"I am happy to announce the launch of my website http://www.themolu.com/. – Search engine which can search both Web 1.0 (Web search) as well as Web 2.0 (Tag search). Currently it gives a facility of searching web, images, videos, books, answers, travel, blogs, news. It is also packed with Related Term Suggestion and Spelling Correction Tool. "

The mashup community is alive and well, nice job Himanshu.

In other news, my good buddy Brad Linder has recently launched his personal fitness website: http://www.getyouinshape.com

"Brad Linder is the creator and host of the show “Get You In Shape.”

He also has created the “Get You In Shape” DVD that has all the tools you need to get in shape. With 5 different workouts, over 70 demonstrated exercises, and 36 different 12 week plans to choose from giving you a long term exercise program.  The DVD also contain proven tips from experts in medicine, nutrition, health, fitness, and wellness."

Brad’s a great guy and his DVD is definitely worth checking out. The tips and techniques along with his encouraging attitude and expertise in nutrition will whip that post-Christmas/New Years butt of yours into shape. Head on over there and check it out [LINK].

"The newest fad in the blogsphere is "tag, you’re it". …now I have to tell you all five things about myself that you did not already know. I also have to tag five other people."

Here’s my five-by-five:

1) I’ve been an extra in two movies: Widow’s Peak and Circle of Friends. I was in the same scenes as Chris O’Donnell, Minny Driver and Mia Farrow (interestingly enough Marc knows Stacey Nelkin, who is a former girlfriend of Woody Allen so in a weird way we share a degree of separation from Woody Allen).

2) I once bought Gabriel Byrne a pint in Neary’s pub at the top of Grafton street.

3) I loved smoking cigarettes and was an avid smoker up until five years or so ago. I started with Johnny Blues, then Marlboros, Camels, Marly lights and so on. I quit cold turkey after many failed attempts with gum etc. I still consider myself an addict due to the fact that if smoking was not bad for you I’d spark up in a second. I once chain-smoked (lit one cigarette off the other) 18 smokes in a row.

4) I once cycled 81 of the 112 miles from Dublin to Clonmel, Tipperary with no prior training (before I started smoking). It rained part of the way. I wore a German army parka jacket and took boiled eggs in the pockets as a snack. Some people in a car saw me eating these whilst stopped at the traffic light in Newlands Cross. They had a VERY good laugh at my expense.  I cycled the first 60 or so miles, then got a lift for about 30 miles, then did another 20 or so. If you ever try this, don’t take a break in the middle. Just go for as long as you can and THEN stop.

5) I was hit by a car whilst cycling to school one day. The crash damaged my bicycle and cut my right index finger to the bone. This and some bruises were my only injuries.

The crash tore a bunch of moldings off of the car. The driver stopped, got out, gave me a handkerchief, took my name and address and told me to "go home and run your finger under the tap". Then he drove off, presumably on his way to work.

I met a friend on the way home named P.J. Troy. I was close to fainting from the shock and loss of blood and he helped me walk the remaining mile back to my house. Doctors cautioned that I may lose the tip of my finger but as it turned out it survived but is numb in certain parts (it also has a weird nervy thing going on ). P.J. continued on to school and promptly got detention as he was over an hour late!!!

A few years later P.J. himself was hit by a car whilst on his own bike. He died shortly afterwards due to head injuries sustained in the crash.  I will always remember that walk home with P.J.

I shall now tag the following people:
Marc Mercuri, Kim Cameron, Dan Harrison, Chris Webb and Donald Crowdis

Unfortunately Wrox has not gotten around to releasing the source code for the book. I’m sure this will happen soon.

In the mean-time I have received a number of emails from folks who have bought the book (thank you). In order to best support these readers I am making the source available from this site in two forms.

The first is a Code Browser [LINK] page which you can use to browse all source from the book. I think this’ll be useful if you just want to reference something quickly. It’s color coded and line-numbered for easy reference.

The second is a set of ZIP files, which you can access by chapter from this post.
Chapter 04 [LINK]
Chapter 05 [LINK]
Chapter 06 [LINK]
Chapter 07 [LINK]
Chapter 08 [LINK]
Chapter 09 [LINK]
Chapter 10 [LINK]
Chapter 11 [LINK]
Chapter 12 [LINK]
Chapter 13 [LINK]
Chapter 14 [LINK]
Chapter 15 [LINK]

I hope this helps folks who’ve ordered. One thing I would ask is that if you have purchased the book, please post a review of same at the Amazon product page [LINK]. This’ll help me improve as a writer and understand what folks liked from this (my first) effort.

Happy New Year!

After fasting for 6+hours as required by the test, my blood pressure was measured three times and consistently below 110 over 60, the lowest reading was 108 over 52.

My pulse was also measured three different times. All three times were under 55 beats per minute.  Bear in mind this was at around 7:45AM.

The lowest was taken using a portable EKG machine whilst laying down and amazingly read 47 beats per minute!!!  That’s one efficient ticker.

Go a step further, what if it also recorded the height off the ground and the vector the camera was pointed towards?

Then you could draw a bezier curve through each and every photo you ever took along with the time it was taken.

Now imagine you tied them together with PhotoSynth[LINK].

Now imagine you are out with your friends and they all do that. You’d have a really cool sort of weaving of threads throughout the day.

Then after a year you could literally "fly" down a thread of your photos. You could remember the entire year. It’d be like a weird clockwork orange type event.

Then imagine you overlayed this data on Google Earth. And imagine Google Earth was advanced to a point where every landmark and every piece of scenery was defined.

Then combined with overlays of your photos  and the data from PhotoSynth you could actually reverse engineer the 3D information for the Google Maps. Upload this and you have an MASSIVELY multi-player data contribution network.

This’d map the entire world, it’s experiences and the timelines of everyone on the planet! and then…and then…the end.

"Tagbulb simplifies tag search by aggregating content from various sources like flickr, youtube and many more with a cool 2.0 interface. Users can browse by content type – e.g. images, videos, blogs, bookmarks, podcasts, products, books etc. "

Nice work Veerendra.

Check it out at:- www.tagbulb.com

My response?

Convert 3737844653 to Hex for the answer.

Here’s a look behind the scenes: I especially like the bit where they elongate her neck. [LINK]

And now for something completely different: Here’s a document describing a tensegrity tower built by some students in Texas in honor of their deceased professor.

Tensegrity (tension integrity) structures are architectural forms comprised of compression members (bits that are compressed by the weight of the structure) and tension members (bits that are stretched by the weight of the structure).

Neat little project. I personally prefer these things on a smaller scale. [LINK]

"Let’s assume that taxi journeys are all of an equal distance (10km, say), and that they go straight in a random direction. At the end of one journey, the driver picks up another passenger at that very drop-off spot.

After her first journey, the taxi driver is ten kilometres from her start point. But what is her expected distance from her original start point after a second journey? And is there a generic formula that tells us how far she is from his origin after n journeys?"

So my answer uses the law of cosines which if Dan had learned his trig instead of wasting time with probability he’d know is

I’d guess that HDTV is the way to go but where to start? Anyone have any recommendations?

P.S. New pictures are up in the photos section. Halloween with Snow White and her Frog Prince. Enjoy.