U.S. Customs now reads your blog entries?
Well, that’s me fceked for getting into the States now.
Another Geography Quiz
After yesterday’s humiliating Geography quiz, I went looking for an easier one that I might have a chance at succeeding at. I found this drag and drop one of European Countries designed for schoolkids. Guess what? I’m still rubbish at it (but slightly better than before). Honestly, who knew France was so close to the UK?
Drunken Santa game
Guide Santa around using your arrow keys, get him as drunk as possible but don’t touch the train tracks.
Borders Books Shop Xmas Discount
Any UK readers who want some cheaper Xmas presents might want to go to this site from Borders book shop and print out the voucher for 20% off this week (until 4th Dec).
Firefox 1.5 Released
Firefox 1.5 has just been released today. I’d highly recommend this web browser as a good replacement/alternative to using Internet Explorer. It’s easy to setup, easy to use and you can use it alongside your Internet Explorer if you’re nervous about trying new things. If you don’t like it then it’s easy to uninstall but before you do, be sure to play around a little bit and check out the many extensions which help to make Firefox the superb browser it is – there are extensions to make virtually everything you do much easier from pop-up blocking to eBay scripts which only show you eBay users’ negative feedback to my all-time ‘most useful’ add-on, the extremely simple paste and go.
Virtual Air Guitar!
Ah Finland! Home of the air guitar and one of the few places on earth that still counts Heavy Metal as popular contemporary music. They have also developed the virtual air guitar which basically put is you+webcam+techno gubbins=rock’n'roll.
Gatso Basto
I thought speed cameras were supposed to save lives.
Where in the world is…
I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to my parents for wasting the education they provided for me. Judging by my score in the Geosense online geography game, I have almost zero geographical knowledge (this will come as no surprise to Mrs grom who seems perpetually astounded that I make it home each night so poor is my sense of direction). My best score so far is 1160 in one round (which is awful).
How to Downgrade Windows to run Linux
In a refreshing twist on the usual geek twaddle about Linux being superior to windows, here’s a how to: suide to run linux on a windows box (caution: humour ahead).
lamabox a P2P media player
A Dutch company has developed a highly controversial piece of kit that I’d certainly be interested in trying out. The lamabox is a media centre that connects to your tv. So far, nothing unusual here. The controversy arises from where the content you can get on it comes from – it connects directly to P2P networks like Bittorrent, Gnutella, eDonkey etc. This is fantastic news for the consumer and is legal in Holland where it’s made (by hand) but I doubt any other countries will be as lenient/realistic about the legality.
The Movie Cliches List
You need never watch another movie in your life. Simply select a handful of Movie Cliches and combine in a random order to give you the plot to yoru own personal movie.
cheers Jim
Book Wallpaper
Although it’s not easy to print out large scale images, everyone has a cheap print shop in their nearest town that could handle printing a book as wallpaper – you need never be stuck for toilet reading matter ever again. I might even suggest this to my dentist so that next time he’s mauling my gnashers I, at least, have something to read instead of staring at the crack on his ceiling.
Online Java Quake 2
w00t! I know it’s a bit old now but Quake 2 still rocks as a classic game and someone has now converted the whole game into java version which you can play online using any machine that has java (this includes many mobile phones and portable gadgets). You can even play multiplayer games (although I’ve not tried this yet).
Lamborghini advice
Word of advice here – if you’re trying to sell your Lamborghini then try not to crash it a couple of days later – I hear the resale value is quite low even if it does come with a free tree in the hood.
Pac Man Ass Tattoo
Four words should sum this up pretty much – Pac Man Ass Tattoo. Actually, I can add one more word – ‘Why?’.
Custom Coffins
Being a ‘burn me or donate my body to anyone who wants it’ kind of guy, I don’t quite see the appeal of custom coffins but each to their own.
Cameras that can re-focus after taking a photo
Whoa. Imagine being able to refocus a photo after taking it. Sounds impossible? Apparently not according to this paper from Stanford Uni on Light Field photography. Loads of examples and explanations that even I can (mostly) follow. Highly impressive stuff.
Spot the Band
Virgin Digital are running a competition which has the potential to drive me absolutely barmy. See how many bands you can spot in this picture. Annoyingly, that image is better quality than this one but whilst you don’t have to wait for the adverts to play in the first link, it seems to have cropped the edges of the image so you can’t see, for instance, the Pet Shop Boys. There are 74 bands in all to find and I don’t doubt I can get to almost 60 without too much problems but the last few will drive me insane.
Hack Your Body
18 Handy hints to Teach Your Body. From stopping a bloody nose in a few seconds to getting rid of pins and needles in a hurry.
Jedi Trainer Game
The new version of the Jedi Trainer lightsaber game is pretty cool.
Motion Mountain – The Free Physics Textbook
How does a rainbow form? Is levitation possible? Do time machines exist? What does ‘quantum’ mean? What is the maximum force found in nature? Is ‘empty space’ really empty? Is the universe a set? How does one empty a bottle as rapidly as possible? What are the highest force and power in nature? How does one connect water pipes to a turning wheel? What are the dangers of a can of beans? What is the single page of unsolved problems in fundamental physics?
A free, extremely comprehensive (40Mb d/load) physics book will hold the answers. Just fantastic.
Too Good not to share
This is much ruder than anything we normally post but it’s just too funny to not share. This comes from this week’s Holy Moly newsletter (not for the easily offended). Here’s what they said;
One of the best radio ‘prank’ calls I’ve heard in a while.
Almost in that too good to be true category – this Preston DJ decides to just phone someone up and pretend to be “Phil”.
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More Retro Gaming Goodness
won’t need anymore introduction to this other than – enjoy some more retro gaming.
The Science of Beer Goggles
Scientists have defined a formula to explain the ‘Beer goggles’ effect. Must have been a slow day in the lab.
george best – OOTTINLTO
My current favourite OOTTINLTO has to be the timely GIS for George Best. Timely because the alcoholic waste of NHS resources has finally died (sorry but he hasn’t been famous for anything other than being a drunk since he was 26 and many other people who needed a liver transplant wouldn’t have wasted a perfectly good liver – apologies to anyone I’ve offended by my opinion of a man who I know is a national ‘hero’).
cheers to my brother for the link (but please note, he doesn’t share my opinion of Best)
Bod!
Sampletastic! For the first time ever the complete collection of music and words from Bod are available on cd.
cheers Dan)
Game-Oldies.com – Bang goes the Afternoon
Kiss your afternoon goodbye with this retro game site.
Paste and Go Firefox Extension
Anyone who has used Opera in the past will know how convenient the ‘Paste and Go’ option is. The good news is that I’ve finally found a Firefox version that works beautifully. On a related note, I’m also trying out the screen grab extension which saves an entire webpage as an image which is very handy for making tutorials and documentation as well as for grabbing pages that won’t always exist (like eBay auctions etc).
OOTTINLTO
I am ashamed to say that I found this OOTTINLTO link myself but I’m not prepared to explain how or why, suffice to say that it was an innocent search and wasn’t anything like as bad as it seems (I know, I know, I’m digging myself even deeper!). Anyway here’s a link to the GIS for men’s stilettos – as usual the ‘One Thing’ that is not like the others is NSFW so be careful out there.
Mary’s “American Inventor” Audition
Mary’s a funny lady, she writes over at Mary’s Great Ideas about… well, I’ll leave you to work that one out. She recently auditioned for a new series ‘American Inventor’ which seems to be yet another Simon Cowell program (My sincere apologies to all our US readers for inflicting Cowell on you – we’re deeply ashamed of him).
