I noticed an interesting trend in my spam today, this morning I got spams entitled good news, by lunch time it was great news. Now, a few hours later, it’s merely ok news.
I wonder what it’ll be tomorrow.
March 28, 2006
March 27, 2006
Things I’ve been playing with …
Links to a few things I’ve been exploring, first a couple from this list of all things “Web 2.0”.
bebop — a neat little tool that talks to iTunes and tells you about any upcoming gigs featuring artists in your library. It’s a nice idea and very well executed but limited in it’s source of information, it didn’t show several Edinburgh dates (I’m guessing because they’re not listed via Ticketmaster) and it only works with iTunes. It’s early days however and I’m willing to give it a go and see what else gets added.
CouchSurfing — an idea that has a lot of potential and the sort of thing that really leverages some of the reach of the internet. From the site:
CouchSurfing.com helps you make connections worldwide. You can use the network to meet people and then go and surf other members’ couches! When you surf a couch, you are a guest at someone’s house. They will provide you with some sort of accommodation, a penthouse apartment or maybe a back yard to pitch your tent in. Stays can be as short as a cup of coffee, a night or two, or even a few months or more. When you offer your couch, you have complete control of who visits. The possibilities are endless and completely up to you.
I’ve been trying to schedule some stuff using HipCal, I’ve never really like the ‘feel’ of any online calendar but this one is quite easy to use and seems to deliver what it promises.
On the not-as-useful side of things there’s this flood map which shows you what’ll be underwater depending on the rise in sea level. (via diamond geezer.)
But mostly this week I’ve been playing with SameGame, a classic and still as addictive as I remember. I lost vast amounts of time a few years ago to Marbles, a variant of the same idea. (via jay is games.)
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March 25, 2006
Want Bunny
Occasionally I see something that makes the part of my brain that is forever a four year old scream “Want!”. The Nabaztag is one such thing.
I’ve seen similar things but they only worked in the States, and had less indicators, and worked on some pager frequency rather than WiFi.
And they weren’t bunny shaped.
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March 23, 2006
A Load Of Bull
I manage all my bills and other financial stuff online. This means that I get very little important mail, and I mean old fashioned paper based mail here, but I do get a fair amount of junk through the door.
Until yesterday it had mostly been for dubious get rich quick schemes, large size shoes, loans and booze. Sherlock Holmes would have a field day with my junk mail. “Elementary Watson, he’s an indebted booze hound with large feet.” “Remarkable Holmes.” Quite.
Yesterday, however, I get mail offering me a special on mail order steaks. This struck me as a bit out of the ordinary, but I suppose people order their shopping online maybe there’s a market for high quality meats by mail. Does this sort of mailing work for them? Are they going to pick up new customers this way?
I admit to being tempted to give them a go. I do wonder if there’s some catch (apart from the premium price), maybe it’s like those book or CD clubs and they’ll automatically send me the editors selection at full price every month. Not that that sounds that bad.
Mmmmm, periodic meat.
And if dead beef through the door isn’t enough for you then you can look forward to the Cow Parade coming to Edinburgh soon. I saw the same thing in Monaco (Monacow, ha!) last year. I’ll see if I can dig out some of my cow pictures before they hit Edinburgh.
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March 20, 2006
More Monday Mixing
The greatest film of the year will be Snakes On A Plane, there is no contest. Everyone else may as well stop trying. Follow the cult with Snakes On A Blog and see the not-trailer over at Tagworld. I know that’s very last week but it could be worse, I could be doing Chuck Norris facts.
Hungry? Pick your breakfast over at alldaybrekkie.com and get a nice background to drool over all day.
Want more distractions? Go play with the finalists for the 2006 Independent Games Festival or deal with the multi-paged preview over at GameSpy.
Bonus link for the geeks out there, William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Original and ActionScript.
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March 18, 2006
V for Vendetta
Went to see V for Vendetta last night, no review here though, you can find plenty of others on the web from mostly positive to mixed to scathing.
Opinion is clearly divided, although it’s generally rated higher by regular viewers than by the paid critics, so all I’m going to suggest is ignore all of that and go see it anyway. Not for any political reasons, but just because, despite it’s flaws, it’s still a damn good film and well worth seeing.
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March 16, 2006
The Hills Have Eyes
Last night I went to see The Hills Have Eyes. It’s times like that when I wonder if it’s normal to want to scare yourself witless for an hour or so. Mini-review after the jump.
(more…)
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March 14, 2006
Bloggies (and some rambling about feeds)
The winners of the 2006 bloggies are up. The winner of weblog of the year was PostSecret, which I’d never heard of. After reading it for a bit I can see it is, quite frankly, brilliant and a deserving winner.
I’ve spent a good while adding some of the winners and nominees to Bloglines. Generally I subscribe to anything that looks vaguely interesting knowing that I can always junk it later, but I was surprised that a couple of sites didn’t have feeds of any sort. There could be many reasons, and I’m not going to try to second guess why they don’t but I do think it’s a shame. I love feeds, I tend to forget about things I’ve found as they get pushed further down the list, having them all in a feed reader means that I see things only when they’re updated which makes it much easier to manage everything.
Fortunately there are some tools to help with just this problem, I’m currently experimenting with FeedYes which promises to generate a useful feed out of any website. It’s seems to work although each post needs linked with meaningful text if you want something readable in the feed (other than fourteen entries that say ‘Link this article’.) Even for sites that don’t have useful text in the links it provides a placeholder in your feed reader and acts as a basic update notifier. Worth a look if you want to keep tabs on a feedless site.
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When the machines finally take over …
… it’ll be these snakebots you’ll find slithering out the plumbing seeking to silence the brave resistance fighters.
March 13, 2006
Monday Afternoon Mixup
The alliteration would have worked better had I managed to post this in the morning …
A few links, distractions, whatever to make up for no posts over the last few days, yesterday my hungover self was strangely distracted by this little flash gem. I also discovered that I am, apparently, a Badger:
What Is Your Animal Personality? ( Brought to you by Quizilla )
Some more self-discovery and a bit of other nonsense the jump. (more…)
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