This Magic Sand stuff is weird. A sort of powdery material which repels water. Hard to explain, just watch this Quicktime video from the Journal of Chemical Education.

The Museum of Online Museums is a site devoted to the growing number of…er…online museums sprouting up all over the Net. The LED Museum, Bizarre Album Covers, The Gallery of Skatepark IDs, that sort of thing. In other words heaven for the truly obsessional. [via metafilter]

The Richard Kennaway site lists 295 made-up languages, some private like LanguageX and some public like Klingon. Does anyone speak these languages apart from the creators, I wonder?

The Levi clothing company has announced that it is to produce a range of Dockers pants – dubbed S-Fit – with an anti-radiation lining in one of the pockets to protect against mobile phone emissions. This is very weird, and could be the first real sign that mobile phones are destined to follow the cigarette industry into choppy waters sometime soon. Quote: ‘”We’re not implying in any way that mobile phones are dangerous,” Levi’s European communications manager Cedric Jungpeter told…

The Zero Blaster smoke ring launcher. File under ‘useless, but fun’?

A-Wandering! Normal service resumes Tuesday 17th September. Cheers!

Tip of the hat again to the redoubtable Phil Askey of DPReview for publishing the first shots I’ve seen of the new hybrid SmartMedia/xD slot that will be featured on many new digicams in the future. Y’all remember the new teeny xD card announcement, doncha? I was unaware that the ‘powers that be’ are going to make xD somewhat backwards compatible. Maybe this is as a sop to those of us who are getting a little ticked off at the…

Apparently Canon has mistakenly published confidential information about its next super digital camera. ‘The EOS-1Ds features the first ever full frame 35mm CMOS sensor with 11.1 million effective pixels’. Hmm, 11 megapixel. Not shabby! Of course it could be a hoax, but if it is, it’s a good one.

I must say I don’t get this. Apparently an American company has just received permission from ‘the US authorities’ to send a self-funded exhibition to the moon. Why? Does the USA now own the moon or something? Is there a chapter that I missed somewhere? That would be rather sad, and if it is the case, what other parts of the universe are now owned by world nations? Mars is owned by Poland maybe? Or Venus by Taiwan?

No mouse, or mouse broked? Then download and install the handy little Mouse Emulator which lets you control the on-screen cursor using the num pad on your keyboard. Useful!

Texan Paul Mathis has set up a Webcam site pointing at his room where you, the ‘umble viewer, can ‘control my lamps, move one of the cameras, listen live, force me to listen to your choice of music, and chat with other viewers’. In other words you can, if you want, drive him nuts with your fiddling. I can only assume that the poor chap has no wife.

According to this article, the wholesale price of 15″ LCD monitors is really scraping bottom at the moment. Apparently one US distributor is looking to pay less than $220 per unit in the run up to Xmas. It could soon be a very flat world. [via digit life]

Oh yes, for the man who has everything, the Rapper Kit. $19.95. [via majorgeeks] And to see just how unfunny this can be, check out ‘How Corporations Exploit Kids‘.

The new Lexmark X85 is the latest in a line of all-in-one printer, scanner, copier machines. It’s remarkable not because it’s funky black, nor because it sports 4800 dpi in the inkjet department, nor even because it claims a top speed of 12 pages per minute. It’s because it will apparently be priced at an astonishing �130.00 or thereabouts when it surfaces over here.