I want this T-shirt.

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Just how awesome is this T-shirt design from Headline Shirts?

Intelligent with just a touch of geeky and a whole bunch of Pete Townsend-style rock.

If you're like me and want to have this item of pure brilliance, you can get it HERE. Actually, it's worth going there just to read the fun little article about the 'newly discovered' designs and drawings made by Leonardo da Vinci.

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Of course, the above design is really a rip-off homage to da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man. (see below)

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The only time I have found the Bible to be beautiful.

 

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I know it looks like a cross between the Aurora Borealis and a seismometer gone mad, but this is actually a graphical representation of the Bible (King James version).

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Each of those tiny grey icicles near the bottom represents a chapter from the Bible, while the length of each shows how many verses are contained therein. The multicoloured arcs, in the meantime, show where there is cross-referencing going on; this may even only be some kind of allusion to an idea presented elsewhere, but often there will be events or people represented.

Obviously, each extreme of an arc will the be the appropriate verses, while the colour (and height, to prevent it becoming an unmanageable mess) shows just how far apart these verses are.

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Reaching across the Atlantic, this amazing image was developed as a result of a collaboration between Lutheran pastor in Germany and a doctoral student of computer science in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

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Book Review: "Diamond Dove"

I like to read. I'll read a lot of things and have even, when boredom and a lack of alternatives beset me, read one of those naff little romance paperbacks belonging to my mother. I can't really remember what that was about, so don't ask and I won't lie. It was crap though.
Anyway. Enough of that.
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These days, I manage to avoid situations like the above. This is generally down to two factors: I have something in the region of two hundred books at home, ranging from fantasy, detective, thriller, natural history, popular science, all the way to biographies and pure mathematics. And, unlike many folks, I will read a book again and again if I like it enough. Lord of the Rings has been read maybe six, seven times. Skallagrigg* has reached double figures, and my Pratchett collection barely has time to go cold.
Then again, I visit the library every week. Once more, this is for two reasons, the foremost of which being that I simply cannot afford to buy all the books I want to read (nor do we have space in which to store them). The other reason is that I can take these to work and not worry too much about damage or having people ask if they can borrow them and then damaging the books themselves.
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Honestly, does nobody know how bookmarks work?
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To the task at hand. This time around, I'm reviewing Adrian Hyland's award-winning 'Diamond Dove' (if you're wondering about the award, it was the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for best first crime novel).
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Set in contemporary Australia, far from the cities that are known worldwide, Diamond Dove introduces us to Emily Tempest (a classic name for a heroine if ever there was...). The wayward daughter of a white man and a black woman, Emily returns from her travels in the wide open world and ends up right in the middle of the usual small-town outback rivalries, petty politics and casual racism. Worse than that, one of the most respected elders of the Aborigine camp is brutally murdered and it looks as though it's the work of the local mystic/resident nutter.

Except Emily Tempest can't leave things alone. Within a short time, she's asking questions and getting up peoples' noses. In the meantime, she's struggling with trying to settle back into her old life.

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Sound familiar? It should do; the plot device isn't new at all. The return of the prodigal child, an epochal event, a crime to be solved and plenty of bad guys you really ought to know by now aren't going to be the killer.

Hold on a bit though. Like I said at the start of this, Diamond Dove won an award. How come, if the story is that predictable?

Well, it has to be down to the presentation and the way Adrian Hyland has managed to write things with just the right amount of detail. Well aware of an audience beyond Australia, he's avoided becoming becoming too bogged down in authentic patois and over-elaborate descriptions of the landscape (etc). That's not to say you have no sense of place, however. It's a very easy read and you get caught up in the lives and trials of the folk in the town - even the less salubrious types.

If you want a comparison, then you might want to think of Alexander McCall Smith's detective series set in Africa (No1 Ladies' Detective Agency), although Diamond Dove feels a lot less cosy. I heartily recommend this book.

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* Skallagrigg is my favourite book of all time. I seriously wish more people would read it. And forget the TV adaptation ever happened.
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Recharging your batteries: going that extra mile.

 

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Rechargeable batteries. They're a good thing, right? I reckon so anyway. I mean, I have an mp3 player which is on quite a bit. However, I decided before buying it that I wanted one where I could change the battery as and when the juice ran out - after all, you hear all these stories about iPods and the like being useless all of a sudden just because the battery died. 

The internal, hard-wired battery.

Sod that.

Naturally, I quite clearly had to invest in a set of rechargeables and a unit similar to the one above. Plug it into the mains and the little blighters soak up that juice like a happy sponge and are ready and raring to go in a few hours. Great stuff. I even went to the trouble of buying a unit with a built-in cut-out system that switches the whole thing off after the batteries have been done to a turn.

The thing is though.... you know those hand-cranked radios you can buy (as invented by the incredible Trevor Baylis)? Well, I was looking at them and wondering, 'surely somebody has come up with a wind-up charging unit?' Because my current unit still has to take juice from somewhere.

And they have.

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Sadly, it's only a power unit, rather than a means by which batteries themselves can be recharged.

So near and yet so far.

But then I found this. I hope you don't suffer from carpal tunnel or some other wrist-related RSI (stop it you mucky buggers, I know what you're thinking...).

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Yes, that IS an AA battery and yes, you do have to do what it says on the tin cover. Essentially, this little beauty is powered by vigorous shaking and works on the basic science of a kinetic motor. Take a look at the picture below for a peek at the internal workings.

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The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed one drawback with this otherwise brilliant design: the battery's capacity for storing energy is reduced by half - the price of installing a kinetic motor half the size of an AA battery inside an AA battery.

Having said that, for those that have the mind to do so, take a couple of these in each hand when you're out jogging and the pumping action should do both you and the batteries a world of good. 

And you know what?  They may last long enough to do the job.

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Thanks to I New Idea for the story.

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Kitchen Sink?

 

See this?

It's a pen knife. You pull the blade out and cut things with it.

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This is also, technically, at least, a pen knife. However, I get the feeling it does rather more than just cut things...

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This, my friends, is the new SwissChamp XAVT from Victorinox, the folks who make the world famous Swiss Army knives. As you can see from the picture (click it for a larger view, as per usual), it stretches the term 'pocket knife' somewhat. Having said that, at $425, it's going to stretch your budget too...

This little beast, while being almost square in profile manages to cram in 80 'essential' features. No, I'm not going to list them, but you can read more about it here. Then again, do you really need a pen knife with a pharmaceutical spatula?

And what the hell IS a pharmaceutical spatula anyway?

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I think the only whittling you're likely to do with this is eat away at your savings....