My guess is that virtually everyone is familiar with the Internet Movie Database, but many may not be aware that many similar websites exist, each focused on a particular niche. Things like comics.org or Mobygames.com’s database of videogames. Anyway for a little friday fun I’ll point out the existence of the ipdb.org – the internet pinball database. When I was a kid we had two pinball machines and a jukebox in the basement, courtesy of my dad’s fond memories of the nickel and dime pinball machines of his youth. Kudos to any hamilton who can find either of the machines we owned in the database – while my memory of one of the machines in particular is pretty good, I can’t remember it’s name and have only a vague sense of when it was manufactured (late 60’s?). If you can find it, please note which one it is here. And for anyone else, if you messed about with pinball in your youth or have a fondness for it, it can be fun wandering through ipdb.org checking out the machines you used to play. Plus if you’re clever you’ll grab a definition file for them and get yourself a copy of pinmame so you can play a simulation of them on your computer.
Month: May 2004
Imagining the digital brain
Engage your imagination before heading over to the Register and reading this short piece on recent progress in the nanotechnology field. Ponder research into artificial intelligence and especially neural networks, and using the newly discovered manufacturing technique to build one that is as dense as a human brain. Would we get a neural network capable of something approximating human intelligence?
I have no idea, but it’s fun to imagine the possibilities.
Deaths from Diabetes exceeding deaths from AIDS
Now this is interesting. Once again, more coverage of the rising incidence of diabetes. What surprised me in this story is that the deaths from complications related to diabetes have exceeded those from complications related to AIDS, yet which disease has a higher profile? Not to take anything away from AIDS activists – clearly they’ve been very effective at raising public awareness about the disease. But equally clear is the fact that the diabetes folks should be paying attention to how they’ve been so successful and working to get the word out. Consider my small observations my contribution to the cause 😉
How common is your name?
Just check namestatistics.com and find out. If you follow the link you’ll discover David is #6. I’ve always suspected I was in the top 10 given how many Davids I run into. I think I first clued into this during my Sophmore year in college – there were around 50-60 folks in my fraternity and 5 of us were Davids. How common is your name?
Schwarzenegger comeuppance
Now this is comedy folks. You might not be aware that Governor Arnold recently sued a company for producing a bobblehead doll of him in full action hero attire, his case being that he owns the rights to reproductions of his likeness. He’s on shaky legal ground at best due to his being a public figure. In response to the case, Fair Use Press has produced a small downloadable book covering the issue. The cover of the book is guaranteed to make you laugh, but be warned it’s not work safe.
[link originally found on the almost always excellent boingboing]
Free gaming is good
In anticipation of the release of a sequel to one of the best FPS series, tribes, Sierra is releasing the original two games for free as a means of marketing the sequel which is due this fall. You can get Tribes 1 and Tribes 2, the entire games. Somehow I never caught on to the Tribes scene, I was playing Quake engine and then Unreal Tournament engine games during their heyday, but both of them are still played today and my guess is with their free re-release they’ll see a surge in servers. Plus there are a wealth of mature, polished mods for each (tribes 1) engine (tribes 2). Anyone up for some TeamSpeak action this weekend in Tribes 2?
Easy access to Google’s hidden features
Most folks are probably aware that Google is chock full of features that aren’t always easy to figure out from their minimalist interface – things like a dictionary for example (type ‘define:word’ and google will provide a definition). Enter soople.com, which provides simple access to google’s extended features. If you have trouble memorizing all the different commands at google, give soople a try.
Fictional rabbits in the real world
Have you read Watership Down? It’s a wonderful story of a band of rabbits forced to migrate to a new home. A fan of the novel has created a map and extensive collection of photos of the area that inspired Richard Adam’s work. Cool stuff if you’re a fan.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 