Last week’s random internet finds
I meant to post these last week, but didn’t get around to it… so here are a bunch of things that distratcted me from work over the last 7 days:
Pringles won an award for this little banner ad and I can see why… it doesn’t matter how much you click on it, you won’t be swept away to their site, it’s just a great little ad to play with (and in my opinion, works far better than any ad that does whisk you away to the company site when all you may have wanted to do was play with a little flash animation):
On the topic of viral ads, here’s a list of other good ones: Viral Marketing Examples
Most of my meetings are productive (since I work for myself and don’t have to put-up with bureaucratic bullshit… well, there may be a little bureaucratic bullshit, but since I founded the aforementioned shit, I think it’s ok). But for those of you who have to endure long, painful, meaningless meetings everyday, here’s a little tool you can use to see just how much money the company is loosing for every minute of each pointless gathering: The Meeting Ticker.
Also on the topic of work – if you think casual-dress Friday is good, but would rather the guys from Accounting not turn-up in Hawaiian shirts each week… you should just be thankful they aren’t coming to work naked. That’s right – in the UK, a company has introduced a day where employees are encouraged to come to work naked as a way of boosting morale.
As you all know, I’m a self-confessed geek, so was quite pleased to discover a place where my online skills are appreciated: The Society for Geek Advancement!
For all my Ninja readers (and c’mon guys, you’ll never admit it because you’d have to kill me, but I know you’re secretly hiding in the shadows reading my feeds via your Ninja iPhone’s) you better be careful not to do any of these things: Common mistakes of a Ninja. Oh, and for any other Ninja related questions, it’s probably best to direct them to AskANinja.com
If you’re one of the few people on the plant that hasn’t had enough of the Swine Flu jokes, then you might like this little comic: Twitter is great for watching uninformed panics unfold live.
On the topic of jokes that have been done to death, here’s another little clip about MJ dying… and Hitler’s reaction to it:
And last, but not least, a cool little jazz choir rendition of Toto’s Africa… nothing funny or particularly special about it (well, their creation of a thunder-storm is kinda cool) – I simply thought it was well done, and c’mon people, who doesn’t like the song Africa:
Read MoreWeekend at Bunya Mountains, Michael Jackson homage, music, some strange photo sites, coffee making robots and The Maxx…
Wow, I just re-read that title and it sounds jam-packed with goodness, so I thought I should add this disclaimer before you read the rest of my post: I do not guarantee, or even make any claim that the following text will be as interesting or informative as the title… there is however a good few paragraphs of waffle with a few vids inbetween to break-up the monotony… so that being said… enjoy (or don’t – it’s entirely up to you).
So it’s been a week of surprises – my weekend in the mountains (without mobile phone or internet coverage) was really good. My sister, Karen introduced us to a game where you take a random object and pretend it’s something else. For instance, you take a shoe, hold it up to your ear and everyone has to guess that you’re pretending it’s a phone. Although simple, the game actually gets rather interesting once all the obvious scenarios are done.
Karen explained to us that the game was introduced as a study to identify how lateral a child’s mind is and to some extent, gain an indication of their overall quick-wittedness and intelligence. Sort-of like a word association game, but instead with objects. All I can say is that my family (and myself included) are rather inventive, quite funny but I’m not so sure about intellectual 
Then on Monday night I did my first-ever public speaking gig which also, surprisingly, went really really well. I’d go as far as to say that it went so well that I’d happily do it again. If you’re interested in reading some of the geeky SEO things discussed, you can check it out at my work blog.
Then in other news this-morning I hear that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are both dead… not related and their deaths don’t really have any impact at all on me personally – sure I liked some of Jacko’s music and think his title of ‘King of Pop’ is justified considering his career… although he also is the King of Crazy amongst other things, but I won’t go into that and I’ll avoid making any jokes [for now] as I think that anyone who passes deserves at least a little respect for them and their loved ones (yes, even the crazy ones).
So in honour of his death, here’s a homage to MJ via Darth Vader:
While we’re on the topic of music (how was that for a segway?) PlayStation have just launched a new, free, music video service VidZone which looks pretty cool. Now if you’re as geeky as I am, you’re probably thinking that since PS3 has a web browser and supports media servers, why would you need a dedicated music service when there’s YouTube and other streaming options via your PC? Well, I agree, it isn’t necessary, but from a quick play lastnight the quality seems good and it’s easy to use, so it ticks all the right boxes… and I imagine that it’s targeted to people who probably don’t use their PS3s to stream YouTube so with that in mind, it looks like a good little service.
Last thing related to music… the following clip was sent to me via a Twitter buddy and I have to say I really like the song and the filmclip is awesome:
Moving away from music and onto photos… This is photo bomb – a website devoted to the delicate art of inserting ones self (or finding someone or something distracting) into other’s seemingly legitimate photos. Or if you’ve got family snaps like those found on this next site, you don’t even need photobombing: Awkward Family Photos.
And finally, last photo-related thing, I stumbled across a project started by Ze Frank called Youngme / Nowme. The site is dedicated to replicating old photos, so you get a photo of you riding your first bike, or sitting on the potty or something typical of kids, and then you try and replicate that photo by wearing a similar outfit and get a snap of you trying to ride a kids bike… it sounds a bit silly, but I love the concept and some of the photos are pretty funny.
Do you like coffee and robots? I certainly do, so if you’re like me, then check-out this super terrific Japanese coffee making robot thing (I think that’s the correct term for it if my translation skills are accurate):
And last, but certainly not least – I like obscure comics / cartoons and years and years ago I was a big fan of the short-lived series The Maxx. Much to my delight, I just found you can watch full episodes of the show at MTV’s Maxx website.
That’s it from me peoples – have a good weekend if I don’t post anything beforehand!
Read MoreHoly crap it’s cold
I can’t believe another week has just disappeared and I barely noticed it. Ok, that’s a small lie – I had a small freak-out earlier in the week over some work stuff (nothing amazingly critical, but I like to keep a calm and level head about most things and due to a few challenges I was struggling to do this) but all is good again now and ticking along again nicely.
Last weekend I spent a lot of time playing PS3 with Caleb and one of the demo’s we downloaded was for a game called inFamous and it was awesome. So I was quite pleased when one of my fav game reviewers gave it a thumbs-up (or at least what could be best described as a thumbs-up since this guy would struggle to say something nice about his own mother)… here’s his review:
We’ve also had the coldest day this year and it hit zero degrees at my place. There was ice on my windscreen this-morning when I left for work. ICE! Now I’ve seen ice before, I’ve seen snow… I’ve even been snowboarding (or more correctly I had a snowboard strapped to my feet as I rolled down a ever so slight hill in the ‘childrens practice slopes’ a few years ago in Switzerland)… but here and now I’m in Queensland – a place affectionately referred to as the sunny state of Australia. The place where it’s beautiful one day and perfect the next… and I had ICE on my windscreen. This certainly isn’t perfect, it’s not even good… ICE!
Even now as I look out the window it looks like a beautiful warm day, yet it’s not… sure the sun is out, but it’s not hot, it’s not even warm. My fingers are like little frozen sausages as I try and type. Normally I bitch about the heat and how hot, humid and sweaty it gets in summer time and I’ve said more than once how much I like the colder weather, but ICE… in June… in Queensland? C’mon people… where’s the global warming now? I should start burning tyres using an lighter and as many aerosol cans as I can strap together (and as a side-note kiddies, I’m not condoning the raping of our environment just because I’m cold and I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone tries to create a mega flame-thrower by strapping a dozen aerosol’s together… but if you do, can you please upload the results to YouTube as I’m sure it’d be funny and definitely put you in the runnings for the next Darwin Awards).
Anyways, despite being cold and bored and not wanting to do work, I don’t really have anyone to delegate my daily tasks to and if I don’t get them done, I’ll have twice as much to do on Monday, so I better get off my ice-cold butt-cheeks and do something productive.
I’ll leave you with this one final thing I read about a few days ago which sounded pretty cool: The MP3 Experiment.
Read MoreA 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 MoreIt’s been party-time lately
Over the last few weekends, it has been time to P.A.R.T… why? Because we gotta!
It all started a few weeks ago with Scotty’s 25th which was a themed James Bond Casino Royale party.
There were Russian Spy’s, suits, tuxes, bow ties, cocktail dresses and one very large golden gun (no pun intended – Scotty’s best mate Tucker turned-up with a Hellboy sized golden toy gun). Was an awesome night with cocktails freely flowing, poker playing, guitar heroing and as the night was drawing to a close, we thought it might be fun to continue partying-on with some uni students who were having a gathering a few houses down the road. Unfortunately our stealth efforts and smooth talking failed miserably and mission ‘uni student party crash’ was aborted very quickly.
The following weekend I had a (very) belated 30th party. Wanting to bring-out the geek in everyone, I themed my party around Internet Phenomena, which basically translates to anything that has gained mass popularity via the Internet.
I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it turned-out a lot better than I could have ever imagined. We had friends turn-up dressed as myspace, the “net”, lol cats, ask a ninja (me), home star runner (Kristy), hotmail, twitter, google, red tube, there were demotivational and other internet-related T-shirts. I was honestly surprised we didn’t get a ‘trent from punchy‘ or a ‘star wars kid‘ and very thankful we didn’t get anyone thinking they were Beyonce.
As the night got-on and after drinking a lot of beer (including a rather potent Quadrupel beer from the Netherlands which was given to me as a gift from the Kintek crew) we thought it’d be fun to have a go at this:
Kristy’s MacGyver skills quickly turned some fence paling’s, a piece of elastic, some string and a bag of marshmallow’s into our own back-yard version of the gameshow above. And these were the results:
A few days after the party, I headed down to Sydney for the Annual Search Marketing Expo / Conference – SMX Sydney. As far as search marketing conferences go, this is one of (if not THE) best and attracts some of the most knowledgeable guest speakers from all around the world.
I won’t bore you with all the search geekiness (if you want that sort-of stuff, you should read my work blog) but the minute that the last speaker finishes, all search marketers (regardless of where in the world you’re from) share another common interest – DRINKING!
Needless to say, it was a very big three days of learning and business networking, followed by three very big nights of partying. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, you can see the photos from the event on there or follow the many Twitter references to SMX.
This coming weekend is Easter and other than catching-up with my family for a BBQ, it should be a quiet one and I’m really looking forward to doing nothing!
Read More