Kia ora!
Welcome to the weekend. What to do, what to do?
If you find yourself wandering about Newtown this weekend why not check out Wellington Festival Of Circus? If having clowning & cabaret up in your face isn’t doing it for you maybe Darren Shan could keep you in theme but through the safety of bound text?
If you’re more of a performer then a watcher have you considered entering this years Smokefree Rockquest? It’s the 25th year this right-of-passage is running and man has it fostered all sorts of household name kiwi musicians. Need some inspiration? Here’s a surface scratching list of previous contestants including Kimbra and last years winners New Vinyl. Take yourself on a journey through our CD collection.
The curtain falls on Game Masters at Te Papa this weekend. The amazing exhibition that caters to almost every level of gamer was borrowed from the incredible ACMI in Melbourne’s Federation Square and includes Pacman, Space Invaders and Sonic!
New music on the playlist shelf this week includes ex-Wellingtonian Willy Moon and half New Zealand alt-indie darlings The Veils with their fourth album.
Ever wondered what happens when you wring a soggy towel out in space? Here’s the answer:
- Physics, fascinating!
That’s what’s a going down.
Fowler out.
If you shoot a satellite into space, give it a camera and nothing better to do, it takes really great photos of earth.
Some highlights: Ireland, complete with aqua-coloured plankton blooms, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Great Barrier Reef.
(Found via metafilter)
Google is running a Global Science Fair for teens. As it is global, anyone in the world can enter. Even a NZer. Especially a NZer, since we’re quite good at innovation and science. Entrants (i.e. everyone reading this I hope*) need to be between the ages of 13 and 18, and can work solo or in groups of up to three. You enter it online obviously!
*The prizes are beyond awesome. They are actually epic. Guys you need to win this.
Which items were borrowed the most from the library last year? By harnessing the power of computers, I can tell you what they were! Definite winners were Stephenie Meyer and Robert Muchamore, unsurprisingly (perhaps they should write a book together and it would be the most popular book ever written?); Glee, also unsurprisingly; and Old Dogs, surprisingly.
The most borrowed item overall (out of everything!) was a magazine from the Young Adult collection; Simpsons Comics.
(There’s no point in listing the most borrowed YA non-fiction, as they’re mostly all study guides (Year 13 Bio is #1); 100% Gleek and Sam Stern’s Eat Vegetarian are the top non-study guide non-fiction books popular with borrowers, who are predominately vegetarian Gleeks.)
1o Most Borrowed YA Fiction
1. Brigands M.C., by Robert Muchamore
2. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
3. Breaking dawn, by Stephenie Meyer
4. Shadow wave, by Robert Muchamore
5. Fallen, by Lauren Kate
6. The general, by Robert Muchamore
7. Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer
8. The hunger games, by Suzanne Collins
9. Tomorrow, when the war began, by John Marsden
10. The awakening, by L. J. Smith
10 Most Borrowed YA Movies
1. Alice in Wonderland
2. How to train your dragon ; plus, Boneknapper dragon
3. Percy Jackson & the lightning thief
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
5. Avatar
6. Glee. Season 1, volume 2, Road to regionals
7. Old dogs
8. Letters to Juliet
9. The last song
10. G-Force
10 Most Borrowed YA Comics
1. Big bratty book of Bart Simpson.
2. Simpsons comics : dollars to donuts
3. Twilight : the graphic novel. Volume 1
4. Ghostopolis
5. Naruto. Vol. 40, The ultimate art
6. Maximum Ride : the manga. Vol. 3
7. Skeleton key
8. The Simpsons : treehouse of horror : dead man’s jest.
9. Naruto. Vol. 23, Predicament
10. Big beastly book of Bart Simpson.
10 Most Borrowed YA CDs
1. Glee : the music. Volume 3, Showstoppers deluxe.
2. Now that’s what I call music 33.
3. Teenage dream, by Katy Perry
4. Now that’s what I call music 34.
5. From the inside out, by Stan Walker
6. Glee : the music. Volume 1.
7. Can’t be tamed, by Miley Cyrus
8. Rokstarr, by Taio Criz
9. Glee : the music. Volume 2.
10. Glee : the music : the power of Madonna.
The Scale of the Universe - from the very largest (i.e the universe) to the very smallest (Quantum foam! for real!). Presented so that you get a sense of scale. We are so small. So very, very small.
What isn’t depicted is the resulting existential void you may find yourself in. See you there!
Two weeks ago we posted a weird, black and white square and asked that you figure it out. Only two people did! That’s no good. It was, in fact, a QR code, which you photograph with your cellphone. Your phone cleverly translates it into an URL and takes you to a webpage. It’s big in Japan you know. Here’s how you do it.
1. Make sure your cellphone is able to even do it! Look at this list or even just google your phone’s brand and ‘QR code’. If your cellphone can’t do it, then, I guess that’s too bad.
2. Find some compatible software to download to your cellphone. Not all software will work on all phones. Again, check sites like this one.
3. Install the software. Hopefully your phone will know what to do. Mine did. <3
4. Start the application, take a photo of a QR code*, and be amazed.
Charges may apply. See your cellular phone provider for more details! (Usually it’s about $1 for 10MB.)
*You might find them in books, or magazines, or who knows where. Billboards? You can make your own QR code.
Are you curious about science? Or do you love filmmaking but aren’t too keen on science?
Well!
ReelScience is a competition for senior secondary school students (Yr 11 – Yr13) that starts on February 10th. To enter you’ll have to make a 2min short film on any aspect of science. There are cool prizes up for grabs like a Mac and film courses. This here clip tells you all about it (or check out their website).
Well, as long as five new DVDs is considered mad it’s madness. All kinds of bases are covered by this selection, and here they are…
Best of Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr follows a reptile expert as he does all sorts of silly things in the name of science. My favourite bit is when he wears a 200 pound kevlar suit covered in hippo dung to extract sweat from a hippo.
The Most Extreme is a series that follows all sorts of extreme behaviour in the animal kingdom. Fighters, Stinkers, Gluttons and many more are looked at in these fantastically shot episodes originally made for Animal Planet.
Sticking with the extreme, Gravity Games H2O is a four disc box set filled with wakeboarding, tow-in surfing, motorcross, kite surfing and other assorted watery hijinks. Except for the motorcross, I can’t explain it’s inclusion unless they somehow ride on water. Now that’d be extreme.
Ultimate Factories is a National Geographic series that goes to, well, ultimate factories. In this one they go see how Ferraris and M1 Tanks are produced. So if you’ve ever wondered how they put them together, now you can find out.
Naked Science: Surviving nature’s fury is a three disc set in the excellent National Geographic Naked Science series. These episodes look at asteroids, the Bermuda Triangle, alien contact and other popular and controversial scientific topics.
Here are ten Top 10 lists written by other websites (and not by us, although we’ve done a lot). They’re in no particular order, and if you want to add to the list go nuts and comment.
1. Top 10 Harry Potter Moments - so far, anyway. Has clips! (See also; Top 10 Harry Potter supporting characters.)
2. Top 10 Comic Book Cities – does Metropolis beat out Megacity One? No, it does not, and rightly so.
3. Top 10 Most Ridiculous Movie Tech Moments – Nerdrage!
4. Top 10 San Diego Comic Con Exclusives – probably of limited interest but there’s some cool stuff there. I had an original Soundwave once. Wish I still had it, it might be worth a mint.
5. Top 10 Twilight Series Moments - Beware, as this list contains spoilers (for the 2.7% of the population who haven’t read Twilight).
6. Top 10 James Bond Books – as selected by Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series of books. He knows his Bond.
7. Top 10 Things You Can Do to Protect Your Privacy - a bit more serious that the others in this list, but very important! Very!
8. Top 20 Free PC Games - Twenty is better than ten, it must be said.
9. Top 10 Rap Songs That Sample Michael Jackson Songs – very topical.
10. Top 11 mashed Potato Recipes – a bit different, this list, but it allows me to a) mention the upcoming cooking event that’s planned (along with the competition!), b) point out that 2008 was the United Nations Year of the Potato and although it’s a bit late it’s interesting to learn, c) I can link to this, and d) mashed potatoes are yum. Don’t know why there are eleven though.
Well, by ‘fun’ I mean it’s more like educational fun. Edutainment? Funucation? I don’t know. Anyway, you can now convert measurements and units of weight by just typing it into Google. Say you want to know how many kilometres are in five miles; you can ask Google ‘how many km are in five miles?‘ And there it is. But! You might want to know what 80 knots is in kilometres per hour. I often do, so I can type in ‘how many km/h is in 80 knots?‘ Or ‘how many cubits in 3 hand?‘ ‘How many acres in 4000 square metres?‘
Also, if you need to know the time somewhere, just type in ‘time [city name]‘ and it comes up. (For example, ‘time reykjavik’.) That’s not so much fun as it is a helpful hint. (It also works with ‘weather’ (e.g., ‘weather ohakune‘), and ’define’ and some other keywords.)
Google Squared builds information tables out of data on the internet. It’s a bit hit or miss – a search for ‘Wellington City Library‘ is fairly useful, but ‘Twilight’ tells us that Bella is a guinea pig.
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