Apparently lightning does strike twice. Last week I mentioned the kid in my town who got struck by lightning when it was conducted through his PlayStation 2 controller into his hands, destroying much of his house. Now it’s being reported that almost the same thing happened in New Hampshire, USA.

If that wasn’t weird enough, one of these events occured in Hampshire, and the second one occured in New Hampshire.

*Twilight Zone music*

eBay Item 7331865939: 19th c. Japanese Lacquered Album w Albumen Photos

Wow…I just saw this auction on BoingBoing and it’s amazing. It’s an album of fifty photos from Japan in the 19th century, just of landscapes and people going about their lives.

It’s an amazing snapshot of daily life in a time and place completely detached from ours. As if modern Japanese culture wasn’t different enough, these are from over one hundred years ago. Admittedly the time is when Western influences had started to permeate the culture (look at the houses in Kobe and the sign in the above photo), but it’s still impressive. The pictures of landscapes and things like temples are one thing, but seeing the people of this culture immortalised is a wonderful thing to look at.

$1,500, though? It’s just beyond my funds and I’d be bidding on it without a second thought if it was cheaper.

I just downloaded the alpha version of Camino 0.9 and, holy crap, it’s a fast browser. It’s a Mozilla browser (like Firefox) but designed as a native OS X application (unlike Firefox) so it takes advantage of some of the functions and interface features of Apple’s operating system. It’s seriously the fastest browser I’ve used and although the built-in adblocking isn’t quite as good as Adblock under Firefox I can deal when it’s this good. Give it a try if you’re running an Apple.

I’ve become something of an RSS addict since I started using NetNewsWire to save the hassle of visiting countless news sites daily, but the growing phenomenon of Podcasting has escaped me thus far. Just as the Internet itself opened journalism (used loosely in some cases) to the masses, podcasting seems to be doing the same to radio for anyone with a microphone and a web connection.

I’ve been listening to the excellent Inside The Magic Disney World podcast since it started but even getting that was annoying without running a seperate program to retrieve it, so for me and the millions of iPod owners who don’t know what a podcast is, this iTunes update has the potential to blow it wide open. Pretty much unlimited free content to listen to is always good, whether you want to read content from the community or stuff from the “real” broadcasters, as the number syndicating their content with RSS continues to grow. I’m hoping for the BBC to start putting some of their full radio shows online through a podcast, but there’s plenty of stuff available now.

Anyway, through digging around I’ve found that I enjoy the aforementioned Inside The Magic as well as Xbox team member Major Nelson‘s podcast, but I’m on the lookout for more. If anyone knows of any good ones that they think I’d like (technology and gaming are both fair game, but I’ll take anything interesting), let me know.

Joystiq and Team Xbox are reporting the admittedly tenuous story that Microsoft are courting a developer made up of several members of the Shenmue development team and, whether it’s putting two and two together to make five or not, speculated that it could mean that Shenmue III is on the way for the Xbox 360.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m nuts about Shenmue and the thought of it with the graphical acuity of the 360 just has me salivating. It’s probably my favourite series which makes the stunted ending of the series so far all the more tragic, but MS are probably thinking the same thing about the amount of money they blew securing Shenmue II as an Xbox title. It’s all speculation but it certainly could add up to a continuation or conclusion of the series. As a graphical showcase for what will certainly be a popular machine, and coupled with the cult following that the series has amassed it must be worth it.

BBC: Presenter Richard Whiteley dies

Man…weekday afternoons are never going to be the same again. That guy was great and completely irreplaceable. Rest in peace.