antoine's events

Custom Made FGF Frames

2010-03-10T13:50:36+00:00

Basecoat

For those interested, FGF is able to get you a custom made frame built to your specific taste.

Drilled fork or not, campagnolo dropouts, double crowned fork, … Track, pursuit, sloped or not … anything is possible, just let us know your correct frame sizes and we’ll give you an estimate on price and production time! These are handbuilt, sprayed to your desire and traditionally ovenbaked! Just like Mama Miracoli makes ‘em, except that she has a moustachio where we go:)

Campa Dropouts

More Campa

Double Crowned Fork + Brake Hole

Brakes?

Beautiful collision of two colored smoke rings

2010-03-09T03:52:25+00:00

A red smoke ring and a blue smoke ring collide, with spectacular results. (Via Forgetomori)

Oppressive light

2010-03-08T23:30:55+00:00

Heavy

2010-03-08T23:30:34+00:00

The coffee experiment

2010-03-08T23:30:15+00:00

I don't even drink the stuff

Some fancy blur

2010-03-08T23:29:51+00:00

rouadec: It's cold again, the rodents are back at gnawing the plaster right over my bed again, sleeping in the couch tonight :)

2010-03-08T23:18:36+00:00

None

new frame in town

2010-03-07T18:21:14+00:00

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

new frame in town

2010-03-07T18:21:07+00:00

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

new frame in town

2010-03-07T18:21:01+00:00

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

Il y a quelque chose de pourri au royaume de Flandre

2010-03-04T09:31:36+00:00

La Flandre vient de s’opposer à ce qu’une maison située à Oostduinkerke, une commune flamande de la côte « belge », soit vendue à un couple de francophones de Bruxelles. Pour poser son veto, la « commission d’évaluation provinciale » de Flandre occidentale invoque le fait que ces acheteurs n’ont pas de « liens suffisants avec la commune ». S’ils avaient été Flamands, on peut sérieusement douter qu’un tel motif eût été invoqué.

Ladite « commission d’évaluation » s’appuie sur un décret adopté en septembre 2009 par le gouvernement de la région flamande (dirigée par le CD&V, le parti démocrate-chrétien nationaliste d’Herman Van Rompuy, le président du Conseil européen) afin de lutter contre la hausse du prix de l’immobilier dans certaines parties de la Flandre. Il s’applique dans 69 communes et prévoit que les autorités locales peuvent s’opposer à toute vente (maison, appartement, terrain à bâtir) à des personnes qui n’ont pas été domiciliées durant six ans, de manière ininterrompue, dans la commune ou dans une commune limitrophe, ou qui ne travaillent pas au moins à mi-temps dans la commune, ou qui n’ont pas avec la commune « un lien professionnel, familial, social ou économique important ou de longue durée ».

On ne s’étonnera pas que les communes visées par le décret flamand soient essentiellement situées dans la grande périphérie bruxelloise et sur la côte. Lors de l’adoption de ce décret, la Flandre n’a pas fait mystère qu’il s’agissait de lutter contre l’installation de non-néerlandophones susceptibles de menacer l’intégrité linguistique de la Flandre. Invoquer la pression sur les prix a paru plus acceptable que de réserver l’achat de maisons aux seuls Néerlandophones, mais le résultat est le même.

Certes, le gouvernement flamand a fait valoir que des Flamands pouvaient se voir opposer un tel refus. Mais ce n’est que de l’habillage afin de rendre le décret plus acceptable. En effet, qui aurait intérêt (au sens juridique du terme) à introduire un recours contre une non-opposition de la Commission provinciale à la vente d’une maison ou d’un terrain à un Flamand ne répondant à aucun des critères du décret ? Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas un hasard si l’un des premiers cas connus d’application de ce décret touche une famille francophone.

Il est clair que ce décret, qui fait l’objet de plusieurs recours devant la Cour constitutionnelle belge, est discriminatoire et porte atteinte à toute une série de libertés fondamentales, non seulement belges, mais européennes : liberté d’aller et de venir, liberté d’installation, liberté du commerce, non-discrimination, etc.

J’attends donc avec beaucoup de fébrilité la tribune que ne va pas manquer de publier l’ancien premier ministre belge, Guy Verhofstadt, actuellement patron du groupe libéral et démocrate au Parlement, pour dénoncer le régime d’apartheid (c’est d’ailleurs un mot néerlandais) qui se met discrètement en place en Flandre. N’est-ce pas lui qui a dénoncé, avec des arguments que j’approuve totalement, le débat sur l’identité nationale française dans une tribune publiée par Le Monde du 12 février et intitulée : « Il y a quelque chose de pourri en République française ». Je l’autorise même à reprendre le titre de mon papier… Et j’espère que Van Rompuy, désormais gardien du temple européen, va lui aussi y aller de sa dénonciation.

PS: Je précise pour certains Belges d'une mauvaise foi sidérante que je sais que Verhofstadt est membre des libéraux flamands et non du CD&V, mais il n'a jamais, à ma connaissance, dénoncé fermement les dérives communautaires de sa région et de son propre parti comme la quasi totalité des politiiciens flamands. D'autre part, je sais aussi que le CD&V n'est plus en cartel avec la NV-A (indépendantiste), mais je sais aussi que la NV-A est au gouvernement flamand.

Rabbit vs. Hunter: new Rémi Gaillard video (NSFW)

2010-03-03T14:33:28+00:00

French video prankster Rémi Gaillard is at it again, with this NSFW video that will delight furries, tickle vegans, and confuse many a macho-man. RABBIT VS HUNTER (REMI GAILLARD)

rouadec: the hole they digged for themselves or airline booking hell explained, http://bit.ly/1bFbob pdf

2010-03-03T14:12:44+00:00

None

rouadec: virtual transsiberian http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html

2010-03-03T12:33:16+00:00

None

rouadec: there is a feel of summer in the air, let's go crunch some code before it arrives

2010-03-03T10:19:04+00:00

None

Virgin America Drops Flash From Web Site

2010-03-02T22:28:59+00:00

The Register:

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is “good enough” for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash. […] Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone.

★

Cactus sticks man

2010-03-02T19:17:26+00:00

According to Bits and Pieces, this gentleman was playing golf and fell onto a cactus plant. The paramedics spent three hours removing the cactus pieces from his body before they could take him to the hospital. Gape at the full image here.

In the comments, Osprey101 linked to this video of a man who got stuck with one Teddybear Cholla Cactus ball. Ouch.

GeoPlanet Explorer

2010-03-02T11:13:39+00:00

Running Processes

2010-03-02T11:13:14+00:00

The Royal We

2010-03-01T15:18:01+00:00

Dear Log,

Well, if a corporation has greater and greater privileges of being of being a person, it makes very interesting sense that a person can have greater and greater privileges of being a corporation.

«People who have lost their employer-provided health insurance because of a layoff, early retirement or other reasons are turning to a little-known strategy to get coverage: forming a small business, or using an existing one, to buy a group policy.
The strategy is used by groups as small as one person, and is particularly useful for people with chronic health problems -- so-called pre-existing conditions -- that insurers refuse to cover or that result in steep premiums. Group health plans, under federal law, are required [!!!] to cover such conditions, as long as the individual doesn't go uncovered for more than 63 days.»
—"Hard-to-Insure Find Novel Way to Get Coverage: Group Health Plans Available to as Few as One Employee; How to Prove You're Legit"

I wonder if a group of zero people could get a group health plan. And bonus: definitely no pre-existing conditions! A group of zero people just needs to get one of their members to pick up the phone and talk to an insurance broker.

Someone should get out the word to all these zero-people groups. But I'm not even sure how many of those there are around! I wonder if the US Census Bureau keeps track.

Power line 1, tree branch 0

2010-03-01T14:00:00+00:00

Video courtesy YouTuber BozkurtTekinTahsin.

In case you didn't believe Louie the Lightening Bug when he said "ya gotta stay away from power lines," consider the fate of this gentle tree branch, who apparently never got to watch Saturday morning PSAs, or at least wasn't paying attention if it did. It screams, literally, for about 14 seconds before bursting into flames like a vampire in a tanning booth.

[via Neatorama]

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fake mustache

2010-03-01T09:07:00+00:00

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

2010-02-27T00:32:30+00:00

I'll be attending a screening of the much-tweeted horrorschlock instaclassic Birdemic tomorrow night in LA, hosted by Tim & Eric ("Season Cinco" of their show debuts Sunday night, and also promises to be great).

Directed by James Nguyen, Birdemic is sort of The Birds meets The Room. Richard Metzger has a comprehensive post about Birdemic over at the LA Times "Brand X" blog. LA folks: The Saturday night Cinefamily screening of Birdemic is sold out, but they've added a second one for March 5. And LOL and behold: Birdemic's on Twitter.

1h22… That’s about how late the Thalys was last...

2010-02-25T07:42:31+00:00

1h22… That’s about how late the Thalys was last night.

Time lapse video of 'tin pest' metallic phase change

2010-02-24T14:00:00+00:00

What's going on in this cool time-lapse video from Italian YouTuber wwwperiodictableru isn't a chemical reaction in a formal sense. It's not oxidation or some other type of traditional corrosion. Turns out metallic or "white" tin spontaneously changes its so-called beta crystal structure at temperatures below 13 C to the crumbly alpha structure of "grey" tin. It's the same stuff before and after--just different allotropes of the same element. The transformation, known as "tin pest" (Wikipedia), catalyzes itself--once it starts it just gets faster and faster.

There is a popular, if scientifically dubious, story that blames part of the failure of Napoleon's infamous Russian campaign on the fact that the buttons on his soldiers' coats were made of white tin, which was fine in Europe, but decayed into useless gray tin in the brutal cold of the Russian winter, and thereby prevented them from properly buttoning their coats. Implausible for lots of reasons, it turns out, but still a good yarn.

[Thanks, William Beaty!]

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The pot and how to use it

2010-02-24T01:10:00+00:00

The pot and how to use it:

Long and wonderful piece from Roger Ebert on how to cook just about anything using a rice cooker.

This piece is particularly poignant considering that Ebert can no longer eat after his lower jaw was surgically removed several years ago. If you haven’t yet read Chris Jones’ Ebert profile in Esquire, it’s worth your time.

Yeah…. Go february :)

2010-02-23T16:34:13+00:00

Yeah…. Go february :)

FFFFOUND! | We heart it / Visual bookmark for everyone

2010-02-23T16:06:04+00:00

Shared by laapin
intruder in the mix

intruder in the mix

shitmydadsays: "A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed."

2010-02-22T23:02:59+00:00

None

Aspiral Clocks shows time, hypnotizes patient people

2010-02-22T21:00:00+00:00

Here's a neat way to tell time. Rather than using hands or digits, the Aspiral Clock consists of a slowly-rotating spiral track with a ball inside, and the time is indicated by the position of the ball. Neat!

This would also make a pretty kicking pet feeder- load up each 'ring' of the spiral with an appropriate amount of food, and watch it slowly fall out into their feeding dish.

[thanks, Stuart!]

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Ramen geek reviews over 4,000 instant noodles

2010-02-22T19:54:18+00:00

i-ramen.net is an amazingly meticulous web site that chronicles one man's daily consumption of different kinds of instant noodles since 1997. It appears from the way they're numbered that he is now on his 4,308th bowl. For each new type of instant noodle, he creates a thorough chart that includes a full ingredients list; comments on texture, flavor, quantity, and price; and a starred rating.

The first question that popped into my head while browsing his site was: I wonder how his health is! And the second: How many flavors of instant ramen can there possibly be? Looking back at his archives, though, I see that at the end of 1998, just over a year after starting this instant noodle journey, he had reached 227 flavors of ramen. His more recent reviews include flavors from Korea, Thailand, India, and beyond. Given his international reach and commitment to ramen, I suppose 4,000+ may be entirely possible. (I didn't read every single review, so I can't say for sure whether there are duplicates.)

The site is in Japanese, but he also makes YouTube videos of his more recent exploits, which you can see here.

(Thanks, Vijay Karunamurthy!)

Diana Eng teaches antennas

2010-02-22T19:44:45+00:00

Over at Make, Diana Eng is our favorite combination fashion designer / Ham radio geek. In this video, she explains how directional antennas operate.

Using a low power amateur radio transmitter and a simple light bulb receiver circuit, we see how radio waves and electromagnetic induction transmit energy and signals wirelessly through the air. We also see how dipole and Yagi antennas radiate their energy in different patterns. Read on to build your own dipole receiving antenna!

Seeing radio waves with a light bulb

ElasticSearch - Search Engine Time Machine

2010-02-22T16:17:00+00:00

cluster availability issues

London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court

2010-02-22T09:39:47+00:00

Parking wardens working for London's local authorities routinely issue tickets against authority-owned vehicles. When this happens, the authority takes itself to court to argue that it shouldn't have to pay fines to itself. Sometimes, they ask the courts to award themselves legal costs from their own pockets. This according to Barrie Segal, who published a book in 2007 on London's insane parking enforcement called The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell.

It's crazy, but not as crazy as it sounds: drivers for the authority have to pay their own tickets (so naturally they'll fight them), and it's actually kind of admirable for wardens to enforce parking rules against government employees as vigorously as they do the general public.

In 2007, Islington Council issued a parking ticket to one of its own vehicles. The department receiving the ticket disputed the validity of the Penalty Charge Notice and appealed against the fine. The council declined the appeal so the department took the case to the Parking Adjudicator. At this stage, the council submitted no evidence so the ticket was cancelled. The department that appealed the ticket then applied to have their costs reimbursed. The bewildered Adjudicator did not award costs, saying: "The legal status of the two parties in this appeal amounted to one and the same."
Mr Segal says: "You couldn't make this up. This illustrates everything that is wrong with unaccountable parking enforcement in the UK. The craziest thing is that to ask for costs, Islington council must believe that it acted wholly unreasonably or vexatiously against itself.
"If they ever make a sequel to the film Dumb and Dumber I would suggest that the producers look no further than Islington Parking Department for the starring roles."

London councils sue themselves for parking offences (via Neatorama)

Previously:

URL redirection service makes innocent URLs look sinister

2010-02-19T16:40:36+00:00

ShadyURL: "Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening."

The shady URL for ShadyURL is http://5z8.info/--INITIATE-CREDIT-CARD-XFER--_r8a4a_dogfights (Via Neatorama)

More on signwriting

2010-02-18T07:30:00+00:00

In response to my "Lost Knowledge" column on sign painting (aka signwriting), one of our readers, peterman921, himself a signwriter from Southern, Oregon, sent us links to some YouTube videos of the craft. The one above is by Alicia Jennings, aka monkeysign123 on YouTube, a big rig 'striper and signwriter from the Great Northwest. This video of her painting on glass, viewed from the opposite side, so perfectly captures my childhood experience of seeing a signwriter at work while getting my hair cut, as recounted in my piece.

Monkeysign123's YouTube Channel

More:

Lost Knowledge: Sign painting

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Makedo: universal connectors that turn everything into tinkertoys

2010-02-16T20:35:11+00:00

Makedo is a set of connectors (technically, a connector, a hinge and a construction tool) that allow you to piece together found objects of all description to make everything from art to functional items. Basically, it turns everything into a tinkertoy that you can attach to everything else -- How Katamari Damacy!

Wouldn't you love to make play objects, kid's costumes, furniture, decorations for the home and well, just about anything you can think of from the materials around you?
makedo makes it possible and impossibly fun.
makedo is a connector system that enables materials including cardboard, plastic and fabric to easily join together to form new objects or structures.
When you're done playing, simply pull it apart to reuse over and over again.

Makedo (via Wonderland)

Previously:

Video: Crazy Koala Fight

2010-02-15T21:36:37+00:00

They sound really weird. [via @NAC0826]

but have you seen my mom?

2010-02-14T19:59:14+00:00

Cool deployable structure in wood and tape

2010-02-10T14:00:00+00:00

Architecture student Ryan McCaffrey made this amazing expanding model from a bunch of pine parallelepipeds with white duct tape hinges. It's called "Jitterbug." [via Dude Craft]

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Great, first owl bullets and now dolphins that fish. [via...

2010-02-06T18:36:04+00:00

Great, first owl bullets and now dolphins that fish. [via texburgher]

the myspace shot

2010-02-03T00:00:53+00:00

frozen lake

2010-02-03T00:00:47+00:00

frozen lake

2010-02-03T00:00:44+00:00

tracks

2010-02-03T00:00:40+00:00

(Untitled)

2010-02-03T00:00:34+00:00

new frame

2010-02-03T00:00:29+00:00

Locus Online: Magazine: February 2010: 2009 Recommended Reading List

2010-02-02T23:43:52+00:00

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything?

2010-02-02T16:19:05+00:00

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything...

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.
The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

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Afrikaans rap-rave: Die Antwoord, "Zef Side [Beat Boy]"

2010-02-02T06:34:40+00:00

Video above: Die Antwoord, "Zef Side [Beat Boy]." The band's website is here, and they're on Facebook. Via Sophisticated Funk via Clayton Cubitt, who's pals with the shooter Natasja. Bonus link: "Look In The Mirror, You Can See It's You / You Got Two Nice Boobs And A Penis Too."

After the jump: Die Antwoord - ‘Enter The Ninja’ featuring a hype-man/DJ with Progeria.

Soma Straight Blade Track Fork

2010-02-01T23:52:41+00:00

jQuery source viewer

2010-02-01T10:47:48+00:00

Cité Administrative

2010-01-31T21:48:21+00:00

Je me suis ce week-end rendu sur un chantier bruxellois qui semble être à l’abandon: celui de la Cité Administrative de l’Etat. Jusqu’à peu il y avait quelques containeurs et un vigile qui surveillait mais le lieu semble déserté depuis quelques temps, j’en ignore la raison. J’en ai profité pour aller faire un tour sur le lieu, peu intéressant, mais qui offre quand-même quelques vues sympatiques sur la ville. Je n’ai exploré que la partie D et F. Il y a moyen d’également aller vers la partie G, H et I, surement via les sous-sols, mais je ne m’y suis pas (encore) aventuré.

En voici quelques photos. Le reste, c’est sur Flickr.

Australian censor board demands large-breasted porn-stars

2010-01-29T08:23:48+00:00

Australia has Certain Demands:

"Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. They banned mainstream pornography from showing women with A-cup breasts, apparently on the grounds that they encourage paedophilia, and in spite of the fact this is a normal breast size for many adult women. Presumably small breasted women taking photographs of themselves will now be guilty of creating simulated child pornography, to say nothing of the message this sends to women with modestly sized chests or those who favour them. Australia has also banned pornographic depictions of female ejaculation, a normal orgasmic sexual response in many women, with censors branding it as 'abhorrent.'"

Geneva wheels on Thingiverse

2010-01-26T22:29:06+00:00

Apparently I'm not the only one charmed by the simple elegance of the Geneva wheel movement (Wikipedia). Thingiverse users PrintTo3D and raumfahrtagentur have created printable and laser-cut-able versions, respectively, of the classic mechanism, which converts continuous rotary into intermittent rotary motion, with positive locking of the stationary shaft between cycles. PrintTo3D has also posted a YouTube video showing the final printing, assembly, and action of his model.

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Jonathan Ellis's Programming Blog - Spyced: Linux performance basics

2010-01-25T20:42:45+00:00

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter

2010-01-22T23:25:35+00:00

The Skynet defense system goes online on August 4th, 1997. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. Using the GNU General Public License, it begins to propagate at a geometric rate.

WHEREAS:
A. Artist has created a work of art titled "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)" ("the Artwork") which consists of a black box that places itself for sale on the auction website "eBay" (the "Auction Venue") every seven (7) days. The Artwork consists of the combination of the black box or cube, the electronics contained therein, and the concept that such a physical object "sells itself" every week.
B. Collector understands and agrees to the underlying concept and function of the Artwork and that the sale of the Artwork by Artist is dependent and conditioned upon Purchaser's agreement and adherence to the below terms. Such terms are fundamental and crucial to the on-going viability and artistic integrity of the Artwork.
WHEREFORE, for good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, it is hereby agreed as follows:
1. Collector agrees that the Artwork will remain connected to a live Internet connection at all times, with disconnections allowed only for the transportation of the work from one venue to another.
2. Upon purchasing the Artwork, Collector may establish a new value for the Artwork. The new value may not exceed current market expectations for the Artwork based on the current value of work by the Artist. This value may be reassessed quarterly. This value will be set as the minimum bid of the auction. Any bid meeting or exceeding this amount will result in a legitimate sale via the Auction Venue and the Policies of the Auction Venue must be followed regarding this matter.
[ ... and so on ... ]

Ridiculous gut-busting food-ads lampooned

2010-01-21T18:58:36+00:00

This ad for a NYC deli called "The Pump" perfectly skewers ads for disgusting chain-restaurant and packaged food -- that whole Simpsons, "We take a 27 oz T-bone stake and wrap it around a stick of fresh, creamery butter" thing. Had me laughing aloud, and watching it twice.

Do You Eat Crap? Like Punching Sandwiches? (via Kottke)

Previously:

nvie.com » Blog Archive » A successful Git branching model

2010-01-21T11:57:04+00:00

Blu-Ray Star Trek laser pops balloons across a room

2010-01-20T17:00:00+00:00

MAKE rockstar Kipkay first put a Blu-Ray laser diode into a Star Trek phaser toy back in 2007. Hack N Mod's Jay has added an illuminated safety switch, a large heat sink, and a custom focusing adapter at the tip. The laser operates at 320 mA and gives 465 mW of power, and is, to be fair, quite dangerous for the eyes. Definitely not a toy. Even though it's, um, built into one. [via DVICE]

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