Links

Bullet time. How they did it in ‘The Matrix’. (Answer: with lots of cameras.)

Ian McKellan (Gandalf) shares his views in “The Grey Book”. via LoTR channel

God has been talkative lately. via andersja

More e-mail being used as evidence. This time, by the evil RIAA against Morpheus and Kazaa. I wonder if this goes against some legal principle? Aren’t you supposed to say, “Anything you say can be used against you?” Reminds me of ‘American Beauty’, in which Ricky agrees to kills Jane’s parents on video.

Waiving import duty for Sachin’s Ferrari is kicking up a controversy. Fair enough. The smartest thing I see Sachin do is drive it for a while, and auction it for charitable purposes. Announcing, of course, his intentions beforehand.

Speaking of bugs, here are some famous software glitches – right from the Patriot missiles misfiring to the London Millenium bridge wobbling. Some links are broken, though. (More glitches and links)

Music helps identify software bugs. I’m sure it can be extended to many other forms of ordered data. DNA sequences, time series, etc.

Rant on HP’s customer service. Long, but interesting. I read it end-to-end. It’s curious, how impersonal a big company can get. via Metafilter

And speaking of glitches, Beflix has a site on the “aesthetics of digital corruption”. He posts screen images of computers that have gone kaput. Some of the animations, especially the ZX Spectrum ones, are a bit familiar.

My current project: transcribing every Calvin and Hobbes into text. Because I’d like to search, using text, for the strip in which Tracer Bullet has “six slugs, one of lead and five of bourbon” or where Dad explains why the Sun rises. Comments The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 11:55 am (pingback): […] So I set out to build one. I can’t remember when, exactly, but it was before Sep 11, 2002. […]

I always knew it. If you’re taking an injection, don’t look at the needle.

11 film-makers make films on 11/9/01. The films will be 11 min, 9 seconds and 1 frame long. via Plastic

Mahesh is experimenting with a new blog format. Something like this has been on my mind for a while too. Will be watching it with great interest.

The Oracle of Google is the coolest Google app so far. Ask it a question with 4 choices, and it uses Google to guess the answer. It knows that Abdul Kalam is India’s President, though it did prefer Vajpayee to former Presidents. via Google Weblog

Man has epilepsy. Woman thinks it’s a heart attack. Gets upset and sues epileptic. via Metafilter

Is using the Net for schoolwork plagiarism? James McKenzie had some thoughts right in 1998.

Rail accidents are nothing new to India.

The next step to globalization. The Columbian President will use video-conferencing. To cut costs and to save time.

Greenspan’s defence. On why he couldn’t have raised interest rates earlier and prevented the bubble.

ABC News managed to smuggle uranium into the US. Reminds of when George Stalk was talking about the security checks in India being much tighter than in the US. He was body-frisked twice, and barely escaped a third random check.