6-Face Fun Time

Here's a nice video by Rinpa Eshidan. I'm always impressed by people who conceive of things like this. Even more impressed when they actually do it :-)

If I did a time lapse video doodah, it would totally be about a cable trying to find a hole to plug into. On his voyage of discovery, he'd fall in love with an effects pedal and they'd have kids. In the end the whole family would settle down on a pedalboard. Or something.

Via Coilhouse.

Waveform is analogue

This is rather neat - an analogue representation of digital waveform editing, in the form of "how to make that Prodigy song":

Helps if you have the sound on :-)

I love all this "writing on things in your house" stuff. Reminds me of this.

An Awful Book

Delightful bit of writing on this dressmaking book of Deb's:

Charming and inviting. From 1965, dontcha know? 3 and 6, and worth every penny.

Inside there's a useful glossary, which reveals to me an entirely new meaning for the verb "baste", and has some nice things to say out loud, like "blind hem," "notches," and "catch stitch." Go on, say them now. Now! Feels GREAT doesn't it?

Also: "Bodge". There's one I haven't heard in a while.

In-trays and postcards

Here's a good one for everyone in England enjoying the postal strike.

Debs heard a thing on Radio 4 a few months ago which told a wonderful story about a man who would go to work in the morning, check the contents of his in-tray (probably while smoking a pipe), and then, having gauged the amount of work he had to do that day, send a postcard to his wife letting her know what time he would be home for tea.

How very civilized.

But for all that we have lost... how much we have gained :-)

Here are all the wires...

This explains everything!

Via Bonerparty.

Ad bash

Let's mock some adverts. Sorry if this is boring to people who don't get British TV... actually no, I'm not sorry at all.

1. 8x the size. Could be "8 weeks worth of stuff", not sure, can't remember

No idea what brand this advert was for (FAIL!) but the premise is something like "What if you had to buy 8 weeks worth of stuff in one go?". Not a particularly daunting idea, really, especially since the first product they use to illustrate this ghastly scenario is a gigantic tube of toothpaste - like 2 metres long or so.

Toothpaste.

A product you use maybe 3g of per day. I don't know about you, but a tube of toothpaste 2m long would probably last me a decade. I can proudly boast that a standard tube easily lasts me eight weeks.

How come the agency was allowed to get away with this?? Who is the client? How come I can't find any pix or videos to illustrate my frustration? Why are you all looking at me like that? IT'S AN INCREDIBLY ANNOYING ADVERT!

2. Dulux - What would you change?

I dunno, it's something about the link between colour and emotion, so therefore... buy paint!

Except that even after the crying woman has had her room repainted (probably by her henpecked husband who we never actually see - I suspect he's down the pub by now) - even after that, and even though by the end of the ad her mouth is smiling, she still has a look of such empty desperation in her eyes, plus that apologetic little mouth motion... hot damn, it makes me want to adopt an abused puppy to redress the balance of good and evil in the world.

This execution FAIL is the most horrific thing I've seen in ages. Conspackulations, Dulux!

3. Glade's "I want to do a poo at Paul's" abomination

I know this was invented by the Germans or something, cos it looks funny and is clearly dubbed, but even they should have realised that children don't give a fig what a bathroom smells like after they've relieved themselves. Concept FAIL.

Even so, a lit match is a far more pleasant solution than some airborne chemical stink. Product FAIL.

DOUBLE FAIL!

Plenty more where this came from, if I can be bothered. In case you can't wait, read this neverending thread of other people letting off steam about dreadful TV commercials.

Copyright and ownership

All right, here’s question for all the millions of copyright lawyers who regularly read this: Let’s say I’ve downloaded a full TV series from a filesharing site or via a torrent service.

Illegal, right?

But what if that series has already been shown on a TV channel that I pay for? I could have recorded all the shows, then converted them into digital files before putting them on my hard drive… ended up in the same place I am now - and been completely within my rights.

So what’s the difference? Isn't downloading simply a more convenient way of getting hold of media I have already paid for?

The same thing applies to albums I own on vinyl. I could spend a couple of hours recording, chopping and converting my LP into MP3s, or just download them in a fraction of the time.

But since I already own the songs, what’s the difference?

For me, there is none - morally. If there is a legal difference, it surely only exists to protect the interests of media and music companies, who want us to pay several times over to get the same thing in different formats.

Bullshit, right?

I await the comments of my learned friends with scarcely concealed excitement.

Barbershops of the World - Extra

Poland! I went there with Debs. And because we were going to the wedding of some friends we met while travelling, I seized the chance to resurrect the popular Barbershops of the World feature from our travel blog. That way I would look all smart for the big occasion, and also publish something exciting here.

It went mostly according to plan.

Having spent hours wandering around Praga - the hip/upcoming/creative bit of Warsaw - and finding nothing suitable, we spotted a cute little shop in the cab on the way back to the fancy schmancy Old Town.

We had to wait for his 90 minute lunch break to finish, then at 3 o'clock we waltzed in, slightly startling the elderly barber, Tadeus. We had a quick chat - him in Polish, me in half Russian half Polish - and came up with a plan. Grade 2 on my head, grade 1 on my face. Simple! Or so I thought.

It's part of the rules not to interfere once Mr Scissors has started work. Debs doesn't understand why, and neither do I, but it's just more fun like that. So I sat back and enjoyed as his crazy, shaky hands proceeded to skin my head at about grade 1, then wave the clippers over my cheeks and chin, achieving a very patchy grade 1-and-a-halfish.

He also nicked me just behind my left ear with the cut-throat. At least it had been nicely sterilised by dipping it into a pot of... stuff beforehand. Er...

I left with a neat and tidy head, but giant fluffy patches all over my face. Not the greatest cut in the world, but quite amusing nonetheless. He also loses points for not making use of that rotary "Barber's Stool" device which is attached to my chair in the above pic.

Cost PZL30 (EUR 6)

Cut quality 5/10

Fear factor 4 - shaky hands razor man

And as usual I left with little bits of hair all over my clothes. It always happens, no matter how tight the cape is around my neck. Debs reckons it's because they use the same brush on everyone, thus depositing as many bits of hair as they manage to remove. Smart barbers might like to try a hairdryer, instead.

Diary of a Grinder

I know, I know, nothing for 3 weeks, then 2 blogs come along at once.

If you're really bothered about getting regular, small doses of blenchtext, get onto my twitstream.

Which is what I'm writing about here: that is, I'm recommending Diary of a Grinder to you.
It's a twitter novella, apparently written by a recently bereaved man on the verge of marital collapse who, in his time of need, discovers the joys of grinding everyday articles into powder.

Sample tweet:

"Feel so satisfied. Drunk whole bottle of port. Ground empty bottle. 22 secs. V good."

So far he's lost his job, and his wife only shows up to shake her head disapprovingly, cry and leave again.

More time for grinding!

Check him out on the all new face of internet excitement that is Twitter.

Bastard's got more followers than me and I've been doing this for about 2 and a half years. What a rotten swizz.

I'm assuming the grinder in question is something like the one pictured above, and not one of these designer "spiceboy" devices. I still have a sore thumb from using this to grind 2 tablespoons of cumin a full 2 weeks ago.

No chance of doing a bottle of port in this. No way.

Under Armour 11

<Alan Partridge>And another!</Alan Partridge>

This tasty site promoting Under Armour's new soccer boots has just gone live today. This is the most fun project I've been involved with so far in my glittering career.

I spent a couple of weeks working with the Perfect Fools in Amsterdam, hanging around at the Amsterdamsche Football Club, meeting and interviewing the players, eating cheese toasties and fending off rude comments from the French dudes about my (tatty) ski-jacket...

And then I sat in front of my keyboard and wrote a load of stuff about football boots, the players themselves, and translated some French (and some Scottish) for video subtitles... et voilà!

The centrepiece of the experience for me is the tidy, full-screen videos. Here's one now (obviously not at full-screen res though innit):

As usual with a Perfect Fools production, there are some lovely details. The Keepy-up game during the preloader is sweet, the Flash mini-games they use to illustrate the boots' features are cute, and they get the simple syndication thing right too - embedding the above video was 3-clicks easy.

<Alan Partridge>Eat my goal!</Alan Partridge>