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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..
Windows ‘Mojave’ Experiment
I have been saying it all along and this just confirms it. Microsoft took (presumably) a random group of people and showed them the Windows ‘Mojave’, the purported successor to the ‘current’ Windows. So, forget about 7 and take a look for yourself.
I can’t really say too much more without giving the game away, although part of me wonders just how random this actually was. Without wishing to be offensive, these people do look to be fairly PC-illiterate and it wouldn’t be too hard for Microsoft to manipulate the outcome. On the other hand, with the amount of ill conceived rubbish being circulated about Vista it doesn’t take too great a leap of the imagination.
EDIT: Just did a bit of reading and found out the test bed for this experiment was a HP dv2000 laptop with 2Gb of RAM. I had a dv2799 (for a short duration) and I know they are very capable machines (although the workmanship is terrible – I have 4 go wrong but never-mind), however not outside the realms of the ‘average’ consumer system. This is good as it at least makes it a fairly fair demonstration.
Pi Approximation Day (yesterday)
Of all the random dates already in my calender, I have just added another! The so called Pi approximation day, which I missed this year, is on the 22nd of July and is so ‘celebrated’ because it mathematically gives a close approximation (divide 22 by 7) to the true value of Pi. Oh well, this time next year (sans one day) I will make a Pi pastry and who knows what else…:)
Awesome geekness. Source.
The Simpsons meet CTF
Randomly came across this great map for Quake 3. Its an excellent remake of the Simpson home for all your fragging needs. The level of detail is astonishing, from the excellent textural work to the scale that says 230 pounds when stepped on. Genius 🙂
Of continuing Tuesdays…
Yes, granted the title to this post makes no sense and basically relates to nothing, but I thought it set up this post rather well. 🙂 You see, this is just a brief post to apologise for the less than usual frequency of my updates in the last couple of weeks. Its been a bit of a busy time so I have slightly taken my finger off of the pulse of the various industries I follow. Since the majority of my posts are reactionary commentaries or rants or how-tos it follows I have not been writing much.
Also, the much vaunted laptop (dv2799) I bought a couple of weeks ago has now had to be swapped a third time!! The first time it had a strange RAM corruption problem in the GFX RAM and the second laptop I received had a poorly constructed USB header which shorted the whole thing out. *sigh*. Still third time lucky I hope, its a lovely laptop, its just a shame it is let down by dubious quality control at Hewlett Packard’s end.
So, stay tuned, I have by no means lost interest in my blog! 🙂 For now, I leave you with the comedy genius of Simon Amstell.
The pride of Chinese Fakes
I want to briefly share an interesting story about a fake iPod I came across earlier in the week. At work, it turns out someone had tried to return a Apple iPod Nano 8Gb they had bought, substituting the Apple iPod for a cheap fake. The circumstances surrounding this are a bit sketchy as I was not there at the time, the first time I came across it was when the fake iPod nano was returned by Apple with a polite and bemused letter to the effect that Apple only services original hardware. Intregued, I took another look at the iPod nano.
As you can see, from the outside it is a very good quality fake – the screen looks a little strange but there are no marks or variations which would immediately suggest this product is a fake. The back plate is engraved correctly with the appropraite logos and serial numbers, although there is a small circular hole on the back plate which should not be there.
On switching on the iPod however, it becomes immediately apparent it is not a geniune article, the unit took a few seconds to boot during which it displayed a strange egg time icon immediately followed by an odd screen with an Apple logo and an animated message saying ‘Loading…”.
The low resolution screen looks awful and the user interface, although trying to copy the iPod interface, clearly fails to impress.
The scroll wheel doesn’t work, nor does the middle button. To move from entry to entry, you have to press the left and right buttons (for up and down respectfully) along with ‘Menu’ to enter into an option.
Entering any of the menu options results in this bland and annoying message for a few seconds.
The Music section looks as though the skin has been copied from WinAMP. Apart from the initial menu, no effort has been made to recreate or emulate the Apple iPod interface in any of the ‘functions’ of this device. Song and albumn navigation is rudimentary and feels more reminiscant of a portable CD player than a modern MP3 player.
The photo / picture option takes you to a very unfriendly file browser with no previews.
I never did get far into the movies function given that the machine appartently was devoid of movie content. Next up is the radio function. I didnt test if this would tune into anything but at least it is a feature not found in original Apple iPods.
Voice recording, another first for the clone! Unfortunately it didn’t seem to want to record anything and I quickly moved on.
The eBook feature simply took me to a screen saying Empty Disk and promptly switched off the machine.
And of course the essential “Good Bye” screen, you will be seeing a lot of it as the battery is terrible, the clone performs poorly and frequently switches off at random. I have no idea what a fake iPod like this would cost, but the only value I can see it having would be in situations like these where people try to con refunds on their original Apple products (or as a film prop), I pity anyone who would consider using this as a functional MP3 player.
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 🙂
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