Sometimes I wonder if this is how I'll meet my end: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7261888.stm
This probably ranks right up there with the guy who got kicked to death while trying molest a horse for embarrassing ways to die.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Linky Love - Fun Stuff Round Up - 24 02
Well yesterday was a total geek fest so today I'm going to focus on fun stuff:
I've been meaning to share this for ages so it's likely that you may have already seen it, but I love planethiltron who photoshop celebs back to normality. if all magazines did this we would be rid of eating disorders at a stroke.
This collection of famous poems reworked as limericks is inspired as I proved when I had a crack at doing some myself and failed miserably.
I've heard plenty of great music mashups in my time, but this flash game mash up of Metroid and Megaman is awesome. You get to control Megaman taking on the space pirates on the original Metroid maps. Great stuff!
For those of you interested to know what desktop wallpaper I use on my machine at home you will be excited to know that I have this picture of Haggar piledriving a shark and yes it does come from a site called gay gamer!
This collection of HRD photography from Japan is hyper real. I Love the way that at first glance it appears to be a painting.
Got some time on your hands?
Why not fold yourself a towel monkey.
I haven't got around to downloading this crazy 2D physics simulation game
yet, but the demo video looks just great.
Staying on gaming. Nintendo have announced that they will be putting C64 games on the Wii virtual console. 500 points seems a bit steep though.
Finally this tiny Korean kid playing Hey Jude cracks me up.
I've been meaning to share this for ages so it's likely that you may have already seen it, but I love planethiltron who photoshop celebs back to normality. if all magazines did this we would be rid of eating disorders at a stroke.
This collection of famous poems reworked as limericks is inspired as I proved when I had a crack at doing some myself and failed miserably.
I've heard plenty of great music mashups in my time, but this flash game mash up of Metroid and Megaman is awesome. You get to control Megaman taking on the space pirates on the original Metroid maps. Great stuff!
For those of you interested to know what desktop wallpaper I use on my machine at home you will be excited to know that I have this picture of Haggar piledriving a shark and yes it does come from a site called gay gamer!
This collection of HRD photography from Japan is hyper real. I Love the way that at first glance it appears to be a painting.
Got some time on your hands?
Why not fold yourself a towel monkey.
I haven't got around to downloading this crazy 2D physics simulation game
yet, but the demo video looks just great.
Staying on gaming. Nintendo have announced that they will be putting C64 games on the Wii virtual console. 500 points seems a bit steep though.
Finally this tiny Korean kid playing Hey Jude cracks me up.
Useful Digital SLR Links
A trip to London Zoo a few weeks back made me understand that a lot of people are investing in digital SLRs these days. I got one for Emily for her birthday last year, Although they take great shots in point and shoot mode you need to get to grips with manual mode if you want to get the best out of them.
I have collected together a few photography links from lifehacker that I found helpful:
The rules of photography composition
Master Your DSLR Part one
Master Your DSLR Part Two
Happy clicking!
I have collected together a few photography links from lifehacker that I found helpful:
The rules of photography composition
Master Your DSLR Part one
Master Your DSLR Part Two
Happy clicking!
Friday, February 22, 2008
Linky Love 22 02 08
So many links so little time.
I've been trying to reduce my backlog of links to post, but it keeps growing faster than I can prune it, not to mention that I promised to review my Sennheiser HD600 cans ages ago, but still haven't got around to it.
I'm going to give this entry a geeky flavor and post some funny stuff next time.
Cory Doctorow recently finished podcasting the whole of Bruce Sterlings "The Hacker Crackdown" which is a very geeky, but brilliant book about the history of hacking which couldn't be further than the nonsense peddled in your average Hollywood movie.
I've had this in depth Ars Technica review of KDE 4.0 in my to read list for absolutely ages, but haven't got around to reading it until now.
I've favored Gnome over KDE since I used Linux at uni, but this release looks good enough for me to consider switching. It doesn't seem like it will be worth installing until 4.1 appears in June though.
With Nokia buying the Troll Tech technology that underpins its development and becoming an official patron things are looking great for KDE at the moment. The port to Windows and Mac OSX might also win some converts.
Voz me is a nifty little web site that converts text to Mp3s which means you can make pretty much any document into an audio book. When I was revising 12 hours a day for my uni finals (I'm not a swat I just I hadn't been to any lectures that semester and it was a month till exam time) I had to sit in a dark room fending off migraines every so often and used a speach synthesizer
in conjunction with some Bit Torrented PDF files of the Harry Potter books to stop me going crazy. Whether I would have found them any less crap if Id listened to the Stephen Fry versions rather than having it read to me by a disembodied robot voice is another story.
Continuing the uuuber geek theme Neetorama had a rather groovy overview of early computing devices. Good stuff if you like letching over retro techno porn.
If you don't visit Lifehacker you really should. They recently published an overview of all their free productivity software. I use Better Gmail, Better GReader, Better Youtube, but they have a whole bunch of great stuff.
The security of encrypted hard drives received an almighty kick in the nuts this week as some researchers got around it with the aid of a spray can and a thumb drive. It's real James bond stuff.
Finally for todays over long and super geeky installment. If you have been wondering about dabbling with Linux, but can't be bothered with partitioning drives and all that technical stuff then try this easy method to run Linux inside your Windows desktop.
I've been trying to reduce my backlog of links to post, but it keeps growing faster than I can prune it, not to mention that I promised to review my Sennheiser HD600 cans ages ago, but still haven't got around to it.
I'm going to give this entry a geeky flavor and post some funny stuff next time.
Cory Doctorow recently finished podcasting the whole of Bruce Sterlings "The Hacker Crackdown" which is a very geeky, but brilliant book about the history of hacking which couldn't be further than the nonsense peddled in your average Hollywood movie.
I've had this in depth Ars Technica review of KDE 4.0 in my to read list for absolutely ages, but haven't got around to reading it until now.
I've favored Gnome over KDE since I used Linux at uni, but this release looks good enough for me to consider switching. It doesn't seem like it will be worth installing until 4.1 appears in June though.
With Nokia buying the Troll Tech technology that underpins its development and becoming an official patron things are looking great for KDE at the moment. The port to Windows and Mac OSX might also win some converts.
Voz me is a nifty little web site that converts text to Mp3s which means you can make pretty much any document into an audio book. When I was revising 12 hours a day for my uni finals (I'm not a swat I just I hadn't been to any lectures that semester and it was a month till exam time) I had to sit in a dark room fending off migraines every so often and used a speach synthesizer
in conjunction with some Bit Torrented PDF files of the Harry Potter books to stop me going crazy. Whether I would have found them any less crap if Id listened to the Stephen Fry versions rather than having it read to me by a disembodied robot voice is another story.
Continuing the uuuber geek theme Neetorama had a rather groovy overview of early computing devices. Good stuff if you like letching over retro techno porn.
If you don't visit Lifehacker you really should. They recently published an overview of all their free productivity software. I use Better Gmail, Better GReader, Better Youtube, but they have a whole bunch of great stuff.
The security of encrypted hard drives received an almighty kick in the nuts this week as some researchers got around it with the aid of a spray can and a thumb drive. It's real James bond stuff.
Finally for todays over long and super geeky installment. If you have been wondering about dabbling with Linux, but can't be bothered with partitioning drives and all that technical stuff then try this easy method to run Linux inside your Windows desktop.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Film Review - Sweeny Todd
Never one to tread an obvious path the latest film by Tim Burton is a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's critically acclaimed 1970's musical about the demon barber of fleet street.
No one who who is a fan of Burton will be surprised to hear that Jonny Depp (switching from Keith Richards to Bowie for his performance cue) and Helene Bonham Carter play the main characters. The plot for those of you not familiar with the story is kind of The Count of Montechristo with the addition of some razor slashed throats. Evil judge Alan Rickman frames Benjamin Barker so he can have his wicked way with his wife and daughter. Fifteen years later he
returns in the guise of Sweeny Todd and begins a campaign of murder aided by the lovesick Mrs Lovett erstwhile pie vendor and sometime human butcher.
The film is up to Burtons usual superb standards and it is safe to say if you are a fan you aren't going to be disappointed, but it's not going to change the mind of critics.
To say the film is gory would be an understatement. It contains more gruesome scenes of closeup throat slashing and blood jetting than any film I've seen except perhaps Kill Bill and that might be a box office problem. I'm not convinced that the musical and extreme gore demographic has that much crossover, (as the difficulty I had finding somewhere that was showing it confirms) but Burton has to be admired for his decision not to go for the soft option and tone it down for a 15 certificate. I just hope that it doesn't tank and deprive the world of more of his surreal masterpieces because for those that do love a jaunty tune juxtaposed with a spurting carotid you will find few finer films.
No one who who is a fan of Burton will be surprised to hear that Jonny Depp (switching from Keith Richards to Bowie for his performance cue) and Helene Bonham Carter play the main characters. The plot for those of you not familiar with the story is kind of The Count of Montechristo with the addition of some razor slashed throats. Evil judge Alan Rickman frames Benjamin Barker so he can have his wicked way with his wife and daughter. Fifteen years later he
returns in the guise of Sweeny Todd and begins a campaign of murder aided by the lovesick Mrs Lovett erstwhile pie vendor and sometime human butcher.
The film is up to Burtons usual superb standards and it is safe to say if you are a fan you aren't going to be disappointed, but it's not going to change the mind of critics.
To say the film is gory would be an understatement. It contains more gruesome scenes of closeup throat slashing and blood jetting than any film I've seen except perhaps Kill Bill and that might be a box office problem. I'm not convinced that the musical and extreme gore demographic has that much crossover, (as the difficulty I had finding somewhere that was showing it confirms) but Burton has to be admired for his decision not to go for the soft option and tone it down for a 15 certificate. I just hope that it doesn't tank and deprive the world of more of his surreal masterpieces because for those that do love a jaunty tune juxtaposed with a spurting carotid you will find few finer films.
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