So much going on, so little to say

I hate to admit it, but I’ve found myself quite speechless of late. There’s a lot of major stuff going on in my life, but to be honest I wouldn’t know where to begin – how much of this can / should / will I share with you? I have no idea.

I know that putting it all out there has some cathartic value, but I’m feeling quite raw and emotional right now*. Being a man (apparently) I think I’m gonna follow the tried and tested approach of clamming up and hoping for the best. For the time being.

Rather than string you fine people (I can’t understand why, but for some reason this blog gets a hell of a lot of visitors) along with pointless little snippets like the Muppet thing below, I’ve decided to take a month off blogging while I sort my shit out. I know it’s hypocritical of me, being something of a blogging evangelist, but that’s how it is. The stuff that’s on my mind is too big to share (for now), and everything else seems so insignificant and meaningless that it’s not worth mentioning.

Next post WILL be on October 1st. If anyone wants to catch up in the meantime, you know where to find me.

In the meantime, here are some snaps I took at the London zoo this weekend. Oh, how I love going to the zoo! Some of the pics are pretty average, but there are some really great ones. About mid-way through there are some shots of a cobra with its hood fanned out. I stood and watched it for about 10 minutes while it shed its skin – very cool! If you can’t be arsed looking through all of them, I’ve posted two of my favourites below.

Love to all!

Lunchtime for kitty? (Reflections in the safety glass are usually a pain, but this cracked me up)

Whoever you are, mate – thanks for the laugh.

*Relax Mum, I’m fine.

BREAKING NEWS!

Courtesy of The Onion…

Local Muppet Held For Questioning In Chicken Sex Ring
October 2, 1996 | Issue 30•08

SHELBY, OH—An area muppet is being held for questioning regarding its role in an illegal underground chicken sex ring. The unnamed muppet, described as a blue, hyperactive, beaked male of unknown species, is suspected to have master-minded the operation, which involved some 2,500 chickens in 11 states. “Henrietta! Myrtle! Lucy!” the muppet shouted as Department of Animal Welfare officials dragged him from his home, where he was found naked Monday with more than two dozen female chickens.

Righto! Off to the pub now…

Puck! Crunt! Rusted!

I must be having a pretty busy week, ‘cos I can’t even be bothered cursing properly. I swear I’ve got some decent posts brewing, but there’s… erm … shit going on right now that I really can’t share with you. Yet.

Hopefully this will keep you busy in the meantime:

I met with these guys yesterday. Based in (I think!) Shoreditch, Trampoline Systems has some of the coolest data visualisation toys on the market. Don’t know what data visualisation is? You could maybe think of it this way, Fuckpuppet – data is… um… data, but data visualisation is visual representation of said data (e.g. a graph). Back with us? Good.

I’m not entirely clear on the widespread commercal appeal of the aforementioned toys*, but their coolness is undeniable. Example: the federales released 200,000 Enron emails into the public domain a while back, and the Trampoline geezers thought (rightly so!) that this would make for a bitchin’ demo of their Sonar product. Seriously, this is fucking addictive! Browse Kenny Boy and Little Jeff’s email archives. Search the sum of all Enron emails for themes such as Chapter 11, Shredding, Insider Trading, Court, Paranoid and Redundancy. (I particularly enjoyed the emails purported to be from Jeffrey Skilling, calling various colleagues ‘cocksucker‘ etc)

Quite simply, this is… awesome.

*Ok, apart from the fact that they will OBVIOUSLY soon be bought out by Microsoft / Oracle for about a gazillion dollars.

I don’t gush

Really I don’t. I mean – I used to gush once in a while back in my student days (ok I was once a poster child for ‘spree drinking‘, but that’s a story for another time), but those days are long gone. Besides, today I’m thinking about a different sort of gushing. I do rant quite a bit, but heaping praise on someone or something really isn’t my style.

However…

I saw Prince play at the O2 last night, and he was incredible. The best way I can describe it is to say his show was everything I’d imagined it would have been like seeing James Brown at the top of his game. Quite simply the best rock and roll show I have ever seen.

If you ever get the chance, you MUST see Prince perform live. Odds are you’ll get the chance – from what I could make out of his abilities, physical condition and love of performing, he’ll be blowing minds for decades to come.

Looks like I’m on easy street!

My blog is worth $4,516.32. How much is your blog worth?		My new favourite hobby? Comparing the value of my beloved blog with others. Be careful, kids – tears may ensue! Dave: $1,129.08 Simonne: $0.00 (WTF? Her blog is great!) Rob Scoble: $3,702,817.86 Om Malik: $3,823,064.88 Jon: $3,951.78

Fatty Vautin you awssy bawstard!

I was talking cricket with a colleague yesterday and was shocked to hear he had never heard of two of the greatest things in the history of cricket:

1. The Twelfth Man; and
2. ‘Fatty’s fucking catch’

Did some looking around on YouTube and managed to find both of them mashed into the same clip. We love UGC*!

*User Generated Content, a.k.a. Consumer Generated Media. Where have you been?

Greetings from the digital divide

Thanks to Tom Hopkins for sharing this with me. A friend of his has just written a great article for the Spectator, looking at the variation in technology adoption between generations.

Her main point is that it’s actually we gen X-ers that are behind the 8 ball, and not our parents as you might first think.

Could it be that the wired retired are the new digital trailblazers? Not only does this demographic group have the money to invest in new technology, they also have the time to invest in understanding how to use it and, perhaps most importantly of all, they have a compelling reason to use it — their grandchildren.

We can be proud that our young people are not Luddites. Those under the age of 24 constantly astound me with their level of technology knowledge even if they don’t consider themselves to be ‘techie’.

So the real Digital Luddites lie, I believe, somewhere in between our web-saturated youth and the wired retired. It’s the busy professionals, too frazzled from family, too washed out from work, who are simply too tired and scared to engage and explore new digital technologies. They feel they have enough technology to contend with during working hours to let it interfere with their leisure time.

She’s certainly pointing the finger in the right direction, but I’m not sure I agree with the ‘tired and scared’ bit. Personally, I’d go for ’smart’…

I know about a bunch of neat toys and technologies, but to be honest I really can’t be arsed with most of ‘em. I’ll pick and choose the bits I feel will make my life that much easier or more interesting, but I’m buggered if I have the time or inclination to be constantly trying out the latest gizmo to see if it’s any good – I can let the kids and old people do that for me, while I’m using the toys I already have to make FAT piles of cash and have a really good time.

I follow the tech media quite closely, and the pace is astonishing. ‘The next big thing’ comes out pretty much every day, makes a bunch of noise, and then (mercifully) tends to either fly or flop in a short space of time. What’s the big deal in being an early adopter? A mate of mine had a gen 1 iPod, and it fucking sucked. I’ve been a Joost beta tester since the very beginning, but I’ll be straight-up and concede that it’s only just starting to be worth the effort now that they’ve ironed out (most of) the bugs and sourced a decent selection of content. Adult Friend Finder? How much fun would that have been when its membership consisted of a couple dozen college kids and a hooker from Fresno?

Call me a Luddite if you want. I don’t fear technological advancement, I just can’t be bothered taking part in unpaid, laborious (and in many cases actually quite expensive) market research and beta testing. My 5th generation iPod kicks ass, and I didn’t have to sue anybody!

I am such a funny bastard

Well – a bastard anyways. Went to see some standups at a local bar last night and ended up taking a turn onstage to get some free booze.

My ‘act’ consisted of one joke. My favourite joke of all time. Stop reading now if you’re easily offended. Seriously, stop reading – this is my goddamn blog and I don’t write for the amusement of you snivelling ‘this offends me’ mommas boys. Go jerk off over Johnny Depp’s MySpace page or whatever you’re into.

Still here? Think you’re worthy? Ok here goes…

So this mouse is wandering through the jungle when it comes into a clearing and finds an elephant with its leg caught in a poacher’s snare. The mouse says ‘looks like you’re screwed, elephant. I could chew through that rope and set you free… but in return you’re going to have to let me fuck you’

The elephant is shocked but agrees, so the mouse runs up his leg, chews through the rope and says ‘ok let’s get outa here!’

They stop in a clearing about a mile away and the mouse says ‘ok elephant here I come’. So he walks down the elephant’s back, lifts up its tail, and starts running in and out of the elephant’s asshole.

About this time a monkey looks down and sees what’s going on and says to himself ‘that’s fucking disgusting’. So he picks up a rock and hurls it at them. The rock hits the elephant right in the face. The elephant screams, and the mouse says (slow pelvic thrusting motion – this is a visual gag) ‘yeah – take it all, bitch!’

*Rapturous applause*

Oh, and a little tip for you – If you ever go to a live comedy gig, DO NOT wear anything likely to inspire the comics (see pic). I oughta know better by now!

Australia has brought on a short backward square…

… David Boon being the natural choice. (heh. Go the 12th Man)

Don’t ask me why, but David Boon’s infamous Sydney-Heathrow binge just came up in conversation and I had a quick dig to get my facts straight. For those of you who have heard the legend but not the facts, here’s the juice courtesy of Wikipedia.

Boon achieved much fame and notoriety for consuming 52 cans of beer on a flight from Sydney to London before the victorious 1989 Ashes tour that saw Australia regain the trophy after five years of English dominance; the previous record had been held by Rod Marsh, who it is believed consumed 45 cans, although there is conjecture as to whether Marsh actually finished can #45, and some believe his attempt only equalled the record of 44 cans set by Doug Walters. Another passionate report of said record claims Boon finished 54 drinks totalling around 19.5 liters of beverages @ 5% alcohol (per 375ml serve), the majority of which consumed at such an altitude that the effects of the alcohol were doubled. Boon is often jokingly referred to as the “Keg on Legs” because of his legendary drinking exploits and dogged, iconoclastic batting displays. He is a unique interview guest, often giving short, clipped, amiable answers to every question.

Dude is my idol.

I like Google

I really do. There’s no denying there are a number of issues they need to sort out (privacy, for a start), but I don’t for a second buy this ‘big brother is watching you, Google is evil’ crap flying around the blogosphere. That’s just tall poppy syndrome, plain and simple. Personally I love it that a couple of students with a great idea could follow it through, change the world and make fad wads of cash in the process. I’ve got no problem with that – shit, I’d sell my grandmother to the Nazis to be Larry Page. And you would too.

But…

I have to admit that they really have their hands full with this copyright infringement situation. Erm … *someone I know* searched Google Video at the weekend, looking for the trailers for The Simpsons Movie and Die Hard 4. Included among the search results? Full-length downloads of those movies, which now take pride of place on … *his* PSP.

I haven’t used Google Video in a while, and the last time I did there was a delay between upload and publication so someone could check and make sure it wasn’t copyrighted material. I can only assume this has now been abandoned as the volume of files increased, but jesus - isn’t it obvious that a video file two hours long *might* contain a breach of copyright?

Great movies, by the way.