That's How It Happened

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I'd just like to point out that I've never liked Superman, and Bryan Singer is my least favourite director ever, so I have like a major anti-boner for Superman Returns. I'm with Lex Luthor all the way on this one, particularly when he's dressed just like I do. If anyone cares to debate the merits of The Usual Suspects or X-Men in the comments, prepare for an unprecedented Mount St Helens level flaming.

If you're a fan of rectal foreign bodies, you might enjoy this paper I accidentally dug up on Medline:
Self-inflicted male urethral foreign body insertion: endoscopic management and complications.:
"Objects included speaker wire, an AAA battery, open safety pins, a plastic cup, straws, a marble, and a cotton-tipped swab."
A plastic cup? The mind boggles.

Bricksmith is an OS X Lego simulator. It has a library of every Lego part in 3-D, and lets you virtual build, without ever running out of bricks. Freetime be gone! (The same author wrote KeyMileage, a program that measures how far your fingers move when typing, as pro-Dvorak propaganda.)

Some google videos that make me feel like I don't get outdoors enough:

Home made Russian Parkour including insane wallride to rodeo move.

Killing rabbits using high-velocity sniper rifles. Warning: intense bunny peril.

Freediving with sharks, and cuddling them too.

There was an Onken stand at Victoria Station yesterday handing out free samples. As I arrived, the scene turned into an ugly riot. Passers-by began looting indiscriminately. I myself fled the scene with 3kg of delicious Biopot. I'm feeling slightly guilty, so I thought they deserved a small plug.

If you are interested in urinary urgency......actually you probably still won't enjoy my new article about Measuring Urgency.

Protoblogger Dave asked me to contribute some crossword clues to the South London Theatre Newsletter. Here's a sample of my cruciverbal witticisms:
A cup or a plate? A girl gets confused. (5)
A gerbil shuffled to head of chorus. (6)
Bishop alleged to have concealed a jewel. (4)
Carol has argument drunkenly up a ladder. (4-4, 7, 2, 4)
Dick strays around standards. (10)
Whisper sweet nothings? Endlessly frigid. (3)
The spanish flipper is small and sprightly. (5)
Susi eats hot fish food. (5)

Life imitates art (well Curb actually) as Rik Flair gets arrested for Road Rage.

Finally a podcast worth listening to: Ricky Gervais.

An Open Letter To Aubrey de Grey. Richard Miller, gerontologist, explains quite humourously why millions now living will not never die.

Spike Jonze completists should enjoy his most recent adverts for Ikea and Gap.

ThingsMag's beautiful Animal Families Cards reminded me of a kid's version of Old Maid called Grumpy Gus Gorilla. Google draws a blank; can anyone use their analogue "brain" memory to recall it?

My PSP broke in the early hours of this morning, during a drunken attempt to finish Grand Theft. Looking at the laser unit, I'm about 51% sure I can fix it myself.

The Get To Z game, is 5 minutes of idle distraction. The solution is eazy when you know how.

Did NASA accidentally nuke Jupiter? The internet and zany conspiracy theories go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Xooglers: a former Google employee tells all about the fabled life at Mountain View.

Howto Flickr set: Katamari cake.

Xbox 360 Hands On Review - Call Of Duty 2
In common with every teenage boy in the UK, I spent part of yesterday trying out the Xbox 360 demo machines that have landed in the nation's gaming emporia. I'm really impressed by Call Of Duty. The game is a sort of "Saving Private Ryan" simulator. It authentically captures the look and feel of the film, and the gameplay is great. The backgrounds and the "SFX" are amazing. The 360 does a fantastic job of rendering beautiful detailed textures, with no redraw problems. The smoke grenades produce a startlingly real cloud of smoke over the battlefield, much more sophisticated than anything the Xbox or PS2 could do. The major flaw though lies in the "uncanny valley". The graphics for the soldiers are great, but no matter how lifelike, they're still not emotive. They run around and bark commands, their heads explode when they take sniper fire; but they feel like toy soldiers. I feel just the same apathy for Mario on the 1" GB Micro, as I do for my high-definiton WWII squadron in CoD. Until the faces of the soldiers are actually indistinguishable from faces in TV footage, I think we'll all continue to suffer a sort of videogame prosopagnosia.

I finally got featured as part of the WebCollage yesterday. Its image searching spiders patched me into its HTML quilt.

Dazzling Blue Ball Machine animated GIF (Thanks, Tomsk!)

I'm confidently tipping Sunset Gun Noise as the Arctic Monkeys of 2006. They haven't released a single song yet, indeed they haven't even recruited all their band members. Rest assured they're going to be huge though.

Brilliantly executed Glass Table Magic Tricks, with spoilers.

Pathetic Personals: an ongoing trawl of online dating sites revealing the stupidest personal ads ever.

Google's Friends are a bunch of extreme dorks. Did they get these guys from the supernerd modelling agency?

Slightly misogynist, slightly NSFW, bicycling woman animation. (Warning contains scenes of naked peril!)

Make mine a 007..Every drink Bond drank.

WOTD: effleurage.

SlashDigg scores highly on Web 2.0 Bingo.

The history of 404 pages.

Really liking The Bays; both the music, and the concept.

Fantstic funny AskMeFi thread: Should I be mad at my friend who wants to join me on a first date dressed as a Slytherin?

Tool assisted speed runs. Using NES emulators to play Mario as if you were Neo. Nerdybutcool.

Has anyone had a dog with Irritable Bowel Syndrome? My feeling is that this is a strictly North American diagnosis, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

There's a disturbing trend in this week's news: people called Gary getting their just rewards. The tabloids must be all confused about these strange cases in which criminals are convicted, serve indecently light sentences, and then suffer further unexpected but deserved catastrophe.
First gang-rapist Garri Holness loses his leg in the 7/7 bombing, then inadvertently blows his new identity while clamouring for more compensation. Now Gary "I took a hard disk full of child pr0n to PC World" Glitter is facing the firing squad in Vietnam. I can't see our "consular services" in Hanoi doing much to rescue him.

Apologies to the 56k heads, but this animated GIF (fullsize here) shows the location of google requests worldwide on a single day in August 2003. It's beautiful seeing the information tsunami sweep across Europe to the States. Tokyo is a shining beacon of never-sleepingness, pretty much like real life. Oz and NZ, show up clearly, but Africa is almost invisible all day. There's a mysterious speck of requests about 1000 miles east of NYC. Anyone have any ideas what it could be? (via)

Cliche watch: Alimentary my dear...

Stockholm Syndrome in action as woman vows to marry man who shot her in groin, and held her captive.

The Lindsay Lohan Story (week-long identity confusion bicoastal Lohan text adventure).

Gawker got owned by Yahoo!

Word association (pointless procrastination)

Otters vs Man: Otters win. Yeh!

This design for a custom dunk came to me in a dream. The custom dunk colorizer doesn't capture the full glory of my vision, which would have a reflective 3M gold swoosh, and have the toe-box airholes punched out larger, with a spot of gold 3M in the base of each hole. All the red parts would be croc, and the brown parts would be pebble leather. This is sort of a mash-up of the Bison colours and the Mita Hi textures, with a touch of Dunkle for good measure.

Cooking With Keller
While in Barcelona I saw the El Bulli books, a 3 volume, 360 Euro celebration of 22 years of Ferran Adria's cooking. It inspired me to get back in the kitchen, and really do some cooking for once. For fear of excess baggage charges, I didn't bring home El Bulli, so I decided to tackle a French Laundry recipe instead. Thomas Keller may be the world's second most celebrated chef, but his cookbook is ridiculously impractical. I've previously tackled a dozen or so of his trickiest creations, with completely mixed success. I thought I'd take some cooking notes, and some tasting notes, and maybe that way my cooking will improve:

Black Sea Bass with Sweet Parsnips, Arrowleaf Spinach, and Saffron-Vanilla Sauce
This recipe is supposed to feed six, but through bitter disappointment I've learned to ignore Keller's advice. I stuck close to the original quantities, and it was enough for 2.

Bass
Six 2 to 3" pieces of black sea bass
Kosher Salt
White Pepper
Waitrose don't stock black sea bass. I bought greek regular sea bass instead. Keller recommends scraping the skin ad nauseam to dehydrate it, so it can crisp up later. I didn't have time for such poncing about, and was sure I'd just eviscerate the fish, so I skipped this.

Mussel Stock
18 mussels scrubbed and debearded
2 large garlic cloves peeled
1 large shallot peeled
4 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup sauvignon blanc
Keller expects you to bring all the ingredients to a boil, remove each mussel individually as they open, and then strain the stock through a chinois. I just ditched this entirely, not having a use for 18 mussels, and cobbled my own stock together later.

Spinach
Three 2" strips orange zest
3/4 teaspoon olive oil
6 ounces spinach
Kosher Salt
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
The recipe requires you to fry the zest in olive oil, add the spinach and some salt, and cook it until it wilts. You then evaporate off some fluid, and squeeze out the remainder. You bunch up the spinach into balls, and save it for later. This all seemed easy, so I did this pretty much exactly as requested. I used regular salt though, because Jeffrey Steingarten says there's no difference at all once it dissolves. No difficulties encountered.

Parsnip Puree
2 Parsnips peeled
1 cup and 1 tablespoon of heavy (double) cream
1/2 cup water
Pinch of kosher salt
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
You slice the parsnips into even rounds and semi-rounds, and then boil them in cream water and salt, for 25 minutes, before scraping it through a tamis (a french flat sieve that Keller is nuts about). Finally you are supposed to add more cream until it has the consistency of mashed potato. I ditched peeling, because it's dull. I do own a tamis, but I ditched this too, because it's a bitch to clean. Instead I boiled it all down, added a little extra milk, and finally blended it in a mixer until it hit the right texture.

Saffron-Vanilla Sauce
1/2 vanila bean split
1 cup mussel stock
1/4 teaspoon saffron threads
1 1/2 teaspoons heavy cream
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
I somehow forgot to read the instructions here. You're supposed to "build" the sauce bit by bit like a hollandaise. I just melted all the butter, added some cava and garlic in place of stock, and blended it in the mixer until it emulsified. Note to Keller: saffron doesn't fit in a teaspoon. My method worked fine, and made a rich saffron coloured sauce, which I stuck on the hob to keep warm.

To Complete
You roll the spinach balls in butter, and warm them at 350F in the oven. You then fry the fish skin side down in canola oil, flattening them with another pan. You give them a brief "kiss" on the other side and start piling up the ingredients, restaurant style. I used olive oil instead of canola. Despite getting hot oil spitting on my arms, in my eyes, and across half the kitchen, I did get them properly crisp. The stack is vanilla sauce, then parsnip puree, then spinach round (I pressed it into a ramekin to get the right shape), then finally the bass.
Tasting
The vanilla/bass is a classic fusion, and it works well. Sweet vanilla sauce, parsnips, and the citrus spinach, all complement each. The modified-Keller technique produces fantastic crispy skin on the bass, and moist delicious flesh.

The Stats
Cost - £8.70, not including the splash of cava (there was lots of vanilla pods and some cream left over though)
Time - 50 minutes start to finish
Ease - 6/10 (much simpler than previous Keller efforts, at least with my many shortcuts)
Taste - 8/10 (delicious, but not utterly startlingly good)

I consider this recipe a success, and I'd definitely cook it again; maybe even for a dinner party. It would be relatively easy to scale up the ingredients, and it looks and tastes impressive.

Prank calls are stupid and puerile; but not when they are as funny as these three:
Shaggy impersonator orders a taxi, (thanks, Renos!).
Shaggy impersonator calls a shop.
President Bush impersonator calls the Sesame St helpline, (thanks, Khoost*r!).

The Sagrada Familia is the most wonderful, delerious, and frankly fantastical building I've ever seen. I was prepared for a spiny tower of kitsch, but actually it's beguiling, intriguing, maybe even overwhelming. In a little tapas bar on the street outside I saw a "living statue", dressed head-to-toe in a gold knight's outfit, but playing pinball and drinking a beer. That serves as an analogy for Barcelona's architecture. Utterly fabulous old buildings scattered incongruously next to acres of modern glass and steel. There are some fine modern buildings though, like the Torre Agbar, a beautiful shimmering spanish gherkin.

I'm in Barcelona, staying at the AC, feeling a little LiT. Anyone got any suggestions for things to see and do, besides gorging on Gaudi?

Cliche watch: Sex, Lies, and X.

On the effectiveness of aluminium foil helmets - an empirical study, a paper exploring the failings of current Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies to avoid mind control. If you are a Linux or Amiga user, you are still safe from them, thanks to Mindguard pschotronic mind-control protection software. No word yet whether your pets should persist with their Foil Hat Technology. (Thanks JB, for the "heads up")

Clash n Slash is an Asteroids-esque game, but oddly quite different. Recommended for 15 mins of idle button bashing.

Someone yesterday told me that Wikipedia was better than Brittanica, because "it has all the stuff people are interested in". I think the opposite is true: it's good because it covers the "long tail" of stuff you never even heard of. Encyclopedia Dramatica is the wikipedia clone that's good for all the stuff I'm into.

Is it a point of etiquette, that you should refrain from asking people where they got their prison tattoos? I have been wondering, because the man that brings the sandwich trolley everyday at work, has some crazy home-made inked symbols on his hands and wrists. He's a super-friendly guy, and I am fairly sure he's committing major sandwich-fraud against Sodexho, which makes me like him even more. Familiar as we are, I don't have the courage to ask where he got his tatts.

BBC interview Takahashi, the creator of Katamari, about his plans to become a playground designer.

Kassovitz rips into Sarkozy, in a huge way: "(his ideas)...illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would be Napoleon."

Sports Illustrated's Hockey Fists of Fury pictorial.

The Guardian go behind the scenes with Nigerian 419 scammers.

100% post-consumer waste house, being made from a 747 (via)

If I could only choose one category at freshpatents.com, (and thank heavens I don't have to), I'd pick fishing, trapping, and vermin destroying. My current highlight would be this autonomous fish-farming robo-sub.

There are 42 pairs of hTM Footscape Wovens in existence, and right now 4 pairs are on offer at Yahoo.co.jp Auctions. Tiny .co.jp sizes sadly, not that I have 60k Yen to drop on shoes.

The Walrus, has the longest baculum of any mammal. Great page of pinniped facts and pictures. (Thanx, PDicky!)

Tag of the day: Blue Steel (from Zoolander)
Phrase of the day (unrelated): Walk-off Home Run

"A 40-year-old Maple Ridge man arrested for illegally recycling $1 million worth of pay phones and phone booths into scrap metal raised eyebrows at Surrey Provincial Court when he paid his $2,500 bail with coins."
Original story now missing, but via The Payphone Project.

Stuff you can mount on a Talon Military Robot:
Gripper manipulator.
Smoke dropping module.
Grenade dropping module.
Breaching tool.
Gen III night vision camera.
NBC sensors.
UXO/countermine systems/sensors.
Anti-Tank (AT4) launcher.
Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW) launcher.
40-mm grenade launcher (M203 barrel).
12-gauge shotgun.
Mounts for remotely controlled weapons including: M240; M249: M16; M82A1 (50-cal).

Howto: Torch a Peugeot (In brief: matches and lighter fuel, but cool anyway).

Make Blog is flawlessly wonderful. Every link a must-read.

Land-o-links have pre-empted me in a pun I've been mulling over using for months. Nice link-blog though. (qv the now defunct Land-O-Ledges skate wax)

Nathanial Hornblower: director, letter writer, and full blown weirdo, has a website, in part promoting his new film: Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That.

I forgot to mention that I am now a published author. As in actually getting paid (a whole £100), and appearing in print as well as on the web.

Slotcar videos, with great howto.

Great Katrina Surfing Vid.

Flip is a research ship that turns vertical, to become a real-life version of Hennessey's research base in The Life Aquatic. (Get your Operation Hennessey Tees and Zissou Intern Bags at spreadshirt).

Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a work of genius. They pay you small amounts to do repetitive tasks that are difficult for computers. I particularly like the image recognition tasks. They could easily be done by pigeons, though presumably the pigeons are all busy working at Google.

Google Local For Mobile is yet another SymbOS app that won't run successfully on my Nokia 6600. Beautiful though it is, I've learned not to be disappointed by such failures.

A comprehensive guide to remote Mac controlling. (For nerds only).

A lesser known McSweeney's List

Some Reasons We Might Send Back Or Dislike Your Submission:
Your submission included the words "these days" or "nowadays."
Your submission did not take place in a jungle.
Your submission did not capitalize the first letters of sentences.
Your submission concerned life in college.
Your submission was some kind of list of goofy e-mail names from spam you received.

Howto: download Google's videos and steal Google's lunch.

Bounty Hunter x House 33, making collabs hot again.

My German sucks, but I think I'm liking ZOOI's brand of design/sneaker fetishism.

The 5 Worst DVDs I Own
In among the 200 or so DVDs clogging up my shelves there are some shameful stinkers. I can't explain how any of them got there, except maybe having an itchy trigger finger on the 1-click button.
5. Dick - No amount of 17 year old Kirsten Dunst can compensate for Michelle Williams in this movie.
4. Detroit Rock City - 1999 was a really poor year for teen comedy.
3. Ready to Rumble - To quote from myself in 2001: "This sucks so hard, it'll make you wonder if you really are a wrestling fan."
2. I Heart Huckabees - I'm baffled by the demi-success of this film. It's so stupid it makes me wonder if I'm the stupid one that doesn't quite get it.
1. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course - "The Crocodile Hunter mistakes some CIA agents for poachers and sets out to stop them from capturing a wily croc which, unbeknownst to him, has swallowed a tracking drone." Surely the TV franchise least well suited ever for a comedy/action/adventure big screen outing?

Romain Duris is absolutely electric in De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrete. It's a not particularly sophisticated art-house gangster flick, but Duris's incredible performance makes it utterly compelling. It's possibly a little bit too French for some tastes. He does smoke almost continuously, and spends most of the film looking gloomy in little bistros, trying to reconcile gangsterism, piano playing and filial piety. The movie is otherwise a complete success, and rates as my second favourite french film ever after La Haine (directed by Kassovitz, who has a blog). Though La Haine is of course looking more relevant than ever in light of the ongoing rioting.

Myotonic Goats are the funnest domesticated animals since Twisty Cats. (Thanks Tomsk!)

"Raped" at the roadside by a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Fantastic funny regional news.

Hanzi's Matter a blog about bad kanji tattoos etc.

Michelin rates NYC for the first time. Top chefs all "plein d'emotion".

Jesus Bowling T-Shirt.

Nokia's new AJAX-tastic browser for Series 60 phones.

Pencil Revolution is the only pencil review blog you'll ever need.

Lorbus a beautiful blog of designer ephemera.