Friday links: October 9

I've got a whole lot more open tabs in my browser that I haven't gotten to. This is more than sufficient.

Can you tell Helvetica from Ariel? Prove it. I got 18 out of 20. [link]

Making shelves from shelf mushrooms. [link]

Dark Horse comics' ghost stories for animals available online. [link]

Paper airplane plans. [link 1 link 2]

Complete Bloom County comic collection coming. [link]

Along those same lines, what happened to Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. [link]

My neighbor has an awesome new bike. [link]

Speakers inside these boxes vibrate. The differing air pressure makes the spoons dance and sing.

Network of satellites designed to detect ripples in space is ready to go. [link]

An urn made from a Sparc workstation. [link]

Good way to break a camera lens. Take a picture of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket launch[link]

Superhero drinks. [link]

A comic to stuff in business return envelopes. [link]

Weirdest cafe ever. [link]

Cat that messes with it's owner. [link]

App that changes sketches into photos by automatically Photoshopping images off the internet. Just watch the video. [link]

Telomeres are a protective cap on the end of chromosomes. Kinda like aglets on the end of your shoe laces. But as the chromosomes divide the telomeres get shorter and shorter. Shortening telomeres is thought to be one of the reasons we age. It may also be why Dolly, the cloned sheep, died young. Since she was a clone her telomeres were the age of the donor. Anyway, the people who discovered telomeres won a Nobel Prize this year. [link]

I saw a guy in Paul Simon's band playing one of these many years ago. It's based on the same principles that make wine glasses sing. But the glass is leaded so musicians who play these have to get their blood checked regularly.

Years ago Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine traveled the world looking for endangered animals. They made a radio program for the BBC and wrote a book, both called "Last Chance to See". I highly recommend the audio book.
Now Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine have done a TV program by the same name. In this video you see an endangered parrot called a kakapo try to mate with Mark's head.


Game: Blob Wars [link]

You Doctor Who fans know who K9 is. Companion to The 4th Doctor and gift to Sarah Jane (and a few others). Apparently the character, but not the look, belong to a former Dr. Who writer. And he's permitting the character to be used in a new Australian show. Since the BBC owns the look they had to redesign him. Follow the link to see the trailer for the new show. [link]

Disney's version of the Wilhelm Scream. [link]

Golden Age of Video.