Portent

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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Popularity: 4% [?]

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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Popularity: 4% [?]

I really like this. Shove in a load of words and it will generate a word cloud- there are loads of parameters, fonts, colour schemes to try.

I used the text from all the previous stories on Portent though you need no more than 150. You can then decide whether to have them horizontal, vertical or a bit of both as well as other parameters and create a picture which you own. Excellent stuff.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Don’t recognise the face? That’ Bill Heine, the man who put Headington on the map with his shark through the roof.

MagMyPic is an excellently implemented generator of magazine covers. Just upload a photo, select a magazine- there’s 14 to pick from Vogue, Time, National Geographic and many more and the results are plain to see.

The man pictured is responsible for increased reporting of sharks (not the legal ones!) in the Oxford area. See the previous story!

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Popularity: 23% [?]

This is a Flash demo of a C++ Physics engine. Yes it sounds like something only a programmers mother would recommend but some of the demos are fun such as the falling rag dolls pictured.

A physics engine is a piece of code that lets software model real world physics. A human can be thought of as a series of lines joined together (that describes the limits of my artistic ability!). But the angles that those lines make is constrained in the real world by bones, ligaments etc. Bending your arms back until they snap off is not a good idea!

In software a physics engine does that and lots more- objects roll or slide down slopes according to the pull of gravity and friction. This site shows a clever bit of conversion work off a C++ (programming language) physics engine into Flash. Very impressive.

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Popularity: 16% [?]

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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Popularity: 8% [?]

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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Popularity: 13% [?]

This is a word guessing game. You enter the word in the box on the left and if you get one of the words, it appears on the map.

Some words are on the edge of the screen and open up into other maps. The white square in the centre of the pink rectangle in the top left represents this map. There are lots of others so i guess it will take quite a while to guess them all. You can share your game with someone else as well for a collaborative effort. It’s simple, but well done but might take a few weeks to solve.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

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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Popularity: 9% [?]

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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Popularity: 18% [?]

The link on the picture takes you to the UK Talk Like a Pirate Day website, while the bottom link goes to the US one. Maybe we’ll see other national sites some time eg “Parlez comme un Corsair?”

This annual event exhorts people to talk in the present tense, drop the gs off the end of words endin in ing and double up vowels- ie ee gettin’ that?

Both sites are interesting though the UK one looks better. Yaar!

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Popularity: 14% [?]

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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Popularity: 28% [?]

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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Popularity: 8% [?]

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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Popularity: 10% [?]

This is well done. A visual generator for characters in the style of the Simpsons, complete with an appropriate backdrop and a message that you add.

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Popularity: 7% [?]