Archive for June, 2006
One more from the archives: one of the Net’s best sites
I’m not always nasty about sites…
“There is a lot of blood in a human,” writes Rob Cockerham. “But not a huge, gruesome lake of blood. Just a small red pool.”
Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com is interested in the big questions. Questions such as, how much fizz is inside a bottle of Coca-Cola? How much foam is inside a can of shaving cream? How much is inside… things? Since 1998, he has devoted far too much of his time to finding out.
“How much is inside one of those 40′ shipping containers?” Cockerham muses. “No-one knows, because they are always sealed shut.” Armed with a tape measure and some equally demented friends, Cockerham discovers that one shipping container can hold 2261 cubic litres. “Thinking of importing some exotic Marlboro cigarettes? One 40′ container can hold 55,511 cartons of filtered cigarettes!” he exclaims. “That is eleven million cigarettes, enough to give a post-coital smoke to every adult in the Netherlands… hooray for shipping containers!”
Most of Cockerham’s experiments are cheap to carry out, but occasionally he decides to explore more expensive avenues. “A typical episode of How Much is Inside costs less than US$10, but testing a black print cartridge was going to cost $32,” he recalls. “So I appealed to cockeyed.com fans to contribute to the cause. Within two weeks, I had $3.”
Luckily for science, a fan of the site stepped in with the remaining 29 dollars and Cockerham was able to discover how much stuff is inside a black printer cartridge. “I was already busy collecting the images I wanted to print,” he says. “A wide variety of porn!” Suitably equipped with dodgy downloads, Cockerham began printing - although he did pause to ponder what the Nobel Prize committee might make of his experimental approach. After a brush with disaster that meant the entire experiment had to be restarted and the pornographic pictures reprinted, Cockerham finally had an answer. “A black printer cartridge contains ì146 printouts at 8×10 inches - or the equivalent of a two-year subscription to ASSES.”
In addition to his How much is Inside? investigations, Cockerham also attempts to expand human knowledge in other ways - for example by attempting to create fire without matches, building coffins for cats or creating “ordinary junk any moron could slap together”. He’s wasted an incredible amount of time on these completely pointless pursuits, and by putting them on the Internet he’s ensured that we can waste an incredible amount of our employers’ time on them too.
More archive silliness: God’s other cartoonist
Most fighter pilots’ careers are fairly predictable: after a spell in the military they move into commercial aviation, or perhaps swap piloting planes for piloting a desk. However, Larry Van Pelt has taken a different road: with years of flying experience (including a spell as a test pilot) under his belt, he decided to spend his time drawing pictures of Jesus. More specifically, pictures of Jesus hovering over people’s shoulders and having a good nosey.
It’s all God’s idea, as Van Pelt recalls. “I was awakened in the middle of the night with a clear, vivid impression that the Lord wanted me to do some special drawings — drawings depicting ordinary people in their everyday environment — with one important addition: the presence of Jesus Christ and His involvement in those routine activities.”
As Van Pelt explains, “I had never drawn anything before, had no training in drawing, and had never really been interested in drawing.” After a spell being taught by a missionary, he honed his new-found drawing skills by practicing “the drawing of wild animals and Christmas cards.”
Eventually he felt confident enough to start his project. “After completing nearly twenty drawings, the time arrived for the crucial task of including an image of Jesus in the drawings,” Van Pelt Recalls. “A search for a suitable model to represent Jesus resulted in the selection of a young man who happened to be 33 years old! (the supposed age of Jesus at the end of His earthly ministry); had the length of hair and other physical characteristics often associated with images of Jesus; was willing to grow a beard; and, most importantly, was a devoted Christian.”
Van Pelt can certainly draw, but we’re not convinced that his drawings depict what he intends them to depict. The Guitarist picture seems to show a deformed member of Status Quo being beamed at by Yasser Arafat; The Student depicts a Bee Gee reading over a scholar’s shoulder, and if we were shown The Forest Ranger and asked to predict what happened next, we’d suggest that the titular ranger was about to be goosed by Badly Drawn Boy. Meanwhile the Golfer image seems to show the Son of God buried up to his knees in a sandpit.
The objective of the drawings is to “help Christians everywhere visualize the reality of Jesus’ presence in their lives at all times, particularly during those everyday tasks where we spend most of our time,” explains Van Pelt. “My hope is you will find that inspiration as you view the enclosed prints.” They certainly inspired us, although we suspect that adding irreverent captions to the images wasn’t quite what Van Pelt had in mind.
Slagging off Jack Chick
More from the archives:
Cartoonists have brought us many wonderful things: superheroes and super villains, pets smashing each other with frying pans, and people who turn green when they’re angry. However, Jack Chick cares not for these things; instead, he wants to save us all from eternal damnation with his magic cartoon power.
He means it, too. After publishing his first collection of sketches, he spotted a group of teenagers hanging around with nothing to do. “I didn’t like teenagers or their rebellion,” he recalls. “But, all of a sudden, the power of God hit me and my heart broke and I was overcome with the realization that these teens were probably on their way to Hell.” Only one thing could save them: rubbish po-faced cartoons about God and stuff! “With tears pouring down my face, I pulled my car off the road and wrote as fast as I could,” Chick says. “God poured the story into my mind.”
And what stories! Evil rock bands turn innocent kids into agents of Satan by singing “we’re gonna rock! Rock! Rock with the rock!”, teachers attempt to brainwash kids with facts and science, and everybody’s just gagging for a bit of Gospel.
It’s gripping stuff - just check out The Accident (”When a priceless carpet is permanently stained, its owner learns that only Jesus’ blood can remove the stain of sin”) or Titanic (”Chester thought he didn’t need God. But when the ship began to sink, he learned how wrong he was” - wouldn’t a lifeboat have been more useful?). But our favourite is The Sissy: “Duke thought Jesus was a sissy, until a trucker explained to him the horrible price Jesus paid so his sins could be forgiven. Then Duke saw that Jesus had more guts than anyone who ever lived. Great for truckers and bikers!”
Of course, Chick isn’t interested in preaching to the converted. He suggests that you should give his tracts “to people you meet each day. They will often thank you for it!” We thought that was a great idea, so we headed for the local biker hangout and distributed copies of The Sissy. We’re pretty sure the bikers were impressed: beating us senseless was just their way of saying thanks.
Arse malarkey
Ah, the things you find when you’re tidying up your hard disk. Back in 2002 I took the mickey out of various daft Web things for The Friday Thing, and while most of the sites I wrote about are long gone, some still survive - including this excellent cure for depression:
Web Celeb: Hiroyuki Nishigaki
Unlike most of our Web Celebs, Nishigaki’s Web site isnít the source of our mirth: we prefer the page on Amazon.com where you can buy his book. And no wonder: Nishigaki’s book promises to beat depression through the medium of anus constriction.No, we’re not making this up. The book - How to Beat Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? - exists, and it’s currently sitting at number 33,709 in Amazon’s sales chart.
Rather than paraphrase Nishigaki’s description of his tome, we’ll let the author speak for himself. “I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth,” he writes. “You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known a 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has a good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make #### three times in succession without drawing out.”
Yes, we’re wondering what #### means too. We think it might be something to do with sex. “He also can have burned a strong, beautiful fire within his abdomen,” writes Nishigaki. “It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention, which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.”
Amazingly, people have shelled out hard-earned cash on Nishigaki’s epic - and not all of them are pleased with their purchase. David Emory is far from happy. “I am afraid I must chime in and say that I didn’t find this book very helpful,” he writes. “It was recommended by my doctor, whom I now regard as somewhat of a quack. One of the more ludicrous claims the books makes is that constricting one’s anus _more_ than the 100 times per day recommended is not suggested and can lead to health problems. I can say with absolute assurance (pardon the pun… continuing) that constricting the anal muscles MANY more times than simply one hundred times daily has had no adverse effect on me whatsoever. In fact, I’m constricting it right now as I write this, and I’ve been doing it all day, almost non-stop. Certainly totalling upwards of 1000 times.”
Most readers’ comments are positive, though. “I just recieved this book not a week ago, and man! are my buns feeling great,” writes Will. “My life has been given a good jumpstart. I feel like the good old captian [sic] Buns O’ Steel himself!”
Nishigaki explains: “If you don’t know concentration, which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like hell.” Or as reader Joshua Beall puts it, “You probably have to be a little warped to buy this book.”
Ripping CDs to iPods is illegal, says BPI boss. No it isn’t, says BPI boss.
Q: Do you believe people who are buying CDs legally and copying that music to an iPod should be punished - as they are, in fact, breaking the law?
A: Consumers don’t have the right to copy CDs in the UK and never have…
BPI boss Peter Jamieson speaks to BBC online, January 2006.
On a separate issue, the BPI’s chairman, Peter Jamieson, reassured the public that they were not breaking the law by copying their own CDs to iPods.
The Guardian, this morning.
You don’t need to spend a fortune on Word
As I mentioned yesterday, I was a guest on Edinburgh’s Talk 107 radio station to talk about piracy and things like that. I ended up in a (good-natured) argument with the presenter about software piracy, and he argued that people pirate Word because they need Word. It’s become the de facto standard for documents, so if you want to read ‘em you need the software.
Of course, the whole point of talk radio presenters is to wind up people and say “bad” things, but it’s an attitude that I’ve come across quite a lot. I do think the “must have Word” attitude is quite pervasive, but you don’t have to spend a fortune on Microsoft’s flagship to read Word documents. In some cases you can get Word for free; in others, there are cheap and free alternatives. Here’s a few:
- Get it for free with your new PC. Most big-name firms bundle Works with their PCs, and Works includes Word.
- Works itself’s around £50 if you shop around.
- Ability Office is an excellent Office clone, and the cheapest version is £29.99.
- ThinkFree Office has a free online version. It’s another Office-a-like and it’s quite nifty.
- OpenOffice.org is a fully-featured, free office suite, and there’s a stand-alone download for £30ish.
- Writely.com is a basic Word-a-like that runs in your Web browser. It’s free (and the block on new sign-ups has been lifted).
And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Google Spreadsheets: so what?
Michael at TechCrunch is clearly in a bad mood, but he’s bang on the money:
After I wrote about the launch of Google Spreadsheets this morning, one commenter said “Its very nice and sleak. Will be very useful for keeping track of money etc”, as if this was the first spreadsheet he’d ever seen. Some of the other comments were also overly effusive…
What drives this kind of blind enthusiasm? When is the last time Google released a product that really changed our lives? For me, it was (and is) their core search engine. And I do appreciate the POP access to Gmail (this was the one thing that converted me from hotmail for personal email). Everything since has been, well, somewhat underwhelming.
I think he’s right: Google search is ace, Google Notebook is a useful utility, and I quite like GMail (but not so much that I’d use it for my main email account), but everything else it’s done recently has been okay rather than OMG. Picasa was nifty when it first came out, but the latest iteration of Flickr is miles better (and on the Mac, iPhoto’s still the program to beat). Pages is GeoCities for the 21st Century, Google Talk is just a chat system, Blogger feels as if it’s stuck in a timewarp, Google Desktop is Yet Another Desktop Search program with added widgets, and so on.
As Michael puts it:
Google-love is getting out of hand.
That Girls Aloud live review I promised
It isn’t easy being 33 - or at least, it isn’t when you love Girls Aloud. I don’t mean “love” in an ironic, aren’t-I-amusing kind of way; I mean “love” because Girls Aloud make music that makes me want to dance like a chicken. I mean “love” as in, “I love the album so much I’m willing to be gouged for tickets, spend an evening in a soulless shed and develop severe back pain from crouching down so I don’t block the view of the kiddies behind me”. That’s love, and it means spending entire evenings feeling like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon 2. At 33, I am clearly getting too old for this shit.
I get the first blast of too-oldism when I pass the merchandise stall, see a few harried dads handing over fistfuls of tenners, and do a quick mental calculation: one dad plus two kids equals three tickets, two t-shirts, two programmes and no doubt lashings of fizzy pop. £150, easy, or even more if dad wasn’t fast enough and had to buy his tickets from eBay.
The second bit of too-oldism occurs when I’m waiting for the band to come on. It’s a typical arena gig, with big screens at the side of the stage so those in the back rows can see… the ads? When did gigs start including ads? Join the support band’s fanclub! Download ringtones! Buy Impulse deodorant! What the fuck?
The third Danny Glover moment is when the Girls finally appear on stage. As a red-blooded bloke I’m looking forward to seeing the Girls in various states of undress - which is, let’s be honest, why I’m at the gig rather than listening to the album on headphones and thinking things my wife would batter me senseless for thinking. But when they arrive on stage I’m thinking food, not rude.
There are three kinds of thin. There’s thin, there’s far too thin, and there’s holy-crap-someone-give-that-girl-a-cornish-pastie thin. Girls Aloud have moved decisively into that third category, and as the outfits get more skimpy the more obvious the lack of calories becomes. Instead of fantasising about Nadine, Nicola and a big tub of baby oil I’m thinking about giving them a good hearty meal, and possibly dessert too. Needless to say, that worries me immensely.
As for the tunes… well, they played the good ones, and they played the bad, dirgey ones too. They also did a horrific, karaoke-style medley of various eighties movie tunes (Footloose, Fame, the sort of things you’d expect), and an inspired, happy-clappy version of Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict A Riot (last pop gig I was at, Sugababes did an Arctic Monkeys song. Maybe there’s a new EU regulation that means all pop bands need to do a Slightly Surprising Indie Cover).
Overall? The sound was awesomely bad, the dancing was endearingly amateurish, the between-songs banter was impressively inane and Nicola - the One Who Never Smiles - looked like a gin-soaked auntie throughout. Not the best gig I’ve ever been to, or even in the top ten (Sugababes were miles better, and it’s hard to top Muse for sheer live silliness), but you know what love’s like: if Girls Aloud tour in 2007, I’ll be first in the queue for tickets.
On the radio
If you’re in the Edinburgh area (or bored in front of a PC) I’ll be on Talk 107 this afternoon (2.15pm, ish) to blather on about DVD piracy, copy protection and that sort of thing.
Don’t put jokes in your first draft…
…if you’re sending a document into the wider world, or Sod’s Law dictates that you’ll forget to take it out. Just ask Greenpeace:
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: “In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].”
Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?
The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.