Storing sonnets on a double helix.

All it took was a couple of guys having a few pints and figuring out that you can use DNA as a hard drive.

They started with a text file of one of Shakespeare's sonnets. In the computer's most basic language, it existed as a series of zeroes and ones. With a simple cipher, the scientists translated these zeroes and ones into the letters of DNA.

And then they did the same for the rest of Shakespeare's sonnets, an audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and a picture of their office. They sent that code off to Agilent Technologies, a biotech company...

The idea of storing data – text, audio and images – in DNA to save space is beyond mind-bending.This statement alone gives me vertigo.

If you took everything human beings have ever written — an estimated 50 billion megabytes of text — and stored it in DNA, that DNA would still weigh less than a granola bar.

 
NPR: Shall I Encode Thee In DNA? Sonnets Stored On Double Helix : NPR

 (image)

Phone box has new life as library.

Things like this make me ridiculously happy.


The traditional phone box was bought from BT for £1.

A traditional red phone box has been recycled into one of the country's smallest lending libraries - stocking 100 books.

BBC News - Phone box has new life as library

(via @jizo_sama)

Tim Gunn on The Daily Show.

Oh, Tim. How I've missed you.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tim Gunn
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

MetroShip – The Original Modern Houseboat.

I got an email today from David Ballinger of MetroShip asking me to check out his gorgeously-designed houseboat. Wow. I now have a new dreamhouse.





I wanted it to be like an updated Frank Lloyd Wright home but with an open New York Loft condo style mixed with a mid century Eichler home post and beam style. Using structurally sound lightweight aluminum panels was important. Using a single piece roof was important. Using the very best doors and windows available was important. Design, as they say, is in the details.

Thank you, David!

MetroShip – modern houseboat yacht – Ballinger & Co. (GDM Ltd.)

Playing For Change | Peace Through Music.

No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.

We built a mobile recording studio, equipped with all the same equipment used in the best studios, and traveled to wherever the music took us.

If the video cuts out, be sure to click below and watch it on their site. It's really, really lovely.

Playing For Change | Peace Through Music

(Thank you, Bradley!)

tweenbots.

I'm late to the game on this one, but I really, really do love both the concept and the bots. I have to post it just to show my support.


Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

tweenbots | kacie kinzer

(via Timbot & Czeltbot)

All this could be yours

...for a mere $869,000 (AUD). Possibly the strangest home decor I've ever seen. It's like the owners just stepped above ground from their bomb shelter. I'm simply awestruck.





Open2view - Property ID# 173002

(via the best real estate blog ever, It's Lovely! I'll Take It!)

Street With A View.

This makes me really, really happy.




On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more...

STREET WITH A VIEW: a project by Robin Hewlett & Ben Kinsley

(via Brooklyn Museum)

p.s. The chicken is from Milwaukee!

I have a new hero. His name is David Horvitz.

He'll feed homeless people. He'll scour Iceland for souvenirs. He'll mail you an empty envelope from NY. He'll have tea with a monk in Japan. All you have to do is send him some money.



If you give me $1,626 I will go to the small Okinawan island called Taketomi and send you an envelope filled with star-sand (don't worry, I've been there before, I know where to go). I will send it from there.


THINGS FOR SALE THAT I WILL MAIL YOU


p.s. I'm really late to the game on this one, but I'm just catching up on my trendcentral newsletters.

p.p.s. I have created a new tag just for DH.