After an enlightening discussion on perpetual motion machines, this seems apt:
posted by A 10:49 AM
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Happy Fun Ball
It's Happy! It's Fun! It's Happy Fun Ball!
Yes, Happy Fun Ball, the toy sensation that's sweeping the nation. Only $14.95 at particpating stores!
Get one Today!
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
Itching
Vertigo
Dizziness
Tingling in extremities
Loss of balance or coordination
Slurred speech
Temporary Blindness
Profuse sweating
Heart Palpitations
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Happy Fun Ball: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
posted by A 3:41 PMTuesday, March 25, 2003
More search fun...
"How to make playdoh"
Well, if you really want to know...
2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water, 2 table spoons vegetable oil.
Fiddle with ingredients until it's about right.
Knead for about 15 minutes.
Be disappointed.
Don't eat it.
Buy plasticine.
And about another dozen people looking for 'sim city 4 serial crack'
Here's a hint - GameCopyWorld.
Or buy the bloody thing if you want it that badly.
Someone also searched for 'nice porn'. Good luck to you, sir!
posted by A 12:23 PMMonday, March 24, 2003
The unwritten geek credo states that originality and strangeness are good, and that blind conformity and stupidity are unforgivable.
posted by A 3:37 PMFriday, March 21, 2003
I just remembered why I never buy DVDs - 20 quid each? How the hell do they work out it's worth that? sheesh...
posted by A 2:57 PMTuesday, March 18, 2003
Hmm.
Some person searched for:
"safety of i cant believe it's not butter"
And got my site...
Uh - it is safe - isn't it?
posted by A 11:14 AM
Best. Internetshortfilm. Ever.
posted by A 11:01 AMMonday, March 17, 2003
That weekend in brief:
Day 1.
Went to Tesco's.
Realised I didn't know how to make playdoh.
Guessed.
Bought extra strong bread flour, cornflour and food colouring.
Looked up various recipes for playdoh.
Made some, with varying levels of success.
Added food colouring (which is just fading now, after 3 days)
Found every lamp and light in the house and put them on the table.
Broke out the camera and had a stop motion play!
Watched quietly as the figure sagged under it's own weight.
Obviously a new tack was required.
Day 2.
Got up.
Went all round Aldershot, trying to find plasticine.
After many shops, found some, hurray.
Spent the afternoon making characters (a penguin, a mushroom, a whale, a frog, a.. man with a hat...)
Had a second play, with reasonable success.
Decided to try stop motion animation with people.
Ended up jumping up and down outside whilst Si takes pictures of me. No you may not see it.
...later...
Got a broom handle.
Waved it around.
Broke out After Effects.
Did this (better with sound)
No After Effects does NOT have a Lightsaber plugin.
Coming soon - more light sabre silliness, with a borrowed DV cam.
I'm exhausted.
posted by A 3:18 PMSaturday, March 15, 2003
A few amusing search terms that have hit my webpage...
'Capabilities of the Adam bomb'
The person even had spell checking turned on...
"british television edonkey"
Good luck. Uhm, what precisely were you after?
"comedy gcse paper metaphors ballerina dog lamppost"
God knows what was going on with this
"mp3 comedy "Darth Vader" interview"
Nice try, but no. Use Kazaa next time...
"bryan adam download here"
Ah... no
"play bomb iraq online game"
Enders' game, anyone?
"large clitoris"
Erk!
"her hair glistened in the rain like nose hairs after a sneeze"
What on EARTH?
posted by A 10:12 AM
You know your life's surreal when...
You use your food-colouring dyed hands to hoover off the cornflour and water mixture from your warhammer table in the living room.
posted by A 9:53 AMFriday, March 14, 2003
Time for some more fun goodies from me and the eMule network! (or edonkey, edonkey2000 or overnet, depending on your preference)
Thumbs:
Thumb Wars - The Phantom Cuticle
Bat Thumb(Batman.Spoof)avi
Thumbtanic(Titanic Spoof)
Frankenthumb (Frankenstein spoof)
Demo sets:
Latest Hardcore/old skool demo set
Latest house/club/dance demo set
Tracks I've written:
DjArcas - AYB - Nu Gabber Style.mp3
Dj Paul - Happy Hardcore - Life is like a Dance(Dj Arcas Classic Mix).mp3
Dj Arcas - Happy Hardcore - My House.mp3
Dj H@ttrix - I lose Control - Happy Hardcore - (DjArcas Tartan Techno Remix).mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - #rave1.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - AirRave.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Bass Drum Go.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Bellisma.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Bubble Techno (Dj Friendly Remix).mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Deadlights.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Duke Technum.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - HardFX.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - I wanna come back inside.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Journeyman of the Sonic.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Ken_boun.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - ONLY if I had one more!.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Pac-Drill.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Please Do Me This time.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - RAR.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Ravers of Darkness.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Rock on my own.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Sail Away (da hardcore way).mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - That old Hardcore choon.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Twinkle Mania Part 3.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Unkey Myland.mp3
DjArcas - Happy Hardcore - Who wanta my Wang.mp3
DjArcas - StarForce Remix.mp3
E-Rotic - Happy Hardcore - Fred Come To Bed (DjArcas Mad Mix).mp3
Happy Hardcore - Dj H@ttrix - I lose Control - (DjArcas Tartan Techno Remix).mp3
Happy Hardcore - Lost In Love (DjArcas Mix).mp3
Jimmy J - Happy Hardcore - Sweet in my Pocket (DjArcas 96 Tr.mp3
Lost In Love - Legend B - Happy Hardcore - (DjArcas Mix).mp3
Nekkid Djs - DjArcas - AYB - Nu Gabber Style.mp3
posted by A 11:43 AMThursday, March 13, 2003
If ever you need to generate an ASCII logo (maybe you have to do a text only page for something I can't mention under a certain NDA)
Use this!
Now I know how the warez groups do it... *grins*
posted by A 3:11 PMWednesday, March 12, 2003
Oh could there be anything worse...
And if there IS something worse, I really don't want to know about it...
posted by A 2:22 PMMonday, March 10, 2003
The future meets the past...
IPV6 enabled Wget
I wonder when IPV6 is actually going to become reality. Internet2 uses it... when will it spring from universities to the rest of the world?
posted by A 10:26 AMFriday, March 07, 2003
The internet... 2!
Scientists have set a new internet speed record by transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data across 10,978 kilometres (6,800 miles), from Sunnyvale in the US to Amsterdam in Holland, in less than one minute
*whoosh*
posted by A 11:00 AM
>Motor City Online?
Never heard of it. And that's a shame, as it looks bloody good, and it's being taken offline!
Hopefully someone will listen to this, however:
Online gaming is assumed to be free. Motor City Online, as a boxed retail product, cost $40 plus $10 a month. That's a lot of money, especially to the core teen audience who can get behind a title and make it a huge hit. EA eventually dropped the price of the game to $20 plus $10 a month, but do the math. When you're selling a game that costs $140 a year on the low end and you're competing for attention with games like Counter-Strike-a free mod for Half-Life, a game that's $20 and you're done, for as long as you want to play it-you're doomed to fail (unless you can convince that audience that it's worth it-which EA, again, did not even try to do). Okay, that's not a racing game, but it does create expectations for what a good online game can charge. (Sierra's NASCAR Racing and EA's own Need for Speed series offer similar free internet play, so if you just wanna race another live person, you don't need to spend $10 a month to do it. For younger gamers without credit cards, MCO did eventually let you send in checks and even pay via PayPal--but nobody ever actually sent out a press release or made any attempt to inform the audience that it was easier to pay to play. There were tons of real-world brands in the MCO, everything from car manufacturers to real-world parts, so maybe in-game sponsorships should have been explored to reduce the price. You're looking at roadside billboards anyway--if they advertise a real car or automotive brand and reduce the fees, that's fine with me. And wouldn't car advertisers love knowing their core, enthusiast consumer was getting their message?
4) Gamers felt like they were buying it twice. Ever hear the old analogy about razors and razor blades? In a game like MCO, you're making steady income on the monthly fee. Charging gamers $20 or $40 for the boxed game as well looks greedy--and that's because it is. A lot of gamers I spoke to said they might pay the monthly fee, but they were not going to shell out the price for a full game as well. They wanted either a free game with paid online play, or a paid game with free online play. A paid game with paid online play is understandably not cool to the consumer. After the first few months, EA should have given the MCO client software away--or better still, bundled the MCO installer on one of the discs that comes with PC gaming magazines. Here it is, here's a week's free play time to test it out; if you like it, subscribe. Instead, there was too much financial risk involved, and not enough people took the bait.
posted by A 10:17 AMThursday, March 06, 2003
" 'Where have you been?" said Arthur.
'Around,' said Ford, 'around and about.' He grinned in what he accurately judged to be an infuriating manner. 'I just took my mind off the hook for a bit. I rekoned that if the world wanted me badly enough it would call back. It did.'
'Er, oh,' said Arthur.
'The point is, you see,' said Ford, 'is that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might as well just give in and save your sanity for later.'
'And this is you sane again, is it?' asked Arthur. 'I ask merely for information.'
He felt very strange. After nearly four years of total isolation he was so pleased and relieved to see Ford that he could almost cry. Ford was, on the other hand, an almost immediately annoying person.
-Life, the Universe, and Everything
posted by A 5:29 PM
Two adorable Maine Coon kittens, free to a good home.
Intelligent, playful, fluffy. Have to get rid of them due to burgeoning food demands and inability to tell the time.
posted by A 11:05 AM
Now then children, play nicely...
(full text underneath)
'Xbox Live has 350,000 subscribers!' said Microsoft yesterday....
With some huge hits like Mechassault and MotoGp, the xbox seems to be king of ot multiplayer games...
And then today
'We've sold 600,000 PS2 broadband adaptors!' say Sony.
Have you really, Sony? Last time I checked, there were 0 good online games, and only about 3 games that support them. Methinks someone's worried.
Microsoft:
Xbox Live Bursts Through 350,000-Subscriber Mark As Players Rush for Fresh Downloadable Content
European Gamers to Join Americans, Canadians and Japanese on Xbox Live March 14
REDMOND, Wash. - March 4, 2003 - Microsoft Corp. today revealed that more than 350,000 subscribers worldwide have joined the Xbox Live TM online game service. In addition to easily finding friends and using voice communication across all Xbox Live games, players now can enjoy downloadable content, an exclusive feature that delivers new maps, missions, statistics and characters to the built-in Xbox TM hard drive, keeping games fresh even after a player has completed all the levels.
New downloadable content for "MechAssault TM ," the popular Xbox Live-enabled game from Microsoft Game Studios, drove more than 172,000 downloads during the first week of availability. Xbox Live players from around the world had access to two new Mechs and two new levels. When Xbox Live launches in Europe on March 14, players of the best-selling Xbox game last holiday season, "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell TM ," from Ubi Soft Entertainment, will have access to a new level, Kola Cell, which requires players to utilize the game's unique gadgets and the characters' stealth capabilities to achieve the level's four objectives.
In a recent Microsoft survey, 82 percent of Xbox Live users identified downloadable content as the most desired feature for Xbox Live. Game developers are keen to deliver downloadable content because it allows them to instantly deepen relationships with enthusiastic fans by extending the life of their titles.
"From day one, our mission has been to give players what they want next," said J Allard, vice president of Xbox at Microsoft. "With the availability of downloadable content now on Xbox Live, we're making a big step toward keeping gaming current and adding an additional element to the industry."
Globally, Xbox Live is playing host to more than 3 million game sessions per week, with the growing Xbox Live community - which includes players from the United States, Canada and Japan - logging more than 15.7 million hours of online play, or just shy of 1,800 cumulative years, in the first three months of availability. And with peak gaming times coming during television prime time, it's apparent that consumers are fulfilling their desire for reality-based entertainment on Xbox Live, today's true reality program. On March 14, the global Xbox Live community will span 11 countries, when players from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom will become Xbox Live-enabled.
In the first three months of availability, Xbox Live Starter Kits have outsold the number of Sony PlayStation 2 Network Adapters by nearly 44 percent. In addition, players are choosing to experience multiplatform online-enabled games on Xbox Live. To date, the Xbox version of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon TM " from Ubi Soft has sold 35 percent more copies than the PlayStation 2 version.*
"Xbox's online service and voice capabilities really enhance the experience gamers get when playing 'Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon,'" said Tony Kee, vice president of Marketing for Ubi Soft Entertainment. "It's the social interaction with other fans of the game that makes 'Ghost Recon' on Xbox Live so appealing."
New exclusive game content for Xbox Live also will be available through retail channels, such as "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon TM : Island Thunder TM ," an upcoming campaign disk based on the original "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon," scheduled to hit store shelves this summer. The campaign disk will feature a new mission scenario, additional game types and 12 multiplayer maps for Xbox Live play, as well as four maps from the original "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon," at a lower estimated retail price than that of a full retail game. Players who purchase the stand-alone product also will have access to future downloadable content, including new missions and maps.
Fourteen Xbox Live-enabled games are currently available, with 10 more scheduled to come online in the next two months.
And Sony's 'rebuttal' (Sony, please note that there's a big difference between selling 600k units, and having 350k paying subscribers...)
Undignified scuffle as console giants compare installed bases
Microsoft's announcement that Xbox Live now has 350,000 users earlier this week has been met with scorn by Sony, which has issued a counter-statement claiming sales of over 600,000 PS2 network adapters.
Sony may have remained aloof throughout Microsoft and Nintendo's ridiculous spat over second place in the console race earlier this year, but it seems that online gaming is a more sensitive point with the market leader, and Microsoft's triumphant announcement has raised hackles in Tokyo and kicked off a round of "mine's bigger than yours" press releases.
Microsoft claims that it has sold 350,000 units of the Xbox Live Starter Kit in the USA and Japan (it's not clear whether the figure includes European Xbox Live Test Drive users; the service officially launches here on Friday week), representing a significant success for the service. Sony's counter-claim is that it has rolled out 0.6 million PS2 Network Adapters in the Japan and USA, despite the fact that the Japanese market is only due to see retail units of the hardware later this spring (as it was previously available only through rental from an ISP).
Sony launched the PS2 online service in the USA last August, and no concrete plans for a European launch have yet emerged - although it's known that beta testing is scheduled to start later this year.
One big question, however, is what exactly those 600,000 lucky owners of PS2 network adapters are doing with them. 200,000 odd of them are accounted for by the subscribers to Final Fantasy XI in Japan, but did 0.4 million people in North America really run out and buy the sparsely supported and under-promoted network adapters - and if so, what on earth are they doing with them?
posted by A 11:04 AMWednesday, March 05, 2003
Average IQ by country:
Uk is a long way down the list
There must be something in Holland. In the water, maybe?
posted by A 12:53 PM
Fairly tech heavy, but a glimpse of the future of cinema:
Digital Cinema
Deals with the resolutions, bit rate, frame rate, security, compression... very interesting. Tho it seems that digital isn't any higher definition than 35mm film, more that becuase it's digital as opposed to analogue, it doesn't need to be.
This is all about a quarter to an eighth of the quality of the IMAX system ("The IMAX 3D projector uses a 15,000 watt, water-cooled xenon arc lamp with two bulbs and runs horizontally at 48 frames per second" ), as it's currently not really higher quality than an expensive data projector ("Keeping in mind that most of the demonstrations of digital cinema to date have been at a resolution of 1280x1024") - on the other hand, the lumen count is probably high enough to burn a hole right through you...
posted by A 12:21 PMTuesday, March 04, 2003
Photographic evidence that you should have to take an IQ test to own a computer.
I note no iMacs here ;)
posted by A 11:51 AMMonday, March 03, 2003
It's started.
RD THS
"The teenager's essay which caused the problem began:
"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."
In translation:
"My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It's a great place." "
posted by A 10:14 AMSunday, March 02, 2003
Sung to the tune: "If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands"
If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi
And the bank takes back your Audi
And the TV shows are bawdy,
Bomb Iraq.
If the corporate scandals growin', bomb Iraq.
And your ties to them are showin', bomb Iraq.
If the smoking gun ain't smokin'
We don't care, and we're not jokin'.
That Saddam will soon be croakin',
Bomb Iraq.
Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.
From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections;
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.
While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.
Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.
If the ozone hole is growing,
Some things we prefer not knowing.
Though our ignorance is showing!
Bomb Iraq.
So here's one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq,
From his favourite little laddy, bomb Iraq.
Saying no would look like treason.
It's the Hussein hunting season.
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.
posted by A 9:49 PM
