Quincying and you…

It seems the much anticipated Playstation Home has, rather then revolutionise the game lobby experience, spawned a rather strange behavioural trend. Apparently all the male avatars gang up on the female avatars pestering them with their attentions… somewhere in the distance, the strained cry of “WOMAN” punctuates the silence followed by a left 4 dead style mobbing. Well, I guess that is what happens when you let pimply love starved socially inept geeks loose on the Internet… but I digress.

I chanced on a great little article describing in detail the act of ‘Quincying’. In the infinite world of Ying, yang and Newton’s third law, the Internet has come up with a comical rebuke to this sort of behaviour. Simply take one part beautiful avatar, mix with a pinch of deviancy. Stir for twenty minutes and add a sprinkle of button mashing and what do you come up with?

The process if trivial, create  a beautiful avatar and glide along seductively where-ever other avatars roam. Human (and online geek) nature being what it is, you will have a nice gathering in no time at all. When you have their attention, suddenly change your avatar from striking blond or giant ogre and watch in amusement as your digital ‘peers’ recoil.

Full story and description here.

I am sure there is scope for a detailed sociological study somewhere here… oh well.

Monitor the LHC Experiment!

I found a great link to a couple of webcams that actively monitor the Large Hadron Collider experiment. There are currently two cameras available,

• Camera 7: looking at the Underground Experimental Cavern from the Saleve side.
• Camera 8: looking out of the window of the 1st Floor of the SCX building that houses the CMS Control room.

Below is just a screen shot, click through and take a look for yourself

Would almost pass as an advert for Command and Conquer Red Alert 3.

LHC Hysteria

I found a beautiful combination of headlines on the BBC news site a moment ago:

Classic..

Ok wiseguy, now what do I do!?!

Randomly came across it today on youtube, brings back memories from my childhood! The episode where the Coyote finally catches the road runner – classic

Of Virals…

I don’t normally post viral youtube videos, but today I found a clip purporting to be the ‘best 5 second clip on the internet.’ I may be a bit late to the party with this one (I only found out what the whole Leeroy Jenkins thing was about last year) but take a look and tell me what you think…

To quote someone … awesome….

GIVING away PS3s – a sign of desperation?!?

I briefly mentioned a National retailer that was giving away PS3s along with top tier TV packages in a comment on someone else’s blog. At the time I considered it to be more of a curious twist of fate, however I heard on the radio today that now AOL are also giving away PS3s! Admittedly they are only given away with, what I assume to be exorbitant contracts which last for 24 months.

This idea of giving away games consoles is not new, over a year ago mobile phone companies were offering free PSPs along with 18 month contracts. Initially I was tempted until I compared Free PSP contracts to Vanilla phone contracts and did some subtraction and multiplication. It turned out that the total overal cost of the PSP would have been ~1.6 times the store price. Needless to say I just went out and bought a PSP (with a nice game bundle) and renewed my contract with O2.

Its curious that at no point have Microsoft nor Nintendo needed to take such steps in order to sell their consoles, although this could be to do with being first to market and being highly sought after repectively. Sony is having a very bad time with the PS3 (the PS2 is still apparently outselling it) and recent surveys showed that at least 40% of PS3 owners did not even realise their console could play Blu-ray DVDs. At points this year, the Wii was outsetting the PS3 6 to 1. Sony’s profits are down, with the company reporting a multi hundred million dollor loss in its gaming division. Luckily other parts of the company are doing quite well (e.g. ATRAC and TVs) so its unlikely Sony will go under any time soon. Slashing the price of the PS3 has definitely boosted sales considerably, but considering they were making a loss at the higher price, I wager the Sony Computer Entertainment Execs are hoping volume and game sales will save their presently sinking ship.

The Fairer Sex

Some rather funny adverts from yester-year, it’s incredible the way women were considered an inferior gender even a few tens of years ago! They range from the crazy to the completely nonsensical!

Take a look!