POKIA retro phone of the future
What could be more old skool geek than a retro handset for your mobile phone. These are excellent.
katie.com
Katie Jones owns Katie.com – she has done for many years now. It’s her site. This doesn’t seem to mean much to Penguin (the publishers) or Katie Tarbox who both seem to think that they have a god-given right to the domain name since Ms Tarbox has written a book called katie.com. Ms Tarbox has some very worthy aims for her domain (note that she already owns katiet.com) but that is irrelevant as she seems to be insistent in her and her lawyers’ bullying of Ms Jones into giving up the domain. Ms Jones makes the very valid point that originally they wanted to call the book girl.com but decided not to since that site is a pr0n site – if they were web-savvy enough to know this then they must have taken the conscious decision that it would be easier to bully an individual into giving away their domain name. This appalls me. I’ve always wanted grom.com since that’s been the name I’ve been known as for many years but someone else has the domain even though I have as much rights to it as Penguin do to katie.com – the difference is that I know that my only two options are to either feel sorry for myself and walk away or offer a large amount of money for the domain with the knowledge that if my offer is refused then I have no legal comeback.
Vinyl Data
Since we’re in a bit of an old-skool geek mood today, here’s a really cool article on the anomaly that is Vinyl Data – ‘secret’ computer programs that came on vinyl that you were supposed to record to tape then run on your ZX Spectrum. I used to have a few of the records mentioned on here and don’t think I ever managed to get the programs to work so, in the oawful American phrase, I can finally have some closure by knowing what I was missing out on.
Maniac Mansion Deluxe
Lucasarts used to produce excellent little adventure games but then they got overtaken by more modern, graphically superior games. A bunch of fans have been quietly releasing new versions of these old games like Mainac Mansion Deluxe and The New Adventures of Zak McKracken. They’re v.cool and absolutely free.
Poolside Sumo
There’s nothing better than lounging about in an flatable ring in a swimming pool on a hot summer day. There’s always one idiot who tries to spoil it though. At least in this game you can challenge them to a game of Poolside Sumo.
National Orga5m Week
A blatant excuse for some free advertising and pointless discussions on daytime tv, it might be but at least National Orga5m week is an excuse to post this Ann Summers advert.
The Eunicycle – a one-wheeled Segway
We’ve posted about Trevor Blackwell’s attempts to build a Self-Balancing Scooter (ie: Segway) before. It seems he’s now gone on to build a one-wheeled version called the Eunicycle which, I presume, is named after what will happen if you fall off one.
SNEX Lego Case Mod
Another Lego case mod today but this one has an XBox and a SNES together in one lego box. Bit of an unholy match but it works.
One Foot In The Grave – The Oldest Punk Band In The World
One Foot In The Grave must be the oldest Punk Band in the world. Just one listen of their covers of the Ramones’ ‘Sedated’ is enough to convince me of their place in punk history but they do seem to have missed the whle point of the ‘Live Fast, Die Young’ motto!
The Apple Product Cycle
This concise summary of the Apple Product Cycle is probably much more accurate than Apple will ever admit to.
Office game
This is a brilliantly designed game – catch the paper, then chuck it in the bin using your mouse. Thing is, it ain’t that easy.
Segway Polo
It’s been so long since we posted anything about the Segway that I’d completely forgotten about them. They have become a 21st century Sinclair C5. There are still enough users around in America to form a Segway Polo team though.
Revenge of the Tattooed Nerds
This post’s especially for Solomon and Kaye – Revenge of the Tattooed Nerds is a list of nerd-specific tattoos that have been submitted to BMEzine over the years. The 8bit sprite ones are actually quite good but I’m not going to comment on the Apple or Zelda ones for fear of causing offence.
How to turn your iPod into a remote control
Very nice indeed – Engadget have come up with a way of turning your iPod into a remote control by converting Infrared into sound and recording the audio for playback on an iPod which can then be transmitted to any gadget you have lying around. Neat!
BugMeNot’s Revenge
In response to the ridiculous amount of personal info that some sites (NYTimes et al) demand before you can access their information, BugMeNot, the excellent service we blogged a couple of months ago, now demand that if you are an employee of any company that uses registration, you MUST fill in a form on their site before you can proceed. The form is hilarious but scarily, not too far-fetched.
Hitchhiker’s Guide Redux
There’s a flurry of Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy things about to happen. We’ve already posted the new movie blog but the original Radio broadcast cast that are still around have got back together to re-create the radio version.
Preparing for Emergencies
We’ve posted stuff by Thomas Scott before but his latest endeavour is a cracker and has already landed him in trouble with the government. Preparing for Emergenices is his parody of the UK government’s vote-grabbing Emergency site. Less than 12 hours after going live, he recieved a demand by the politicos demanding that the site be taken down. They obviously haven’t seen their own laws about satire and parody being fair-use.
Dental Shocker – grooo!
Everyone hates going to the dentist and we’ve probably all been told that the dentist is about to put some kind of chemical in your mouth which’ll taste funny but I doubt many people would be too happy about having sperm squirted into their mouths.
Build your own Gauss Rifle
This isn’t the first time we’ve posted about how to build your own Gauss Rifle but I just love the lethal weapons you can make with just a ruler, a handful of ball-bearings and a few magnets. (I’m not joking about the lethal bit either). Check out the rest of Sci-toys for loads of Gonzo gadgets that you can build with your children (not my words since other projects include Railguns!)
Elizabot passes sex-chat Turing test
I got quite excited when I first saw this story on Boing Boing about an Elizabot passing the Turing test. Until I read more about it and realised that it hasn’t really passed a true Turing Test – it only works in the context of illiterate s3x-starved teenagers but it’s still more impressive than most chat bots so good work!
Real or Fake?
What do you reckon? Is this picture real or fake? No-one on J-Walk blog can decide.
Lego Guitar
No idea if it’s actually playable but a guy called Brad has built a rather stunning lookingLego Guitar – good job!
the Degree Confluence Project
The Degree Confluence Project is an interesting idea – or it might just be an excuse for a lot of very odd holidays. Alex Jarrett has been visiting the points on the globe where longitude meets latitude and taking a photo of the point since 1996. Bearing in mind that there are over 64,000 confluence points – that’s a lot of holidays he’ll be taking unless you help him out.
FBI List of Concealed Weapons
There’s quite a bit of James Bond style ingenuity going on these days as this presentation of concealed weapons found by the FBI shows. I love the fact that a company called ‘United Cutlery’ make something called a push dagger which has absolutely nothing to do with food hardware but is clearly intended to be a hidden, violent weapon.
Google Search: “what is rss”
Definitely NSFW this one – Courtesy of NTK comes another in the series of ‘One of these things is not like the others’. This time it’s the Google Image Search for “what is rss”.
Choon of the Year!
Best tune this year so far! William ‘Cap’n Kirk’ Shatner backed by Ben Folds (of Ben Folds Five ‘fame’) covering Pulp’s Common People.
Woo-Yay and Houpla indeed!
USB Gundam
We love USB hubs disguised as weird objects – the mix of geek toys and gadgets is just right in the USB Gundam.
Which Way Adventure
Remember those point and click adventures like Myst?
How much better would they be if the writers dispensed with the game element and simply concentrated on amusing you? Well, here’s Triangle Morning’s Which Way Adventure
Krispy Kreme Donut Drink
American cholesterol purveyors, Krispy Kreme have introduced a glazed doughnut frozen drink.
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