A weekend of nothingness
This weekend Kristy is helping-out at a local dancing eisteddfod so I’m taking this opportunity to chill-out, not think about work and basically vegetate for a couple of days.
Being the geek that I am, part of this whole ‘vegetation’ process involves dicking around on the internet and in doing so, I’ve made some more random finds.
For starters, I discovered that today is the iconic computer game – Tetris’ 25th birthday. To celebrate, I wasted some time playing this cool little free online version and found this homage on YouTube:
Whilst on YouTube, I also stumbled across this ‘literal’ version of Bonnie Tyler’s song – Total eclipse of the heart:
And this cool Nintendo Wii preview of their game Wario Land – Shake It. It’s probably best if you view this on the YouTube website itself for the full effect. Very cool.
On the topic of cool stuff, this guy made a whole song only using iPhone apps. The song itself isn’t fantastic, but considering the only instrument used was an iPhone, it’s pretty impressive:
Hidan – Timeline Music for iPhone from Paul Higham on Vimeo.
A couple of days ago Simon sent me a link to some cool computer programming-related web comics. You have to be a bit geeky to get most of the jokes… ok, you have to be geeky to get all the jokes (I especially liked the guide to understanding flowcharts… in flowchart form).
Something else you’ll need to be a little geek to appreciate is Despair’s latest social media t-shirt (so true, and I think I want one).
And last, but not least, something you don’t have to be geeky to enjoy (simply a little juvenile.. like me)… but here’s a site dedicated to Things I Did Lastnight.
Now I’m going to go and watch some TV and chuckle to myself as I imagine your response when you click on that previous link.
Read MoreTwESP, Little People, Data Visualization and a years worth of home ownership
I realised that a small milestone had passed about a month ago that I completely overlooked – I’ve now been a home owner for one full year. Within that time interest rates have increased at record-breaking speeds and then dropped just as quickly, house and land prices have followed suit.
Completely unrelated to the local and global economies, over the last 12 months we’ve also had some of the heaviest storms and rainfall that has happened in nearly 20 years and to top it all off we’ve even had a couple of burglaries that unfortunately targeted ours, and the surrounding, suburbs. But what was even more troublesome than the break-ins was the painful process of sorting-out the insurance claims that followed.
Fortunately we used this as a learning experience and improved the security on our home and purchased a fearless guard dog – George. Ok, perhaps he’s not entirely fearless… or more accurately he gets scared by most things that move (including his own reflection). And given the fact that he’s not much bigger than a Rugby ball with legs, he wouldn’t intimidate someone suffering from acute paranoia. But all that aside, bringing him into our family was one of the best things we’ve ever done.
So in our first year of home ownership a lot of crazy stuff has happened, but to be honest, I wouldn’t change a thing. With each financial, environmental and personal challenge (and everything in between) we’ve learnt some really valuable things and everything has always worked-out well in the end.
Now that I’ve gotten that heartfelt story off my chest, let’s move onto a bunch of meaningless links and other random internet finds…
The New Scientist has launched the first ever Scientific Twitter Experiment to determine if random users from around the world can accurately guess a location using nothing but mind power. The concept sounds a little crazy, but also quite fascinating, so it’ll be interesting seeing the results once the study is complete.
Last year a street-art project was launched where miniature hand-painted people were placed in various locations around London and then left to fend for themselves. The project, titled Little People is very cute and cool and the collection of photographs collected from the experiment have been collated into a book, you can purchase prints or go and view the photographs (and possibly even some installations) at the Andipa Gallery in London.
If you work in an office environment it’s difficult to make it through a day without being inundated with countless facts and figures, reports, spreadsheets, graphs or other (seemingly) important data. Now I don’t know about you, but I always find data a lot more appealing when it’s presented in an aesthetically pleasing way, like these 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization.
And on that note, I’m going to check my email, web-stats and have a quick skim through the latest updates on Twitter and Facebook, then I’m off to bed.
Read MoreWhite guys, peeing, twitter and some cool acrobatics
I’ve been meaning to do a proper blog post about stuff that has actually been happening lately, but everytime I sit down to write something I get distracted. So for now, I’ll just copy-and-paste a bunch of things that I’ve been sent recently.
During the week Vicky sent me a couple of things that were funny and useful.
The first one is Stuff White People Like, which is a site written by a white guy who points-out all sorts of things that white people like. In some respects, it’s kind-of-like reverse racism without any racial under-tones (other than the name and the constant mention of ‘White People’) but the guys quirky approach and accuracy with a lot of things that white people do generally like, well… it makes it somewhat accurate and an interesting read.
The other one she sent me was Run Pee – a site tells you the best times during popular block-buster movies to run out of the theatre / cinema to go and pee.
This dude can do some awesome acrobatics:
We all know how much I’ve been talking about Twitter lately, so here are a couple of fairly accurate clips of what Twitter is really like… although I love these clips and think they are sooo true, I still like Twitter:
Read MoreMore random internet finds to start the week off with
I’ve mentioned that I like Twitter… but sometimes, people just Tweet Too Hard – a site where people’s self-obsessed tweets get the recognition they deserve. While other’s provide much more useful info.
If you’re as geeky as I am, you might also find this pretty funny – http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/. I don’t spend my days playing Halo, but I have had similar phone calls and it’s just painful. Webguy – I feel you’re pain!
Oh, and talking about Geeky, it doesn’t get much geekier than this: http://konamicodesites.com/ – a website that won’t let you access it until you successfully execute a Konami code.
Moving right along – so, you’re in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn’t have sex with you anyway. Sounds like you could use an easy-to-follow guide to getting her to have sex with you.
You are probably aware of those ‘capcha’ codes that are used on websites to stop spam bots filling-in web forms. Those little boxes that display some random text that you need to enter before being able to submit the form… well here are some of the best/worst: 15 of the Meanest CAPTCHAs ever.
Last week there was a brutal shooting in Sydney and the police interviewed some eye witnesses. As a result, one of the girls interviewed gained some instant popularity, but then it went pear-shaped when it was discovered she had made-up the whole story. You can read the full article here or just watch the clip (cause despite the atrocity of the event, the clip is kinda funny):
And last, but not least – please DONT PANIC, and set aside a moment of silence with your towel (and no, I don’t mean that in a dirty way) – today is International Towel Day. An annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.
Read MoreWet weather, cats and a little bit of nudity
Today I feel a bit like a king – no I don’t have a crown, a throne… or even a castle, but my house DOES have a moat. Recently the local council has been putting curbing and channelling in our street which has meant they’ve ripped-up the footpath, leaving a 2 – 3 food ditch down one side of our road. This ditch runs straight past our house and since we’ve just had the wettest day in South-East QLD in 17 years, that ditch is now full of water.
There are some photo’s on the Courier Mail News website of some of the flooding and other water damage throughout Brisbane.
Some could say it’s raining cats and dogs… which I’m going to use as a segway into talking about pussy. No, not the rude kind, but instead the energy drink variety of pussy. Yes that’s right – there is an energy drink called Pussy. From looking at the website, it seems like this has been around for a while, but has only just found its way to Australia. The drink was being distributed at the Pussycat Dolls Brisbane show.
Makes me wonder if there are health warnings on the cans advising how much pussy one can have within a 24-hour period or if pussy shouldn’t be consumed by those with heart conditions or under the age of 18?
Now onto a completely different kind of pussy – this one being a rather geeky, retro, cool pussy – you can now buy Transforming USB Flash Memory sticks… how cool is that?
And one final cat related clip – this one was sent through to me via Twitter (and sorta reminds me of what I’m like when you put me on a treadmill):
And if cat’s aren’t your thing, maybe you’ll like this Slow Loris clip. To be honest, I had no idea what a Loris was until today… and well, I still don’t know that much about them, but I can tell you that this guy is very cute:
And finally, I’ll leave you with a little music clip I found that makes karaoke so much more appealing… a little bit rude, so be careful if opening at work:
Read MoreRandom Tuesday Internet Finds
As I haven’t received any negative feedback (well, I haven’t received any feedback, which in my books, is pretty-much the same thing).. I’m going to continue with the random daily internet finds. [update: Vicky did respond which is why I've embedded YouTube clips and haven't linked to articles that contain the word vagina] 
To kick things off, here’s a very funny little site where users can submit EPIC FAIL stories about their bosses. Some very funny stuff there – I’ve secretely added a couple of posts about old bosses I’ve had under a fake name… which is one of the great things about the site – you can vent and rant as much as you like and no one will ever know it’s you
On the topic of jobs, this guy obviously has it tough:
I have no idea what this song is about, but I do know I like it and the animation is really interesting too (give it time to load… it takes a bit): Labuat
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