Blog
20 January 2009
According to Google Analytics, people still seem to end up on my website when searching for Lego DeLoreans. Here’s a list of the search phrases which led people here just this month:
- how to build a lego delorean
- lego delorean
- lego deloreans for sell
- build a lego delorean
- buy lego deloreans
- delorean building lego
- how to build the lego delorean
- lego delorean instructions
- lego deloreane
Well since that’s what you people must want, how about this one?
You might also want to check out this old post of mine back in 2004 which links to some less impressive ones...
[Via Boing Boing Gadgets.]
Labels: film, gadgets, links
13 November 2006
Niraj Sanghvi and Dave Fymbo released the Amazing Web Race: Final Route – a follow up to the original Amazing Web Race – on Saturday 11/11/2006 at 1:11 PM Eastern time. I started it around 20:00 GMT and finished it around 4 hours later, claiming 4th place on the leader board.
I recommend you give your brain a serious workout and try it for yourself. And if you like exercising your grey matter, you might want to try these too:
- Logic Game
- The Web Riddle – the best riddle on the web (IMHO) and I’m 9th on the Legends board
- P4X the Riddle – inspiration for The Web Riddle but I’ve not yet tried it
- The Ruscoe Riddle – not yet released but I’ll write it one day...
Labels: links
12 May 2006
Since Google’s disappointingly easy Da Vinci Code Quest has now finished, it’s good to see there’s a new game in town. The Web Riddle written by Sam Davyson and friends requires some basic HTML knowledge and quite a bit of lateral thinking to play. (For some background information, see Sam’s original post.)
Currently containing only eight levels, Sam promises in his recent blog post that there are more to come, with maybe even a few written by yours truly!
There are no prizes here; the only reward is the pleasure you’ll get from being incredibly smug when your colleagues take hours to solve the riddles that only took you a couple of minutes...
Labels: links
7 April 2006
As always, Chris is right. I’m a part time blogger! Admittedly, there are a few things that have grabbed my attention over the past couple of weeks that I probably should have blogged about, so I’m going to cover them all now to try and keep him (and you) happy.
Chris has already blogged about the stupid (or maybe clever) woman who was in front of me in HMV yesterday lunch time, so there’s no need for me to cover that again. What he says is all true so just go and read it on his blog. What he doesn’t mention (presumably because I never told him) is why I was in HMV in the first place...
I went to HMV to buy a copy of the St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion) single by 80s rock legend John Parr which is being sold in aid of the Help A Hallam Child charity. He agreed to re-release the single after Hallam FM’s Big John contacted him and persuaded him to do so. (At least that’s what they’ll have you believe.) Anyway, in order to make sure that as much money as possible goes to the charity and not to Columbia Pictures (who own the rights to the original recording that featured on the soundtrack to the St. Elmo’s Fire film back in 1985), he re-recorded the track from scratch, promising to make it sound as close to the original as possible. And he did a pretty good job. (Even he struggles to tell the difference, apparently!)
At this point it’s probably worth noting that despite what some people think, Help A Hallam Child doesn’t raise money for the poor kids who can’t afford to go to a proper university and have to put up with the nearby special needs uni; it’s a real charity that helps children who are sick or live in situations of abuse, neglect or deprivation.
If you’re ever near Torquay in Devon and want some good fish and chips, visit Hanburys Licensed Fish Restaurant & Seafood Takeaway. They are (or once were) one of the top three fish and chip shops in the UK! We ate in their characterful restaurant but I assume you still get the same high-quality food from their takeaway next door.
We’ve finally got a new bathroom (with a proper door so that you’ve no need to be paranoid about someone peeping through the gap at you).
And finally, if you’re after a couple of funky gadgets, check out this grass chair and these crazy keyboards. [Via Boing Boing and Chris Chris.]
Labels: food, gadgets, links, music, personal, photos, rant, restaurants
23 March 2006
I’ve had an idea going around the back of my mind for a few years now. I didn’t really think it would work, so I’ve never really pursued it. (Well, that and the fact that I’m too lazy to pursue it...) The idea would be to put a small ball-bearing game in the bottom of a urinal instead of a standard drainage hole. The aim would be to chase the ball around the puzzle using just pee-power. (And you’re all sat there wondering why I’ve not bothered to pursue the idea... I know!)
It’s a (perhaps not-so) well-known fact that men can’t help but aim at anything that’s happened to find its way into a urinal; be it a cigarette butt, a pineapple cube, a pint glass, some drunken student... whatever – we simply cannot help to aim our hose at it and give it a good blast of wee-wee. I’ve been caught out by some “clever” marketing technique that exploited this idea in the past. A drinks company had placed targets advertising their drink in the urinals, the only problem being that when you actually hit the centre of the target, you got serious splash-back. Thanks for that you clever marketing folk. Well done.
Anyway, there’s always someone who takes the simplest of ideas and pushes them to the limit. These On Target urinals designed by Marcel Neundörfer have a pressure-sensitive display screen embedded in them. Not only does this provide entertainment whilst taking a leak, but it also saves on cleaning bills (apparently) as your aim is improved by the game (apparently).
Genius. I want one! But where will it all stop? Hungry Hippos in the bottom of the toilets...?!?
[Via Boing Boing]
Labels: gadgets, links
25 February 2006
In the same week as releasing Google Page Creator (which was allegedly named after Co-Founder & President of Products, Larry Page) I can exclusively reveal that Google has also been working on Google Brin Creator, presumably named after Co-Founder & President of Technology, Sergey Brin.
Rumour has it that Brin was so upset about not having a service named after him, that he forced some poor Googlers to create the new service as their 20% project. From the website:
Has Google Page Creator let you down?
Are they still unable to offer new accounts due to heavy demand? Is your googlepages.com address already taken? Why don’t you start creating Sergey Brins instead of Larry Pages? They will live on our site at googlebrins.com/yournickname
Google Brin Creator allows users to “create and publish cool, attractive looking Sergey Brins in just minutes” which are then hosted on the googlebrins.com domain (rather than the googlepages.com one used by Google Page Creator).
What will they ever think of next?
;-)
Update: 24 March 2006 (17:39)
Check it out... someone was inspired by Google Brin Creator and copied it!
Labels: google, links, personal
22 February 2006
Chris Riley’s brain was working overtime a few weeks ago. You could almost hear those rusty cogs turning! He was thinking about how he could use Amazon Web Services to power a cool new website. After throwing a few ideas around the office, he someone (probably the other Chris) finally came up with the concept for Judge A Book By Its Cover.co.uk.
The idea’s a simple one: view the covers of books, CDs or DVDs and rate them from one to five stars based purely on how they look. Once you’ve submitted your rating, compare what you and others thought about the cover to the Amazon rating to see if it really is that unreasonable to judge a book by its cover. If you want to see for yourself whether you judged correctly, you can easily click-through to Amazon to buy the book, CD or DVD and make your own mind up.
I prefer the Head to Head! version of the game. It’s much easier to compare two covers and choose which you think is best than it is to rate a cover from one to five. (Sometimes, you’ll be faced with two covers that are so similar that you can’t decide which one gets your vote – but don’t worry, you can always call a draw if that happens!)
There’s more to read in the About & FAQs section of the site and you can keep up to date with the latest news on the site’s blog.
Get judging!
Labels: books, film, links, music
First there was File Swap, then there was Sketch Swap and now there’s Question Swap!
File Swap didn’t really appeal to me. I’m lazy, so uploading and downloading files sounded like too much hard work to me. I played Sketch Swap for a bit but quickly realised I was rubbish at it, and since there’s no way to just view what people have submitted or correct your mistakes, I got bored of that pretty easily. (Of course, you could just submit a few squiggles and view a sketch in return – but that’s just creating more effort and must be annoying for the people who moderate all the sketches.)
Question Swap is quite addictive though. You don’t need to find a suitable file from your hard drive, nor do you have to sketch anything; you simply ask one of the thousands of pointless questions that’s probably floating around inside your head right now. In return, you have to answer somebody else’s question, which seems fair enough, and whenever someone answers your question, the response gets emailed to you. Whilst some of the responses can be rubbish, most are usually pretty funny. Check out some of the examples to see what I mean.
Whatever will they be swapping next? Here are some possible ideas:
- Meal Swap – Submit what you’re having for your dinner and get a recipe back that you can enjoy tomorrow. (Just the thing for when you’re bored of the same meals every day!)
- Friend Swap – Enter your best friend’s contact details and get somebody else’s best friend’s details back. Start emailing or calling each other and make a new best friend. (Also great for swapping wives!)
- Blog Swap – Submit the login details for your blog software to the site and get somebody’s else login back. Start posting on each other’s blogs. (Perfect for spammers!)
- Identity Swap – Enter you name, personal details and credit card details and get somebody else’s identity back. (Ideal for fraudsters!)
Any more?
[Via Google Blogoscoped]
Labels: links
23 January 2006
Here I am, banging on about Google and their new stuff all the time, whilst forgetting that the company I work for has got a pretty cool tool of our own. (No, I’m not talking about myself; whilst many people might call me a tool, I’m not sure how many would call me cool.)
FreeTranslation.com has been around since 1999. If you’re between 13 and 21 years old and living in the USA, you’ll probably have used it to translate some insults into a foreign language before emailing them to your friends. (For some reason, most Europeans use another website – but we won’t talk about that here!)
Today we quietly released the FreeTranslation.com Blog. There’s only one post there at the moment, but there are plenty more to come and they should make quite interesting reading. Some people might think that we’re jumping on the blogging bandwagon a few years too late – I think that if you’ve got something to say, it’s better to say it late than never! (Also, trying to justify working on something that isn’t going to make you money is always difficult!)
The fact that I’m posting about something work related like this makes me feel like I’m trying to be to FreeTranslation.com what Matt Cutts is to Google or something! As if... (Well, I can dream can’t I!?!)
Anyway, if you’re interested in translation, add the FreeTranslation.com Blog Feed to your feed reader or aggregator. And if there’s anything you’d like to know, post a comment here or there and we’ll do our best to answer your questions.
BTW, this was going to be an exclusive post but I thought I’d let Chris have the scoop since he’s been so patiently waiting for its release so he could be the first person in the blogosphere to post about it!
Labels: links, personal, translation
28 November 2005
Whilst my PSP is absolutely brilliant, I can’t help thinking that it must still have loads more to offer than just games, movies and music...
Imagine if I could take my PSP on holiday with me, speak English into it and have it instantly translate what I said into another language and speak it back to me. Well, if I want to translate what I say into Chinese, Korean or Japanese, this review suggests that’s not such a crazy idea after all. TalkMan was recently released in Japan and does exactly that. It’s bundled with a USB microphone that screws into the top of your PSP and uses speech recognition software to try and find a match for what you’ve said in its huge list of common phrases. You can even play games to help you with your language learning and pronunciation.
It’s not quite a Babel fish, but it’s one step closer I guess.
(What else could that USB microphone be used for though? I’m thinking that SingStar for the PSP would certainly keep my fellow tram passengers entertained on the way into work...)
[Via Waxy]
Labels: gadgets, links, personal, psp, translation
11 November 2005
Earlier this week, I emailed my photo and blog URL to Philipp Lenssen for a new website he was planning after he requested people to do so via Google Blogoscoped. I had no idea what the site would do, but all became clear when it was released earlier today.
Forty Faces is a very simple idea, but I like it. The home page displays forty faces (some of which are duplicates) that correspond to a blogger who has submitted a photo and blog URL for inclusion on the site. Whenever one of the bloggers makes a post to their blog, their portrait is added to the top of the page and it links to their latest post.
In his article on Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes, Jakob Nielsen claims that a photo “offers a more personable impression of the author” and connects the virtual and “physical worlds”. To some extent, I think he’s right. He also suggests that author biographies add credibility to the opinions and thoughts expressed in a blog, so it will be interesting to see whether Philipp adds these to the Forty Faces site too.
Labels: links
8 June 2005
My mate Dave (yes, that’s right – the one Papa Lazarou always talks about) introduced to me to The League of Gentlemen (not literally) when I was in my 3rd year of uni. Their 2nd series was airing on BBC2 and I’ve been hooked on their work ever since. In January 2001, I visited Hadfield to take a tour around the real life Royston Vasey. When you walk around Hadfield, you really do feel like you’re in Royston Vasey; the local butcher even sells special stuff sausages...
Earlier this year I came across The League of Gentlemen Scripts and That book, which was released ages ago but wasn’t really very well promoted. I bought it Dave for his birthday hoping that he’d already have a copy so that I could keep it. (He didn’t have it, so I had to buy it again for myself.) It contains all the scripts from the series, biographies of each character, and loads of pictures. It’s an ultra-heavy hardback book that every TLOG fan should own.
At the moment, The League seem to be pulling out all the stops. Not only have they just released their first motion picture, but they’ve also released The Complete Collection DVD Box Set (all three TV series and that disturbing Christmas Special) and a new special edition of their Live At Drury Lane DVD, featuring five minutes of new footage from their hugely popular "Local Show for Local People". They’ve also got another live show planned for later this year titled "The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You" which I’ve just booked some tickets to see at Llandudno’s North Wales Theatre.
Until very recently, they didn’t have an official website (there were, of course, hundreds of "unofficial" fan-sites popping up all over the Internet) but with The League now moving from cult to mainstream, it’s not surprising to see official sites starting to appear. For anyone that hasn’t managed to track them down, here are the ones I’ve found:
And in case you’ve never been to any of the unofficial sites before, here are some of the better ones that have managed to survive:
Labels: books, film, links, personal, photos, theatre, tv
27 May 2005
Chris Riley is putting so much effort into his latest online project that I think it’s only fair I give him some space on my blog.
Chris says, "Now that Big Brother is starting in the UK this Friday, I’ve decided that now is the time to put some Ants in the gel and watch them in what I like to call Big Aunt." (You can read more in his original post.)
His mate (and best man) Anthony bought him the Antquarium and designed the logo (which I think looks pretty neat) and I’ve kindly lent him my webcam so that everyone in the world can see what the ants are getting up to in the Big Aunt Antquarium.
Sadly, I’m also to blame for giving him the idea that the phrase "Big Ant" could be turned into "Big Aunt" to keep it more in keeping with "Big Brother". This pun works fine for me because I pronounce "Aunt" exactly the same way as I do "Ant" - and for anyone who pronounces it differently... well, that’s just tough!
So, if Big Brother 6 gets too boring for you, be sure to tune in to Big Aunt to catch the latest from the Big Aunt Antquarium...
Let’s hope it turns out to be fANTastically brilliANT and not a load of pANTs!
Labels: links, personal
25 May 2005
Another University of Sheffield reunion in London is being planned for Saturday 24th September 2005. The details I’ve received so far are as follows (last updated on Friday 24th June 2005):
Received 24th May 2005
POP TARTS LONDON!!!!! Bring it on!
We’re really excited to announce the arrival of the third storming Sheffield Uni reunion in London, on Saturday 24th Sept!
Following hot on the heels of 2003’s "Love Shack London", and last year’s "Love Tarts London", by very popular demand we now have POP TARTS London!
More favourite classic cheesy tunes, a student-priced, silly-cheap bar all night and a chance to meet up with old mates (and old flames) on the 24th Sept at the same venue, the enormous Camden Centre, Kings Cross.
Be sure to put it in your diaries now, and please spread the word far and wide – more details to follow in the next few days!
Cheers...
Seb, Katherine (and many others...)
Graduated 2001
poptartslondon@gmail.com
P.S. To get your email address onto our mailing list, send us an email with ‘add me’ in the subject
Received 16th June 2005
POP TARTS LONDON is coming!!!
There was a huge response to the last email, and you can now reserve your very own ticket and get more details at www.poptartslondon.co.uk. We’ve also finally gotten round to posting photos on the website from the past two events, Love Tarts London, and Love Shack London, so have a look and see if you’re there!!!
As always, vital ingredients for the event will be cheep cheep drinks all night, classic cheesy tunes from our native Sheffield Uni DJ, and a great excuse to meet up with old friends and flames from days gone by! Loads of you have been emailing us with your new email addresses, so if your mates have moved jobs etc, they may not be getting this email – please forward it on and spread the word to make sure they all get tickets.
If you want to add an email address to our mailing list, you can do this on the website too. Any other questions, just drop us a line...
Looking forward to it!
Cheers
Seb, Katherine, and the others...
Graduated 2001
poptartslondon@gmail.com
For more information, check out the Pop Tarts London website.
Labels: links, personal
31 December 2004
What do you think the future should bring? Have your say and add your opinions to one of the many items listed on Philipp Lenssen’s Future Feature website. And if it’s not listed already, add your own item.
Labels: links
3 December 2004
Since I’m originally from the Bolton area, I know quite a few of the locations used in Peter Kay’s latest TV series on Channel 4. For any die-hard Peter Kay fans out there, surfing t’Internet trying to find out where those locations are, I’m proud to present "Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere Location Guide"...
Labels: links, personal, peterkay, tv
24 November 2004
The Man In Blue asks, "Can a group of random people, each contributing a teensy weensy bit, make a coherent piece of art/design/garbage purely through the influence of the work itself?" I added pixel 4234. Go and pixelate!
Labels: links
2 November 2004
http://www.network-science.de/ascii/
This is great for creating annoyingly huge signatures that use only ASCII text. That’s all it’s good for though.
Labels: links
http://www.airbagindustries.com/bucket/ipod/
So, Apple has released a U2 iPod. Well that’s nothing compared to this special edition! As the designer says: "If only an iPod existed that would make lip syncing fool proof so we wouldn’t have to know that our musicians only pretend to sing live. And then we could go on with our lives without having to worry wether or not the person performing on television was lip syncing or not."
Labels: ipod, links
29 October 2004
Since it’s Hallowe’en this weekend, we’re going to have a go at carving a pumpkin. I’ve not done this for a few years, so I was looking on the Internet for some ideas and came across ExtremePumpkins.com where they’ve got some pretty extreme pumpkin designs! As good as they are, I’m not convinced I’ll be using any power tools on my pumpkin...
Labels: links
