Alien v.s Bread-eater!
I’ve just got back photos from a trip to London.
You’d think I would’ve noticed that when taking the shot.
Sloths…
Emos of the animal world.
Noooo! The Sky Kitten has returned!
Dear Gods! The vegetables are attacking!
Before he was famous,
Ghandi attacked Victorian London.
It’s covered up in the history books though.
She’s coming to destroy London!
And she’s chewing on Glinda, the Good Witch of the North!
Oh, and there’s loads of new puzzles over on http://www.StickScene.com too!
The most beautiful thing ever
It might not look like much, but that’s my thesis. It’s done!
I handed it in today, and I’m very pleased indeed.
Oh yes, and ‘Matazone’ is also now legally one of my middle names 🙂
Go me!
EDIT: In case you can’t read it, the title says ‘Hidden Cyberspace: Narrative and Identity in the Work of William Gibson’. That’s the final title that was settled on. I needed three copies for the examiners; it’s not in three volumes!
Specialist magazines…
There’s something for everyone these days…
Actually, that’s a StickScene puzzle. Click here to guess the film!
Photographic voyeurism
I can’t promise you won’t see anything you don’t like, but this page assembles a random selection of images posted on LiveJournal and provides an interesting moment’s browsing.
*head explodes from cuteness*
Now there’s a perfectly named website.
In other news, StickScene.com has over 120 puzzles on it now and it’s only been open the the public for less than a week!
Borges and the NSA
It’s been a big scandal that the NSA is illegally taping the conversations of several million Americans. It’s been denied that the project was so out of control, but it seems like every time the story is returned to that the numbers go up.
There is a writer called Borges who came up with some brilliant ideas in his stories, but the one that returns to me as being the most relevant on an everyday basis is about a king who wanted an accurate map. I heard this several years ago, so this is probably my spin on it, but it went something like this:
There once was a king that, when he was done with war and had conquered all he desired, wanted a map so he could see everything that he ruled over. His closest entourage are sent to make a map of his land. They bring it back to him and spread it over his table. He looks at the map, and sees that it is good, but it does not show all the streets of his city, so he asks for a better map.
More people are sent out to make a better map. Much time is spent on making an accurate map of the city and the land. When it is done they return to the king and spread it out over the floor, because it is now much bigger than the table. The king looks at the map and sees that it is good, but it does not show every building.
A huge amount of people are sent out to make a map of the land so accurate that it shows every building, every field, every stable, and every shed. After many years the map is done. They spread it out over the city, because the map is so large that it cannot fit inside the castle. The king sees that this is a very good map, but it does not show the rooms.
The whole country begins to make a map that is accurate to the last detail. Everything, every room, every table, every tree, is included. The country begins to crumble and the map expands until it covers the whole land. The country is engulfed in the map, and in places the map and the countryside cannot be told from each-other. The map is finally completely accurate, but the land has been destroyed.
The NSA seeks to build a map of the people, but they are getting so much information that it becomes meaningless. The detail with which they are now capable of looking at people means that they can no longer distinguish any patterns or purpose. Meanwhile, the land itself is changing and being destroyed by the processes that are needed to collect all the data.
Holly matrimony
My new website is ready! http://www.stickscene.com
Hi everyone!
Yes, it’s been quiet around here lately hasn’t it? I’ve got a few things going on:
I’m finishing my thesis on Monday next week
I’ve been putting the finishing touches on http://www.stickscene.com
I’ve got two clients’ websites to build
Yep, I’m definitely a busy bunny!
So, about the new site, the premise is that people have to guess the film/TV series name from a simplified version of a poster, DVD box art, or a scene. Have a look on there to see what’s been made so far to get the idea.
Currrently there are a couple of bits of coding to add, but I could do with more content so I’m hoping people on here might be able to help.
Basically, you create an account using the ‘join’ menu option, then you can use the ‘submit puzzle’ menu option to create new puzzles for the site. When you’re creating a new puzzle, please check the details on http://www.imdb.com !
The best system of making the pictures I’ve found so far is to put the original image on one layer and then draw lines and sample the colours on layers over it. Personally I use Flash to make the pictures, but I’ve seen ones made in Photoshop or even Micro$oft Paint!
Important bit:
ALL IMAGES CAN ONLY BE UPLOADED IN .JPG FORMAT! This is due to the code involved in the watermarking feature.
After you have had five images approved then you can add a picture to your profile, and after ten you can add a link to a website. This will appear under your puzzles, hopefully giving you exposure to thousands of people every day! Hurrah!
This is still beta-test stuff, so if you have problems please let me know. There’s a forum on there too, which is a good place to post any comments that you have, http://www.stickscene.com/forum/ .
Have fun!
A bit of code… Simple form rollover submit
I’m in the final stages of putting a new site online, and I decided to put a little polish on some of the buttons. Given that the whole thing is done in PHP and involves lots of forms, I needed a way to make a rollover image that could submit the form for me.
A search on Google initially made this look like it was going to be rather complex… Well, not complex, but unnecessarily lengthy:
http://www.idocs.com/tags/forms/index_famsupp_107.html
Look at the state of that! Lines of code running all over the over the place!
But then I found this thread, with the following lovely bit of code:
[input type=”image” value=”someValue” src=”yourImage.gif” width=”widthInPixels” height=”heightInPixels” onmouseover=”javascript:this.src=’yourImageRollover.gif’;” onmouseout=”javascript:this.src=’yourImage.gif’;”/]
[replace the square brackets with angle brackets]
I customised it a bit so that it would submit my form and to give it some more user-friendly tags:
[input name=”Submit” type=”image” id=”Submit” onmouseover=”javascript:this.src=’siteimages/button-tell-me-down.gif’;” onmouseout=”javascript:this.src=’siteimages/button-tell-me-up.gif’;” value=”Submit” src=”siteimages/button-tell-me-up.gif” alt=”Tell me this clue!” /]
[replace the square brackets with angle brackets]
But otherwise the code is all there. It doesn’t have a pre-load function in it, but for a form-submission button you’d hope that the image file sizes are going to be so tiny that they won’t take a moment to download. I reuse this code a lot on my pages too, so one preload and the whole site looks swanky without the need for piles and piles of Javascript at the top of every page.
I’m a big fan of good coding. When something as simple as and useful as a rollover can be achieved with a line of code then you know that things are working the way they should.
Zombie cheerleader rampage!
Hurrah for Lordi (US link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POO33XjtAws
Any band that releases an album called ‘The Arockalypse’ gets my vote.
For people in the US who might not have heard of the Eurovision, it’s a big song contest where each country pretends to try and win, but actually only wants to give that impression because it costs millions to host and if you win then you host it next year. Ireland learnt this the hard way after winning three years in a row; their entry the year after was so bad that there was no way they were seriously trying to take part. The usual result is a bunch of below-average song-writing, passionate performances, and lots of dancers to make the whole thing seem more impressive. Every year someone (usually a country from northern Europe, who have developed a bleak sense of humour after several centuries of living in northern Europe) will put in a novelty act for a bit of a laugh. This year we have Lordi, but I’ve got a feeling that they stand a good chance of winning!
The Eurovision defintely needs more zombie rampages, and Lordi might just be the people to provide them.
Digi-Shakespeare’s website?
This is a bit odd. I had a new-DS poem in my email:
tortuous you mitosis me, arrowhead swanson . clearwater you doric me, orange .
dignify you serbia me, ontario wilkes . bluster you chap me, billie paulsen . carmine you lodowick me, inverness .
I’m really not so keen on this form, somehow the rhythm isn’t so contemplative as they used to be, nonetheless there was something that caught my eye: who is ‘Billie Paulsen’? I don’t remember DS mentioning any names before. A quick Google reveals that there are almost no ‘Billie Paulsen’s on the web.
From the six results, one page seemed to call to me. It has the title ‘Condolement’, and the page heading ‘Circumlittoral’ (which means ‘adjoining the shore’). Imagine my surprise when I discover that it’s a whole page of DS spouting out words and non-existant email addresses.
It gets better! After looking at the Google cached version of the page (Google saves old versions of pages, if you have Firefox then you can see this from your right-click menu using the excellent Gcache. I love that extension, it’s more useful than you might at first think!) I saw that the page is updated regularly too!
There are a few lovely phrases in there:
Although I have no idea about the meaning of:
but it sounds fun!
Or like it needs lubrication.
Or both.
…
Anyway, could this be DS’s secret webpage? And does DS know I’m watching now? Was ‘Billie Paulsen’ a secret clue to me to get me to find its inner-sactum? Who knows, but as you can tell, I’m very excited by this find!
Go go salsa bunny!
Star Wars: The Designer Edition
This amused me today:
Star Wars: The Designer Edition
The concept is that the Stars Wars universe would be so much more fun if it was a bit less drab. The designs are fun, but I think it was the descriptions that caught my attention:
Fashion designer Betsey Johnson didn’t want Chewbacca to be called a “walking carpet” ever again. Gone are the earth tones and tattered accessories. The new Chewy is fun, funky, and fabulous!
The whole site has some great stuff on it, so have a browse!
Two views of goths
The BBC has covered a recent study with an article titled ‘Goths ‘more likely to self-harm’‘. The New Scientist has also covered a recent study of youth culture and titled their article ‘Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children‘. The titles suggest that the studies have produced opposing results, but they are both covering the same story.
The BBC’s article does counter its shock-scandal style headline with a quite reasonable article yet I can’t help but feel that the damage will have already been done.
As for the study itself, it suggests that people who have self-harmed (cutting and burning usually) are more likely to associate with the gothic ‘subculture’. The New Scientist points out, very reasonably, that it appears that people have self-harmed less after becoming involved with the non-violent and accepting goth social group and so being ‘goth’ has been of benefit to these people.
I find it amusing that the old adage of goths comes into play here, that anyone who says that they are a goth isn’t really a goth, but that’s a bit beside the point. In the study only 25 people said that they were goths, which means that the figures, while being interesting, are worth about as much as George W. Bush’s contribution to the rap music scene. I wonder if one of the people had been missing a leg if the articles would say ‘Goths more likely to lack 25% of their digits’.
Thanks to Wookiee and Novander on my forum for the links.