bfish.xaedalus.net

In case you are currently living under a rock… http://discipline.nin.com/

w00t; some mad python hacker has created an iPlayer download script for XBMC!

BigDog is a (downright terrifying) robot designed by Boston Dynamics (funded by those doomsday loving scientists at DARPA). The following video demonstrates how it can keep its balance when on rough terrain, deliberately kicked and even on black ice (which most of us would have trouble walking on)!

Slashdot cites a story in the Observer about the Security Service seeking to trawl the database of 17 million Londoners’ travel records collected by the Oyster card system.

Boy, I never saw that one coming(!)

This is terrifying (but kinda cool at the same time). It’s the way that the sales-guy tells us it’s perfect for dog walkers…

Something to try: a nice HOWTO has appeared on Wired, about installing the Tomato open firmware on routers that use the Broadcom chipset.

Tomato apparently lets you boost wifi transmission power, and set up QoS (quality of service) to try and stop your housemate’s torrent downloads from clobbering your Counterstrike ping times.

Trent Reznor has released his first album since departing from his record label. Ghosts is an instrumental offering which tries to create soundscapes for imaginary locations. Only had a quick once through so far but it’s worth checking out – especially for $5 USD!

Find out more and download your copy in FLAC / MP3 or Apple Lossless at ghosts.nin.com.

I’m not sure if I’ve posted about this before. According to Google, I haven’t, but I thought I had done at least twice…

Anyways, Apricot is a collaboration between the Crystal Space (my favourite open source 3D game SDK for C++/Python/Perl/Java) and Blender (open source 3D modelling package) communities to make an game of current industry-standard quality using free tools, partly to promote the projects involved and partly as a catalyst to improve some aspects of them, but mostly just because it’s cool.

Three programmers and three artists are basically locked in a room together for 6 months and told to bloody well make something brilliant.

Go here and pre-order a DVD in the knowledge that you’re contributing to the gaming arm of the free software movement as well as getting a cool game to play on your Linux, Windows or OS/X computer.

Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, (which, incidentally, looks like an awesome book) has had a short promotional film made about it, by Alfonso Cuarón of Children of Men fame: here. Check it. Word, home dogs.