Many Fingers in Many Pies.

Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry!

Potty time with Elmo. 69p on iTunes What a gif. Thanks laughingsquid

Music (via this )

How South Africans advertise disabled parking bays (& deal with fire)

pitchfork:

Legendary BBC DJ John Peel’s extensive record collection— “over 26,000 LPs, 40,000 singles and many thousands of CDs”— is now making its way onto the internet.

As part of a little project that I have been tinkering with, I’ve developed a little Windows system tray app to develop/assess switch skills with music on a standard Windows computer. When assessing switch skills we often want to look a number of aspects; cause & effect, timed and two-switch. Playing music (along with a game such as Musical Statues) can be a great way to assess this. There are quite a few ways of doing this with the right equipment, for example a powerlink and tape player is the classic (reliable?!) way - or using one of the iPod switching boxes that suppliers now sell. However if you are out on an assessment and of these bits of kit is failing you or that mp3 file is stuck on a computer you can use this little tool.

(For more information on developing switch skills take a look at Ian Bean’s free book available from Inclusive or the documentation available at ACE North for starters)

To use:

1. Download it here. Unzip it. Feel free to run it from your desktop or wherever - even a USB stick will do.
2. Get your music ready in iTunes or Windows Media Player. Open one of those apps. Don’t have both running. (NB: It doesn’t need to be in the foreground so you can do other things with other switches if needed)
3. Configure your switch driver software (e.g. this) to convert the correct switch presses to the correct keys:

Some suggestions:

• Timed play with 1 switch Configure switch to F8. Configure time by pressing Control+Shift+C (Default time is 8 Seconds). If you want to check what time is set: Control+Shift d
• Latching with 1 switch Configure switch to F7
• Two switch Play/Stop Configure Play switch to F3 and Stop switch to F4
• Two switch Play/Next Configure Play switch to F3 and Next switch F6

NB: It will stop any previous use of F keys whilst running. Just Right click on the taskbar icon to exit the application.

The full shortcuts are:

F8 or ctrl-shift t : Play music for timed period (default 8 secs)
Ctrl-Shift c : Config window to set the time
Ctrl-Shift d : View the time period set

F3 or Ctrl-Shift f : Play (not toggle)
F4 or Ctrl-Shift s : Stop (not toggle)

F7 or ctrl-shift p : Play / Pause toggle
F6 or Ctrl-Shift ] : Next
F5 or Ctrl-Shift [ : Previous

Ctrl-Shift - : Vol down
Ctrl-Shift = : Vol up

Ctrl-Shift h : This help box

The code is written rather quickly in AutoHotKey you can take a look at the source code here and you are more than welcome to fork the code and adapt for your own needs. (with thanks to this thread)

Show me a cat that can do this?

Endal came again to national attention in a 2001 incident, when Allen was knocked out of his wheelchair by a passing car. Endal pulled Allen, who was unconscious, into the recovery position, retrieved his mobile phone from beneath the car, fetched a blanket and covered him, barked at nearby dwellings for assistance, and then ran to a nearby hotel to obtain help

and

“When I couldn’t talk, he learned sign language – if I touched my head I wanted my hat, if I touched my face it was for the razor. He learned hundreds of commands in signing. Eventually one day, in this very silent world we lived in, I grunted. That was like an electric shock going through him, he was so excited. They said I’d never speak again, but Endal just dragged the speech out of me.”

and

The first dog known to be able to operate a Chip and PIN ATM card, including both card insertion and card removal

(More on Endal “the most decorated dog in the world” at Wikipedia and follow the links)