TalkRhubarb

Ok that’s stretching it a bit. But this article on BBC News immediately brought to my mind the Babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have created a device that translates mouthed words into one of a number of languages. With a very limited vocabulary of less than three hundred words, and only an 80% success rate, it’s clearly not a product that’s going to be available anytime soon. And that’s a shame, because I was looking forward to special promotions at Amazon along the lines of “Free Babelfish with every Hitchhikers Guide DVD”. It would be a great way to get rid of excess stock of the dire movie adaptation.

Some people have incredible ingenuity which flies in the face of much more obvious and simple solutions. Here’s someone explaining how they use a torch and their iSight webcam to switch on and off iTunes on their mac.
MacOSXhints.com article

As the editor of the site above says - it’s a lot easier to go and buy a remote control! And did I mention that all new macs (with the exception of the high end mac pro’s) come bunded with a remote control? Alternatively with bluetooth on the computer you can use your phone as a remote, with the salling clicker software. This is also available for Windows users too.

The BBC has an article on taking pictures from the Higher Art examround the country in a bus.
You can see the 10 of the pictures here.
We’ve known Josh Wilkie’s family (his is the bright and cheerful still life - picture 5) since Faith was very small. Josh is studying chemistry rather than taking his art further academically, which you might think is a shame. Personally, I feel that some things are more fun when they’re your hobby rather than your job. Why is it that professionalism sucks so much of the of the life out of things? “Amateur” has as it’s root “for the love of”, and I find the passion and inclusivity of an amateur often much more inspiring than the stand-offish exclusivity of many a professional.

This is an old trick- but still a good one**. You can get details here.

**If you’re windows user, or a mac user without a webcam, you’ll just have to take my word for it!