An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot
Now you can prove exactly how true the saying ‘As useful as a chocolate teapot’ is since bored scientists have done research into the pressing issue and releasedd the results in their Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot. Bottom line: it melts and doesn’t make good tea.
99 Luftballons vs 99 Red Balloons
Most people of a certain age (ie: old farts like Solomon and I) will be fairly intimate with the 80′s classic pop song 99 Red Ballooons or, as it was originally called, 99 Luftballon. This page shows the two different lyrics translated side by side – I never realised how much more poetic the English version was (ignoring ‘hurry, hurry, super-scurry’ or fcourse – that will always be inexcusable).
Liquid Condoms?
Sometimes I’d rather not treanslate foreign websites and just try to leave it to the imagination. This is definitley true of this image from Italian newspaper, la Repubblica who have a story about Cryptomorphic condoms which just looks scary.
Xmas USB Silliness
We’ve done many USB gadget round-ups over the years and here’s another seasonal one for you all.
First up are the USB Christmas Tree and Snowman.
Next up is the Snow Globe, closely followed by the Drumming Santa with the Santa Claus liquid optical mouse bringing up the rear.
Any more suggestions for any sort of USB gizmo (the sillier, the better) then please send them to the usual address (and keep the OOTTINLTO links coming in too).
Reevu – the world’s first rear view motorbike helmet
Anyone who’s ever rode a motorbike will know the problem with seeing behind you. Traditional rear view mirrors on motorbikes are useless as they tend to vibrate so much that you can’t see propoerly. Reevu motorbike helmets attempt to overcome this issue by using a clever periscope gizmo built into the helmets so that you can see behind you at all times whilst still looking forward. Looking at the pictures it’s not clear how much this would distract you though.
Create your own Geek Ringtone
If you’re sick of Crazy Frog and fancy a ringtone that no-one else has, why not use WolframTones to make you’re own using their online generator – some of them are actually quite good.
Lego Hard Drives
Anyone who’s read Douglas Coupland’s novel, Microserfs will appreciate the humour in Lacie’s new ‘brick’ hard drives (N.B. Lego’s lawyers are famous for their protection of the brand but we all know what these look like). For everyone else, they’re very cool external disks that won’t look out of place on any geek’s desktop.
Local Food for Local People
If you like your food to be fresh (and live in the UK) then pop over to theBig Barn, type in your postcode and it’ll show you all the farms, markets, organic shops, apiaries and every other shop relating to healthy food in your area.
American Edit
Just found another mash-up album to check out – this one is courtesy of Dean Gray and is a bootleg called American Edit (being based around Green Day’s American Idiot album).
Guitar master Link Wray RIP
It’s actually slightly old news but I’ve only just heard that Link Wray has died. Link inspired hundreds of the greatest guitarists, wrote ‘Rawhide’, the classic ‘Rumble’ and influenced people such as Neil Yong, The Cramps, Bob Dylan and Pete Townsend amongst many others. If you haven’t heard his music before, dive onto your favourite online source for downloading music (legally or not – I don’t care less) and check out his music – it sounds as fresh today as it did all those decades ago and there’s not many you can say that about. His defining guitar sound was created by puncturing a speaker cone with a pencil and helped pave the way for fuzz-tone and grunge music along the way. Pulp Fiction wouldn’t have been the same movie without his music forming part of the magnificent soundtrack.
ThrowingMusic – Kristen Hersh’s blog
I apologise sincerely to Kristen Hersh but in my mind, she was always second best to my all time sweetheart (in my dreams) Kim Deal. Having said that, number 2 in such company is no bad thing. I’ve just been listening to Kristen do a superb session on Radio 6 which should be online tomorrow and I’ve been rooting through her
blog which is worth a read. I’d highly recommend digging out your old Throwing Muses albums and I’ll be checking out her new stuff (many tracks available from her site).
The McDonald’s Sign Prank
I’m a big fan of any pranks but ones against McDonald’s always rate highly with me.
Brassy Pictures
Random link of the day – a site full of images of Brass Band and Brass related photos. Don’t ask why – just enjoy them.
Dubya Foiled by Door
It’s far too easy to mock the afflicted as this video of yet another George Bush snafu shows.
Finger Frenzy
Find out how quick you can type the alphabet with the Finger Frenzy tester. It seems that my main problem is actually not the speed of my typing but more that I don’t know the right order of letters in the upper region of the alphabet so I’ve not managed to break 5 seconds yet.
NetGear Storage Box
In my hunt for more storage for my prized music collection, I came across the Netgear Storage Central unit which look slovely. It’s basically an empty box which you can put 2 hard drives in and setup different types of RAID levels. I’d love to hear from anyone with any experience of this unit or recommendations for something similar (especially if it can use SATA disks as this only uses IDE drives). For the price it looks excellent though.
No to foil bags for Seabrook crisps Petition
If, like me, you have wonderful memories of piling out of your local swimming pool with the heady scent of chlorine in your sinuses, the climax of your visit being the burning of your tongue on hot soup out of a beige plastic ridged cup whilst munching on a packet of delicious “see what you buy” Seabrooks crisps… you too will be thoroughly disappointed at the decision Seabrooks have recently made to make the Walkers-like move to totally opaque foil packets! (gasp!). If you think this is a travesty the pop along to petitiononline and make your voice heard! (Doesn’t work in Firefox… try IE!)
Pete Townsend has a blog
Another addition to our ongoing irregular series of celebrities with blogs – Pete Townsend – deaf guitar guru from The Who has a blog called The Boy Who Heard Music (shouldn’t this be subtitled ‘although there was an annoying ringing sound in the background’).
Coloured Bubblelicious
Popular Science magazine has an interesting write-up of one man’s quest to create Disappearing Coloured Bubbles. Sounds simple but when you think about it, it’s actually incredibly hard (no wonder it tool 11 years to perfect). Expect to see ‘Zubbles’ in the shops early next year.
VoiceOver Masterclass
What Happens when five movie trailer voice over guys get into one limo? Hilarity ensues (well, it make me laugh anyway).
Second Skin Clothing
Ok, first off, a warning – this page is technically SFW but actually isn’t so do be careful. It’s not in English but the pictures are all you need to understand the basis of these skin-like clothes. Very well done and slightly disturbing – Dali would be proud of them I think.
Discover Music – Pandora
JC has a bit of a reputation of being able to guess a persons individual music tastes… either that or everyone he knows is utterly predictable. Either way, he’s got some competition in the form of Pandora.com. Just name a tune or two and let Pandora do the rest… I’m rather impressed – it got me sussed with about 80% accuracy! Good way of discovering new choons.
Monty Python Killer Rabbit Toy
Is this the ultimate geek toy? I’d love to buy one but I think I’d mentally scar my daughter for life if she played with it.
Zombiegrinder 60000
Zombiegrinder 60000 is a manic, frantic zombie-killing game with kick-ass music which fits right in with the game. Excellent!
Discovering Sherlock Holmes
Ooh very nice – Standford University is running a Discovering Sherlock Holmes community project next year. They’re publishing reprints (both hard and soft copies – paper or pdf file) of the original Strand magazine Sherlock Holmes stories. Stories being included are two early Holmes stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Speckled Band”; the nine-part novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles; and the famous “last” encounter between Holmes and Moriarty, “The Final Problem.” I’m guessing the paper versions will only be available to US readers but I’ve subscribed to the announcements for the pdf versions. Have a root through the site & you’ll find some Dickens novels already available too.
wikiHow – The How-To Manual That Anyone Can Write or Edit
Having given this site a quick viewing, I love the idea of wikiHow as a repository of HowTo: manuals – I think it’ll take another month or so to take off properly but it might just turn into the next big (useful) thing.
Robotic relief
How lazy/desperate would you have to be to use a Robotic w4nking aid? Still, as they say, it beats the competition hands down.
UK’s first ‘most wanted’ website goes titsup
I was going to post a link to the new UK Crimestoppers ‘Most Wanted’ website which went live today. I say, ‘was’ as the site has already disappeared in a puff of smoke under the strain of people logging in to see if they’ve made the top ten.
