Filed under: Internet, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 9:19 pm
So. Ed Lau of the.[ED]ition found a blogpost by Michael Kwan, showing videos of how business meetings would happen if all of the participants were like the commenting masses on large forums and blogs. You know, “FIRST!”, “pwned”, “dugg”, that sort of thing. It’s a fantastic pair of video clips, that I can only say are worthy of sharing. However, because it’s already posted on those two blogs, I fear that I really shouldn’t just copy those posts. Instead, here’s another video from the same creators at CollegeHumor.com, whereby they wonder “If urban legends really did exist, what would the Casualty department of a hospital look like?”.
It’s extremely funny, and definitely worth a look, so long as you don’t mind a bit of blood…
About a month ago, I felt I needed a change of phone, and so I started hunting around for what I could possibly use. Bearing in mind that I’m a relatively low-usage phone owner, whereby I make a few calls in the month, barely a few texts and no real MMS or internet usage, I felt that an iPhone wasn’t exactly the best plan of action, and neither do any of the smartphones currently on the market fit my current needs. I do, however, use Skype a lot, but a phone company would usually throw a hissy fit at the suggestion, and then throw on a heap of data charges.
Then, I stumbled upon 3… (more…)
Kung Fu Hustle is, oddly enough, a Kung Fu film with a vaguely typical Kung Fu storyline. The story of a street bum and a weird slum strangely full of martial art experts in hiding. Add in the local criminal underworld, and you have something that we’ve seen before.
I have to admit to you all right now, I am an internet junkie. That’s right, I spend my time looking at my 3 computer screens (2 on PC plus the Macbook) looking for the latest and greatest of offbeat randomness. This does impact what I wear somewhat, namely I want to be as comfortably dressed as possible whilst spending hours on the information superhighway. Of course, if I want to do something else, such as leave the house to visit someone, or to go to work in an office, I will make myself look presentable. Or at least attempt it.
Allentown police had suspected William Torres of dealing drugs in the city. But an undercover narcotics investigation yielded much more, and resulted in Torres, 21, being charged early Saturday with two counts of homicide.
Ok, so we have someone who takes life seriously enough to be doing highly illegal stuff. He’s killed people. He therefore must look sharp. I’m expecting a Samuel L Jackson level of coolness here…
Torres was driving on Turner Street Friday afternoon when he was pulled over by police and arrested. He was wearing a hooded sweartshirt with a skull-head pattern on it, pajama bottoms and fuzzy lion-faced slippers at the time. He was still wearing the get-up when he was arraigned after midnight at Lehigh County prison.
Wait, what?
Fuzzy lion slippers? Hooded sweatshirt (at least I spelt it right…) patterned with skulls? Pyjamas? Someone who kills others dresses like this? Well, I would think it would be from being arrested at home, except that he was DRIVING when he was arrested. He actively chose to go outside in this gear to do something. What exactly was he thinking?
Do you own a Wii? Do you own a Wiimote? Are you a really geeky person that needs to see the latest in future gaming technology using today’s tech? I’d suggest watching this…
Johnny Chug Lee has somehow managed to destroy everyone else’s normal thought patterns, bent time and space, and probably had a Happy Meal for breakfast, by making a damn realistic 3D effect with a Wiimote and some safety glasses.
It’s probably unrealistic for anything to be released in the short term that takes advantage of this idea, but I would absolutely love to see this used in the future. Imagine, a decent Time Crisis game where you have to actually duck or hide around a pillar. Metal Gear Solid with you peeking around the corner in first person view. Tetris with damn realistic blocks.
This might sound a bit strange, but I’ve registered mIRC. That in itself is weird, although it really shouldn’t be.
mIRC, to the uninitiated, is a fantastic Internet Relay Chat client that has been around since 1995. A fairly simple client with the flexibility for it to be used/misused with vast amounts of scripting, it is still holding it’s own against the now usual Instant Messaging systems such as MSN and Yahoo IM. An absolutely fantastic program that has proved itself over many years as pretty much an essential tool for net enthusiasts around the world.
As I reopened my usual mIRC window to join the usual suspects in the usual communities I hang out in, I saw the usual “You’ve used this for 30 days” registration nag message you get when you run the program, and began to wonder how long I had really been using it for. I mean, most shareware programs are limited in terms of how long they last for, or how much they allow you to do in them. mIRC allows you full access despite asking for a registration, even after the 30 days are up. No stopping you from chatting, no changing your nickname to something useless, not even an over the top nag screen that takes up the entire window. I’ve used the same unregistered installation of mIRC for years, and I think it’s more than earned my registration fee to it. So, I did.
After years of service, I’m now a registered user of mIRC. Fundamentally nothing has changed, except that I feel a little bit better, that I’ve done a “Good Thing”.
Everyone knows Jeremy Clarkson. He’s the loud-mouth from that motoring show “Top Gear” on the BBC, that compares cars to greyhounds going to the toilet, that has celebrities driving a really crap car, and has The Stig. Jeremy will say anything to make you think, and will try to make his opinion known, usually in a fairly blunt manner. Yes, he makes lots of enemies through his work.
Recently, Clarkson decided to, in an article about those missing UK government data CDs containing bank details for millions of people, try to prove that this isn’t a big deal, and decided that the best way to show it was to put his bank details in the newspaper column for everyone to see.
Many would say this is a fairly foolhardy manoeuvre just asking for trouble, but Jeremy persisted in his “I’m always right” ways.
Until he checked his bank statement.
Someone managed to set the account to send a direct debit for £500 to the charity Diabetes UK. Not only was he proved wrong, but also due to the data protection laws in the UK, the bank “can’t” find out what happened.
Jeremy eventually admitted his mistake, changing his belief from the lost data CDs being pretty much nothing to something far better, namely “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”
Today, during a lunch break in work, I went to the nearby newspaper shop to get some supplies for the rest of my shift (food, drink, reading material, headache tablets…). I was a bit low on cash, so I used the in-store ATM that charged a fee per withdrawal, even for something as low as £20. Everything went fine, and the machine spat out 2 crisp £10 notes. It then started to make a weird grinding noise, then stopped. An error message appeared on screen saying that it had failed to give me £20, and that the amount would be altered to match what I had been given. The machine printed out a receipt showing the mistake and changed the error page to a generic “Out of Service, See Attendant” message.
I checked the receipt, and weirdly it said that despite asking for £20, it says it dispensed just £10. It didn’t realise it spat £20 out for me. The machine screwed up and would only be charging my bank account £10. I had the right amount I had requested, but at half the cost. Effectively the machine gave me “free” extra cash.
Me being me, I took the extra note and the slip of paper to the woman behind the counter at the shop, explaining what had just happened, and gave her the £10 to put back into the machine. She looked at me weirdly, and asked why I didn’t just keep it for myself. Funnily enough, everyone else today asked the same question, as if it’s a break from the norm to hand in seemingly free money.
Most would believe that since there’s so many withdrawals and fees being taken out each day from the machine, that the company that operates the ATM wouldn’t miss the £10 at all. Yet, weirdly, my thinking is more that it isn’t MY money, so therefore it belongs to someone else, and I should try to rectify the problem as quickly as possible.
No-one I have talked to today have said they would return the money, preferring to spend it. Even when I suggested if the machine accidentally dispensed an extra £50, most of the same set of people would do the same, with only a small proportion of them thinking that at the higher value it would be better to hand it in. I’d have thought more would do what I would consider “the right thing”.
Moral Dilemma Time – When faced with an extra note coming out of the ATM, would you keep it, or return it to the bank?
Filed under: Gaming, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 2:06 am
Comedy gold you want? Gaming goodness you crave? Video Fantasticness with a British Accent and No Breathing your kind of thing? Might I suggest, in a most likely NSFW way…
Zero Punctuation reviews were created by internet god Yahtzee (I keep expecting a C somewhere in that name for some reason…) where he talks about whatever the current game on everyone’s mind plays. He is a picky guy (like me), but this only aids his fast-moving comedy speech. A highly-barbed, tightly-compressed video of epic proportions, that I just wish I could ever be half as good as.
[Zero Punctuation arrives thanks to The Escapist]
