Lego facts

Businessweek.com has an article about how LEGO bricks are made. The article contains a number of interesting facts:

• in 2000, LEGO was named "Toy of the Century" by Fortune magazine as well as by the British Toy Retailers Assn., beating out such other classics as the teddy bear and Mattel's Barbie;
• the bricks produced today can interlock with those produced back in 1958;
• the bricks are so versatile that the LEGO Group has calculated that just six eight-stud bricks can be arranged in 915,103,765 different ways;
• LEGO is the largest tire manufacturer in the world, it produces 306 million tiny rubber tires a year;
• the production process is so air tight that only 18 of 1 million pieces are considered defective; and
• in 2004, the company launched LEGOfactory.com, where anyone can download a LEGO Digital Designer and build his own LEGO model. After that, you can either save it in a gallery or buy the pieces needed and have it sent to your home to build it in real life.

To take a look at how the classic LEGO bricks are made: click here for the slide show.

Close-ups at the playground

Daylight saving (2)

As noted in my previous post there was a lot of discussion of daylight saving in Queensland a few weeks ago. Daylight saving has also been on the agenda in Perth, where the West Australian chased comments from the state’s leaders last week. Here are some of their deeper thoughts (sourced from Crickey):

Bruce Donaldson: Liberal MLC

Who will cook the tea? While everyone is prancing around the beach or running around a park kicking a football, what will happen? I have a feeling our major takeaway outlets will love daylight saving because Mum will say to Dad: 'We've had a great time in the park but I didn't put the chops or potatoes on'.

Ray Halligan: Liberal MLC:

If this legislation is passed and we have daylight saving, it will mean either that some alterations will have to be made or that people will have to accept that their wedding photographs may not be taken at sunset.

Barry House: Liberal MLC:

A lot of blokes do not turn up to work if the surf is up. They do not arrive until 11 o'clock in the morning. If we agree to daylight saving 11 o'clock will turn into 12 noon. By then it will be lunchtime, so they will take two hours off for lunch and think: 'To hell with it, it's not worth going to work at all'.

Robyn McSweeney: Liberal MLC:

The effect daylight saving will have on our circadian rhythms, which is the 24-hour cycle in the physiological process of living beings. When our circadian rhythm is upset, it puts us out of sorts. I do not want my circadian rhythm upset because I do not like being out of sorts.

The most thoughtful response, however, came from the Nationals MP for Avon, Max Trenorden – a very deep thinker indeed:

In physics there is no such thing as time. The Earth goes around the Sun and rotates on its axis, and that is pretty wobbly too. We need atomic clocks to adjust time every now and then because it is not perfect. It might be worthwhile for people to remember that.

Stoffer og Bias

Invisible

Ever wonder why young children aged between two and four years believe that you only have to cover your eyes (or head) to become invisible?  According to Nicola McGuigan and Martin Doherty this is probably because young children think of ‘seeing’ in terms of mutual engagement between people.

Here is further discussion.

Blogsite graph

Here is a site which converts data from websites into a graph resembling a molecule diagram of some sort. I ran it on this blog. The result is shown below.

The colours have the following meaning:

• blue: for links (the A tag)
• red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
• green: for the DIV tag
• violet: for images (the IMG tag)
• yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
• orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
• black: the HTML tag, the root node
• gray: all other tags

For screenshots of other sitegraphs have a look on flickr at websitesasgraphs.

Daylight saving

While New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory and South Australia adjusted their clocks to daylight saving (adjusting the official local time forward, by one hour) a couple of weeks ago (earlier in Tasmania) we in Queensland together with Western Australia and the Northern Territory have left our clocks untouched.

In a 1992 referendum Queenslanders categorically rejected daylight saving. I am unaware of the specific arguments back then, but based on the discussions in the media this time around they seem to have revolved around beginning the day in darkness, ruining some farmers routines, disruption in sleep patterns and increased temperature at the end of the day.

Queenslanders appear to have the daylight saving discussion annually and this year was no exception with Premier Peter Beattie fronting the peculiar argument that daylight saving would have the consequence of increasing our exposure to the sun, increasing the risk of developing skin cancer (click here for a presentation of the arguments). Funny, he didn't argue for daylight saving as way of conserving power in these climate change times.

The main problem is of course that Queensland is huge in all directions. There is little seasonal variation in the tropical north, while the south has a more temperate and variable climate. For us living in Brisbane (which is the far east) the problem is also exaggerated. Sunrise here is earlier than in the west. Sunrise in summer is very early. It is light before 5am – great if you get up early to work, but not if you want to stay up past 10pm. Sunset is around 6:30pm.

Beattie has promised a vote on the issue next year to see if consensus has changed since 1992. This is a good move. Queensland should have time zones that suit the majority. The problem is that the vote is likely to reveal a very clear geographical preference, with the majority of people in the south east preferring daylight saving and the others the status quo. One way to solve this problem is to split Queensland into two time zones. The southern and eastern part would get the benefits of daylight savings and the northern and eastern parts would retain the existing system.

In any case, for us it is really not a big deal. We live more by the sun than a time zone. Tobias in particular is guided by the sun, although he gets up around 6am at the moment. However, as a consequence of the early sunrise I have shifted my morning routine and now get up at 5am.

There is a fairly detailed Wikipedia entry on daylight saving here and an Australian specific entry here.

Jellyfish

Tobias har tegnet vand- og brændmænd eller som han ynder at kalde dem jellymans.

Bugs & Frogs

Tobias var helt vild da jeg viste ham billeder af diverse insekter og froeer paa taet hold. Klik her (Click for large gallery of bug close-ups). Hans tre favoritter er nedenfor.

3 minutes

Hvis du har tre minutter saa klik her.  Den stoerste prik laver en rotation (en cirkel) paa tre minutter, den naeststoerste prik to rotationer, den tredjestoerste tre....osv.

Ikea Logan

A new Ikea store opened Friday in a suburb call Logan, 17 km south of Brisbane. In the week leading up to the opening, Ikea spammed the airwaves with an annoying commercial boasting a fictional Swede named Steve (a young bald trendy guy with glasses – thick black frame - dressed in yellow) fine talking the delights of Ikea in Lowgan (i.e. Logan with a Swedish accent).

In Melbourne we often visited Ikea because of their import of Swedish food products not readily available anywhere else. Within the first month of our arrival in Brisbane we decided to keep up the tradition and visit Ikea in Springwood. It turned out to be small and puny and as a result we didn't go again. However, with the new Ikea in Logan we were hoping for a better experience as it was being hailed as the largest Ikea in the Southern hemisphere.



We arrived at 10 to 10. There was already a queue building up outside the car park, but the attendants and police were quick to guide the cars into place. Once inside it was the familiar Ikea layout. On offer was a breakfast consisting of bacon and eggs for a lousy $2, so it wasn’t a surprise that people had turned up early for some food before hitting the exhibition. Because Tobias was hungry we bought some breakfast. It was poor (what can you expect for $2), but Tobias was happy nonetheless.

We ended up spending $120 on different items, most significantly some Christmas decorations. On our way out we also paid the Swedish food market a visit and bought some obligatory liquorish.

I am certain Logan Ikea will be a great success. Located between the Gold Coast and Brisbane it has a huge market base. It also has a reasonable size and therefore the full Ikea range with a decent warehouse to go with it.

Monicacos de Esperanza

Neil Guy, Burning Man photographer extraordinaire, has posted his striking 2006 pix: http://burningcam.com/2006/photos/.

Above is a photo of Monicacos de Esperanza by Pepe Ozan. An odd ensemble of surreal creatures walking towards nowhere. The creature in the foreground reminds me of cartoonist Vaugh Bodé. A common theme in his works was the use of lizard-like creatures as stand-ins for "real" humans (though most of his female characters are quite human).

Extracting extra value

Many DVDs have alternative language tracks. Especially many of the cartoons we have bought for Tobias contain a multitude of language options. Today Tobias watched the first 20 minutes of Garfield in Finnish by his own request. He had a ball!

iCrib

I was clicking my way through the Engadget website and came across the iCrib. Well, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone would come up with a sound system that attaches an iPod to a crib. After all, babies like music and lots of people own iPods (we have 4), so it makes a whole lot of sense.

Christoffer is too old for the iCrib, he would probably grab it, wrestle it free and proceed to shake it and push any buttons he could find. Ultimately he would probably toss it through the air in an attempt to see how far it could fly. Probably better to consider the iCrib for the next one. And no... before you get too excited there is nothing on the way.

YouTube and looking forward

From Concept to Hyper-growth: Click here to view a fantastic video about the creation and early days of YouTube from the quiet co-founder, Jawed Karim. This is a University lecture he did on the 21 October. It is 50 mins long and required viewing for anyone interested in the process of creating an internet company.

Tobias and Christoffer hope you listen and learn. Although the world will probably have changed when you enter the business world, I would like to hope that you could be just a fraction as successful as the YouTube guys.

People are already searching the the next YouTube. One candidate could be outside.in.

Yesterday Boing Boing reported that Steven Johnson has published a new book The Ghost Map, a scientific thriller about an 1854 cholera outbreak on London’s Broad Street in Soho. The Ghost Map celebrates cartography in the context of neighborhood knowledge, the wisdom about a place that can only come from living there.

Now Steven has brought that same theme alive in today’s world of Google mash-ups and location-enhanced computing through outside.in.

outside.in is a tool for participating in the online conversations taking place about your community within your community. After you locate yourself on a map, real-time blog posts, reviews, and news relevant to that area appear. Drag the map and the content changes. The system draws from a wide variety of placeblogs, user-contributed links, and tagged neighborhood data. All of that hyperlocal information is then aggregated together and linked to the physical places where the news matters most.

So far it only appears to be working for selected areas in the US.

Abstract cars part II

In the previous post is a painting by Tobias. Majken managed to catch the artist on camera. It shows him initiating what apparently turned out to be a tractor. When you watch the clip, note the background music. This is not any recording of ours; it is music from the Roma Street Parklands at our doorstep.

Last weekend a multicultural festival was held in the park. The intention was to celebrate the diversity, colour and vibrancy of Brisbane’s population. There were samples of music, art, ceremonies and food from a multitude of different countries and the opportunity to take part in many of the activities.

An interesting feature was a world map (2 by 4 metres) where festival participants were encouraged to place a tiny red sticker on their parent’s country of origin. Not unsurprisingly there were mountains of red on Australia, most of Europe, New Zealand, Hong Kong (migration prior to 1997 prompted by the hand-over to China) and Pacific Islands. However, patterns I didn’t expect where: the relatively few stickers on countries like Spain and France; a red cloud around Peru and hardly any on the other South American countries; and two or three major pockets of red on Africa, suggesting substantial migrations from a few selected regions.

There was also Danish representation at the festival. The Danish Club of Brisbane had a stall where they sold hotdogs and aebleskiver (a small cake of batter cooked in a special pan resulting in a small round delicacy that is eaten with marmelade or sugar). According to Majken the quality of their aeblerskiver was not up to scratch. I guess this should be expected given that good home made versions are very difficult to come by even in Denmark.

Abstract cars

Tobias has painted a collection of different cars. Can you spot which ones are which?

Monster Trucks

Tobias har fået nogle nye biler – ikke helt almindelige biler men monster trucks. Han har i en periode leget med tog, sværd og computer men nu er biler et hit igen. Han har altid haft et særligt forhold til biler og tilbragte timer med at parkere (eller placere) dem i farveorden, da han var mindre.

Cars are back as Tobias preferred toy, not normal cars, but monster trucks.

Han fik sin første Hot Wheels monster truck fra fars trylletaske. Det er min gamle computertaske som har den særlige evne at den kan fremtrylle legetøj. Det sker dog ikke særlig ofte (hidtil kun tre gange på et halvt år) og det er kun mig, der ved hvornår tasken kan anvendes.

His first Hot Wheels monster truck came from dad’s magic bag, i.e. my old computer bag with the wonderful ability to conjure up toys. It doesn’t happen very often and at my full discretion (has only happened three times during the past 6 months).

Han har siden købt to til med penge han har tjent ved at støvsuge. Så nu har han tre ialt, hvilket gør det hele lidt lettere fordi Christoffer så også har mulighed for at lege lidt med dem. Det er ikke let at holde styr på alle tre på en gang.

He has since bought two additional trucks using the money he has earned vacuuming. So now he has three, which makes life a little easier because it gives Christoffer the opportunity to play with them as well. It is difficult to keep track of all three at once.

Hans fascination med monster trucks er ikke ny. Sidste år var vi på the Melbourne Show Grounds. Her fik han et førsthåndsindtyk af en monster truck ”in action”. Se videoklippet nedenfor.

His fascination with monster trucks is by no means new. At the Melbourne Show Grounds last year he saw one in action. See the video clip below.

Laughing with measuring tape

In a previous post I described how Tobias gets a lot of kicks out of everyday tools and objects. Here is an example of Christoffer (and Tobias) having fun with a measuring tape.

[Jeg har tidligere beskrevet hvordan Tobias faar en masse sjov ud af at lege med dagligdags ting. Her er et eksempel hvor Christoffer (og Tobias) har det sjovt med et maalebaand.]

TED

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is an annual event where leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration. Talks are made available on-line.  Click here.

There are may interesting talks, for example, Richard Dawkins Oxford University Professor and author of the 1976 book, The Selfish Gene and more recently The God Delusion gives a talk called Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science, he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe. Also Hans Rosling professor of international health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, provides an amusing presentation on how the well-being around the world has changed over the past forty years using the program Gapminder.