More Geek Toys

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16 December 2003
2 min read
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In Entertainment, Technology
870 views

Fancy a glowing rubber duckie USB key ring drive? Shame it only goes up to 16MB. As you’ll need somewhere to plug your duck, may we recommend the Hello Kitty USB hub. Hello Kitty responds to your keyboard motion by talking and moving in either Japanese or English.

The T-Cube is a new tiny, orange, cubic PC intended for sale in China. It runs some wacky OS called T-Engine.

Be the envy of your friends with a fuel cell toy. Pour in the water and watch it separate into hydrogen and oxygen, forming a gas to power your vehicle across the floor.

If you’ve ever wanted to eat a hologram, LightVision Confections are selling giant lollipops with edible holograms embedded in them.

MAME is a project to allow for the emulation of every video-game ever minted, but what if you’re more the pinball type? No fear: a group of MAME hackers are building virtual pinball machines that lovingly emulate every jot and tittle of every pinball table under the sun.
If you’re not into geek toys, why not try a jelly bath. This stuff turns ordinary bath water into a soothing puddle of brightly-coloured aromatherapeutic slime that looks like weird alien porn.
My favourite selection is the Catapult Watch that fires teeny projectiles from your wrist. How can you not like a company that has an entire section on trebuchets? They come in sizes ranging from the annoy your workmates desktop model through to the 1/10th scale Warwolf that is still large enough to have your neighbours firing off complaints to local council.

Elvis Drives Again

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11 December 2003
37 second read
In Entertainment, Weird
763 views

Cab Elvis lives! And so do any other Seattle cab drivers who want to trade their black slacks and crisp shirts for costumes. The Seattle City Council approved an ordinance allowing cabdrivers to hit the road dressed like Santa Claus, Superman or whatever strikes their fancy, as long the costume is approved by their cab companies

Crank Letters to Corporate America

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7 December 2003
1 min read
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In Entertainment
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Consumer Joe is a collection of crank/prank letters sent by screenwriter Paul Davidson to a variety of gigantic corporations, asking, for example, if he should call poison control after swallowing toothpaste, or if the Barbie hot-tub would be suitable for a garden party. The letters are genuinely funny, and the clueless bureaucratese in the responses is often equally good, but best of all are the responses from corporate letter-answerers who have winkled out his game and are playing along with their own sly humour:

Our research and development department went to work right away in the smoothie lab experimenting with your concoctions.

The Tuna Melt smoothie looks promising. We found the key to be white albacore tuna in oil, lots of mayonnaise and some powdered cheese. However, the Thanksgiving smoothie (turkey, cranberry, and gravy) is posing some challenges. Your recommendation to heat it up would require us to install microwave ovens at all locations.

Interactive and Not so Interactive Distractions

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5 December 2003
1 min read
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In Entertainment, Technology, Wildlife
716 views

Create your own Picasso style portrait with Mr Picassohead — via The Green Man.

Play with the weirdness of dirtdirt.com’s Dreems. Clicking on any of the three panels swaps a body part, reloading swaps all body parts.

If you like photoshopping sundry bits of carcasses together, send it to the Uncommon Creatures gallery.

Behold the mighty Nohands Kitten in all his incarnations.

If you’ve ever enjoyed flattening your little brother’s carefully constructed tower of blocks, you’ll get a kick out of knocking down the bouncy pink teddy bears.

A new toy from Weebl, the guy who brought me Badger joy, the Monkey can go Anywhere.

How the Brent Stole Christmas

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4 December 2003
34 second read
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In Entertainment
708 views

I hate the whole decoration part of Christmas, bring on the food and presents, but the stupid seasonal clothing and silly hats of family are difficult enough to tolerate for one day. Having to endure the same insanity at your place of employment for an entire month is a form of torture

Foot in Mouth and Bad Sex in Fiction Awards

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4 December 2003
1 min read
In Entertainment
683 views

A comment last year by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was awarded the Foot in Mouth prize by Britain’s Plain English Campaign; ‘Reports that say something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ Aniruddha Bahal, an Indian investigative journalist, won Britain’s little-coveted Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a turbo-charged account of a lovers’ tryst that likens their amours to a speeding Bugatti sports car

Escape from Woomera

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3 December 2003
29 second read
In Entertainment, History
728 views

Escape from Woomera is a first-person video strategy game, based on Half-Life, in which you play a refugee in the notorious Australian detention centre. The idea is to call attention to the deplorable state of Woomera and the inherent cruelty of the detention process

An American-Made Organ Waits in the Wings of a Swiss Cathedral

By
29 November 2003
1 min read
In Business, Entertainment
656 views

Replacing a pipe organ is no small undertaking. These majestic instruments are costly and difficult to build, and demand months of tuning and tweaking to deliver a perfect sound. In Europe, birthplace of the organ and long the dominant producer of them, they are also intensely political. When Lausanne decided in 1999 to replace the cathedral’s aging Swiss organ with a new one from an organ maker in Gloucester, Massachusetts, it was viewed by many Swiss as an act of heresy. Never before had a European cathedral entrusted such a sacred task to an American firm

Battle Cry!

By
19 November 2003
1 min read
3 Comments
In Entertainment
935 views

Generate your own battle cry.

I got lumbered with the not terribly fear inspiring:

I’m going to reduce you to ash, and sell you as spice!

I was a wee bit miffed, picturing my enemies on the battlefield being in serious danger of dying from laughter. But then Brian cheered me up by pointing out:

If somebody was screaming that at me, and the wind whipped their duster/trench/overcoat open to reveal dozens of tiny Schillings or Lawry’s bottles, I’d turn heel and bail.

The teeny spice bottles are a given. So, provided I remember to wear the trenchcoat and drag a wind machine into battle, you will all bow before me in fear.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

By
18 November 2003
1 min read
4 Comments
In Entertainment
1045 views

New Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban trailer released. This site also looks quite pretty.

You can also check out www.azkaban.com where currently you can see an animated wanted poster of Sirius Black, and post sightings.

The third movie isn’t due to be released until 4 June 2004 though. At this stage Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), will be 30 when the 5th movie is released. It’ll be Beverly Hills 90210 all over again… AHH!! Imagine Aaron Spelling producing a Harry Potter movie. Not a covered navel in sight and Tori shamelessly paraded around as Hermione.

Music Sharing Isn’t New

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18 November 2003
4 min read
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In Entertainment, History, Rights
637 views

In 1909, residents of Wilmington, Delaware, were able to subscribe to an online music service that piped phonograph recordings over their telephone lines and through loudspeakers. This was one year after the sheet music publishers were told to get bent by Congress: see, they’d grown alarmed at the prevalence of unauthorized piano rolls and had asked the Congress for a Broadcast-Flag-like regime that would let them veto any new music technology that would endanger their business — like online music delivery — making it illegal. Congress told them to get lost. Good thing we rescued those idiots from themselves back in 1908 — can you imagine a music industry where the most lucrative product in the market was sheet music?

It’s a pattern: the Vaudeville artists sued Marconi over the radio — which made them rich. The movie studios boycotted TV until Disney sold out to get the funds for Disneyland — and TV rights made the studios rich. Jack Valenti told Congress that the VCR was the Boston Strangler of the film industry, and then it doubled his income through pre-recorded tape sales and rentals.

Now, of course, Congress has given up on saving the entertainment industry — and us — from itself. With the Broadcast Flag, new technologies will only come into the market if they don’t disrupt the industries built on the old ones. And with the WIPO Broadcast Treaty in the works, it’s fruitless to pray for some technology safe-haven where we’ll be able to develop our gear in peace, far from the short-sighted, greedy lunacy of the entertainment companies. The FCC should be ashamed of itself.

When plugged up to a phonograph the subscriber’s line is automatically made busy on the automatic switches with which the Wilmington exchange is equipped. Several lines can be connected to the same machine at the same time, if more than one happens to call for the same selection.

Each musical subscriber is supplied with a special directory giving names and numbers of records, and the call number of the music department. When it is desired to entertain a party of friends, the user calls the music department and requests that a certain number be played. He releases and proceeds to fix the megaphone in position. At the same time the music operator plugs up a free phonograph to his line, slips on the record and starts the machine. At the conclusion of the piece the connection is pulled down, unless more performances have been requested.

Musicians Polled on CD Burning

By
18 November 2003
1 min read
In Entertainment, Rights, Technology
695 views

While record companies prepare for the sentencing of three Sydney men convicted of music piracy by the Federal Court, a new survey shows most musicians and other music professionals believe copyright laws are too harsh. It found that 81% of the 200 respondents felt that the Copyright Act should be changed to allow the copying of a user’s own legally purchased CDs, but not borrowed or downloaded music. Less than half of respondents felt that downloading free music constituted theft from artists and composers, while only 25% felt it was theft from record labels. 27% of respondents did not feel downloading music was theft

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