Goods and Chattels

MAKING MONEY ONLINE : ZAZZLE

2008-12-15T15:30:00.009Z

I'm really impressed with this custom design store. Zazzle has a great range of products - t-shirts, mugs, greetings cards, note cards, postcards, badges, stickers, bags, hats, etc. and is easy and fun to use, whether you just want to create individual, one-off products for your own purchase, or set up a store and make money selling your designs publicly.

Elephant Poster by fullmentaljacket

It also has some unusual products - you can completely personalise your own Keds shoes, and now you can make designs for embroidery on a range of different products.

Svengali Poster by fullmentaljacket

Marketing is simple - you can earn money by selling your own products, or by promoting other people's designs in your store, and you can set your own sales margin. Each day, Zazzle gives out awards for the best designs. Although these are kudos only, you do get a nice little rosette next to your product, and it is featured on the front page for that day. The Zazzle model is very well run, with payment credited quickly and reasonable shipping times.

Le chat de M. Matisse by fullmentaljacket

I've found that black and white photographs work a bit better than colour, and vector graphics are really good. I ordered a selection of my own products, to see what the quality is like, and I was surprised and delighted with the professional finish. The cards and envelopes are the kind you'd find in good high street stores, and the gloss finish is perfect. The mugs are good quality glaze and the designs are rendered faithfully. The t-shirts are high quality, and very good value for money.

Hoverfly - Volucella inanis by fullmentaljacket

I've made a variety of products from photographs of flies and butterflies, some vector art and some old family photos with funny captions. My favourites that I've done so far are my Birthday Elephant, Svengali and Matisse's Cat designs.

MAKING MONEY ONLINE : THREADLESS BARGAINS

2008-04-03T09:01:00.000+01:00

One of the potential money-making ideas that I shall write about more fully sometime is the wonderful, user-designed t-shirt site, Threadless. I've tried in vain to get designs accepted, but the standard both of the ideas and of the execution of the graphic design, is so incredibly high that I've not yet managed. The result is a site with the most brilliant and unusual ideas, and truly innovative works of art that you can buy and wear, anywhere on the web.

Anyway, I'm not going into the submission details right now, I'm just giving a tip that they have the most amazing sale on at the moment. Beautiful t-shirts have had their prices slashed, with some as little as $5. Get down there as quickly as you can, all the designs are available only while stocks last. Get your unusual Christmas gifts there now, the variety surely has something for everyone.

The designs here are among my favourites, all currently on sale at only $5. The top one is "Caged", by Frank Barbara. Below that is "Damn Scientists" by John Slabyk, and under that is "Calling Home", by Glenn Jones. Even if you're not really a t-shirt fanatic, it's still worth heading over to Threadless evry now and again anyway, just to get inspired by the brilliant artwork there, and the sheer volume of it.

If you have any interest in graphic design at all, the user message boards are full of helpful tips from established graphic designers, and you can submit your own work to critique by the community. The site is very popular, so your work is viewed and commented on usually almost as soon as you post it, so you can get really quick, honest and helpful feedback. Shop, participate or just grab a bargain, but hurry - designs sell out quickly, and it's not often that prices are this low!

LATIN WORD OF THE DAY

2008-03-03T17:00:00.000Z

There's nothing I love more than a really good laugh, and being a generally happy person, I laugh quite often. The only problem is that I suffer from narcolepsy with cataplexy, and so "falling about laughing" is absolutely literal in my case. My favourite television programme is "You've Been Framed", and for half an hour a week I am completely incapacitated by home video funnies.

It's only because of the brilliant support of Mr. Kizzy that I'm able to fully appreciate the show, though. In our house, it's Mr. Kizzy who looks after the video recorder, and always makes sure we get You've Been Framed on tape, even though he doesn't like it himself at all. The problem is that, once a particular clip has got me going, my head drops and my eyelids droop, so I don't get to see the next couple of clips, even though I can hear the soundtrack. By having a copy on tape, I can watch it again to see the bits I missed the first time.

Sometimes, I've thought that what I need is a soft neck brace, so that I can keep my head upright when I know that I'm going to laugh, but that still leaves the problem of trying to keep my eyelids open.
Then I found this device. It's called the "Lundie Loop", and I actually found it through the website of the Myasthenia Gravis Association.

Myasthenia gravis is a much more serious and debilitating condition than narcolepsy, and is characterised by - as the phrase translates from the Latin - excessive muscular fatigue. Its cause is entirely different to cataplexy, and affects a much greater range of muscular groups.
As with cataplexy, though, one of the signs is involuntary drooping of the eyelids. The Lundie Loop is designed to help sufferers to keep their eyes open, even when the muscles are too weak to lift the lids themselves. Whether it works or not, I don't know. I just found it rather intriguing and highly ingenius. I might try to get hold of one, and see how it works for me.

I am, of course, only being semi-serious, although I'd genuinely be prepared to wear almost anything that works - Lundie Loop included, if for example I'd paid for tickets to see a favourite comedian perfom live. I'd love to have the joy of laughing uninterrupted through the whole show, and without missing any of it.

There is a line that I'd draw, though. I cannot tell you how wonderful this "Pillowig" concept by Joon Youn Park looks to me, but I'd never wear it. Even for a person like me who is relatively unconcerned about what other people think, it's a step too far.

Even so, it just looks so wonderful - whenever I get one of my sudden, crushing, sleep attacks (and I'm talking about sleep now, not cataplexy) this photograph has the same effect on me as I think a picture of Willy Wonka's factory would have on a chocoholic. It is genuinely only a concept design, anyway.

This Sleeping Jacket, on the other hand, is just brilliant, and be ideal for both sleep and cataplectic attacks. As far as I can tell, it's genuine, too, from a designer called Matthew Gale. Finally, it brings me to my wonderful, newly discovered Latin word of the day...

...Excubo. I sleep outside.

MAKING MONEY ONLINE : YOUGOV

2008-03-03T13:42:00.000Z

Here's a really nice, easy way to make a bit of money online if you live in the UK. Some time ago, I came across YouGov, a survey and opinions website run by the UK government. Once you've signed up and completed a simple profile about yourself and your household, you start receiving email notifications of surveys that you can complete. Some surveys are paid, at 50p each, and others give entry to a prize draw for a much larger amount, perhaps £20,000. You don't have to do them, and can still stay registered as long as you want. It costs you nothing, and you don't get any spam.

Unlike other "Get paid for surveys" sites I've used, the software works well, even though I use Firefox. I also don't find myself going through the frustrating process of answering half the questions, only to be told that I don't fit their required profile. When I'm notified of a YouGov survey, it is always possible to complete it, and the payment is always credited.

I don't get notifications very often, perhaps about two or three a month. The questions range from what kinds of technology products I have or might consider buying, to my opinions on particular household brands, to my political views and preferences for certain politicians. They're quite interesting to do, and only take about ten minutes each. The money you earn is credited to your account, and you can view your survey and payment history by logging in to your account. When you get to £50, they send you a cheque.

One of the best things about it, though, is a relatively new introduction. If you have friends and family who'd like to sign up, you can download a personalised link, like the one that I'm using here and in the sidebar. For each new member that signs up via your personalised registration link, you receive equivalent amounts in survey credit for each survey they complete during their first three months of membership. If you can recruit a few people, that's actually pretty impressive, as it's not just a percentage commission, but the whole survey fee, per referral.

Okay, I won't be retiring on my YouGov income anytime soon, but it's quick and easy. The referral bit has a lot of potential. I'm actually worried that it might be so generous that it costs them more than they thought, and they might withdraw it. I think it's worth getting in there now and referring a load of friends, and enjoying the benefits while they last.

A MOUSE ABOUT MY HOUSE

2008-02-26T21:23:00.000Z

Finally, I'm back in the blogosphere again! It feels like forever, although it is actually less than three weeks, since we were burgled and my laptop was stolen. It has certainly highlighted to me the importance of taking regular backups, which I hadn't been doing. Fortunately, as I had only had my previous laptop for three months, the loss of data was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

The one thing left to sort out is that our patio doors are still mostly boarded up. The burglars actually put a brick through a double-glazed, toughened glass door. They must have been really desparate. Two lights were on in the room, and we were asleep upstairs, too. Instead of a double door sized window onto our back garden, we currently have only a foot-wide gap to see through, and the rest is fibreboard.

Perhaps it is because of this, though, that a little mouse felt safe enough to run across in front of the glass in broad daylight this morning.

In fact, he came across a dozen times, pausing each time in front of the blue rubble bag into which we put all the broken glass, and then darting across to the pile of seed and nuts I left out for the birds, taking a single peanut and scurrying away again.

I watched him for about ten minutes, as he dashed in, picked up the peanut and then ran off, meticulously continuing until there were no peanuts left in the pile.

As he sped off with his loot, I looked to see where he was disappearing to, expecting that it might be our garage, only a few feet away. I was wrong, though.

To my great surprise, he was running the entire width of our garage, under our next, door neighbour's car and diagonally away farther than I could see into their garden. What an incredible, arduous shopping trip for such a tiny creature!

I don't know what made him so bold - I've never seen a wild mouse in daylight before - but on his penultimate trip he caught sight of me, and looked straight at me as he paused by the rubble bag, and I thought I might not see him back again.

Wrong again - he still came back for the last peanut. Maybe he thought cold weather was on the way, or maybe he'd just discovered what seemed like easy pickings, but he was a delight to see anyway, did no harm and is welcome to my peanuts any time.

Although I'm sure our burglars also felt desparate in their own way, I can't sympathise, and I do begrude the damage they've done and the trauma they've caused. Perhaps they think we have more than them, and so they can morally rationalise their actions, but they do not take into account how hard we've worked to get here. We love our house and the suburb we live in, but this is not a wealthy area full of big houses. It is a mass of standard 1930s semi-detached houses. It epitomises ordinariness, in many ways.

Still, we're okay, and everything is getting back to normal slowly. We're putting extra security on the house to stop it happening again, and I'm just about to replenish the mouse's nut supply.

DESIGN ICON : SPACELANDER ELECTRIC BICYCLE

2008-02-08T18:01:00.000Z

I don't think that I could ever be a dedicated follower of fashion in a clothing sense, and I rarely take an interest in lifestyle advice programmes or magazines, which sometimes makes me think that I'm not much swayed by appearances. However, this is completely cast aside any time that I find an elegant, innovative industrial or mechanical design.

Some time ago, I was looking at the fascinating Gorey Details, hoping to find some unusual Christmas presents, when I came across a beautiful postcard, and just had to buy it. It was a photograph of the Spacelander electric bicycle, taken from an exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. I knew nothing about the bicycle itself, and assumed that it was probably a single model built as a prototype, never going into production.

Then, this week, an old photograph from the wonderful Modern Mechanix was reproduced on several blogs, and I felt sure that this was the same lovely bike as my postcard. Sure enough, it is. I hope my reproducing the image here counts as "fair use", as I've struggled to find out who owns the copyright. The postcard is printed by fotofolio.com.

This prompted me to find out more about the Spacelander, which I was able to do thanks to the fantastic research compiled by Leon Dixon, whose website, The National Bicycle History Archive of America, is an amazing resource that will delight all enthusiasts. Thanks to Dixon's research, I was able to find out that, far from being only a prototype, the Spacelander was manufactured and sold, although only 522 were ever produced. This figure he counted up from the manufacturer's original shipping lists, which he still owns.

The designer himself, Benjamin Bowden, was born in London in 1906, and died just a decade ago in Forth Worth, Florida. The New York Times carried his obituary. He designed for the British sports car company, Healey, and later moved to Ontario where he had a hand in improving the performance of the Ford Thunderbird. The Spacelander is the most beautiful bike I have ever seen, and I am surprised that the creator of such a perfect marriage of form and function is not more famous. If these were in production today, I would most certainly buy one, and I doubt that I'm alone in that. Like all iconic designs, it is ageless, and looks as futuristic now as it did in 1946.

ISABELLA AND THE INSECTS

2008-02-04T22:54:00.000Z

I'm a long-standing fan of David Lynch, and, as I've said before, I love flies. Now, Isabella Rossellini was once married to David Lynch, and now it looks as if she's maybe taking the insect investigations a lot further, too.

Just to clarify, when I said, "I love flies", I absolutely did not mean carnally!!

MAKING MONEY ONLINE - AMAZON MECHANICAL TURK

2008-02-04T22:15:00.000Z

One of the things about having narcolepsy is that it is difficult to find work. It's not really that I'm incapable, in fact I can do quite a lot of things that employers find useful. The problem is that most emplyers want these things done at particular times, and that's what isn't so easy. Although in general I'm more alert in the mornings, there are days when I start falling asleep at nine o'clock in the morning, and others when I might be reasonably alert all day. Because one of the peculiarities of narcolepsy is night-time insomnia, my most productive work hours can sometimes be at two or three o'clock in the morning.

Hence, I've been trying to see what potential there is for making money online, where I can choose to work when I am feeling most alert, and take naps whenever I need to without letting other people down. I'm going to do a series of posts on what I find out, and try to give an honest analysis of what potential I think there is for earning, and how this compares to what the sites themselves say about it.

One of the first money making opportunities I found on the web was Amazon Mechanical Turk. It's a web application by the same people who are better known as an online bookstore, and is named after a famous chess-playing automaton built by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769. Kempelen convinced many people throughout Europe that he had built a machine with artificial intelligence, able through its cogs and gears to beat some of the best chess players of the day. The Turk was, however, in machine intelligent terms, a fraud, since its achievements at chess were actually being accomplished by a grand master concealed inside.

Amazon Mechanical Turk's principle alludes to that cautionary tale, some tasks are repetitive and fairly simple, yet are not accomplished well by machines or need human input. Once you register, you are able to choose from thousands of available HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks. This is perhaps the simplest possible model of crowdsourcing, and perhaps clickworking is a better description, since many HITs do not require and great deal of skill.

Examples of the kinds of things that appear on Mechanical Turk are:

Write a short plot description for a specified movie - $0.50
Choose you favourite photo from a given set - $0.01
Give you opinion about a topic on a website - $0.10
Make a list on a website - $0.25
Guess the colour to appear on a given website on a given day - $0.01
Write a short blog article on a specified subject - $1.00
Answer a survey question - $0.01

Some HITs have a bonus payable for good work, and these can be very lucrative indeed, compared to the standard payment. Some can be very interesting, and can lead to new finds on the web. It isn't big money, in my opinion, but more a worthwhile recreation. Having said that, I believe that it is easily possible to make a lot more than I do, with dedication. It is quite possible that good coders might be able to write scripts to help them with some HITs, and thereby earn far more.

Mechanical Turk is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, and tends to have a US bias in its HITs, and also in its payment system. Earnings are accrued in an Amazon.com account, and workers can have tis transferred to their US personal bank account, or converted into Amazon.com gift certificates. Workers in India can take payment from their accounts in the form of a cheque in Indian rupees, but in the rest of the world the gift voucher is the only payment option.

I find Mechanical Turk more a bit of fun than anything else. By playing around for about an hour, I can earn a couple of dollars, but I'm pretty slow and easily distracted by the more interesting tasks, and spend quite a while looking at the background sites to the HITs. It's definitely worth a look, though.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE...

2008-01-31T12:30:00.000Z

Someone was asking on a forum the other day about the best treatment for crows' feet. I don't know, but I think it would be very difficult to catch one and try it out. I suggest that any crows having difficulty walking should consider flying instead.

Do people choose their jobs, or do their jobs choose them? I love the name of the BBC's whaling correspondent.

SCIENCE, SLEEP AND SSRIs

2008-01-31T12:06:00.000Z

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I have narcolepsy with cataplexy, which is a very odd condition, and becomes odder all the time. One of the recent discoveries about it involves the identification of orexin producing cells in the hypothalamus, and their depletion in narcolepsy. Hence there is a diagnostic test which involves a lumbar puncture to take a sample of cerebro-spinal fluid and analyse it for orexin concentration. In narcoleptics, the level is either abnormally low, or undetectable.

I was very worried about having the test. Notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the test itself, it has taken me more than half my life to find a sympathetic neurologist who would agree that my symptoms might be narcolepsy with cataplexy, and the diagnostic validity of this test is taken to be so strong that I was terrified the outcome. What if the orexin count was not low? It would leave me wondering if my symptoms were psychiatric all along, and perhaps my neurologist would think that too.

Photograph by MegElizabeth

Anyway, I needn't have worried. I was honest with my neurologist about my apprehension, and he said that whatever the outcome, he felt strongly that something neurological was going on, and that nothing would alter his standard of care to me. You can see why I didn't want to lose him! As it turned out, my orexin levels were, as he put it, "barn door abnormal".

I take modafinil for the narcolepsy, and venlafaxine for cataplexy at the moment, although I used to take prozac for the latter. Over at Ben Goldacre's brilliant Bad Science blog, there's a discussion going on about the quality of research into the effectiveness of selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors, SSRIs, like prozac. Most particular to the confusion as to their effectiveness seems to be the selective reporting of positive trials, and mis-reporting of some that had less favourable results. Venlafaxine is a selective seratonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), and I don't know how well its trials and their fair publication compare.

One thing that is always interesting about psychoactive drugs is that there are high variations from individual to individual in their effect, dosage and efficacy. They also seem to act differently for different conditions. For example, fluoxetine (prozac), when prescribed for depression, usually takes a couple of weeks to start taking effect. When I was prescribed it for cataplexy, the effect was within 48 hours. It seems to me that it must be acting through different channels in each case. The human nervous system is an enigmatic and complex machine, and I don't think our current understanding is adequate to explain these differences. It is interesting, for instance that Parkinson's patients can develop secondary narcolepsy, and exhibit the full range of narcolepsy and cataplexy symptoms, although the primary defect is in the dopamine system. Recent research has seemed to indicate that REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is strongly associated with later development of Parkinson's Disease, unless it is associated with narcolepsy, in which such a progression is not expected.

It all makes me wonder whether depression is really a single illness at all, when it has many different triggers (and none) and manifests itself differently from person to person in its extent, prognosis and response to treatment. When the brain and its workings are so difficult to understand, then any medical trial has the problem that even in the patient group, we may not be comparing like with like. Faced with the difficulties in trials of comparing an active drug accurately with placebo, and the added difficulty of comparing placebo to no treatment at all, the possibility that very similar symptoms may arise from different organic mechanisms within the study group makes any inferences very tricky indeed.

I'm not arguing against trials - on the contrary, I think we need to know far more. But we also need to better understand the nature and origin of the illnesses before we can make hard pronouncements. We need well organised, well reported trials, but we also need to be willing to challenge all underlying assumptions openly and honestly, and not censor or prejudice any possible debate.

AN INTERESTING MATHEMATICS PUZZLE

2008-01-23T10:43:00.000Z

Well, this is the first time I've tried to put any maths into my blog, and I can tell you for sure I'll have to learn a lot more about how to do all the typesetting and stuff before trying again!!! Hats off to the clever folks who do it all the time.

I wanted to share a puzzle that I tackled some while ago now, when I was doing my first undergraduate year in mathematics. It was satisfying in one way, but remained always rather unsatisfying in another.

The course in question was a rather gentle introduction to some topics in number theory, and the lecturer wanted to encourage us to experiment and learn for ourselves a bit, so as well as the compulsory assignments we did each week, he set a weekly "challenge problem", which was optional. Whereas the assignment tested that we had understood the course and could apply what we had learned, the "challenge" was intended to go some way beyond the course itself. The lecturer gave the added incentive that he would keep a record of the challenge problem solutions he received, and at the end of the semester there would be a prize for the best student.

Initially, about eight or so students submitted solutions, but it tailed off quickly, and by about half way through the semester, the only students still submitting solutions were myself and another student. This carried on until the final lecture, when we both waited expectantly for the winner to be announced. Instead, however, he said that he was still unable to separate us, and so he was launching a final challenge for everyone to think about over the Christmas break. He said he would wipe the slate clean, and, regardless of how many, if any at all, of the previous challenges had been completed, the person who delivered the correct answer, with proof, soonest after Christmas would win the challenge prize. Should he receive more than one correct answer, the prize would go to the student whose solution was the most elegant.

What he then handed out read as follows:

CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE

The following Christmas teaser was set by Dr J Brownowski in the New Statesman and Nation, 24th December, 1949:

Find the smallest natural number which is such that if the digit on the extreme left is transferred to the extreme right, the new number formed is one and a half times the original number

He also gave a hint, without which I am sure that I would not have been able to solve it. I had a solution by the soonest date, and so did two others. One turned out to be wrong. The other was also correct, and had been submitted by the same student with whom I had been neck-and-neck all along. Since the lecturer still could not separate us, he finally announced us as joint winners.

I said at the beginning that the process was satisfying, and this was partly of course the pleasure of winning, but also because I had in doing so undertaken some puzzles, including this one, that I would never have thought I could solve previously. The dissatifaction, though, was entirely with my solution to this last problem. My initial approach, using the hint, was fine, and led to a most general solution. However, the second half, which was in order to find the lowest possible solution has always seemed inelegant, and I've wondered whether there was a better way of finding the answer. I hope that I've eluded to the part I mean enough, since my own solution, in the graphic is, I hope, too small to read, and those who want to try it themselves can avoid enlarging it.

The hint, was, in ROT13,

vasvavgr qrpvznyf

BAD SCIENCE

2008-01-07T10:17:00.000Z

Perhaps I've just had too good a Christmas, and my normal bad temper is on rebound, or perhaps some things are just remarkably annoying. I usually make a point of not watching programmes like "The Wright Stuff" on UK Channel 5, but my other half is off work with the 'flu today, and put it on.

As the programme went to an advertisement break, the teaser question we were left with was:

In what year was MRSA first discovered?
a) 1880
b) 1950
c) 1980

It's often possible to answer these questions on a psychological basis rather than actual knowledge; they are almost always designed to surprise. Now, I don't mind the intellectual superiority that people intend to show by asking these kinds of questions, as long as the answer is actually correct, and illuminates the subject in some way. However, it was all too easy to predict that the given answer would be - and indeed was - 1880.

Since MRSA is methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, it doesn't take a genius to suppose that MRSA cannot have been discovered until after methycillin was developed. This was by Beecham, in 1959. It was first reported in the UK in 1961 that certain Staphylococcus Aureus had been found to be resistant to methycillin.

The bacterium itself was discovered in 1880. It resides perfectly normally on human skin, nose, throat and the colon, and doesn't necessarily indicate the presence of infection. It usually responds to methycillin, among other antibiotics.

Why does this wind me up so much? Because what it does to the watching population is give the impression that MRSA has been around for over 100 years, and has not been a problem until now. I think the average viewer may conclude that all the recent concern is merely scaremongering, and will also find the conflict with what they thought previously will add to a sense that science is not to be trusted, and that scientists change their advice according to political expediency.

Staphylococcus Aureus in itself is not a worry. MRSA is a big concern. It may well have been caused to thrive today by continued overuse of antibiotics. It is very hard to see how we can get back from this position, but disinformation is unlikely to help.

MY FAVOURITE JOKE

2007-12-18T05:45:00.000Z

Only just under a week to go before Christmas - and that means the usual kinds of jokes you get in crackers, all over again! Here's a substitute, my favourite elephant joke ever:

What's grey, and sings the blues?

Answer in ROT13 : Ryrcunagf Trenyq

If you don't get it, try saying it aloud. If that doesn't help, click here!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS ENTOMOLOGISTS EVERYWHERE

2007-12-11T22:49:00.002Z

I found this beautiful, early Russian animation, "The Insects' Christmas" on YouTube. It's an absolute delight, and remains surprisingly undated.

MORE GIFTS FOR SCIENCE GEEKS

2007-12-06T20:50:00.000Z

Okay, Christmas is getting pretty close now, and this is the time that I usually start assessing whether I have enough stocking fillers, so I thought I'd do a little post on some smaller and lower-priced things that physics and maths geeks in particular might like.

Amazon.com Widgets

Moodicare Colour Changing Alarm Clock
I've had one of these for two years now, and I'll honestly never tire of it. It's utterly beautiful, and you can tell the time at night to any necessary accuracy without being able to see the face, simply from the colour. Anyone who wakes up in the night bleary-eyed will wonder how they ever managed without it. See also the Water Powered Alarm Clock

The Physics of Christmas
Two of the most wonderful things in life, Physics AND Christmas - what more could anybody want? See also the Glow in the Dark Solar System

Plasma Ball
How wonderful are these? They never stop being beautiful, no matter how many times you see them. Nobody could possibly have too many of them, and these days they're affordable.

The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Numbers
Every mathematician knows that there are no uninteresting numbers, and some can even give a proof. This is a fantastic compendium of the most interesting - a delight for mathematicians, and a source of inspiration to all those who simply wonder at the beauty of numbers. See also The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems and Irresistible Integrals

T-Shirt: No I will not fix your computer
The shirt that saves a thousand words. Let the whole world know when you are off-duty. See also I don't work here

Dynaflex Powerball Gyroscope
Fantastic gyroscope on acid, with built in bright blue LED and capable of rotation upto 15,000 rpm.

Squid LED Flexible Light
Gorgeous little flashlight with 3 white LEDs. See also the Glow Mini Lizard

The Best of the Annals of Improbable Research
This latest compendium includes a listing of the Ig Nobel prizes, annually awarded "for scientific achievements which cannot or should not be reproduced," and some of the prizewinning papers, such as "Failure of Electric Shock Treatment for Rattlesnake Envenomation" and "Of Mites and Man." There are also plenty of groundbreaking original studies from AIR: "How Dead Is a Doornail?" "Furniture Airbags," and "The Medical Effects of Kissing Boo-Boos."

The Best of MAKE
384 pages of the best projects from the first 10 years of MAKE magazine.

T-Shirt: Generic Humanoid Carbon Unit
This T-shirt accurately announces the life-form of its wearer, distinguishing it from the silicon-based variety it keeps closest company with. From the brilliant ThinkGeek - see also the WIFI Detector T-Shirt, and Bow before me, for I am root.

POODWADDLE!

2007-11-29T21:16:00.000Z

I hope you like my little alarm clock. You can move the hands to have it go off when you want. I set it whenever I put my lunch in the oven. I downloaded it from Poodwaddle, a great little customisable home page. Perhaps "little" isn't right - it's actually quite a major achievement, especially given that it's been put together by one man. Shane describes it as his "hobby, brainchild and family run business" and says he is "just a solo lunatic dodging manual labor by punching keys for a living".

So there are other ways of customising your home page, but I happen to like this one. I like that Shane hopes to use his profits to found a Central American charity, and I especially like that when he says he answers all his emails, he actually does, and really quickly, too.

There are lots of clever free programs on the site, like the World Clock:

It takes its basic data from sources such as the CIA World Factbook, the World Health Organisation and the US Census Bureau, and makes real-time adjustments based on estimated rates of change. It may not be spot-on, but that isn't really the point. It's really thought provoking, and somewhat hypnotic to watch.

A lighter widget is the Christmas countdown - which fills me with excitement and wonder, although I suspect some would regard it with dread:

There are loads of clocks, games, a CSS widget, calculators and much more besides. They can all be used to customise any page you like, including the Poodwaddle custom home page. It's really worth a look, especially if, like me, you quite like to have everything laid out in front of you when you're surfing, but haven't quite warmed to iGoogle.

SHIFTY-LOOKING COVES

2007-11-26T21:07:00.000Z

When I was researching my family history recently, I ended up trawling some Daily Mirror archives. I came across this wonderful story, from September, 1909, about how Britain would "descend into a nation of criminal faces", and analysing the typical physiognomy of the criminal type.

Strangely enough, BoingBoing has this story, about how caricatures are more effective than accurate police sketches in identifying criminals (full post here), with a wonderful illustration (Dad, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed picture from PhylB's Flickr photostream):

Do you think these chaps are related? Forget historic DNA, I reckon the "bird and cow-like faces" test is a dead cert.

These newspaper archives are loads of fun. No wonder our parents are bonkers. Watch this space for more exciting happenings in the early 20th century!!!

FLY GUY

2007-11-20T07:07:00.000Z

Here's a shameless plug - I made this shirt on Zazzle, and I'm really pleased with it. You can buy one, if you like - from here. It's a really good site, actually. You can make things and post them for sale, and there is actually a huge range of items, or you can just make unique items for yourself or as gifts for family and friends. It's a good blend of other similar sites, with affiliate and shopkeeper programmes, but without that obligation.

I've found some more great insect stuff on the wonderweb recently. I'm rounding it all up, and it'll be posted here soon. Keep watching, insect fans...

10 BRILLIANT CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR SCIENCE GEEKS

2007-11-12T12:35:00.000Z

Oh, I wish it could be Christmas every day! There's just such a lot of beautiful stuff out there. Some things, in particular appeal to the physics or maths geek.

Here's a round-up of some that I like the best:

1. Acme Klein Bottles

The classic, one sided, zero volume container is one of several topological curiosities made by Cliff Stoll (whose Erdös Number is 3) at Acme Klein Bottles.

Technically a four-dimensional object, it is immersed in three dimensions for convenience of viewing and handling, in quality borosilicate glass. From the "baby" to absolutely huge, their range is impressive, and each comes with a mass of informative literature that you will want to frame.

It doesn't end with Klein bottles, though. There's also the Cup of Tantalus, great for geeks with a penchant for practical jokes, and you can also wrap up warm with a Klein hat and Möbius scarf set. Pure Genius.

2. Lichtenberg Figures

Don't you just love lightning? Bert Hickman at Stoneridge Engineering does exceedingly dangerous things with it, and captures the results in perspex.

The fractal patterns generated are just incredible, especially when viewed using one of the LED illuminating bases they supply. Most of the sculptures are generated using electron beams with energies of between 3 and 5 MeV. Much more information is available on the website.

He also shrinks coins:

3. Stirling Engine

An old favourite, but currently enjoying a bit of a comeback, Stirling engines are beautiful in their simplicity, and look as if they are working with no energy source.

In fact, they are driven by temperature difference between the top and bottom plates of the air reservoir that houses the piston. From precision machined works of art to basic models, it's also good to know that they're also relatively easy to make out of ordinary household bits and pieces.

4. Bathsheba Mathematical Sculptures

Bathsheba Grossman's sculptures are absolutely exquisite.

Like the Schwarz D Surface and gyroid shown here, many are made by a 3d modelling technique. She also uses laser etching to create amazing 3d sculptures in perspex, from astronomical models to mathematical figures and biolochemical molecules. Here's her Calabi-Yau manifold, and quaternion Julia set:

She also has two delightful LED keyrings available; Buckyball and DNA:

If you have the patience and skill, she also has a few patterns of her designs to download and make yourself.

5. Theremin

The ultimate musical instrument for physics geeks.

Invented by a physicist, inordinately difficult to play, and a completely other-worldy sound make it the music of silicon heaven.

Better still, many theremins come as kits, so you can go easy on your pocket and exercise your junior electronics club knowledge at the same time. If you've done it right, you'll have your own "Forbidden Planet" sound system!

6. Quzzle

Quirkle's catalogue is all about quality, rather than quantity. They make only a very few products, but they are all precision machined to be beautiful and tactile pieces.
Quzzle is a re-engineered, reworked old favourite, a variation on the sliding block puzzle. Although it has only nine pieces, it is the most difficult puzzle of its kind in the world, amongst tens of thousands of possibilities, there is only one solution.

Quzzle comes with instructions and a web address where you can find solving tips. You can reveal them gradually, or go straight to the solution if you are too impatient.

7. Unicycle

I once met someone who had studied Physics and Philosophy joint honours.

I asked what he was doing for a living now. He was a professional juggler and unicyclist, at the local community circus. I don't know why I asked, really - in hindsight it is the obvious career path for a person with such credentials.

Of course, the unicyle is difficult to master, but that's all part of the fun. The best bit is that your hands are free, so you can work on your Quzzle while you commute.

8. 507 Mechanical Movements

All geeks love books, and when your head really hurts a picture book can be just the tonic.

Perhaps the nearest thing to a coffee-table book for nerds, this wonderful volume will inspire all the budding engineers and tinkerers, mechanics and armchair inventors.

9. Cabaret Mechanical Theatre Automata

Within Cabaret Mechanical Theatre's extended family, many geek heroes are to be found.

Their associates include the living god of "wobbly moving stuff" Tim Hunkin, automata visionary Paul Spooner and creator of dragons Keith Newstead.

If your pockets aren't quite deep enough for a ready-made automaton, there's always the designer's kit, winner of a Editor's Choice award at this years Maker Faire in Austin, Texas. Full of ready-cut wooden components, simply assemble and design your own masterpieces - no need for any tools!

10. Binary Blanket

At the end of a hard day's thinking, and maybe tinkering, all geeks need some comfort. What better than to cuddle up in a snuggly, warm blanket that declares its identity in ones and zeroes?

You could also rest your head on the lovely binary pillow, and enjoy 10 kinds of comfort at once.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

I JUST HAVE TO SHARE THIS!

2007-11-12T10:47:00.000Z

Just a quick post, but this is so wonderful. I'll blog a bit more about it soon, but as a taster, you've got to see this video. Some musical performances are just so great that they become the definitive version of that piece, like, for instance, the Leningrad Cowboys doing Tom Jones' "Delilah", or the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain's version of George Formby's "Leaning on a lamp-post". This just has to be such a rendition - a pair of Tesla coils "singing" the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, from Tchaikovsy's Nutcracker Suite. Enjoy!!!

THEREMIN PLAYING DOLL

2007-11-09T16:21:00.000Z

There's something hideously creepy about dolls, and very beautiful about theremins. Put the two together and you have something like this - warning: don't watch it just before bed!!

There's something rather reminiscent of the ventriloquist's dummy that comes to life in the film, "Dead of Night" in the performance, especially when the human performer alters what she is doing to try and follow Clara. Ugh!

LACK OF SLEEP IS A LOT LIKE MENTAL ILLNESS

2007-11-05T17:49:00.000Z

I was amazed to read this report in the 26th October edition of NewScientist. Not because it was news to me, but because I am constantly surprised that it should be news to anybody else. Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that, "It is thought that psychiatric conditions create sleep problems. We should entertain the possibility that it is a sleep disorder that is creating the condition."

As a sufferer of narcolepsy with cataplexy, I am only too well aware of the confusions that arise in diagnosis. My symptoms began when I was about 13 or 14, but I did not receive the correct diagnosis until I was 36. This is not unusual, and unfortunately my experience of referrals to psychiatrists for many years is not uncommon either.

In some ways I sympathise with general practitioners: narcolepsy is underdiagnosed and misunderstood. Although it is recognised as a neurological, degenerative condition, the diagnostic criteria to which physicians refer are still to be found in DSM IV, the primary diagnostic reference for psychiatric and psychological disorders. In one, large-scale study, the average delay between symptom onset and diagnosis was 17 years. Other papers available in the academic literature have documented case studies of confusion in diagnosis that have ended up with narcoleptics diagnosed wrongly with schizophrenia or adult ADHD.

My sympathy runs out, though, when the failure is not in the medics' available resources, but in their ability to listen without prejudice. I eventually found out my own diagnosis through the wonderful world wide web, but getting a GP to agree, accept and treat my condition was another matter. After several changes of GP, I finally found one who was prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt, read all my medical records and see that the evidence was there. Referral to a similarly open-minded local neurologist led to the test results that finally confirmed the diagnosis.

Since having the correct diagnosis and treatment, my life has changed immeasurably for the better. I have endless gratitude for the GP who finally listened. She calls it "simply doing her job". Not all do, and this is disadvantages the physicians as well as their patients, who can be a vast resource of anecdotal information that could inspire further lines of research.

I LOVE FLIES

2007-10-25T13:40:00.000+01:00

I was lucky enough to see, some years ago, this beautiful hoverfly, Callicera Aenea, at Clay Hill in the New Forest.

Why do I love flies? I really don't know, but I just never get tired of looking at them, and there are always new ones to discover. Like most amateur entomologists, I was first attracted to butterflies and moths - lepidoptera - but then decided to specialise in flies. As the class name suggests, Diptera are characterised by having just two wings, whereas most other insects have two pairs of wings.

To me, flies are incredibly beautiful, as are any artworks that take flies as their subject.

For example, the amazing pavement artist, Julian Beever, created this piece:

Beever specialises in anamorphic art, in which the image is distorted in 2d, and only appears as it should when viewed from a certain direction. It's exactly the effect used for advertising images in sports arenas and race circuits, where the company logo's ideal viewing point is designed to coincide with camera positions.

Beever doesn't particularly specialise in insect art, but there are others who do.

For instance, Mike Libby creates wonderful micro-quasi-mechanical sculptures out of dead insects and watch parts. Although his gallery doesn't have any flies at the moment, he does take commissions. Actually, his bees and beetles are my favourites:
The absolutely brilliant Stephanie Korschun at Sasquatch Designs produces highly detailed scientific illustrations, some of which she sells as t-shirts:

She also does sweatshirts and hoodies, as well as monochrome notelets in the same designs.