Make a USB TURD
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! We’ve been featuring ridiculous USB devices for a long time now but nothing, surely, can beat the USB TURD and what’s more it’s geek-approved since it’s a DIY job too.
Yesterday’s Outage
Apologies for the outage yesterday. The site was down for a large portion of the day due to issues explained in this article – ‘UK2 victim of IP hijacking‘. Annoyingly I emailed UK2.net to find out why all of my sites were down despite being on seperate boxes and they gave me a boilerplate response about it being an issue with my ISP. I tried to explain to them that I’d personally tried to connect to the servers using numerous ISPs and also by routing through different countries but they stubbornly stuck to their story even when presented with proof that what they were saying was wrong – it was like arguing with creationists! All better now but annoying all the same.
Young at Heart
I’v written in the past about how I found Johnny Cash’s later works (the American recordings for Def Jam) to be his most powerful work as a lot of it deals with the finality of life and facing his mortality (I defy anyone to argue against Hurt being one of the most simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting videos ever). I was similarly struck by a cetain level of poignancy when I came across the Young at Heart chrous who make some very striking music indeed – see their version of Coldplay’s Fix You for evidence. I missed the documentary on UK tv the other week but it’s repeated soon and you can see clips online – I really want to hear their Sonic Youth cover version.
Erotic Fonts
Erotic Fonts
cheers Al
Drilling a square hole
I’d love a Reuleaux triagle drill bit just to be able to drill square holes but I think I’d end up putting holes in all of my walls just for the sake of it. Here comes the maths…
Catfood vs Dogfood
Where do you stand on the Catfood vs Dogfood debate? Having eaten some dogfood in my younger days, I’d probably agree with JimmerUK when he says “it was a choice between catfood, dogfood, and death… I’d eat the catfood. If it was dogfood and death, I’d rather die.”.
Unfortunate Book Title
groo. snigger.
A nice animation
Sweet surreal animation with some sweet choons. Nice work!
MP3 doorbell
Yep, I’m geeky enough to want an MP3 doorbell.
Making Lego
I was rather disappointed to learn that Lego isn’t made using Lego robots but is far more traditional in it’s manufacturing methods. I’ve made working conveyor belts, robotic arms and other industrial machines out of Lego so why can’t they?
A much more interesting animated description is here for those of you who like moving pictures.
To the women who work in my office… I hate you
To the women who work in my office… I hate you.
Grinderman
This one caught me by surprise, apparently the balding, but otherwise god-like, Nick Cave has a new band called Grinderman. Featuring old compadres Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. You can expect a grumpier, noisier Cave harking back to his earliest work. Even better, if you’re in London tomorrow (30th Nov) then you can be in the video.
Things are more painful in slow motion
Trust me, things look more painful in slow motion – movie directors like John Woo have known this for years but you can see for yourself with this collection of Slow motion high FPS clips.
Worn Free T-Shirts
This might be a repost but my memory is starting to fade – we’ve almost made the 5,000th post to the site so I’ve got a bit of an excuse. Worn Free T-Shirts is a good site for vintage look t-shirts as worn by such luminaries (and pri.me.uk favourites) like Frank Zappa, John Lennon and Joey Ramone.
cheers for this Kim – loving your work!
Chi Balls!
I watched the first few minutes of this snippet about the power of chi shaking my head in sad disbelief that people still believe in such things as the ability to knock people out with mystical chi balls. Then I got to the final segment where they tried this against a scientist and failed completely – the excuses were genius – for one thing, he was an unbeliever (great attack to use against your enemies then!) and then the best excuse I’ve ever heard – ‘his tongue was in the wrong position and blocked my chi balls’. Autosuggestion’s a wonderful isn’t it? Another failed experiment is shown here where the instructor resorted to slapping the journalist in the face to try to prove it worked!
Sign This.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create a new exception to copyright law that gives individuals the right to create a private copy of copyrighted materials for their own personal use, including back-ups, archiving and shifting format.
If you live in the UK then please sign this petition – I’ve been taping vinyl albums onto tape from the age of 8 and ripping my cds onto my pc for years always against the law – I’d rather be legal instead of falling foul of an antiquated law (and one that plays right into Apple’s hands allowing them to stop you moving files between iPod and PC).
Cursor thief
This little guy really wants your cursor
Interesting Graphage
Couple of interesting graphs for you, firstly here’s a comparison of the relative values of various liquids and secondly, for anyone that still hasn’t seen the best pie-chart ever. More pie charts here.
Ban on MP3 transmitters is lifted
As we have previously reported, the UK Ban on FM transmitters is to be lifted meaning that your favourite mp3 players can legally use the transmitters that the rest of the works have been using for years now.
Camberwell Carrot attempt cancelled
Organisers in Amsterdam today annouced that they were cancelling their attempt to make the world’s largest spliff.
“We have now read the small print and realize there could be problems,” they said today, giving them some small consolation in that they might have broken the world record for understatement.
MP3 player to turn PCs into Linux boxes
I might finally get around to upgrading from my ancient Archos mp3 player when the Wizpy mp3 player gets released next year. Not only does it have all the usual features (audio, video, radio etc) but it also comes with linux on it allowing you to attach it to a pc, reboot and be straight into your own custom desktop with all of your personal settings. The linux flavour is Turbolinuc and you can read more here (assuming you can all read Japanese that is).
FeedCycle serialised RSS feeds
FeedCycle is a cool new service that allows you to have more control over RSS feeds. The idea is to allow you to publish serialised RSS feeds – the obvious example would be chapters of a book. Normal RSS feeds just send you the latest post when you subscribe but using Feedcycle, you always start at post number 1. There is even the facility to do audio or video posts.
Imagini Gift finder
If you’re stuck for ideas this holiday season then you can try the new Imagini Gift finder service for some ideas. It’s no way near perfect but it’s certainly an interesting idea. I did notice that most of the things it suggested for me were quite overpriced so I’d only use it for inspiration, not to actually buy the things since I can get most things cheaper elsewhere using a little bit of searching.
Aries Spears Rap Freestyle
Ok, it’s a fairly niche market but Aries Spears has the rap impersonation arena tied up pretty well.
cheers John
How Tonedeaf are you?
Regular reader Ted sent me this little online test to test for musical memory and tonedeafnessisity (my made word for being tonedaef). I’m happy to report that his score was an impressive 80.3% whereas I urinated all over his score with an exemplary 80.6%. Ha! Take that ted!
Second Life
I won’t waste a lot of time explaining Second Life but I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in there recently mooching around – if you’re already signed up then come and say hello – I’m ‘grom Amiga’. If you haven’t seen it yet then please go and check it out, it’s a fascinating virtual world almost along the lines envisaged by Neal Stephenson in his seminal novel ‘Snowcrash‘ (or just a way of laughing at sad, lonely, kinky men pretending that they’re young girls). Oh, and it’s free.
John Safran on Tolerance
This video made me laugh so much. John Safran takes on the Mormons at their own game of door knocking. If you haven’t come across John before, you can see some of his stuff on his website – he’s a very funny man although his ex-girlfriend says he just copies Michael Moore.
Screwed by Bush
(NSFW) Bush screws America. Indeed.
Wii Games You’ll Never See
Rejected: the Nintendo Wii Games You’ll Never See.
Ultra-violent Demolition tool
How awesome is the FatMax Xtreme Fubar Utility Bar? It just looks like an ultra-violent damage tool, which happens to be pretty much precisely what it is. I have no requirement for such a thing, indeed it would undoubtedly lead to me breaking things that weren’t meant to be broken but I still want one! I think it’s a guy thing.
