e-glue (geddit?)

Need a massive dinosaur for your kid's wall? Zombie pirates? Smiling jungle dwellers? Crustaceans and the like?

e-glue adhesive design

Fantastic, if quite pricey...

f4c38o0K?

In an idle moment, I was thinking about social networking sites and how the natural progression might be from all-encompassing global phenomena to tightly controlled specifically targeted medium. As such, here are a few ideas:

fakebook: For forgers.
fadebook: For sound engineers.
facebuck: For deer (or 80s sci-fi) lovers.
facebucket: For window cleaners.
facebok: For South Africans.
facehook: For pirates.
bakebook: For breadmakers.
vasebook: For people who insist on using American pronunciation (i.e. Americans)
allyourbasebook: For lovers of old internet memes.
fastbuck: For people who have sold their social networking sites to massive faceless global conglomerates and gone to live in the Bahamas.

Anyone care to chip in?

Giving Palm The Finger?

Astonishing account of Palm 'customer service' (impersonating the CEO, anyone?)

Could Tech Support Undo Palm?

(via daring fireball)

Big Blue Collapse

So this was bbc.co.uk at 17:15 today:


I guess the 20-odd homepage developers were all off merrily tucking into their turkey sandwiches :)

FFFFound

Anyone have a spare invite for FFFFOUND?

You can spend hours wilfing around via the You may like these images links. And we like a good wilf (quiet at the back). Anyway, I'd like to join up!

Christmas Eve At The Coalface

It's been a busy old morning.



So anyway, this is me wishing a very Merry Christmas to all my fellow bloggers and (both) my readers. Have a good one, whatever you are doing. And here's to a fruitful 2008...

Overheard #32

This may have been about the recent fluctuations in the FTSE or the price of beer at the Rack & Tenter. I forget. Anyway:

It's been up and down like a euphemism.

34B-O-XXS-18-24m-15"

Just in time for that last-minute dash to Oxford Street to buy everyone's presents in the sales, we bring you:

Christmas Cheat Sheets

Amusingly, the ladies' one contains 'ring size' (now there's optimism!)

Yes, I'm blogging on Xmas Eve. Yes, I'm at work. Yes, the two are connected

Bad Apple?

Looks like Apple has decided that the season of goodwill is the perfect time to go on the offensive against commentators and bloggers who deign to publish leaks/reviews/criticism of its products.

And now, in an astonishing move (and in my clearly worthless opinion, a proper PR shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-disaster) they have suggested to the daddy of the genre, Fake Steve Jobs, that he cease and desist in return for a 'settlement' / update#1: as long as he shuts up about it / update#2: or worse / update#3: lawyer time

Anyone else think the most media-savvy company in the world just started to make itself look ridiculous? But hey - what do I know. Hang on, there's someone knocking at the d...

(And of course it's all a subtle Yuletide gag from the very amusing Daniel Lyons and his Forbes crew...or maybe not...but perhaps it is...or not...could be...looks like it isn't...or is...*applause*)

Bah Humbug

Hurrah! It's the ever cheery Charlie Brooker and his Festive Quiz! The maths round is especially taxing :)

Where's It Gone?

I was bemoaning to esteemed colleague Alex the other day about one advantage that IE7 had over Firefox (*gasp*) in that when you went to full screen (F11) the menu bar nicely disappeared as well, only sliding back in if you moused near it or hit the Alt key. FF didn't do this by default, much to the chagrin of those of us currently playing with their shiny new Eee with its dinky 7" screen :)

However, Autohide to the rescue. Nice work, KrickelKrackel plugin guy.

48,500 Handles

How much?


Before you ask, it wasn't me :)

Symphony Numero Onion

For some reason, I couldn't help but think of Antonia and her fighorn:

the vegetable orchestra

Bring on the leek violin, cucumberphone and pepper trumpet (and stop sniggering at the back...)

Housework

So today was the start of Christmas.

We bought a tree, got the lights and everything down from the loft, realised that all the decorations were broken or cracked, went to get more at Homebase (which had a broad and tasteful selection, much to my surprise), spent rather too long with a spirit level and a bucket of sand getting the damn thing upright, stuck the lights on, watched as Freyja was singularly unimpressed with our efforts, went to a chilly carol concert at the Horniman Museum (thanks for the brandy coffee, Graham...), came back and had tea with mince pies and Christmas music while we put the decorations on and Freyja carefully took them all off and put them back in the boxes again.

It was great :)

And what made it all the more exciting was that we have our house back. When we bought it, the downstairs looked like this:


Then, after a rather sudden decision to knock the ground floor rooms through, ten days ago it looked like this:


And now, I am enjoying a rather good glass of port, in this:



Two weeks and counting (and we're going to need more port...)

Table Not Found

I wonder how long they waited for their food to turn up?

Look a little closer...Oh come on, it's not that geeky...

What's That, Artoo?

Very silly.

R2D2 Translator

For example, this is "I Fought The Law", R2-stylee:

Very Burial

I have been boring everyone silly with how good the Burial albums are; I think I still prefer the eponymously-titled first one, despite the reviewers raving over 'Untrue', (which is still awesome).

Anyway, there is a fantastically-moody and yet still dancefloor-friendly remix by Boy 8-bit which I hope will whet the appetite for more of the same:


via Nialler9 and Mad Decent and do contact me via the comments if I should take this down or something...

Pardon?

I am officially old.

Yesterday I went for a 'business lunch' with a colleague and, once seated at our table, felt the need to ask the staff to turn the music down. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Time was when a mere high-street hostelry could not have dreamed of matching my decibel capacity but here I am, the wrong side of 35 and heading towards the Ovaltine and comfy slippers. It's a sad, sad day indeed.

Those of you who saw Probemeister rocking the (sadly-missed) Arts Centre in York with an aural onslaught of thundering beats and analogue synths will remember remarking, "There goes a chap who'll never be defeated by a slightly intrusive blast of KT Tunstall of a lunchtime and no mistake" but I fear I have let you all down. I can only beg for forgiveness (quietly).

Waitress: "Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?"
Me: "Look, I can't hear a single word you're saying; can you possibly turn this dreadful racket down a bit?"
Waitress: "A Malibu & dry ginger, a pint of snakebite and a pair of Campari shooters?"
Me: "Yes, but can we have one with mash?"
Waitress: "No, it's the last door on the left, can't miss it."

Flickr! Editr!

Look, you can now edit images directly on Flickr (apparently using Picnik on top of the Flickr API):

Edit your photos! On Flickr!

This may be the kickr* that means I finally move my Gallery off Doug's poor overloaded server...

* ahem :)

Doug. A Life In Pictures.

xkcd #353

Overheard #31

Via our Yorkshire branch, to whom a great many thanks are due for this beauty:

"Becky, how many days in May?"
"May next year?"