At the Elephant Wash

National Geographic Photo of the Day has a nice picture of an elephant being washed by its handler.

Spitfire for sale

Still looking for the perfect present? The Times has a short article about an air worthy Spitfire that comes up for auction soon. It is expected to sell for GBP 1.5 million.

The Autofocus Time Management System

As astute readers will know, while not particularly productive myself, I have always had an interest in productivity systems. The latest one to come up is the Autofocus system.

The Autofocus system is similar to Getting Things Done (GTD) in that you write everything down. The difference is that you have one large list that you cycle through rather than a bunch of smaller context specific ones.

There is a video on the linked to page where the creator of the system explains how it works.

via lifehacker

Fish Photo

National Geographic has a nice picture of a coi feeding in a pond.

Interview with Alexa

Since the last article I linked to about Alexa got hidden behind a password I'm going to try again with a link to this interview with her.

Flash Game: Splitter

Another Flash game to kill an hour or so.  In Splitter you use a knife to cut ropes and blocks on each game level to try to get the smiley faced ball to roll to the target.

via kottke.org

Tracking Presidential Promises

PoliFact has a website that aims to track President Obama's campaign promises and how many of them have been fulfilled. So far he has kept 7, broken 1, is working on 18 and has 482 to go.

This could be quite handy if it were to catch on in other locations and for different levels of government.

TED Talk: Photosynth demo

This short TED talk (7 minutes) is a demo of some experimental software called Photosynth. The software builds composite images from collections of photos. The really interesting part is how it can find the photos on its own.

Player Piano Rolls

The Buffalo News has an article about the ending of production of player piano rolls. The interesting thing is not so much that they aren't made anymore but that production stopped on 31 December 2008.

via slashdot

February Smashing Wallpaper

As you can guess from the post title, the February Desktop wallpaper collection is out at Smashing Magazine. I've gone with the lizard picture.

A Non-Corporate Annual Report

I'm not sure who Nicholas Felton is but I have read his annual report and he seems to keep track of a lot of data about his life. I can't help but wonder how he does it.

via kottke.org

Deserted London

This Flickr set shows the results when you get up early Christmas morning and drive around London taking pictures - the whole place is deserted.

I was especially amazed at the picture of Villiers street - that's the street that turns up from Embankment tube station, its a pedestrian street except for all the cars. It is always packed with people.

via kottke.org

Related: The Big Picture has some great aerial shots of London (though these have people in them).

Tom's Laws of Life

Tom Hoobyar presents his Twelve Laws of Life. I don't know who Tom Hoobyar is but the laws are interesting and worth a read, even if they are a big new-agey.

For example, number 8 - Nobody wakes up in the morning choosing to be the villain.

via lifehacker

Sailing Pictures

The Big Picture has some really nice sailing photos.

Web Comic: Easter Island Explanation

Truck Delivered Kibble has a comic that finally explains the mystery of what the giant heads are for on Easter Island.

via reddit

Guide to Urban Exploration

WebUrbanist has a summary post about urban exploration. The links should be enough to get you started on a life of sneaking into abandoned buildings but if you just want to watch some of the linked articles have some great photos.

TED Talk: Third World Stats

The TED conference has another talk, this one about various statistical misconceptions about the developing world. While the statistics themselves are interesting, the graphics that he uses to present them are also worth a look.

New Limo for New President

The Detroit News has an article about the new US presidential limo. Built by GM it seems to be pretty much a custom vehicle made to look like a large sedan.

via Danger Room

Follow up: Bruce Schneier has a blog post with some more links. One is the same graphic linked to in one of the comments below while the LA Times article has an actual picture of the new limo.

Boring Machines

Dark Roasted Blend has an article about the giant machines used to bore underground tunnels.

The machine tows nearly 800 tons of backup equipment through the tunnel, including trailers for electrical support systems, firefighting supplies and even a lunchroom.

Light Cone

A bit of a strange one today, this site provides an RSS feed that lets you know when the theoretical light from the moment of your birth reaches various nearby star systems. Physicists call this a light cone.

For example, 5 months ago my light cone reached 58 Eridani.

via kottke.org

edit: fixed typo in star name