Posts made in March, 2010
Mimas probe sees ‘Pac-man in the moon’
If it was two days later I would think this was an April Fool joke – but apparently not!
How well read are you?
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the top 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Update: Correction – This is not the BBC’s top 100 list, it is in fact the Guardian’s top 100 list from 2007, and the statement about believing most people will have read only 6 was created to try and make this more appealing as an internet meme. More on the meme here. Apologies for not fact-checking this. Thanks to Ben for spotting the error (see comments below). In any case, I’ll leave the post here, it may still be interesting to see how many on the list you’ve read.
Instructions:
Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read, then count how many X’s you have.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible X
Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado, Nikki Yanofsky and many more in Canada’s answer to Band Aid
In the same vein as Band Aid’s Do they Know it’s Christmas, a huge number of Canadian singers including Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado and Olympic star Nikki Yanofsky have come to record a charity single to raise funds for Haiti’s relief efforts.
Support Haiti by buying the single, video or T-shirt at Young Artists For Haiti. And be sure to pass it on so others can help too.
an interesting tale from 18th century France (via @jmatlin)
In this short cartoon you will learn some interesting things about the history of paper money and why you can’t just print more of it.
It’s a great example of why would need to study history and learn from it, so we don’t make the same mistakes in the future.
Is there a parallel with US subprime lending? You be the judge.
Hopefully the new trend of local banknotes in the UK are backed by equivalent UK legal tender in a bank vault somewhere!
Travel Bite #4: Hotel Avante, Mountain View
I’m currently spending a couple of days relaxing in the Bay Area after attending the Cloud Connect conference. Usually I’d write about places I’ve been and sights I’ve seen, but I thought for a change I’d blog about the hotel I am staying in – Hotel Avante in Mountain View. I got my stay here through the cheap hotel site hotwire, for a very reasonable $59 (39GBP) a night. One of the things about Hotwire is you get cheap prices but you don’t find out the hotel until after you book (by area) – so I would never have known about this place – but boy am I glad I did. It’s probably the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in!