That's How It Happened

I have brain fugue again, I feel completely mindless. I have three possible explanations:

1. I accidentally dyed part of my scalp green with malachite green on Monday. I didn't know this until my hairdresser discovered it on Wednesday though. Maybe the malachite has finally seeped through to my brain and is poisoning me.

2. I saw Keanu Reeves loitering at Claridge's on Wednesday. Maybe the sight of him, resplendent in a glossy black beard, has freed my mind from the constraints of the Matrix. Even now as my body types these words, my mind might be off in another conceptual space fighting albino vampire twins and flirting with Monica Belluci.

3. Maybe I just worked too hard this week, and need to chill the frick out all weekend long. Maybe it's all three. I certainly don't seem to be able to muster enough neurons to work it out.

Neologism watch: en ess eff double u / yoo.

How to: read more blogs. Some say least helpful blog post ever.

Stackopolis: a game.

Google Maps Mania is just overflowing with cool sh*t.

"We thought it would have been better with drugs": DQ Issue 3.

One candidate for most profitable research thesis ever: "The Anatomy of a Search Engine". One candidate for silliest research thesis ever: "The Rap Canterbury Tales" (via everywhere on the entire known internet)

Neologism watch: killerest (GOOG) and unicorn chaser. More idiom love at whatdoesthatmean?

See a giant railway tanker car implode.

A collection of insanely bad baby names.

Stephen J. Levitt of Freakonomics fame, will offer you a free copy of his book, if you submit a logged history of over 30,000 poker hands. Just a small freako-tip from me: even at the $1 table, with a house "rake" of 4%, that free book is going to have cost you a minimum of $1200. Unless you are already a pro, of course.

Stage diving can be dangerous. Very dangerous (via). Who knew? Apparently, Paul Wertheimer, the world's leading expert on mosh pit injuries.

Prison Survival Guide: "Never, EVER become involved in gambling. It’s a death trap, as sure as walking into an aryan fest with name badge that says zog." Hilariousslashterrifying tips for getting by inside.

"I always had a thing for the Dewey Decimal System"; Phone sex operators can be nerds too.

Great (and long, how!) article from the NYT about the new US retirement home for research chimps. Too late of course for Nim Chimpsky. (via Monkey Wire).

I have a new obsession: the game of Quarters (via they say no, but they mean yes)

Things have gone really seriously insane in London. Every taxi company in the city is sold out all day, because people are staying off the tube. People who are taking the tube, are risking not only suicide self-harm bombs, but being shot dead by the police. Rumour has it that there's a mosque in east London that's under siege, and Islamophobia is at an all time high.
Avoiding this heady atmosphere of crossfire and hate crimes, I thought the time had come to judge the clerihew contest. There were six valid entries:

from Charlie Beez:
Countdown's Richard Whitely
Entertained us with humour which was spritely.
He was once attacked by a ferret,
and more recently was buried.

from Nixta:
A man as old and wise as Nelson Mandela,
Such a loveable and kind fella,
Deserves not a limerick but clerihew
For all the good things he's put us through.

from Max:
the problem with old Tony Blair
is the fact that his wife's always there
with a simle to her shoulder, an intolerable grin
I can state outright that she's ugly as sin

from Turlough:
Tiger Woods
Has got the goods.
No time for flummery
Unlike Colin Montgomery.

from Tartley:
George Walker Bush - a man of his word
but words can decieve, we recently heard
caveats added, as he elegantly strove
to save the bacon of old pal Karl Rove.

from Jojo:
Doctor James Rufus Cartwright
Entertains daily with a most amusing and useful website.
A perfect destination
For procrastination.

Although all entries win a pot of honey, some contestants argued strongly that there should be a top prize. Bad rhyming did for Jojo (Cartwright and website) and Charlie (ferret and buried). Tartley slipped up by misspelling "deceive", as did Max by misspelling "smile", or possibly "simile" (unless they were both just trying some freeform neologistic jazz poetry). That left Nixta and Turlough in contention. Turlough clearly doesn't need any more honey, so he wins a top prize of a small jar of rare weasel coffee beans, shipped back by me from Vietnam. Everyone else wins honey! Hooray.

Steve "Blow" Jobs wears New Balance 991s.

Comic Life, Blue Phone Elite, and the Optimus Keyboard. Three good reasons why I really deserve a Mac Mini on my upcoming trip to NYC.

Talking of which I've totally booked to go to Masa, as reviewed by the Boy in the Bubble.

Great bOINGbOING post about fire hydrant shenanigans.

Minority blog alert: LegoFlashDrive.blogspot.com.

Fricking awesome tiny autonomous consumer level planes. All I need now are some smuggled diamonds and a hook-up in Antwerp.

PSP E Mag, the mag that automagically downloads to your PSP, then displays as an e-book.

Tenacious D: The Movie, prepare to have your socks rocked right off.

Frankfurter sculpting, (click for detailed schematics).

Letter Maze, a game of spelling, and coordination, and mazes.

www.youblewmeupyoubastard.com

My Diet Coke Habit, July 2005
About a month ago I stopped drinking alcohol. Not in the hardcore AA, total abstinence way. I just haven't bought a drink, or had more than one drink in an evening. As a result of this I've been drinking more Diet Coke than ever. I have this weird thingy where I get a lot of ventricular ectopics, so I kinda promised my cardiologist I'd cut back on the caffeine. After a particularly sober visit to the K-Bar I realised I'd spent over £30 in one night on Diet Coke. I resolved to quit:

This is not the first or even the second time I've tried to quit caffeine. However this time my resolve has been strengthened by the discovery that aspartame is carcinogenic to female rats. I hate Coke Light and its dangerous sounding caecal enlarging saccharin. Even that sweet sweet Coke C2 is off the menu, with its blend of aspartame, acesulfame K, and good old sucralose. I feel terrible, but at least I'm healthy.

Greenpeace have started placing these cards on the windows of 4x4s and SUVs parked in London (click for larger image). This protest, typically for Greenpeace, lacks irony, and I'm sure it will be counterproductive. Daubing gas guzzling cars with Spray On Mud, would be a more effective eco-insurgency.

Walking Insect flash thingy.

Word of the day is: fogdog.

How to do the Johnny Chan Trick from Rounders. (via).

The Guardian placed a huge crossword on the floor at Victoria Station today, promoting their new java crosswords for your mobile. I'm pleased to report that it's yet another application that doesn't work on my Nokia 6600. Update: Work's great, and I'll definitely subscribe for when I'm abroad.

Iron Chef America Woohoo!

I went out with some Bloomsburites last night. Mostly they couldn't give a damn that Harry Potter 6 got OCRed and onto bitorrent in 12 hours because they're too busy rolling around on giant piles of cash.

HotorNot vs Google Maps =HOT!

The standard in the clerihew contest has been so high that I'm keeping the competition open for another day. Still no word as to what the prizes might be though.

Amanita are nominated for a European Design Award for their point n click games: Samorost, Rocketman (for NikeLab.com), and Quest For The Rest (for the Polyphonic Spree).

I'm so impressed by the Guardian's Harry Potter in the style of... contest, that I've decided I should hold a clerihew contest. I've started the lyrical action with this tribute to Ted Heath:

The Right Honourable Sir Edward Richard George Heath
To Britain, the EU, did bequeath.
Though our former PM lies dead,
We will remember him; as Ted.

As ever, I'm expecting exactly no entries, though I know that some other bloggers are fond of a poem. In a fit of madness, I'm declaring that every lyrically correct entry will win a prize (Max one per participant)!

I'm seriously trying to get some work done. That probably involves not surfing the web for hours at a time. Posting may be erratic. Today's links were all submitted by fans of the internet:

Disused Underground Stations, thanks Yoel.

Shocking footage of The Death of Civilization, thanks Shams.

Photoshopped Chimeras, thanks Harry.

Meet Anne, Kate, Evie, Karen, Lisa, Lisa's rival Hank, the oddly named Tax Friendly, and an owl called Cosmo. They're all virtual reps, or vReps, part of ridiculous "Interactive Customer Care". They stink of that AOL-like trait of shielding people from the real power of the internet. I know site specific search often sucks, but vReps are not making it better.

My boss has a typographic mania for Arial. Every piece of work I produce for her has to be in Arial, or if possible Arial Bold. Even in her kindest moments she refers to Tahoma as the font of c*%@s. What I didn't know is that Arial's popularity and ubiquity is mostly due to Bill Gates, and that Arial owes everything to the more venerable Helvetica. If you'd like to avoid the ambiguous morals of Arial use, then you'll need to be very familiar with Arial spotting. Incidentally while we're on a font nerd trip here, text messaging is so over, text massaging is where it's at.

This is video that finally proves that dogs are better than cats: Zero-G Dog. I could watch this in a loop forever, and never stop laughing.

Levers is a really good flash game. It's not nearly as non-directional as some have claimed. There is a definite goal, you just have to figure out the rules to get there.

IYHY has rescued my mobile surfing from a hell of dodgy bits of incompatible SymbOS software. They store your mobile bookmarks, and offer a stripped down "feed" that is lo-bandwidth but more content heavy than RSS. Brilliant.

I've been using the web for over a decade, and I finally got involved in a meaningful helpful discussion. All hail MeFi, for effectively fostering intelligent online debate.

A Tale of Two W(h)orfs
The first Worf, is Lieutenant Worf. He is an orphan, adopted by a Starfleet Officer, and became the first Klingon to graduate from Starfleet. Due to his duel Klingon / Starfleet heritage he often proves invaluable to Picard / ST:TNG script writers in explaining what the cr@p the Klingons are on about. The Klingons, rather unhelpfully, speak Klingon. Klingon is an example of a conlang* (constructed language). The Klingon Language Institute** estimates that there are only a few dozen (actual) fluent Klingon speakers. One of them though is Alec Speers who was raised by his mad genius father as a bilingual english / Klingon baby. Fortunately for him he gave it up by age 3 and a half.
The other Whorf, is Benjamin Whorf, co-author of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that thoughts and concepts are entirely constrained by the possibilities of language. It implies that mastering an artfully constructed language, might allow more artful, more intelligent thought. In order to explore this possibility there is a subset of conlangs, called engelangs, that are supposed to explore the limitations of natural languages.
This leaves several unanswered questions. Is the Worf / Whorf coincidence, just that? Or was Rodenberry dropping mad references? Does Alec Speers dream in Klingon? Does it bother him that his mother has a smooth forehead? Are asterisks inherently unsuited to the web?***
* When conlangers get bored they hold a translation relay, which is a giant nerd game of chinese whispers for lingonauts****.
** The first web site I ever visited way back in 1994.
*** And if not why are they so seldom used?
**** Just because that's a neologism, it doesn't mean I consider myself to be one.

Today was flying ant day in the UK. My whole bedroom is full of the little critters. It's distinctly less fun than I'd anticipated. I'm ordering Entertaining With Insects from Amazon, in order to try and make the best (breakfast) of a bad situation.

Google Maps Pedometer is an incredibly neat google maps hack that lets you work out how far you ran/walked. Works great for US and UK.

Why do Flash game creator have such a penchant for cat abuse? Mmeoww (with the focus on the ow).

Bloodwars is a great pdf street art magazine.

Easydim is the cleverest lightbulb you ever saw, or dimmed.

Wok Media make a cool Scrabble Table, and also these Lightbulb/vase water/electricity combos.

Imprint Shoes are the Nike of the horse world. Really clever custom fitted plastic shoes for horses.

The Prize for "Getting over the bombings fastest" goes to Radio 1 Hip Hop Supremo Tim Westwood. On last night's show, just 36 hours after the bombs exploded he said, of his own new MTV show:

"Pimp My Ride UK is blasting off huge, blowing up all over the country. I want to big up everyone who's been watching that. This Sunday 10pm we be pimping a hearse, that's right a hearse. It's actually technically a double decker hearse, one of those that takes two coffins. Aiii."

I may be paraphrasing slightly. For the next week you can of course listen again at Radio 1, or via the magic of Wiretap Pro (excellent OSX Stream Ripper) you can enjoy my edited 1.6 Mb AIFC Clip. As Westwood himself would say, that sh*t was incredible last night.

People were back on the Tube today in force. If they were nervous, they were tough enough not to show it. I'm a little bit ashamed by what Ian McEwan wrote in the Guardian:

"We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?"

I couldn't disagree more. Just as we "never negotiate with kidnappers", I'm not about to concede any freedoms to terrorism. Nor am I going to renounce my confidence and joy. Sure I'm sad for the casualties and their families, but I'm not about to let terrorism change me one bit. Any response to terrorism merely validates and legitimizes it as a political intervention. As of tomorrow I'm resuming normal "trivial blogging".

It's been a long day in London. To cheer myself up I posted all my Nike Air Wovens on NikeTalk Retro. Last time I did it there was more hate than love forthcoming, but I feel like I have to be true to myself.

I walked home tonight along with millions of other Londoners. Stupidest quote of the day goes to a Manchester family interviewed while trying to get back to their car in the suburbs:

Manchester Mother: People are saying we might have to walk for three hours, I hope that's not true.

BBC Interviewer: When did you start walking?

Manchester Mother: Midday

BBC Interviewer: So you've been walking for three hours.

Having been confronted with the effects of terrorism, I was impressed by how calm and stoical Londoners were. It really brought home to me what a blunt political tool bombing is. The Guardian had been complaining that Live 8 was politically naive, but compared to a series of bombs, Bob and Bono's mission seems highly focused. It's not just that Al Qaeda's web designers are so bad, it's that no-one knows what they want, or what they're trying to say. I looked down the BBC's list of post-70s bombings, and felt somehow stronger, and more sure of my western bourgeois convictions.
As if to prove that we can all still laugh in the face of terror, an amusing link: How to turn your doberman into a poodle.

My entire hospital has managed to turf all its inpatients, and defer all its outpatient appointments. As yet though, I believe we've only seen a handful of patients with cuts and bruises. The informal doctor's grapevine has suggested major action going on at The Royal London, UCH, St Mary's and St Thomas'. The BBC's report from Whitechapel said they had 6 trauma theatres running at once, dealing mostly with burns. I also heard that all elective work had been suspended at Guy's, so surgeons could get across to St Thomas'. We in turn are expecting all tonight's obstetric cases at Tommies to come across to our labour ward. Luckily I'm not required. My main concern now is getting home. I'm officially stepping my alert level down to amber.

Some random thoughts:

Tony Blair's "immediate response" was pitch perfect. It made GWB's famous "stunned silence" (having been told of 9/11) look even more idiotic. He perhaps could employ some other rhetorical dveices to generate dramatic tension rather than ..... pausing.... quite..... so.... often .....though.

7/7 just has no ring to it. Better than 7/11 obviously. November 9th would have been an especially auspicious date, reading in Queen's English as it does, 9/11. I guess at least 7/7 removes any trans-atlantic day/month/day confusion.

When the world leaders lined up behind Tony, how come only GWB looked like an uncomfortable school child? He kept sneaking glances at Jacques and Vladimir. Also is a brown suit really appropriate for Gleneagles? Wouldn't black, or very dark navy have been more appropriate for deciding that fate of the planet?

Update 12.25: Apparently UCH has taken a majority of the casualties. The hospital where I work, is on major alert, but the A+E hasn't taken a single casualty yet. On a ghoulish note, these kind of major incidents turn out to be CV gold for doctors working in A+E or Surgery. People I know who attended the Admiral Duncan bomb immediately slapped it on their CVs, and found it was ever after a guaranteed easy interview topic. I'm not saying I'm jealous, but you know it would have been fun to get to wear a hazmat suit.

Update 11.11 BST: It's creepy being in a media black-out. All the roads seem to have been shut down, and the BBC are struggling. Only the Guardian News Blog has been brave enough to admit that these were "patently terrorist bomb blasts".

It's 10.31 BST as I write, and there have been multiple explosions across the tube, rail and bus networks. My mobile phone service has gone down. Strangely though all the internet news services are still blaming a "power surge" for the problems. As far as I know no "power surge" causes buses to explode. No-one seems to be saying it, but the coincidence with G8 is too strong to be ignored, it has got to be the UK's long awaited 9/11. Al Qaeda, rabid anti-globalists, angry French olympians? Who knows?

"An alchemist who can transform athletics into poetry, poetry into mathematics, mathematics into history." We're not talking about Seb Coe and the Olympics, we're talking Kobayashi and Hot Dogs. (via)

You probably already heard about bookcrossing. If I understand it rightly, it's a literary form of geocaching.

Although the David Lynch weather report is fun, I'm more in favour of Statler and Waldorf's movie and DVD reviews.

I've been very slow off the mark with PSP homebrew apps, but PSP VNC is too promising to pass up.

Not so long ago I linked to the Texas Death Row pages, but Florida Death Row Roster makes equally good bedtime reading.

Some amusing Cosplay hatin'.

The game Fleaworld is some true 8-bit Flash goodness.

Most wanted tee: "Don't be jealous that I've been chatting with babes online all day." Napoleon Dynamite references are never going to grow old.

OSX emulation (with incredible javascript GUI) for XP: FlyAKiteOSX (Thanks, James!)

Horrifyingly creepy Optical Illusion.(via)

The future just happened to my mobile: Mobile Google Maps (with satellite views!) and Litefeeds (RSS aggregator for phones) Update: neither of these are working for me. Anyone have any tips?

What should you do if a Chihuahua eats your stash?.

Iron Chef Fan Fiction Keller Vs Blumenthal (via)

Can there be too many online design mags? Netdiver.

Scoopt Inside every moral citizen is a paparazzo trying to get out.

Blackboard Streetfighter I think the official term for this is w00t! or some such.

Yuen Wo Ping x Michael Chabon x Snow White = Hotness (via Robot Wisdom, because I missed it in this morning's Guardian)

Foopad for online mash-ups.

101 Tried and True Pigeon Killin Methods: The Book and The Exhibition.

Man Convicted For Chipping X-Box. If that's a crime, I'm, oh sh*t, a criminal. Seriously go buy a chip now, before it gets really illegal.

Nothing is worse than McD's french fries wedged under the accelerator pedal. Everyone needs an in-car french fry holder.

Imagine, you are the proprietor of a respectable canal museum. You invest in a nice brown sign, in order to guide curious visitors better. And BOOM! all of sudden pesky kids, armed only with a scratchy key, make a mockery of England's rich industrial heritage.
In a similar vein: an unfortunate Singaporean sign.
And now, some stuff that has me somewhat buzzed aujourd-hui:

Poom! a terrifyingly addictive game. Top score from me is 86 bounces.

Flying Ant Day, which according to the Indie is due between July 21 and July 28th in the UK.

Waffles. Some say second best Waffle Jingle ever.

Eric Haze X Nike Delta Force Low Them's fadelicious.

Some Star Wars silliness:

Dooku.net Nod your head as Dooku rides across the desert with a variety of inappropriate soundtracks.

Build your own R2 Unit.

Leia's Metal Bikini is really the definitive site for girls who love Leia cosplay, (and for the men who love those girls).

Memento was a truly original movie, a movie that made it seem like Christopher Nolan had promise. Batman Begins is a major disappointment. The reviews (well 83% of them) were wrong. The first hour is cliched but engaging twaddle: martial arts training in Tibet, art direction that looks like Se7en crossed with Dick Tracy, a very cool car, and Michael Caine doing a passable impression of Michael Caine. I then sat through a further 1hr 20mins of utter garbage. Katie Holmes woodenly limping through her lines, abysmally handled fight scenes, Rutger Hauer and Gary Oldman desperate for more screen time, and Liam Neeson looking more like Yoda than Qui-Gon. Worst of all is the mechanical "big finish", which is breath-taking in its lack of imagination. This film is utter dross, and you should save the price of the cinema ticket, to go buy a book, or some intoxicating drugs. Anything would have been better than this.

I realise I am the last to know about it, but Paris looks hot, in her too-hot-for-TV burger ad.

Ramune is my new favourite soft drink.

Pimp My NOT Ride (via awesome linkblog Robot Wisdom)

Roomba are going all open-source and allowing Third Party Apps. (via Pimp My NOT Ride (see how this blogging thing works now?))

Sharapova may be out of Wimbers, but you can still enjoy her moans and grunts thanks to the BBC's Queen of Screams Audio Sampler. (Thanks, Paddy!)

There's this girl in a bikini, and you kind of drop her, and she bounces off stuff, and it's like so cool man...Tetka, Flash Friday Fun.

Best headline of the week is either: Boffins create zombie dogs or King of Chavs Finally Gets ASBO (cover of the Guardian!)

The Loch Ness Tooth conspiracy looks like slick viral marketing...until you see the shots of the shredded deer.

What your bowels look like from the perspective of a Smart Pill

The Chicken's Suit Collection, for people (and their chickens) who are too into Eglus.

Futura's desk is made of Lego™, an idea he stole from Microserfs.

How to cook a whale found dead: "...the first step is to call for a party and invite all your friends, relatives, and local dignitaries."