If you are like me – an audio gadget fanatic – then you’re going to be in love with the Buddha Machine. It’s a simple device that contains a bunch of audio loops, an amp and a speaker. The Buddha Machine is a project started by audio artists Christian Virant and Zhang Jian. They’ve put together a set of audio loops that represent the type of ambient sounds one might expect in a Buddhist temple.

Each loop is only about six seconds long, but you get the choice of choosing your tone from up to nine different ones enclosed in this beast. A switch on the side lets you flick through each loop randomly.

What makes the device irresistible is that audio is played through a cheap sounding amp and speaker. Adding to this, the cheap plastic casing is available in a variety of colours. The lo-fi quality also adds to the unique ambient feel you get when listening to it. It even has a volume control and headphone output. Now where are my Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting Speakers?

By Timothy Wong, July 2006

Linda Hogan has filed for divorce from her wrestler husband Hulk Hogan, a newspaper reported Friday.

Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, told the St. Petersburg Times that he had no idea his wife had filed for divorce. He was informed by a reporter that Pinellas County court records showed that the paperwork was submitted Tuesday.

“Thank you for the great information,” he told the reporter.

Family spokesman Adam Handelsman referred calls to another spokesman, who did not immediately respond Friday night.

“My wife has been in California for about three weeks. … Holy smokes,” Bollea later told the newspaper. “Wow, you just knocked the bottom out of me.”

The couple star in the VH1 reality TV series “Hogan Knows Best,” with their two children. Recent episodes show the normally close couple attending marital counseling, but they eventually reconcile.

On Nov. 7, Hogan’s son, 17-year-old Nick Bollea, was arrested on reckless-driving charges after a car crash. Clearwater police said Bollea crashed his 1998 Toyota Supra on Aug. 26 while street racing against a silver Dodge Viper driven by a friend. A report said Bollea was driving faster than 60 mph in a 40 mph zone.

Bollea’s passenger, John Graziano, was not wearing a seat belt and was critically injured. Bollea, who was wearing a seat belt, was not seriously injured.

The Hogans moved to a $12 million bayfront estate on Miami Beach in 2006 so their children, Brooke and Nick, could pursue singing and acting careers. They had previously lived in Clearwater, near Tampa.

An abstract masterpiece by a Mexican artist that was found in the trash by a woman who knew little about modern art has been sold for more than $1 million.

The painting “Tres Personajes” by Rufino Tamayo was discovered in 2003 by Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted it on her morning walk on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She said she took it home because “even though I didn’t understand it, I knew it had power.”

The brightly colored abstract work was purchased for $1,049,000 by an unidentified private American collector bidding by phone at Sotheby’s Latin American Art sale Tuesday night.

Gibson spent four years trying to find out about the painting, finally discovering on the “Antiques Roadshow” Web site that it had been featured on the popular PBS program and described as a missing masterpiece stolen in 1989.

Gibson has received a $15,000 reward for turning in “Tres Personajes” and also will get a percentage of the sale price.

Painted in 1970, “Tres Personajes” was purchased by a Houston collector for $55,000 as a gift for his wife at a Sotheby’s auction in 1977. Ten years later, as the couple was moving to a new home, it was stolen from storage.

The husband has since died, and the widow, who wished to remain anonymous, decided to sell it.

Tamayo was born in 1899 and died in 1991. His early work has similarities to that of famed 20th century muralist Diego Rivera. His later work features the vivid colors and expressions of his native state of Oaxaca.

China has set up its first help centre for lottery addicts that offers counselling and legal assistance, the Beijing Morning Post said on Friday.

Lotteries have become hugely popular among the poor and newly rich in China, where many forms of gambling are banned.

The service will be run by the lottery research centre at Peking University and will include a hotline for “problem ticket holders” to call.

“Problem buyers are those whose lottery ticket buying has a negative or destructive impact on themselves, their families or their careers,” Wang Xuehong, director of the centre, was quoted as saying.

“Most people who buy lottery tickets in China are not mentally mature, and they still hold the belief that they can be rich overnight.”

Earlier this month, a lottery ticket seller was jailed for life for taking advantage of a system flaw to cash 28 million yuan (1.8 million pounds) in winning tickets.

McDonald’s? The burger joint? Stampede! Eight cows escaped from a trailer when the gate opened as the driver pulled into a McDonald’s. It took about two hours to round them up Monday.

“Maybe they were going to … hop in the freezer, save the middleman,” Weber County sheriff’s Sgt. Dave Creager said.

Lt. Kevin Burns had another theory: “They didn’t like their future.”

The roundup was called “Operation Hamburger Helper.” A nearby resident even hopped on his horse.

“I thought my eyes were lying,” said Wayne Sanders, who was at a truck stop next door. “I don’t know where they came from, but I’d say they’d have to weigh 800 pounds apiece and they were on a pretty good trot.”

Chad Johnson has found about 80 diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park, but on Monday he nearly threw away his largest find yet. A cube-shaped rock plucked out of his sifters turned out to be a 4.38-carat, tea-colored diamond.

Johnson, 36, made the dig Saturday at the park and left his equipment in a locker. When he came back Monday morning, he made the discovery.

Crater of Diamonds State Park, which opened in 1972, is the world’s only diamond-producing site open to the public, and visitors can keep the gems they unearth. The largest diamond found at the park was the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight, a white diamond found in 1975.

Johnson’s find is the second-largest diamond uncovered at the park this year. In June, a Louisiana man found a 4.8-carat stone. More than 700 diamonds have been found there this year.

Since moving to Arkansas from Iowa in February, Johnson said, he was living off money made by selling diamonds. He only recently took a job at a convenience store, partly because he “got tired of selling diamonds to make ends meet.”

Park officials declined to speculate how much money Johnson could get for the diamond. Johnson suggested he expects much more than what he is used to getting.

“If someone offers me that much money, it’s theirs,” Johnson said.

The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China — it’s such an important part of the national consciousness that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Most of the 3,491 people with the name “Aoyun,” meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, as Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Daily reported, citing information from China’s national identity card database.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn’t say where the others live.

Names related to the Olympics don’t just stop with “Olympics.” More than 4,000 Chinese share their names with the Beijing Games mascots, the “Five Friendlies.”

The names are Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When put together, the phrase translates to “Beijing welcomes you!”

Chinese have increasingly turned to unique names as a way to express a child’s individuality.

In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 percent share the same 129 family names. That’s why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the Beijing Daily report.

Parents have turned to unusual combinations of letters, numbers and symbols when choosing their child’s name, Li Yuming, deputy director of the National Language Commission, told the Xinhua News Agency in an August interview.

At least one couple wanted to call their child “1A,” he said, while others use the e-mail address symbol (at), which in Chinese is pronounced “Aita,” meaning “love him.”

An Australian man who kidnapped and raped a woman blamed his actions on a spider, local media reported on Thursday.

Philip Spiers pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape, but told a court that the poison from a funnel-web spider bite had left him with a viral illness which led to his actions.

But a toxicologist told the New South Wales state District Court there was no medical evidence to suggest a spider bite could be responsible for anger and hatred.

Spiers, who kidnapped and raped the woman in 1997, was sentenced on Wednesday to eight years in jail.