Fishing Using Game Boy Pocket Sonar
Drop 1410 writing on his Game Boy Carts blog:
Bandai developed the sonar device with Honda Electronics. A fish-finding sonar device designed to be used in conjunction with Nintendo Co.’s Game Boy hand-held video-game machine has been introduced by Bandai Co.
The device can detect fish up to 20 meters deep when placed on the surface of the water. It provides a readout on the Game Boy screen.
This is amazing.
Puerto Rico takes big step towards US statehood
The two-part referendum first asked voters if they wanted to change Puerto Rico’s 114-year relationship with the United States. A second question gave voters three alternatives if they wanted a change: become a U.S. state, gain independence, or have a “sovereign free association,” a designation that would give more autonomy for the territory of 4 million people.
With 243 of 1,643 precincts reporting late Tuesday, 75,188 voters, or 53 percent, said they did not want to continue under the current political status. Forty-seven percent, or 67,304 voters, supported the status quo.
On the second question, 65 percent favored statehood, followed by 31 percent for sovereign free association and 4 percent for independence.
This isn’t a done deal yet. The next steps are approval by the US Congress and then Puerto Rico would need to adopt a state constitution. But this is a big, big step forward for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state in the union.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUUqtR1czAM
A while ago I was having a bit of angrytime, so friendpal and generally Swedish individual Mattias sent me some Spyro Gyra to help chill me out. This worked quite well, actually, as Spyro Gyra is rather high on my “I NEED TO BE HAPPY RIGHT THIS SECOND” music list.
The song he sent me was “Bob Goes to the Store” from their 1986 album Breakout, and I’m sharing it with you all now.
The Lord of the Rings Family Tree Project is a somewhat absurd undertaking by Emil Johannsen to catalog the characters of Tolkien’s Middle-earth and their relationships.
One of the things that’s possible with this database is crunching numbers!
Only 19 percent of the total number of characters are female with the highest percentage among Valar, Maiar and Hobbits.
Oh. :(
Resist your gag reflex — this is not yet more gauche east-meets-west self-help nonsense. As far as I can tell this appears to be a summary of several highly serious neuroscience research efforts. Great read.
Alfred Chicken is an old platformer for a few systems: Game Boy, NES, etc. It apparently had an unusual advertising campaign in the United Kingdom, according to Wikipedia:
Karl Fitzhugh, the Product Manager of the Amiga version of the Alfred Chicken video game, ran as the Alfred Chicken Party candidate in the 1993 by-election in the Christchurch, Dorset constituency. The exercise was done to promote the original game’s release. Fitzhugh finished second last with 18 votes, two votes ahead of the Rainbow Party candidate.
He also finished five votes behind the “Ian is King” party candidate.
Did you know that Dennis Hopper was a photographer? I had no idea. According to Wikipedia, he painted, sculpted, and wrote poetry too, which is pretty cool.
But back to his photography. After he died in 2010, a collection of photos that were exhibited from 1969–1970 were found in his house. They’ve been collected and printed in the volume Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album and are also being exhibited in Berlin. Le Journal de la Photographie has more info and a selection of the photos.
The photo I’ve chosen for this post, “Double Standard,” was taken in Los Angeles in 1961.
RedDyeNumber4’s Cuil Theory, narrated by Roy Kelly.
Victoria Stanell for Beautylish:
As part of his newest exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, French artist Fabrice Hyber sculpted a massive cubic meter of red lipstick sitting atop a cold cement slab. The sculpture, entitled “1M3 de beauté” is part of a larger exhibition called “Matières Premières” (raw materials) showing through the holidays.
So, uh, yeah. A cubic meter of lipstick.
One of the coolest ideas I’ve ever heard in my life is, oddly enough, a bike trail. Specifically, the Route of the Hiawatha trail in northern Idaho. It gets that name not directly from a person or a poem, but rather the Hiawatha trains that ran along the Milwaukee Road railroad system while it used to operate.
If you’ve inferred that the bike trail has this name because it runs across the old railroad lines, you are correct. The photo accompanying this post is taken from the official gallery and shows some bikers going over one of the trestles. Just look at that.
Someone I met at a wedding I attended earlier this month was telling me about this trail. I don’t know how to ride a bicycle, but it really, really made me want to learn.