Grand Illusions Shop
This is a great online shop and resource (not everything is for sale) run by an endearingly British eccentric who demonstrates most of the products in videos which are well worth watching. The Grand Illusions site has made it onto my wists lists (see right hand sidebar) for it’s wonderful Hurricane Balls and Toro Fluxus but there are many, many things I’d love to see but my only quibble is that it’s not cheap.
Websites as graphs
I’m a sucker for pretty pictures so I liked this Websites as graphs applet. There’s a Flickr for the screenshots here.
Later with Jools Holland
YES! One of my favourite bands, Ojos de Brujo are playing on UK tv this week on the continually awesome live music show Later with Jools Holland. Readers from other countries can normally download the shows from the newsgroups after the Friday night shows. Other acts on this week include Morrisey, Hot Chip, India Arie, Dirty Pretty Things and Crosby/Nash (shame no Young with them!) so there really is something for everyone (even better – look out for Gogl Bordello in a few weeks time – they’re, erm, unique).
That’s the way to do it
Australians have a reputation for speaking their minds – this clip does nothing to disprove this stereotype. (caution, needs sound, contains swearing).
Accessibility Color Wheel
A great little app for web designers – the Accessibility Color Wheel uses some algorithims to show good and bad combinations of foreground/background colours including tests for various forms of colour-blindness.
The Truck Driver’s Gear Change
Although a quick look at the FAQ made it all clear, it wasn’t immediately obvious to me what was meant by the phrase “The Truck Driver’s Gear Change” but like “Earworm and Jumping the Shark it’s an evocative phrase worth remembering.
Build Your Own Lego USB Drive
Very simple idea – buy a cheap USB Drive and convert some Lego to make yourself a Lego USB Memory Stick. Neat.
eBayer driven to edge by email quippery
A hilarious round-up of writings all (I think) from the same, highly sarcastic, bloke. Firstly the Register reported about his being driven to edge by email quippery over an eBay auction but further investigation reveals his site which is every bit as funny. Looking at his profile leads us to more eBay responses to make you giggle.
chronon
If you’ve played the other ‘GROW’ games then you’ll know how frustrating/rewarding they are. chronon is another game in the series but this time, not only do you have to work out the correct order to do the game in, you also have to work out when to click them. Once it annoys me too much, I’ll try to find the solution and post a spoiler in the comments as usual.
Toon Crisis
Excellent little viral game here called Toon Crisis (can you guess what it’s based on?). Great extra features such as the devil horn power-up or the duck feature.
About an Url
Excellent resource for anyone who has their own site – AboutUrl has links to loads of useful tests to run on your sites (note I do mean useful, there are many sites like this that have utterly irrelevant tests).
cheers tigersden
the broken laptop i sold on ebay…
It’s the usual story, guy sells laptop on eBay, claims it works fine. Guy doesn’t send laptop for 2 months and it not only doesn’t match specs but doesn’t work. New owner tries to get money back but seller refuses. New owner then takes hard drive out of it and finds original owners bank details and a cast array of pr0n and many decidedly dubious photos so makes a website to shame the seller. Don’t forget to check out the comments too for the laughable attempts of the seller to fake some identities.
Desmond Dekker RIP
Sorry to hear that Desmond Dekker has died suddenly. He was a phenomenal musician – if you only know him from his song ‘Israelites’ which was used on many adverts then please, do me a favour today – go and find some of his tracks on iTunes, easynews or whatever your online source of music is and pay your respects by giving his music a well-deserved airing.
Don’t know who to vote for?
It’s not for me to tell people who to vote for but if you don’t have a party in mind for the next elections, can I suggest that you read this article about the Lib Dems ID card protest. Coincidentaly (or not), I’ve just renewed my passport for the very same reason that they mention.
More Poor taste Humour
From a mailing list I’m on (hello T&Fers;);
“How busy must the password reminder link on this page be?
Acoustic Locators and Sound Mirrors
Loads of photos of mena wearing silly headphones. They’re actually Acoustic Radar devices used to locate passing aircraft or ships before radar was used.
More photos of these and other ‘Failed Audio Projects‘ for your amusement
thanks ted
Improv Everywhere Mission: Best Buy
I really like the Improv Everywhere guys, they’re most recent flashmob mission was Operation Best Buy – they had 80 volunteers dressed similarly to the staff at BestBuy turn up and hang around the shop. It reminded me of one of my favourite scenes from a movie – the museum heist from the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair. Photos, story and videos (taken using BestBuy’s own shop demo kit – nice touch!) are all available.
How to get banned from every guitar shop on the planet
Reader ted has stumbled across a site that has mp3s of 101 mp3s of cvoer versions of Stariway to Heaven. I’m not going to pretend to have listened to them all but rest assured that Rolf Harris’s wobble board version is present and correct and it’s always nice to see the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir – their version of Tom Jones’s Delilah is still my favourite version of that track.
mattboyce.com
Matt Boyce. Three quarters bonkers, three quarters dyslexic, troubled genius, fantastic artist and just a dash of completely and utterly twisted. The fact that this guy is a very dear friend of mine is completely irrelevant as I’ve always thought he’s a complete genius – it’s just wonderful to see he’s finally got a website together. Bookmark him, buy his books, give him money and free s3x, become a fan, e-mail him and abuse him… he’ll love it! I can’t think of anyone else more deserving of success. If you don’t do anything else at least go and look at some of his work. Mattboyce.com. You’ll probably find that much of his stuff is NSFW but after a poke around his site I think he’s left much of the truly offensive stuff at home. You might need to buy his stuff to see how dark it can really get.
Hello-cthulu
Tired of cute Japanese-ness? How about Cute Elder Gods? Yes, at long last its Hello – Cthulu. Oh, and in a similar vein try Cthuugle (probably safest that its not working 
USB Turntable – convert your vinyl to mp3 easily
Found this a few days ago and forgot to post it but now I’ve seen it posted to a few sites today. This USB Turntable is ideal for ripping your old vinyl collection to mp3 – I’ve seen many ways of doing this in the past but this really seems the simplest way of doing it – you just need one USB cable between your pc and the deck and away you go.
I’ve also set up my own Wists list now in which I’ll start dropping cool and odd things to buy that Icome across on my travels so keep checking it out – I’ll stick a link to my Wists list in the righthand sidebar on gromblog so you can find it easily – please keep sending me links to things to stick in there.
More Bad Tattoos
We love/hate Bad Tattoos or to re-use the marvellous phrase invented by friend of gromblog, Kaye, ‘Shattoos’.
Fancy Getting Legless?
Why not have a drink here. Soon to be renamed the Heather Mills Arms no doubt.
(apologies for the bad taste – if you don’t get it, explanation is here)
So I nearly got killed today…
It’s funny how a few hundred miles makes such a difference – this guy nearly got killed today and seems pretty fine about it. If it had happened in the UK, this would have been headline news and woul dhave started another week or so or news items about gun control. Luckily we don’t have the right to bear arms in the UK so this is very unlikely to happen over here (and bear in mind how strong I am on freedoms and civil liberties – I still believe there are few reasons to own a gun, I’m happy sticking with my right to bare arms!).
$100 says that the guy with the gun was w*nking over them in the bathroom because they made him feel more of a man than his tiny pen15.
Bizarre and Expensive iPod Dock
This has to be the biggest and most expensive iPod dock I’ve seen so far. Shaped like a piano, with two speakers hidden inside, it also doubles as a dining table and a work desk. Hmmm.
The Microsoft EULA made easy
I’ve installed thousands of pcs in my time which means I’ve agreed to Microsoft’s Term and Conditions without thinking about it. There’s really no point in worrying as you either agree to sell your soul and get to use the software or you don’t agree and can’t use it. Someone at LinuxAdvocate has gone through the license agreement and simplified it so anyone can understand it.
Two provisos here – firstly I don’t believe that this type of license agremment has ever been properly tested in courts across the world but I’d be interested to hear of any cases where it has been. Secondly clearly Linux advocate has its own agenda but to be fair to MS, most other software provider (non-open source of course) have very similar agreements – Microsoft are just an easy target.
Cribcandy & Wists
Have I posted Cribcandy before? I certainly meant to. It’s a user-contributed site that looks very professional. The CribCandy site itself is a simple page of links to other sites but it’s made using Wists which is a nifty idea – it’s a very simple way of creating visual bookmarks of sites and collecting them, hard to explain but simple to understand – just hop on over and see.
Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot
In an unexpected twist to the rise of bio-organisms, the first Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot has been demo’d recently. Anyone who reads The Register can insert thier own Kevin Warwick/Captain Cyborg joke here.
cheers tigersden
Cartoon-like Tree House
If they ever get a UK distibutor for these Tree House Homes then I’ll be first in line but don’t think my kids will ever get near it, oh no, this’ll be just for me especially when combined with yesterday’s solar-powered wifi extender link. I really love the cartoon-like shapes of them.
World’s First Hybrid Motorcycle
In this green eco-era, it’s nice to see that manufacturers have finally come up with with the World’s First Hybrid Motorcycle.
thanks Kim
