Category: Musings

For the sake of consistency (read ‘laziness’) the template at my interaction design blog ‘is useful’ has been updated to match the snazzy new orange/brown affair that’s happening here. At some point soon I will also be adding in the comments and trackback features that are on that second generation blog so stay tuned.

Rolling Stone has a great article on Pearl Jam and what they’re currently up to. Back in the day I was a big PJ fan, so it’s good to hear they’re back on top of things again after a few blacker years.

Also from the blog-o-sphere this morning – MetaFilter picked up this amazing ‘antique’ ascii art from the 40s. Funny how things that look like emoticons aren’t really as new as we thought. As more and more people dig out their old magazines and scan them in I reckon we’ll see a whole pile more of this sort of retro-invention coming to light.

This caught my eye at a junk place in Canada – a 1970s Dunkin Donuts logo on a nice heavy cup. Can’t seem to find out much about it on the Interweb so any info appreciated.

Back in 1972 many momentous events occurred – The UK joined the EU and never looked back, I was born and Atari released Pong. Those last two events are now highly intertwined, given how much time I spent in my youth cajoling my parents to buy an Atari VCS which led to my first computer, a Sinclair ZX81 and no small number of tantrums. Eventually I shut up and started playing with it, then coding on it and many other computers until finally the real world required me to get a job and, guess what, that was working with computers.

So for those of you who’s lives are not dissimilar go check out this great video that traces the evolution of computer games from Pong to now, via UK coding kids and Nintendo masterminds.

The New Yorker has a great article this week on how James Joyce’s grandson restricts what he classes as unfair usage of his family’s estate. Along the way the article covers the extension of the copyright laws to 20 years after author’s death (something that Disney pushed hard for) and how Lawrence Lessig, internet famous contributer to Creative Commons, is going to bat again to keep copyright sane.

Well the 2006 World Cup is now in full swing, and so far England is doing ok with a 1-0 win against Paraguay (albeit with a boring game) putting them up front in their group. Nice start guys! One thing that was a bit strange during the game is the shadow of the overhanging block in the stadium – for some reason there is a suspended square right above the open stadium, which throws shadows right onto the pitch. This is very noticeable on the TV, but apparently not so bad for the players. However FIFA has made the decision to close the stadium roof to prevent these shadows which sounds like a recipe for heat exhaustion disaster to me. Tens of thousands of over-excited football fans in a closed stadium… London tube anyone?

OK – time for the big announcement of the day… drum roll please! Da da da da da dah DAH!

Finally, after at least a few years of being annoyed about it, MattHobbs.com finally got let loose by it’s previous owner. So, being a geek ‘n all, I snapped it up. Yay! No more skulking around feeling embaressed that I live mostly in New York but have a .co.uk domain. No offence to the CoUk folks of course there, but it is a stupid TLD. There, I’ve said it.

Next step… global domination!

Well, tomorrow is 6/6/6 so fingers crossed no crazed religious types (of any denomination) decide to do anything silly. And by silly I don’t mean wear amusing hats and bounce around going ‘wibble’, although I’m fine with that in general.

* or the fear of the fear of the number 666 – thanks to the Beeb for that one.

That’s ‘wicked’ in the old skool sense of ‘awesome’ and other such superblatives that show my age… Coming on the back of my random site re-design this will be very exciting news indeed – so expect more information soonishly.

Finally got around to seeing Wedding Crashers last night. It’s one of those movies like Zoolander that I kept thinking I should like but wasn’t sure I would. Luckily, like Zoolander – now one of my favourite movies ever, it turned out to be an absolute gem.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, the ‘heroes’ of the movie, play so well off each other as a pair of committed womanizers who crash weddings for fun ‘n frolics that I was constantly in stitches (and that goes for their commentary as well). In fact the whole movie could well be a worthy successor that high king of male ‘dating’ movies – Swingers, aside from suffering an attack of Hollywood ending-itis. So rent/buy, see, enjoy.