That's How It Happened

Rollerblading to work: quick, cheap, and fun. Who knew tube strikes could be so enjoyable?

How to build a home-made flamethrower. With excellent pictures of the device's astonishing effectiveness.

15 year old girl with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy has heart attack while playing DDR. Should have stuck to Derby Owners Club.

The Petrus Method for solving Rubik's Cube at speed. A really brilliant scheme, that teaches you to rise above the "vanilla" layer by layer method.

As I warned last week the Cali Dunk SB is getting major heat. The pair I picked up attracted an email offer of $450 within minutes of posting. Check out my listing and bid the incumbents up a bit.

Alice and the Enemies are competing for this month's X-fm Unsigned. Vote for them here, and make their dreams of poptacular stardom come true.

I had been really proud of myself for curing a lifelong addiction to video games. My XBox and PS2 have been gathering dust, absolutely unused for months. I have even managed to feign disinterest about GTA San Andreas. However that all changed yesterday. I noticed a queue of Japanese kids trailing from a scuzzy arcade. Being naturally curious about the ways of hipster japan, I joined the queue and discovered a new form of computer crack. I suggest you have nothing to do with this frightening expensive addictive habit, but for those looking to acquire another vice here is my guide to Derby Owners Club:

Derby Owners Club is a giant multiplayer arcade racing sim. It requires you to mate a sire and a dam, then nuture the resulting foal to be a track champion. The combination of Tamagotchi like elements, with competitive horseracing, has led to passionate involvement for many obsessive players. It's an extremely expensive hobby. Not only does it cost at least £20 per horse raised and trained, but there's a burgeoning eBay black market in the tradable memory cards that carry a horse's data. Most valuable of all are rare mutant horses. Once a horse becomes a champ, he or she must retire and be bred to produce even better foals. The ability to breed through many generations has led to the creation of virtual stables offering exquisite pairs of horses for stud.

Text Messaging Olympics.

Bill Gates' Blog or is that a Microsoft Digital Diary?

Stereoscopic sushi.

Unbeknownst to me there have been two new Yeti Sports games since I last linked to them. Both awesome.

beastieboys.com has had a big update, lots of new content, including Beastie Boys Frogger: guide your 'Boy across the highway to a political rally, avoiding Cheney and Bush driving deadly tanks.

Totally NSFW scatalogical homoerotic video of some guy swallowing forty feet of dental floss, then flossing his entire GI tract. Not really recommended, especially not before meals.

HateBeak MP3.

Zlad! was Molvania's Eurovision entry this year. Unfortunately he was arrested on drugs charges by turkish customs officials before he got a chance to perform his amazing hit Elektronik Supersonik. Fortunately for you though the music video and MP3 are still available for download. Incredible! Must listen! Download now!

Beekeeping Jones' Diary
(honey collected: 0lbs, siblings asphyxiated: 2, stings sustained: 3, swearwords uttered: many)
My brother is a man of comparative leisure. He's just returned from an arduous trip guiding 18 year old cheerleaders around Southern Spain, and he's off again tomorrow to Sweden to go ice fishing inside the Arctic Circle. This left a window of only one day for the all important weekly bee hive inspection. It was far from ideal conditions, being overcast and windy, but that doesn't excuse the unmitigated disaster that followed.
Just as I removed the hive top, the smoker failed. My brother gamely puffed warm air in my direction as a cloud of bees descended on me. Given their state of buzzing enragement, I felt lucky to get away with just three stings. Once you get the first sting you know you're in trouble, because the released alarm pheromone instantly warns the whole hive of the ongoing attack.
I had to briefly retire to change my gauntlets, and then returned brandishing the smoker with renewed vigor. Choking back the clouds of smoke we got half way through checking the frames without sustaining any more stings. Unfortunately we were then caught out by a sudden thunderstorm, and had to close down the hive in a hurry.
So for all our work, we failed to find the queen, didn't get any honey for extraction, and my arms look like I've got a florid case of the plague. Beekeeping seemed like a romantic peaceful past-time, until I actually got started on it. Now I know better; it's stressful, painful, and physically disfiguring.

Is this house actually made of Lego™? If it really is then I think there are some questions the owners need to answer:
1. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to build the house from gold, or truffles?
2. Aren't they very vulnerable to nerdy burglars? (though the burglars would probably break a lot of fingernails trying to pry open gaps between bricks.)
3. Isn't the lavatory seat quite uncomfortable on one's bare ass?

Collection of contraband weapons and escape tools confiscated from prisoners in Hamburg during the 80s and 90s.

Packbot has apparently been very useful in Afghanistan. Unfortunately he's now been superceded by a new robot scout. Why is the new robot better? It looks like Johnny Five, and has a cooler name: meet Dragon Runner.

Blueprints for lots of awesome moth sized, rubber band powered, ornithopters.

Clay-Kitten Shooting (flash game), blast those innocent kittens out of the air, as they fly through the skies of San Francisco.

At first I was sure this must be ironic hipster stuff, but no, it's a genuine guide for scouts: how to construct beaver mats and fagot shacks. Handy.

The 10 Eightiest Movies, which reminds me that apart from "eightiest" my neologism of the day is "awescum". More entries still required in the Neologism Fest.

A second flash drunkard simulator inside of a week. My record is 121 drinks downed.

The LA Times brings us some extra snippets of Kim Jong-Il insanity. Not much new for die-hard Il-O-Philes, but it rehashes the pizza and sushi memoirs, with some new insider info.

Cocaine: still one hell of a drug. Jamie Foxx recounts Rick James' recent house call: "He came to my house, he brought these girls with him, and he broke my bed. He was like, “Yeah, Jamie, watch this!” He jumped on my bed and broke it. I’m such a fan of Rick James that I was like, “I don’t care, man. Break the shit out of that muthafucka.” Rick James is hysterical. He gives you a window to when Hollywood was really Hollywood, the ’70s shit, sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll."

// posted by Rufus @ 12:39 am 0 Comments

The latest internet celeb......moi?
This morning I returned from a galling sleepless night shift via Bond Street station. Utterly bleary eyed ascending the escalator, I noticed two guys rather pointedly looking at me. At the top of the escalator I strode off toward the exit, but was stopped in my tracks as a lilting South African accent said, "Is that Dr Rufus?".
I turned round to see the same two gentlemen, and struggled to place them. I'm notoriously bad at remembering names and faces, and I really couldn't identify either of them. In my confusion one of them stepped forward to say hello, and explained, almost unbelievably, that he read this blog on the internet, and recognised me from my shoes (Nutmeg/Spice/Dark Orange/Cane Nike Air Wovens).
I was absolutely flabbergasted. Such a chance meeting seems vanishingly unlikely; with probably no more than about 200 regular readers I had hitherto been feeling snugly anonymous, lost in the vast wilds of the interweb. There's not more than a smattering of photos of me spread across this whole site.
Shocked and stunned though I was, I can hardly pretend this incident wasn't rather gratifying. I would be very pleased if my mystery reader(s) could make themselves known via the comments to confirm that this wasn't just some crazy insomniac delusion.

The Most Powerful Forces in Practical Memetics
In the most recent issue of The Journal of Memetics, it was persuasively argued that the meme that is memetics itself, faces strong selection pressures from more useful, zeitgeisty academic disciplines, and is itself likely to become extinct.
While it is true that academic memetics is as dull as ditchwater, practical memetics is thriving. On a daily basis bloggers are fighting to maintain their place just ahead of the meme-curve. If you want your links to be "cool", they don't just have to be interesting, but you have to post them before the massive meme-popularisers get to them. Jason Kottke has been described as an informational Typhoid Mary, but he's not the only vastly infective meme spreader. There are several tools available for seeing which memes are spreading fastest, and who is doing the spreading. Having surveyed the blogdex, the technorati top 100, the daypop top 40 links/weblogs, and the most popular blo.gs, I conclude that there are essentially three categories of meme: nerd (which includes all science, programming, and web design), politics, and most importantly entertainment (which includes all games, amusements and web frippery). Although a really powerful meme will infect almost all the big hitters, some sites by nature of their theme are immune to one or more categories of meme. instapundit will never feature a story about japanese sex toys, just as fark will never debate the latest developments in Movable Type. In ranking my top ten, I have considered web traffic (where assessable), frequency of new outbound links, number of inbound links, both static and fresh, and finally an eyeball judgement of what percentage of big memes will be picked up by a site.
1.boingboing
2.metafilter
3.slashdot
4.fark
5.instapundit
6.Kottke
7.Andrew Sullivan
8.Anil Dash
9.plastic
10.memepool
Impressively five of the ten are one-man shows, but each, because of their A-list status, receive hundreds of meme submissions daily, which enables them to stay on top of the pile. That list basically constitutes the blogs and sites I strive to beat to a meme. It gives me great pride that I was 72 hours ahead of boingboing and memepool with the Hatebeak meme, and literally months ahead of Kottke on the "25 weirdest Amazon items" meme. On the other hand the Power Of The 10™ is so great that there's no shame in linking to a meme that they already infected you with.
Long after That's How It Happened is dead and gone, those ten will probably still be serving fresh slices of piping hot meme, and I recommend them all as excellent sources of quality contagion.

I'm not sure what's wrong, but my inner nerd seems to have escaped. All links supremely geeky. If you're feeling especially cool, I'd ignore them and pop-back tomorrow:

Hotmail email accounts can be maliciously suspended with one unfounded accusation of spamming.

When both Google and Yahoo crashed simultaneously last week, I had pseudo-panic attacks and felt utterly alone and helpless (well it was after a long sleepless night on call), fortunately I'm now better prepared with this Guide to Contingency Planning for When the Internet Goes Down: "People in pre-Internet times used to read "books" and "magazines", written materials once created in printable format to pass the time. Some e-books are still available on paper, and may offer a short-term solution until your power is back and your broadband is restored."

The That's How It Happened Neologism Fest is proving a grand success. Get even more hyped about your potential prize by checking if your preferred username is still available with gmail.

Chic laptop bag disguised as a pizza box, and good guide to regional pizza variations.

Incredible graphs of the most popular current Yahoo photos. Good to see Rasputin's cock still riding high. This tool (NPI) could be as interesting as the Blogdex.

This stumbling drunkard flash game has been linked to everywhere in the last 6 hours, but I'll add to the hype, 'cos I got it via Nixta.

Nathaniel Hornblower's June 20th Letter to the New York Times:
"Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it."
"As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times — and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!"

This piece on Playing Poker With Dick Cheney, may be the funniest post in the history of blogging.

Star Wars Origami using Japanese banknotes.

Splinter Cell was right: lock picking is easy.

A team of 1000 linguists has revealed that the Tshiluba term ILUNGA is the world's least translatable word. (But it means: "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".)

"The next steps the police will take involve talking to people who might help identify the criminal." Boulder police struggle to capture man who snuck into cheerleader's hotel rooms, in order to photograph his own genitals, with their cameras.

I'm unclear who would be interested in this hot tip, but as of Monday the California Dunk SB will drop in London. It will no doubt be available at Foot Patrol, Slam City, and maybe Slammin Kicks. Unlike the abysmal Carhartt Dunk SBs it's getting major hype, and this release is way way ahead of the US. This spells guaranteed eBay profit. If you can't sell them on, you could always use them to test water quality.

This text file contains a stereoscopic hidden message. It's extremely neatly constructed. Best of all you can hack it, as I have (rather inelegantly) here. Don't go all amblyopic on me though.

My greatest regret about reaching my mid-to-late twenties is the inevitable failure to acquire new slang. I'm insanely jealous of Uncle Grambo, the "Wizard of Obvs", and Nick Catchdubs, the Jawn-Meister. They each rock some of the choicest slang terms this side of the Urban Dictionary. Not only does it make their blogs stand out from the usual crowd, but it makes them seem cool too. It's clear to me that I need some new slang for this site, both local fresh lexicographic cuts and a few tasty neologisms. After the success of the last competition, I am therefore announcing: The That's How It Happened Neologism Fest. I invite you to submit favourite unusual slang terms and cleverly crafted neologisms via the comments. The winner(s) (judged on quality and quantity) will receive a gmail invite, or a prize of equivalent value. You have until next week to feed my linguistic needs. All entries will remain the intellectual property of the author, but with unlimited licensing rights granted gratis to me. Good luck!

I kinda ignored this story about harvesting energy from thousands of subcutaneously implanted thermocouples, until I remembered that's what the robots will need to feed on us Matrix-style. I say "Stop this dangerous research now!", and I hope the Daily Mail will be behind me on this issue of pressing public concern.

The Freedom of Information Act rules: read the FBI's complete files on Charles Bukowski, including the details of his secret wife. On the same note Bukowski: Born Into This needs an immediate UK/torrent release, because the preview buzz is James Flames.

A little round-up of gmail developments:
GMailo v1.0 only works for XP, but redirects HTML mailto links to open the gmail compose window, instead of the default Outlook/desktop email client. Neato.
GCount is for OS X. It sits in your menubar, and monitors the number of unread messages in your gmail inbox. Especially impressive is the fact that it's only a 42Kb download. That's still too large for my old Acorn Electron, but tiny by modern standards.
Hotmail blocks gmail invites. I knew that Yahoo mail automatically treated gmail invites as spam, but Hotmail actually just munches them undetected. That's so grossly anti-competitive and unethical, it could only have come from Microsoft.

At first it was just the entire world population who were sick of the "I'm Rick James, Bitch!" catchphrase, but now Chappelle's ubitiquitous monster is getting to him too. Enraged by hecklers taunting him with his own catchphrase he stormed off stage at a stand-up gig last week. He returned to berate the crowd with this lecture about "how comedy usually works: I say something. You mull it over and decide whether you want to laugh or not, and then you do or not. Then I say something else, and you think about that."

Last week I pointed out that boingboing has a declining readership, and this week I've discovered that beloved metafilter is waning too. Could this be the death of blogging? The beginning of the end for the internut?

This guidebook to window seat views from US flightpaths looks like my cup of tea. Sounding themic, but not: Cloud Atlas is an incredible work of fiction. I haven't finished it yet, so I'm still unsure if is a collection of related short stories, or a fiendishly complicated novel. Either way it's all killer, no filler (and not much scrilla?).

Eric Harshbarger may be a polymath genius. Not only did someone pay him to create an office desk from Lego (an idea ripped from Microserfs), but he's charted his dogged rise into the US Scrabble Top 50, prompted by nothing more than thinking that he needed a hobby apart from Lego. I am officially inspired again on both counts.

These floating houses may be tres eco, but the designers can't have seen The Day After Tomorrow yet. The wake from a passing turtle might capsize them, let alone an apocalyptic tsunami.

If you want a chic housing solution as espoused by hip interior designers Smithson & Rink you need to bid now for this collection of retro computer junk. The Smithson & Rink design method is to strew odd bits of outmoded electronics throughout every room of the house in an artful fashion. As they say on eBay: "don't sleep on this auction".

I bring terrible news: Mr Sinners/Winners has taken on an apprentice mini-megaphone menace. For non-Londoners, or perhaps for those Londoners that lurk only in the suburbs, Mr Sinners/Winners is an evangelical demon, who makes Oxford Circus his pulpit by means of a fricking annoying megaphone. His constant refrain is to ask the shopping populace to look into their hearts and consider whether they are "a sinner, or a winner" (hence the name). He's become a bit of a meme in his own right. LinkMachineGo are fond of him, and briefly they linked to an online confessional from the fool who first bought Mr Sinners/Winners his megaphone. Anyhow, I can now confirm that after two recent sightings there is a Mini-Sermoniser apprenticed to the master. This young colleague not only distributes infuriating leaflets, reminding consumerists of their pending damnation, but also gets to front on the mega-phone. His timing and delivery need some work, but I assure you he's shaping up to take over the mantle as the scourge of Oxford Street.

On July 10th A Proper Site are organising a shoe drive for the kids of Long Beach: Sneakers for Snotnoses. They are inviting sneakerholics to donate shoes for needy kids. I'm not sure they'll persuade many denizens of NikeTalk to line up and hand over their vintage Air Jordan IIIs, but perhaps it's the thought that counts.

Hatebeak: the first metal band in history with an avian vocalist! I quote from the liner notes from their debut 7" "Beak of Putrefaction": "Hatebeak pecks your eyes out and assaults your ears in a flurry of pummeling riffs and grey feathers that leaves you lying in a pool of blood begging for more."

A picture of a toaster made from toast. I haven't made that sound very interesting have I? Take my word for it, it's worth the click.

The John Kerry campaign may have suffered due to this spoof action figure, but he's surely delighted to be represented in this genuine Star Wars Hoth Rebel Base Commander diorama.

Eggheads only take note: not content with 3-D eight level chess, brains can now be frazzled by 3-D Go. Way to go nerds, taking the world's most complex board game, and making it many orders of magnitude tougher.

Prior to Thursday night in BB5 and Stuart's outburst to Marco: "Don't fucking disrespect me, gimp boy Gollum", my all-time reality TV highlight was Richard Blackwood's colonic irrigation Celebrity Detox Camp. Now thanks to the wonder of PinkBoard you can re-live Celeb Detox Camp in the comfort of your own home. I like their claim that PinkBoard: "will have paid for itself after four sessions". Are they suggesting that the 7-21 pounds of hard impacted waste that PinkBoard helps you to recover has a resale value on the open market?

Bopano.net has an online exhibition of fake roadsigns designed by 40 international artists. I couldn't give a rat's ass about that, it's frankly sophomoric. However their GUI is awesome. You get to guide a little UFO around the menu, and vaporise stuff with a deathray. So relaxing.

BeNothing are doing a very creditable job of documenting the London sneaker scene. Mostly they seem to just visit stores, then blog about what's in stock. But that's cool anyway.

Linklater the Pinball Wizard
Feeling the buzz for the upcoming Before Sunset, I re-watched Before Sunrise this weekend. I hadn't seen it ever since its release, and somehow my fond nostalgia for it wasn't entirely justified. I did however notice a scene where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy trade stories about past lovers while duelling over a pinball machine. This is definitely not the only Linklater movie featuring pinball:
There are a stack of pinball tables seen at the Emporium in Dazed and Confused, at least one of which Richard Linklater probably owns, because it is the same table he plays in Waking Life. In the final scene he himself delivers this concluding dialogue (about Phillip K Dick in part), all the while playing pinball. Recently Erik Davis noted that Linklater's house was a: "pine-forested getaway pad outside of Austin, which features a pagoda, a huge stone tower, and many pinball machines". I think a picture of a man after my own heart is emerging.
I don't have the time to rewatch Slacker or School of Rock right now, and I don't have the inclination to see some of his other dross. (He's more inconsistent than any living director). I feel sure though that pinball tables sneak into a few of his other flicks. Any submissions more than welcome via the "comments".

The latest Iraq scandal:

"...weapons experts acting on U.S. intelligence scrambled to search chicken coops for missiles that were not there. "We inspected a lot of chicken farms," said a former inspector who asked not to be identified because he now works with U.S. intelligence. His U.N. team printed "Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team" on 20 gray T-shirts to mark the futile hunt"

Read more from the LA Times (login:nopass username:nopass), or now thanks to the entrepreneurship of Waxy Fresh you can buy the commemorative t-shirt! I don't even get a free t-shirt for this plug, let alone commission.

I was invited to contribute to A Picture's Worth, a collaborative project that simply: "invites people to send in photos along with a story which explains the photograph's significance". I haven't got a great photo to share right now, but anyone is free to submit, and many of the entries are really engaging.

I posted a new picture of my collection of wovens at niketalk. I got mostly favourable feedback, plus I discovered a new hTM Woven that had somehow escaped my notice. I must be pink/yellow colourblind.

One for Phil the Meleophile: Who would win? Hammerhead Shark or Badger? From a whole site of delusional animal battles.

Amusing pictures of David Bowie injured by a stray lollipop. You shouldn't laugh at potentially blinding accidents, but I won't be mad if you do.

The Beastie Boys forum has now been slashdotted, boingboinged, and memepooled because they put both evil DRM, and some kind of nutty lurkware on the new album. This promises to be a public relations disaster that will run and run.

Through the blurry filter of a monstrous hangover, I recall that the Infadels were staggeringly good last night. Somehow alcohol overwhelmed me too soon, and I flaked before Mark Ronson played. But I'm sure he was great too.

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness. He should start in the Oval Office, where he'll be able to confirm several diagnoses: substance abuse, delusions of grandeur, anti-social personality disorder...

Packing.org got all your concealed weapon queries covered:
"Maybe the stories are out there, but I've never heard of a human being taking a shot from a .357 Mag. hollow point in the torso and not being instantly incapacitated."

When I first ordered a Disposable Friend I was confused, and more than a little afraid, but once the happy little chap arrives you'll know you made the right choice.

Great lists of general and medical eponyms.

Just some brief links. I seem unusually busy in actual life today:

Splinter Cell: The Lost (Drunken) Mission

Bridge Footwear got some dope sneakers, at very reasonable prices. I'm thinking bling bling is so 2003, but these 22k gold laces is kinda fly too.

Secrets of the gmail wizards.

Beetles: so hot right now.

Google is an amusing beast. Search for: gabriel coxhead naked (or nekkid), and it cleverly (thanks to me) finds the above image, of Gabriel Coxhead messing about with his art school "chums". If you apply a magnifying glass to the screen, I'm confident you'll find Gabriel in the top left of the picture coyly concealing his member. Anyway as is my custom I'd like to point you in the direction of yet more excellent journalism from Mr G, as he reviews the re-opening of the South London Gallery for yesterday's Times. I'm so disappointed in him, I was sure he was going to devote his life to substance abuse and girl-chasing.

My gig of the week is Alice and the Enemies at the Waterrats tomorrow, on stage at 10pm, and just £5 if you print this flyer. I shall strive to be in attendance, but rumour has it that a big name NYC break beat DJ will be bankrolling a night of decadence at Fabric, where the awesome Infadels will be playing live.

Try this fantastico mix n match faces game.

I'm just discovering the joy of bookmarklets, which are little web-apps accessed via your bookmark bar that do handy things. My first two recommends are a Firefox-only extension that automates BugMeNot powered logins, and hyperlinkomatic that lets you produce web based lists of links, and categorise and annotate them. del.icio.us does something similar, and lets you share your prime link discoveries.

"Note to self: having a discussion about theoretical indie-rock physics with an attractive girl is possibly the hottest thing ever."-The Theory of Hipster Relativity

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My current invertebrate collections weigh in at: 30,000 bees, 25 ladybirds, 20 ants (domesticated), 2,000 ants (wild), and 12,000,000 slug killing nematodes. With this surge in arthropod life in my household I've revived a lifelong ambition to breed giant stag beetles. The Tokyo Times explains some of the fascination:

FRI., APRIL 30, '99 -- Eighty beetles valued at 8 million yen ($64,000) were stolen from an insect shop in Toshima Ward, Tokyo yesterday. The haul included 15 pairs of Japanese-born Dorcus hopei, a type of stag beetle popular for its large size and referred to as a "black diamond" because it is so expensive. The price of a Dorcus hopei increases per millimeter of length. Some reach 80 millimeters and are traded for several million yen, even if they are reared in captivity. The owner of the shop, which stocks about 1000 insects, said that in spite of the country's recession, the overall value of stag beetles has not been affected because the insects are now growing bigger due to improvements in breeding techniques.

I've discovered several english manuals, that have lots of helpful advice. Unfortunately I'm having difficulties navigating the online stores, not least because it seems to be illegal to purchase one in the UK under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act. It's not illegal to capture my own Dorcus Hopei, nor to import one for personal use, so this is just another thing to add to the list of things I have to bring back when I visit Tokyo.

I've spent the afternoon in a hammock in the garden, watching my beehive, and updating my CV. Never has wifi seemed so essential. Recently boingboing has been in decline. Too often recently they've been hyping personal projects, or just too slow with the key links. However today marks an exception, all these three links are in part via boingboing:

My Yahoo Mail account just upgraded to 100Mb. I think this goes for new signups too. I'm loving my gmail 1Gb though. The interface is fast and intuitive. My only gripes are that my work firewall somehow blocks it, and that it's not yet Safari or IE5.1 for Mac compatible.

Great how-to on hacking iTRIP to boost its measly range. (for malign purposes).

Prince Charles' fears about "grey goo" may have been allayed by Eric Drexler, but I'm still terrified that the world will be swamped by qoo (click through at your peril!).

An Application Of Game Theory To Real Life.
This morning while returning home from a tough night shift, I encountered a challenging social trilemma, that required a rapid game theory analysis. While travelling down the Down escalator at Waterloo station, I recognised a rather winsome girl ascending the Up escalator. My immediate inclination was to duck, while fumbling with a new clip (NSFW), before I remembered that my name is not actually Carlito and shootouts in a crowded station are not my Way. Instead the girl beamed broadly at me, and then waved, forcing me to wave back. I of course had absolutely no idea of her name, or how I knew her. I quickly mentally scanned through everyone I've ever slept with, all my school year, and the people on my sim card, and concluded that the mystery stranger was probably only a casual acquaintance. With horror I then realised that she might still be expecting me to go charging back up the escalator to say "hello". The escalator is not more than a 30 second ride, but I quickly classified the possible positions in the necessary game theory analysis:
"Defensive"-Walk away swiftly and don't look back.
"Neutral"-Loiter nonchalantly at the bottom of the escalator.
"Aggressive"-Ride back up the Up escalator in anticipation of her taking the "Neutral" position.
I was just tackling the 3x3 matrix of tactics, to see if the risky "Aggressive" ploy was tenable, when I realised that the actual solution lay outside the remit of my analysis. Due to an embarrassing accident with a breakfast cheeseburger, I was covered in McDonald's ketchup. I abandoned my 2nd and 3rd order theory of mind simulations and broke for cover on the Waterloo and City platform.

Today's alternative career choice: becoming a micropartiologist.

A Scanner Darkly must be the most buzzarific flick currently in production; click to enlarge this most unusual backstage shot of Robert Downey Jnr sporting some ultra-oddball kegs, while Woody Harrelson rocks the coolest hair in history.

"Suppose you killed somebody...how would you dispose of the body without getting caught?", ask a stupid question, get an absolutely shockingly clinical, detailed, and seemingly practiced answer.

Beautiful simple 3-D tile flash game, my record is 71 moves, but much refinement possible.

Operation Slaps remixes the playground classic "Slaps", with an Al Quaeda training facility style, to produce the most absorbing flash game since the last link.

Tiny Mix Tapes not only review stuff in a snarling ironic hipster way, but will also curate themic mixtapes at your request.

Who would win? 1 sumo wrestler, or 11 Japanese school boys in an "Ultimate" wedgie contest. Yahoo has the answer.

RSPCA spoil-sports ruin Australian live mouse tail eating contest. Pommie bastards!

This weekend I achieved an incredible victory over my father. I have won a battle of the inner mind that strikes deep into the heart of our (entirely affectionate) relationship.
On each and every occasion when we play Scrabble™ he berates me for playing unusual two letter words. He repeatedly insists that despite their inclusion in Chambers, "zo", "qi", "xu" and their ilk are not actual words; and he frequently implies that only a mendicant or a cheat would try to play them.
However unfortunately for him, his lexicographic standards have been breached. In a published work on Sunday, both in print, and on the web, he has used the word "né". Enjoy his article describing a recent meeting with John Updike, but pay particular attention to the penultimate sentence.
I am now looking forward with glee to our next game. He has mistakenly declared open season on the play of two letter words, and I shall delight in placing "aa", "gu", and "oo".

Redundancy In Urban Street Furniture.
1. London Red Postboxes - have separate slots for 1st and 2nd class mail, and yet only a single collection sack inside, because the mail is now sorted by robots.
2. All the Manhattan pedestrian crossings have little buttons for pedestrians to press, that actually do nothing. They just serve as a calming influence.
3. Despite the warnings at the Underground ticket barrier to insert your ticket in a particular orientation, you only have to have it facing upwards.

I was going to complain that obsolete design can be time wasting and somewhat demeaning to the public. Except I noticed yesterday for the first time that London Underground have fixed their problem. Since the introduction of Oyster, the tickets just say "this way up" and the schematic on the gate gives no indication which orientation to insert the ticket. And frankly I'm not asking Royal Mail to replace their beloved postboxes, so it's just New Yorkers who have a problem.

Recipe book for classic McDonald's dishes from the 50s, including oddities such as Broccoli Cheese Soup and the Shamrock Shake.

I've learnt nothing from Jimmy's Farm about pig husbandry, luckily this porcine guide has the fundamentals down.

If pig rearing fails I could always become an illicit expert monkey fisherman.

Tim Hunkin is still kind of pervy and weird.

The now infamous Lindsay Lohan Harry Potter SNL Sketch(29 Mb).

With Mixmaster Mike strangely lacking from TT5B (To The 5 Boroughs dummy), and following the massive disappointment of the new RJD2 album, it's left to DJ Shadow to fulfill all your turntablism needs with a new live DVD. (while at the Shadow site check the stream of Six Days-Mos Def Remix, which is my favourite track of '03)

This insane collection of Dunks and Jordans may be a few pairs too far.

All work and no play:

SeatGuru helps you find long haul legroom.

The Garbage Trucker Hat (a milinery pleonasm).

Patron saint of That's How, Kim Jong-Il orders pizza, hilarity ensues.

The Gmail boycott is on at Gmail-is-too-creepy.com.

The "Two Things" theory states that any topic can be fully understood, having grasped only two concepts about the subject. For example: The Two Things about Being a House Husband: 1. That can wait until tomorrow. 2. That can too.

Dan Greenpeace played an awesome, all Beastie Boys, 2 hour show last night. He picked two of my favourite remixes, (Sure Shot, Large Professor; Root Down, Free Zone.) Tracklist here. Whole album streamable here, (complete with hopeless comments on each track from the 'Boys).

Hopefully it's not too late to jump on these bandwagons but Deerhoof and TV on the Radio are like my new favourite bands.

97% of you shouldn't CLICK HERE, and other insane foolery courtesy of Everlasting Blort.

Awesome rock climbing robot videos.

Teens and tramps favourite tipple Thunderbird was the wine that made the fortunes of Ernst and Julio. Who knew?

NASA have made a kick ass lightsaber training droid: publicity whores.

Did you think the corpses on Six Feet Under were just actors holding their breath? Wrong! This gem brought to you via FuneralWire.com "your leading source for deathcare industry news".

Lastly and perhaps leastly, Japanese scientists have invented an actual factual invisibility cloak.

That's more than enough, I think I have linkage burnout, I must go and rest my brain.

Out Of Reach: An Exhibition of Rare and Sample Sneakers
5th Dimension launched their new sneaker show last night in Hoxton. I was lucky enough to be on the guestlist, and dragged my sneaker dis-interested mead drinking buddy (see previous post) along with me. I sweated slightly about what shoes to wear. I figured this was a prime opportunity to impress the footwear cogniscenti with something fresh. I toyed with the idea of busting out a deadstock pair of Wovens, but that in itself is just too expensive, too important to waste on a bunch of sneaker nerds. It would be like cracking open your favourite magnum of vintage Krug, just to impress the local wine bore. Finally I plumped for a near DS pair of 1996 original colourway Footscapes.
The gallery space is squashed next to London's coolest video store, Today Is Boring. The antechamber to the cache was hung with sneaker art, including some pieces by Dave White,and some from JB. As predicted the crowd were predominantly Japanese sneaker freaks, furiously photographing each others feet. Biggest splash of the night came from the shop assistant from Foot Patrol who rocked a sample pair of the as-yet-only-rumoured California Dunk SBs (pictured).
The actual motherload of shoes was totally awesome - but only of interest to a real trainer fiend. My inebriated companion was utterly underwhelmed by what superficially was just a whole lot of Nike shoes. For those that care I shall shortly be posting a gallery of snaps. The curators had rifled through the collections of the greatest "'heads" in London to assemble 50 or so of the rarest dunks and AF1s ever made. For example: all four super-rare Undefeated Dunks, including the Splatter Lows available only to the staff of the store; the Futura FLOM Dunk, (1 of 24 pairs, available only to competition winners) and a matching signed Futura Deck (1 of only 100); the Michael Lau embroidered ThreeZero Dunk, 1 of 10, and also available only to staff of the toy company; the Tokyo "White" Dunk (won by lottery), and the London Dunk, both limited to 500; the early prototype for the Orange "Stars" Supreme Dunk Low; the Unkle Dunk and Methamphibian Roswell Rayguns Dunk (1 of "less than 4"!); the Black Album, Nellyville, Shady Aftermath, and Vibe AF1s. These are all among the rarest and most expensive shoes ever made by Nike, all so rare in fact that they practically never show up on eBay. To complement these "production" shoes was a display of customized sneakers, including the semi-production Ricky Powell. I particularly liked the dunk pictured above, that was panelled with actual dollar bills. I actually really enjoyed this exhibit. It's like seeing the crown jewels of Nike collecting.
The depressing flipside is that each of these shoes has value, only because Nike chooses to release them in tiny numbers, but with maximum hype. I would never dream of wearing lime green Huarache Lights, even emblazoned with a Stussy logo (1 of 21), so why was I so pleased to see them exhibited? Furthermore why have I bothered to add to the hype by reporting on the show? Curses on you, corporate machine! (but congratulations on a killer show.)

An Historical Re-enactment (Of Insobriety).
In medieval times before water sanitisation people drank only mead, since honey has natural antibacterial properties. Being in possession of a bottle of fine Lurgashall Mead, Nick and I decided to test mead out as a water substitute. Being very committed to the spirit of this historical experiment I failed to post to the blog all day, instead revelling in the authentic mead experience.
The conclusive result of our experiment? Drinking only mead is an excellent alternative to drinking water, as long as you have no requirement for driving or operating heavy machinery, and you don't mind that you smashed a whole bottle of perfectly good cava while stumbling about outside the St John.

How do you make the 5-7-10 split? Yell out "the 8 pin is a cop".
(A modest prize is offered for the first comment noting both the reference, and explaining the meaning of that little gag.)
I'm not sure if there's a word for what happens when you buy someone else a present that both totally inappropiate for the recipient, and your ideal gift. That principle is at work here as JT Leroy dispenses disasterous "career advice for the Olsen twins", in the form of "JT Leroy's Olsen twin fantasy":

"Maybe one of them could break off from the pair and take on a lesbian role (but not with the other twin!) in an edgy foreign film, a role that would really prove some acting chops."

Read more pearls of wisdom (after enduring a stupid ad for DJ Waxy Fresh's wankingle car) over at Salon.

Some things are too important not to blog about, (even after a link gets comprehensively boingboinged and metafiltered.):

From the FAQ: "Zombie Reagan, however, cannot become President, because he has already served two terms in that office. If George W. Bush were to die during his second term (say, by being eaten by Zombie Reagan), three options exist: the Speaker of the House would be elevated to the Presidency, Congress would convene to elect a new President or the President would undergo the zombification process and complete his term."

MONKEY + QUADBIKE + iBOOK = $$$$$

DARPA have announced the 2005 Grand Challenge. The challenge is to design and build an autonymous ground vehicle that can navigate 75 miles across the Nevada desert through a detailed series of GPS waypoints. This year the entrants mostly consisted of large robotic Hummers and 4x4s, none of which managed to get further than 7 miles. Lots never left the start line, and several went backwards, probably because it's tough to automate a full sized vehicle. Since the prize is 2 million dollars, I figure some innovation is needed to spice up the competition.
My design is of a highly trained orang-utan riding a quad bike, reading directions off a GPS equipped iBook. This relatively low tech solution seems sure to meet with success, after all animals as dim as pigeons are capable of steering missiles. I haven't found out where to order an orang-utan yet, but I have until December next year to train him up. I intend to start him off playing Grand Turismo and Colin MacRae Rally, before moving on to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
I haven't actually checked the rules to see if an orang-utan is eligible; if not I intend to pull a mechanical turk on the organisers, by concealing a smaller monkey, perhaps a marmoset in the engine housing.
Any offers of assistance welcome. I can't afford to pay my crack team of ape wranglers and geo-locational programmers, but I might cut you in for a couple of points from the profit, and maybe a coveted Gmail invite.

The slaves have been hard at work in the link mine:

A life sized replica of The Simpsons' House.

Bonsai Kitten is old hat, meet Bonsai Potato.

A tribute to Reagan in jellybeans; touches the heart.

CAD created homes for hermit crabs based on the designs of a fascist architect.

When London gets too gentrified I intend to move to Assloss or Twathats, just two of the many hilarious UK placenames in this compendium.

Although monkeys may rule at quadbiking they still suck at typing Shakespeare. The virtual simians of The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator have only managed 16 letters: King Richard II, which is much better than the typewriter equipped monkeys of Paignton Zoo who only: ""...succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter "s"." (via Rogue Semiotics.)

The image on the left is by nerd fantasy artist Hajime Sorayama. It appears to be a rather sweet pastiche of a late period Mel Ramos as seen on the right. Before you sweat that you just accidentally downloaded a nude at work; relax, Ramos is real art. His animal paintings were even used by Blur on fly posters promoting their Best Of album. Still don't believe me? Better invest in this chunky hardcover retrospective of his oeuvre, so you can enjoy his nudes in the privacy of your own home.

Announcement: web design gives me a headache. I loathe tables, but I now hate CSS more. I made this cool logo and background and I can't integrate it with a working Blogger template.

As a rival to Qibla-Cola, there now exists Leninade. Soft drinks to suit, whether Al Qaeda sympathiser, or closet commie.

A really comprehensive list of logical fallacies. Bone up on this and barrack-room lawyerdom will be yours.

My japanese is at the level of an 8 month child, but I think this is a banana juice carton that looks exactly like a banana.

Two reasonably prominent blogs, Glamorama and SSTPeabs, have died inside of a week. This actually got me concerned for the mortality of my own dear blog. It takes a surprising amount of work to churn out this garbage, and the rewards are relatively obscure. I get a certain satisfaction from the exponential growth of my hit counter (over 3000 hits last week, mostly because a black porn site linked directly to my stolen pictures of Cam's pink Range Rover.) I also get a little thrill from the nice emails from strangers, and I delight in the verbal interplay of the comments, most of which come from friends.
On the negative side I get a sense of dread everytime someone I know (most recently my father's agent) discovers my blog my chance. There are far too many references to Lindsay Lohan for me to be quite comfortable with semi-acquaintances judging me on the basis of my web output.
The dilemma is that I neither want to write exclusively about my daily affairs (hello, Kottke's Doormat, famous as the worst post in the history of blogging), which might be of marginal interest to people who really know me; nor to I want to become a single issue blog (e.g. celeb gossip, questionable legality MP3s, underage teen starlets) which would pull in a more focused sort of traffic. Instead I want to carry on pouring out this stream of eclectic nonsense onto the virtual page. With this in mind today's links are as ever utterly unthemed:

Best Google answers evs? Why Crocodiles can't stick out their tongues, why Betty Rubble was the last Flinstone to be included in the Flintstones Vitamins, and 43 other fascinating factoids answered for just $5 plus tip.

People Falling Over is a really focused blog, dealing exclusively with comedic human perils. If the Darwin Awards is the Oscars of human misadventure, People Falling Over is the MTV Movie Awards.

Petals Around The Rose is an awesome puzzle, whose secret can never be revealed only solved. I took around 20 rolls to crack it, which is considerably faster than Bill Gates managed to solve it.

If that's too brainy for you try this flash bubble game, like a cross between Go and Bubble Bobble, except more fun than that would be.

Do you remember that thingy in school where you would fold up a square of paper into a kind of quadruple fingermouse, then say this dorky rhyme and pick your favourite number? I kinda forgot the details too, but that thingy was actually a sort of flexagon.

Awesome collection of photos of passed out dipshits who've been fucked over by their "friends", though obvs as a doctor I completely disapprove.

URL DJ is beautifully designed, but their link-mixes are all distinctly MOR. More Jo Wiley than John Peel.

These comic fonts are so WHAMMO awesome that they might well feature in the upcoming That's How It Happened site re-design. Hooray!

My album of the month is obviously "To the 5 Boroughs" by the Beastie Boys. Although I'm reviewing it here a week before release, and I have sinned by downloading it, I will be buying an actual copy in due course. It's a bitch ripping vinyl to MP3, so consider this a pre-emptive back-up. The bittorrent I got my grubby hands appears to have the tracklisting all messed up, with the song 3 The Hard Way entirely absent. These then are my preliminary impressions of a potentially deep rewarding master work.
The album has a stripped down sound, show-casing the rhymes and vocal acrobatics. The beats and basslines are reminiscent of Paul's Boutique, though breakbeats unheard of in 1989 are scattered throughout. Mixmaster Mike actually gets a surprisingly small slice of the pie, only a few songs have his trademark intros or breakdowns. When they do come though, they hit hard. Most of all though what impresses are the lyrics. For your edification here are a few of my fav couplets:

"Your rhymes are fake like Canal Street rocks; You're hearing me and y'all be like "Oh my God it's sasquatch."

"Whatchoo talking 'bout Willis? Who the illest? You know my name is Adam; stop callin me Phyllis."

"Communicator check, 1-2 1-2; this is Bones McCoy on the line to Sulu."

After a few listen throughs, two or three tracks suffer from a kind of "Just Say No" preachy tone. The album is startlingly political, at one point rhyming OPEC with "come correct". When combined with the post-9/11 sensibility the message is too forced in places. However at least 10 of the 16 tracks have "classic" written all over them: Right Right Now Now, featuring the first ever harpsichord loop in hip-hop; Triple Trouble, in which the Boys rap in Mockney over "Rapper's Delight"; The Brouhaha, a huge melee of scratches and breakbeats, with a chorus to die for; most of all I'm loving An Open Letter To NYC, a tender homage to the heterogeneity of the five boroughs, which has the most original swirling stereophonic bassline you'll hear all year.
Tentatively I'm going to jump off the fence by saying this might be the best Beastie Boys album yet. There's not obviously a dance floor classic like Intergalactic, nor are there any power guitars as in Sabotage, but the depth is there in brilliantly intelligent, witty rhymes. To quote Triple Trouble:

"Moving the crowd, well that's a must ; I got some words that apply to us; and that's mesmerizing, tantalizing; captivating, we're devastating."

PS If you're reading this before 12.30pm GMT on the 8th, don't forget to go view the transit of Venus which has never been seen by any living human.

I'm not going to pretend that funerals are more fun than weddings; obvs they suck a whole lot more. None-the-less it is a terrifying reminder of one's earthly bounds and pending mortality to spend an evening Irish country dancing with aging middle-englanders at a wedding. I actually had a blast, I love cringing speeches and cheesy bands, (interestingly called "Rufus Returns"), but the company provided a little more insight into my future than I am accustomed to coping with. Congrats anyhow to Dave and Coggie Lewis, who I'm sure will spend their remaining years together aging gracefully and happily.

Geoff McFetridge may be the world's hippest graphic designer, but he's also the slowest. He seems to output only 2 or 3 designs a year. The image above features in both the new Refill Magazine and this month's Lodown. Half the components of the design above have already been used in his t-shirts. I'll still be buying both magazines though: "free" BAPE badges with refill, and an image of a wonderful pink pinstripe Unstoppable Champion Vandal in Lodown. If none of this makes sense to you, just give up and move on to the next post.

Five things I need to keep reminding myself of:
1. Not to call people bitches. My surname is neither Chappelle nor Z, and frankly it's not just girls who consider it disrespectful.
2. Bees are associated with death and unconsciousness, but if you can keep your cool, they are perfectly safe to be around.
3. Though I don't seem to have a job after August 1st, I shouldn't freak out, because when I was in steady employment, I was always planning to quit and go surfing anyway.
4. Japanese flash games, though addictive, waste time, and don't contribute to my life experience.
5. Enjoy yourself, it's a celebration, bitches!

"You see I walk like Jabba the Hutt, With the style so new y'all be "like what?""
So absolutely nothin' doin' in my daily adventures right now, that the imminent release of The Beastie Boys "To The 5 Boroughs" may be my June highlight. It's been so long: when the last album dropped I was still an undergrad at pre-clinical med-school. More preview schizzle further fueling my anticipatory appetite.

Mil Millington has a blog (sort of), and it's still funny.

In a similar vein the Guardian recap the fifteen most callous break ups in history.

A tough little flash game requiring razor-sharp mouse manouevres.

Quannum.com got a stack of good preview tracks from the whole discography.

BugMeNot let you enter password protected sites: NY Times etc, without exposing your precious email address to unsolicited junk.

Firefox is a really good browser, I don't know why I took so long to discover its joys.

I had heard rumours of a shoe shop in Bethnal Green that was somewhat out of the ordinary. Bethnal Green is one of the traditional cockney slums of London's East End. My sources suggested that unlike other local emporia Meteor Sports stocked more than just the usual fake Timberlands and ugly Skeechers. Yesterday I decided to pay it a visit. The shop is completely nondescript, even lacking a sign; I had to identify it by the numbers of the shops either side. Once inside though, it was unmistakeable. It is clearly the product of someone who lives and breathes sneakers. Every wall is covered in rare and unusual kicks: 50 colourways of Dunks, 50 AF1s, seemingly all the Nike Footscapes, every Prada sport colour, even a reasonable stock of the usually unobtainable Bapestas. I was on an even rarer hunt though: Nike Air Wovens.
For non-regular readers, the Nike Woven is the only handmade shoe Nike have ever produced. In 1995 a shoe fetishist's version of tulipmania developed for it. All across Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore insatiable demand for the shoes led to ever spiralling prices. This mania spread to the US in 1999 when Nike allowed Alife to become the first Western retailer to stock them. The prices eventually plateaued in the region of 4-5 thousand dollars. This puts the 1st edition colourways on a par with vintage Air Jordans and the rarest Dunks as the most valuable "production" shoe Nike have ever made. They also happen to be the most comfortable.
After a few minutes stalking the shoe shop aisles, it became obvious, that despite the presence of practically every post-millenial Nike shoe on the walls, no Wovens were in evidence. I tentative enquired of the shop assistant whether he had any in stock. In hushed tones he referred me on to a junior honcho in a backroom. The junior honcho pointed to a box on the floor, and said that yes he had a few, but he couldn't sell them today, because he needed them for a GQ photo shoot. In the box were eight different colourways, of which I only own 3. Then he in turn said that the manager himself would be delighted to field my enquiry. The manager appeared up a ladder from a basement filled from floor to ceiling with the alluring orange Nike shoe boxes. He revealed that the Wovens were not on display, because they were kept in "The Archive". However he had in excess of 30 pairs, the catch being that he could only accept offers in writing.
As I've commented before, a collection completed is a collection ruined. With just 12 pairs clogging my cupboard, I have at least 20 pairs still to go. Even if I had the spare thousands needed to complete my collection, I would prefer to hunt them down one by one at sensible prices. Still it's great to know that less than a mile from my apartment the coveted missing shoes are hidden in a backroom of a shoddy shoe store.

I was wrong about Rance, (as were Mondo Retro who kindly linked to me yesterday) His true identity was identified with some impressive googling. If you want skillz like that check this Mini-Guide to Google Hacks.

MemeFirst have come MemeSecond: to me! You have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat How It Happened to a new meme.

Double Tongued is a tasty resource for the neophyte lexicophile.

The infamous Sesame Street Pinball Song Remix is now available from Ninja Tunes as a Real stream.

Porn Star names suck, you need a Smurf Name.

Today's update brought to you by "Pimpin' Smurf" Cartwright.

There is an insidious trend in corporate decorative aquaria that's really angered me. Increasingly in flash restaurants and hotels you see freshwater aquaria disguised as marine aquaria. Poor unfortunate cichlids and catfish are made to live in tanks full of marine sand and dead corals. The reason for doing this is that marine aquaria are very difficult to maintain, and slow to set up. The stark white sand and eerie tree corals look great though, especially with a few bright freshwater tropical fish swimming about. Prime culprits include the £1500000 custom tanks at Yauatcha and the tanks in all department stores selling Creme de Mer.
Quite apart from the fact that this is deceptive, I think there are three main reasons why it is fundamentally unethical:
1. These tanks are deliberately keeping fish in the wrong environment, and suboptimal water conditions, which can only lead to ill-health and frequent replacement of stock.
2. Dead corals are harvested to provide a backdrop. Most punters probably don't even realise they are dead. Keeping live corals is already environmentally unfriendly, but purchasing dead corals is truly destructive, and illegal in most of the countries where the coral is "poached".
3. The most typical fish kept (as pictured) is the Parrot Cichlid. This malformed manmade sterile hybrid can barely swim straight. The most outlandish colours are produced by hand dyeing. It would obviously be preferable to keep captive bred actual species in their natural colours.
I am not naive enough to suggest any political action, but if you keep an eye out for the mal-adaptive parrot cichlid, you'll probably notice some of these evil aquaria. You don't have to boycott or protest to gladden my heart, but disapproving stares might be in order.
Now that's off my chest, back to the usual irreverent irrelevant linking:

A photo of a penisbird perched on Bill Oddie's head.

"One surfer didn't even paddle in after the attack; he had to be talked ashore." Waves must be really overcrowded in Sonoma County if an 18 foot man-eating great white isn't enough to scare you out of the water.

Where is Saddam's pistol? In the Oval Office of course!.

Got an eskimo to insult? You need the Racial Slur Database.

Geek DIY is full of cool projects, including build-your-own G4 Mac, and the open source Big Mouth Billy Bass. Nerd alert, nerd alert!

A robot made of Lego that solves Rubik's Cube. Just flabbergasting. So best, evs.