Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Say Clem?

Yeauh?

Ya dun seen Jim Bob's new limuzeen"?

yeauh. Shur is suweet.

yep. Wish'n ah hayd wunudem fer me, the missus and all the june'yers.

yeauh.

Monday, December 17, 2007

(they) can count your money...

What's scary is that, based on the latest polling numbers, there are approxmiately 50,000,000 idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople who would cheer an idea such as this.

Anyone know the citizenship requirements for Australia? . Sure they're hated by most of Asia but that would be a huge step up from here.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Déja vu: a recent xkcd webcomic recapitulates my own Leopard upgrade experience.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Attention WalMart Shoppers!

Their prices just can't be "beat". 

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Believe it or not, reading Reprobates requires college-level reading skills. It says so on the Internet, so it must be true.

cash advance

Tuesday, November 20, 2007


So Amazon has announced its e-book reader, the Kindle. This means I can now spend $400 on a device so that I can then buy books in softcopy for $10 each rather than, say, $20-$25 for real, actual books. The real draw of this thing though is supposedly its abilty to hold 200 or more books and enable you to carry them around with you - this is a good thing if you're tired of having to trundle around a wheelbarrow with you to carry your physical book collection with you.

I'm not sure who the target demographic is, but the video overview shows someone who could be a student carrying the thing around. That makes sense on one level, because I remember carrying at least 187 books with me between classes when I was in college. Actually, no I don't, because I didn't. I carried maybe one or two books with me, tops, and a notepad. "Ah!" you say, "But college textbooks are reeeeeally expensive, so this thing gives instant payback!" which, yeah, it might if a) college textbooks were available for purchase in softcopy and b) college students weren't able to buy all the textbooks they need second-hand from last year's users for, you know, $10. Plus - show me the college student, who, given $400, wouldn't immediately turn it into mad quantities of weed, beer and Ramen, possibly not in that order.

It has what looks to be one piece of cool technology, which is the display technology and which is touted to be almost as good as real paper! - for $400. Yeah.

So then what of the device's aesthetics and its behavioral design? Jeff Bezos' stated design goal is to make "Kindle disappear in your hands", as in, have the experience be as immersive as a (real) book. I can see what he means by saying a real book does this, but my larger concern would be over reading this thing in public where it may well literally disappear from your hands - along with your wallet, cell phone, iPod and any other valuables. But then you watch the video demonstration and, right there at 1:01 in, the dreaded phrase "page turn buttons" (emphasis mine, but it hardly matters) surfaced, and my heart sank. I was thinking - oh, hey, page turn gesture, like the iPhone ... but no. Stinkin' buttons. It gets worse - "Use the select wheel when you want to choose an item on the page or menu". Groan. So much for immersive, and disappearing in your hands. Plus, one other little kicker - "the display doesn't use backlighting, so just like paper, it's as easy to read outside in bright sunlight as it is inside your living room or office" - and, just like paper, is illegible unless you have pretty strong frontlighting. Again, the iPhone (and other devices) have already solved this problem - it's called a transreflective LCD, and it works very nicely.

To sum up - FAIL. As a device, ironically, I believe, because it doesn't have enough advanced technology in it - no touch screen, no colo(u)r (thus no killer app), and no transreflective goodness. As a cultural artifact, it will also FAIL because, oh yeah, FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS.

But, hey, go ahead. Be a good American, buy several of these things and use them in the manner suggested by the device's name, and also by the residents of the state next door to mine who refer to "books" by a different word.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Paging Paul - paging Paul. Boy, you got some 'splainin to do - "Fart in the Duck".

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Monday, November 05, 2007

The MTV show Pimp My Ride (not to be confused with that other show, Ride My Pimp) has spawned a video game that, apparently, and not surprisingly, "sucks".

So anyway, before I found the scathing review referenced above, I followed a number of useless links served up by Google in response to the query string pimp my ride wii review, most of which were pages talking about a review of the game, or which contained the keywords in otherwise unrelated contexts, but eventually I hit gold.

Yes, our old friend keyword-driven advertising strikes again, and this time the lucky company is BizRate.com, a pretty reputable p2p business ratings site, where somehow the keywords noted above translated into the following howler:

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

... but apparently they didn't stop watching even once they figured out the movie was about a very different kind of Pajama Game.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

In American media, hearing the words "a very special episode of ..." before this week's episode of your favourite sitcom-slash-drama means that said show is about to jump the shark and become crap.

In British media, it apparently means your favourite newspaper column is about to end with the word "cunt".

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

I wanna talk to you about the Cannonball Run - no, not that Cannonball Run, this one, the one the movie was based on. See, it's a real thing - or at least, it was a real thing, but now there's also the Gumball 3000, and that's also hella fake, so what's real any more? Where's the real Two-Lane Blacktop-style outlaw driver action?

I'll tell you where it is - right here, buddy. And here, but most especially here, and here.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

"It's hard to be a Don Juan...

...when you've got a chinchilla on your..." SFW? Maybe... Music video is a treat and the test drive is worth trying for the n00b.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Fun with automatic reference generation - nice title this guy has (yes, I was looking for my own name, no, I'm not in there). Bonus points for the way the title was (incorrectly) inferred from the borderline-patronizing usage as applied to the "Equipment Maintainer" in the next paragraph, in an apparent "local boy made good" kinda reference.
(POSTING REDACTED)

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"There's no way I'll work with Jennica again. I was really shocked what that cunt said to me."

Monday, September 17, 2007

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Dasher for photos?

Actually, dasher for everybody's photos. Eek, I wonder how many different ways there will be to get a pic of the inside of my nostrils...

Monday, August 27, 2007

"Brrrrr, it's cold in here. There must be some A/C in the atmosphere."

And a generator on the trunk.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

What comes after Windows Vista? Behold! Windows RG!
Worst. Tradenames. Ever.
She may be pretty, but she's not real smart. Nosirree.

Transcript: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because...ah some...people out there in our nation don't have maps and...ah...I believe that eh-education such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should....our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or-or should help south Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our gen..."

Thursday, August 23, 2007

So you come across an academic paper entitled "On the Efficiency of AC/DC" and you assume that it's about, say, large-scale electricity generation and distribution systems, but then you read the second part of the title: "Bon Scott versus Brian Johnson"

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Ever wanted to hear a sexy girl moaning your IP address? Wish granted!

Friday, August 03, 2007

Would you wager money on this horse?

Maybe you should've. His heart was certainly in the race.

And he runs like the wind.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Stop pussyfooting around

Remarkable. NSFW, unless you work for some seriously freaky foot-fetishists.
They call him Flipper... Flipper... FLIPPER OF DEATH!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Friday, July 06, 2007

When it's my time, I can only hope to be remembered with an obituary like this one.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Who says all video game players are sunlight-fearing, couch potato, no-life-having nerds?

Some of them are sunlight-loving, no-life-having nerds with way too much time on their hands.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Marvin gets a laser canon in his face

I read this and I can't help but imagine it saying "Need Input".

Bad, yet classic 80's movies aside, that may be one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Every now and then, you come across an idea so revolutionary that it is greeted with Schopenhauer's now-classic formulation (I am paraphrasing here): "it won't work, it is trivial, and besides we already do it that way". I believe we may be witnessing a (kill me now) paradigm shift in text input for small personal electronic devices that will revolutionise the industry by freeing devices that operate on text input from the size constraints that keep them at a certain minimum form factor. The system is called Dasher and it comes from a research group at the University of Cambridge. Watch the Google lecture series video on it, download the beta software and then play with it. Oh and, yes, I did write this blog entry using it :)

Friday, June 01, 2007

Thou shalt not ... do a bunch of things. Like, say, rip off LCD Soundsystem?
No, it's not (thank Zarquon) some kind of fetish porn - but other than that, the site Hot Chicks with Douchebags delivers exactly what the domain name promises. More douchebags here, here, here, and, oh, say, here. Hot chicks can be found ... wait, you need help finding pix of hot chix? Sorry, you fail at the Internets.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Once you click here, you will have experienced this phenomenon.
A meme within a meme within a meme.

Where does it end? It doesn't, it's memes all the way down.

Monday, May 21, 2007

An interesting Idea...

Saw this on Reddit. No need to read the whole thing, because some of his arguments are stupid. We're way too lazy in America to walk up 1, let alone multiple floors.

What does rock is the very 1st comment.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

You may have heard someone say "you've got a friend in Jesus". Now you can put a Jesus in your friend.

Monday, May 14, 2007

totalcleaningsupplies.com

We all get spam. But not all of it leaves you laughing & wondering quite like this one:

Would you like to have a killer meat stick? If you do, Penis Enlarge Patch should be for you.

After taking Penis Enlarge Patch make you sure your dick doesnt make too much shadow on the beach.
Web 1.0 was insufficiently legit, but this new Web 2.0? Too legit, it seems. Too legit to quit, that is.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Viddy this my droogs - Ongopongo is Digg for Google My Maps mashups!

What the fuck has happened to our language? Now, get off my lawn.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Bible Fight
It sounds to me as though the US Department of Defense have a taken a leaf from these guys' playbook.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Rock, Paper, Scissors TNG

Bored with Rock, Paper Scissors? (Well, these guys aren't, but that's another story.). Expand your hand-to-hand contest repertoire with an updated 21st century version.

Brain cramps? Form a line on the left.

Monday, April 16, 2007

George Carlin, of seven dirty words (and many more), and Rufus from Bill & Ted fame, has a new rant/rap/monologue about being a modern man (transcript here) that I find oddly reminiscent of this.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Threat Alert Jesus - sorta reminds me of this dude.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

In case you're worried that Reprobates has been a bit "tame" lately, I offer the jury the following for their consideration on the topic of the word "shitcock":

Exhibit 1 - John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Exhibit B - Shitting dick nipples (NSFW)

That is all.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

"Man in unfortunate saw-mill penis incident"

Once you've read the headline, do you really need to click on the link?

Sunday, March 25, 2007

I think this thing is similar to this thing.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Imagine the worst film ever. Now multiply its badness by at least infinity and it still won't be as bad as the film they call the Turkish Star Wars.

The nuke kid on the block

"Dad, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I won the science fair. The bad news is that the electricity bill is going to be $42,000."

Damn, my science projects sucked in comparison.

Monday, March 05, 2007

I see this kind of thing every day in our cafeteria aroud lunch time.

Maybe it's not really happening, but it's what I see.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I did it for the lulz.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

"You can get white noise from your television, I got mine from Sainsbury's" (thanks, Serge)

Friday, January 26, 2007

A new team member

Holy. Shit. I am calling this kid for the Reprobates team. He was even so kind as to make an audition tape for his slot on the Reprobates team. Holy. Shit.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Are you ready for XTREME!!!! uhh ... cakes? How about a TV show on the topic?

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

"In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, 'Come Again?'"


Sure, I have keratoconus'n'all, but surely I can't be the only person who at first glance misread this text from the BBC News web site as "Drug inspires surge in smoker's popularity" - under a headline of "China's pot idol" ... ?

Friday, January 19, 2007

It's Flicky To Rock A Rhyme

To Rock A Rhyme That's Right On Time It's Flicky, Flicky, Flicky, Flicky, Flicky. Props to Run DMC and Samsung.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

How to Poop

Umm... Just in case you need to see how Japanese man-tigers do it...

Friday, January 12, 2007

Back in the good ol' days of the Internet bubble, the typical business model seemed to be to sell dollar bills for 99c apiece, and then make up the difference on volume. Things today are much more complex - now, the business model du jour is this - call a number in Iowa at standard call rates, then use the dialtone they give you to make free international calls to one of 50+ countries - for free. Did I mention that you get to do this for free?

How does it work? No idea.
DMT - whoa (NSFW)

Monday, January 08, 2007

The inmates really are running the asylum

Then again "Nostrils of Satan" would make a great name for a rock band.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Farts are funny.