The NEO Cube is a set of 216 high powered spherical magnets. cubed root of 216 is 6 so can make a six sided cube.
“The NeoCube is an entertainment device like no other in the world.
Composed of 216 individual high-energy rare-earth magnets, the NeoCube allows you to create and recreate an outrageous number of shapes and patterns. The NeoCube Is literally a puzzle with billions of solutions. Your NeoCube will provide you with hours and hours of unequaled entertainment!”
Order it here [LINK]

Following on John Gill’s amazing strength, reminded me of a party trick I can do. It’s a combination of strength and balance.
Sit flat on the floor with your legs in front of you. Using only one leg and without putting your hands on the floor, put your foot on the floor and stand up. The only part of your leg that can touch the floor is your foot. You can’t go onto a knee or anything like that and you can’t pull yourself up using your hands.
Give it a …

I came across this picture of climber John Gill doing a one armed “front lever”. You can read the article here [John Gill on Training].
Turns out John is a mathematician, professor and gymnast also! Interesting guy. What’s even more interesting are the strength exercises he was capable of. From Wikipedia:
“As an amateur gymnast in the 1950s, 6’2″ and 180 pounds, Gill specialized in the competitive rope climb and the still rings, achieving a time of 3.4 seconds for the 20′ rope climb (from seated position on the floor, arms only) …

Did you know Formula 1 racing had become boring? No? Well join the club. I guess it was always fairly boring but apparently the cars are so advanced, with so much down force and grip that F1 felt they needed to re-write the rules to jazz things up. The new rules have re-shaped the cars to increase over-taking, reduce grip and even add boost. KERS is a go fast button that uses braking force to charge a battery, when fully charged the driver hits the button and can gain up …

WordPress is pretty nice out of the box but there’s a few things you’ll want to do on top of the base install. I’ve been tweaking WordPress 2.7 since the day I installed it. It’s humming just as I like now and I figured I’d share the few things I changed.

I started with wordpess 2.5 which was my host’s default installation. I immediately upgraded to 2.7. This was as simple as ftp’ing some files across and running a database script.
I migrated my old data, which was in SQL Server into …

CBS is running an article “Fate Steps In; He Misses Flight 3407” which states that if Paul Twaragowski’s connecting flight from Newark had been on time he’d have boarded the fatal flight to Buffalo which crashed last week.
Did Fate step in? Did something intervene to prevent Twaragowski from boarding the plane? Nope. It’s just the way things worked out.
When I was in my teens I was hit by a car whilst cycling to school. The car hit the front wheel of my bycicle and demolished it. I was plastered along …

I’m officially putting Mario on the Heart Attack watch list, his weight is just not good.
Take a look at the distinct taper from where his neck begins, straight up to his ears.
I caught a couple of episodes of that traveling Italy show with him and Gweneth Paltrow, he was big back then. This is a whole new level.

Yesterday was Darwin’s birthday. Born 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury he would’ve been 200 years old! Coincidentally Lincoln was born 200 years ago also!!! Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, what are the chances?
Both men had fairly interesting lives but I think the overall achievement award has to go to Darwin. Arguably the single most important scientific contribution in the history of the planet: “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”.
To truly appreciate this man’s work you have to imagine what things were like back in 1859. …

Another month, another baseball meltdown.
Baseball is known as “America’s Pastime”, romanticised and celebrated in movies and newspaper since the days of Babe Ruth. It’s a father’s duty to indoctrinate their children into his team’s fan base. Listen to any caller on WFAN radio station and they’ll start out with “I’m a die-hard XXX fan”.
There are 162 games in the regular season and each year millions of Americans attend. Some crazed individuals go so far as to buy season tickets!
The reality is this that baseball is a disgrace. …

A nice article introducing me to Sebastian Kruger who draws really detailed and realistic portraits that are actually caricatures.  I especially like the one of Steve McQueen below.
“I like the dark side of people’s character,” Krüger says in English that, while halting, is easier on the ears than Schwarzenegger’s. “Or I like to find out if there is a dark half. I like painting people like Vincent Van Gogh, William S. Burroughs, Keith Richards or even Marilyn Monroe. These people are very special to me. I feel very close to …