Super crowded wave pool in Japan!

Groovey Yellow Keepon Robot in Spoon video

Hamutsun Serve: Popping Duo from Japan

3 days till holidays!

that's right, you read correctly, I'm off on holidays soon. One glorious week sans work!
Myself, my lovely girlfriend, and ours friends Chris and Ronnie are going to Thailand.
It's going to be brilliant. All I have to do is not kill myself with work beforehand.

I spend some time on Sunday designing some new blog headers. They're based on the city view of KL from my apartment window. Technically it's actually the view away from the city, but you know what I mean. If you hit in your browser I think there's a 30% chance you'll see one. 30% depending on how random the random function is in javascript, which is probably not that random at all.

We've got Rick from our Sydney office visiting us for most of this week. Sounds like there are going to be some very significant changes in our department, but without saying too much, I think they're going to be a really good thing. More details as they come to hand.

Not that much else new to report from KL, I haven't been going out at all recently as I've been saving my pennies for this trip [and trying not to completely break the bank in the process], although there have been the necessary splurges on dvd's and the like.

I, like apparently most people, have recently joined up with Facebook and I'm amazed by the number of people I've been able to re-establish contact with. Still almost no-one from my hometown of Leeton, which is a bit of a pity. Hi Tammy, if you're reading.

I've really got to get back to Leeton next time I'm in Australia, it's been about 8 years since I've been back, which is waaay too long, even for a place I really couldn't wait to leave when I was 18. Leeton seems tremendously far away when you're sitting in your little apartment in hot, humid Kuala Lumpur.

Things that have made me laugh recently:

..the local [chinese?] breakfast-cereal-in-a-cup, Chlorella, not to be confused of course with Cholera, the insidious disease that causes massive diarrhea, and kills millions of people each year. Bad marketing? You betcha.

Awesome rotating canvas paint jam!

overview of the Chinese Technology Cloning Industry

"In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players.

Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities.

"On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk.

Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail addresses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs."

.. Read the full article

Nokia's Raccoon project

This is apparently quite old news, but it completely slipped past me:

Nokia has ported the Apache webserver to Symbian, in order to enable mobile phones to serve content on the World Wide Web.

Many mobile phones today have more processing power than early Internet servers, suggesting that "there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones," according to the company.

hungry for more details? go here

Facelift for inner Sydney

By the time work is finished, Town Hall will boast a new park, CBD residents will finally have a choice of grocers and gourmet supermarkets and Pitt Street Mall will charge the highest shop rents in the country. But before the gains will come plenty of pain.

The scope of work in the CBD, scheduled to begin in a few weeks, is enormous. New developments will extend all the way from the northern end of George Street, opposite Wynyard, to the redevelopment of the old Menzies Hotel and Wynyard station building to, Justin Hemmes's The Ivy - which comprises a boutique hotel and eateries - then south to the Skyvue office and shopping complex and through to the Gowings site on the corner of George and Market streets and the Lumiere project in the nearby cinema district.

It all begins when the Mid City Centre, which connects George and Pitt streets, closes soon. A new office tower and shopping centre will be built before Westfield embarks on its $600 million demolition and transformation of the big three, Sky Garden, Imperial Arcade and Centrepoint. The eastern and western corridors of the CBD will not be left out, with Castlereagh Street boasting luxury boutiques, while York Street will cater for the more affordable designers. The Mid City Centre's tenants - which include Rebel Sport, HMV, Priceline, HobbyCo Toys, the Body Shop, Marcs fashion, Review and a host of smaller speciality stores - must be out by September 13. While most are moving to other city sites, HMV music store will not reopen.

And while dodging cranes, trucks, broken footpaths and an army of construction workers will become the norm for city workers, the upside for shoppers will be a month of sales to get rid of stock. Another Sydney landmark that is set to go is the nine-storey Woolworths building on the corner of Park and George streets. While the grocer still has eight years left on its lease, in the commercial world big tenants such as Woolworths need to begin examining their options. The City of Sydney bought the building for $17.3 million in the late 1980s and signalled plans to create a piazza and park to complement the historic sandstone Town Hall complex.

It has been many years since the CBD has had such a serious facelift. It was given a spit and polish in preparation for the 2000 Olympic Games, but has languished since then as the development of office skyscrapers took priority over shopping.

Green roofs

City of Sydney is considering putting parks and gardens on top of city office towers and apartment buildings.

On Monday the council will vote whether to grant $48,000 to a community group of environmental experts to develop a process for installing "green roofs" on buildings across the CBD and inner city.

The group is led by Tone Wheeler, an architect and environment advocate at the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

"This could be the single biggest revolutionary change wrought on Sydney in terms of greening up the city," he said.

Green roofs could contain vegetable gardens, solar hot water tanks and photovoltaics - a technology that converts sunlight into electricity.

"There are many roofs that are flat, accessible, but not habited, and we are thinking we can use that space to grow food and grow trees, but also make power and make hot water, and create a … community resource," he said.

"We can heat and cool buildings and supply electricity using equipment that needs to be in the sun - medium- and high-rise towers are ideal for that."

Plants on roofs would also absorb the heat that bounces off concrete rooftops, thus cooling the city, he said.

A Pyrmont resident, Macey Kavalee, drew Mr Wheeler's attention to the idea after a recent trip to Chicago, where green roofs are common.

A green roof would give city residents a "pleasant place to sit and read", she said, and could feature vegetable gardens and fenced cycle paths for children.



Councillor Marcelle Hoff said green roofs would create more open space, enhance bio-diversity, insulate buildings, reduce stormwater run-off and reduce greenhouse gases.

Mr Wheeler said almost every CBD roof could become a green one. But a structural engineer, Matthew O'Hearn, said many roofs would need strengthening to withstand the extra load of soil and trees. This could cost up to $1500 per square metre.

An engineering analysis would also be required, costing $100,000 for a tower of more than 20 storeys.

Cult cartoon Futurama is coming back later this year as a full-length film. The movie, Bender's Big Score, will be available to buy on November 27 as a high-definition DVD, and will be followed by three other feature-length movies. Each movie will, however, be divided into four separate episodes and will be aired on TV. Comedy Central will be showing the 16 episodes. Not much is known about them, apart from a few juicy tidbits from Bender's Big Score. Apparently it involves nudist aliens and the secret of time travel ñ- which apparently has something to do with Fry's buttock.

In Japan, riding the train in a skirt is still an invitation to have your ass grabbed or photographed by some random perv.
These days, there's a more advanced threat: cameraphones with IR night vision can be tweaked to see through clothes.
Cramer Japan made these nylon and polyurethane panties that block IR, hampering the photographs. The name of the undies? ShotGuard Inner Shorts. The company is planning bras made from the same material.

from Gizmodo

Mobile Phone watch

Wow, check out this super cool mobile phone watch coming fresh from China. Made by Cect, it has a semi-decently large LCD, six hardware buttons, GSM support, Bluetooth, MP3, MP4, FM radio and a headset jack. No pricing yet, but it does come in all sorts of jazzy colors. I wonder what the battery life is like..

from Gizmodo