worlds tallest man

Sultan Kösen from Turkey has been named by World Guiness Records as the tallest man in the world measuring 8 ft 1 inches/246.5cm.

According to Sultan life is not necessarily rosy when you're that tall; you can't fit into a car, you have to bend over to enter any standard size house, all clothes have to be tailor made and you can't find a girlfriend who is not scared of you.

According to Guiness, there's only 10 confirmed cases in which humans have grown past the eight foot (2.44 meter) mark.

Kösen's rapid growth was caused by tumour damage to his pituitary gland which triggered the overproduction of growth hormones. His tumour was removed in 2008.

Video of Sultan Kösen


Leonid Stadnyk the tallest?

Determining who is the tallest man on earth is usually a hotly contested affair but being independently measured is not always easy, considering that some of these giants live in remote parts of the world and are not always willing to be measured anyway. Kösen was named the tallest man after the Ukranian, Leonid Stadnyk, refused to be measured stating that he doesn't enjoy being in the public eye. According to his countrymen he measures 8 ft 5 inches/2.57cm but since it's not official, he couldn't be considered.



Stadnyk lives in poverty in a small village in the Ukraine and lost his job as a veterinarian because he couldn't use public transport due to his considerable size. So the president of the Ukraine presented him with a new car:



Robert Wadlow - tallest man in history

American Robert Wadlow was the tallest man ever, measuring 8 ft 11.1 inches/272cm. He died at age 22 in 1940.

Miracles of Nature

7 Wonders

Miracles of Jesus

The miracles of Jesus are the supernatural deeds of Jesus, as recorded in Gospels, in the course of his ministry. According to theGospel of John, only some of these were recorded. John 21:25states that "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, ...even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." These miracles may be categorized into four groups: cures, exorcisms, resurrection of the dead and control over nature.

In the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus refuses to give a miraculous sign to prove his authority. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is said to have performed seven miraculous signs that characterize his ministry, from changing water into wine at the start of his ministry to raising Lazarus from the dead at the end.

To many Christians and Muslims, the miracles are actual historical events. Others, such as some liberal Christians, may consider these stories to be figurative. Historians are virtually unable to confirm or refute reports of Jesus' miracles.Certain Christian scholars present arguments for the historicity of miracles.

What Is Miracle...???

A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what people perceive as miracles.Theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well.

In casual usage, "miracle" is seen as any event that is statistically unlikely but beneficial, (such as surviving a natural disaster), or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds.' Some coincidencesmay be perceived to be miracles.

Fun with the Uno

Recently I was asked to develop a custom solution which allowed an artist to use a joystick input device in an installation with the electronics simulating a regular keyboard.

The artist in question was Prayas Abhinav, from India, to whom I got introduced through Eelco. The installation, a modified space invaders game, is called "Even war has its limits".
For the hardware, I found a nice joystick on Farnell which I ordered. It turned out a bit smaller than I had expected from the picture, but it's very cute and sturdy, so perfectly usable. For the buttons, I shouted out to the META mailinglist (since Farnell has thousands of different pushbuttons...), and Diederik was so kind to source me some arcade-style pushbuttons he had used for a project earlier. The Arduinos and prototype shields I got from the cute www.duinos.nl webshop.
As for the software of it all, it turned out that the Uno makes emulating a USB keyboard very, very simple. With this new Arduino board, the platform has gained a powerful new feature, namely that it can be programmed to mimic any USB device out there. The old FTDI chip got replaced by a programmable atmel chip which takes care of the USB handling. And thanks to Arduino being open source and all, a great library has been developed for this chip, LUFA, which is a full USB stack.
So after some Googling, I found this existing arduino keyboard driver, and modified the code to work with a more recent LUFA version. The result is, of course, on Github.
The actual Arduino program is there as well: reading from 5 inputs and sending key down / key up events to the computer through the special keyboard firmware.