Archive for January, 2007

Who am I?

January 19, 2007  |  Gaming  |  View Comments

Who am I? I am the greatest gam­ing machine ever inven­ted. I am never late to mar­ket, never out­sold and never exclus­ive. I have games of every genre and play style from the simplest of puzzles to major epics to rival the out­put of Hol­ly­wood. I cater to all demo­graph­ics, all mar­kets and all nations. Sure, I am a little more expens­ive at first, but upgrad­ing me to the latest and greatest intern­als will costs less than a Play­sta­tion 3. I can take every single peri­pheral you can dream of and all in a true uni­ver­sal con­nector stand­ard. I can dis­play graph­ics to make the so called “next gen” con­soles look pos­it­ively 8-bit. I also come in all shapes and sizes, from giant tower­ing neon lit water-cooled over-clocked élite gam­ing sta­tions to smooth onyx hi-fi black units smal­ler than a loaf of bread. I am all inclus­ive. I con­nect my play­ers into the world wide gam­ing net­work that has been run­ning and grow­ing for 20 years and has a bil­lion other play­ers of all races and nations. Through me every bit of inform­a­tion you could want to know, and quite a lot of inform­a­tion you wouldn’t is at your fin­ger­tips. I always reward cre­ativ­ity and I love indie design­ers, home brew­ers and small stu­dio developers. I enable a col­lect­ive gam­ing voice of opin­ion and debate made up of indi­vidu­als dis­sem­in­at­ing gam­ing news through a mil­lion gam­ing web­sites and pod­casts, all of which can all be stored on my massive hard drives or synced wire­lessly to port­able devices. I out­sell every other gam­ing plat­form because I am so flex­ible you can even work out your taxes while play­ing mine­sweeper. And yet, for all my powers I am often described as humble. I humble? I who’s mouse clicks can shake the very found­a­tions of this world! I am the greatest gam­ing machine ever inven­ted! I am a PC.

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Joke of the day

January 18, 2007  |  Web Finds  |  View Comments

The SAS, the Paras and the Police decide to go on a sur­vival week­end
together to see who comes out on top. After some basic exer­cises the
trainer tells them that their next object­ive is to go down into the
woods and catch a rab­bit, return­ing with it ready to skin and cook.
Night falls.

First up — the SAS. They don infrared goggles, drop to the ground and
crawl into the woods in form­a­tion. Abso­lute silence for 5
minutes, fol­lowed by the unmis­tak­able muffled “phut-phut” of their
trade­mark silenced double-tap. They emerge with a large rab­bit shot
cleanly between the eyes.

Excel­lent!” remarks the trainer.

Next up — the Para’s. They fin­ish their cans of lager, smear
them­selves with cam­ou­flage cream, fix bay­on­ets and charge down into
the woods, scream­ing at the top of their lungs. For the next hour the
woods ring with the sound of rifle and machine-gun fire, hand
gren­ades, mor­tar bombs and blood curd­ling war cries. Even­tu­ally they
emerge, car­ry­ing the charred remains of a rabbit.

A bit messy, but you achieved the aim; well done”, says the trainer.

Lastly, in go the cop­pers, walk­ing slowly, hands behind backs
whist­ling Dixon of Dock Green. For the next few hours, the silence is
only broken by the occa­sional crackle of a walkie-talkie “Sierra Lima
Whisky Tango Fanta One, sus­pect headed straight for you…” etc. After
what seems an etern­ity, they emerge escort­ing a squir­rel in handcuffs.

What the hell do you think you are doing?” asks the incred­u­lous
trainer. Take this squir­rel back and get me a rab­bit like I asked you
five hours ago!

So back they go. Minutes pass. Minutes turn to hours, night drags on
and night turns to day. The next morn­ing, the trainer and the other
teams are awakened by the police, still hold­ing the hand­cuffed
squir­rel, now covered in bruises with one eye nearly shut.

Are you tak­ing the p***!!??” asks the now ser­i­ously irate trainer.

The police team leader nudges the squir­rel, who squeaks:
“Alright, alright, I’m a rabbit!”

 

Found on Arnies

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Earth from 4 billion miles away

January 16, 2007  |  Web Finds  |  View Comments

 

Earth seen from 4 bil­lion miles away, pho­to­graphed by Voy­ager 1 on June 6, 1990.

Of the “pale blue dot,” astro­nomer Carl Sagan said, “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it every­one you love, every­one you know, every­one you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggreg­ate of our joy and suf­fer­ing, thou­sands of con­fid­ent reli­gions, ideo­lo­gies, and eco­nomic doc­trines, every hunter and for­ager, every hero and cow­ard, every cre­ator and des­troyer of civil­iz­a­tion, every king and peas­ant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hope­ful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of mor­als, every cor­rupt politi­cian, every ‘super­star,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sin­ner in the his­tory of our spe­cies lived there — on a mote of dust sus­pen­ded in a sunbeam.”

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

I had a hamster…

January 16, 2007  |  Philosophy  |  View Comments

My hamster teaches me a valuable lesson

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24 Season 6

January 15, 2007  |  General  |  View Comments

We. NEEDSKY!

dam­mit!

 

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Black Sheep — trailer

January 14, 2007  |  Web Finds  |  View Comments

 Now, I have seen everything.

My friend Duncan will love this one!*

Basho

 

*He’s a sheep farmer.

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Robert Anton Wilson dies

January 12, 2007  |  General  |  View Comments

Author, vis­ion­ary, philo­sopher and icon.  A great man has died today.

His last blog entry sum­ming it up in clas­sic style,

 

Vari­ous med­ical author­it­ies swarm in and out of here pre­dict­ing I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guess­ing. I remain cheer­ful and unim­pressed. I look for­ward without dog­matic optim­ism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please par­don my lev­ity, I don’t see how to take death ser­i­ously. It seems absurd.

RAW

I have long been a fan of Wilson’s works, espe­cially the bril­liant “The Illu­minatus Tri­logy,” which is one of the most sex packed, drug fueled mas­ter­pieces of all time.

In it he sat­ir­izes more genres, insults more dog­mas, ties together more con­spir­acy the­or­ies and speaks more truth than an entire branch of Waterstones.

This is the book that inven­ted the word Fnord and pop­ular­ised Eris and Dis­cor­dia.

A massive book, a great work.

 

 

But he wrote more than that, in his excel­lent Pro­meth­eus Rising he attempts to draw together a cogent and fant­astic philo­sophy regard­ing the human self and man’s poten­tial in this universe.

He explains human exper­i­ence in terms of bio­lo­gical cir­cuits and imprints. It is one “model” of the exper­i­ence and as such it is inter­est­ing and it is valid. Together with the out­line and explan­a­tion of dif­fer­ent imprints and how they are formed, Wilson provides exer­cises so that the reader can come to his own con­clu­sions through his own experience.

 

A true counter-culture Icon, he was loved by the Inter­net gen­er­a­tion who imme­di­ately took him to their hearts as his mes­sage is part of the spirit of the inter­net and on a per­sonal level a great influ­ence on my philosophy.

RAW, gone, but not forgotten.

 

Hail Eris, keep the pasta fly­ing and always have the cour­age to see the Fnords.

 

Basho

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]