Category: Uncategorised

  • iDolatry

    As much as I hate the iPod hype, it’s impossible to spend any time with an iPod and not come to the conclusion that it’s a fantastic bit of design, particularly if you don’t think about the unimpressive battery life. I wasn’t too keen on the iPod Mini, though; it looks a bit Toytown in…

  • The Matrix, with puppets

    Ageowns has created a short clip that combines The Matrix with puppets. I love the Internet.

  • Games and violence, again

    The Register reports that in the “murder by Manhunt” case, it turns out that the game was owned by the victim, not the murderer. Somehow I doubt you’ll see that on the front page of the Daily Mail this morning.

  • When technology attacks

    Previous versions of my site included an article about repetitive strain injury (RSI), and I’ve just realised that the move to a Blogger-based format means the article has disappeared. So here it is in all its glory: it was written in a rush so the grammar and spelling may not be up to my usual…

  • What the Dickens (again)?

    Today’s crop of wonderful spam-senders’ names: Delving E. Snapshots Hobgoblins P. Maturest Nincompoops R. Intimacy and Tubeless A. Saloons

  • The new Empire

    I’m starting to wonder if every news story about a magazine redesign is nonsense: first Q’s rebranding as a download magazine didn’t happen, and now the new-look, repositioned-as-a-lifestyle-magazine version of Empire is basically Empire in a nicer layout. To be fair, it’s gorgeous inside – the art bods have done a stunning job, there’s some…

  • The Apple lifecycle

    One for the Mac geeks: a very funny description of how the Apple hype machine works. “Eager Mac-heads fan the flames by flooding the Mac discussion forums with more groundless conjecture. Threads pop up around feature wish lists, favorite colors, and likely retail price points. In a matter of days, a third-hand, unsubstantiated rumor blossoms…

  • The latest gaming controversy

    An interesting article in today’s Scotsman says that the mother of 14-year-old murder victim Stefan Pakeerah ‘claimed her son’s “inherently evil” murderer was “obsessed” with the game [Manhunt] and called for it to be banned’. Further down the article, we get the full quote: “I think that I heard some of Warren’s friends say that…

  • Amazon vs Anonymous

    A few months back we ran a story in .net (“Trust No One”) about the ways in which people abused shopping sites, message boards and other public areas: writers reviewing their own books and slagging their literary rivals, record company street teams pretending to be normal people to plug albums, and so on. Today’s Media…

  • Scotland’s population timebomb

    Here’s one for the asylum scaremongers: The Herald reports that if current immigration rates stay constant, Scotland’s population will still plummet by half a million between now and 2042. That’s a pretty significant drop for a country of around four and a half million people, and it has serious implications for the Scottish economy: a…