Merry Christmas

Mario Kart

Have you ever want to play Mario Kart in real life? Remi Gaillard has made your dreams a reality. The best part is at the end and it involves police.

Jones Big Ass Truck Rental and Storage

Jones uses all the best sales techniques for his business.
- have "ass" in your business name
- say you are drunk in your advertising
- "Drunk Discount Sale" promotions
- appeal to the everyman, "You got an elephant, I got space!"

Video of rare squid

The mysterious magnapinna squid has been captured on video by a remote submersible while filming an oil rig 2.5km underwater. The video can be seen on the National Geographic site courtesy of the Shell oil company.

'Good Game' in 1984

Fans of Good Game should enjoy this vid below. I recommend start the viewing at the 4 minute mark. It's pretty long so run through the synopsis I've given below to see the times for the highlights.



Synopsis

0:00-2:10 : Introduction: check out how much fun they have playing pong. I hope their ties don't get in the way.

2:11-3:59 : Backwards Compable: History of games (until 1984)

4:00- 11:02: Gamer Interviews:
Interview Steve Kitchen about Atari 2600 game Space Shuttle. These guys are fantastic, the game is 8k and the manual is 30 pages long and it took him 1.5 years of research.

11:02- 12:51: Gamer Interviews:
Interview with Chris Crawford about Atari 2600 game Excaliber. A 'huge game' of 66k that requires 'disk swapping'.

13:05-22:25: Gamer Interviews:
Watch the person who founded Electronic Arts talk about his philosophy on games; "Simple, hot and deep".....I kid you not. (watch 14:31 onwards) The game "Pinball Construction Set" looks revolutionary, I guess that is why Bill Budge was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for "User Generated Content/Game Modification .

22:25-23:24: End Credits

23:25- 28:53 Gamer News: - new 'portable printer', new PC codename 'POPCORN', PC communications via 'MODEMS', world's first Robot Bartender

Obi-Wan Cannoli

Food dressed up in Star Wars outfits, it's worth watching.

Poker

If you like poker but don't have pay tv, youtube comes to the rescue. Some guy puts the episodes up soon after they are broadcast in Australia.

Here is the first vid of the biggest poker game of 2008.

Doggies!

What is better than pictures of doggies? Pictures of upside down doggies!

Love those red DTs

I haven't found anything great lately.

I'd thought I'd post this video clip because the song is awesome and so is the set design.

VP Debate

View the Saturday Night Live VP debate here.

Baby Got Back

I missed this when it was hip and happening on the net. So here is Jonathon Coulton's folk version of baby got back.

Molly's ukulele brilliance

Molly (or sweetafton23 on youtube) will definitely make you smile. Spend some listening to her cover Tom Cruise Crazy and her original songs including MyHope in which she hopes that the current MySpace craze will embarrass future parents.

Inappropriate design

I think there is something disturbing about this inflatable slide for kiddies.

Copy Proofing is a good idea

Taken from B3ta newsletter #344.

"Why is copy proofing a good idea?"

hint:
Check out the Windows tabs of the developer's screenshot / top banner.

Gremlin Fan Film

A fan has made a great video with Gremlins digitally added into memorable scenes from many movies. The Raiders of the Lost Ark part is great. The making of film is interesting also.

Segway crash test

The magic starts at 1:25 on this video.

Scary

Science is fighting hard to win it's battles; global warming, evolution.... Now comes news of a new battle to be fought.

Polar bears are cute

Polar Bear Doesnt Need to Flush - Watch more free videos

Pedestrian crossing abuse

From B3ta.

A crowd of arty types lies in wait for cars at a zebra crossing - then parades across in an almost unending stream of funny costumes and wacky characters. The drivers seem to take it in good spirits though - perhaps it's because they're French.

PEOPLE ARE STRANGE (REMI GAILLARD)
Caricato da nqtv

Fancy Cardboard Chair

A design student created a cardboard chair called Flexible Love.

Ryan will never live this down.

Does anyone else see anything wrong with this ad? Ryan's fruit rocket. I've sent it in to the Gruen Transfer.

Wouldn't the parents of the poor kid say something?

"Believe me, it's torture"

A columnist is waterboarded and reports how it feels. 17 seconds was enough to give him nightmares and small panic attacks days after the event. There is a video footage but I would read the article first.

Skincare

Google Maps

The Chaser treatment on the GodHatesSweden.com preacher

Heres the link to the video.

Gruen Transfer

The ABC has a new show The Gruen Transfer. It pokes fun at advertising and has a competition to create your own ad from their video footage and sound effects. These are my contributions thus far.

Andrew's academia

I'm sure Andrew is secretly studying chemistry and not doing his PhD in NZ. There has to be a connection between him and this paper which was published in 2004.

Focus Groups

Thanks B3ta newsletter #328!

Internet goodness

The intertron can give you many feelings. Some wrong¹ and some good.

Talking to people overseas for free using skype gives you that good "the world is so small, everything is so connected, I am skynet" feeling. It's been a while since I've felt that feeling, but using this and this have given it back to me.



Hey kidlets, what is wrong with the proposed logo for the UK Office of Governement Commerce?

Read about this marketing folly and bungled logo attempt here.

Thanks go to b3ta since I pinched all these links from their newsletter.

¹Don't ever do an image search for "that's wrong"...bad things appear.

Bogans

Before committing oneself to Andrew's call to arms you must prepare yourself for the foul beasts that lay within the Gate.

Unfortunate address

Is this where all the bogans originated from? Unleashed from Bogan Gate, NSW?


View Larger Map

Logic Puzzle Hint

The three gods.

Staged?

I can't work out if this was staged or not.



Transcript for those without sound:

Reporter: Brian is 1990 graduate of Northern and he is going to tell us a little bit about this amazing structure.

Brian: As you can see it's the leaning tower of Pisa. It's about 12000 blocks, it took over 2 weekends to build, and I'm really excited because next week the Guinness book of world records team are going to come to evaluate it. I'm really looking forward to that.

.....
.....
Brian: Oh! oh!
Reporter: Geez Brian, I don't know what to say.

Interest Rates

Everyone wants to save money to pay for the latest rate rises and saving that spare change is boring. I'm sick of stapling my $5 notes to the cat and I need to put coffee in that mug that currently has all the shrapnel from the wallet. So I need somewhere to store my spare change. Lucky for me, some fancy pants inventor in Japan came up with a new awesome money box.

Pure Pwnage

Andrew's spelling of "ownage" reminds me of something I used to watch a few years back. It's still funny. Welcome to the funny videos of Pure Pwnage. Here is first episode of the first season.

As an aside, as I linked to in my comment "ownage" can have many spellings. My spelling is the old school spelling, Wikipedia explains it:

Owned has now spread beyond computer and gaming contexts and become part of standard slang, where it typically entails defeat or humiliation, usually in an amusing way or through the dominance of an opposing party.[7] Other variations of the word owned include own3d, 0wn3d and oaned,[7] terms which incorporate elements of leetspeak.

At some point, the variant term "pwned" appeared in the same subculture (generally thought to have been invented by Paul Semenets; this alteration originated from typos that occurred when hasty gamers tried typing too fast on the keyboard, thus missing the "o" and typing "p" instead).

Too much cute

Enough cutsey poo videos.

Animal vs Human cage fighting!

Star Trek XI

Like any big nerd I was excited to hear that another Star Trek film is being made, and its being directed by by Lost co-creator J. J. Abrams. I was even more surprised to see a trailer on you tube.

Pahl the butcher

Pahl is an enterprising butcher that has come up with many disturbing ideas to sell more of his meats especially for special occasions.




- birth of a baby
- valentines day
- wedding
- for the lady (not safe for work)
- for the man (very wrong and not safe for work)
- shaped like a dog
- shaped like a cat
- shaped like a turtle
- more birthday

Some new engrish

Some recent discoveries on Engrish:

New Zealand maths tutor

In honour of Andrew's new adventure coming up (I think he is becoming a crack smoking pirate) here is a New Zealand person teaching maths.

Andrew help

Andrew can you check if this is correct.

Andrew found stuff in a can

This is lifted from an email Andrew sent me.....

For starters.....
- thongs (as in underwear) in a can
- the economy (how does it fit?)
- romance (abstract concepts can be canned too!!!!)
- the cheeseburger thread on something awful (they do a taste test!!!!)
- pancakes (actually pancake mix, so not that weird, really)
- wine in a can

.... they don't really seem to get better..... but, hey, I tried.

Excitement for mac users

Australian's can now make photo books using iPhoto. See this more details.

USB drive

Looking for a new USB drive?



You can watch the humping dog usb drive again here.

A good prank.

Over 200 people freeze in place for 5 minutes at Grand Central station in New York.





Thanks Damien for the link!

The 1996 internet

Here is a funny article linking to the actual sites used in 1996...

fast food and soft drink corporations because they were some of the earliest adapters of the internet. They viewed the medium as a chance for inexpensive advertising and invested dozens upon dozens of dollars into it. The results are tremendously humiliating.

Cheeseburger in a can

Hungry? Buy it! Here is the English translation of the page using BabelFish.

Johnny Lee strikes again.

I thought I'd check out Johnny's research. It's even more interesting than the wii stuff.

Johnny Chung Lee, the coolest guy ever.

Johnny has come up with some great stuff using the Wii.

Monkey Business

Have you ever wanted to dress up a monkey and make them talk? Here is your chance - Monk-e-mail.

Considering a pet?

I love all things nerdy, especially robotic nerdy. So this year get ready for "Pleo", a robotic dinosaur that has

"body language, exhibits evolving emotions, is aware of his surroundings and has recognizable behaviors that change over time."

However, I would still favour adopting a real pet from the RSPCA instead of forking out the $349 USD for the dinosaur pet. The RSPCA has a great site called Adopt-a-Pet where you can search for all types of pets (and see pictures) that are currently available at the RSPCA centres.

Exploding Dog

Want to know how to make a living drawing stick figures? I'm not sure how to do that, I just know that a guy named Sam who runs Exploding Dog does. People send him emails containing a sentence and he draws a picture using that sentence as a title. I enjoy his take on the titles.

Here are some titles and pictures:

I need to be outside.

Are you going to eat that?


More titles - click to get the pictures:

• Our little secret.


• I thought it would be bigger.


• I get nervous in cars.


• Please drink responsibly.


• Will I be able to do it?


• It didn't have to end this way.

This blog is white hot

Thanks to David Barry who left a comment on Andrew's blog. I can now see that this blog is hot with visitors. I don't know how the servers can keep up.

Check out the stats below taken by google analytics since I started it just after the new year.




13 visits and 6 unique vistors, average time spent on site = 2 minutes. I must have an intelligent readership since they speed read my blog posts in 2 minutes.

My blog must be in competition with Crossing the Ditch for the hottest website. Apparently the Crossing the Ditch website had 1 million hits in 30 minutes when the 2 Trans Tasman kayakers were about to make history when landing in New Plymouth.

Stormy Brisbane

To avoid the current thunderstorms in Brisbane and northern NSW I thought I'd share a handy site. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology's Brisbane radar has saved my car from many hail storms and traffic jams in the last few years. You can find the closest radar to you here.