My Girl Loves Cheesecake!

Exploding Bulls? It's the Hedgehog I feel Saddest For

This story, just in from Auckland, New Zealand.

"Seven bulls ‘exploded’ and caught fire after power lines fell on a Dairy Flat farm, north of Auckland, on Tuesday. Three bulls were electrocuted when the lines fell at a 60.7ha Wilks Road farm and another four were killed when they walked into the live area. A hedgehog was also killed. Dave Taylor, who leases the farm, says he jumped the fence to see what was wrong but realised he was trapped when he heard the fences and gates were ‘fizzing and hissing’ because the fallen lines were still live. Mr Taylor says he was lucky because he and workmate Glen Johnson might have jumped the fence without touching the wire. - Rodney Times"

Via Metro

Stop Press! "Dave Mows Grass" escapes Blogworld!

An open message to Dave, a guy who, like many has seen a lot of changes in his life over the last year or so, some not so good, some for the better, I've been following his exploits in a kayak, on swirling waters, and felt not a little jealous... getting pangs, ya know, to go out in mine, but, after they sat unused behind the house for a year or several, I um... sorta gave 'em away. One had become a bit porous, that was the serious white water toy, me and it had crashed into many rocks, submerged trees, and ice floes, I'd dragged and carried it through forests and, roped it down cliffs, been smashed upside down onto the beach.... Ahh, happy times.
My neighbour, who I gave it to, thought the fact that this much-patched lightweight kevlar reinforced adventure-machine leaked a bit, so you got a little wet, was a fault, and unacceptable.
It was, in fact easily fixable, but fixing it would add a little weight... so I never bothered. Water never bothered me.
One day I came home and Dylan was cutting it up in his back yard. CUTTING IT UP! DAMN!
But, you give something away, you lose the right to be angry when the new owner treats it badly.

Here's my thoughts on Dave's announcement of closing his blog.

Oh how insidious, Dave Mows Grass escapes, how the hell do you think you'll get away from the keyboard?
Blogger enforcement techs are right now creeping up on you, like they did to me, with a great big net, which they throw over you, and use to subdue you, dragging you off into the van. The van takes you to a secret facility, many miles from anywhere any of us would wish to call "home", and you will there be deposited into an empty room. Yes, room, they call it, not cell. There will be sedatives, of course, for a few days... But the lights go on and off at times, and with no windows, no clocks, how do we know time, days? I think I've been here a few weeks, but it may be days or years...

After a while, you sleep most of the time. Then, after one waking, there is a desk, and a computer. "You know what to do", a note on it says. "Blog. Or else".

And after a while, blogworld? seems like reality. You envy those out there on the water, those travelling, those living lives... but hey, there's another picture to cut and paste, hit post... Every time you hit so many words and images posted, you get a reward. I once got a beer, that was for a two thousand word post on a blog about knitting... Oh no, you don't have your own blog! that's too funny, no, you just get assigned blogs to post on, in the style of, I've done blogs on everything from high-altitude cheese-weaving, to the migration habits of pigmy shrews.

Now they tell me I've got one on grass-mowing and kayaking to do.

It seems another blogger has escaped, slipped his chains sometime in the night and left the blogcentrum, I heard the alarms the guards shouting, vehicles starting up. What happened? I think one of the guards has a blog, I'll tell you when he updates.

Come visit, Dave, let us know you're okay?

A Discussion of Orgasms

Well, that seems to have got your attention......
I hit post, before I wrote the content, so... the feed readers popped the "O" word up, and some of you, regular readers, blogfriends.... you know who you are..... (and so do I), ohhh Pavlov would have loved this, Mary Roach would too... as soon as I hit post (almost), came visiting... Whilst there was nothing to visit, empty post.

Here it is.




Video, yes, I'm aware that youtube is an annoyance to some... is of writer Mary Roach, speaking at the T.E.D. conference (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. If you are interested in hearing inspirational people speak on all manner of subjects, then I heartily recommend you visit TED, click HERE.

Mary Roach. Ten Things You Did Not Know About Orgasm. Go visit Mary, after this I'll be looking out for her books, she really made me laugh.

This is via BoingBoing, which some say is the worlds most popular blog. website, online magazine. I read Boingboing pretty much every day. I get bored with some of it's obsessions, but hey, I get bored with mine too. Points ot of ten for Boingboing? eight and a bit. sometimes fewer, sometimes ten.....

Custom Bikes Seen in Skipton

They're rebuilds on old frames, registered as tax exempt/historic, there's a distinct similarity between them, but they're far from identical, I'd guess them to be the work of the same person or workshop. I like the red one more, with its open forks and (argh!) leaf spring front suspension.
Although the red bike's tank says "Ace", the only "Ace" bike I know was a straight, inline four, not a V-twin, the company became "Indian" far back in the mists of time. If any passing reader knows more about these two, I'd really be interested to know, If you're the maker, my hat is off to you.

Power Your Car With an Electric Toothbrush!

"South Korea's top technology university has developed a plan to power electric cars through recharging strips embedded in roadways that use a technology to transfer energy found in some electric toothbrushes."

I read just so far, paused, and had visions... I've often mused on the residual dark-energy found in electric toothbrushes,-if you're at all psychic, you can see the crackling field of satanic power that surrounds such a thing. Wise folk, fearing contagion, plague, or being posessed by a demon, shun these frightening devices. I, being braver than many, simply wear an amulet, made by the wise old lady who lives in the hovel in the woods. And use my buzzy-brush without fear.

It seems that, protected by my amulet, I could collect dozens of electric toothbrushes, rip out my diesel turbo engine, and stuff a bundle of buzzing gum stimulators in its place. NOOOOO!!! ladies, ladies, TOOTHBRUSHES only!...... Well, obviously a gearbox redesign might be needed, in order to translate buzz into forward motion.

Maybe I should read the rest of the article.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25498972-5014239,00.html

Sigh. How disappointing. A more honest journalist would simply have said "induction charging". Yes, toothbrushes do use it, and so do a lot of other things.
However, the sentence structure used is clumsy, a confusion between subject and predicate. My old schoolteacher, Miss Carter, would have rapped my knuckles for writing such a confused sentence. When I was eight. Why is it that journalists are not ALL required to be literate?

p.s. I'm not a journalist. my use of English may often be open to criticism. I will rarely feel guilty if I transgress.

Oh Beautiful! I Want an Air Penguin.......

And the graceful Air Jellyfish...



These are made by German firm Festo, exploring the future of robotics, but crossing a border into bio-mimicry and art. In my huge mansion, that I will one day have, I think I'll have shoals of these roaming the atrium.



Click the video embedded links or google Festo for lots more, but for me, these are the most beautiful of Festo's creatures.

Eight Miles High, Byrds.

A live concert recording from the Byds gig, the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, 1968.
I loved this song in 1968, no less now. In 1968, the first manned Apollo mission was launched, (Apollo 7) the first space mission to carry a three man crew, a previously unheard of eleven day orbital mission, later that year Apollo 8 left earth orbit and travelled to the moon on a three-day journey, completing ten lunar orbits, in preparation for the moon landing in july '69.
1968 was a time of unrest and rebellion, of assassination and unease, Russian tanks crushed the Prague Spring rebellion, Paris was ablaze, Martin Luther King was murdered. Baader-Meinhof guerilla gang bombs go off in Berlin, Wiki 1968.
Others were exploring inner space.
"The obscure lyrics, penned by Clark, are about the group's plane trip touring England in 1965. "Eight miles high, and when you touch down, you'll find that it's stranger than known." Airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles high; but it was felt that "eight miles high" sounded better. Unconvinced, the BBC banned the song"
The BBC didn't like that word "high"........