Archive for the 'Lists' category

20 foods you should not eat together

You can’t read Chinese? That’s a pity. You would learn from this official announcement that some foods should not be eaten together (it is not clear how the exact risk was identified, though).

According to Xinjiang, the list of terrible mixtures is:

1. Pork + water chestnuts = a stomach ache
2. Beef + chestnuts = vomiting
3. Lamb meat + watermelon = a decreased vigor for life
4. Dog meat + green beans = poisonous to the body
5. Rabbit meat + celery = loss of hair
6. Chicken + celery = a decreased vigor for life
7. Goose meat + chicken eggs = a decreased vigor for life
8. Turtle meat + amaranth (a nutritional herb) = poisonous to the body
9. Carp + liquorice (not the candy) = poisonous to the body
10. Crab + persimmon fruit = diarrhea
11. Chicken eggs + saccharin = poisonous to the body, potentially fatal
12. Brown sugar + preserved eggs = poisonous to the body
13. White wine (白酒) + persimmon = chest pains
14. Onions + honey = damaged vision
15. Radish + fungus = dermatitis (a skin disease)
16. Bean curd + honey = makes you deaf
17. Potatoes + bananas = (not translated)
18. Bananas + sweet potato = a bloated belly
19. Peanuts + cucumbers = harmful to the body
20. Sweet potatoes + persimmon = lithiasis (formation of stones, such as the kidney stone)

I knew that you wanted to know about it…

It’s true that if you want to burn a CD-RW or a DVD-R (or any other optical slice of storage in the shape of a CD/DVD), the name of Nero immediately comes to mind. The advertising efforts are paid with this success (well supported by the good quality of this CD-bruning software), but there are very good replacements that you can download for free and use in place of Nero.

Found in an article of DownloadSquad:

• ImgBurn
• CDBurner XP which still is my prefered solution (by far) in the CD/DVD burning category
• InfraRecorder
• NCH ExpressBurn
• Burn CDCC

CollegeDegree.com lists 100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access.

Knowledge is always free.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

Some of our pets can become heroes or -at least- be more unusual than we would think. The Pet Blog collected a series of astonishing histories about cats high moments, like:

• Oscar a.k.a. “Unsinkable Sam”
• Simon, of the Royal Navy
• The Alamo Cat
• Fred, the undercover secret agent
• Tama, train station master

Source: The Pet Blog.

Recenty, we looked at unusual swimming pools. Here comes an article about the most marvellous pools found around the world of luxury hotels.

…with this long list of proxies (unfortunately, some or many of them may not work for all people).

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If you are a whisky lover, here are a few links you may appreciate:

• The Scotch Malt Whisky Guide, with an excellent little historic guide to whisky that is perfectly written for those who discover this strong alcohol.
• the web site of the Scotch Whisky Association if you want to share your passion with other amateurs.

But this is not enough for some people (real alcohol geeks). Wired discovered that true US amateurs are pushing sunday afternoon distillery in a country where moonshine is still prohibited. It’s quite easy, and the result is supposed to be very good.

A few images of extreme pools (via 13 really cool pools).

The next one is located at the top of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. It’s a small zone of complete quietness in the middle of furious liquid torrent.

For more about this strange location: Fogonazos.

For this last one, excentricity is in the photo itself. Not the pool.

We never can get enough of them, but our computers are sometimes overflowing. Software applications are everywhere, but how to choose the right one for the task at hand? I built a real collection of pages where you will be able to find nearly all you can dream for nearly all computers:

• Five important security apps for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
• Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software
• The Windows Apps You Never Need To Install
• Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls; We have to admit that there is no longer any good reason to pay for your computer security under Windows.
• Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications
• Logiciels gratuits from TutoWeb.
• Now, to look into the future, Sneak peek at OpenOffice.org 3.0
• And, last but not least, for old dinosaurs, let’s remind you that you can still use VAX-VMS on your Linux PC. If you don’t know what I am saying, either you’re too young, or you never received a hacker education. Or both.

Hollywood in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s created a long string of cheap horror movies that never reached the top rating lists. However, some of them, despite being left mostly abandonned by their authors, are worthy of some renewed attention. In this context, it is interesting to notice that the Internet Archive has recently pointed to a nice list of these B horror movies. In there, you will find (available for free download):

• Attack of the Giant Leeches
• Attack of the Killer Mushrooms
• Horrors of Spider Island
• Killers from Space
• Bloody Pit of Horror
• The Satanic Rites of Dracula
• Werewolf of Washington
• Killer Shrews
• The Giant Gila Monster

In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 – and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month. [1]

Interestingly, this statement allows to believe that by June 2008 the list will have grown to 1 million terrorists in the US of A. I believe that Americans can be silly, but I doubt that one out of 230 is a dangerous moron attempting to end western civilization next time he or she will take a plane.

I suggest that you have a look at the astonishing list of “unlikely suspects” displayed in this article from ACLU. It includes US Senators and US Congressmen (and their spouses), war heroes, John Does with a common name, dead 9/11 hijackers, foreign presidents (dead as Saddam Hussein or alive like Evo Morales), pop star singers and toddlers.

Everybody keeps hearing that those buildings built in Abu Dhabi are the most extraordinary ones because the architects have huge amounts of money flowing to build them. But, actually, it’s a world wide competition to create the most astonishing sky-scrappers and buildings. Here are my best finds in this huge category:

Vertical urban farm

Imagined by the environmentalist researchers of Columbia University. More details [PDF].

Cubes piled in Singapour

More than 1000 flats for Singapour. Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
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If you are interested in GNU/Linux and want some useful e-reading, you should jump to this list of free ebooks related to Linux from LinuxHaxor.net.

Hollywood! Movies! There’s no other place where:

1. If the hero starts dancing, suddenly, everybody around knows the steps and dance with them.
2. Any car hit by a bullet immediately explodes in a cloud of flames, a mere rivulet of oil turns into a fire ball.
3. An ugly girl only has to remove her glasses and untie her hair to transform herself into an iridescent beauty queen.
4. If you look languorously into the eyes of a woman, music always starts to play (even if there is no stereo in the room). Ain’t it handy?
5. In car pursuits, you only have to zip through crossroads for all others to halt in tire shrieks. No need to check the traffic lights…
6. In car pursuits, you just need to speed up to fly over wide gaping spaces (gravity seems nullified provided that you can push the pedal hard enough!)
7. The first truncheon hit systematically sends the bad guy either to sleep or flying through the room like a ball on a pool table.
8. The hero will only yield to baddies after dozens of hits by a large group of hulking champion weight-lifters.
9. All computers are fifteen years ahead of current technology and blinkingly beautiful (no dull grey boxes, but nice blinking lights or impressive 3D graphics interface).
10. Baddies are always easy to recognize in a crowd. They are ugly, dirty and grimacing (if not with a scar on the face). Why doesn’t the police use this kind of clue in movies while the same kind of profiling is used routinely in our streets?
11. When the hero enters an unknown derelict space ship, he has no difficulty finding and operating the door lock, the ship’s controls and the hyper-space radio.
12. When we see a distant explosion on screen, the sound is never late (is speed of sound as fast as speed of light in movies?).
13. Radio-activity makes objects glow in the dark (it’s useful since we wouldn’t see it – Many scientists including Pierre and Marie Curie would have wanted to know that they just had to switch off the light in their laboratories!)
14. In the void of empty space, sounds are deafening: Shrieking spaceship rockets can be heard from the other end of the galaxy despite the total lack of atmosphere to transmit it.
15. A detective cannot solve a case before he has been suspended for insubordination
16. Even when the road is straight, if you drive a car, you must continuously swing the wheel right and left
17. The wounds of the hero will not make him even wince, except when a gorgeous woman is trying to clean them

You may not have the time and money to go to University lectures. But there are other open options that the Internet is now offering. Many universities and famous institutions provide free online lectures. Let’s browse a few of the best ones I could find:

• Collège de France : the most famous French scientific institution has free-access lectures all year long. Most of them are available online too (from Mathematics to Philosophy through Archeology).
• The MIT publishes a number of lectures in video-on-demand (and has a large web site named OpenCourseWare).
• OpenYale is presenting seven free introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
• Courses of all levels from the Washington University (introductory, undergraduate, graduate).
• PodCasts from UC San Diego
• Lectures from Vanderbilt.
• Computer and Computer Graphics, from University of British Columbia or from Virginia U.
• Webcasts from Oxford Internet Institute.
• Webcasts from Rice University.
• Podcasts from York College (NYC).
• Harvard at Home.

I could also advise you to check the Lecturefox Blog with a lot of information about these free lectures.

The stars of show business and other stars are chased all around the world by paparazzis. Sometimes even catch them in X-ray photos. Here are the evidences:

Pamela Anderson

Homer Simpson

Mickey Mouse

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I recently stumbled upon several good ideas for the photographer (and cinematographer) with a limited budget. They seem quite simple and interesting to apply.

Ring Flash for a penny

For macro-photography and proxi-photography, a flash is often needed. But it is difficult to obtain a nice light not simply coming from the side (and casting ugly shadows). This is why exist those ring flashes that are usually so expensive.

Today, Strobist provides a neat little idea to make nearly free ring flash out of a common cobra flash. Just use a circle (more precisely, an ellipse) of cardboard or white metal to reflect the light of a more common flash light (see the image below). In seconds, you’ll get most of the advantages of a ring flash without changing your equipment.

The flash light comes from the side and is reflected toward the scene while the hole in the middle allow the lens to peer naturally into the scene.

Poor man’s steadycam

You may know that a steady-cam is a simple rig that allows to stabilize a video camera for use while walking or running. It is so essentially simple that Johnny Lee made one out of three metal pipes and a weight. It is much nicer than the expensive pro ones and you can easily copy the design if you do not want to pay for the 39$ he asks for it.

Older issues

If you have been attentive, you can remember that there were similar other ideas popping up in these pages before.

• Poor man’s light photo tripod
• Poor man’s fish eye lens