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.

Lego Miscreants

Minifigforlife, who apparently are not licenced by Lego, have come up with a, dare I say it – a rather cool range of accessories of the budding Lego adventurer. However they have met with a fair amount of criticism from around the world chiefly for their ‘terrorist’ Lego man which some say bears a striking resemblance to a Taliban fighter. Ok, I would have to be blind not to see where the critics are coming from, but for such hysteria over a toy?!? I seem to recall from my childhood that I was playing with Lego Pirates and other such miscreants. Infact, I am fairly sure I once built both the ship and the island fortress in this picture. Good times 🙂 .

According to wikipedia, the Pirate range started in the late 1980s, so as you can see it is a bit late for Lego to turn around and condemn “violent” and, in their eyes, “non-family friendly” toys. Granted Lego themselves have nothing to do with this new range, but for papers like The Sun (and others, but I feel like picking on The Sun) to write headlines like “Osama Bin Lego” is simply absurd.

Of course violence and terrorism are not concepts to expose young children to, but in this Nanny state we find ourselves in, it never ceases to amaze me how people can get worked up over such petty things. I highly doubt that a child would think along such lines anyway – this is simply a fun baddie like countless others before in the varies Lego franchises. Admittedly this is the first time the Lego ‘bad guy’ has come to vaguely resemble a particular ethnic or social group before (if we don’t count pirates for a moment) but I am sure no disrespect was meant. In fact, I would challenge that such a stereo type (perhaps we should include Call of Duty 4 in this)  is as contrived as the pirate characters were in the first place.

Long and short of it? Stop getting so worked up over nothing – I leave you a particularly nice construction that is definitely not suitable for all ages ;).

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.

Roswell Revisited

Time for me to come clean :). The so called UFO I posted before was a ‘FO’ but the ‘U’ part was not strictly accurate. During my walk I noticed a balloon which presumably some child had lost flying quickly overhead. When I got home and looked at the photos I decided to perform an experiment. I wanted to see how quickly this ‘discovery’ of mine would be picked up by enthusiasts and circulated. As it turns out, barely an hour after my post links to my blog and ‘sighting’ started cropping up from the US / UK to Israel.

Perhaps this, ‘special interest group’ are more prone to scanning blogs/news wires for stories than other groups (The Lone Gunmen anyone?) but it made for an interesting experiment. I should now prove it was a hoax. The first photo I posted before was scaled down, if however, you zoom in on the original you will see a little bit of string attached to it (as seen below.)

Some photos…

I messed with a picture I took today of a Sunset, so in a break from all the recent tech related posts… some photos 😉

 

Ok so you caught me, they are the same image, I just felt like playing with photoshop a bit 🙂 .. and it was a pretty sunset between the buildings…

A Mysterious Package (C/o Ebay)

A random package appeared at my doorstep from ebay this morning. Not having ordered anything (from Leeds anyway) recently I was surprised as the package was ~A5 size (or that of a DVD slim case.) Curiously I unwrapped the packaging to discover what, on first inspection looked like a box of cheap ebay branded Christmas cards.

I thought ‘great, another cheap mass produced product sent in the hope cheap people will send them out and ebay will get free advertising…’ But on digging further through the packaging, I discovered a rather (cheap but nice) set of ‘EBAY’ festive coloured lights powered by USB. I would never have put them on a tree but they look rather nice on my desk, so I have to give Ebay a thumbs up for this rather unexpected but nice Christmas present ( / advertising tool.)

Sorry for the bad picture, but they were too bright to snap without the flash. Anyone else get these?

EDIT: They look better in a dark room

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!