Building a Balancing Scooter

An interesting web page on how to build your own balancing scooter like the segway.

Walkway propels Paris metro into future

This BBC News looks at a new travellator in one of the Paris Metro's stations that is high speed. It is so fast that inexperienced people can fall down when trying to get on and off it.

Definitely something to try if I ever get to try it. Hopefully I won't end up flat on my face.

BBC News in RSS format

It appears that BBC News can now be accessed via RSS Feeds. Check out this blog posting for info on the various BBC News feeds.

Business Week: Five People Pushing Tech's Boundaries

Business Week has an interesting special report on five people pushing the boundaries of current technology. These people are:

• Ching Tang, who investigated the properties of organic light emitting substances, giving rise to OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes)


• Sheila Kennedy, an architect looking into moulding flexible light displays (based on OLEDs) into structures


• Vic Hayes, one of the pioneers of wireless technology, leading to the current 802.11 wireless standards (Wi-Fi)


• Jeff Pulver, one of original people who is pushing for VoIP (voice over IP) technologies


• Yoseph Bar-Cohen, a scientist investigating the properties of materials that change shape, leading to the creation of artificial muscles

Pretty interesting stuff.

Practical Cryptography

Bruce Schneier is a well known expert on computer security. His monthly Crypto-Gram Newsletters are full of interesting news and commentary on security issues. He has now written a book, Practical Cryptography, with Niels Ferguson, that shows how to implement a secure system in practice. This should be just as interesting to read as his previous book, Secrets & Lies.

Reality and Movies

With the Academy Awards 2003 over, you might be interested in the following articles from National Geographic News that looks at three Oscar nominees for best movie to see how close they were to reality:

• Chicago: The True Murders That Inspired the Movie


• Lord of the Rings Inspired by an Ancient Epic


• Gangs of New York: Fact vs. Fiction

The Planetary Society interviews Arthur C. Clarke

The Planetary Society has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke in RealAudio and Windows Media format.

Clarke makes some comments about Stanislaw Lem, "Solaris" and the inspiration for Hobbits as told to him by Tolkien at about 5 minutes
into the show.

BBC's Walking with Caveman

After producing two remarkable TV series, Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts, what else can the BBC produce but Walking with Cavemen?

Hopefully, I can see this series in the near future. But at present, my question would be "Cavemen? But they don't live in caves, do they?"

Amazing sequence shot of the Sun going around in a figure-8

The Astronomy Picture of the Day site often gives wonderful astonomy related photos, like this one of the sun going through a 'sunrise analemma'.

A 'analemma' is a figure-8 loop you get if you mark the sun's position at the same time of the day each day. We know the sun rises and sets at slightly different positions each day but it is fascinating to see it visually in this remarkable photo.