- Belly’s gonna getcha! Classicand highly disturbingadvert for some running shoes in the UK. Seeing this advert will make several of my posts from the last few years suddenly make sense…
Category: Random
- Best game ever – an asteroid takes revenge on the tiny vector ships that have been oppressing it I’m a bit of a fan of this. Plucky underdog rises up to fight the oppressor. Very cool.
- Apparently thinking of three good things that happened to you or you did before going to bed improves general happiness This is an AP story, heavily syndicated all over the internets. I wonder about things like the AP. It drives me mad that this link probably won’t work in a few weeks. At the moment it’s on hundreds of sites. In a year? I don’t know that it’ll be on any. Doesn’t seem like a particularly brilliant model…
- It looks like we might actually hit a point relatively soon where you can get two $US for the £ Everything in America is free.
- Duncan Wilson and Sirrka Hammer’s awesome wall of beautiful pixel post-its Really like this – the wall is painted red and then four layers of grey post-its, each a slightly lighter shade the one before are placed on top. Through use patterns and shapes emerge…
- Richard Dawkins has written another essay about Atheism which I suppose is worth a read It’s not the best essay, by any means, but it’s vaguely interesting and of course I’m there with the sentiment. I wonder what draws a man to finally declare war on religion. I feel close to that point, but not there yet…
- Ethan KaplanSenior Director of Technology at Warner Bros Recordsis decidedly unimpressed by the Zune Discovered via the Digial Music Weblog, one of my new favourite places for keeping up with media shifts…
- Jack Schulze talks about robot arms, both those that translate movements larger or smaller and those that operate alone I don’t know if I buy the idea of ubiquitous robotic arms, although no doubt improving technology, better sensors and semi-flexible materials might make them more practical. But it’s a lovely lyrical post. Fascinating…
- New Popular Edition Maps is using 1940s public domain maps as a foundation to build a free UK Postcode database All you have to do is go to the site, find the place you grew up in or your current home on the site and then leave a marker complete with your postcode and the dataset builds itself. Totally public domain. Very cool.
- A team of experts has drawn up five “grand challenges” in order to evaluate the safety of nanotechnology… This seems mostly concerned with the creation of new particulates rather than with any of the so-far science-fiction grey-goo assemblers that people tend to get so tense about…
- Although nominated for best personality, I’m afraid I was not a winner at the Gay Bloggies It went to the much more entertaining Towleroad instead. I always felt a bit out of place in the listings, not being quite A-Gay enough. Still it was nice to be nominated – gives you faith that it’s not just the flamboyantly gay who get noticed…
- towleroad – the blog for modern gay men It’s political, it’s sexy, it’s funny, it’s got all the social media stuff going on and it just deservedly won some gay bloggies. A relaxing read before my people rise up and force our twisted sexualities and musical theatre on Middle America…
- We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to replace the national anthem with ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet The British, as ever, cutting to the heart of the world’s big issues. Altways believe in your soul. You’ve got the power to know. Britain, you’re indestructable…
- Beautiful scarves covered in awesome retro-pixel art I desperately want some of these, but I can’t tell whether or not I’d look ridiculous wandering around in one. Would anyone take me seriously? Does anyone take me seriously now?!
- How to write in polytonic (ancient) Greek in OSX This is sort of a niche thing to care about, but care about it I do. I keep wondering if I should put up any of my old abandoned doctoral work onto the web. Seems weird to have spent that much time on something and not be able to open up some of the results…
- Techcrunch (in July) covered the online sites that are hoping to replace paper TV guides Fascinating overview full of useful information that gesture towards the future of television
- The Cintiqas described on Kevin Kelly’s siteis basically a combination tablet and monitor that allows you to do illustration work in a way that resembles working on paper There’s a substantial chunk of writing on the page from Scott McCloud talking about how he uses it too. It looks pretty extraordinary, actually. Wouldn’t mind one of those, although god knows what I’d use it for.
- Medium-old BBC article about the perfect comedy face contains a great line from Ricky Gervais “All these years I assumed my global success as a comedian was down to my acute observations, expert directorial rendering and consummate skills as a performer. Turns out it’s because I’ve got a fat girly face.”
I normally manage all my links through del.icio.us but for some reason the other day my normal publishing routine failed to work just as I’d linked to a hundred thousand things. So here is what that post would have looked like, carefully recreated by hand:
- Check out Flickr’s new maps for London. This is stunningly good stuff… Yahoo and Flickr now have good maps for Britain and the rest of Europe as well, which should help the whole geotagging thing really fly outside the US. I’ve known this was coming for a while, but it doesn’t make its arrival any less welcome…
- Awesome Japanese version of the Apple Mac ads See if you can guess which one is the PC and the particular subject of this advert. It’s weird how literal the translation has been…
- Locomotive – the simplest way to get playing with Rails quickly I started off thinking that it would be easier to play with Rails by getting Pair to install it for me on my server, but actually having a go using Locomotive is actually much the simplest option. Much recommended. Get the Agile book too…
- Big Brother are now operating in Second Life Now I enjoy Second Life as much as the next guy, but you have to wonder about big media’s relationship with it. It all seems to be about getting headlines and being talked about. The actual Second Life experiences are normally a bust.
- Photosynth appears to be a pretty extraordinary new way of exploring and using photos Created by Microsoft Research, my only real eyebrow raise is whether or not it’s one of those things that actually gets effectively translated into the mainstream. Microsoft’s done a lot of fascinating work recently that hasn’t been productisable…
- Joe Clark is asking for your money to help him get some accessibility projects off the ground I think this is very interesting indeed. He’s looking for people who can fund him for four months while he tries to get a larger and more serious piece of funding together. I’ll probably contribute something. You should do, it’s a decent goal…
- Das Rad is a German video about human civilisation from the perspective of some sentient rocks Reminds me of the Super Furry Animals song ‘Slow Life’. It leaves me wanting more – what happened to all the people?! What’s the story of the solitary light that blinks for a while? Awesome.
- Ask Metafilter discusses the frat boys who were confused participants in the Borat movie Scandalously, I’m on the side of the students here. I’d need to see the full video of the evening, complete with the way they were primed, the things that Cohen himself said and how selectively they were edited before I’d be prepared to condemn them…
- Looks like the lovely Dunstan Orchard is going to start working on Flickr Perfect, lovely match. They’ll do very well with one another. I’m really interested in the international nature of the Flickr team. Surprisingly well-stacked with Australians, Canadians and Brits…
- Ze Frank talks about Web Developers Simon and Paul are nothing like this at all. I’m not either. None of my friends are like this. It’s a scandalous misrepresentation. Um.
- Samurai Jack vs. Kill Bill Now this is entertainment! Samurai’s destroying robots in gloriously invigorating (if slightly clich√©d) pastiche with Kill Bill music…
- iShowU – screencast software for the Mac I haven’t tried this yet, but I have a feeling it’s going to come in very handy. Recommended by friends.
- .net magazine has a list of top British blogs that is worth exploring I feel a bit of a fraud being referenced in these things as if I were an eager publisher desperate for an audience, rather than a grumpy curmudgeon who views this site rather as a part of himself and considers this self rather shy…
- The Top 100 darndest things that fundamentalist Christians have said recently… Even though I’m profoundly atheistic I’m well aware that most Christians are utterly unlike the lunatics exposed here. But I spent over an hour reading through the site in horror, and people need to be aware that these extremes exist…
- Sir Elton John would like to ban all organised religion It’s a sentiment with which I find myself sympathetic to, although banning stuff seldom seems to solve anything. He’s going to get no end of stick for this though. It could destroy him in parts of the US…
- Glumbert.com has a 1950s Anti-Homosexual Propoganda film from the United States There’s so much I’d say about this if I had more time. The important thing to remember is that there is a sizeable population in the US who would like to start making films like this again. Never believe that the progression in gay
- Our soldiers are getting scorched colons launching fireworks from their arseholes… Godsmacked. Stunned. And not only because this actually happened, but that the Times would print the story. The latter situation may be what this link is really about…
- Daring Fireball has a sizeable and comprehensive review of Stikkit, Rael Dornfest’s new project recently launched at Web 2.0I was going to write a review of my own, but I’d be pretty hard-pressed to compete with this. Mine in a nutshell – it’s a beautiful and classy bit of work that I’m having trouble getting my head around.
- Entertaining Late Late Show approach to Donald Rumsfeld… Thanks to Kerry Bailey at mugwump.typepad.com for finding me that one. S’funny