Low-Budget Remakes of Hollywood Movies Set In The Towns In Which I Grew Up

The Bournemouth Identity
Poole Harbour
The Passion of Christchurch
The Sword in Parkstone
The Sway

Science Is Fun

Dammit, Wikipedia

I can't even remember what I was looking for to start with and I've just wasted three hours.

Three Highly Unsuitable Songs That Came Up On iTunes Party Shuffle While We Were Working Stupid Amounts Of Overtime On The Last Magazine Deadline

We Have All The Time In The World
Suicide Is Painless
Theme from Bergerac

User-created content

A piece that made me laugh in Private Eye last week:

As storms battered Britain at the beginning of last week, presenters on Sky News begged viewers to "help us put together the fullest national picture possible" by sending in their photos of the damage... posters on the Football 365 forum, finding that such pisspoor efforts as a shot of a watering can ("the wind blew it around all night") were being featured...rose to the challenge.

And so:

By 11.30am on Tuesday, despite a solemn promise that “your photo will be checked by moderators before it can be displayed,” the 408 photographs in Sky’s “Wild Weather” gallery included a shot of a young Norman Wisdom dismayed by a car crushed by a tree; footballer Carlos Valderama in flooded New Orleans captioned “it’s windy here in Widnes”; a still from the environmental disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow captioned “Whitley Bay”; a suspicious number of scenes of destruction featureing either teddy bears of the athlete and television presenter Kriss Akabusi; and several shots of fallen trees and flooded streets in which missing toddler Madeline McCann was clearly visible in the background.

In other news, I got a new job and moved to London. It's pretty hardcore but I'm on it.

Time bandits

I really like Paris, somewhat to my surprise. Now I like it more:

A group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

These are the same people who ran the secret underground theatre. More power to their WD-40.

Fame please, Carol

It's not easy being a former Countdown champion. In fact, if I was going to be dramatic, I'd say that Countdown ruined my life. Ever since I won, my life has been a constant, utterly in-vain struggle to ensure that this would not prove to be the defining moment of my life.

The story itself isn't really all that interesting, unfortunately, but I want to take a note of the opening line.

Money well spent

Paul just pointed out that Discovery are buying HowStuffWorks.com, for $250 million. Not having much memory of HowStuffWorks beyond it occasionally surfacing in Google, I visited it and can confirm that it is absolutely worth the money. Just on the front page today:

How Machineguns Work
How Bats Work
How Quantum Suicide Works

All Discovery need to do now is buy up Look Around You to run practical demonstrations.