Pure Geekery
Zombies? Oh, go on then. This week’s Friday Fun has you, not trying to stop the zombie spread, but making it happen. Infect populations and watch as your undead army spreads throughout the globe! Mwuahahahaha! …ahem…
You can upgrade your abilities too, if those pesky humans just refuse to succumb to the virus.
You’ll need Flash to play.
This is a guest post by William Judd.
Coffee is the second most-traded good in the world, after petroleum, and it is a ubiquitous indulgence in the western world that’s consumed by millions each morning. It’s hard to become that big without turning up in some odd places, and coffee has definitely done it all. Did you know that coffee was a key part of the development of stock exchanges, computing equipment and even revolutions? Read on to find the secret life of coffee.
The coffee break is commonplace across all kinds of businesses in the western world and beyond; a routine social gathering where workers take a few minutes to talk with their colleagues and higher-ups over a warm cup of coffee. The coffee break’s popularity in the United States is thought to be down to the work of behavioural psychologist John B. Watson, who developed Behaviorism and later worked with Maxwell House, a large coffee brand in the United States. The coffee break may have its origins even further back this though, with Time writing in 1951 that coffee breaks were written into union contracts. The true origin of the coffee break apparently originated in the late 19th century in the small town of Stoughton, Wisconsin, where the wives of Norwegian immigrants took regular breaks with coffee. The town still celebrates Stoughton Coffee Break Festival each year.
Saint Domingue was the most treasured colony of the French empire in 1791, with the Caribbean colony producing about 60% of the world’s coffee and 40% of the world’s sugar at the time. Around 452,000 slaves worked to harvest the coffee, controlled by only 40,000 whites and 28,000 free blacks and mulattos. While the white plantation owners were scared of a slave revolt and prepared accordingly, when the revolution came in 1791 they were unable to stop it. The conflict continued until 1804, when plantation owners were roundly defeated and the plantations burned. The revolution brought a stop to slavery in the colony, which was reformed as the independent Haitian Republic. The revolution was the most successful slave revolt in the Americas, and was one of only two successful revolts against European powers before the 19th century – the other being the United States. Coffee production has never recovered, but that seems a trivial price to pay.
According to my part-Turkish flatmate, the first espresso machine was developed in Italy by an inventive business owner irritated with the long coffee breaks his workers took. He devised a machine that forced water at high pressure through coffee grounds, producing a single-serve coffee drink that could be produced quickly. While it’s a cool story, I sadly haven’t been able to find any citations for it. According to what I have been able to find, the first espresso machine patent for an industrial espresso machine was developed in 1884, but it wasn’t until 1901 that key improvements including single-serve were perfected. Espresso has continued to evolve as a rapid single-serve beverage, most noticeably with the development of encapsulated single-serve coffee pods in 1959.
Coffee houses quickly became popular places for wealthy businessmen and intellectuals to meet in Europe and the United States; indeed such establishments were nicknamed penny universities (after the cost of the drink and the quality of the discussion therein). The biggest stock exchange in the world was started by 64 traders at the Tontine Coffee House in New York; it is now called the New York Stock Exchange. A number of other massive firms also began life as coffee houses, including the East India Company (which started life as the Jerusalem Cafe) and Lloyds of London (which began as Lloyd’s coffeehouse).
My favourite instance of coffee prompting scientific enquiry came in 1991, when the very first webcam was developed. It was engineered in the Computer Science department at Cambridge, where a camera was pointed at a coffee pot and hooked up the network. Computer scientists working in the university could connect to a web page to check the level of coffee in the pot, potentially saving themselves a wasted trip. The same coffee camera was still running in 2001, when the development of high-speed Internet allowed the past vision of video telephones to finally become a reality. The webcam has since become ubiquitous on portable computers like laptops, mobile phones and tablets although the coffee cam has since shut down.
So there you have it – five interesting instances of coffee in history. I hope you’ve discovered something interesting about coffee. If I’ve left anything off, let me know in the comments below!
How does a superhero fund his heroic lifestyle? If you’re Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, you do it by also being the CEO of a huge corporation… but what if that all went bust? Or what if you’re just a mild-manered scientist like Bruce Banner who needs to replace his wardrobe every time he “hulks up”?
Introducing… superhero credit cards. Just a bit of fun from the guys at MoneySupermarket – they imagined what features a superhero would look for in their flexible friends (remember that advert?).
As the site says, these aren’t real, but we can dream :)
I’m not quite sure what to make of Small Worlds. It’s an exploration game but it feels like an art installation too – it’s simple, but the design and the music give it a distinctly melancholy feel.
The graphics are low-tech, but don’t let that put you off. There’s a strange feature that sees the resolution increase as you explore more of the map. It’ll never get up to photo-realism or anything (more Commodore 64) but it’s pretty innovative. I really enjoyed playing this, and it shouldn’t take you too long to complete.
Small Worlds requires Flash and has sound. The music is a big part of this game’s appeal, so I’d strongly recommend keeping the sound on while you play.
Friday Fun this week is a bizarre game where the aim is to help a cat get as fat as possible so that he can meet his dream “girl” (she’s actually another cat, in case you were wondering).
Drop him in at the top of the screen and he’ll fall down like one of those fairground coin-drop games, eating any sushi he meets on the way. The game isn’t too long, so you’ll be able to complete it fairly quickly. It’s nice and entertaining, though, and has a good mix of easy and more difficult levels.
It uses flash and has sound, but you can put the sound off if you like. Have fun!
Some retro gaming for you this week – mobile phone retro gaming at that, too. This week’s Friday Fun is Snake, which was a staple of mobile gaming before mobiles got all fancy and clever.
You’ll need Flash to play. See if it brings back memories for you!
This is a guest post by Gary Nicholson, on behalf of Policy Expert.
Successful prediction of disasters can help us save money, time and in some cases, even lives. However, throughout recent history, and for as long as the media has been around, such predictions have left us wanting to run for the hills only to amount to nothing. Almost as if the powers that be are playing a little Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. Here are some of the best examples of overhyped predictions.
Image credit: roberthunt1987
The year 2000 bug, also known as the Millennium Bug, referred to a digital computer problem which was predicted to occur from 1st January 2000. The problem was suspected to come from software which used the last two digits of the year rather than all four, creating a series of problems which was believed to have the potential to cause catastrophic damage across the digital world.
As the world celebrated the new year, we also held our breath in preparation for what the year 2000 would bring. However, it soon became clear that the preparation had been for nothing. A few minor glitches were reported, however the digital world mainly continued business as usual.
Image credit: Lord Jim
There have been numerous doomsday scenarios over the years, all of which have so far proved to be completely incorrect. For example, Harold Camping famously predicted that on Saturday 21st May, 2011, the Rapture would come and the universe would be completely destroyed within six months. He made a similar prediction in 1994, and both have been proved to be spectacularly wrong.
Image credit: NASA
In March 2012 scientists fearer that a solar storm within the Earth’s magnetic field could cause substantial damage to satellites and power grids. However, later reports showed that this prediction had been wildly overhyped, as there was no significant solar activity when the storm occurred.
Image credit: Wikipedia
Thomas Malthus’ population theories are still used as a key basis of our understanding of the world’s population growth and our relationship with food and other resources. However, despite the highly regarded key principles that Malthus’ theories were build upon, one less successful prediction was the idea that by the 1970s mass starvation would hit the world due to the imbalanced relationship between food and people. Of course, what Malthus did not predict is the world’s ability to innovate and adapt to the ever increasing population, and this prediction proved to be well and truly incorrect.
Image credit: AZRainman
The idea that the energy crisis is over hyped is a fairly controversial topic, as it is easy to argue that this prediction is at least partly correct. However, many scientists predicted that by 2010, all crude oil would have run out, and there simply would be no more left by now. This would drastically alter our modern day lifestyles, and force us to revert back to a stripped back, more ecological way of living.
Oil is by no means an ‘easy’ resource to obtain – it’s very existence causes wide political and economic issues – however, domestically, we are still able to fulfil our highly energy dependent lifestyles, and prove this theory wrong.
What do you think of our selection of overhyped disaster predictions? Are there any you disagree with? Any you would add to the list? As ever, feel free to let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.
All images in this post are used under Creative Commons license.
No game this week… instead, this week’s Friday Fun is a video from the Slow Mo Guys. If you’ve ever wondered what a bursting water balloon looks like in slow motion, popcorn, or a flaming tennis ball (yes really!) you need to check out their YouTube channel.
The one I want to show you today involves a watermelon and hundreds of rubber bands. I really want to try this out :)
Enjoy.
Sports fever has hit Britain! Actually, it’s been a pretty good sporting summer, with the usual Wimbledon tournament, Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour de France, and the London Olympics (where Mr Wiggins triumphed again).
So let’s go all sporty today. This week’s Friday Fun is Qwop – a fiendishly difficult athletics game. You control a runner using the Q and W keys to move his thighs, and O and P to move his calves. It takes coordination and timing, and you’ll end up doing more than a few backflips before landing on your head.
Speaking of which, I managed to get to 11 metres before keeling over… after plenty of practice! Why not post your best distance in the comments?
Ice Breaker is another physics-based puzzle game that has you rescuing Vikings who’ve been frozen in ice. How do you do that? Cut the ice up and guide it towards the Viking ship where the captain will break it up and free his crew-mates. Eventually you’ll move on to tougher problems involving ropes and pivots but, in the end, it’s all a case of working out how that bit of ice you’ve just cut free will fall…
A great distraction!
Recent Comments