Farewell to "The Hurricane"

Alex Higgins, one of the greatest snooker players ever has died.
He attracted so many to the sport with his unique style....bold, brash, eccentric and exciting...he would reach the table ready for play and whip off his dickie bow, undo his top button and light up a cigarette...and do it all in double-quick speed.
He has suffered for so long with throat cancer and was down to six stone in weight recently, if a positive can be taken it's that he has been released from his suffering.
He'll be talked about for many years to come...and will always have his place in sporting folklore, may he rest in peace...

Firefox's New Feature - 'Tab Candy'

Tabs are a great addition to browsers, it's not that long ago since browsers didn't have tabs and you would have multiple windows open of Internet Explorer or Netscape or whatever browser you had at the time.
A problem that Firefox is going to try to address in the next version of it's browser is how confusing having a lot of tabs open can be...
The new feature, shown in the video below, is still in testing mode...and for those that would like to get a hand's-on play with it, or those that like to download early versions of future browsers, you can download it *here*


An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)

This is my latest favourite 'viral video'...a superb take on Alicia Keys / Jay-Z "Empire State Of Mind"...
A friend of mine in Wales tells me it's all over the radio and clubs there....quite right too...it's absolutely brilliant...

A re-enactment of a wonderful scene from 'Harvey'

This is Brandon Hardesty who has made quite a name for himself since joining YouTube and uploading a series of 're-enactment' videos based on scenes from well known American films.
This piece he did really stood out for me, it's a classic scene from the 1950 film 'Harvey' which starred Jimmy Stewart.
I am sure that anyone who has seen the film can appreciate just how good this tribute to it is...

TubeChop : Cut to the Interesting part of any YouTube video..

Following on from the "Free Video Cutter" post, this neat and simple online tool makes it easy to take, say, the interesting two or three minute part of an eight or nine minute YouTube video and share it on forums, blogs or email...and you don’t even have to go to YouTube for searching videos and their urls. Just put your keywords in TubeChop seach engine and get the videos. Once you have the video, just use the left black bar and right black bar to select the time frame which you want to chop. Left black bar is for staring time and right black bar is for the ending time of video. Move it around and fix it.
When your video gets chopped, you can embed the chopped video to blog/website/forum (forum rules permitting) with the supplied code.


go to TubeChop *here*

A Paragliding Donkey

A donkey was attached to a parachute and launched into the sky, while attached to a motorboat, above a beach in Russia this week.
Tourists on the beach apparently screamed, and children were crying...but the stunt was allowed to continue for 30 minutes.
Russian media are describing the act as "extremely brutal" and "a violation of animal protection laws".


This stupid and cruel stunt was supposed to attract the beachgoers to hire the services of the Paragliding company.

Download Your Facebook Photo Albums

Facebook photos can accumulate in a lot of different way, your own uploads, photos you added from other sites {like a funny / interesting picture} or people have tagged you in photos....saving those photos to your hard drive can be a bit long winded, especially if you are like me and have hundreds of photos..
This software simplifies the task...
Fotobounce – it’s a free Windows-only utility that helps you manage photos in your Facebook (and Flickr) accounts right from the desktop....You can download photos, upload new ones or simply view your existing photo albums as a slideshow without downloading them locally.


download *here*

Free Video Cutter

It's small, basic and free....and it does what it says on the tin..


It will accept any video you may have and edit it down to the clips or scenes that you need....it works with all the major formats, including flash, so ideal for cropping any videos you download from youtube or the like {use keepvid.com for easy downloading from youtube, dailymotion, etc}


download *here*

You know those voice-over fellas on american film trailers...

well...

Why Obama needed 22 pens to sign one single document..

TIME magazine explained the reason..

"The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often engraves the pens, which are then given as keepsakes to key proponents or supporters of the newly signed legislation..."

so there.

All the President's Pens from The White House on Vimeo.

How to Skip Trailers and Ads on DVD's...

It should be noted that there are some DVD players that you have to press  STOP –> STOP –> STOP –> PLAY.


On computers, taking Windows Media Player as an example, press STOP then PLAY on each section until you get to the main title.

Got a lot of old cd's that you don't want ?

Then why not make an air-hockey table ?

The Christmas Truce of 1914

A pretty amazing event.


On Christmas Eve 1914, during World War 1, the soldiers on both the German and British sides formed an unofficial pause in battle to wish each other a Happy Christmas..

After exchanging handshakes, cigarettes, some gifts, and Christmas wishes, and playing football they had to ultimately return to their trenches. Neither side wanted to start shooting at the other, with whom they just spent Christmas. But with all their hesitance, the shelling started, as well as the bullets flying, under threat of punishment from the higher ranks if they refuse orders to start fighting each other again.

Lina Medina

Lina Medina (pictured with her doctor and her child in 1940), from Peru, was the youngest mother in history, giving birth to a son when she was just five years old in 1939.

It was thought, in her home town, that due to her abdominal swelling she must have had an 'evil snake' or parasite growing in her stomach and she was brought to an exorcist, which had no effect.


Lina's father, with no other obvious answers for his daughters condition, carried her to the nearest doctor, which was 70km away...when the doctor examined the little girl he couldn't believe what he thought he had found, he re-examined numerous times to be sure, and when he was sure he promptly contacted the police to have Lina's father arrested on suspicion of child rape....he was thrown into cells but released a few days later due to lack of evidence.


Doctors had no explaination as to why before she was 4 years old, Lina had already developed visibly her breasts, pubic hair and had her menstruation.
Lina was given a cesarean section, due to her size not allowing her to give birth naturally, on May 14  - Mother's Day in her country of Peru.


The news became a big global story, but only briefly due to the start of WW2...the family were offered a lot of money from various media for their story but resisted the offers, including one for $4,000 a month plus expenses if the girl travelled to New York for a year to be exhibited as freaks in the World Fair.


Her son grew up healthy, but developed a bone marrow disease and died at the age of 40, a disease that had nothing to do with the extraordinary circumstances of his birth....Lina married at the age of 33 and had another son, she currently lives with her husband in a very poor region of Peru.


The father of Lina's baby remains unknown.