WIGGUM DAILY

 

This is some video taken with the WD digicam on a stormy and freezing cold Sunday afternoon at Pt Leo. Air temperature was a chilly nine degrees C with a biting wind of 25-30km/h coming in from due south made it even colder. The water was actually the warmest place to be.

 

 

 

This video combines some the craziest/best/worst/luckiest driving on public roads you’ve ever seen, and one of the worst ever Number #1 Pop Songs Of All Time.

 

 

  ENJOY 

 

Dutch artisit Theo Jansen calls himself a kinetic sculptor (what ever THAT is… ) who builds mechanical works of art that are self-powered by the wind. Whatever it is he does, Theo is a very clever man with an amazing "da Vinci" like vision for the structure and movement of the natural world. The results are spectacular…

 

THE STRANDBEEST 

 

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP… That should be the thought running through your mind everyday if you own a computer. If your not doing it now, then you will. I’m not going to be too preachy here because I believe that the critical importance of GOOD data back is one of those things in life that has to be learnt, rather than taught. People only implement a solid data backup solution AFTER they have lost critical data at some point in their lives. I know that’s what happened to me many years ago.

 

Loosing mission critical data at some point in your life is not a matter of IF, but WHEN.  If it’s already happened to you, then you know the pain and loss involved. You’ve just lost years worth of irreplaceable digital photographs, or weeks worth of school assignments, or the last four years of your company finicial records and employee data, or ALL of the above if it’s all on the one machine. You already know that when it  happens, you would pay just about anything to have that data back.  Unfortunately this is more than often not possible. And in cases where it is possible, recovery requires the services of specialised data recovery firms, using highly specialist equipment, working in clean-rooms, to recover the data. This level of service will typically cost several thousand dollars just for them to take a look and give you an assessment. Then add many many thousands more to actually recover your data.

 

ENTER DROBO.

 

Drobo is the first consumer device of it’s kind to hit the market and has the potential to bring affordable enterprise level data security to the home user. Despite it’s name, Drobo is not a robot of any kind. It won’t walk around your computer desk searching for errant 1’s and 0’s. It’s just a box. But a very useful and clever box. I won’t explain it all here because the video does a much better job.

 

 

This is by far the longest video we’ve brought you on WD timing in at 26 minutes. But it’s compelling viewing and worth the time to sit there and watch it. This home video of the Sept 11th 2001 attacks on the New York City was taken by "Bob and Bri" from the window of their 36th Floor Manhattan apartment, located less than 500m from the two towers of the former World Trade Centre.

 

The video starts out a few minutes after the first plane hit the north tower. Resist the urge to skip forward through the video. It’s really interesting to watch it from start to finish. Made more so because We in 2007 know how it ends, yet these people are not sure what to make of it all in this video.   Observe how their state of mind goes from "Just another crazy day in New York… I hope I can still make my hair appointment in time…"  to… "That fire is going to take ALL day to put out…"  to  "Oh my God..  Oh my God… Oh My God… what the heck is happening…are these windows sealed…"

 

I think the essence of the unprecedented and unbelievable nature of those events, to those who watched them at the time, can be summed up best by Bri who is on the phone talking to someone in the first 5-6 mins of the video and she naively says at one point "No no.. it’s OK, they’re only attacking the World Trade Centre… not us…". 

 

 

The first few minutes are in "silence" with just the voice of Bri talking on the phone and to another person in the room. It’s surreal when she opens the window of the apartment and the NOISE that floods in from the streets below.  And when she zooms in on one of the first fire trucks arriving at the base of the tower. You think… those guys in that truck would all be dead now. Being first on the scene, they would have gone straight up the tower to the scene of the fire… never to return.

 

In a footnote to this video, I would like to add that the USA’s response to this attack by fundamentalist Islamic extremisits, was to round up a posse and invade the Arabic country of Iraq. Shock and Awe said the poster. In and Out.. Home By Christmas was the sentiment.  That was in March 2003.  Flash forward to June 2007 and they are still there. They have NO idea how to get out. Or even when. Meanwhile the death toll on the USA side has long since raced past the 2993 official death toll for the Sept 11th 2001 attacks. 

 

When I wrote THIS article in March 2007 the Iraq/Afgan USA military death toll was 3597 killed. It’s been 85 days since that was written, and the official USA death toll for soldiers killed is now 3927.  That’s 403 more killed in the 85 days since March 31st 2007, or FOUR soldiers killed per day, everyday of the week. Or to put in another way, 2.49 USA soldiers have died on each and every of the 1575 days since George Bush’s 2003 botched and mismanaged invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

No WONDER they had to come up with a recent "plan" to send more troops over…