Portent

There’s a technique called dynamic soaring that birds particularly Albatrosses use to harvest energy from places where winds are changing such as in wave troughs.

Gliders use the same technique and radio controlled gliders in this video, to get up to a speed according to the radar gun of 399 MPH. Call me a little skeptical but are model gliders structurally able to go that fast without over stressing the wings? Certainly one or two of the comments suggest the same. Anyway you make your mind up!

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This is almost certainly one that should be filed under the “Don’t try this at home” category. Mankind’s ingenuity has developed many different types of weapons of which one of the most nasty is a flame thrower. They have their uses- clearing bunkers and caves in wartime. Of course one of the things you don’t realise is that man carried flame throwers made the wearer a bit vulnerable- one stray bullet and you become a human torch as the fuel was carried under pressure and …

So it’s a bit of a risky thing to try – I could easily see anyone doing this ending up in the Darwin Awards one year so try it at your own risk… But it’s still fun to look at someone else doing it!

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I like this. What happens if you enter a phrase in English then have it translated into foreign languages then back to English. That what this site does, using the Babelfish translation service.

For instance the phrase “This website is called Portent and it’s about interesting, new and fun stuff on the web.” when run through this ends up with “This site of the Web is called the false prognoses and is extreme messages and of the safeguard the end to interest in the Web the substance.” which sounds about right! or what about

“Humpty Dumpty, of that one in a wall, Humpty Dumpty one was company/signature, had a great case, all the horses of the king and all the men of the king, could thus immovable not he Humpty in in course.“. You can probably figure out the original!

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The links go to a youtube video of the fan in action. Unless it was a fridge I doubt you’d find anything er cooler! There are 42 LEDs and through careful timing, you can program all sorts of animated graphical effects. I suspect that you need to be half decent at programming it- it comes with 5MB of storage and you need a serial port. Also, it costs $389 from here.

If that is beyond your budget they also sell a cheaper ($5.00) hand held fan that can have up to 6 messages.
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Crazy Golf isn’t quite the right name but the game is pretty much that. See the white ball in the top level. Moving the cursor behind it, gives it a push forward. The white rings and squares deflect it, while the dark blue circles swallow it.

You just have to get it to the target- a rotating disk with the word next in it. Sounds easy but .. well see for yourself!

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In this age of the “War on Terror” where it seems if you’re not part of the answer, you’re part of the problem, it is important to demonstrate levels of alertness. The Fear Chart generator makes this an oh so simple thing to do. Just enter five levels, pick a picture and voila as the French say.

By my reckoning we are at condition Puppy Kisses- ah bless.

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This is just a reminder that NaNoWriMo is back on again, growing year on year. I covered this last year in Portent so there’s not much to say except to mention the other stuff that is done by NaNoWriMo such as the encouragement of Young Writers- take a look at their programs.

Others have picked up their idea as well, well sort of- it’s much easier to read a novel in 30 days than write it- DefectiveYeti (Remember the Cliche rotation project) have done this with NaNoReMo 2007- where they’re reading Catch-22.

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From ages 9-14, my childhood was spent building Airfix kits. At one point I had 83 aircraft hanging from my ceiling, mostly 1/72nd WWII but also a few modern aircraft including the Hercules transporter. For a kid with asthma this was probably most unwise, as model aircraft are a dust magnet, but every three months my parents got out the step ladder out and dusted the whole lot. No wonder my wife says I was spoilt!

Sadly Airfix went into receivership yesterday with 31 out of 41 of Humbrol’s employees (the owner of the Airfix brand) laid off. I wonder if the present Govt. will send in people to destroy all plans of the TSR-2 aircraft kit (shown) that was new this year, just like a previous Labour administration did with the real aircraft plans in the early 1960s. (To prevent any chance of a future Conservative Govt resurrecting it)!

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Sometimes you need Post-It notes. And if you want to have a little fun, you can easily create them online using this generator.

Then you could be really sad by printing it out on a colour printer, cutting it out and super-gluing it to someone’s computer! Prank #1928 from “the Boys Book of really nasty pranks”. Just imagine the look on their face when they try to remove it! Won’t you be popular!!

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If you like wine to have a little body in it, why not buy a fake corpse! These are terrific, though I suspect if you were to say drive around town with one in your front seat you might have a little explaining to do.

Each is hand crafted with attention to detail- nostril cavities and fingernails. Heads can rotate, mouths open a close and the fingers can be angled as you wish! Including howe much decay (6 months decay, drowned with maggots please!) Even the latex skin feels real and apart from the lack of smell, they look very realistic!

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As you can see, although it looks ok, my first go wasn’t a total success. There are 5 questions, each with three choices so that means a possible 3^5 = 729 different versions. On my second go I got hands up but I’m not saying how until I’ve sold it for a lot of money.

This isn’t too serious- more for bright kids but it is interesting and lovely illustrated. If you really want to design a roller coaster , I suggest you get one of the “Roller Coaster Tycoon” game series. There you can design it to be ultra elaborate of different designs and as extreme or not as you like.

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One weekend each year in September, London throws open its houses to anyone who wants to visit them. Not all houses, but designated buildings and houses. Lets face it London is full of them, but here you can go in places that are often never open to the public. But just for one weekend until next year.

They have a google maps and a half decent search, you can even see which are more children friendly (and visit the rest!). About the only annoying thing is the intro splash screen which is so 20th century and should be dropped immediately. I’ve linked directly to the search, not the intro page because of that.

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If you like cycling and can get to London on a Sunday, this is one way to see London in a safe (ie car free) day, along the highlighted route. It takes place on Sunday 23rd September 2007.

Sponsored by Hovis (they’re putting up the dough…), as well as various councils, Metro newspaper, BBC, TFL and Met Police etc. It’s a 9 mile route starting at London bridge and ending up at St James park which is taken over from lunchtime. I’ve walked most of the route in one go- on July 7th 2005 (from Earls Court to Whitechapel) and it is very scenic.

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This is my mini city- not much to look at, but the more visitors it gets the higher the population becomes and then I can add industry, set up proper transport infrastructure, security, business and the environment. I’m not sure if they have to be unique visitors but would guess so or else repeat visits would clock up the numbers.

For once the link goes to my city called Portent999 rather than the site itself but you can set up your own free city and invite visitors. It’s a neat idea so long as people visit so come on everybody- turn my humble patch into a sprawling (but green!) metropolis…

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It looks rather bleak- you have a ball on the end of a piece of string. the other end moves with your mouse cursor so you have to drag it (the ball falls under gravity) and try and click on it.

I found it almost impossible until I learnt a trick. (Warning Spoiler). Drag the string to the left or right edge so the ball is half off the screen. then move the cursor off screen until it’s a few pixels away. Then a quick mouse move and click should hit the ball. What does it do? That would be telling!

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