CatCam and CatTrack
I just noticed an interesting aerial photo on my contacts Flickr page which turned out to be friend of the sites Dan P aka Gusset. It turns out that he’s bought a CatTrack GPS unit and a CatCam so that he can see where his cat goes. As long as it’s not too heavy or annoying for the cat then it seems a great idea. Even mrs grom asked if we could get another cat just so we could use it.
Religulous Trailer
”’Bill Maher””s new film is due out shortly and it looks as though ‘Religulous will wind up all the right people in a ”’Michael Moore”’ kind of way.
Amanda Palmer – Leeds United
Unusually for someone who’s neither gay, troubled or gothy/emo, I’m a huge fan of ‘Brechtian punk cabaret’ band ”’The Dresden Dolls”’. The singer ”’Amanda Palmer”’ has a new album comig out next week and I’ve got to say I was somewhat surprised to see that one of the tracks is called ”’Leeds United”’ – my local football team (not that I follow sports). The album entitled Who Killed Amanda Palmer has ”’Ben Folds”’ singing and co-writing many tracks and even surprisingly ”’East Bay Ray”’ on a track and ”’Neil Gaiman”’ has contributed to the album package.
Amusingly for Leeds locals, I found a blog post about this by Sheena Beaston – what an awesome name! (Beeston is a town in Leeds and you probablyu know ”’Sheena Easton”’ if you’re old enough)
WikiFighting
If you are bored at work then why not start a WikiFight with your colleagues? It’s a kind of ”’six degrees of separation”’ where you have to get from one random article to another in the least clicks. It’s strangely addictive.
The UK’s Filthy Manner of Life
Those unbelievably pathetic bile-mongers at the ”’Westboro Baptist Church”’ (home of godhatesfags – despite the fact that, if you’re a believer, godmadefags) have a new target for their hate – The United Kingdom. Whilst I’m honoured that they’d consider us a target, someone should point out that using an image of Prince Charles fondling a female soldier’s b00bies is probably not the best accompaniment to illustrate an article saying how gay we are.
I’d also like to point out to these wastes of oxygen that in the UK, the word ‘fag’ means ‘cigarette’. With this in mind, would anyone care to knock up a firefox extension which replaces the word fag with cigarette for anyone who feels the need to visit any of their sites? Or failing that, just hack their site into oblivion.
Ivan Anuvadrink
”’Ivan Ukhov”’ should consider changing his name to Ivan Anuvadrink after his latest Drunken high jump attempt.
Arachnophobia Ahoy!
Apologies to arachnophobes like mrs grom and the totally wussy Solomon – you should probably skip this post. Everyone else can marvel at the Play With Spider site which lets you play with a tarantula on your desktop.
Kingfisher
Steve has sent me this stunning collection of Kingfisher photos. Well worth a look, the shots really jaw dropping, especially the underwater ones where the graceful, elegant bird suddenly looks like a pre-historic killing machine.
Nine Inch Fails
Caption of the Day – Nine Inch Fails
Audio Puzzler
Audio Puzzler is an odd type of game – you have to listen to snippets of speech, type up what you hear and merge the sections together to complete the level – it took me far too long to work out how to merge them but then that’s because I didn’t read the instructions fully.
Add More Cowbell to any song
Oh yes! Upload any mp3 to MoreCowbell.dj and it will scan the file and add appropriate cowbell and some bonus ”’Christopher Walken”’. ”’More Cowbell”’ indeed.
I wonder how many people it took to bring the server down by sending ”’Blue Oyster Cult””s track to the server?
I cowbell’d ”’Ministry””s Thieves for you.
Oh – also, if you have an iPhone then the iCowbell should be on your shopping list.
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
Check the source code for disclaimer.
Sir Nils Olav – Penguin
A belated congratulations to Nils Olav on his knighthood. Nils is a penguin who was previously made Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army and was knighted last month. Let’s just hope he never has to lead our troops into action.
2020 – The Herd
Slurfed across a very nice tune and video – the song is called 2020 by Australian hip hoppers ”’The Herd”’. I’m off to look for the album.
Animation Backgrounds
Sometimes I stumble across a random blog that really grabs my attention and teh Animation Backgrounds is one of those rare beasts. I’ve linked to the ”’Alice in Wonderland”’ posts as it’s a superb example of what the site’s about. My only grumble is that it’s all so good that I want higher resolution.
The Animated Gif Appreciation Society
In amongst the usual dross there are some beauties in the collection from the Animated Gif Appreciation Society.
Throw Me
We’ve certainly featured an older version of Throw Me but it’s such a good 5 minute lunchbreak game that I thought I’d post this newer version. First attempt got me 1107 points butthen I remembered to use the space bar in flight so second score was 30789 points and that wasn’t a particularly good throw either!
Minisearch Feedback
I’m keen to get any feedback any of you might have on the minisearch feature we’ve added to the blog recently. It’s now being used on a lot of posts and I’ve had a bit of feedback already but feel free to add any comments or mail me. Would you like different search engines added or maybe some removed – is there something missing or annoying or even do you think it’s useful or pointless – we’d like to know.
If you haven’t used it yet, look for words in bold and italics and click on them for a quick, simple search box – it saves me putting links to background information into posts and, I think, keeps the page tidy.
Holiday Inn, Cambodia
I really wish this ”’Dead Kennedys ”’ Holiday In Cambodia t-shirt was available in a colour other than yellow – I’d get one straight away if it was but I just look jaundiced in yellow tees unfortunately.
Bloons Tower Defense 3
Yes, it’s another ”’Tower Defense”’ game but in case you needed another one, here’s Bloons Tower Defense 3.
Emergency Powerpoint
Much like the new online photoshop clones, 280 Slides is like an online Powerpoint (I know that’s a very unfair comparison). It’s free, simple and easy to use. You can even import existing powerpoint documents so it’s very handy for last minute edits when you’re on the road, the only thing missing is somewhere to host the finished document although this is only a minor point as you can download locally or upload to anywhere else.
Album Covers Map
I’m very grateful to Al for pointing me to the Word Magazine Album Covers Map – a Google maps mash-up onto which you can place the locations of your favourite album art shots. first thing I went to check was that someone had already done ”’Led Zepplin””s ”’Houses of the Holy”’ taken at the ”’Giant’s Causeway”’ (where mrs grom grew up) and it was indeed there. I then discovered that the iconic shot of the ”’Verve””s ”’This is music”’ single was shot outside one of my old student houses. I think I’ll be spending a lot of time on here.
PhotoCamp Leeds
Big congratulations to Jon Eland for putting together the first PhotoCamp Leeds (and hopefully not the last). I didn’t make it to this event thanks to a diary clash and Big Grom’s missus successfully dropping out a new nephew for me (so congrats to them too!) but the feedback I’ve had so far all points to it having been a highly successful event. I will be there next time and I’ve got my talks on hacking cameras ready (it may not be a geek event but that’s not going to stop me nerding out!).
The attendee group shot is here as is the Flickr group. I can’t believe how many people I know from non-geek life were there!
SoundUnwound
Some old friends on mine started Sleevenotez a while back but I think it’s kind of been left to drift away which is a shame because it was a good idea and one that worked well, especially as it was nicely integrated with last.fm so you could see info about bands as you were listening. Now the big boys at ”’Amazon”’ and ”’imdb”’ have teamed up to create their own version called SoundUnwound. there’s no last.fm integration and instead of using ”’Wikipedia”’ for the content about bands and musicians, it uses it’s own ‘pedia which everyone is invited to contribute to. not exactly a novel idea but having the power of Amazon and imdb behind it should mean it will shortly become the de facto resource.
Enter SandCat
”’Metallica””s ”’Enter Sandman”’ in cats (even includes guitar solo).
Black Cab Sessions
I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ve posted the Black Cab Sessions before but just in case we haven’t here it is again (or not). Take one London taxi, stick a band in it and press record. It’s one cab, one song, one take. Personal Highlights for me are ”’Daniel Johnston”’, ”’Seasick Steve”’, ”’Lykke Li”’ and the ever awesome ”’Benjamin Zephaniah”’ but I’ve only seen about half of the gigs so far.
Mister Bookseller
Mister Bookseller is a comic by ”’Darko Macan”’ which has been translated into English. It’s a very touching story about a bookseller whose shop has ‘every book in the world , except one’. Very touching.
Finally, a t-shirt worthy of the Ramones
Australian designer James Lillis has a great range of t-shirts on the Redbubble site. I’m a huge fan of the Ramones – (Sold More T-Shirts Than Albums) shirt in particular.
Makin’ a Pr0no
Here’s the (NSFW) trailer for ”’Kevin Smith””s forthcoming movie ‘Zack and Miri Make a Pr0no’. It’s not the most original idea but I’m confident that it’ll be great. Enjoy Makin’ a Pr0no.
Font Conference
You know know ”’Comic Sans”’ is going to make an appearance at the Font Conference.
