TorrentRelay

TorrentRelay is a website that offers a unique Bittorrent client, one that is entirely web based. You can load torrents from a variety of methods, Local Files, Online URL's or even short MiniNova ID's. Originally designed to stream media and downloads (and still can), TorrentRelay is a powerful and extremely fast client that works though any firewall, complex routing or firewalls.

HERE

Can anyone give me any feedback as to whether this works well or not? Thanks.

Flash Periodic Table

HERE

Does this rule, or what?

List of Physics Games

So far, we’ve reviewed the following physics games (78 games):

HERE

FixUpMyPic

FixUpMyPic is a web 2.0 tool that allows users to upload ordinary pics and have them “fixed” by our large professional staff. These pics are then sent back to the user, where they can be shared on any popular social network, personal blog or web site, or even printed and shared as gifts. This whole process is 100% free, and no registration is required. Please note that FixUpMyPic is in it’s beta stage, so there may be some quirks.

HERE

Man mauled by grizzly kills bear, lives to tell tale

A man from B.C.'s Interior not only survived being mauled by a grizzly — he killed the bear as well.
John Shorter, 38, was hiking near Dease Lake in Northern B.C. Tuesday when he said he smelled a bear in the area.

"I heard a woofing sound, turned, seen a grizz coming at me. I managed to get my rifle up and get one round into the chest.… At that point he got on top of me, obviously, and took me down," Shorter said. "He proceeded to try to maul me in the back of the scalp and on the neck, and I protected my neck with my hands. They got fairly chewed up."

The bear was biting at his hands, which were covering his neck, so he dropped his rifle. He scrambled to get it back, eventually putting some distance between himself and the bear.

He shot the animal a second time, this time killing it.

"You just put yourself in overdrive and try and not get yourself killed," Shorter said. "It's an amazing amount of adrenaline going through yourself.… You get lots of thoughts going through your mind but you think about, obviously, your family and it's worth living, so fight."

After killing the bear, Shorter picked up his rifle and staggered back to his vehicle.

"I got back in my pickup, grabbed a drink of water, got my thoughts straight. I noticed my shoulder was dislocated. I managed to pop it in myself and thought I'd better go and get some help," Shorter said.

He drove to the nearby community of Iskut for medical treatment.

Shorter escaped the attack with what he called minor injuries. He received 40 stitches, and suffered a broken hand and multiple puncture wounds.

"You know, if you're in that situation, all you can do is fight for all you got. I mean, I don't think I'm any different from anyone else," he said.

Shorter is still recovering at his home in Smithers. Conservation officials continue to investigate the attack.

HERE

600 million-piece Stasi jigsaw

In the dying days of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Stasi officers were ordered to destroy their reports by shredding and then burning them. So numerous were the reports, that shredding machines stopped working, and officers were forced to tear the documents by hand. A problem with transport meant that the estimated 45 million A4 sheets of paper were not burned.

Since 1991, a team of 30 workers has been carrying out the painstaking task of reconstructing the documents, revealing new information on the activities of the Stasi and its collaborators. The team has now reconstructed the contents of 350 sacks, but with over 16,000 remaining, the task would require a further 400 to 800 years to complete by hand.

Now new technology developed by the Fraunhofer Institute of Production Facilities and Construction Technology (IPK) could complete the work in a fraction of the time. The E-Puzzler, the world's most sophisticated pattern-recognition machine, was completed in 2003, and has now received Government funding for a pilot project to reconstruct the contents of 44 sacks.

'The virtual puzzling follows the logic of manual puzzling,' explains Dr Bertram Nickolay, head of department at the IPK. The people working on the documents so far have used a number of identifying factors in order to establish whether or not two pieces belong alongside one another - shape, colour and handwriting, for example.

The new system involves first scanning the double-sided scraps of paper. The E-Puzzler then assesses the different attributes of the paper pieces in order to reduce the search parameters.

While the IPK team waited for the funding go-ahead from the Government, the machine has been put to a number of other uses. It has helped Chinese archaeologists to reconstruct shattered Terracotta Army figures, helped to solve a multinational tax evasion case, and pieced together hundreds of thousands of bank notes shredded by a mother who wished to stop her estranged daughter from claiming her inheritance.

This range of applications suggests that the E-Puzzler will be in high demand once it becomes commercially available. The scientists have already received requests for the machine from other former communist countries of eastern Europe, as well as from countries that have experienced a military dictatorship in the past.

Source

A slaver enslaved

When British slaver James Irving was shipwrecked and himself enslaved by Arabs, did he see the dark irony of his predicament? Not a bit of it, according to newly recovered journals, which provide a rare, self-justifying account of a slave trader.

It started with a shipwreck. It was swiftly followed by capture and then 14 months working as a slave. Such a traumatic experience might change the outlook of most people. But not James Irving.

HERE