It’s nice working in an environment that can produce something like this. I remember vaguely talking to one of the people behind this earlier in the year and while I thought it sounded like a fun idea, that was about it. Who’d've thought that the project by Boredom Research (via the National Centre for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University) would end up covered by so many people.

If you’re unfamiliar with ‘Real Snail Mail’, it’s basically this:

An e-mail is sent to a tank containing snails fitted with RFID chips. If and when a snail wanders by the e-mail collection site, its RFID chip will pick up the message. Then, if and when that snail wanders by the drop-off point in another area of the tank, the e-mail will be delivered (at that point, via the Internet, of course).

Genius! I believe it’s just had it’s proper exhibition at siggraph 08 but the snails have been hard at work for months now, with varying success. You can check the progress of each ‘agent’ (and add your own message!) at the official site – Real Snail Mail.

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Just a brief bit of randomness that made me smile because I’m slightly unsmiley right now.

Photoshop managed to successfully fuck me over by corrupting a file I’ve been working on for a good couple of months. That’ll learn me for not making copies / saving versions. Bah.

Anyway, as I said, this image made me smile.

It’s funny cuz it’s true.

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Tagging is not an art form or about expressing oneself. It is vandalism and the destruction of private and public property. Tagging is any unauthorized marking, etching, scratching, drawing, painting or defacing of any surface of public, private, real or personal property.

Brilliant. You couldn’t make this up. I actually agree with some of the criticisms of tagging but really, is this the best way of clamping down on it(?) I know my parents wouldn’t've been reading any Plymouth City Council things about graffiti when I was a wee lad for example and I doubt that too many people are bothered about this.

Still; good work.

http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/pd/Graffiti.asp

via Wooster

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Stumbled on this last month on cpluv but didn’t actually get ’round to watching it so it’s just festered in my ‘don’t forget to look at this at some point’ bookmarks folder for all that time. Finally made 5 minutes to watch it last night and it’s uber cool.

On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but today, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them.

The reactions of people walking around are what makes it. Great stuff.

Go and watch: http://improveverywhere.com/2008/01/31/frozen-grand-central/

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Wu Tang & El Michels Affair -”Bring Da Ruckus”

I’ve had the MP3’s of this session for a while now, and though the majority of the Clan are missing, they’re still quality recordings. What’s been lacking for a while however, are any accompanying videos.. But no longer! Youtube comes through again..

tsatsulo street soccer

Ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I like to think that I’m an alright footballer but seriously.. Ridiculous.

bonus: the new FIFA Street 3 viral ain’t too shabby either..

DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei

If only I’d've got my Technics 10 years earlier, then I too could’ve been a superstar child DJ. But I didn’t. So now I can’t scratch for shit. But these kids can.

Wasn’t that fun(?)

Related posts:

1. wu-tang – 8 diagram
2. when life gives you promo
3. kutiman mixes youtube

Terrifying.

From a collection of photos here. I have no idea what they’re about (anybody care to translate?) but some of them are fun.

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A. You get into the minds of people walking past them. Obviously.

This new billboard for the tv series ‘Paranormal State’ (which, btw, sounds like a quality production *cough* Most Haunted *cough*) effectively tricks people into thinking they’re mental by sending sound straight into their tiny little brains.

Mounted above the billboard, the system projects an isolated beam of sound down onto a targeted area of the sidewalk – from seven stories up! People who pass by the billboard are startled and entertained by the sudden message, and their attention is drawn directly to the billboard itself. Meanwhile, quiet is preserved for all of the neighbors.

Lucky neighbours! Not so lucky innocent people walking past who don’t actually want to pay attention to your poxy advert. Apparently, ‘the sound of a women’s voice whispers, “Who’s that? Who’s There? …It’s not your imagination.”‘, which in my book is really creepy. By ‘creepy’ I mean ‘irritating’. By ‘irritating’ I mean ‘a ridiculous invasion of personal space that should surely be illegal or something’. It’s tantamount to those people who block your way on pavements by holding up luminous signs with ‘Unlock your phones! Next street across!’ on just following you down the street all up in your face going ‘ooohh, you love your phone being unlocked don’t you.. oooh…’.

It’s not on really is it(?)

That said, it’s very clever . If only these powers could be harnessed for the power of good..

more info: http://holosonics.com/PR_AE.htm

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(Click on the image to view it full size)

Nice visual representation of ‘beautiful’ html code.. Something to strive for if your code comes across as an illegible mess of random characters, overused div ID’s and inline styles.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for web developers to output tidy code; it makes it so much easier to work with. Worth the extra minute or so that it takes to produce.

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Still at work, having to listen on FiveLive, which isn’t normally too bad (but still no substitute for watching it) but the commentary is via mobile phone because radio lines are down from Moscow. Ridiculous. But still, come on England!!

edit: 5:52pm.

Shit.

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Wu-Tang Clan coming at’cha..

This post at Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog is brilliant. Just wish it was longer.

p.s. Still nearly 2 months ’til ‘8 Diagrams’?! Far too long..

Related posts:

1. wu-tang – 8 diagram
2. wu-tang / mental football / child dj’s
3. last.fm chart – 7.jan.2007

So way back in August, I signed up for ‘blog action day‘ with the genuine intention of coming up with a decent post that related to the environment and all that..

But here we are on October 15th and I’m fresh out of posts. Blame it on work. Nah, actually, blame it on me. The few times I sat down and tried to come up with something, I ended up writing tripe. Not good. So I’m not really sure why I’m bothering posting anything.

I suppose it’s because I think that the whole ‘action day’ thing is a good idea and it’d be nice to be a part of it somehow.. even if that means posting something as relatively meaningless as this. So here it is. Better than nothing surely(?) Even if the very least I’ve done here is brought your attention to the main blog action day site, then that’s enough for me.. There’s thousands of blogs who have committed to posting something today and while I’m sure that some of them will probably end up in the same boat as me, the vast majority should come up with good stuff. Have a look at the participants.

More generally, if you’d like to read stuff from people who actually manage to find the time to write good things about the environment, I wholeheartedly recommend treehugger. I used to subscribe to it but frankly, they post too much for me to keep track of. So now I just pop back occasionally..

Save the environment and all that!

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A recent video chat..

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Can’t really be stretched to make a coherent couple of single posts about these things so consider this a link-dump of sorts. With mostly videos.

Pet camel kills Australian woman – madness! I’m quite a fan of camels generally and reckon it’d be great to have a pet one (someone on Location Location Location last week had a camel trekking business.. THAT’d be great) but I dunno if I could cope with it expressing any sort of sexual urges. Curb that shizzle..

Happiness Factory 2 is simply great. The original one (which you’ve surely seen by now) was also great, but this takes it to a whole new level. Well, not completely new, but it’s great regardless.

Women in Film is somewhat interesting if you like soft focus. Though, they really missed a trick not naming it ‘girls on film’ with a duran duran accompaniment instead of the violin.

Some free UK hip hop courtesy of Baron Samedi in the form of ‘Ripping Yarns’, his album from last year which is now available to download here (rapidshare).

Mos Def in a film worth seeing shocker?!!?!! Perhaps.

I’ve not actually managed to find the time to watch this yet but Zeitgeist looks kinda interesting. I’m going to try to fit it in across a couple of days this week. You should too.

Top 10 Low Budget Music Videos is a bit hit and miss (I hate that OK GO treadmill shit) but the number 1 is bang on. Takes a while to see why they picked it but once it gets going… Genius!

I’ve signed up for ‘blog action day‘ and thus, will make a difference

And finally, this poster is mental. I’d like to go through it line by line and see if it really is what it says it is but alas, I’m not really that fussed.

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Just some videos which brightened up my morning in one way or another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JCFUA-N2ps
KRS-One, Ice T, Fat Joe, Craig G and a ton of other people dropping science.. (Yeah, that’s right.. science)

http://www.wumovie.com/trail/09/wu.html
Trailer for a new documentary on the Wu-Tang Clan. Slightly worried about the production values of this but still, can I get a wuuuu-tang?!

http://sarahsilvermanonline.com/mtvintro.html
Sarah Silverman kicking off the MTV VMA’s this week. Jump to 3:37. Poor Paris Hilton.

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Kinda random but I stumbled on this at Spy’s Spice and felt compelled to post a photo from the collection. How much fun does that sloth look(?) And people say they’re ugly!

They’re so odd and yet so great. I’m not sure I like the fact that their fur harbours various other species which live off their dirt but still, I like sloths.

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I just wanted to say a quick thanks to the various sites below for featuring me (specifically, this site) at some point in the last week or so. It’s brought a lot of traffic my way and I’m flattered and grateful. If only I could turn it into something useful.. hmm..

So, thanks to (in no particular order):

Dark Eye

W3C Sites

CSS Mania

Screenalicio.us

CSS Princess

Pro Web Art

The Daily Slurp

ヘルプ(??)

And, by proxy, I’ve been on Most Inspired, CSS-Galleries, ma.gnolia and del.icio.us!

Fun times fun times.

Ta!

Update – Feb 5th:

now on screenfluent!

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as promised last friday (“celebrity big brother 5“), i went to the live filming of celebrity big brother on friday night. while standing around for near 5 hours in the freezing cold isn’t ordinarily my idea of fun, the thing was rather enjoyable. definitely worth the speedy drive up to elstree after work.. it’s lucky we arrived when we did, because the queue was immense! i’m sure that hundreds of people didn’t get in. (randomly – thanks to the guy who directed us to the studios after google maps let us down. who says all londoners are rude, obnoxious and out to mug you? lies i tell you!)

it was odd being at the place i’ve seen on tv for the last 6 years or whatever it’s been.. and it’s much smaller than i thought it’d be. also, i was shocked to find that it’s not all live. call me naive but i just presumed it always was on a friday night. the second show (when jade goody and her family went into the house) was actually recorded whilst ‘ugly betty‘ was on, and then shown on tv half an hour later. oooohh.. tv trickery!

but anyway.. good fun. it’s a shame that the microphones didn’t quite pick up all of our various shouts, although at the end of the last show you can just about hear me crying “go faceman!”. i have no shame. what follows below are some pictures i took, and some screenshots from the show, with our glorious banner “no cigars? no benedict!” highlighted for your viewing pleasure..

recognise.

davina. talking about the birth of her child. odd.

some pictures of the banner, as seen on tv!


with jade goody spoiling the view.

jade’s mum. she has one arm.

since our visit, donny and ken have both left the house. i think that’s more to do with jade goody going in, rather than us being in the audience but you never know.. can’t say i blame them tho. her voice! christ almighty.. just awful!

anyway. we’ll see how it pans out. dirk to win!

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“if you look at creationism, you realise it’s the only possible answer to all the questions”

of course. silly me.

now, i’m not going to launch into a rant about religion and it’s countless flaws because that’s not for me to do.. god schmod.. but i do want to say one thing about this documentary. it’s scary.

i’m all for people believing what they want to believe but it’s things like this that make me question whether we missed a trick allowing puritans to populate new england way back when.. the fact that america hasn’t really ever been exposed to other faiths is a clear recipe for disaster. not good. i mean, seriously, how can anyone justify telling kids they’re phonies with so much venom that they’re reduced to tears, just because they don’t display their belief in God enough. (i say ‘reduced to tears’, but worryingly, that could in fact be tears of joy from feeling the Holy Spirit..)

blah. i find it unnerving that people like this exist.

what is slightly satisfying however, is the fact that famously anti-homosexual ted haggard (the senior pastor at this megachurch in colorado) has since resigned/been sacked amid a flurry of gay sex and drugs allegations.

he was the same bloke who was interviewed on that richard dawkins programme last year; The Root of All Evil? and i thought he was a dick on that too.

it’s worth tracking down the full film (available from all good torrent search engines), but until you do, there’s a handy compilation thanks to almighty Google.

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this video from Saturday Night Live, starring justin timberlake, is very funny.

it’s the dancing that gets me.

good stuff.

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(alternate view of the above building found on flickr)

and

(also, there’s a google satellite map of the above building… which is odd.)

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