The Lost Realm

Not only is he one of the richest people on the planet, but it seems that Kerry Packer is really, really lucky. Most of us are lucky if we find a dollar coin in our back yards; Packer manages to find rubies. Lots of rubies.

Now, under New South Wales law, all minerals discovered are vested in the state. Here, “Lucky Kerry” strikes again, as it seems that rubies aren't considered minerals with respect to this law. Someone forgets to include rubies on a list, some digging reveals a shiny thing, and Kerry Packer lands an estimated 8.2 billion Australian dollars worth of rubies.

I now know why I'm not rich. Kerry has all the money and luck, and he's refusing to share.

Okay, picture this: you have a captive-bred tammar wallaby that you want to release into the wild, but you're worried that it won't know to run away from predators likes foxes and feral cats. What do you do? Well, one technique would be to make a stuffed predator, and then run around chasing after the wallabies with it. This apparently works really well when stuffed foxes and cats are used, but fails dismally when a stuffed goat is attempted.

I bet you can't picture that without laughing: Blaaaaag! Run away, for I am a scary… erm… goat!

The Beatles are popular. Metallica are popular. So if you combined the Beatles and Metallica, you can't fail!

O'Rielly have a very interesting article on the Wayback Machine and how they built a system of 300 computers with over 100 terabytes of storage for about US$400,000. Not only that, but the parallel aspects of the system are transparent to the programmers due to their system, P2 (soon to be released as open source).

For those people who think that was all too technical, you might prefer this random selection of cute kittens.

Although it's difficult to top choking on a pretzel, I think this is running a close second: this is me, by georg bush.

What would we do without Americans to mock?

Woohoo! Not only has Aardman Animations confirmed that Nick Park is definitely working on a new Wallace and Gromit film, but they've also announced that there will be 12 one-minute Wallace and Gromit films released in the near future. I can't wait to see what sorts of wacky inventions he comes up with this time.

While you're waiting, check out some of Aardman's other creations.