Today’s MacZOT is the absolutely beautiful world-as-wallpaper app, EarthDesk. Also available for Windows, but you won’t get the special price of $12.95 (UP $19.95). It updates itself online and renders moonlight and daylight taking into account reflectivity and live cloud cover information. I believe that means what you see is pretty much what you might get from space. If there are any tornados going on at the time, you’ll see them too.

I’m thinking about it… but I might wait till I get my 20″ iMac. It’s probably not the same on a 1024×768 laptop screen.

Take Salon.com’s Machiavelli personality test! It’s about 7 years old, but has only now surfaced on digg.com for some reason.

I was just talking to somebody last night about the unsurprising and commonsensical nature of Machiavellian thought. So my results weren’t unexpected, but they could have been higher.

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 79
You are a high Mach, you endorse Machiavelli’s opinions.

Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there’s a significant minority at either extreme.

Apple made about USD$410m in profit last quarter, and nearly $1bn in the last two. iPod sales are up 61% from last year’s equivalent quarter, with 8.5 million sold. Mac growth is slower at 4%, but this is still a lot more money than most people, myself included, would have given them credit for.

Link

Another magic-related thingy. Two previously-feuding British magicians whose blogs I frequent have made up and are going to tour the country together a bit. What are the chances that they’re passing through my old 2nd home on my birthday?

This is one of the funniest magic parodies I’ve ever seen! A David Copperfield wannabe named Daniel Chesterfield(?), complete with flowing white shirt and hairsprayed do. [via Styra “I punch thrice my weight” Foam]

DSC00417.JPG
Originally uploaded by sangsara.

This is one of the scariest buildings ever. I’ll get a better shot someday when I’m not in a cab. It’s opposite the Singapore General Hospital, if you’re wondering.

It’s like a cylinder with a quadrant cut out, and it looks at least 50 years older than it is. I see it as a nightmarish hong-kongesque urban housing project fallen into disrepair, where people are squeezed too close to each other, everything smells, and you can see 20 neighbors by looking out your kitchen window.

TOKKO
Check out this description:

Shindou just became a new investigator for Tokki: The Special Mobile Investigation Force. On the day of his graduation, he finally saw the half-naked girl that he had always saw in his dream in real life and finds out that she`s part of Tokko: The Special Public Safety Task Force. Shindou ends up joining Tokko to revenge his parents` death who’s bodies were ripped into pieces…

AniDB page

Zero 7 alumnus and all-round wonderful Australian person/singer, Sia, has a video for her song Breathe Me that I’ve never been able to find for download. Links to streaming video of it appeared today on Digg, with the focus on its having been built from 2500 polaroid photos shot in succession. It’s beautiful and worth checking out.