tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39087892024-03-14T07:16:41.802+00:00Ideal projectGreat potential, suit enthusiast.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.comBlogger245125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-14102800919082688632009-12-06T15:55:00.011+00:002009-12-06T20:42:25.840+00:00London Underground's Inspector SandsSomething I've come across several times in London, but never remembered to look up afterwards - the sort of experience I suspect the iPhone is ushering into history, along with the pub quiz and bothering to describe individual music videos - is the announcement for Inspector Sands.It goes out over the Underground tannoy system, in a style seemingly calculated for maximum creepiness: a very loud,Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-15411266770724003142009-01-28T20:31:00.001+00:002009-01-28T20:33:33.351+00:00Four Things Overheard At A Left 4 Dead WeddingWedding cake, over here!Ring-exchanging!You may vomit on the brideYou have startled the mother-in-law!Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-45060939343849586112009-01-26T13:41:00.003+00:002009-12-06T20:47:29.293+00:00Four Cocktails Named For Left 4 DeadThe Boomer BileThe Lazy SmokerThe Flaming HunterThe Rage QuitUPDATE: Because I am in a position to indulge daft whims like this, OXM actually tapped up a cocktail waiter to create a series of gaming cocktails. Remember, kids, you can do this sort of thing too if you grow up to work in media.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-28027862246690917552009-01-06T00:51:00.004+00:002009-01-06T00:54:16.267+00:00TwitterI'm a big fan of Twitter, these days. This isn't the reason, but it could have been.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-68093623104291033912008-11-10T22:34:00.003+00:002009-12-06T20:43:49.242+00:00The Monkey DiesA snappy shorthand for commercial reality is recorded in the often-interesting, occasionally-wrong blog of Keith Boesky: why publishers don't want film licences, particularly King Kong. "This is exactly the kind of things you said you are looking for. You have two and a half years until the release of the film, the budget is fixed and large and the promotion will be huge." "Doesn't sound Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-18968881827772455872008-09-13T13:38:00.003+00:002008-09-13T13:43:52.506+00:00Interview TechniqueThis made me smile: The Onion's Nathan Rabin points out an old interview in which Amy Heckerling makes the mistake that interviewees should never, ever make:AH: Did you see the movie?O: Yes, I did.AH: Did you like it?O: [Pauses; makes "don't ask me that question" gesture.] Um... There were parts about it that I liked. There were things I liked about it. [Note: This is a lie. —ed.] And it was Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-86048201218944585812008-07-23T23:37:00.001+00:002008-07-23T23:38:14.328+00:00Three Stories From 'The Onion' That Came True Hershey's Ordered To Pay Obese Americans $135 Billion Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades Bush: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over The final one is the scariest. It's like a bullet-point list of everything Bush has done wrong, written years before it happened. Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-74495884651518203692008-06-14T15:34:00.003+00:002008-06-14T15:37:54.862+00:00Low-Budget Remakes of Hollywood Movies Set In The Towns In Which I Grew UpThe Bournemouth IdentityPoole HarbourThe Passion of ChristchurchThe Sword in ParkstoneThe SwayJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-86643537936235795612008-06-14T10:03:00.002+00:002008-06-14T15:33:45.467+00:00Science Is FunJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-57826146944753280742008-04-19T13:17:00.003+00:002008-04-19T13:19:06.142+00:00Dammit, WikipediaI can't even remember what I was looking for to start with and I've just wasted three hours.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-24980209619266387522008-04-05T16:05:00.002+00:002008-04-05T16:10:21.440+00:00Three Highly Unsuitable Songs That Came Up On iTunes Party Shuffle While We Were Working Stupid Amounts Of Overtime On The Last Magazine DeadlineWe Have All The Time In The WorldSuicide Is Painless Theme from BergeracJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-39535554325246709012008-04-04T01:31:00.004+00:002008-04-04T01:36:50.615+00:00User-created contentA 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 Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-67083236147819545612007-11-27T01:05:00.000+00:002007-11-27T01:09:38.725+00:00Time banditsI 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 Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-58756042585160518082007-11-17T11:23:00.000+00:002007-11-17T11:26:41.262+00:00Fame please, CarolIt'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.Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-56497805627210402592007-10-16T09:08:00.000+00:002007-10-16T09:16:35.953+00:00Money well spentPaul 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 WorkHow Bats WorkHow Quantum Suicide WorksAll Discovery need to do now is buy up Look Around You to run practical Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-75448888660152438932007-10-15T21:46:00.000+00:002007-10-15T21:51:21.954+00:00Know your marketA fine statement on the recent hoo-ha about a church group using Halo 3 to tempt in kids for later reprogramming, care of the NYTimes:“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-31598925842164119262007-09-29T15:32:00.000+00:002007-09-29T15:51:14.089+00:00The unstoppable HeaviesI've been spending too much time playing TF2 recently, despite having loads of work and lots of other really quite significant games I could be playing instead. An interesting encounter on PC Gamer's server last night: Team LOL, including Richard, decided that they would all play one class per round, resulting in offences composed exclusively of Scouts, Pyros, etc. It ended predictably: Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-10362979138903679052007-09-09T10:11:00.000+00:002007-09-09T10:47:56.515+00:00Zero PunctuationMy current favourite thing on the internet is Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw's (I think that's the correct form) Zero Punctuation, a series of animated rants about gaming delivered in a polite British monotone that is slightly reminscent of what I used to do when I got worked up about something back before I was a burnt-out corporate shell but I just got drunk and moaned at people in pubs rather than Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-53123999374016780172007-09-06T08:18:00.000+00:002007-09-06T08:24:19.094+00:00Carnival of LockjawCardhouse has posted some choice quotes from a book on fireworks. The factory explosion survivor is a good 'un, but this is my favourite:"Because of such devices, nearly as many people died celebrating independence – around four thousand over the years -- as actually died fighting in the War of Independence itself. The glorious Fourth became known as the “Bloody Fourth” and, because of the large Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-62902393865862609552007-09-05T09:25:00.000+00:002007-09-05T09:46:21.372+00:00Cri di coeurThere's a status bar at the bottom of the CMS software we use to put the magazine together. Since launch, it has held a brief text message - similar to the "I'll find something to put here" at the bottom of a Facebook page, except this one has spooled through random quotes from the minds of, presumably, our merry band of internal developers. A new one today: "l'enfer, c'est les autres". They mustJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-53542746903056322822007-09-02T17:13:00.001+00:002007-09-02T17:24:24.277+00:00Why the Halo movie might be troubleA synopsis of the Halo comic does not sound promising:The Chief is flying on the ship, then on the ground, in a firefight with Covenant forces. There is no dialog, just shooting and grenades going off. The aliens look particularly gruesome, and the artwork seems very faithful to the look of the games. Master Chief blows open a door to enter a room where he faces down a very large force... The Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-18048034709278394052007-09-02T15:06:00.001+00:002007-09-02T15:27:24.703+00:00WTFDestruction still mutually assured:"This doomsday apparatus, which became operational in 1984, during the height of the Reagan-era nuclear tensions, is an amazing feat of creative engineering." According to Blair, if Perimetr senses a nuclear explosion in Russian territory and then receives no communication from Moscow, it will assume the incapacity of human leadership in Moscow or elsewhere, andJonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-53665439895040574782007-08-29T09:14:00.000+00:002007-08-29T09:30:04.442+00:00I have both dudes and catastrophesI'm a project manager now, I'm slowly realising. It's not a career choice I'd recommend, but it has its moments. I recognise trace elements of them in the words of Cornelius:It's a bit like manning a joystick at Cape Canaveral: lovely equipment, men on task, and always the promise that things which go awry are capable of going so awry that the course of a federal program is altered forever.Note Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-58697994921824097912007-08-27T23:59:00.000+00:002007-08-28T00:02:09.529+00:00Noted for future use in the workplacesomeecards.com:Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3908789.post-60044579685399176062007-08-27T23:18:00.000+00:002007-08-28T09:11:13.549+00:00Good Things In Bioshock(Somewhat to my surprise, this doesn't appear to contain spoilers. So go ahead and read if you haven't finished it, although it'd be a far better use of your time to actually play it.)Bioshock's hype machine started to get silly a couple of weeks ago. It jumped the shark when culturally bankrupt games sites better known for hosting flamewars about Ghost Recon weaponry started comparing it to Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05735589238427636426noreply@blogger.com0