Beyond... The Black Stump

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

How to Permanently Erase Data Off a Hard Drive

So you want to make sure that someone can't get their hands on your private files on a hard drive. Here's a trick that will destroy the hard drive! You will need a set of Torx wrenches. the T-9 sized Torx wrench is the one that fits most hard drive screws.
How to Permanently Erase Data Off a Hard Drive

Human-powered ferris wheel in Nepal

At the Hindu Swasthani Mela festival held in Kathmandu earlier this month, there was a small ferris wheel that appeared to be non-functional. It consisted of four octagonal open-air cages and a simple metal frame. When two kids climbed into one of the octagons, though, a man got up on the other side and started jumping up and down, eventually getting the thing to turn like any other ferris wheel.
Human-powered ferris wheel in Nepal

Science Question from a Toddler: The color of light

Why does a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee glow green? Why does a spark from a light socket look blue? Two different questions, but one intertwined answer.
Science Question from a Toddler: The color of light

Google Reader Lets You Monitor Page Changes Without RSS

It’s not as nifty as a cell phone, or as amazing as street views of businesses all over the world, but to me it is big news — really big news. Google announced yesterday
that Google Reader can now be used to monitor pages for Web changes — whether they have RSS feeds or not.
Google Reader Lets You Monitor Page Changes Without RSS

Sunday, January 24, 2010

50 Banned Books That Everyone Should Read

As long as there have been books, there have been people opposed to what is said in some of those books. Authors who challenge the accepted norms in their literature are often the target of angry people who do not understand or appreciate their literature. The following books are excellent examples of great literature that has become banned or challenged in an attempt to shield the public from what some see as inappropriate.
50 Banned Books That Everyone Should Read

Numbers Galore: The Internet 2009, A Collection of Stats You’ll Likely Keep All Year

Pingdom, a company that offers services to measure server uptime and performance monitoring along with letting the webmaster (in many cases that the server is down, has done one impressive job compiling a large amount of stats from a variety of sources (they’re provided at the bottom of the post) about the Internet in 2009.
Numbers Galore: The Internet 2009, A Collection of Stats You’ll Likely Keep All Year

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Naked airport scanner catches cellphone, misses bomb components

Check out this German TV clip highlighting the failure of the new, privacy-violating full-nude scanners going in at an airport near you. As Bruce Schneier notes, "The scanner caught a subject's cell phone and Swiss Army knife -- and the microphone he was wearing -- but missed all the components to make a bomb that he hid on his body... Full-body scanners: they're not just a dumb idea, they don't actually work."
Naked airport scanner catches cellphone, misses bomb components

Friday, January 22, 2010

What is the most popular password?

Following the announcement of an attack at RockYou.com whereby a hacker managed to obtain all the account details of 32M users, the security companies have had fun analyzing the data. It appears that the hacker only shared the actual passwords, not the accompanying account information, but that was probably just to keep the useful stuff to themselves. There was a website featuring all the passwords, but this has now been taken off-line.
What is the most popular password?

New Online from Fortune: The 100 Best Companies to Work For, 2010

Fortune’s 2010 List is Now Available. Lists Back to 2006 are Also Online.
New Online from Fortune: The 100 Best Companies to Work For, 2010

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

We all have shortcuts that are essential to our daily workflow. A majority of them are staples such as Copy (Command + C) and Paste (Command + V), but occasionally we stumble upon a shortcut we wish we’d learned years ago. Suddenly, this simple shortcut has streamlined our process and shaved quite a bit of time off our day. Collected here are some lesser known but extremely useful shortcuts. Many of these are not documented in the “Keyboard Shortcuts” menu, and some of them don’t even have equivalent menu options.
Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

Stay Under 7 Megapixels to Avoid Photo Noise and Diffraction

Ross at the Petravoxel blog gets precise, and provides proof, on why going over 7 megapixels in a point-and-shoot makes absolutely no sense.
Stay Under 7 Megapixels to Avoid Photo Noise and Diffraction

"Memorize Now" Helps You Commit Long Passages to Memory

If you find yourself in a position of needing or wanting to commit long passages of text to memory, webapp Memorize Now can help.
"Memorize Now" Helps You Commit Long Passages to Memory

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Reminder Of Why You Should Never Put Foil In A Microwave

Here’s why your mother always said never to put aluminium foil in the microwave. Can someone buy this Swedish guy a new kitchen, please? And a box o’ wine, too?
Reminder Of Why You Should Never Put Foil In A Microwave

PDFmyURL Generates PDFs from Any Web Address

We've covered online file converters, browser extensions, and psuedo-printers that convert web pages into full PDFs. For a simple, no-software-required solution, PDFmyURL spits out PDF files when you plug in a web address. And, yeah, there's a bookmarklet.
PDFmyURL Generates PDFs from Any Web Address

What Is My Computer Doing

Have you ever asked yourself why the computer’s hard drive is trashing like mad or why everything seemed to come down to a halt without you doing anything on the computer right now? What’s My Computer Doing is a free software program for the Windows operating system that tries to shed light to those questions.
What Is My Computer Doing