Looks like a How-To Do-it-yourself guide to destroying the Earth is in the works. So many people out there who want to figure out how to build the button. But never press it. Heavens no.

Sam Hughes gives a careful, methodical analysis of how to destroy the Earth for real. Here’s the preamble:

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You’ve seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You’ve heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

(read more)

Via BlenderNation, a script for exporting blender 3d models to javascript. This reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s quip: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” The conversion is approximate and the animation slow for non-trivial models, but it is impressive to see plain javascript doing this. Kudos to useless pickles for the core triangle-drawing trickery.

Now that Flash lets you process webcam images, lots of strange and wonderful things become possible with a browser that until now were only possible with specialized computer vision software. It feels a little bit like the early days of the web, when people were creating lots of mostly useless web scripts, some of which were the seeds of the blogs and googles we use today. I’m trying to collect some highlights of Flash webcam experimentation. Here’s what I have so far:

1. Grant Skinner’s Webcam Snowstorm, takes the webcam view and superimposes a light snow fall on it. The best part? The snow builds up into drifts on edges. Very pretty.
2. As a contrast, Skinner also made Webcam Fire, where anything in motion ignites.
3. Quasimondo’s Minority Cube - spin a cube through motion in front of the webcam (or by moving the webcam itself). Hard to describe, but fun. Tip: press the space bar. There’s also a webcam kaleidoscope.
4. Our own Webcam Hat gadget that tracks an object around, putting a jolly hat on it.
5. Our own Webcam Ambush, which will play a prerecorded sound when it detects someone entering the room.
6. Cameroid.com, which takes pictures, applying the kinds of distortion or framing you might get in novelty photo booths, and lets you download or post the result.
7. I’m not too clear on this one, because it is all in Japanese, but apparently the Laughing Man Camera tries to detect your face in the video stream and put a stamp over it. It didn’t work so well for me, and had an annoying feedback overlay I couldn’t get rid of.
8. DustyPixels has an “ASCII-cam” and some basic filters. Also, a more advanced ASCII-cam version developed later.
9. There’s a few more basic filters (mirroring, pixelating etc.) at a Sound and Software Art Workshop 2006 page (in Japanese).
10. The Motion Bubbles game. Like Skinner’s Webcam Snowstorm, but with bubbles instead of snow, and in game format - you can use your body to pop the smooth bubbles and avoid the spiky bubbles.
11. In Shockwave, there is PlaydoCAM, which has a few game demos. (Link via lessrain).
12. Everybody seems to love bubbles. With BubbleMaker you can blow bubbles (by breathing into the microphone) and then pop them visually. How… odd! (Link via lessrain).
13. Add a funky reflection effect at Pixelfumes.
14. Flash webcam DVR at Zero Point Nine. Records video, but requires a lot of memory to do so.
15. Using your webcam like a wii-mote (via Digg).
16. An interactive piano.

In looking around for these, I see the web is littered with advice for Mac users that I might as well repeat here: if your webcam doesn’t seem to be working from Flash, right-click (or control-click) on the Flash animation, select “settings,” and try choosing a different video source. The default is not always the right one.

Got a webcam, some spare time, and a friend you want to annoy? Lay a trap for them with our webcam ambush. This is an image change detector implemented in Flash which triggers whenever there’s motion in the field of view of your camera. When it triggers, it plays a sound of your choice.

So the scenario is: you leave your computer, webcam, and the ambush page running in a room. Later, your friend walks in and boom, the star trek “intruder alert” alarm goes off, or a mysterious voice laughs darkly, or there is a fanfare greeting, or … well, you get the idea.

It is like those 20 dollar gadgets you can buy that do basically the same thing, except now with extra internets!!

This gizmo was inspired by Guy Watson’s tutorial on Flash motion detection. It is in the same series as our webcam hat put-er on-er.

Invisible Man say, “I can has light.” Gots light.

And it was good. Then some people took it far too seriously.

There’s a few interesting examples of hobo sign at Willa’s Journal. For example, the one on the right apparently means that a “kind-hearted woman lives here.” There’s also sign for man-with-gun lives here, and you-can-sleep-in-hayloft. Interesting to compare the vocabulary with Lapine, the imagined world-view of rabbits. Wikipedia has a little bit more information, and there’s a good “alphabet” at slackaction. Although there are plenty of alternatives.

I don’t usually post about politics. But who the heck is this man? And where did the current vice-president hide his body?

The epic saga of Harry Potter versus Snape, summarized in one short flash animation. These people are having a little bit too much fun with puppets. Bother bother bother.

Just came across mention of a movie about Klingon speakers called “Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water.” That’s a truly excellent title. There’s also bo logh, a Klingon language blog, which may be good or bad, it is hard to tell, as it is in Klingon. I asked our local Klingon advisor for translation. He just ranted on about blood and smiting, even for this cute entry. I think he’s bluffing…

It is remarkable how circular the blog world is. Case in point. Consider this 101 tips to improve your web presence article, which in tip number 87 gives:

87. “Link baiting” means writing some killer content that people will want to link to. Like a “101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence” list!

I also like tip number 34:

34. Find quality and relevant blogs and leave a comment (with a link back to your site of course).

I see a lot of enthusiastic commenters followed that advice on the article itself.

Another nice pair of tips, so to speak, were 28 and 29:

28. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.
29. Ask a large breasted lady to wear one too.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose…