Justin Fleming's Fuchsia Shock

Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition (via Justin...

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:41:00 +0000

Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition (via Justin Fleming)

Does this count as an expansion pack?

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have created their own version of the Cooking Mama game complete with cruesome cooking of body parts to attempt to put people off the consuming of animals.

www.peta.org/cooking-mama/index.asp

Rudy’s Blog » Blog Archive » Early Days of Cyberpunk

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:11:52 +0000

Rudy’s Blog » Blog Archive » Early Days of Cyberpunk:

[Excerpts from my memoir, Nested Scrolls.]

I started getting mail from a younger writer in Texas called Bruce Sterling. He’d written glowing reviews of Spacetime Donuts and White Light in a weekly free newspaper in Austin—he was one of the very first critics to appreciate these books. Soon after this, Bruce began publishing a zine called Cheap Truth.

Bruce loved all things Soviet—it wasn’t that he was a Communist, it was more that he dug the parallel world aspect of a superpower totally different from America. He spoke of Cheap Truth as a samizdat publication, meaning that, rather than printing a lot of copies, he encouraged people to Xerox their copies and pass them from hand to hand.

Reading Bruce’s sporadic mailings of Cheap Truth, I learned there were a number of other disgruntled and radicalized new SF writers like me. The Cheap Truth rants were authored by people with pseudonyms like Sue Denim and Vincent Omniaveritas. I was too out of the loop to try and figure out who was who, but I took note of the authors being hyped: Bruce Sterling, Lew Shiner, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, John Shirley, and Greg Bear. I couldn’t actually find books by many of these people in Lynchburg, Virginia, although Bruce did mail me a couple of his novels, including Involution Ocean, a delightful take on Moby Dick which features dopers on a sea of sand. This work has some transreal qualities, and I liked it lot, including its unexpectedly maniacal ending…it’s a shame the book is currently so hard to find…

Website resolutions moving on?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:58:58 +0000

It’s interesting that we are still encouraged to design websites for 800x600 resolution (excluding the mobile device world).

I still read and get told that sites still must be viewable on 800x600 resolution despite new computers with default views being way, way higher than this for years.

When was the last time a computer was purchased that had an 800x600 screen?

I know this backwards compatibility accounts for those with old machines, but I think it’s really a bit too old now. Such machines now probably wouldn’t even know want a dial-up modem was and site of an all singing, all dancing ‘internet’ would probably give it a heart attack.

The reason this has come up is that I have just checked some stats from a website which show that out of 1,436,135 visitors, 4.46% were 800x600. Most visitors were 1024x768 (41.09%) or HIGHER.

1. 1024x768 - 41.09%
2. 1280x800 - 18.84%
3. 1280x1024 - 15.60%
4. 1440x900 - 6.29%
5. 800x600 - 4.46%
6. 1680x1050 - 3.81%
7. 1152x864 - 2.68%
8. 1280x768 - 1.49%
9. 1920x1200 - 1.22%
10. 1280x960 - 0.85%

PopCap Games - Online Games

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:18:48 +0000

PopCap Games - Online Games

Pepsi’s New Logo: What Went Into the Update - Advertising...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:21:31 +0000

Pepsi’s New Logo: What Went Into the Update - Advertising Age - News

How I cured my fear of spiders but not of light bulbs ... with a little help from the Flumps! | Mail Online

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:10:22 +0000

How I cured my fear of spiders but not of light bulbs ... with a little help from the Flumps! | Mail Online

army man (via mrhomer12)

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:08:39 +0000

army man (via mrhomer12)

DOSBox - DOS emulator

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:12:59 +0000

DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms. DOSBox has already been ported to many different platforms, such as Windows, BeOS, Linux, MacOS X…

DOSBox also emulates CPU:286/386 realmode/protected mode, Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, Tandy/Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics, a SoundBlaster/Gravis Ultra Sound card for excellent sound compatibility with older games…

You can “re-live” the good old days with the help of DOSBox, it can run plenty of the old classics that don’t run on your new computer!

DOSBox is totally free of charge and OpenSource.

Think Elite, Doom, Tie-Fighter!!

DOSBox

Guardian do their bit for mobile news

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:06:48 +0000

I’ve just found that the Guardian newspaper are the first UK paper to have switched their RSS feeds to full text.

This is quite a big thing really as it means that you can finally sync your portable device and take full news articles away with you. Until now, I always found subscribing to RSS feeds largely pointless as you often only got the RSS teasers and still needed an internet connection to read anything meaningful.

Well done Guardian, if word gets out about this, I’m sure it will increase the numbers of readers.

Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

I’m not sure of the reason for this, but you’ll...

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:57:31 +0000

I’m not sure of the reason for this, but you’ll probably agree that nobody needs a reason to labour away for the sake of producing various artworks of Robocop riding a unicorn.

This kind of thing just is the internet all over.

Robocop on a unicorn (via Olav Rokne)

#4

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:52:34 +0000

(Have Personality: Documenting the silliness that is human.)

When you insist on things being done a ‘right’ way, even though everyone behind your back does it their way and you never notice the difference.

Flashblocker Firefox Plugin

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:58:06 +0100

The best thing I’ve done with my browser yet.

“Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.”

This really enhances the internet, especially if you should happen to use torrent sites, or these days, even more reputable sites that seem to plaster half-naked women all over them.

Flashblocker removes all this crap and often (on particularly offending site) leaves a nice clean, white website design.

Now you can browse your content in peace and stop ‘them’ looking at you!

Flashblocker, thanks Fuzzyman.

Page Load Error

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:56:34 +0100

Page Load Error: The connection was refused when attempting to contact thepiratebay.org.

Have a heart, Cyberpunks A 3D computer model has been revealed...

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:45:25 +0100

Have a heart, Cyberpunks

A 3D computer model has been revealed and dubbed ‘The world’s first ‘cyber’ heart’. Unnamed ‘experts’ say it’s the biggest advance for 500 years. The model is for use in cardiac survery and it is said it will improve the accuracy in such operations and help speed recovery time. The ‘Heart’ lives in London at The Heart Hospital. World’s first cyber heart hailed as revolution for surgeons

Plantbot

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:00:07 +0100

Plantbot: A concept from THE PLAY COALITION for a robotic plant container fitted with a light sensor so the plant can find the best position for light in the house.

AutoCopy :: Firefox Add-ons

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:23:07 +0100

AutoCopy :: Firefox Add-ons: Select text and it’s automatically copied to the clipboard. Like Linux or mIRC.

Born Geek » Copy Link Text (CoLT)

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:21:29 +0100

Born Geek » Copy Link Text (CoLT):

CoLT (short for “Copy Link Text”) is a tiny extension for Firefox which makes it easier than ever to copy a hyperlink’s associated text.

CoLT also includes a means of copying both a link’s text and URL at the same time. This feature is particularly handy for bloggers, web developers, or anyone else who finds themselves writing links to other places on the web. The latest release allows users to create an unlimited number of custom formats for copying both the link text and location.

New magazine on blogging and only blogging

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:17:47 +0100

I found this fascinating quote today:

Few weeks ago I read the news about planned release of first printed magazine about blogging, planned by www.bloghology.org. Yes, I found it interesting. This week, guys from Bloghology kindly invited me via their Twitter account to join their additional project - social network for bloggers and marketing peole interested in us, Bloghology community.Sylwiapresley, Sylwia Presley, Oct 2008

You should read the whole article.

Welcome to SchoolCalendars. High quality, customised fun...

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:34:47 +0100

Welcome to SchoolCalendars.
High quality, customised fun calendars to help schools, charities and other organisations throughout the UK, including parts of Europe, to raise substantial profits towards their fundraising efforts.

Bad, lying journalism

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:59:00 +0100

It constantly annoys me that it seems acceptable to have news headlines which are only proven to be untrue as you read the story.

It seems OK now to mix the tense of a news report, rendering the headline an optimistic lie:

Ban on ‘free drinks for women’ promotions

Bars could be banned from offering free drinks to women and cigarette-style health warnings could be put on alcoholic drinks under new rules to curb..

Headline says there has been a ban. Story says there could be a ban.

How is this OK? It seems every time I have to go on a news website, I find this kind of thing and it’s just wrong and annoying.

It doesn’t seem to happen much on higher profile news items, probably to avoid any potential legal problems.

I hate news. Because it never seems to be news. It’s either spin, or personal opinion. Talking of spin, here’s another about the apparent newly discovered danger of eco bulbs:

Energy-saving light bulbs could leave you red-faced… from UV radiation Eco bulbs
Some energy-saving light bulbs emit harmful ultraviolet radiation, health experts warn. Unencapsulated fluorescent light bulbs could make the skin red if used for long periods close to the body.

The article conveniently hides the fact elsewhere in the article that any ‘danger’ is from prolonged exposure to a bulb AT LESS THAN 30CM! What the heck is anyone in a normal day around their house going to be doing that they are under 30cm away from a bulb?

I know they are energy saving, but they are hardly that dim.

It’s just another example of hyping up an article just to make you read it. And only if you read it do you discover the actual truth.

What I think the crime is is that most news is by people scanning the headlines - headlines which are more often given untrue facts to create buzz.

I wish all newspaper sites added DIGG’s to their pages so we could all easily BURY those stories with misleading headlines and leave little comments saying why.