30/04/06
Marcus:
"A blistering comedy 'tribute' to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close." (via)
justin: Here's the video at You Tube. I gotta say, this is funny stuff - the president gets b*tch-slapped hard.
Marcus:
Feng shui-enabled mobile phone patented by Motorola.
Marcus: The amount of sensory data it uses is impressive, although the concept is weird.
29/04/06
Justin:
Do you remember where you were when the first Nintendo Revolutions screenshots came out? - A Fanboy Intervention
Marcus:
A new physics processor chip "makes virtual worlds behave as realistically as they look".
Marcus: "Buildings will blow up spectacularly, football tackles will become more bone-crunching, and cloth will flutter and crumple, lending a dramatic flair to online role-playing games."
Marcus: The only problem is it's currently too powerful for even high-end PCs to support properly. And it costs $300.
gareth: Yeah, already mentioned it in reference to some demos of it
Marcus:
"The Sci Fi Channel will delve into the backstory of 'Battlestar Galactica' with a new series that looks at the years leading up to humanity's devastation by the Cylons." (via)
Marcus: 'Caprica' will be set more than 50 years prior to the events of 'Battlestar Galactica' and focus on the lives of two families - the Adamas (ancestors of future Galactica commander William) and the Graystones. Humankind's Twelve Colonies are at peace and on the verge of a technological breakthrough: the first Cylon."
Marcus: Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet!
justin: Hmm, doesn't sound amazing. Chariots of the Gods could be cool though.
gareth: Gentlemen, start your torrents!
tim: yeah I've got a few doubts that this goose will lay another golden egg on demmand
Justin:
The Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP will blow your face off - literally, and I mean it this time. Look at the video of what it is capable of. Cute.
chris: (Jaw hits floor) Want one!
Marcus:
"The Glastonbury Festival is hoping to expand to allow up to 20,000 more people to attend next year, taking its capacity close to 175,000."
Marcus: The new Latitude Festival looks interesting too. Although they've still made it too early in the summer for me to attend. Why not the end of July, you selfish bastards?
justin: I thought that after they put the wall up the congestion at the festival was down to more acceptable levels. I have no interest at all in seeing 20000 more people there (if I am there).
gareth: Are they still doing the wireless headphones thing?
Marcus:
YouTube, the increasingly ubiquitous video hosting service, could be running up bandwidth bills of over $1 million a month. And, er, not really making any kind of money back. (via)
28/04/06
Gareth:
Nationstates is awesome. You create your own nation and it evolves based on your decisions regarding certain political issues. It's funny too.
27/04/06
Marcus:
"SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas." (via)
Marcus: It's a Google thing intended for use in designing 3D building models for Google Earth.
Marcus: But also claims that it's "a great way to discover if 3D modeling is right for you."
Marcus:
The Call of the Bloop.
Marcus: "One sound captured by the sensitive SOSUS hydrophones has scientists puzzled. It fits the profile of a living creature, but for a creature to create this sound it would have to be significantly larger than a blue whale, which is believed to be the largest animal ever to have lived."
Marcus: Hear the Bloop. Sadly, it's a little underwhelming.
justin: Hmm, sounds exactly like a bubble underwater.
Marcus:
Nintendo's Revolution console is now going to be called "Wii"?!?
Marcus: In other news, Sony rename the Playstation 3 to the "Puu".
gareth: And a liquid version of the PS2 dubbed "pipi"
Gareth:
At Baghdad's Bab al-Sharjee market, a haven for criminals, anyone can walk into one of about 15 shops selling police and military supplies and buy a police commando uniform for 35,000 Dinars (about $24) or an ordinary police uniform for $15.
shop owner: I don't care who comes to buy them. As long as they give me the money, I give them the products
gareth: No wonder people are getting abducted and killed by militants disguised as police officers
Justin:
The Culture War - wired article with some great quotes by people waging war on all aspects of culture from telephones to the waltz.
Marcus:
Iridium makes most Mac OS X apps use the cool-looking Unified theme instead of the mish-mash of three different visual styles that you usually get.
Marcus: Although on reflection I prefer Uno, which does the same kind of thing.
Tim:
god have mercy, and call the fashion police, hands up whoever loves socks with sandals
Marcus: Horrendous in so many ways. Also, it's one big webpage with dozens of big images on - a web design crime as big as the sartorial one it chronicles.
Marcus:
Why does HAL sing "Daisy, Daisy" in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
tim: I think I heard somewhere that it covers all the major vowel sounds or something....
Marcus:
"Pepsi has been ordered to pay 20,000 rupees ($445) in damages to a man from Delhi who found a condom in a sealed bottle."
Marcus:
The BBC has "unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com."
Marcus: A "public service version of MySpace.com" sounds like a nightmarish dystopian vision to me.
Marcus: But perhaps I'm just old fashioned in wanting my BBC content to be made by, you know, professional people who know what they're doing.
Marcus: Rather than have the BBC aim to make a website that looks like this.
Marcus: That last link is fairly NSFW. And the worst part is, it was literally the first profile I clicked on when I went to MySpace to find an example of what I didn't want the BBC to look like.
Marcus: As opposed to finding it on, say, Something Awful. Which is where the entirety of My Space belongs.
26/04/06
Justin:
Man, those projector keyboards are already available! - next someone will be telling me that we all live in SPACE.
Justin:
Great Interview with Matt Groening where he talks about The Simpsons, new Futurama movies and Family Guy
Gareth:
Dr. Hans Blix—Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and fromer head of UNMOVIC—referred to his cameo in Team America: World Police. Hilarious clip.
25/04/06
Marcus:
What is red mercury?
Marcus: According to some people, it's a load of bollocks; according to the guy who invented the neutron bomb, it's a very real and scary way of killing people in explosions with small amounts of material.
Marcus: These guys thought it was real, too.
Marcus: (Although it transpires that the original linked article at the top was clearly turned out in pre-Iraq invasion "do they have WMDs?" hysteria.)
gareth: Oh, the huge manatee!
Gareth:
Is the US public ready for United 93, a movie about the fourth plane involved in the mess on Sept.11th? I think it's time the American public wake up from the garbage movies and media they are addicted to and look at a portrayal of something real (that actually affects them). Although this will probably just excite the war-mongering part of them.
Gareth:
Magician David Blaine has announced plans to spend seven days submerged in a water-filled container in New York.
24/04/06
Marcus:
The iPad "at just 380 square feet, with a stylish living space and fully-fitted kitchen area, separate bedroom and proper bathroom... takes its name from the iPod".
Marcus: No sh*t - I'm glad that we've got journalists to point this kind of elusive fact out.
Marcus: Still, the iPad looks like an interesting small-but-affordable-and-trendy housing intiative thing.
gareth: I hate the trend of prefixing just about everything with "i" that the iPod has brought on.
Marcus: iAgree.
gareth: youBastard
Gareth:
John Dvorak is almost right (especially with Boot Camp)
Marcus: John Dvorak is clueless. And his keyboard layout sucks.
gareth: The Dvorak keyboard is frustrating, yeah. But he does seem to have called Apple on supporting Windows XP. Although it's not as if they're at all abandoning OSX (and they shouldn't). I suppose it could have been a lucky guess though.
Marcus: The central idea that Apple would abandon OS X in favour of XP is retarded. I wasn't all that suprised that Apple brought out a facility to run Windows though - it's a logical move to capture more of the wavering "I'd buy a Mac if I could also run Windows on it" market. Worked on me anyway.
gareth: I have to admit, I'd be more likely to switch to a Mac in attempt to avoid using WinXP. OS X seems to have some really genius ideas about it (ie: one install directory, no stupid registries etc)
Marcus:
Bonjour for Windows puts Apple's zero-config networking software onto PCs for easy PC<>Mac file/device sharing.
Justin:
Revisiting Another World - if anyone remembers the classic Eric Chahi game "Another World" - they are in for a treat.
Marcus: Awesome game - Flashback was even better.
Justin:
So Say We All: The Visual Effects of "Battlestar Galactica"
gareth: The space battles are truly impressive
23/04/06
Marcus:
Happy St George's Day!
Marcus: Probably the most under-celebrated patron saint's day in the world. I do wish us English had more of a sense of national pride.
Marcus: Still, at least crass commercialisation of the day isn't such a problem.
Marcus: Whereas.
Chris:
Just got in from seeing Calexico and Iron & Wine at the Academy in Bristol. Amazing gig. If they're touring near you, go see 'em.
justin: I stumbled past the Academy this evening, on my way home from a bar.
21/04/06
Chris:
Hmmm. Variety are reporting that Lost and Alias creator J J Abrams is to make a film of the "Starfleet Academy" script that's been kicking around for ten years or so, featuring the first meeting of Kirk and Spock. The folks at Ain't it Cool reckon (not entirely seriously) that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck should be cast in the roles. You never know, it's a million to one shot but it might... just... work... Just give me five minutes to configure the main deflector dish to emit a chroniton pulse, cap'n. Or something.
On the other hand, the Variety story itself sounds like it was written by aliens - I'm not sure I like the idea of anyone "energizing the pipeline via high-profile tentpoles while revitalizing the Par brand with top-tier talent such as Abrams." Where do they get these people? What drugs are they on? I think we should be told.
Gareth:
I have just lost complete faith in all aspects of humanity
justin: Eww, it looks like a dried out baby dragon foetus.
Marcus: It looks like the wet dream of somebody who says things like "my +3 magic staff gains +3HP when used in conjunction with the +2 magic boots".
justin: You know too much.
Marcus:
How to subscribe to a Google Calendar using iCal.
Marcus: In case my Mac-heavy linkage hasn't already given it away - I've betrayed humanity switched.
Marcus: Also: how to subscribe an iCal calendar to Google Calendar so you can edit your iCal appointments and have them sync to gCal.
gareth: I was rather suspicious that you'd switched teams. Why though?
justin: He didn't mention it to me last weekend. Next thing I know, wham, he's about-faced more dramatically than the Italians in WW2.
Marcus:
How to install Windows XP on a Mac using an external USB/Firewire HD.
Marcus: Although there are conflicting reports about whether or not you still need the internal partition, and whether or not it actually works at all.
Marcus:
iTorrent: download BitTorrent'd podcasts into iTunes. (via)
Marcus: A bit of Googling suggests that BT'd podcasts are rather thin on the ground at the moment.
Marcus: Mondays, "a weekly show chock full of technology news", is one site which does offer a BT podcast.
Gareth:
Survey after survey shows that whether you measure your productivity in facts researched, alien spaceships vaporized, or articles written, adding an extra monitor will give your output a considerable boost — 20 percent to 30 percent.
justin: I've used a dual monitor setup at home and at work for some time now, and it is amazing. I cannot believe how some people, especially 3d artists, could work without it. Although I do browse the net all day with one of them.
20/04/06
Marcus:
CoverFlow is a free Mac iTunes plugin which enables you to browse you music collection as if the albums were in their original CD jewelboxes.
Marcus: The accompanying QuickTime video gives a good impression of how cool this is.
Marcus:
Salling Clicker is superb remote control software for the Mac (and PC). Control all kinds of apps through your mobile phone/PDA and Bluetooth/Wifi.
Marcus:
Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace: one guy's account of getting more graceful CSS into MySpace, or "making a pig do the pachanga." (via)
Marcus: Fascinating (providing you're into your web design) as well as a useful guide if you fancy getting your hands dirty with prettying-up a MySpace page.
Marcus:
County-by-county maps of different religion concentrations in the US. (via)
Marcus: I can't actually view this at work (stupid filters), but it sounds interesting.
Justin:
Sex cues ruin men's decisiveness - this is courtesy of Marcus, but he never posts anymore.
Marcus: Er, I was about to post this. You've ruined my life.
justin: I did email it to all women in the workplace telling them they have to wear grey jump suits lest they impact my personal producivity.
19/04/06
Justin:
Whats going on here? the BBC is annoyed because someone within it's ranks has leaked some DJ's salaries, so what does it do? a Q&A disclosing the leaked salaries.
justin: I'd like to think it was in order to remind Chris Moyles that he's the lowest totem on the pole.
gareth: I'd gladly take the lowest totem position if they paid me 630k a year
Gareth:
easyGestures is probably the most innovative and original extensions I have ever used. Although the myriad of adblocking ones are awesome, too.
18/04/06
Gareth:
"I'm the decider and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain," Mr Bush said.
gareth: One day, the Grammar Police will catch him and I will be happy.
Gareth:
Studies of the brain using the video game Duke Nukem have shown how sleep affects long-term memory. Pah, Duke Nukem? I'd think Counter Strike would be a much better game to test that with.
Gareth:
The Gatso camera at roadworks on the M62 at Ferrybridge raised £1,088,000 from 18,000 drivers.
17/04/06
Gareth:
Use this awesome page to convert an image into 1024 people holding up coloured signs. Really crappy google translation from japanese, but the page isn't that hard to make sense of.
Gareth:
"One of the more visually arresting wearables on display at the recent CTIA Fashion in Motion shows was this vertebral wireless interface to be worn around the head and neck."
16/04/06
Marcus:
Explore original papyrus pages of the The Gospel of Judas, and download the original Coptic text or its English translation as a PDF.
Marcus: "...This newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities."
Marcus: The National Geographic Lost Gospel microsite is superbly put together and a thoroughly diverting read.
Marcus: The Wikipedia article is also interesting reading.
Marcus:
Interesting things at Damn Interesting. (via)
Marcus: Such as the tale of the WWII Soviet anti-tank dogs.
Marcus: Or the rather gruesome article on Lucid Decapitation.
Marcus: Or the weird story of North Korea's "Secret" Hotel.
Marcus:
"The roll-out of Apple's forthcoming video iPod has been delayed substantially after the company encountered problems with the display and touch-screen interface."
15/04/06
Gareth:
Why Windows is less secure than Linux: "Windows has grown so complicated that it is harder to secure." There are pictures too!
14/04/06
Marcus:
"Teenage Goths are more likely to self-harm than those in other social groups, a study has found."
Marcus: My vote for "least surprising research of the year".
gareth: The researchers probably actually wasted all the research money they had been granted on vacations etc, then went "oh sh*t we have to do a report" so they pulled that out of their ass.
Gareth:
In a surprising turn of events, it turns out D-link routers are garbage and are breaking the internet.
13/04/06
Marcus:
"Two-thirds of the members of a teaching union have considered leaving the profession because of pupils' bad behaviour."
justin: And most kids don't want to be at school either... doesn't sound like the Disney Land it's made out to be.
Gareth:
Some awesome javascript 'bookmarklets', that will aid in removing garbage formatting/flash/sound/images etc from annoying pages that you might find and happen to want to read. Although someone who is rubbish at webpage design can't be all that useful of a logical/intelligent thinker, can they?
Justin:
The Battle of Tra Binh Dong and the Korean Origins of the U.S. Marine Corps Martial Arts Program
justin: "It was knife to knife and hand-to-hand—and in that sort of fighting the Koreans, with their deadly tae kwon do are unbeatable. When the action stopped shortly after dawn, 104 enemy bodies lay within the wire, many of them eviscerated or brained."
justin: Brained??
gareth: Dictionary.com says that brained = "To smash in the skull of."
12/04/06
11/04/06
Gareth:
SoundOfAnImage converts images into music. Unfortunately I'm not a mac user, and as such can't really give it a go
10/04/06
Gareth:
The American Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service that a government document containing specific information about the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One and detailed interior maps of the two planes -- including the location of Secret Service agents within the planes -- was posted on the Web site of an Air Force base.
09/04/06
08/04/06
Gareth:
The Fotosniper: essentially consisting of a Zenit 122 SLR, huge telephoto lens, and tough-guy rifle-mount, this is indispensable equipment for global espionage, top-secret reconnaissance, and no-holds-barred birdwatching.
chris: Jeez, I remember seeing one of these in about 1976 and wanting one. It doesn't look like the design's changed at all!
Gareth:
Kapersky has written a virus that targets both Linux and Windows boxes, as a proof of concept
Marcus:
Firefox "causes" breakup. (via)
Marcus: "Later, she installed Firefox for herself, and happened to need to edit the list of sites to never save passwords for. She quickly realized that he had been visiting dating sites in secret..."
Gareth:
How to pull an all-nighter
gareth: Just incase you were wondering
gareth: Actually, thinking about it, it's not very well-written. He does have a point regarding what foods to eat; however, I find a lot of techno to be a bit overly rhythmic for when you are trying to stay awake. Classical offers more ups and downs - the variation helps a lot for staying completely alert.
Marcus: My tips for pulling an all-nighter: just bloody do it. Just stay up. It's as easy as that.
Marcus: My all-time longest all-nighter was being up for 72 hours on the trot prior to my teaching assessment day.
Marcus: Although I was an hallucinating gibbermonkey by the end of it.
Justin: Exactly, so what's the point? There is such bravado about working late hours, but if you don't take into account how vastly diminished your effectiveness is, you just end up wasting more time. We've been pulling late ones at my workplace for quite a while now, and you begin to notice people making schoolboy errors.
andy: Marcus! 72hrs? pah, i remember those counterstrike days all those years ago, fuelled on nothing but orange juice... must of been at least 96 hrs!
Gareth:
Someone is selling this running replica of Star Wars Landspeeder, made from a 1988 Ford Escort for £8,000.
gareth: Sorry Marcus, it just went for £6,500
Gareth:
This is quite possibly the longest (and most boring) Rube Goldberg machine ever
Marcus: You're really selling this link to me.
gareth: I bet you clicked it anyways!
07/04/06
Gareth:
Israelis have come up with "forcefields". Although it looks more like a really fancy use of radar from the way they describe it
: This is so cool - it's probably just like that thing we (UK) have on ships, computer controled guns that shoot at targets. An additional benefit I can think of, is that it enables heavily armoured vehicles to be lightly armoured, thus boosting their speed and range.
andy: I used this ECM system on ELITE ages before any human government got its hands on it... old news.
Gareth:
Hollaback apparantly "empowers" New Yorkers by giving them a place to post pictures of people that harassed them on the street. I don't follow their logic at all.
Marcus: Mmm, self-obsessed-passive-aggressive-tastic.
justin: Yeah, this is just a bunch of highly strung women b*tching about men they don't fancy approaching them.
Justin:
Jesus and Mo - charming comic about the adventures of Jesus and Mohammed
justin: Bonus Mohammed clipart.
Justin:
Police are now warning UK citizens to report to Defra if they find any particular types of dead birds, or groups of dead birds. I suppose citizens in other countries ought to keep their eyes open as well.
Gareth:
Microsoft has snapped up one of the UK's leading figures from the world of video games, Peter Molyneux.
gareth: Bah, I don't think he's nearly as innovative as they give him credit for. Atleast, Fable was a load of garbage - after being in development for five years, you have to wonder what the hell happened.
gareth: Where was this "freedom of exploration" you were talking about, Peter? Or characters that compete with you as if they were living players? Huh Peter?!
Gareth:
KittenAuth is a new system for human-checking that forgoes all the useless random string crap that people cannot read, and replaces the whole lot with pictures of cute animals.
06/04/06
Gareth:
Women tend to put on weight and eat more unhealthily when they move in with a boyfriend, a study suggests.
justin: So are they trying to say that we make women eat unhealthily, or that women just let themselves go once in a relationship, because we all know what the truth is.
05/04/06
Marcus:
Snopes: "A quick romp through a growing list of those who died in the blaze of the footlights or on camera, or who were rumored to have met the Grim Reaper there."
Marcus:
Apple has brought out Boot Camp, free software which enables new Intel CPU Mac owners to install Windows XP.
gareth: Heh, that's after Apple's Techs were proven wrong in assuming it probably couldn't be done in the first place.
gareth: Haha, I love some of the info that Apple has put up on their page:
Apple wit:
Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.
Marcus:
Gene Pitney has died.
Marcus: Lyrics: 24 Hours From Tulsa.
Marcus: Lyrics: Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart.
Justin:
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, TX—In what wildlifestyle reformation volunteers are calling a "positive step," the first group of rehabilitated Girls Gone Wild were released back into the civilized world Monday, and early signs indicate that they are adjusting smoothly, according to the director of the group responsible for their rescue.
Gareth:
Ever wondered what sort of setup Bill Gates has, and how he works?
gareth: Funny that he uses the default xp wallpaper.
justin: Maybe that was his wallpaper to begin with, and he made everyone else have to use it as well?
04/04/06
Gareth:
Bit late now, but about 23 minutes ago the time was 01:02:03 04/05/06. Although I'm -7 GMT, so I haven't missed it yet.
gareth: However, if you put the date before the month it'll happen again next month
Gareth:
Bookmarklets are free tools to help with repetitive or otherwise impossible tasks in your web. The zap category is particularly useful.
Gareth:
How secure is your password?
gareth: Have a garbage password? Generate a proper one. My shiny new (and ridiculously long) password would take a minimum of 5.9266052933204949770461880190828e+95 years to crack with a bruteforce attack.
gareth: Of course I can't remember it, so it's a bit of a hindrance.
Gareth:
This is a lot of case mods. I'm admittedly not much for them, but this oneis some great design at work.
03/04/06
02/04/06
01/04/06
Gareth:
Wikipedia has a list of this year's best known April Fools jokes
chris: Probably the best one I saw was Flickr's "explore" page, which showed nothing except cat photos from midnight right the way through until noon.