Oh Internet

I like the Photoshop Disasters blog almost as much as I dislike Vista:

See also: You Suck at Photoshop

I was already annoyed about missing the Hide and Seek festival (because I was too busy, uh, making a game…) and reading this write up by Jane McGonigal isn’t really helping. It sounds like it was great fun!

Nick Hornby on why eBook readers don’t (and won’t) sell.

Be careful not to read too far into the comments page, though. It’s full of that special breed of Internet solipsist who hasn’t figured out that their borderline obsessiveness isn’t exactly representative.

But – and this is the most depressing reason – the truth is that people don’t like reading books much anyway: a 2004 survey of two thousand adults found that thirty-four per cent didn’t read books at all. The music industry’s problems are many and profound, but you never see advertisements asking us to listen to more music; there are no pressure groups or government quangos attempting to ensure that we make room in our day for a little Leona Lewis. The problem is getting people to pay for music, not getting people to consume it. Can you see every teenager in Britain harassing their parents for a Kindle? Me neither.

BBC News - 04/07/2008

Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”

Control room: “Right.”

Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”

Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”

Caller: “It’s in the air.”

Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”

Caller: “OK.”

The mystery was soon solved, as the exchange between control and an officer at the scene, makes clear.

Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”

Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”

Dubai is planning to build an 80-storey, wind-turbine-powered, Rubik’s cube-style spinning skyscraper, with a 70-storey version planned for Moscow.

(Make sure to watch the concept video too, it looks well swanky.)

According to the sign below, how many different things are you going to hell for? For reference, a score of less than 10 could be construed as indicating a distinct lack of ambition…

(Furthermore, most of the list is standard bible-basher boilerplate, but the inclusion of “sports fans” seems like it has an interesting back-story.)

Via: here.

Compare and contrast:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Hip Replacement: Deeply stupid, and not the good kind of stupid that the other Indy films were.

Iron Man: Deeply stupid, but completely magnificent. (Also has Suicidal Tendencies on the soundtrack, which is always a good thing.)

Stop-frame animation taken to ridiculous lengths.

Hello Internet! How have you been these many months? (I have mostly been chained to a desk in a nuclear-white-walled office, seeing how long a human body can survive on a diet of tea and greasy take-out food, thanks for asking.)

Before I go back to that grand experiment in anti-socialization, I will point you in the direction of Weezer’s new video made up entirely of YouTube memes. (On YouTube, of course.)

A tiny little earthquake hits the country, and Britain springs into action to claim the dubious distinction of being even wussier than California.

The insurance industry is already covering its collective arse.

The populous overreacts somewhat.

Delicious cognitive dissonance upon seeing the word “epicentre” used to describe small-town Lincolnshire.

Quotes like “Student David Bates, 19, suffered a broken pelvis when he was pinned under masonry in his attic bedroom[...]“ just beg for elaboration.

People are already freaking out about potential aftershocks.

In summary: Britain is frustratingly mediocre. Who knows what we’ll do when London finally slips under the waves.

Superficial. A 2004 work by Michel de Broin. Hopefully well signposted as Art, lest ramblers think they’ve been caught by a Predator.

My god, it’s full of starsbeers.

Via Kung Fu Grippe: YouTube vids of Hüsker Dü playing at the Camden Ballroom (now Koko)

Just… completely magnificent. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

WANT!

“The flat occupies part of the shared top floor of an existing Victorian mansion block. Our proposal extended the flat into the unused loft space above, creating a new bedroom level and increasing the floor area of the flat by approximately one third. We created a ’secret’ staircase, hidden from the main reception room, to access a new loft bedroom lit by roof lights. Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books.”

I have no excuse for this, other than multi-layer parallax scrolling being the first “oh wow, new and shiny” bit of computer game tech I remember as a young ‘un.

So, with that in mind, go to this site and start resizing your browser window.

(And try to ignore the fact that it’s impossible to work out what the site is actually for, and that it’s taken the web 17 years to catch up with the Amiga.)