Benny Ling’s Bling

Magnetic field lines on the Sun, on August 20, 2010. Credit: NASA SDO/Lockheed Martin Space Systems Compan

via Amazing Image: Map of Magnetic Field Lines of the Sun | Universe Today.

Seeing the operation of code in Atari 2600 games. This is a dual reprise of my dismap and mariosoup pieces that look at the code of cartridge games, and how the graphics are mixed in.

via distellamap | ben fry.

via Fan replica of Fallout Plasma Rifle – Boing Boing.

via YouTube – Australian Election Pokemon.

via YouTube – Australia goes to the polls 澳洲選舉難分勝負.

via Rosscott, Inc. » Archive » The System 408: Bowser Testing.

I’ve been looking for a local distributor for Dynomighty Design wallets for a while now, and I’m glad to report I’ve finally found one.

Roughly four years ago, a couple of friends and discovered ThinkGeek. We were probably a little late on that particular bandwagon, but that’s okay. At the time getting items shipped from the US seemed like a particularly daunting task, so we decided to go in on a group buy – one of us would place the order and get the items shipped to that person’s house, and then the rest of us would pay that person back in cash. It kinda made sense as we’d save on shipping.

That very first order was pretty epic, to say the least; I’m not 100% on what I picked that first time around, but the total order amount came to over $400 AUD for the four of us. One of my items that very first order was a Dynomighty Design Dot Matrix wallet, as it greatly appealed to my inner-geek at the time. It was cool as was pretty much indestructible, and it had the number pi printed out in the ultra-cool dot matrix style.

It’s been a good four years. Many people have commented on how slim it is, even loaded up with receipts and cash/cards, and it’s pretty unique, too.

It was about time for a replacement though, and for a while I wasn’t even sure if I could get them in Australia without paying the exorbitant shipping rates from the Dynomighty website, or without going via ThinkGeek again. Looking into the matter a little more revealed that there were Australian distributors, but they charged quite a lot for the actual wallet, plus I then had to pay shipping.

To be honest I had completely forgotten about the issue until about two weeks ago, when one of the people I follow on Twitter tweeted about a cool little store in Elizabeth street, a cool little store called Syzygy. I went to Syzygy, and to my delight, their window display had a Dynomighty wallet on display! Well, that settled it – I just had to have one. Sadly they weren’t open that day, but I vowed to return.

And return I did. I was back the very next day before Uni, and picked up the wallet with the NYC subway map. It’s like having a wallet without actually having a wallet. It’s (somewhat) unique. It’s only a single-fold, but that’s okay, I’ll get used to it.

I like it – I’m still tossing up whether I should give that extra bit of personalisation with an Apple sticker (as seen below), as doing so would mean that some of the map is covered up. We’ll see.

The Army’s set to roll out a new explosive for large-caliber munitions; military-funded developers estimate that it’ll nudge out TNT “within a decade.”

Called IMX-101 (which stands for Insensitive Munitions Explosive) the explosive is one successful result of a four-year Pentagon-funded effort that sought to replace TNT — military munitions’ longtime staple. First to go will be M795 artillery projectiles: 1,200 produced with IMX-101 instead of TNT will be delivered to the Army and Marine Corps by 2011.

via Army’s TNT Replacement Only Detonates On Command | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Vevo was recently released on the App Store, and it’s one of those apps that contain US-restricted content (namely, music videos from popular artists).

Pandora Radio is also another app that’s limited to the US – if you’re outside of the US, then you can kiss any radio-listening dreams you had goodbye.

Then there’s Steam. There’s a whole bundle of games that are just plain unavailable outside of the US (namely, the Rockstar collection), not to mention all the price-gouging that goes on if you’re outside of the US.

Frankly, I was getting sick of all this. This is the 21st century – if you put it on the internet, expect it to be accessed by the whole internet.

With Super VPN Service, you can now access all of your favourite US-restricted content – even if you’re not from the US!

It’s pretty cool, you should totally check out their services.

Disclaimer: yes, I used this post to get a free lifetime (3 year) account. Don’t hate me – instead, do the same thing – full instructions here.

via Cyanide & Happiness #2144 – Explosm.net.