Your left hand and right hand are mirror images of each other. There's no way you can position your left hand so that it looks like a right hand. It will only look like a right hand if you look at it in a mirror.
There are molecules like this in chemistry. Molecules that can't be positioned in such a way as to look exactly like their own mirror image. These are called chiral molecules. We talk about them having a handedness because they share this property with our hands. Continue reading →
The sensors in digital cameras pick up more than just visible light. They pick up a lot of infrared too, that's light below red that we're not able to detect with our eyes.
This can make pictures look funny, so manufacturers add a filter to block the infrared and give you a more natural image. Actually the filters don't do a perfect job and if you fire a TV remote control at your camera phone you should see it light up on the screen.
All this means you can have a bit of fun with your old web cam. You can remove the infrared filter then add a visible light filter so your webcam only sees infrared!
Just spotted this using google search. They tend to test new designs and features on handfulls of people. Anyone else seeing it?
click to enlarge
I love Reddit but I don't get to visit every day and I worry about missing good stories. So I created this RSS feed of Reddit posts that score over 1000. Here's the feed link:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/RedditFeedWithAScoreThreshold
1000 won't work for everyone so you can customise the feed from the Yahoo Pipe I built:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=4a3af06dcba612424a858ea79dd263db
You can also specify the subreddit.
It feels a little grand to be calling these features but here we go: Continue reading →
UPDATE 30/01/2011: I've had to correct the maths a little. Fortunately, the numbers that come out are almost identical.
Ever since the invention of flat panel monitors and screens, it didn't matter what colour your pixels were, you'd still consume the same amount of power. That's because these screens have a big flat light at the back that's always on. If a pixel wants to show you white it lets all the light through. If it wants to show you black it blocks all the light. Either way, the light behind is still on and still consuming the same power.
On a mobile phone that means the colour of your wallpaper doesn't affect battery life. But all that changed with the introduction of OLED screens (or more commonly AMOLED and Super AMOLED) and a lot of new phones have these. If your phone has an OLED screen keep reading, you might be able to improve the life of you battery.
I've been guest blogging over at Lifehacker. Here's a post about setting up a Google Apps account so you can use it to authenticate outgoing mail from your regular Gmail account:
Use a Google Apps Account To Authenticate Outgoing Mail From Your Regular Gmail Account
Update 16/01/11: Helpful commenter Ewerton points out you can just hit the tab key to bring up the login prompt. So the below now saves you a grand total on 1 key press! Probably not worth it 
I find myself clicking on this a lot:
It brings up this little box from which you can log in to twitter:
In fact, it's rare that I don't want to click on "Sign in". So wouldn't it be great if that log in box was already there and that the cursor was in the username box ready to be typed in.
I've written a greasemonkey script to do just that! It works in firefox with greasemonkey installed and in Chrome. Continue reading →
Listen to these two sounds:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Is the second sound higher or lower than the first sound? (let us know in the comments). Play it again if you're not sure.
Ask a few other people to do the same. You'll find that some people hear the second note as higher and some hear it as lower!
(mini update: so far 5 commenters hear the second note as lower and 8 hear it as higher)
That's because it's an audio illusion. And just like an optical illusion an audio illusion can tell us something about the way we perceive the world around us. Continue reading →
