"Hyperlink Crescent"

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• Phil: Yet another reason not to use Starbucks. As if their revolting coffee (how do they make it taste that crap?), patronising, insensitive staff and smug global posturing weren't enough reasons.
• Phil: Oh bugger, forgot the link
• penelope: Aha - remember reading that a year ago... They backed down pretty sharpish. But just goes to show, they have a network of intelligent managers, eh?
• I Say, Porter!: [Kevan] What? No Maureen Toncrescent?
• Raak: [SM] Today's is 15MB. Mind you, well worth it for 15M pixels of Hubble looking at the Crab nebula.
• Kevan: A solution to stupid YouTube comments: replace them all with Richard Feynman quotes (alternatively, YouTube comment snob is good).
• Simons Mith: XKCD's been given a makeover. Pretty stylish, I'd say.
• Kevan: [Geocities] Is there any important Crescent stuff we should save from there before it gets shut down? I see someone's already backed up this great archive of tube station diagrams.

November 2009

• Raak: [SM] APOD's picture today sets a new record for minimalism.
• Néa: [Raak] So space is beige. Somehow I am not surprised by this.
• Rosie: (Néa) If that beige I'm a coal scuttle. Far too light; it's fawn.
• Raak: [Néa,Rosie] It's officially cosmic latte now. Beige.
• Graham III: [Rosie] No, it's Vellum Parchment, looking very similar to the colour I've just painted a large proportion of my living room.
• Software: [G III] Ah, that'll be Magnolia, then - the developer's colour of choice.
• Graham III: [Software] Nope, it's a lot warmer than that, and not pink at all. And our chimney breast is now teal. Actually, looking at the APOD picture on my work computer instead of at home makes it look a completely different colour. Darn monitors.
• Software: [G III] Mrs Software decided that our particular shade of magnolia (yes, the colour is perceived differently dependent on location and ambient light) was boring. Off to the DIY store and £5.00 later we have 4 samples of other shades of beige to test. At home she diligently painted stripes on the wall to compare. When dry all but one of the samples were undetectable against the original. So much for designer colours.
• Rosie: It's the same, more or less, as the door and other woodwork in my bedroom which is, according to Dulux, buttermilk.
  (Raak) The universe is black, of course, very nearly. Almost the ultimate minimalism.
• Simons Mith: Inside a hyperbolic chamber
• Boolbar: Forget Fail - embrace Succeed! SucceedBlog
• Boolbar: Surely the best venn diagram yet
• Dunx: I know it would have messed up the diagram, but it's Frankenstein's monster...
• Raak: Here's a new time (and potentially money) sink for people to play with: Evony. A game of strategy and conquest played in real time in a web browser (with Flash). They make a big thing of it being free to play, but there are, ahem, opportunities to spend real money to get game money to buy stuff to speed your development. How essential it might be to take these opportunities I don't know yet. I've only been on for a few days, and I intend seeing how far I can get without spending real cash (beyond the $5 I spent before making that resolution). If anyone else is on Evony, I'm Krniec Raak in the city of Krniecgrad in the Tuscany region on server 101.
• Kevan: [Evony] Be careful with your money and your computer security, there; the company behind the game sound quite dodgy.
• JLE: I have not yet heard a single good thing about Evony - at least, not that it didn't rip off from either Civilization (Sid Meier) or Travian (online war game where you fight as Gauls or Romans or Teutons).

  Mind you, I still play Kingdom of Loathing, which is not only still going but still coming up with new ideas. I'm kind of glad to say I even contribute towards some of said new ideas, these days.

• Raak: [Kevan] That's a disappointment. I shall be suitably cautious. Fortunately I paid them through Paypal, so they shouldn't have my financial details.
• Raak: On further reading, now I wish I'd never mentioned Evony.
• Kevan: It's only the company and advertising that are dodgy; if the game is a straight clone of Civilization, I wouldn't blame you for enthusing about it. (I'm a little nervous of how much of my time the official version of Civ will take up, when it arrives on Facebook next year.)
• Dunx: [Kevan] I once spent an entire night playing Dune, a single player resource management game, on my Mum's computer when I was visiting my parents one weekend (this would have been in 1991 or so). Ever since I have assiduously avoided any RTS games, resource games, or indeed any open-ended multi-player game. They would turn me into a wirehead.
• Raak: I have Civ III, but I only ever played it a couple of times, mainly because it took so long to make stuff happen. Once I'd seen what it did and got the ideas, I didn't have much interest in playing it any more.
• ImNotJohn: Well, I chuckled at this
• snorgle: Laptop steering wheel desk. The reviews and customer pictures are brillant.
• Moomintroll: Mandelbulbs.
• Raak: The future that never was. Predictions of the present, from the past.
• Phil: [Raak] Very interesting. I think that would make useful subject matter for history and sociology teachers, and I strongly suspect I'm going to get engrossed in it myself if I' not careful.
• Dan: What's always striking to me is how scarce mobile phone predictions have been. Even the internet seems to have been guessed at with more frequency and accuracy than personal communicators. Science Fiction older than a decade or two rarely depicts people walking around with a phone the size of a pack of cards, let alone smaller. In 2001: A Space Odyssey the phone booths not only exist but are bigger and more plush, to accommodate private video. Even Until The End of the World, produced almost immediately before cell phones went mass-market, figures phone booths prominently (unless I'm remembering it wrong), and phone booths seem to be all over the place in cyberpunk. There are plenty of exceptions in terms of absolute numbers but still proportionately videophone predictions seem (to my subjective eye) to vastly outnumber mobile phone predictions. And this despite the fact that car phones at least have been around for many decades. And I can't recall a single example of a prediction that a huge proportion of people would obsessively use mobile phones to the point of (and perhaps even with the point of) substantially shutting out their surroundings and with absolute disregard for the circumstances. Quite a remarkable lack of self-knowledge our culture has had about itself; we really don't seem to have realized that we're like that until it was upon us.
• Software: [Dan] Telecoms is my business and so your comment is of interest. Trends in communications have always been unpredictable. Up until the 1950s fiction authors relied on the telegram for the urgent conveyance of good/bad news even though even before the war the telegram no longer was as promptly delivered as in Victorian times. The telephone was rarely used even though it was quicker and cheaper even then. The mobile phone is another example. Nobody foresaw (with the exception of the people promoting the business) the boom in usage that has happened. Video phones have proved to be rather less attractive to consumers than predicted a couple of decades ago. Somehow people prefer the semi-anonymity of the voice only and text mode. For video users prefer to be in front of a computer or in a group. The predictions of the industry for the uptake of data have finally come true, but 10 years on. The 3G gamble at the turn of the century burned many fingers in the business, although the fat cat mobile operators had plenty of cash from their obscene mark-ups to get over the crisis. It is now only with 4G on the horizon that mobile data and media have started to become a commodity for mobile users; 3G was a bit of a damp squib. Watch this space.
• Graham III: I've often wondered whether the unwillingless to either 'predict' or even use mobile phones, both in science fiction, and in modern fiction, is because more often and not they would wreck the plot...
• Dunx: [G III] One of the reasons I like running the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game in the 1920s setting is because there aren't any mobile phones. I've heard of others who, even in a modern setting, have the player characters somehow cursed to prevent the operation of such newfangled devices.
• newkid: Star Trek - their hand-held communicators were like mobile phones, complete with shell-style flip mode! And Bond, he used his watch as a video-phone, I'm sure I've seen that done by some company recently. Did anyone ever predict that we'd all get fat?
• Dunx: Fatties - look at Judge Dredd. And Judge Dredd also had smokeatoriums where people who persisted in the habit of smoking were exiled to enclosed rooms to puff away, which is probably only a short legislative hop from where we are now.
• penelope: [Dunx] We have those at the university. We call it 'the dirty room'.
• Software: [newkid] The American strip cartoon Dick Tracy had a wrist phone as early as the 1940s and that was upgraded later to a videophone. There is nothing new under the sun, as they say.
• snorgle: Stuck for Christmas gift ideas? Not any more!

December 2009

• I Say, Porter!: [snorgle] that should have had a health warning. I nearly lost my lunch.
• Raak: See the brain of H.M. being sliced into very thin slices! Live video feed! Er, I mean dead. For a few days only! The video, that is, not the being dead part.
• snorgle: The tube in German. Not quite sure why.
• Tuj: [snorgle] Heathrow Flugabfertigungsstelle 1,2,3 - that's why! [aside] Haven't I seen a map in fake-German linked to from here before?
• Simons Mith: This is a link I'm not going to follow: Morris jihadi film set for Sundance – because I much prefer my own mental image of what's going on. Folk dancing's darker side revealed…
• Simons Mith: And, um, breaking the link there was an extra precaution I intentionally took, oh yes.
• Dunx: [snorgle] I think "Opel" is especially good.
• Herr Bratsche: [German map] It's pretty good, but obviously not done by a German - I'm sure the plural of Garten (garden) is Gärten, not Gartenen, and Süd Harrow would be rendered Süd-Harrow, with the hyphen. But that's just me being picky. I do like the idea of converting Mile End to metric, too, but if you're going to do that, get the fecking conversion right!.
• Tolken: [snorgle] I love the way Euston Platz sounds when pronounced in German.
• Phil: [snorgle] Very nice - I hope "Prince Regent" was an oversight - Prinzregent would be my pidgin German translation.
• I Say, Porter!: [snorgle] Has a half-finished air to it, but quite fun.
• Dunx: [IS,P!] Agreed, but in fact less than I thought - there are more German words spelt the same as English words than I thought (eg Gold, West).
• Watt D. Furquinelle: Some web developers have far too much time on their hands. Make sure you have sound on for this Dutch department store. (Sorry if this has come up before - I've not been keeping up.)
• penelope: [W.D.F] Marvellous!
• snorgle: [Watt]That is impressive!
• Software: Hema - the Dutch Woolworth. (Except they haven't gone bust)
• Dan: For anyone who missed David Mitchell's Whiter Shade of Pale to the tune of the Muppet Show Theme, this chap seems to have captured it.
• Boolbar: The Framley Examiner Advent Calendar
• Newkid: Boolbar, it's been ages since I've seen the Framley Examiner. The advent calendar is a work of genius.
• penelope: [Boolbar, Newkid] this is brilliant! I've been a fan for years, got the book, and worked on one of the local newspapers that could well have been inspiration for the whole spoof. I'm sure I wrote those WI meeting reports...
• Uncle Korky: Re Framley - brilliant, but the calendar's a pure repeat of the one that they used about three or four years ago. I get the impression that the site as a whole's defunct.
• penelope: Framley Examiner news pages were always produced sporadically. I guess they only put it together when they'd got enough material - and I suspect they were all journalists with proper jobs anyway. Does anyone have any more clues?
• CdM: How does a topologist tell the difference between a bagel and a coffee mug? You can't do this to a coffee mug.
• Boolbar: Stuck for presents? Here are some useful Amazon Reviews.
• Boolbar: [penelope] Framley Examiner: it is the same team that are behind books such as "Bollocks to Alton Towers"
• newkid: boolbar - more genius with the amazon stuff.
• Simons Mith: [Bool] I thought those were moderately amusing to start with. Then I realised there were pages and pages of them and fell about laughing.
• simons Mith: somewhere else to play the Great Game: the Radio 4 Message Boards.
• Simons Mith: PS thanks to 'Pingers' for the tip-off.
• Simons Mith: while I'm on a roll multi-posting, The Psychology and Power of False Confessions
• Chalky: If you have 6 mins or so to spare - check out The Known Universe
• Software: [Chalks] Fascinating.
• Newkid: On Chalky's theme, some beautiful, humbling pictures.
• Phil: For those that use Spotify: this made me weep with laughter.
• snorgle: [Phil]Wow. How did you find that?
• Phil: [snorgle] I promise I wasn't looking for it!
• snorgle: [Phil] I should hope not! Just goes to show that there's a market for anything.

January 2010

• Simons Mith: Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls! Taking the Lord's name in vain
• snorgle: [Simons Mith] The comment are particularly interesting..
• Raak: [SM] "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."
• Projoy: I see Steorn are still at it. There's a live demo of their "free energy" motor in Dublin at the moment, open until 31 Jan for those who would like to laugh and point.
• Herr Bratsche: Here's another time sink: Daffy Duck Parachute Jump.
• I Say, Porter!: [SM] Which of those four is "the Lord's name"? The Jews won't tell us.
• Simons Mith: They all are, aren't they? It's known as the Holy Trinity, Extended Edition, I believe. (© 1995 www.irishcatholic.ie)
• Rizmage: Looks like 100% coverage.
• Rizmage: Let's try that again... Looks like 100% coverage.
• Rizmage: I just found a higher resolution version of the above picture, this one is better if you want to see your roof.
• Rosie: (Rizmage) Brilliant pic. You can all sorts of stuff like that here.
• Rosie: You can get it, even.
• Dunx: [Rizmage] Thank you - I saw that pic on BBC News, but then lost it before I could post it!
• snorgle: Check out the comments for a good laugh. Not to mention the "also bought" section.
• Rosie: (snorgle) And another thing - there were "used" ones for sale. The mind boggles.
• Dunx: [snorgle] I like the tags that have been added.
• Raak: Every Day The Same Dream, a (very) short video game.
• Phil: [snorgle] Your communion wafers made it onto Radio 4's News Quiz this week.
• Projoy: savethewords.org. Choose and adopt an obsolescent word from the capacious recesses of the Oxford English Dictionary. You just have to commit to using the word in the hope of rescuing it from a state of desuetude. I have adopted "pigritude", in spite of my own pigritude.
• penelope: I have 'jussulent' - full of soup or stew, which is normally the case. I may adopt another word for the summer.

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