fantastic assortment of bicycles modified into many shapes and sizes.

a collection of 'sonograms' - graphical representations of the dynamics of music, in this case, various selections from the last four decades of rock music.

Each selection is discussed and dissected, and points out what makes a well-balanced mix of sound qualities, as well as what makes them stand out from the rest.

The image shows a section from 'Here comes the Sun' from the Beatles 'Abbey Road'.......

Whatever the techniques, it's interesting to note how flat-out addictive this type of sound is. Every element plays a role- for instance, the bass guitar in the sample is smooth and resonant but also capable of swooping down to very low frequencies with a Rickenbacker-like thunder. All the melodic instruments have a lovely articulateness and clarity. Nobody produces a result like the sonogram shows, by accident. It's the culmination of great experience in getting drum sounds, and it's a signature Beatles sound- what was buried at the back of 'Sgt. Pepper' comes out into its full development here, kicking off possibly the most popular album side ever.

From a technical point of view, a lot went on behind these recordings.

a great series of photographs of an abandoned amusement park in Japan.

The foliage has grown up around it, and the rails and cars of the rollercoaster are flaking into rust, all set against a fog shrouded background.

there is also an index of other forlorn places.

The site is in Japanese, but the pictures don't need words.

for fans of the Tetris game, or any of it's incarnations, an interesting idea for furniture shapes...

" ...storage systems made out of modular TETRIS-shaped blocks. This design, by Brooklyn company Brave Space, is intended for "Life-size play", and the blocks really do have the exact proportions of the original Tetris pieces. The storage units are sold piece by piece, so you can buy as many as you want and arrange them however you want."

an online presentation of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula" in journal form...

"This blog will publish Bram Stoker's Dracula for the next six months. Individual pieces of the novel will appear on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and finishing up with November 6 and the final Note."

It was 1969, the Cream had run it's course and Traffic was thinning, when Stevie Winwood and Eric Clapton put together what was inadvertently hyped as the next supergroup...Blind Faith.

Alas, only one commercial album and a handful of performances followed. The personalities, varied interests and directions proved too explosive to be controlled. A classic example of how a collection of extremely gifted musicians don't always make a great group. But it was good while it lasted.

From Cool Tools, an slightly smaller and hand-held version of the 20Questions game that is found at 20Q.net. This is an old game with a new opponent - the accumulated learning of a neural net that has had a million online games to teach it. It knows what you are thinking of...most of the time , and is hard to stump.

"Burned into its 8-bit chip is a neural net that has been learning for 17 years. Inventor Robin Burgener programmed a simple neural net on a DOS machine 1988. He taught it 20 questions about a cat. He than passed the program around to friends on a floppy and had them challenge the neural net with their yes/no answers to the object they had in mind. The neural net learns only when it plays a game; no data is added except for the yes/no answers of visitors. So the more people who test it, the more they teach it. In 1995 Burgener put the now robust neural net onto the new web where anyone could play it (that is, train it) 24 hours a day. And they did. Burgener's genius was to turn the hard tedious work of training a neural net into a fun game for humans."

here is a challenge....an online project where one can construct a model and pit them against machine-constructed models in a race-type forum.

"Sodarace is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit."

not really a game, but a fairly involved course on simple (or not so simple) robot model building.

OEDILF......an ambitious project aiming to put a limerick to every word in the english language. Such as one for 'aorta'.....

The arteries carry the blood;

Without them our bodies would flood.

They're elasticized -sorta;

The chief's the aorta.

If it ruptures, that's all for you, Bud!

some great inspiration on the beach.

nothing but sand and water.

from Flickr the photo sharing site, a set of images starring the Gummie Bears , revealing the seven deadly sins....

Pictured is 'pride'.............link