When I was at a school we ‘learnt’ about magnetic fields in what felt like hundreds of physics lessons. We’d be given a load of iron filings and some magnets and make a great big grey mess of the science labs. People would try and wash the filings off with tap water, which didn’t work and so every desk was wet and metally. I’m not sure what it taught me, a visualisation like this excellent video may have helped a little more (or even explained why my massive speakers do funny things to my monitor):
I watched the Macworld Live stream last year. I just like seeing a load of shiny stuff I can’t afford, basically. So I tuned in this year to catch some shock news, which turned out to be a fiction created by those pranksters from the place which we dare not speak.
4chan Vs MacRumours
Someone tried to do something on the internet without involving 4chan. WHEN WILL WE LEARN?
It seems rampant right now. Lots of speak about of account hacking and all sorts of nastyness. Perhaps this is why twitter needs a proper API key system? Flickr has one and that’s usually pretty safe. People seem perfectly happy just to give away their twitter username and password to any site or firefox plug-in (some of these are almost adware) asking for it! My advice is don’t! As with all great ‘web2.0′ *spit* apps, Twitters strength lies in its expandability and openness, but I think more work needs doing to get a secure, working, framework in place.
Still, at least there is a comedy upside (thanks to a thousand twitterers for re-tweeting this).
Happy new year! Lets start with something predictable. Anne Coulter, the blonde Fox News Sturmführer, has a new book and she’s already being such an unbelievable bitch about new first lady, Michelle Obama. From the Daily News:
Coulter wrote, “Her obvious imitation of Jackie O’s style - the flipped-under hair, the sleeveless A-line dresses, the short strands of fake pearls - would have been laughable if done by anyone other than a media-designated saint.”
Coulter said Cindy McCain, the wife of vanquished GOP nominee John McCain, “dressed well without freakishly imitating famous First Ladies in history.”
I found this amusing for two reasons; Firstly, Jackie dressed exactly how a first lady should. Any emulation of her look is common-sense for any woman lucky enough to be able to pull it off (read: not the Bush wives). Secondly, Cindy McCain? Well dressed?
A 'well dressed' Cindy McCain
I can’t remember if that was before or after she stopped playing with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Yup; lets hope Coulter gets that jaw un-wired again and we can enjoy her dropping bitchy lol-bombs well after the inauguration.
Channel 4 are courting controversy as usual and are letting the President of Iran take the reigns of their ‘Alternative Christmas Message’. I usually don’t watch the Queens message (because I know what she’s going to say anyway), but I think I’ll be watching this. I’ve not heard much from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since Obama won the election. Although Obama isn’t exactly going soft on Iran, he doesn’t seem to be partaking in any G. W. Bush-style goading of the Iranians. So if Ahmadinejad mentions anything about his new less-threatening counter-part, it could be quite interesting.
We never get to hear Iranian politicians without it going through some pretty heavy filtering. Remember the “Israel must be wiped off the map” ‘translation‘ in the Western media? I’m no fan of Ahmadinejad’s often frankly dickish behaviour, but an appearance like this on Western TV is definitely a must watch for anyone interested in the nonsensical ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East
A Battle of Hoth Lego diorama is the next logical step from this previous blog post I suppose. Unless of course you think the idea of a Rebel offensive makes it more likely that this defensive battle is a step backwards. Chronologically. I’ve said too much.
Lego Hoth
Feat. AT-ATs, Snowspeeders and the usual Millennium falcon. LEDs provide some atmospheric lighting. The whole set of picture can be seen on the builders flickr account. Once again; nerdgasm.
The worlds most universally hated man and serial bastard, President George Bush, has a dog called Barney. Barney has stared in many of his own videos and this Christmas is no exception. The reason for Barney taking such a role at Christmas is probably because despite his support of the war and attacking journos, he’s probably the least unpopular living entity in the Whitehouse.
His latest video is painful, obviously. It’s nice to see the Bush twins in a less slutty pose for a change. Watching the Bush family ‘interact’ is undoubtedly cringe worthy but like all good train-wrecks, you’ve got to watch.
Barney and the Bush family; Maybe a white fluffy cat would be more fitting.
The thing that disappoints me, as a non-American, is that the production of the video is actually rather good. Well; not ‘telly good’ (maybe ITV), but Barney the dog receives definitely better video production than most of our British politicians.
Part of a new series courtesy of my insatiable hardware buying thirst. Did I spend too long looking through science text books at school? I feel a meme coming on.
This 1st post on the new (and absolutely superb) Wordpress 2.7 is brought to you by the Beavis and Butthead part of my brain. Thank you.
Remember when the statue of Saddam fell and everyone set about it with their shoes? It was then that I learnt that a shoe to the face is pretty much the greatest insult one Arab can give another. Well; at a recent press-contest an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at Bush. He almost got him in the face. It’s a pity Bush dodged, because then he could have said he had at least sacrificed something in the war on terror / Iraq / anyone who looks at us funny. Still, it was a pretty good throw (non of this under-arm nonsense) so full credit to the guy.
Apparently the reporter shouted, “This is a fairwell kiss, you dog” before he probably got the secret-service ass-kicking of his life. Apparently Dana Perino White House Press Secretary / presidential eye candy Dana Perino came away with a black eye in the scuffle. Lets hope at least she passes that message on.
I don’t know if it needs making clear how Iraqis feel about the current (but not for long, thank god) president but you never know, we might see Obama wearing an anti-hush puppies flak vest. For the comments section: If you could have any footwear thrown at you, what would it be?
This is possibly not exactly what you’re thinking. This is ‘hack’ to improve, not destroy. Why haven’t we done this before?
Government isn’t very good at computers. They spend millions to produce mediocre websites, hide away really useful public information and generally get it wrong. Which is a shame.
Calling all people who make things. We’re going to show them how it’s done.
They’re completely right of course. Government currently are a bit of a joke on the web. Especially local Government. Just look my own councils awful awful website. Call that navigation? “Widescreen”? wtf? I’m not sure about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if rewiredstate.com was the gang at TheyWorkForYou, simply because I know they are very much on the ball when it comes to the web and politics in Britain. The web is a great way to share information that should be available to the public. Doing that only strengthens democracy and increases citizen interac…. oh why the hell am I saying this? They know that. We know that. Lets hope someone does something about it.
I personally feel that when large companies get involved with the Government and computers then it almost always ends in unmitigated disaster (see; NHS). Maybe if APIs are created, access is encouraged (or even allowed), OpenSource is utilised and work is done by designers and developers on a volunteer/small agency basis, then we’d see a lot more useful stuff. Well, a lot more usable stuff anyway and certainly a lot less waste. I’ve signed up. Lets hope this flourishes.
We’ve all heard how Apple try and make it sound like they actually give a damn about the environment, and we listen. Then we feel slightly less bad about replacing our iPhone after a few months of use. There is plenty of reading regarding shipping material waste and Apple, but it’s still nice to see them in action, like when this box turned up at work this week:
True, we bought it from Amazon so I think they’re probably to blame as well, but don’t big companies work together on shipment policies? Amazon would be in trouble if they started shipping out iPods in egg-boxes, so why not if they do dumb things like shipping tiny items in massive boxes? I won’t even get into how it’s stupid that we even needed a new monitor adaptor in the first place. It seems to be Apple-specific and unlike the video connections to any other non-fruit-based computer I’ve seen.
...to devolute.net. This is the webpage of Ian Parr; a UK based web designer.
About me
I enjoy the ramblings of MES, the color blue and people who move their hands around too much when they talk. I read the Guardian, go to gigs and play music on my record player. My interests include design and the comedy of Armando Iannucci.
Visit the about page to find more about me and this page or the work section to view a growing portfolio.
