217 Lemurs

Another odd one from Wikipedia. Vile Vortices is a short article but claims that there are a series of points on Earth that are hotspots for disappearances - 5 of them are on the Tropic of Cancer and five on the Tropic of Capricorn with one at each of the poles.

It looks like these points on the globe are also connected to the theories that the Earth is a crystal and to the various leyline arguments.

(This map is from http://www.crystalinks.com/grids.html not the Wikipedia article)

Tempaper is interesting - such an obvious idea but I have never heard of it before. In effect it is a temporary self-adhesive wallpaper. There are a range of patterns available but the site claims it is for the artist in everyone, suggesting that you are encouraged to mix and match.

Removable wallpaper doesn’t come cheaply though - USD 75 for an 11 yard roll.

I can see this as a way of tackling bland corporate office walls but I can also see health and safety officers having a fit.

Time for a New Years Eve resolution (at least in the half of the world still on the 31st December): ditch iTunes, at least if you are on a PC that is…

A quirky idea as an app. Haiku review encourages people to write reviews as haikus. The argument being that people like reviews but don’t want the whole game given away by an over enthusiastic reviewer. A haiku, the developers argue, also encourages creativity given its restrictive size and prescriptive structure…

If they get the funding I suppose the whole world will soon enough know if this is a stroke of genius or not.

Of course, to have do this startup due respect I should have managed all of this in 17 syllables. 

Wikipedia is proving to be entertaining tonight.

The entry for the Voynich manuscript, despite all the editorial guidelines of Wikipedia, poses quite a mystery on a variety of levels - its authorship (although the suggestion of John Dee did attract my attention), its subject material and its language.

Its uncertain origins and complex progress through history all add to the weight and interest value of the story.

Sometimes I even learn things from Wikipedia. The entry for Toynbee tiles reveals a very complex project of urban graffiti in the US (and elsewhere) that utilise rather obscure if not surreal quotes without a directly clear political sentiment.

The suggestions around how these tiles were actually produced is equally interesting (although admittedly it had me trying to work out if it was possible to do these tiles in the UK).

Powercursor - a way of bossing your mouse pointer into doing things that it definitely does not want to do…