not from the same tree

Although these days it's not as impressive, I pride myself on my ability to drink. I can drink lots and I can drink fast. It's an important skill to learn while growing up and can cause much amusement at the pub.

Today I discovered the identity of the lightiest lightweight in the whole wide world (tm). This person assumed average drunkenness after just half a glass of mead. I must add that the glass was only 3dl - that's half a pint for you imperial types. I must finally add that the afore mentioned mead was shandy. So lets work that out - half a glass of a half pint of half alcohol. That's a lot of halves.

The identity of this person? My girlfriend. However will our children turn out.

collusion

Since I found out that Craig Venter used his own pet dog's DNA to sequence the canine genome, I decided that it'd be cool to sequence my DNA and print it on a t-shirt. It seems that some guys at dna11 made a pact with the sandman and crept into my mind while sleeping to steal my original idea. They modified for their financial purposes and are now making more than $800 a pop. Bastards.

antiviral marketing

I like this. It's arty and poignant.

tube rollers

A few moments ago I was rolling up a tube of cream from the bottom to save space. It was of those annoying metal tubes you get from pharmacies that always break at the sides and the cream comes out. They really need to look at toothpaste manufacturers for help there - modern toothpaste tubes never break at the sides and you can get every last bit out of them.

Anyway, that got me thinking back in the 80s (again) it seemed that every household was equipped with a toothpaste tube roller. Whatever happened to them?

A quick google revealed that they live, but they just don't seem to be as sought after.

itching to own one

Recently at a mac design conference, this rather elegant video was released.

From gizmodo:

iPod Flea, a music player that can hold one song. That’s right—after the unparalleled success of the Shuffle, Apple has turned things to eleven and released the smallest and most un-screen-iest iPod in history.

Layers Magazine aptly described it as "[the produce of] the slightly unstable minds of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals".

Geeks with a sense of humour, God love em.

red hot

I've mentioned my desire for decadent furniture before, so the fact that I like these should come as no surprise.



Yes, these are actually taps that have LEDs to colour the water according to the temperature.

Fantastic.

Want one.

se8en

I found an interweb gem today. It's entitled The emotional final scene from Seven. Performed by stuffed animals. It probably doesn't need any more introduction.

I've never seen Brad Pitt act so well; I especially like his gangster pistol grip.

digital inversatile disks

Anyone remember how long it took the DVD standard to be finalised? Was it 10 or 20 years, I forget. Why then are we doing it again? Toshiba's HD-DVD vs Sony's BDA's BluRay.

It doesn't matter which is better - look at Betamax vs VHS and see who won. My name is Joe Consumer and I want a new disk format that is better than the DVD in whichever ways you choose to market it to me and I want it now. Reports like this which say x is better than y (in this case 58% of consumers prefer bluray, 15% HD DVD and the rest undecided) are utter rubbish. The BDA (Bluray Disk Association) should take their loaded questions and shove them in unsavoury places.

Here's a tip to anyone from Toshiba that reads my blog. Sony are going to release their new game console, the PS3, by Q2 '06. The PS3 is going to be equipped with a bluray drive. Your manufacturing cost argument is now moot. Why don't you push the format? Tell Microsoft that you'll pay for the first million HD DVD drives for their new console (due for release in November), the Xbox360, and get out there.

Also, a plea to anyone from Microsoft that's listening: Can we please have a next-gen format in the Xbox360? Enough people have complained about it. DVD just doesn't cut it.

I personally want the 360 to have a bluray drive just to see the look on the die-hard's faces.

cross breeding

On the way back from work today I started to think about geeks and gamers. You see, although they belong to the same species, they are very different breeds. To a person that has no interest in dogs, a yellow labrador is no different to a golden retriever; to an owner of either, the difference is clear.

There is a significant overlap between these breeds of people, but I don't imagine that that was always the case. Looking back 10 or 20 years (back in the 80s again) I imagine that this overlap was much less pronounced - probably due to age. The geeks were the post-education computer scientists and the gamers were children.

As games have become more mature, the age of the gamer has increased. The internet has vastly increased the knowledge required for technotrickery and is available to all ages, thus reducing the age of the geek.

I've curious to see how this will evolve. Will the gamer/geek divide close even more? Will the pedigree be lost? Being a half-caste myself, I'm no help to the purebred cause.

subtlety

In my daily peruse through the myriad of articles out there I came across this bass guitar.

For those too tired to click, here's a pic. (thanks gizmodo)



It just seems that it takes the subtlety out of the authorities demanding to know what's in your violin case.

mad amphibians

2000 years of judeo-christian civilisation and we produce the crazy frog

An amusing quote from a friend of mine on Friday. The truth hurts.

white rabbits

I just noticed that today is July 1st. As a child my parents (or was it just my father?) would wish me happy white rabbits on the first of the month. I don't remember how long the tradition went on for, perhaps it just wasn't as good as our 8:38 mantra each morning on the way to school. A quick google to find the source of this tradition revealed a page with too much text for my limited attention span to cope with, but I do wonder how many other people shared this tradition and I also wonder of its source - just not enough to find out.

Anyway, it wasn't the first thing I said when I woke up this morning so I guess there's no good luck for me this month. Roll on August.

today is

Often when you have a day off at the start of the week your perception of which day it is goes a little awry.

I wasn't at work on Monday, I was in London. On Tuesday I was convinced it was Monday. On Wednesday I was convinced it was Tuesday. On Thursday I have no idea what day I thought it was and on Friday I thought it was Thursday again.

I never used to have these problems, maybe I need to drink more.