March 06, 2006
Simevolution AKA Spore
Spore Gameplay Video - Google Video
Awesome awesome awesome. Will Wright does it again. This looks like it's going to be the timesuck of the decade.
February 19, 2006
He Safire to the facts! [in the style of Cartman from South Park]
Kottke led me to this post by Wes Felter rightfully criticizing William Safire's rough'n'far from ready article ostensibly reviewing the jargon of the blogosphere. Among the numerous factual errors, Safire's primary source for these facts - blogossary.com gets things so wrong it's almost laughable. Here's a quick example of their entry for 'meme': "A meme is a type of online chain letter where bloggers answer questions or participate in a quiz designed to give a quick overview of the author’s personality."
I can't believe that such a well-respected writer at the Times uses a single (barely visited) site as a primary source for his article. Even five minutes spent googling or hell - askjeevesing (get it before he's gone) - would have exposed Safire's factual 'malfunction' with a teeny bit of evidence.
December 29, 2005
IM Quotes
November 27, 2005
Ace Bar for sale
Yeah. The Ace Bar in the East Village is being sold on Ebay. I hope it comes with the Hologram Werewolf and the collection of vintage lunch tins - cos those things are worth like 1/2 a million alone.
November 19, 2005
How T-mobile reinvented SMTP...
So I was doing a bit of googling to fix up my new Nokia 6682's email capabilities and I found some useful information via Google and then this
complete nonsense (see image on left) from T-mobile - my trusted cell phone provider, to whom I pay large chunks of cash every month to provide me with limited data speed, shoddy connection and erratic SMS delivery. Now I know why - they don't even bloody know what SMTP is! Perhaps I am wildly off the mark, and what I have thought of for many years as the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (defined in RFC 821), the cornerstone of email is actually the Short Message Transfer Protocol. Hmm... 371 hits on Google, zilch on Wikipedia and precious little everywhere else.
Perhaps they were confusing SMTP with SMS - the Short Message Service - which is sometimes also called text messaging. These acronyms are difficult to sort out, especially if you're one of the largest carriers in the US with other things on your mind, like working out how to squeeze more $$ out of your millions of customers. Frankly, if they can't even copy and paste definitions of easily understood acronyms, I shudder to think of the incompetence lurking within their billing department. Sheesh.
November 08, 2005
dack.com 2.0
Go to the Web Two Point Oh! site and get yourself a new company pre-made for VC loving. I am the President and CEO of the Welsh-sounding Secwy, who specializes in tag-based classifieds via Ruby on Rails.
Ah.. the good old days.... found while perusing apophenia
June 16, 2005
Supercool Casio Phone
Nobody likes to beat a dead horse. And nobody wants to see that there's a five month old campaign to buy Ari Fleischer on my site that has raised approximately $5 in working capital. I could go on with a long list of things that nobody wants to see on the web, but instead, I'll slip in this golden nugget of a Flash site devoted to Casio's new - G-Zone phone. Thanks for the tip Lian.
Aiight. Redesign, more frequent posts and an end to global hunger coming soon. Honest. Watch this space. Heh.
February 13, 2005
Jozi is unimportant...
Browsing through the World Gazetteer tonight looking for the Lat/Long of Johannesburg as one does, I saw a link titled World: Important Places. Brilliant! I thought, it must be there... uh.. think again Mr South-Africa-Is-Clearly-Not-Important. Futile searches in Firefox turned up Korea (South), Dhaka and Rangoon. While I'm not even remotely suggesting that those places are not important, why is Suid Afrika, ranked even below Kinshasa and Lagos? Oh well, as a consolation prize, I learned that another name for Jozi is Tokoza... hmm.. verrry interesting... read all about it here at Jozi in the World Gazetteer.
Currently bobbing my head to: Sleep from by B. Fleischmann
July 11, 2004
A surreal living
Alright, so I know I should know better, but I'm a sucker for reality television. I don't know if it's the fact that it's so far removed from most people's realities, but still, stick some random people together, give them some loose premise to make them fight for (or against) and wham - instant eyeglue.
My latest guilty pleasures are Joe Schmo 2 and The Surreal Life. Have you ever been at a party and everybody is giggling and you get the feeling that people are having a joke at your expense? Yeah, Joe Schmo 2 nurtures and breeds those feelings of paranoia in a fake reality show called Last Chance for Love where everybody except the 2 schmos are actors. It's really funny and an education in the art of smooth talking.
The Surreal Life is the kind of reality show that could have only been dreamed up by nostalgic coked-up execs - but it also has its moments. It's a show where nothing much happens except you get to watch MC Hammer, Corey Feldman, Vince Neil, Emmanual Lewis and other D-list stars slum it in an LA mansion.
Highlights are the philosophical discussions between Hammer ("It's so wimpy to complain") and Feldman ("But I've never made $15m on any project), laced with witticisms from Webster ("We are really in the woods y'all"). Ok, I'll admit it - I am the king of low brow sloth. Just send me some Wayans Brothers DVDs and I'll stop offending your highly refined Kurosawa sensibilities.
Currently bobbing my head to: namewithnohorse from field recordings 1995-2002 by fennesz