XKCD is a superb webcomic (although pretty geeky) that I follow religiously. I recently came across this one which I found funny.

I thought it was pretty random so I Googled the incident and it turns out that Jimmy Carter was indeed ‘attacked’ by a swimming swamp rabbit in 1979! Read about it in the Wikipedia article: Jimmy Carter Rabbit Incident. There are also links to more detail.

Jimmy Carter stares at the crazed swamp rabbit that he had just fought off. Carter was out fishing alone when the swamp rabbit swam towards him and tried desperately to enter the boat. Mr President was forced to fend it off with an oar. Not sure that I believe this - but it does seem to be legit…

I love Flickr. It’s an awesome photo sharing site. The developers are innovative and I believe this is one rare case where the Google offering (Picasa) isn’t the best:

• There are awesome online communities. People commenting, organizing groups, messaging each other, etc
• A lot of the images are Creative Commons licensed so they can be used for all sorts of things (they often pop up on Do Stuff in Cape Town)
• Flickr have opened up an API which allows other programs and websites to easily access their data
• They come up with interesting features like the Interestingness feature for finding great pictures

Every now and then I send Jules a mail with some of the best photos that I have seen recently on Flickr. I thought I would turn that mail into a blog feature. So, here is the first of the “Friday Five Flickr Fotos” series. Enjoy.

It took me a little while to figure this one out. A mostly submerged trolley in some reflective water. Nice effect

Taken between two cruise ships in Greece

Taken from behind glass in a zoo

You don’t need to tell me twice!

One of my own photos

Grand Theft Auto 4 is a game that was recently released and it grossed more than $500 million in its first week!

One of the things that I always enjoyed about GTA is the open gameplay style. They have created a working city complete with streets, buildings, people, cars, trains, boats, etc. Players are free to explore the city, interact with citizens, steal cars, fight gangsters, etc, etc.

The key to making that fun is to have a rich and realistic in-game world and these guys have done an amazing job modelling New York as the ‘Liberty City’ of the game.

Here are some pictures taken of the game (on the right) and the associated spot in the actual NYC (left). Awesome work.

Statue of Liberty. If you want to get there in the game you need to hijack a boat or helicopter…

I came across this blog showing the development of a chicken inside an egg. Seems like these guys cleverly got an egg to develop inside a clear container - like a ziplock or something.

Anyway, I had assumed that birds develop in the yolk - I don’t know why. But this chick definitely develops outside the yolk and consumes the yolk through a network of blood vessels. Very interesting.

The other day I was driving past the 2010 stadium being built in Green Point and I was amazed by how far it seems to have come. I still worry that they aren’t going to be ready in time, but it does look pretty impressive.

Here is a site that posts photos of the progress as it moves along. The ones below are from 21 April 2008. Long way to go….

Wired recently had an article on this Swiss pilot who has spend the last few years developing some rocket wings that he straps to his back. Basically he jumps out of a plane, unfolds the wings and powers up the rockets. He is able to steer pretty well (enough to do barrel rolls), build up some good speeds (over 300kph) and crucially land safely.

Very cool, but I’m sure it’s not as safe as he makes out.

This must have been pretty freaky. It seems that the pachyderm is in a rather ‘friendly’ mood if you know what I mean - still scary though…

Click for a larger view of the image - the guys expression is pretty cool and you can see what he is looking at

NewScientist has an awesome headline on one of it’s stories today: “Great tits enjoying the warmer weather”. I think that one might get quite a lot of traffic…

Anyway, the article is actually about how a species of birds in the UK known as great tits have responded to global warming by laying their eggs earlier. They need to time their laying pretty precisely and over the last 30 years their laying has shifted 2 weeks earlier in the spring.

So here is that picture of some young great tits:

I like this photo. At first I didn’t realise what was going on, but it shows the tracks of a rabbit moving across some snow when BAM an owl nails it. You can see the wings of the attacking bird imprinted in the snow - and no more rabbit tracks…

China is an amazing place - massive, beautiful, and so different to what we Westerners are used to. It is a wonderfully beautiful country and I have blogged about it before.

National Geographic has this short photo essay of aerial photographs of China - “China From Above“. Below are some of the better images.

This one shows limestone pinnacles along the Li River

Blooming fields of rapeseed weaving through the hills. I like the way these steep hills look as if they regularly pop out of a flat landscape.

This one is interesting. They have planted rows of vegetation alongside the roads to keep the desert sands back. The buildings dotting the roadside every few miles house the workers who maintain the greenbelt.