Stalking Venus

Well now here’s a pretty nifty idea. Palabea.net is a social networking site designed to foster the learning of a new language.

It’s a free service that hooks people up internationally so that everyone becomes both a student and a teacher to someone else. In other words, if someone wants to learn English, I can become their English teacher by creating my own video tutorials, podcasts and documents, or simply by communicating with them online via video or audio chat.

Language exchange, grammar lessons, video recording facilities, online dictionaries and more are all made available for free via the site. The only problem I can forsee is naughty trolls using the site to teach people things that will get them into trouble, like teaching someone who wants to say “Which direction is the beach?” that to say it in English, they must say “I would like to lovingly fornicate with your dog”.

Source: Palabea.net (with a somewhat confusing URL of palabea.com)

Respect.

In a bizarre bit of news this morning, the Associated Press report that a man aboard a Greyhound bus in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba was stabbed forty to fifty times by a fellow passenger, who then used the large knife to sever the man’s head.

Other terrified passengers fled the bus, along with the driver, who held the door of the bus closed while waiting for the police. Apparently the man walked calmly to the front of the bus to show off the dripping, ragged-edged head to the passengers outside the bus.

“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Thursday that a man was arrested for the homicide, which occurred late on Wednesday night aboard the bus which was en route from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Authorities declined to name the attacker or victim, and provided no other details about the attack.”

I’m guessing the man lost his head. Leave your punny comments in… the comments!

Source: Associated Press

There’s an interesting post and Java applet over on Mike’s site that examines the idea that you can determine a person’s gender by examining their browser history.

” I… apply the ratio of male to female users for each site and with some basic math determine a guestimate of your gender. The math is really quite simple, I just take:

1 / (1 + r_1 * r_2 * … * r_n)
where p_i is the ratio of men-to-women for the specific site. For example, if you had been to two sites that had a 2-1 ratio of men to women, the probability of you being female would be:
1 / (1 + 2 * 2) = 1/5 = 20%”

That doesn’t mean anything at all to me, because I suck at maths, but the Java application is quite interesting. There’s a button on the site that lets you perform an analysis on your own browser. Mine was accurate.

Check it out here. Sent in by Abby - Thanks Abs!

I don’t know where this is (Czech Republic?), but what a concept.

Source: Sent in via email

I was deeply chuffed today when my sister decided to send me a bunch of photos from Cape Town’s past.

I’ve lived in Cape Town since a small boy, and some of these photos really bring back some memories.

Others are from farther back than I can remember, showing scenes from the city’s past that remind one of just how empty South Africa was in the old days.

Picture 1: Cape Town station

Picture 2: The old cable car. Spot how undeveloped Lion’s head is!

Picture 3: Cape Town foreshore… No pepperpots against the mountain! Also notice the traffic circles at the bottom end of Adderly street, with no buildings around them!!

Picture 4: Cape De Waal Drive… Wow!!

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Such a cute baby…