Peter’s Picks – 12/1/9

January 12, 2009 in Picks

If you post links on Twitter, use Twitturly to see who posts the same links.

Show your blog’s commenters some Luv. Feel free to leave a comment below to test it out.

Congrats to Niall Harbison and the guys on their recent funding. Looking forward to more great things from iFoods 🙂

Robin Blandford runs through some of the great technology projects at this year’s young scientist show.

Pete’s Picks – 4th Jan 2009

January 4, 2009 in Picks

A new weekly feature for this blog, obviously drawing inspiration from Damien, Joe and others. I hope you enjoy

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of the most popular presentations on Slideshare. Do it.
Usain Bolt’s not just a record breaker, he’s a curve breaker too.
ReadWriteWeb‘s introduction to Greasemonkey, and their 7 favourite browser tweaks.
Gigonomics – the new economics of the music industry

Obama names Tom Daschle as his Secretary of Health and Human Services

November 20, 2008 in links, Videos

It was announced earlier today that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle will be Health and Human Services secretary in Obama’s cabinet. The news is pretty widespread on the internet, and all of the big news sites have write ups on the story, so I won’t try echo here what they’ve already said.

However, if you are interested in the people that the American’s new President-elect is selecting for his cabinet (as I am) you should have a look at some/all of the interviews below which are good introductions to Tom Daschle. Charlie Rose interviews are always quite good, each one is about 20 mins.

December 2, 2003

May 14, 2002

July 25, 1996

November 29, 1994

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of Mr. Daschle.

Musical Tesla Coil

October 23, 2008 in Videos

Absolutely brilliant! The music it plays shows they know their audience…. i.e Geeks like me!

I found this video here, check it out, there’s some more pretty cool science related videos.

The Debate

September 27, 2008 in links

So the first debate came and went last night. I tried to write a quick little post after watching it and some of the analysis but at 6am (and after a few beers) coherent sentences were a little hard to come by! I’m sure the web is already flooded with much more detailed and smarter analysis, so I’ll spare you anything more than a few sentences of my own. As a Barack fan, I was a bit disappointed, but maybe that was just because my expextations were high after such a shambles of the week for the McCain campaign. To be fair to McCain, I didn’t think he had it in him to argue his points as well, even if I didn’t agree with him he was able to articulate his policies quite well. I didn’t see a “winner” but, as many people having been saying, this foreign policy debate was supposed to be McCains ‘home turf’, so anything less than a big win for him is a good debate in the Obama books.

Here’s my favourite clip of the night


For those that can’t view the video, a rough transcript:
Obama: “John you like to pretend the war started in 2007 when you talk about the surge… the war started in 2003! At the time when the war started you said it was going to be quick and easy, you said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were, you were wrong. You said that we were going to be greeted as liberators, you were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shi’ia and Suni, you were wrong….. If the question is ‘who is the best equipped to make good decisions about how we use our military and how we make sure we are prepared and ready for the next confilct’, then I think we can take a look at our judgement”

The New Bond Theme Song

September 24, 2008 in Music

The theme song to the next Bond movie (Quantum of Solace) has been released. “Another Way to Die” is a duet, written and recorded by Alicia Keys and Jack White (of the White Stripes) and is incidentally the first ever duet in the history of Bond theme songs. I heard it this morning for the first time, and it’s not half bad! Check it out and leave a comment, let me know what you think.

Quotes of the week

August 25, 2008 in Quotes

As this is just a new blog, I only have two candidates for my favourite quotes I’ve heard this week (i.e. not necessarily said this week!):

“Science works; planes fly. Magic carpets and broomsticks don’t. Gravity isn’t a version of the truth; it is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth floor window. Evolution too, is reality.”
–Richard Dawkins, “The Genius Of Charles Darwin

“He has the memory of an irresponsible goldfish”
John Oliver, on “The Bugle” episode 41, in response to John McCain’s statement that “In The 21st Century Nations Don’t Invade Other Nations” (talking about the Russo-Georgian conflict)