Sunday, September 24, 2006

Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure

I am somewhat unsure as to whether I blogger about this curious piece of the internet ruining people's lives in the past, but I am quietly confident that any previous mentions were made in passing and were, infact, absolute and utter tripe. But nevermind that now, on to the business at hand.

Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure is one of the most engrossing stand up performances I have ever seen. Yes, that link will take you to a place where you can buy the book of his terrible funny and refreshingly passionate adventures in the wide world of the web, but the stage show is all I have honestly read. However, at £6.39 I'm tempted to delve into the literary equivalent, despite the fact that the video is a whole 42 pence cheaper.

"Dave Gorman: this way up"

It would do well here, I suppose, to maybe enlighten you to what a Googlewhack is. Well, in effect, a googlewhack is any combination of two real (and dictionary.com verifiable words that, using no punctuation in any way, produce only 1 result when searched for utilising the Google search engine. This is not as easy as it looks. For example, you would imagine that a phrase such as carburetor mollycoddling would be one of the most unlikely combination of words to appear anywhere, spoken, written, least of all on the web; however, Google returns 101 hits for the blasted thing! A traditional googlewhack these days is endlessly thwarted by a plethora of wordlists out there on ye olde interents (serious business), so good luck to finding one. Do be good and e-mail the site proprieter if their site contains one.

However, I suppose this post is actually more about how wonderfully human Dave Gorman is as a person. This, I can imagine you thinking to yourself right now, is painfully obvious, what with him quite naturally being of the race homo sapien and all, but what I mean is that there is something unerringly beautiful about the way that he lives his life and the fact that he may be dubbed as one of those "touchable celebrities". Despite being an utterly brilliant man, undeniably so one may even say, he is still quite human and someone who you can easily get in touch with and may even reply to an e-mail of yours, should he feel like it. Dave Gorman does not only have a website, but also a flickr account, a flickr account that he no doubt payed for like any normal person with a credit card would. He also takes staggering (and occassionally bizarre) shots of things balanced on top of eachother. I'm sure there's something beautiful about that kind of thing too, but that's surely for another time. I suggest you take a look at what he does and be impressed at the fact that celebrities can often be real people too.

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In other news, Escape Pod's Steve Eley directed me (impersonally, of course) to Destructomundo, a fun little podcast that postulates on armageddon hypothesese. This week was "Technopause", the idea that everything electronic would just stop working. Apparently we'd have to resort to using steam powered dildoes and goats for pleasure, just like in the old days, and many people would make a living buy creating armoured dog-pulled transportation carriages. It's crazy stuff and I think it's definitely worth having a look into, if you're very bored, or even just passably bored, or even not bored at all.

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And Emily: I won't talk to you about boobs, it's not right. At all. Sorry dear.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Saturday Night Edition

Ok, not pleased. I had just written a wonderful piece full or witty raport, as is habitudal of these rants of mine, only to have it deleted by Microsoft Word 2007. Don't get me wrong, I love that program. It's sleek, it's sexy, it has integrated maths equation building tools now, but do not trust it with your blogs. It doesn't have any integration for the new blogger beta, as of yet atleast, and will only be able to publish to the old non-beta blogger. And even then, it won't publish them. You can download it here either for free or for the paltry cost of £1.20. That's for the full 7 programs "Professional" edition. Be warned, they only accept Visa or Mastercard (and some lesser credit cards) as payment methods. Also be warned there is no HTML support for blogs. You can hyperlink and italicise all you want, but that's about it.

In other news I am the last of my male friends who still lives here at home. James is leaving tomorrow (and thus is still technically here, but realistically inaccessible), Ben left last week for Sheffield and so do did Gareth, although Gareth actually went for a year's worth of work placement in the land of the mighty sheep, provider of pot noodles, Wales.


"What? A racist advertising campaign against the Welsh? Muppets."

So, invariably, I am left with my girly friends, Emily and Heather, as well as Lis, other Emily and other Emily. Not that I mind this of course, I will be just left incapable of talking about breasts in quite the same way and any sexist comments will no longer be met with giggles but with sound thrashings; girly thrashing, without doubt, but sound ones nonetheless.

I'm taking solace in photography for now, in an attempt to expunge some of the unpleasantness, pictures such as these, for example:


Jim and Sheepy by ~gebimble on deviantART


Emily by ~gebimble on deviantART


benjaimeuna by ~gebimble on deviantART

and


flight261 by ~gebimble on deviantART

... I think I'm going to cry.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Why I am a Bastard

  • I openly laughed at the fact that someone decided to heartfelty mourn the loss of their beloved pet and show it publicly with flowers.
  • I laughed (unknowingly) at the fact that Lance Armstrong had testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain and then went on to win the Tour de France (nicknamed by some the "Tour de Lance") seven times. Bah, this one needs explaining.
    • It was that bit in Dodgeball where Vince Vaughn is sitting in a bar drinking when he should be playing and Lance Armstrong comes and gives him the speech about what happened to him. I just thought it was so improbably tragic that I just had to laugh, like it was so bad it could never actually happen to a person. I'm sorry. I realise far worse does happen on a daily basis too. But I've gotta just keep laughing, y'know?
  • The fact that I'm snide, sarcastic and belittling to everyone I talk to, including my friends (who somehow still like me).
  • I hate most people. Infact, I doubt I would much mind killing most people.
  • I wouldn't mind killing most people.
  • I never really do anything for people (I think).
  • I can't remember a damn thing past what happened this morning. This usually includes birthdays.
  • The list goes on and on! I'm too tired and bastardly to keep writing!

I'll update the bastard list as time goes by, I suppose. Right now, however, I'm going to do something horribly self indulgent: situps.

Serious. Fucking. Business.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Coach Carter [edit]

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

- Timo Cruz (quoting Marianne Williamson from here book "A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles"), from Coach Carter

--

Thank you anonymous!

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Ode to a Schelebrity

Prompted by one of the most moving things I have ever seen eschewed from the fingertips of a friend I am compelled to write some kind of rebuke, or rebuttle.

Spenny, like the Rogue she has whole-heartedly adopted the mantle of, is passionate, thoughtful, provocative, intellectually adept and flirtatious, as well as quite the cutie.
As she writes, "I think I first properly met Joe in year 10" and there's little more I can really add to that. Sat at the back of maths, adamently trying to work for an early GCSE, failing with an incredible fervour due to the fact that we are all incessant chatterboxes, there is little else I can remember about that year. This could either be due to the fact that I have some fictitious Altzeimers for the young or the fact that most of the rest of those years was taken up with little more than contemplating Hannah Brown's busoms, but either way Maths was one of the few things worth remembering. Good old Mr. Dowson, the gangly youth, how I do miss him. Year 11 was a little different, spent mainly in the company of the Dinner Group and actually trying to work over Anthony Giles and "Tiddle" screaming half-swears back and forth accross the classroom, in a bid to be clever.

"Pe-"

"-nis!"

And so on.

I rediscovered the joys of Spenny (and oh what joys they are! ... that sounds too smutty for it's own good. I'll take it out in post') in year 12, sharing no classes but atleast a few minutes every day, I feel she almost became a surrogate cuddle-bag, as it were. That sounds terrible. Bah. But what I mean is that quite often Spence would instantly brighten my day. We want gamble, frolic and titter for merry hours at a time and I think memories of you smooshing my eyes into my face while cooing "wheeeeeeeeres Joey? Where is heeeeeee?" will never be far from the forefront of my recollection. Yes, it'll be a combination of that and general giggles, the award winning smile and the nice ass, in all likelihood. Hey, I'm a guy! It's not like they'll be the only memories I have of her, just the primary ones.

I'm gonna miss her a lot. Over the past few months when we haven't seen so much as a scrap of eachother, bar textually via IM programs, she's still been ready to entertain and just blather around with all over the internet.

I feel bad that I don't know her as well as I ought to, but hey, if it were meant to have been that way then that's the way it would have already happened, and if that's not how it was meant then I have the whole of my life to rectify it. That's a long time, but saying that there's doubtless quite a lot to learn.

Thanks for the two years of sunshine sweetie. As you go to bigger, bolder (better?) places I'll be sad to see you go, but hey, clouds don't last forever!

iPod Games

Listening to:
Reading: New Scientist's "Last Word", collection 1

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So, apple have finally released their new iPods. We've all been waiting a long time (in the tech world) for this and, personally, I'm a little disappointed. It's nice that they've dropped the price (for the 30 gig model atleast) to under £200, but for all I know that might have happened a short while ago. However, with this model update (which includes a better battery life as well as a brighter screen) comes the version 1.2 firmware update which allows any fifth generation iPods to play games, downloadable through the new and improved iTunes store (which looks rather sexy jumping out of the new iTunes 7 release). This, in my eyes, is something truly incredible. Ok, maybe "incredible" is being a little overzealous, but the idea of walking down the street being able to play Tetris on your iPod is something that titilates if nothing more.

As well as this apple have released a new iPod Nano coloured range (just like the dearly departed iPod mini) and the new iPod shuffle looks like something I wouldn't actually mind owning.

There still appears to be no easy, first party method of removing your music from your iPod and slapping it on some other form of digital media, something I would like to have seen a long time ago, but apple have their reasons for this (curse you RIAA) and I can deal with just having to back up absolutely everything the old fashioned way.

--

Is 2 pm too early to start drinking?

Saturday, September 09, 2006

This Providence

Listening to: This Providence - A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing
Reading: Plato's Republic
Blogging from: my bedroom

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It's been a long time since I've done a proper, in depth music blog and so, after the couple (quartet) of apple vodka martinis I have consumed this evening, I feel pretentious enough to write like I have opinions that people take to heart.

This providence is a four piece indie set from Seattle, Washington.

the world's greatest seattle one piece indie set


They are currently on tour with notorious girly fronted rockers Paramore, unoriginal (but irrefutably catch) Cute Is What We Aim For (give curse of curves a listen, that's one helluva badboy) and Hit the Lights (as yet unheard of by me, but naturally it'll happen in due course).Ok, time for a new paragraph. I'm typing this in the html editing tab and that just looks like far too much text to be healthy.

I recently acquired their album "Our Worlds Divorce" (don't grumble about it, I don't care) and was very pleasantly surprised at their refreshing awesomeness. Aha, I tell a lie! I was expecting something beautiful and they delivered, goddamnit.

The first track from this little stunner, "Well Versed in the Ways of the World", is an eclectic correlation of absolutely staggering coolness. Initially it makes me think of the The Early November, or that is to say, the lead singer sounds unneringly similar but appears to have nothing to do with TEN. I don't know why I bother to explain these irksomely subtle nuances, all of my music sounds exactly the same, note for note, word for word. Humbug.

Anyway, the track quickly develops into a pseudo-standard indie rhythm guitar style only to drop it, providing a poppy, husky, gravelling noise filter (like listening to a low quality .mp3 file) as Dan Young's vocals soar, peaking at sugary-sweet points throughout the track which, if I were of a slightly less lucid persuasion (stop snickering...) would probably cause me to melt or go weak at the knees.

As well as this, This Providence appear somewhat more lyrically sound than most of their forebearers. "In a world that lacks commitment you very quickly learn to justify your actions," appears to me to be a wonderful summary of the way things are today. Not necessarily all about the necessity for self justification, but it hints at the "sue 'em, sue 'em for every penny that they've got!" attitude of modern society.

The album quickly moves to something a little more standard (although nonetheless well executed) in "Truth and Reconcilliation", and it's nice to see that even rockstars can be fans of the same things as we lowly insects. We also discover here a hint of TBS vocal overlays.

The rest of the album continues in much the same vein, which is by no means a bad thing, oh lord no!

There new album, "This Providence" looks set to be cracking. The released track, "A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing" is jaw droppingly good. I can't seem to stop listening to it. This tells me good things for the rest of the album. Very good.

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In other news, I just found out about the Brand New demos that are floating around the internet(right click, save as, that whole deal). I used µTorrent, but the effect is the same. As far as I'm concerned, these demos are awesome. The sound is more indie-pop than the hallowed "I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don't" affairs of Deja Entendu or the bouncy emo effects of Your Favourite Weapon, with the initial sounds being similar to REM with good old Brand New lyrical flicks. The second track (if I've got this right) is my favourite of the lot thus far, reminding me a lot of Razorlight at their rockingoutiest.

I'm also informed that Brand New have an album scheduled for release sometime this year. It's been four years, goddamnit, and this album has been finished since mid-July! What's the hold up? It as yet does not have a name, but their new website appears to suggest that it might be called "Fight Off Your Demons".

Hand me a cross and some holy water, I've waited a long time for this!

Friday, September 08, 2006

Twitter.com

Yup, that's right people, Twitter have sorted out there site, made it all happy, jolly and colourful and alloted a number for English people to text to. That means I can text in. That means you guys get to know when I'm standing behind anyone who smells malodorous, or watching chavs, out of their face on Frosty Jack's cider, try to catch a pidgeon with a shoe (nowhere near as useful as a hunk of chocolate and a cardboard box, is it Spenny?)

--

Guess where I'm blogging from.

The bath. Yes, I'm actually in the bathtub. There's no water in it though, as that would be silly.

Goddamnit, I love wireless.

"...like tiny little gnomes with not very tiny mallets and an incredibly large penchant for evil."

Listening to: hellogoodbye - shimmy shimmy quarter turn
Watching: King of Queens
Blogging from: the living room
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Have you ever woken up one morning to a hangover that you didn't drink to earn? Kind of like those times where you've been out drinking the night before and simply refused to get a hangover the next day? Well, that hangover you should be having has got to go somewhere. It can't just disappear into the ether, that wouldn't be coherent alongside the laws of phyiscs, making something of nothing and nothing out of something. Well, like the Bilious, God of Hangovers of Discworld fame, it appears, for today atleast, that I appear to have received somebody else's night out without the fun memories, the possibility of a beautiful girl in your bed (who was too drunk to realise you closely resembled Sin, in an aesthetic sense) and that somewhat comforting feeling of having a badger that tastes of cheese nesting on your tongue. Just the hangover. The fact that it seems I haven't spent any money to get there is some kind of reparation towards making things right, but, by God, I feel awful!

It doesn't help that I seem to have woken up in the middle of a construction site. Turns out that I forgot that today was the day the carpet fitters were coming in. All that I've heard fr the past hour or so is banging and sawing and loud, surprised talking. All I have to provide any solace for this awful, awful situation is that I've got a nice hot mug of coffee, which is getting colder faster than I'd like it, and King of Queens. I'm not really sure why, but Doug reminds me of Jon, producer of the year.

Jesus CH-RIST, there's some vicious banging going on. I'm no longer sure if the carpet fitters are fitting carpets, taking down one of our walls or falling through the floor.

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On a side note, I'm sorry to admit that I've got myself a MySpazz account, so, if you really want to add me as a friend if you've really got to.

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On a second side note, I was recently sent to Pandora Internet Radio, which is truly excellent if you're looking for some new music to entertain yourself with. It takes what music you already like (an artist or a specific song) and then finds other songs that match its musical qualities in the hope that you like what it picks out. I think the idea is awesome and, in the short time I've been using it, I've already managed to pick out roughly 3 bands which I adore to bits. That's spiffy that is. Real spiffy.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Episode 66(6)

Bah, so I missed out on the fact that my last post was post 66, which, without doubt, it going to be the closest (although not in any "number-line" sense of the word) I'm going to get to having a post 666, undoubtedly the most evil post of them all.

As an aside, the gematriculator says:

This site is certified 29% EVIL by the Gematriculator

so it seems like I've got a long way to go.

--

I currently have nothing to write, apart from to let you know that the very English SPENNY is a celebrity these days. She had a podcast alley comment read out on Jon and Scott's ack' - Total Talk Nonsense. This is intense.

Those septic wannabees are like God's to me. Seriously, in their last episode they actually had God as a guest. I was amazed and moved by the profoundity of this and further feel they should do blasphemous, giggle filled bible readings for the religious podcast listeners of the world.

Congratualtions very English SPENNY. Congratulations.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Geeks abound!

Listening to:
Reading: Stephen King's "1804"

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Ok, so I've been watching some geeky movies lately and it's made me miss the physics I was doing a few months ago and will soon be doing again. Thinking of Primer I got to wondering about time dilation and how much of an effect it has with things that travel at everyday speeds.

Starting off with human beings and using Lorentz's Time Dilation Equation I thought of Paula Radcliffe:

Paula ran the London Marathon (42.195 kilometers, or 42,195 meters) in the record time of 2:15:25 (or 8125 seconds), moving, on average, at 5.193236769ms-1.

If we suppose that "t'" in this instance can be considered the observed time (as far as I can tell) this means that we have to multiply it by the square root of 1 minus the velocity of the body squared over the speed of light squared. The value of t' multiplied by this is equal to t. This is about 8124.999999999999878093402159375. This means that, on overage, during the course of the London Marathon, we experienced 1.2190659784062500274364533910957x10-13s more time than Paula. It's not a staggering amount, but the fact that we experienced any more time (even though the amount is getting on for very close to 0) is quite mind boggling.

What if we now think about particles in a particle accelerator? It reputed that the guys over at CERN can accelerate a particle to about 0.99c (that being 99% of the speed of light, which is pretty fast). Lets say that they send it wizzing around their brand new synchrotron, the Large Hadron Collider, for 5 seconds. I have no idea how accurate that time is because I haven't studied this kind of stuff in detail, but at the speeds we're talking about it should have some intriguing effects.

Travelling at 0.99c (296,794,533ms-1) for 5s (where this value is t'), the value of t produced for this is only 4.949999993s. This doesn't sound a lot, but imagine it had been in there for 5 hours (or 18,000s), this value would be 1781.99997s. That's just under 20 seconds of time we experienced at a totally different rate to that particle. Now, imagine it'd been doing that for, say, 100 years (3155760000s). The difference is 31557604.42s, which is 365.250051 days. That's just over a year.

That's mind blowing, in case you hadn't noticed.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Lord of the Net

Listening to:

Reading: Neologies ("watching" the "how to defend yourself in a barfight" video, kinda).

--

I am lord of all I survery. This specifically being the internet and my laptop. They shall all bow before me or have their soldered circuits buckle under the might of my mighty, mighty might.

You think I say this without reason? Have at, you cur! Why would one such as I claim these things simply for the sake of narcissism, merely to elevate my already inflated ego? I tell you now, egoes are like balloons that dive and swoop through the variously pressured skies of the world. A balloon, with simple air in it of an equal pressure to the room around it will be flat and, unless something is done about it, will remain flat forever. A balloon with a higher pressure of air in it than the air outside of it will yes, be bigger, but be doomed to fall. A balloon with helium will doubtlessly float but only up to a point, that point being when the pressure inside of it is the same as that outside of it. We are all as these balloons, some filled with air, some with helium and some, like me, with hydrogen. What I'm trying to say as that everyone's ego can be likened to the air and balloon. We all have a certain amount of air and pomp in us and it varies from person to person. The size of our egoistic balloon is governed by not just this, but the pressure (or lack thereof) exerted upon us by the people around us. I say there are those with egoes of helium and hydgrogen, as these peoples egoes will soar regardless and probably grow as they do it. I say I have a hydrogenic ego not because this will fly the fastest, but because it will undoubtedly fall short of the lofty heights of the helium ego and also for the fact that hydrogen is quite explosive, and very dangerous stuff.

But there was no need for that! Why is my ego so pumped, today of all days? Why now am I a god among electronic insects?

Coz I set up a wireless network, bitchez.

Yea, ok, it's not the hardest thing in the world to do, but it's not the easiest either. Ok, so it is pretty easy as far as the plethora of hardware based escapades go, but I was rather stumped for a very long time. When setting up the router and wireless base thing I was prompted to try and find and input a fair few numbers. VCI, MTU (MUT?), things like that. I then found out it would have done it automatically if I'd asked it to. So i did that, wanting it to get everything first hand, rather than rehashed through me. I was then prompted to input a username and password. I was a little worried at this point, seeing as through BT you issue yourself a username but never use a password. I eventually got 'round this and things seemed set up correctly, so I tried to access the internet. I couldn't! What could it be?

I set the damned thing up another 5 or so times, trying varying combinations of stuff, doing the best that I could with my limited knowledge, and all of it to no avail. In the end I gave up and went to sleep.

I awoke today to try and do the same thing, with similar results. I tried using the supplied microfilter this morning too, rather than knicking one of the BT ones, and that didn't work either.

I tried ringing Linksys' support line too, and while I was doing it my laptop loaded a web page infront of my very eyes! I was so overjoyed I nearly leapt up and hugged my dad, who was standing right next to me at the time. I was so happy in fact that I let him go around and tell people that "it started working as soon as he turned the grey box up on it's side!" Bless 'im.

And that's it really! We have a wireless broadband network now, so we'll be prey to all those handy dandy little wardrivers and I am starting to get a little worried about security. I'm gonna try and set up some MAC secure stuff soon, but if someone could help me out with a little something else then I certainly wouldn't mind the support.

Blogging, without wires! What a blast! I'm gonna have to add a "where I am:" thing to the top of my blogs now.

Finally, my quest for blogging in every room of the house can be realised!