The Rube Goldberg site is full of awesomeness just like this…I do enjoy these 🙂
August: A dotcom movie
I’m a huge movie fan but this is my 1st blog post about one…not sure why and I’m not sure how it’ll go!
I’ve just watched “August”-a 2008 Josh Hartnett film that looks at the dotcom bubble and overall-I think it’s pretty good. I skipped most of the bits about relationships but Josh Hartnett gives a great performance that makes the film dynamic, enjoyable and watchable…which is what you want from a film is it not?! Some great “start up founder-not acting like everyone else does in the boardroom whilst wearing a t-shirt” 90’s bubble style stuff going on 😉
If that isn’t enough-our good old friend David Bowie makes an appearance which is great as always.
It’s also got some real world tech presence with:
Ron Insana – CNBC Senior Analyst
Jason Calcanis – Entrepreneur/Blogger/Mahalo man
Buzzword quote of the year goes to:
“You want bleeding edge, mission critical, cross-platform, robust, scalable architectures…?”
It isn’t the best film ever made, but it’s definitely worth a watch-so go find it!
If you’ve got an unlimited subscription to Lovefilm (so you can watch stuff online) and you take a short (2 mins) Dell survey-you can watch it on there…that’s how I did it. Plus you might win a laptop! It might be possible to watch it online without taking the survey-I haven’t checked…
Wordle
I’ve just made my first Wordle-it’s something I’ve seen around the net on various occasions but have only just got round to playing with…don’t ask me why!
Here’s a Wordle of this very blog:
I think this is an excellent idea and I’m now trying to think of ways to include these as much as possible at work 🙂
Dictionaraoke
Haha, I’ve just stumbled across this online and it’s pretty awesome…it’s classic hits performed by online talking dictionaries 🙂
Black Sabbath’s “IronMan” is particularly excellent-go check them out at:
http://www.archive.org/details/dictionaraoke
Admittedly some of them are more noise than anything, but the one’s that work definitely work in my opinion 😉
First Look at DJ Hero
When I first heard that DJ Hero was a reality, I was excited…then convinced it would be pretty sucky and no good…however, I’ve just watched a first look video that Gizmodo have here and it looks awesome!!! 🙂
One thing I didn’t realise is that it DOES have a cross fader-which is excellent and certainly adds an air of realism I wasn’t expecting. I used to have some decks when I was younger and am a fan of mixing, scratching etc in general so this, if done well, will be right up my street.
One thing I wonder-will you be able to link DJ Hero & Guitar Hero?! 🙂
*Update* Wikipedia tells me that:
“Ten songs have been specially mixed to also support gameplay with Guitar Hero and other compatible guitar controllers in a “DJ vs Guitar” mode. Players can also use a microphone for a non-scoring addition to the mix…”
The individual songs themselves have been pulled from a large number of music genres, including grunge, soul, R&B, techno, hip hop, and house. The mixes listed below have been confirmed to be in the game. Additionally, the songs “The Way You Move” by Outkast, “Hip Hop” by Dead Prez and additional songs from 50 Cent, Justice, N.E.R.D., Beck, and Blondie are confirmed to be in the game. In addition to mixes using individual songs from both Eminem and Jay-Z, including Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”, there will be a Eminem/Jay-Z mix song. Eminem also stated that he will have additional songs included later in the year as downloadable content for the game. Universal Music Group is providing much of the content for the game.
Song 1 title  |
Artist 1 |
Song 2 title |
Artist 2 |
Mix Artist |
Guitar part? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| “Feel Good Inc.“ | Gorillaz | “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” | Marvin Gaye | No | |
| “Bustin’ Loose” | Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers | “Time of the Season“ | The Zombies | DJ Shadow | No |
| “Let’s Dance“ | David Bowie | “Jack Of Spades” | KRS One | DJ Shadow | No |
| “All Apologies“ | Nirvana | “Give It to Me Baby“ | Rick James | DJ Shadow | No |
| “Jayou” | Jurassic 5 | “Rockit“ | Herbie Hancock | No | |
| “Shout“ | Tears for Fears | “Pjanoo“ | Eric Prydz | No | |
| “Hollaback Girl“ | Gwen Stefani | “Give It to Me Baby“ | Rick James | No | |
| “Satisfaction“ | Benny Benassi | “Boom Boom Pow“ | Black Eyed Peas | No | |
| “Sabotage” | Beastie Boys | “Monkey Wrench“ | Foo Fighters | Yes |
We’re looking at an October 27th US release date so should be with us in the UK just in time for Xmas 🙂
Modern Day Samurai
This might be the most off topic thing I’ve posted on here so far but it’s awesome. This guy Isao Machii is a master of the sword-cutting string beans horizontally, slicing moving bullets in half and all sorts! Also, the “English Subtitles done by a Japanese speaker” are brilliant 🙂
I know every man and his dog has blogged about Twitter by now but I just want to do a quick post with my thoughts on the hottest Web 2.0 topic of the moment.
I took a while to get in to Twitter. I’d tried a few times but thought it was boring, pointless and vain and then around November 2008 I finally got it 🙂 I saw the potential within Twitter for increasing/creating business contacts as well as discovering and learning about new things-and that’s how I use it.
You may have seen my “Windows 7 Diary” on the MS Technet letter a few weeks back…I found out about that through Twitter. I’ve got the Royal Institute Xmas Lectures on DVD…got that through Twitter. Got an early invite to Spotify…through Twitter. There are plenty more. too. It’s also great for connecting with people for work (I follow, and am followed by, a number of MS people) and strengthening relationships etc. For things like this I think Twitter is great and invaluable but there are 2 things I don’t get at all:
1) Following “celebs” for the sake of it. These can be media celebs such as Stephen Fry, Wossy, Russell Brand, Lily Allen and the 100’s others and/or “web celebs” such as Scobelizer, Loic etc. I follow Mr Fry as his tweets are for the most part interesting and pertinent while most, if not all, other celebs are amazingly bland and boring; however they still have 1000’s/10,000’s of followers for no real reason. I found particularly “Wossy” was very boiring and irritating!
2) Tweeting about what you’re doing: doesn’t that mean you’re not doing it?! I often see tweets such as “Am having lovely meal with family-great night”…really? If it’s that good why have you got your phone out and started Tweeting? Surely if it was that good, you’d be too busy enjoying yourself?! Another one you see is “Am really enjoying being with the kids”…do the kids really enjoy watching you type?!
I don’t want to sound too militant about it but certainly number 2 really strikes me as being odd! That said it’s each to their own and Twitter is great 😉
Take screenshots on Windows Mobile
There have been quite a few occasions where I’ve wanted to screenshot something on my Windows Mobile device but I’ve always thought that to be impossible-how foolish I was it seems!
I found a great post from www.aboutonlinetips.com which lists 15 different free applications to do just that. You can find it here.
Microsoft Patent Milestone
Microsoft recently passed the 10,000 patents milestone and are now on 10,541 according to Gizmodo.
“Is that a lot or is that rubbish?” you ask, as did I. Well Apple have a mere 2541 patents in their name so 4 times that amount is pretty good going 🙂
However, IBM lead the field with a whopping 53,413 patents with 4000 of them in 2008 alone!
Geek Ties
I saw this post over at Geekologie and I have to admit, it is pretty cool…Geek Ties:
As you can see from the pic, there are 4 versions available:
- Space Invaders
- Asteroids
- Tetris
- Pong
and they’re all available from Amazon.com for $24.95 but I don’t know what the shipping will be! It doesn’t seem that Amazon.co.uk see them as viable items as I couldn’t find them earlier.
While I don’t think I could get away with wearing these in (most) meetings at work I could definitely wear them out and about as normal…
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 