General: Just like on the crime tele-movies

For a measly US$40, you can have voice-changer software on your PC!
http://www.screamingbee.com/product/MorphVOX.aspx?adid=349

It's worth a listen to the demos of male-Female changes (both ways) plus added background.noise

It works with stacks of games and communications programs -
...
MorphVOX Pro voice changing software can be used with all online games including World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Second Life, Lord of the Rings Online, Everquest, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 2 and many more.

It also integrates with VoIP and Instant Messaging programs such as Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, XFire, GoogleTalk, Roger Wilco and more.

In the studio, MorphVOX Pro integrates with multimedia applications such as Sound Forge, Vegas, ACID, Audacity, IClone and much more.
...

And if you should happen to have a need for it -
http://www.screamingbee.com/product/FurryVoicesforSecondLife.aspx
I'm just sayin'...

Techo: A free seamless texture creation tool

This free tool is handy for creating textures that tile without visible joins, both for 3D modelling work and as backgrounds for web pages etc'.
And don't think it can only do plain wood textures.

http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm

Here's one I made in a couple of minutes -


The tool itself is only a 4.5 MB download, if you would like a downloadable friendly tutorial video of it in use, this one is 130 MB -

http://vidtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/Make-seamless-textures-with-Wood-Workshop.mp4

This link shows a lower-resolution version of the tutorial, but also has links to hundreds of ready-made seamless textures -
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/28/make-seamless-textures-with-wood-workshop-video-tip-of-the-week-40/

General: Finally! (well, hopefully soon anyway)

A lot of people have been waiting a long time for this to happen.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

It looks like it will be a lot of fun but with no mention of a release date, there's no telling when it will be fun.

Techo: Was Dr Who right all those years ago?

This article -
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-self-organizing-quantum-universe
mentions -
"A theory of quantum gravity aims to describe the nature of spacetime on the very smallest scales—the voids in between the smallest known elementary particles—by quantum laws and possibly explain it in terms of some fundamental constituents."

That sounds a lot like "Interstitial Space" as mentioned in Dr Who decades ago, this is a comparatively recent mention of it -
http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_ma33.htm

Anyway, if you have a heap of time spare, it's a very interesting article (imo as always).

General: Free Game time again

This time an odd-ball MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) based around competing factions led by Bo Peep and Little Red Riding Hood!

The web-site has a rather nice scrollable text with a static graphical front overlay, worth a look just by itself (imo).

http://www.secondhandlands.com/

A snippet -
"Secondhand Lands ...
is the massively multiplayer online game set in a parody fairytale world. There will be none of those pansy elves or cantankerous dwarves in this land. Our heroes are comprised of the Wolves and the Sheep who have pledged their undying allegiance to Bo Peep or Little Red Riding Hood. Well, perhaps not undying... "

General: No ice at the North Pole

This Year!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
Worth a read, I'll bet they'll be prospecting for oil quick smart!

Techo: Aussie Telco's screw us so bad

I pay $80 for 25GB a month at 1.5 Mbps up and 256Kbps down, so this story about a new Japanese broadband cap makes me really depressed.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080625-japanese-isp-institutes-upload-caps-of-30gb-daily.html

That's a cap of 30 Gigabytes UPLOAD per day over 100 Mbps fibre (100 Mbps both ways!) with UNLIMITED downloads!
Telstra still apparently doubts that the market will use all the bandwidth that they can supply, so we're still in the dark ages of wire to the home.
It's cold comfort that the US telco' infrastructure is (according to the article) similarly retarded and their carriers are now adopting download caps too.

UPDATE
I wondered how much the japanese paid for that, so I Googled "Japan broadband cost" (without the quotes). Now I'm really sad!
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/656.html
$0.22 per Mbit per Second per month, That's $22 a month for 100 Mbit!

How did it get to be like that? Here are some clues -
http://www.itif.org/files/Ebihara_Japanese_Broadband.pdf

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sigh, However, since I get a new 25GB allocation starting tomorrow and have 6GB to use up today (I'm always careful to leave plenty for my wife to VPN into work from home), I have decided to get this 5-part documentary on the history of the computer -
http://waxy.org/2008/06/the_machine_that_changed_the_world_the_world_at_your_fingertips/

If you don't have a torrent download program, may I recommend Vuze (formerly Azureus) as an easy to use tool with a good catalogue of continually updated media recommendations built right in -
http://www.vuze.com/app

Obit: How old is Big-Bird? 6 or 74?

Introducing a new category 'Obit:', for those who like to avoid them as well as those who want to see who they've out-lived!

Sadly, we kick off the new category with the demise of Kermit Love, the creator of Sesame Street's Big-Bird.
In this article you will find the answer to the question and other fun trivia.
The sign-up to the New York Times is free and no spam ensues, so why wouldn't you?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/arts/24love.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

He sounds to have been a real nice chap, I'm always a bit happier when such folk leave something they created or achieved in the world to remember them by.

General: Thinking straight can be tricky

I was looking for a different 'Ruth effect' this morning, but this little (430KB) PDF was certainly worth the download and read.
http://www.turtletrader.com/pdfs/babe-ruth.pdf
It seems to be endless, the way our gut instincts are at odds with reality when it comes to thinking about risk and probability.

(Here's what I was looking for btw - https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5668)

General: Whatever became of Levelord?

Or, "Richard Bailey Gray III" the great 3D Level designer.
It's only THIS hard to find out -
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Levellord

Here are some good relatively recent pages, up to yesterday even:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gray

http://www.levelord.com/

http://cdb2.deviantart.com/

Enjoy!

I really must make a rendition of this in Second Life -