Bioluminescent Snails!

     How cool is this?  A glowing green snail!  Hinea Brasiliana.  Ok, so it's only a sea snail, not something you'll find in your backyard.  And this snippet of info disputes the green bit - but hey, a blue-white light is pretty cool as well.
     It's theorised that they use their bioluminescence as a defence mechanism, lighting up when disturbed to either try and scare away predators or simply light them up so something bigger and badder again can eat what's attacking them.
     The mechanism they use to light their shells up is pretty neat as well.  The shell actually acts like a light transmitter/splitter, picking up the light from a small bioluminescent organ and spreading it throughout the entire shell.  Sort of like one of those plastic light tubes, where a light shone on one end illuminates the whole thing.  See Fibre Flare for an example of what I mean.
     Even more intriguing, the mechanism by which the shell transmits light is wavelength sensitive - it only lights up when hit with a greeny-bluey light, it won't transmit red for example.
     Neat little thing, but not quite enough to take the coveted "favourite snail" position away from the Otways Carnivorous Black Snail, Victophanta Compacta:

     Sure, this one doesn't glow - but you have to admire the persistence of something that slow deciding it's going to live by hunting other critters.  (Unfortunately they're endangered, so it's not working out so well for them.)


Original Article: BBC

3 mobile phones no longer roaming to Telstra?

     Over the past few weeks (possibly months, time gets away on you....) I've noticed some real issues with my mobile phone which is on the 3 network.  I used to love the service.  I got cheap calls and very cheap data rates while around the city, and when I went to the country it just roamed onto Telstra's network - which undoubtedly has the best coverage in the country.   It was a great deal as far I was concerned.
     Recently though, I've noticed that my phone not getting any coverage whilst in the country any more.  The first couple of times this happened I just put it down to something glitchy going on with the network.  But three trips to the country without any reception made me start digging a little deeper.
     I took a look at 3's mobile coverage map and noticed that it's looking much sparser than previous versions.  Especially Telstra's, which they used to roam to when I signed my contract with 3.  Ugh, seems like I'm starting to personally see the first effect of the 3/Vodafone "merger".  Abysmal support for anywhere outside of major cities, a massive degradation on their prior service.  Yay 3.
     Needless to say I've taken it up with 3.  I'm sure there's nothing they can do to improve their service, but I do expect them to unlock my phone and release me from any early exit contract fees as they're no longer providing the service I signed up for.  Thankfully Telstra pricing has become far more competitive in the year or so since I signed my 3 contract.
     I personally find it highly immoral that they've made this change without even notifying me.  People rely upon their phones for emergency contact - what they've done is not just an annoyance, it's a safety issue.
     Hopefully I hear back from 3 quickly and don't need to take it up with the telecommunications industry ombudsman.

Apple TV 2 4.1 Firmware Update Failure

     So I just went to update the firmware on my Apple TV 2.  The process was very straight forward, looking very similar to doing an iPhone firmware update.  Unfortunately it failed and my sleek little media streamer is now a sleek little white led flashing device.  It's rather disturbing to see that big "plug this thing into itunes!" symbol on your TV screen.
     Ok, so the firmware update failed, no big deal.  Maybe that's why apple makes you connect iPhones for an iOS update rather than doing over the air (even over wifi) updates.  I thought I'd just plug it into iTunes, the new firmware would download and away I'd go.  Not too much of a problem.  (Though I guess I'll need to drag the power cable out from behind my TV as well, sigh...)
     Now here's the really unfortunate bit, which Apple should be held accountable for.  They've chosen to put a micro usb socket on the Apple TV.  I've got no problem with them choosing the latest and greatest connector version - by all accounts the micro usb design is more durable than the much more common mini usb.  (Though I'd hope I don't need to plug my Apple TV into a usb connection enough for durability to be an issue!) But micro usb is still in it's very early stages.  I don't have any other devices that require a micro usb cable.  I'd expect that many people don't.  There's certainly nothing else in the Apple ecosystem that needs one.  Yet Apple didn't see fit to include one in the box.
     That's incredibly galling.  It means I've got a (temporarily) bricked device with no way of recovering it until I can get to the store and buy a cheap usb cable.  Way to fail, Apple.

     For those interested, my Apple TV connects to the internet via 802.11n from an Airport Extreme, running with WPA encryption.  I've seen some anecdotal evidence which states that the firmware update is more likely to fail over WiFi.  I'd recommend you don't attempt the update until you've got a cable on hand, just in case.

UPDATE:  Once I got a micro usb cable and plugged the Apple TV into iTunes the update went fine.  All updates since this one (up to 4.3.1 at the minute) have, thankfully, worked via wireless.

Kinect the dots.

     There's some neat IR video of the Microsoft Kinect peripheral for Xbox floating around on the web.  Basically the device shoots out thousands of points of IR light for the camera to pick up on.  I wonder how the algorithm which deciphers the dot pattern works?  They grid they form seems to be more random than structured from what I can tell.  I wouldn't have thought that the IR camera in the Kinect would have the resolution necessary to pick up on different sized dots for different distances.  (The light beams that Kinect shoots out aren't parallel, things closer to the Kinect have smaller dots.)  Does it pick up elongated dots and interpret them as angled surfaces?  Interesting stuff.
    This video seems to indicate that it just uses the IR grid for depth perception.  That's probably a lot simpler - it doesn't need to measure the individual size or elongation of the dots, only how far apart they are.  You can do this with a much lower resolution (i.e. cheaper) camera.
     Still, it's nice to see MS doing something interesting for once.

Iron Man 2 DVD Copy Protection

     So today, on a whim, I bought the "Iron Man 2" DVD - I hadn't seen the film but thought I'd like it & it was on sale  *shrug*.  As I do with any DVD I purchase, I popped it into my computer to convert it to a format I can easily watch on my iPhone, or stream from a computer to my TV.  The computer buzzed a bit, and spat out a heap of garbage but no video files.  Ughhh.  I flipped the case over and saw the tiny but dreaded "This DVD is copy protected!" symbol.
     It's completely immoral that they're allowed to sell crippled non-standard discs like this as DVD's.  If they want to try and force their waste-my-time copy protection crud down consumers throats then it needs to be clearly labelled.  I don't mean subtle either - I'm talking an industry agreed on standard strip at least 1cm high running across the front cover of the DVD.  Something which states clearly that it's a non-standard DVD and may not provide the functionality expected of a DVD.
     I'm _very_ against pirating.  I think people deserve to paid for their creative efforts.  However it's insane that I need to jump through a bunch of hoops to watch a movie that I've bought, when I could pirate it and have a copy of the movie that just works.  Copy protection (DRM) doesn't stop movies being pirated, it just annoys those that have legitimate copies.  Idiots.
     Paramount (the studio for this particular DVD) seriously needs to rethink their consumer strategy as their current one is "irritating" people that would otherwise support them.  Yeah, they suck.