National Statistics & Chicken Nuggets
The National Statistics Online of the UK government is the official body that collect stats about the UK population (you may remember them from the 2001 census that added Jedi as a religion to select causing hundreds of thousands of nerds to skew the figures). Every year, the NSO create a ‘shopping list’ of products to enable them to create their stats and it makes interesting reading sometimes. This year, it’s a sad reflection of the times when Chicken Nuggets are added to the list but at least dumb-bells have been removed to make way for mobile phones and laptop computers.
Yahoo buys Flickr
Anyone with even a passing interest in the excellent photo-sharing/community site Flickr can’t fail to have heard the rumours which have finally been announced – Yahoo have bought Flickr. In the past I’d have been more sceptical but Google haven’t broken Blogger since they bought it (although new innovations have almost stopped now) so maybe there is hope (until the suits at Yahoo try to ‘monetize’ Flickr too much).
English Cut – a well fitted blog
As part of our regular features showing uniquely specialized blogs, I thought that I’d share English Cut with you. It’s the site of a Saville Row tailor – not the sort of person you’d expect to have a blog but it’s an interesting read.
The Online Video Game Atlas
The Video Game Map Atlas is a cool resource for gamers. It’s got images of the levels layouts from tons of games. If you’ve ever got lost in Legend of Zelda then this site is for you.
Batman: New Times
To satisfy every geek fetishin one fell swoop, check out Batman: New Times – it’s a cgi cartoon of Batman in which every character and scene is made from computer-modelled lego blocks. It’s made by a film school but they managed to rope in Adam West to play the voice of Batman, Mark Hamill to play Joker and Dick Van Dyke to play Commissioner Gordon. (I think we did a post last year about Dick Van Dyke’s love of computer animation).
Barry White Sings Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller invented the geodesic Dome and the element ‘Buckminsterfullerene’ is named after him but I never knew what a fan Barry White was! (scroll to bottom – I assume this is a spoof cover but I’d love to know more if anyone can dig anything up on this)
Subbuteo Streaker
The one thing that has been missing from Subbuteo has been the realism. Sure, they have accurate teams, cups and pitches but until now they’ve been missing one important element – streakers. Now you can get a complete Erica Roe kit (last link is NSFW).
Music thing
Music thing is another in our series of specialised blogs. We’ve posted several things from the site before (mainly because they cover fave things of mine like theremins and photos of moog-filled recording studios). If you like music or music making then it’s definitely worth a visit. You can even keep up to date on the popular world of plectrum innovation.
Centarsia – photo mosaic maker
Centarsia is a simple program that lets you create photo-mosaics from your photos. Simply choose a master image and then point it at a directory of images to make the mosaic out of and it does the rest. With a small amount of fiddling you can create some quite cool images (or just recreate your boss’ face out of goatse images).
Neuromancer radio play
I’m a big William Gibson fan but I was a bit startled to hear that the BBC did a radio version of his most famous ‘cyberpunk’ book, Neuromancer. This guy is on a one man mission to preserve the radio show. I’m linking to the BoingBoing post about the article in case the main site goes down as they’ve posted a torrent file as well. The show is only a 46MB d/load – I’m going to grab it and listen on the way to work tomorrow.
Behind the Scenes at Pixar
Ain’t It Cool News have a cool feature that has made me very jealous of the staff at Pixar. Judging from the behind the scenes tour, it’s a fun place to work and certainly the type of office where you can focus completely on the work. I give it two years before the sheds are ripped down and replaced by cubicles to fit in with a more professional, corporate feeling space but I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
Kylie Goodness
Purely from a technical point of view, I’m sure you’d all appreciate this collection of Kylie Calendars from the past 3 years. The flash interface is rather cool (but I doubt many of you will pay any attention to that!).
New Dr. Who Leaked on Purpose?
Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks that the first episode of the new Dr Who series was leaked on purpose.
The Office – Yank Version
Everyone (and that includes the original creator Ricky Gervais) reckoned that the US version of The Office wouldn’t be much cop. I’ve not had a chance to look yet but first reports seem to indicate that it’s not that bad. I’ll make up my own mind by watching by this 12 minute clip.
Whack Your Boss
When work’s getting you down why not kill a few minutes by Whacking Your Boss?
Cliffhanging
There’s a scene in Cliffhanger where the sly stallion jumps off/onto an cliff and manages to get his ice axes into the ice, climbs up and saves the day.
.This would never happen in Hollywood.
What really happens in real-life!!!
thanks Stephen
If at first you don’t succeed…
Courtesy of abum.com, here’s a guy insisting on hurting himself. I’m really surprised he doesn’t break something in the course of teaching himself this trick but in the end he almost gets it – if only he could keep his right arm straight.
The Farting Preacher
Hallelu*PARP*jah! Direct link to WMV file *QUACK* pardon me LSFW
The Blind Fragging the Blind
How cool is this? Wired have an article on gaming for visually impaired people – not an area I’d ever thought much about in the past but one that is fascinating. I’m gonna be doing some more research into this field when I get a moment.
Keytarded
I’m currently guffawing over this video of a Croatian chick playing that most 80′s of instruments, the keytar (as popularised by Wang Chung). You have to see the rest of Belinda’s site to see her in all of her keyboard-humping glory.
Show Me The Monet (and other awful shop names)
It’s a tradition that seemed to start with hairdressers and goes all the way through to the more modern tanning salons – appalling puns for shop names. Shop Horror is a book and website that has many examples of this UK phenomenon such as ‘Austin Flowers’, ‘Right Hair, Right Now’ and ‘Wok This Way’.
Lomo Fisheye Camera
We’ve done a few Lomo posts in the past as I’m a big fan of these unusual cameras. The latest innovation they’ve come up with is the Fisheye camera. For a mere $50 (about £28) you can get this compact 35mm camera and make your arty friends extremely jealous.
Party Picker
This is a superb idea that I really hope gets finished. The Party Pickerhelps you decide which UK political party to vote for via a simple set of questions. The guy who runs the site, Matt Dyson, asked the same set of questions about policy to each party but unfortunately, as is often the case, only the Liberal Democrats bothered to respond which is a great shame as the questions are simple and seem failry unbiased. It’s bad enough having to deal with voter apathy but when the parties themselves are apathetic then I wonder if there’s any hope.
Brighton Graf
Longtime friend of the site Carl has been collecting examples of superb graffiti in and around Brighton for a while now and he’s just sent me a link to a an image that he’s stitched together in Photoshop – it’s the outside of a skate park near him. Whilst it’s more traditional than Banksy, it’s still a damn impressive piece.
Just Call Me Two Willies
Sometimes you read a story that leaves you speechless and know you have to blog it but no attempt to describe it could do it justice so just go and be dumbfounded at the story of the Man with two willies.
Know your Fo’ Shizzle’s from your Sagging Duece’s?
If you’re not down with your holly or blowing trees then you need this Rap Dictionary. It was certainly brought Bumboklaat to the attention of this honky.
Ultimate Nerdvana
Lego, Star Wars and computer games are often signs of nerdom.
Which must make this one of the geekiest things ever!
iPSP – simple to use tool for the Sony PSP
Now that people are starting to buy imports of the Sony PSP, software is starting to appear for it. iPSP is a Mac and PC piece of software that lets you encode video, audio and photos for simple use on your PSP.
One of these things is not like the others
We’ve not had any good ‘One of these things’ image searches for a while so many thanks to Imran for pointing me to the GIS for i dream of jeannie. The odd one out is, as usual, NSFW
Cats as Emoticons
A visual guide to using Cats as Emoticons cheers Carl
