Just had an email from BBC saying:
At least nine people are killed in explosions on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, BBC correspondent reports.
The article on the BBC is reporting the AP saying that two people are reported dead.
Fortunately I’ve had an SMS from my friend in Bali saying he and his family are safe, they’d actually just moved up the coast from Kuta.
ABC news is reporting three explosions in Bali two in Jimbaran and one in Kuta.
I’ve got a friend and his family on holiday in Bali at the moment, I hope they’re OK..
Q: When can you get blood out of a stone ?
A: When it’s from a 20 million year old spider trapped in a piece of amber!
The scientist from Manchester is now wondering whether he can extract DNA from the blood.
This is good news from first pictures of live giant squid in its natural habitat. The article says:
Working with a cheap camera and a fishing boat, the two Japanese researchers have succeeded where millions of dollars and international film crews have failed.
This is pretty cute, it’s a captive portal for wifi access on the same lines as NoCat but intended for running on embedded Linux systems such as the WRT54G, and it’s called WiFiDog. Ahem. Anyway, their site says:
Existing captive portal solutions were either almost impossible to embed (NoCat, which relies on perl, GnuPG , OpenSSL ), or only designed to display disclaimers with no access control at all (NoCatSplash and others). Wifidog is designed to have optional centralized access control, full bandwidth accounting, node heartbeating and local content specific to each hotspot. It does not rely on a javascript window, so it works with any platform with a web browser, including PDAs and cellphones. It is developed in C to make it easy to include in embedded systems (It has been designed for the Linksys WRT54G, but runs on any recent Linux platform). A typical install only takes 30kb on i386, and a fully functionnal install could be made in under 10 kb if necessary.
Here’s an interesting press release from Google – NASA Takes Google on Journey Into Space
NASA and Google have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The MOU also highlights plans for Google to develop up to one million square feet within the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field.
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Interesting story from the Australian ABC, scientists have found native plant that repels termites, the report says:
The University of Western Sydney says a team studied a fence post that was left standing in a Queensland paddock, where all the others were eaten by the pest.
The university’s Associate Professor Robert Spooner-Hart says an Australian native plant called the desert sandalwood was growing around the fence post.
Given the alternatives are all pretty noxious, this could be really good news!
We’re sitting under a big thunderstorm at the moment, so I went and had a look at the Bureau of Meterology rain radar map of Melbourne, and saw an amazing image of what was going over the top of us.
After months of work (on and off) with my wife Donna and the rest of the Auties.Org committee I’m proud to announce that an innovative new website has just been launched.
Auties.org is for people on the Autistic Spectrum who are ready to dare reach out, open the doors to the community and market their abilities directly to the public and for those interested in supporting these pioneers.
So if you are on the Autistic Spectrum and stagnating whilst waiting for society to create something for you, why not go ahead and look at what you CAN do and CAN manage, what you ARE interested in and ARE doing now, and begin creating your own opportunities. Even more, if you haven’t got a clue where to start, take a look at what others on the Autistic Spectrum are doing in their own self employment and employable hobbies/skills and see if it inspires you to dare such things with your own unique style, in your own unique way.
All you need is a website or an email and the desire to take that leap.
They say the greatest risk in life is taking no risks at all.
Auties.org has two sides to it, the entrpreneurial/self employment side, and the ‘autie-friendly’ establishments side where you can check out all kinds of places, spaces, faces and activities that are advertising themselves for one reason or another as ‘autie-friendly’ establishments… who knows they might even respect us enough to give us jobs if they have any! From accomodation and eating spaces, to entertainments, travel, social opportunities, goods and therapies, we hope, in time you may find these things here.
By using Auties.org and Autie-Friendly establishments you are supporting a vision of equality regardless of difference, celebration of diversity, ability within disABILITY, and of active empowerment of one of the most disempowered and also underemployed communities in society.
Here’s an example reported by the ABC via the AFP of how unexpected acts can preserve delicate remains from the past, in this case using the shoulder blade of a dead mammoth as a shelter for the grave of two very young children, 27,000 years ago.