30 March 2007
[apple] Top 10 Apple Products which Flopped … ‘One of the main reasons of Lisa’s failure was its astonishing price of $9,995 dollars ($21,500 in Feb 2007 dollars).’
1 April 2007
[blogs] Real interview with Fake Steve Jobs … ‘You know this one time when I was at Reed and really experimenting with acid, we did some 4-way acid but we didn’t realize it was 4-way so we each took a whole hit — which turned out to be a quadruple dose. And I swear during that trip I imagined the iPod for the first time. This was the early 70s. Actually I imagined a little teeny tiny record player that you could carry with you. But that’s basically what a hard disk is. I think.’
2 April 2007
[sopranos] 7 Minute Sopranos — brilliantly done summary of six seasons of the Sopranos … Christmas with the Sopranos: ‘Tony and Carm are racist. A.J. resents his Dad. Carm is pissed at her Dad. Bacala’s kids hate Janice. Tony is pissed at Chris for banging that Chick. Meadow’s moved to California and Chris is back on heroin.’ [via Metafilter]
3 April 2007
[tv] Peepshow Series 1-3 Catch Up — Peep Show summarised by Super Hans … ‘Frosties are just cornflakes for people who can’t face reality.’ [via As Above]
4 April 2007
[press] The Ten Things Most Likely to be on The Daily Express Front Page — Currybetdotnet analyses the Daily Express so you don’t have to … ‘I’ve looked at just over 150 stories which have been published on the front page of The Daily Express during the first three months of 2007, and I think I’ve come up with the definitive list of the ten most important things that have happened so far this year. Well, according to The Daily Express, anyway…’
5 April 2007
[comics] Are People really that anxious to see Lois get spanked?!? — amusing collection of letters from Superman comics in the Sixties … ‘Dear Editor, Everybody keeps asking for a story in which Lois gets a super-spanking. You keep saving Lois from a well deserved thrashing by saying SUPERMAN is a gentleman and would never hit a lady. Well I KNOW he’s a gentleman. But what about a story in which SUPERMAN meets up with RED Kryptonite…’
6 April 2007
[comics] Top 15 Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels — great list including some I’ve blogged before. Includes this classic panel:
7 April 2007
[green] I’ll Compost Your Corpse — The BBC’s “Ethical Man” looks at the issues around decomposing a corpse in an enviromentally friendly way. ‘…the problem with the way a corpse decomposes at the bottom of a grave is that there isn’t enough oxygen to get a good aerobic compost going. The main by-products of aerobic decomposition include carbon dioxide and water meanwhile anaerobic decomposition produces methane – 23 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas as CO2.’ [via Digg]
8 April 2007
[comics] The Mile High Collection — interesting Metafilter discussion on the discovery a massive collection of Golden Age comics (reminds me of Seth’s wonderful Wimbledon Green) … ‘$2 million for Action Comics #1. $273,000 for Flash #1. This society is sick.’
9 April 2007
[self-help] Ask Metafilter: What is the dumbest, funniest, most peculiar piece of advice you have ever found in a self-help book? … ‘From the worst ‘How To’ book on screenwriting ever written (“How to Write a Movie in 21 days” by Viki King): WEAR YOUR LUCKY SOCKS.’
[london] Google thwarts al-Qaeda kamikaze strike on US embassy … ‘Quite what the Post Office boys down on Rathbone Place will make of Google’s fingering of their building as a decoy target is anyone’s guess…’
10 April 2007
[film] Charity Screening of An Inconvenient Truth — Sashinka has arranged a screening of Al Gore’s Documentary at the End of April for charity. Details below. Please support if you can by attending or if you’re not based in London you can donate by clicking here. Thanks!
Charity screening of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient
Truth Date: 29th April 2007 Where: Tricycle Cinema, London Time: 12.30pm Price:£12.50 (or click to support Sasha’s Charity Mission to Moldova) |
13 April 2007
[comics] The Connections between Lost and Watchmen — interesting Wikipedia-style article … ‘In Watchmen there are a character named Bernard, who opened a magazine store to meet people after his wife, Rose, died. In lost Rose and Bernard are two minor characters…’ [via Pete Ashton]
[bbc] spEak You’re bRanes — a blog on the wit and wisdom of the BBC’s Have Your Say Site… On the Falklands (I think!): ‘when jim challaan was pm thay got to know some how that the agies where going to invade the fslklands and thats all he did was send a nuclear submaren out there and let the argentenas know that it was waiting for them but we all knew what happened then maggie did she do the same as jim no she let them invade and she was told the same as jim that thay were abought to invade and look what it cost us’ [via The Daily Chump]
14 April 2007
[comics] Stuart Immonen on Computers and Art: ‘…Huge imagebanks and community photosites started cropping up online. If I wondered whether the NYPD drove Ford Crown Victorias or Chevy Impalas (trick question– they use both), the answer was available in a matter of clicks. Need to know the typical architecture in the Pyrenees or the Ginza? No problem. The governing philosophy is this: reference is a device, and is only as useful as the artist who wields it is talented. In other words, ideally, it will spur creativity, not stifle it, allowing the artist to work efficiently and effectively.’
15 April 2007
[tv] £1,500 in a carrier bag? What planet are you on? — the origins of the BBC TV drama Life on Mars … ‘One of us said, “Is there any way we can just do The Sweeney in the Seventies?” The Sweeney is terminally sexist, terminally racist, all the things you just can’t do, and yet we also thought there was almost an odd innocence about it. We just had a feeling it wouldn’t turn out to be a vile piece of offensive drama but might end up being quite cool and fun, and probably the only way to do that it is to take someone with our sensibilities and plonk them right in the middle of it, so that any time Gene Hunt says, “All right luv, go and make us a cup of tea and [bring] a Garibaldi biscuit,” someone can roll their eyes. Somehow that lets us off the hook.’ Graham got to work on the story under the working title Ford Granada…’
16 April 2007
[music] Coming soon: the Ian Curtis happy meal? … ‘Sportswear company New Balance has commissioned two pairs of trainers inspired by [Joy Division]. One features the cover artwork and the catalogue number of their 1979 debut album Unknown Pleasures, while another displays the Factory records logo and the cryptic slogan One of One Made in Macclesfield. They are the work of Dylan Adair, perhaps the only man in history to listen to Joy Division and think of sports-casual footwear…’
[comics] A Script Review of Grant Morrison’s We3 — a look at Morrison’s script for New Line Cinema’s adaptation of We3 … ‘Much of the film is a long chase, a blend between one of Disney’s Fantastic Journey films and, perhaps, The Iron Giant by way of Robocop or another hard, gristle-strewn actionaer. It is also a brilliant and incisive exploration of freedom, instinct, will the universe’s natural orders… and the desire to identify yourself as an individual.’
17 April 2007
18 April 2007
[archive] Linkdump:
- Akira Fansite … ‘TETSUOOOOOOOOOO!’ [via Metafilter]
- Use Your Mac Mini as a Media Server … I’m very tempted by this…
- YouTube: The Simpsons Evolution Intro … watch the evolution of the Homer and check the comments: ‘ Matt Groening created “The Simpsons.” That’s probably as much creationism as is relevant for this video.’
- Create a Safely Remove Hardware shortcut … useful tip for using USB Devices with Windows.
- The Top 50 Productivity Blogs … So, you can cure procrastination by reading productivity blogs?
- YouTube: Lazy Sunday UK … ‘Tea, Motherfucker!’
- Ask Metafilter: Women comic book authors … ‘What are some good comic books written by female authors?’
19 April 2007
[comics] Massimo Belardinelli 1938 – 2007: A Tribute by Pat Mills — very sad to hear news of the death of this stalwart 2000AD artist from it’s earlier years … ‘It is also worth stressing his real devotion and loyalty to 2000AD. He was not working for 2000AD as a portfolio piece before he headed off to Marvel or Vertigo; in working on the comic he had arrived. It was where he chose to be. I can relate to that. As one 2000AD reader, Steve Earles, put it to me today, he was: “A true one-off. In this day of cookie-cutter clone artists we will not see his like again.” I concur…’
21 April 2007
[tv] The MacGyver Multi-Tool … ‘The only tool you’ll ever need…’ [via Clipmarks]
22 April 2007
[funny] Biblical Curse Generator … ‘I pray thou shalt be mocked by eunuchs, thou child of Jezebel!’
23 April 2007
[blogs] Scenes from a Blog — the life of a blog-post expressed in diagram … ‘Descend to general ennui.’
24 April 2007
[drugs] 72-Hour Party People … behind the scenes at 3 day meth binge — ‘”Oh, my God, you know the fucking war, right? The liberation, the occupation, whatever? And the Palestinians, right? And the Israelis and the Muslims and Hindus and all the hate and the fucking guns and the bombs and the, uh, the, uh, you know, all the children with their legs blown off by land mines in Afghanistan, right? You see what I’m saying? I mean, you all know, you’ve all seen like a million times that one picture of that little boy from Afghanistan, right? And he’s in his little purple robe, with his little white sheepherder’s hat, and his little Christmas Carol, um, what do you call it? His Tiny Tim crutches, you know, right? And he’s got these, like, you know, like these little sad, brown, puppy dog, fucking abused-animal, dog-pound, take-me-home-please eyes, right? I mean, God…okay, right now, let’s get online, and let’s find out who he is and where he lives and, and, and, let’s find out what we need to do to buy him a new leg, right now! Who’s got a laptop?” Bonnie is 27 and a florist…’ [via Metafilter]
25 April 2007
[blogs] The Diary of a Nobody, as a daily weblog … ‘This is a weblog version of The Diary of a Nobody, written by George Grossmith and originally serialised in Punch magazine in 1888 and 1889. Bringing Charles Pooter into the 21st century, his diary is now available as a selection of weblog-style RSS feeds which you can subscribe to…’ [via As Above]
26 April 2007
[crime] The Vanity of Reason: Making Sense of the Virginia Tech Tragedy … ‘People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to “fix” them.’
[blogs] In which Weird and Inexplicable Things Happen Involving Letters, Trees, Front Doors and Keys — Dave Gorman on why he’s changed his locks … ‘It was about 9.30 on Sunday night and I and a friend were watching some TV and having a lazy time of it. Pizza was involved and bellies were full. I heard a key in a door and I heard a door opening and there was a moment before I realised that it was my door opening. Now… no one else should have a key for mine and no one else should be letting themselves into my house at 9.30 on a Sunday evening…’ [via Feeling Listless]
27 April 2007
28 April 2007
[weather] Rising Slowly – the original Weather Blog from Giles Turnbull.
29 April 2007
[tv] Fallen Madonna to go to New Buyer … ‘An auction of The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies – the picture made famous by BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo – has raised more than £4,000 for charity […] Mr Moore, from Thame, said many other copies of the picture, by fictional artist Van Clomp, were ruined during shooting of the series. “They were rolled into German sausages, shoved down trouser legs, or singed by an exploding gilded frame intended as a gift for Adolf Hitler,” he said.’
30 April 2007
[speccy] Youtube: Watch Manic Miner loading on a ZX Spectrum — I spent a lot of time as a teenager waiting for games like this to load up – And now so can you! :) [via Complete Tosh]
[comics] Forbidden Planet Blog: Steve Ditko documentary on the BBC … ‘Jonathan Ross has a programme coming up on the BBC entitled “In Search of Steve Ditko” […] Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Stan Lee, John Romita and Paul Levitz among others…’
1 May 2007
[blogs] Pole to Polar: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive … ‘A Guide to Being A Mentally Interesting Girl Navigating the Labyrinth of the NHS Mental Health Services.’
2 May 2007
[comics] Revenge of the Dark Knight — profile of Frank Miller … ‘Miller got famous for fight scenes that played like ballet across comic book pages bounded by rooftop water towers and dingy alleyways of Hell’s Kitchen in New York. Now he is far from his New York world and getting further from comics, where he has been a beloved figure; if this Hollywood player’s romance is a passing affair, can he comfortably go back to just the small pages? “That’s the hardest question. I love that community and love the freedom I have had there and the success there and appreciation. But I’m on this new adventure right now.”‘
3 May 2007
[blogs] To The End Of The Line — another blog about the London Underground … ‘This is a hugely self-indulgent, yet also dangerously ambitious, undertaking. Namely, to document my visit to every single working station on the London Underground. It’ll take the best part of the year, so don’t except regular updates. It’ll also be far from objective, fairly presumptuous, and (hopefully) by no means earnest or exhausting.’ [via Feeling Listless]
4 May 2007
[comics] 52 weeks, 52 wonderful pieces of art – Metafilter discuss DC’s 52. ‘…the idea of an island filled with nothing but the DCU’s “mad scientists” was absolutely hilarious … until it became absolutely horrifying.’
5 May 2007
[books] Long Zoom: Interview with Steven Johnson — he discusses his book The Ghost Map amongst other things … ‘I called up my editor and he asked, “How’s it going?” I replied, “It’s kind of like Emergence, you know, if Emergence were a disease thriller.” And he said, “Yeah, it’s like Emergence if the slime molds started killing people in chapter four.” And that became my mantra as I was writing it: “Just think Emergence with killer slime molds and you’re golden.”’ [via Kottke]
6 May 2007
[funny] The Brain of Britain — amusing cutaway of what is in the brain of an Englishman … ‘BACKBONE!’
7 May 2007
[comics] 16 Panels That I Don’t Think Work All That Well … following on from Wally Wood. [via Do You Feel Loved]
8 May 2007
[web] YouTube: Everyone Knows Your Name … Just Remember – Think Before You Post.
9 May 2007
[comics] Matt Fraction on DC’s 52: ’52 threw all the comforts of safe storytelling out the window, for good or for ill, and tried to be something… well, if not “new” then at least ‘different’. Novelty was in its bones: characters were reborn and thrown into wildly inventive and over the top imaginative situations in a book that defies and denies conventional wisdom and practice. There were some big ideas going on here, some big thrills and some heavy duty weirdness both on the page and in them that, sometimes, in all their stoic grace and attitude, DC books miss. (Don’t believe me? Go pick up a SHOWCASE volume and compare it to its present day counterpart. See that mania that’s missing? I like that. It’s nice. 52 has that mania.) 52 was a DC comic with blood roaring in its ears and you could sense it.’
10 May 2007
[comics] Grant Morrison’s 52 Exit Interview … ‘If it compared to other media at all, 52 was more like a couple of long seasons of a TV show featuring stars you’ve barely heard of. We didn’t have the marquee names or the $100,000,000 budget, so as with, say, Lost or Heroes, we had to engage the audience straight away with characters and story. I think 52 was very human and accessible in that way. In the end it wasn’t about making pseudo-political points or staging yet another huge brawl between superheroes, it was about loss, and love and death and transcendence and the sprawling lives and emotions of people who just happened to have superpowers.’
[ebay] 18 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Find on Ebay … ‘Find Womens Sweat on eBay.’
11 May 2007
[comics] Getting Blair — Steve Bell on Drawing Tony Blair … ‘I was on the top deck of a Blackpool tram when I bumped into George Pope, a Labour party stalwart I’d not seen for some years. “I don’t think much of your Blair,” he said. “You haven’t got him yet, have you?” Moments like these are difficult for the sensitive professional. While I have no right to expect the world to fall at my feet, chortling gratefully at each new offering, this was impugning my professional integrity, which is like laughing at my penis, only worse. The trouble was he was right. Cartooning is a kind of performance art for furtive exhibitionists, and you’re only ever as good as your last performance.’
12 May 2007
14 May 2007
[blogs] What Would A Group Blog by Daily Telegraph Readers be Like? — a collection of Links and Quotes from Blah Blah Flowers … ‘So the UK entry for Eurovision was saved the ignominy of nil point by its few European friends left in Ireland & Malta… Cast Terry Wogan and the dead hands at the BBC aside and let another public broadcaster like Channel 4, or even Sky (yes Sky) be given the reigns to enhance the image of the UK in Europe.’
[balls] YouTube: Billy’s Balls 2 — Go Watch… a fun video from Youtube of a guy bouncing ping-pong balls into cups. (more…)
15 May 2007
[comics] Some Photographs From the Wedding of the Greatest Living Englishman and Melinda Perry Gebbie — Some photos of Alan Moore’s wedding by Neil Gaiman.
17 May 2007
18 May 2007
[books] Spoof Amazon Customer Reviews for Richard Littlejohn’s New Book: ‘After reading this searing deconstruction of our liberal, permissive society, I was almost blind with rage. And so I followed Littlejohnson’s example and did the only thing open to a red-blooded, patriotic Briton: I buggered off to America. Luckily, before I left I went out speeding one last time and managed to run over an immigrant, who I believe was also homosexual – as is my God-given right as an Englishman. God bless you, Littlejohnson, God bless you.’ [via qwghlm.co.uk]
[blogs] Cnet asks: Is Casey Serin the World’s most Hated Blogger? … ‘Financial exhibitionism, coupled with a lack of penitence for stiffing his creditors, has transformed the 24-year-old resident of this sleepy Sacramento suburb into a celebrity among fellow bloggers. But unlike other online celebrities, Serin’s stardom comes from a unique source: “haters” who patronize his blog solely to learn what financial missteps he’s made today. “A community formed overnight,” Serin said in an interview. “It wasn’t a very positive community.”‘ [via Pete Ashton]
21 May 2007
[internet] Ask Metafilter: Has thirteen years of WWW ruined my brain? … ‘At home, at work, whenever I can, I’m bouncing from website to website, ingesting these quick hits of information and moving on to the next site at the slighted twinge of boredom. Doing this for 2-3 hours a day since 1994 has left me unable to concentrate on anything that’s not absolutely scintillating to me — I get impatient with conversation with my wife, I can’t pay attention during meetings at work, and what’s worst, it’s very difficult to do my job, which is not interesting to me…’
22 May 2007
[funny] Funny List of Colemanballs… A Colemanball from Pat Glenn (a Weightlifting Commentator): ‘This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning and it was amazing.’ [via Informationally Overloaded]
23 May 2007
[funny] loltheorists: Thus Spake Zarathustra … ‘god iz ded. lol’ [via mondo a-go-go]
24 May 2007
[funny] The Philolsophers Pool … ‘eckzistenshulizm. chix dig it’ [again via mondo a-go-go]
25 May 2007
[comics] Blogdok — Modok (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) has a blog… ‘Greetings, tiny-headed comic book (finger quotes) “FANATICS!” This is MODOK speaking! Refreshing your pitiful web browser is futile. Futile, I tell you!!! After many long decades of plotting (and calculating) silently in the shadows, I, MODOK!, have decided to take over the Interweb…’ [via Warren Ellis]
[comics] Alan Moore Downing Street E-Petition: ‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to award Alan Moore with an honour.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
26 May 2007
[games] Pac-man’s Skull — a photo of what a real Pac-man’s skull might look like.
27 May 2007
[web] Burst Culture — Warren Ellis on Boing Boing, magazines, blogs, tumblelogs, Ad-sense and more… ‘I love print. I love magazines that commit and pay for long articles and long fiction. The web rewards neither approach. It’s a packeted medium, a surf medium. Short bursts are the way to go. The web isn’t a replacement medium — it’s *another* medium.’
29 May 2007
31 May 2007
[comics] Welcome to Nerd Vegas: A Guide to Visiting and Enjoying Comic-Con International in San Diego, 2007! — nicely done guide from Tom Spurgeon … ‘A comic book convention is not a young-woman-with-her-first-job-in-the-big-city movie. If it were, you probably wouldn’t be the star. It’s best not to go assuming you’ll engage in long conversations with your favorite writers, powerful comic book editors will solicit your opinion on where to take their characters next, Pantheon and First Second will enter into a bidding war for your mini-comic, and you’ll cap off your evenings doing shots with the cast of Battlestar Galactica at J6Bar. It’s a convention, people are working, and you’re one of 130,000 people experiencing the moment. Enjoy the experience you’re having, not the experience you think you deserve.’
[bb8] Big Brother: A girly night in — Grace Dent on Big Brother 2008 … On Lesley: ‘Once upon a time, retired posh women used to trek the Andes for charity or make prize-winning marmalade; now they want to go on Big Brother and have a breakdown in public and let people they’ve never met watch them without make-up looking like a cadaver. I’ve no idea what possesses someone as sport-mistressy as Lesley to do this show. She seems to have one expression, which is: “Yes, you will do cross-country running in the sleet, young lady. Nowwwww!”…’
1 June 2007
[crime] Psychopaths Among Us — Disturbing article about dealing with psychopaths…
‘Hare had his subjects watch a countdown timer. When it reached zero, they got a “harmless but painful” electric shock while an electrode taped to their fingers measured perspiration. Normal people would start sweating as the countdown proceeded, nervously anticipating the shock. Psychopaths didn’t sweat. They didn’t fear punishment — which, presumably, also holds true outside the laboratory. In Without Conscience, he quotes a psychopathic rapist explaining why he finds it hard to empathize with his victims: “They are frightened, right? But, you see, I don’t really understand it. I’ve been frightened myself, and it wasn’t unpleasant.”
In another Hare study, groups of letters were flashed to volunteers. Some of them were nonsense, some formed real words. The subject’s job was to press a button whenever he recognized a real word, while Hare recorded response time and brain activity. Non-psychopaths respond faster and display more brain activity when processing emotionally loaded words such as “rape” or “cancer” than when they see neutral words such as “tree.” With psychopaths, Hare found no difference. To them, “rape” and “tree” have the same emotional impact — none.’
4 June 2007
[lolcats] Roll Your Own LOL, Not Just For Cats Anymore — some funny examples of lolcats mutations … ‘no cry, albino’
[books] Sci-fi writers join war on Terror … ‘”We’re well-qualified nuts,” says Jerry Pournelle, co-author of the best sellers Footfall and Lucifer’s Hammer and dozens of other books. […] During a coffee break at the conference, Walker, Bear and Andrews started talking about the government’s bomb-sniffing dogs. Within minutes, they had conjured up a doggie brain-scanning skullcap that could tell agents what kind of explosive material a dog had picked up.’
5 June 2007
[comics] Ask Cerebra – The Comics Blog Search Engine — useful Customized Search Engine from Beaucoupkevin.‘…it’s even easier to find out exactly what the zeitgeist is when it comes to such important topics as that Heroes for Hire Hentai-A-Go-Go Special cover and whether or not Jimmy Olsen is the devil.’
6 June 2007
[lolcats] Schrodinger’s Lolcat … ‘in ur quantum box… maybe’ [via Minor 9th]
7 June 2007
[comics] We Must Expand Our Nuclear Power Program If We’re To Realize Our Dream Of Superhero Mutants — from The Onion … ‘We say we are committed to science, but where are the halls of justice, filled with governing councils of serum-created superpatriots, part-android teenagers, and scantily clad femaliens sworn to protect us?’ [via Neilalien]
8 June 2007
9 June 2007
[tv] Diamond Geezer Reviews the BBC’s iPlayer: ‘I have caught up with the Doctor Who Confidential I missed while I was on the train coming back from Dungeness, and a couple of programmes I only realised were worth watching after I’d read the review in the following day’s paper. iPlayer can really change your viewing habits.’
10 June 2007
[comics] Mark Millar on Jonathan Ross’ Documentary on Steve Ditko: ‘…we have a documentary filled with Ditko goodness for one Earth hour ranging from Flo Steinberg and John Romita Senior to Stan Lee, Jerry Robinson and vast chunks of Alan Moore (singing a song about Mister A he wrote some years ago).’ [via Neilalien]
11 June 2007
[interview] Stephen Fry on the Internet — great video interview with Stephen Fry – he comes over as really loving the internet.
[interview] More from Stephen Fry on… Web 2.0, Technology, Learning and his Heroes. [thanks linkbunnies.org]
12 June 2007
[books] TwitterLit — neat idea – twittering the first lines of books … ‘Albert Einstein was born in 1879, in Ulm, Germany, with a head shaped like a lopsided medicine ball.’
13 June 2007
[books] The Digested Read: God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens … ‘The purpose of this book is not to prove God does not exist; it is to prove I am cleverer than Richard Dawkins.’
14 June 2007
[usa] Judge Who Seeks Millions for Lost Pants Has His (Emotional) Day in Court … ‘Before trial began yesterday in the case of the D.C. judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaners after they lost his pants, the most extraordinary fact was Roy Pearson’s demand for $65 million in damages. That was before Pearson, an administrative law judge, broke down while testifying about the emotional pain of having the cleaners give him the wrong pants. It was before an 89-year-old woman in a wheelchair told of being chased out of the cleaners by an angry owner. And it was before she compared the owners of Custom Cleaners in open court to Nazis. “I knew it: It’s all my fault,” said the reporter from German television who was sitting next to me.’ [via kottke]
15 June 2007
[tv] BBC, ITV, Channel 4 Plot Single Broadband TV Player … ‘The BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 are said to be aiming to create a “one-stop shop”, open to other channels too, which would allow legal broadband viewing from one programme. According to The Guardian, the plan is dubbed “Project Kangaroo” and will “do for broadband what Freeview did for digital television”. It is expected to operate like Joost, perhaps hinting at some P2P element.’
[tv] Always Remember: It’s not Lupus. [via polymath blues]
16 June 2007
[science] Bad Science — a blog from the Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre.
[comics] Go Look: Kirby Saturday: Damn! Damn! Damn!
17 June 2007
[tv] Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos … ‘On the unintended consequences of technology: “It sounds to me like Anthony Jr. may have stumbled onto existentialism.” “Fucking internet.”‘
18 June 2007
[tip] Windows Tip: Copy Error Messages Text To The Clipboard — I can’t believe I’ve been using Windows for 17 years and never realised you can do this! 
[food] What the World Eats … facinating photo essay from Time.
20 June 2007
[obit] Surplus Manning — Marcus Brigstocke sums up Bernard Manning … ‘For myself, I am glad Bernard Manning is dead. Good riddance. The world now has one less ignorant, hateful bigot living in it. One less racist oaf poisoning us all with his stupid, crass, playground ideas; may the many others, who shared his view of the world, soon leave us too. If you thought Bernard Manning was a harmless loveable rogue with impeccable timing and a charming yet dangerous disregard for conventions of taste and acceptability, you are wrong. He was a racist, hateful and dull, and we are better off without him.’
21 June 2007
[comics] Scans from Jack Kirby’s Comic Adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey — spotted on scans_daily – it really looks like Kirby was having a blast with this one…
22 June 2007
[quotes] Grouphug.us: ‘In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max’s toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog…When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I went nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out…But the worst thing I ever done — I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa — and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.’
[wikipedia] Wikington Crescent … How to Play: ‘To start a game of Wikington Crescent, first click on the Random article link. From the article given, you then click on one of the article links to the next article. The object of the game is to reach the article on Mornington Crescent tube station, whilst clicking on as few articles as possible. The fewer the links used, the better the game. An example is that the article for Matterhorn can lead you to Mornington Crescent tube station within four links.’ [via plep]
23 June 2007
[comics] 2001: An Adapted Odyssey — Metafilter discuss Kirby’s adaptation of 2001 … ‘This is really neat and all, but I misread the original post and was really hoping to see 2001: A Space Odyssey as it was adapted by Jack Chick, because that would have been, you know, really really fucked up.’
25 June 2007
[music] ‘Oh good, it’s raining again’ — Charlie Brooker does Glastonbury … ‘Once you’re in, the sheer scale of it is initially overwhelming. Imagine forcing the cast of Emmerdale to hurriedly construct Las Vegas at gunpoint in the rain. Then do it again. And once more for luck. That’s Glastonbury: a cross between a medieval refugee camp and a recently detonated circus. Roads of sloppy mud and drunken civilians shivering in tents; this is what London would look like if I’d been in charge for 100 years. Not because I’m some kind of laid-back dreamer, but because I couldn’t organise a piss-up in a pissery. It’d take me six decades to assemble the most rudimentary infrastructure. There’d be no museums in my London. Maybe a bin or two, at a push.’
[virtual] YouTube: Second Life for Real … (more…)
27 June 2007
[books] Henry Raddick’s Amazon Reviews — spoof book reviews on Amazon. Raddick reviews
God, Why Did Dad Lose His Job?: … ‘A truly wonderful guide which has enabled me to explain my recent sacking for vandalising company property to my children in terms of a minor act of redemption. First rate.’
28 June 2007
[politics] Go to Australia or use your own Judgment … ‘As prime minister, with ultimate responsibility for Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Mr Brown has to write a letter, in his own hand, giving instructions detailing what the UK’s response should be in the event of a pre-emptive nuclear attack. The letter will be opened only by the commander of a British Trident submarine, who would have to assume that the prime minister was no longer in a position to take “live” command of the situation. The options are said to include the orders: “Put yourself under the command of the US, if it is still there”; “go to Australia”; “retaliate”; “or use your own judgment”. Each new prime minister writes the letter as soon as he or she takes office…’
[politics] Ten Years of Waiting come to an End in 57 minutes at the Palace … ‘Telling staff to call him Gordon, he acknowledged that it had been an emotional day for them saying goodbye to a great leader and a great family. He thanked them for the welcome and said it had been an interesting day for him. “It’s not every day you meet the Queen at 1.30pm, become the prime minister at 2pm, speak to the president at 3pm, and get told by Sarah to put the kids to bed at 7pm,” he told them.’
29 June 2007
[iphone] 29 June 2007: The Day the World Changed — Fake Steve Jobs rallies the troops … ‘To those of you who serve under me at Apple, I say this: Yes, I have berated you, and insulted you, and exasperated you. Yes, I’ve fired your friends for no reason, and made you work harder than you ever thought you could work. Yes, I’ve taken you away from your spouses, your children, your transgendered domestic partners. In some cases your devotion to me has cost you your marriages. You’ve sacrificed a great deal for this. But has it not been worth it? For the rest of your life, you’ll be able to say that you were working at Apple when the iPhone was introduced. You were here on the day when the course of human history was changed forever. Plus, you’ll get a free 4-gigabyte iPhone, at $500 value. Not bad, right?’
30 June 2007
[science] Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn’t mean that a god fixed it … ‘The impression of design is illusory: our universe has simply hit the jackpot in a gigantic cosmic lottery. The multiverse theory certainly cuts the ground from beneath intelligent design, but it falls short of a complete explanation of existence. For a start, there has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and allocate bylaws to them. This process demands its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from?’
1 July 2007
[iphone] Wait in Line like Everyone Else, you Traitorous Bastard — Fake Steve Jobs on Steve Wozniak … ‘He lifts my brand name and calls his book iWoz. Then he comes sniffing around looking for a free iPhone. Forget it, Captain Segway. Look. You did some nice work — back in the seventies. To put it another way, the last time you did any real work, Styx was still selling out arenas. Bokay?’
2 July 2007
[crime] Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder — Wired Article on Hans Reiser and the disappearance of his Wife … ‘For the past two decades, he has struggled to create a different method of organizing data. His approach, known as ReiserFS, is a file system unlike any other. Rather than assign data a fixed location on a hard drive, it uses algorithms to frequently reposition information, including the code that makes up the file system itself. It elegantly maximizes storage space, but it can also complicate data recovery when a computer crashes. If the algorithms are corrupted, the file system will be unable to locate its own position. All the data it organizes disappears into an indistinguishable mass of 0s and 1s. The contents of that hard drive will be irretrievably lost. In Reiser’s case, a critical piece of data — the location of Nina Reiser — has gone missing…’
3 July 2007
[uʍopǝpısdn] dı1ɟ — .sʇɹnɥ pɐǝɥ ʎɯ .uʍop ǝpısdn ʇxǝʇ dı1ɟ oʇ 1ooʇ qǝʍ :)
4 July 2007
[films] Hello, come in, do have a nibble — Interesting interview with Dennis Hopper … ‘He certainly isn’t in the mood to discuss any of the half a dozen films he is due to appear in this year, a roster which is due to include a performance in Speed 3, even though I have plenty of questions about that. Surely his character Howard Payne died in a decapitation incident in the last reel of Speed 1? “It’s a river of shit,” he tells me pleasantly but firmly, “from which I have tried to extract some gold.”‘
5 July 2007
[blogs] Lowdham Book Festival Lecture Notes — Mike of Troubled Diva’s guide to Blog-to-Books… ‘There is something which has recently come to be seen (in certain quarters) as the Holy Grail to which every personal blogger must aspire. Two little words, which have an almost mystical hold over certain sections of the blogosphere… …and I’m going to say them now… BOOK DEAL!‘
7 July 2007
[comics] John Byrne in a Nutshell — analysis of a brief John Byrne comment on Grant Morrison’s introduction to Kirby’s New Gods Omnibus … ‘Morrison wrote the introduction not because he did time in the trenches doing alternately decent and forgettable Kirby homages like you, but because he is the obvious heir to Kirby’s weird, boundless creativity. He actually took the old man up on the challenge to fill the world with your own crazy-ass shit.’
8 July 2007
[science] Perpetual truths — Bad Science on Perpetual Motion … ‘I should therefore like to posit the first law of bullshit dynamics, which I suspect this invention may well obey, as follows: “there is no imaginable proposition so absurd that you cannot find at least one person, somewhere in the world, with a PhD or professional post, who is happy to endorse it.”’
9 July 2007
10 July 2007
[drink] What’s inside Red Bull … ‘Taurine – Also known as 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, taurine was originally isolated from bull bile in 1827.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
[movies] The Veidt Method — viral marketing campaign for the Watchmen movie … ‘Latest News: President and C.E.O. Adrian Veidt interviewed in latest edition of Nova Express – on newsstands now!’ [via plasticbag.org]
11 July 2007
[interesting]
33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names … ‘Jarns, Nittles, Grawlix and Quimp – Various squiggles used to denote cussing in comic books.’ [via Torrez]
12 July 2007
[funny] A Google Map Plotting the many Gaffes of Prince Phillip … ‘You are a woman, aren’t you? – The Prince seeks clarification from a Kenyan lady in tribal dress back in 1984.’
13 July 2007
[radio] Speechification … ‘A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded.’
14 July 2007
[blogs] Dave Gorman’s Blog … ‘I’ve given in to the way of the blog.’
16 July 2007
[london] An A to Z of the Evening Standard …
A is for Attack, B is for Bastards, C is for Chaos, D is for Death, E is for Evil, F is for Funeral, G is for Go, H is for Horror, I is for Iraq, J is for John Prescott, K is for Killer, L is for Legend, M is for Murder, N is for Nightmare, O is for Olympics, P is for Pictures, Q is for Quit, R is for Raid, S is for Sex, T is for Terror, U is for U.S., V is for Victim, W is for War, X is for X-Rated, Y is for Younger, Z… there seems to be no Z in the Evening Standard Alphabet!
17 July 2007
[politics] Margaret Thatcher and Ice Cream: ‘Fans of the Mister Softee style have Margaret Thatcher [..] to thank. She was one of the team of chemists at J Lyons who first developed soft frozen ice cream.’ [via boundr]
19 July 2007
[web] Wikiclock … ‘This is the Wiki Clock — a clock that runs on Wiki technology! Please update this page with the correct current time (UTC).’
[bbc] BBC iPlayer launch: The first 14 days — some predictions about what might happen after the BBC’s long-awaited iPlayer is released … ‘The Daily Express front page “Now Poles Steal Our TV” reports on how ‘hackers’ in Poland have managed to bypass the BBC’s GeoIP system and have downloaded and installed the iPlayer software on a computer in Gdansk.’
20 July 2007
[comics] For Sale on eBay: Batman: Hush Volume 2 by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee.
21 July 2007
[tv] Want to save Teletext? Don’t press the red button — The Guardian on the Slow Decline of Teletext … ‘Ceefax has been clinging onto life since 2001, repeatedly flatlining and then sitting up in bed shouting “No, I’m feeling better!” However, this time the decline does seem terminal, as indicated by the decreasing frequency of page updates. During last week’s Wimbledon, for instance, score updates were lagging nearly a set behind the live action…’
22 July 2007
[comics] Old Interview with Alan Moore, Pat Mills, Steve Moore, Alan Parkhouse and Angus Allan — from the Society of Strip Illustration Newsletter in May 1981. Alan Moore: ‘My greatest personal hope is that someone will revive Marvelman and I’ll get to write it. KIMOTA!!’
23 July 2007
[blogs] Secret Blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/4) — funny fake blog of a TV Exec … ‘Thommo is stomping about issuing disgruntled threats to everyone left, right and centre; Fincham is curled up in his office weeping. Human Resources people are barging – unannounced – into offices and throwing office stationery around; even the kind Indian gent in the papershop in White City has a fucking scowl on his face whenever I pop by.’