If papercrafting (21st July article) isn't to your taste perhaps creating your own games might be.
Playcrafter is a site which allows you to create, share and play your own games.
At the time of writing it is blocked in school - probably the playable games.
Ever wanted to make your own safety warnings? Well this site can help you.
The St. Claire web-based Sign Builder
This came via Peter Serafinowicz on Twitter, he posted several amusing signs here, here, here, here and here. (At 3:20am on June 21st 2009 he also wrote, "I'm so tired, my skeleton is using my skin as a sleeping bag.".)
'CCS-PK' also featured a different sign-creation site back in December 2007.
The Canon Creative Park site - yes, they are the printer, copier and camera peeps - has a number of very detailed papercraft models for you to download, print and make. They cover a wide range of topics including science, architecture, animals and toys.
The picture on the left is a model of the Sun and looks quite beautiful.
Some nice things to do if there's any wet days this summer.
Original link via Make.
So, who do you think is dancing out there on some rocky planet?
If you click this link you can see the full video of their amazing performance.
The NASA "Space Your Face" site allows you to upload your own pictures and then email your friend(s) a link to the finished video. They currently have three different scenes available and you can see this superstar in the other views here and here.
Almost 40 years ago - actually on July 20th 1969 at 2017 UTC - the Lunar Module from Apollo 11 touched down in the Sea of Tranquility.
I followed all the various space launches in those days and, as a teenager, I was very excited by the endless possibilities for the future.
Although we may only have visited the Moon a few times since then I am still amazed by what has been achieved.
The BBC has a great archive of material from that time.
And there's a NASA site too where they are recreating the mission. By the time this article is posted the 'launch' of Apollo 11, on July 16th, should be very close.
Just a reminder that the Dunwoody 1000 Mile Challenge is due to end today.
According to the site when I wrote this in early June :
"Richard will finish the challenge on 10th July 2009 doing his last mile up the home straight of Newmarket racecourse at approx 2.20pm before the Ladbrokes Bunbury Cup. Richard will be joined in his last mile by famous faces, to be confirmed shortly."
I hope that he is successful.
Originally posted on 10th June 2009 here.
You can find an online map with some highlighted items here :
This is a "shortened URL" provided via Station X at the Bletchley Park site.
Shortened URLs are very useful and have become more widely used via services such as Twitter. The real URL is MUCH longer and shown here as a comparison. (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=114780553626409762558.00046da9197c47d1b3213&ll=51.644655,-0.054417&spn=0.040052,0.077162&z=14)
CNet have a nice video that explains quite a bit - take a look if you have a decent connection for streaming. You can find out more at Toyota's own site too.
And of course there's a Wikipedia entry to look at as well.
This story made the papers and TV in the middle of June. It concerned the installation by Sainsbury's in Gloucester of a device in their car park to recover energy as cars passed over it. The energy could then be used to help power their store tills.
This was explained to be very "green" and therefore good for the planet.
Most interesting to me was the fact that the site linked above, the Green Optimist, was probably one of the few that seems to have had no comments pointing out the big error with this story.
As you can see if you scroll down and read the comments on these pages :
There is nothing "green" about this at all. The energy is "stolen" from the cars which for the most part will be powered by petrol (or diesel).
How can you avoid being taken in by such stories?
And don't listen to celebrities - at least, not when they're talking about something important.
Some of you are probably wondering why people bother with things like dice throwing nowadays, after all, a computer can generate random numbers can't it?
Well - no it can't.
Computers are machines that follow a set of instructions and there is nothing random about them at all.
They can generate pseudo-random numbers - that is a pre-programmed sequence of numbers that appear to be random. But they are NOT random. (Read more about it here.)
You can always use a website like Random.org to create random numbers for you.
Notice how their site explains how they produce random numbers by NOT using a computer.
