Let’s see what we can pull out today, shall we, boys and girls?<\/p>\n
I don’t use picks much, apart from finger picks when I’m playing banjo. I do use picks when I play mandolin, but I don’t play my mandolin that often (and, actually, it’s on a long-term loan at the moment). However, I can’t help but wonder if I’d have a better grip and be able to keep the picks from sliding around in my fingers without having to clamp down to the point of cramps if I were to punch them out of old credit cards<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carbon fiber is neat stuff. I’m quite taken with the Blackbird carbon fiber ukulele<\/a>, although I doubt I’ll ever own one. Perhaps I can eventually learn to make my own<\/a>, though.<\/p>\n If you’re interested, there are more extreme substances discussed here<\/a>. I don’t think there are any hobby guides for using them, though.<\/p>\n There are a couple of new British reality shows in the process of finding cast members. I’m linking to this article<\/a> because the shows are based in Liverpool, where I was born, and I enjoy stupid puns such as the series names.<\/p>\n Invisibility cloaks are now officially pass\u00e9 – now they’re proposing time cloaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is an extremely heart-warming story<\/a>. I so<\/em> understand why the father feels like that.<\/p>\n We’ve long had computers that could play games, but that’s because they were specifically programmed to do so. There have also been computers that have been programmed with the rules for a game, then tasked with determining a winning strategy by playing countless games against themselves or other computers. Now there’s a computer that learned to play a game by reading the manual<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here’s a cool video: one year of the moon’s cycles covered in 2.5 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n If someone tells you that the Sun doesn’t affect weather on earth (which I’ve seen argued by some global warming\/climate change advocates), tell them “thanks for playing; now go away<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Lots of information about sunscreen here<\/a>; some of it I’d known, and some I hadn’t. It does put me in mind of the letter purportedly received from a child by a book publisher: “Dear Sirs: I am returning your book because it is about penguins and it tells me more about penguins than I care to know<\/a>.” The link goes to PDF file of a speech delivered in 1948 – I first ran across the anecdote (which I remember slightly differently) in an earlier edition of this book<\/a>.<\/p>\n This looks like an interesting site to help with learning a foreign language<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Steyn has a disturbing report up<\/a>.<\/p>\n