Recently in Ranting Category

Matt and Tom are both putting up their 20 favourite games of all time, so I thought I would throw my 2c in. In no particular order, the games that have made the biggest impression on me are: - Doom: (PC) Who can't include Doom in their list of 'greatest ever games'? I distinctly remember the first time I saw Doom- it was in the computer science lab at my High School. My brother was playing it and ...

In seven days, I leave. Interesting how we look to patterns for comfort, even when we?ve established there?s a problem in the pattern that needs to change, we still go back to them. Finish work at four-thirty. I could have left several hours ago with little difference- my workload has practically dropped to zero. I am making a presentation introducing people to our new document management syst ...

Much like learning a new word and then suddenly seeing it everywhere, or humming a song you haven't thought of in years and then suddenly hearing it a dozen times on the radio over the next week, since posting The Culture Defence I have been running into example apon example of how tradition is pretty much the only reason anyone does anything. One of the more amusing ones is Amanda's take on crusi ...

To: Office All Subj: To whoever stole my cheese from the Office fridge Dear whoever stole me cheese from the office fridge, I hope you enjoyed my cheese. I was looking forward to eating it for lunch, and I certainly hope the joy you gained from stealing it surpassed my annoyance at having it stolen. You will be happy to know that I have replaced the cheese, along with several other food items, a ...

No-one's happier about the Hoff revival than I, and I think the series of self-mocking Pipex ads is a lot of fun. But the above picture is just plain creepy and there's no getting round it. Is it me or does his head look way, way smaller than his body would indicate? Scott says that the Hoff has taken so many steroids that his balls have dropped off. I don't know how he knows that. ...

So I just got kicked from Ade's post about belief and tradition, because I happened to raise the dreaded C-word (circumcision), a topic that is dear to my heart and I love ranting about, not least because it continually strikes me as one of the oddest paradoxes about modern society: we run ads about how awful it is to hit children, but we're more than happy to chop bits off of them when they're a ...

It always bugged me that in the film Braveheart, the battle for Stirling Bridge is presented as being in a big field- no bridge. It's annoying to me because in reality it was a really interesting battle- a relatively tiny amount of Scotsmen took on 10,000+ English soldiers (with cavalry), and won. They won because it was really an ambush- they waited until a large portion of the horsemen were acro ...

via Matt You Are Not Scary Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet? How Scary Are You? ...

Meme in the making...try out this hilarious face-recognition program that was originally developed to tell you your family line, but is a lot more fun to tell you which celebrity you look like! I'm usually told I look like Sean Austin, or slightly more embarassing, Daniel Bedingfield. But the computer doesn't lie, people! ...

If anyone can tell me what this is, or where I took it, I'd be very impressed. ...

Anyone who's ever seen me squeal with delight when the DVD player display hits 01:23:45 in a movie or scream in frustration when the ticker on 24 fails to display 12:34:56 (which is, like, every series, grrr) will understand just a fraction of the joy I am experiencing at the knowledge that at this exact moment in time, for one of only two seconds in the last century, we are experiencing the majes ...

I had an accident with some printer's ink and it completely randomly landed in this screaming face pattern. I thought it rather beautiful. ...

I love the way language evolves over time, according to need. I love that no-one controls it, that words just bend their way across the languagescape, changing and altering as required. I love watching new words thrive or die and wondering why. I love that 'cool' has stayed the ultimate expression of goodness while other, lesser would-be successors have had their time and passed. I love reading th ...

Much like Tetris or Grand Theft Auto, if you get deep enough into a 24 DVD marathon, your brain starts to interpret the whole world around you in the language of the show. You're sitting on the tube, you check your watch: beep, boop, beep 8:51:34 8:51:35 8:51:36 Your world folds into a box and compresses into a corner of the screen. Your empty desk, awaiting you at work, pops in below. Your ...

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My brother has a Yuletide tradition of playing It's a Wonderful Life over and over throughout the Christmas season, so I went to never having seen it before to being quite the expert on the whole thing. If you haven't seen it (and really, you should), it's the ultimate American Christmas movie. It's a kind-of retelling of the ultimate British Christmas story A Christmas Carol, in that they both pl ...

Check this story out- it's about 'Asbo TV'- residents of shoreditch may soon have the ability to 'tune in' to the local CCTV cameras to scope them out and report any crime-making they see. ?The CCTV element is part curiosity, like a 21st-century version of Big Brother? said Atul Hatwell, of the Shoreditch Digital Bridge project. Uhm, you said it, pal. Orwellian or Channel Fourlian? The creepy th ...

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You will find this in the 'Life' section of the Tate Modern. ...

Because sometimes you're in a meeting and forgot to bring a pad to doodle on. Because you can taste the care. ...

So I've been playing this game, Dawn of War, recently, and I came to something of an impass. I started in this valley, and every time I tried to get out of it, bad guys would start raining down on me and slaughtering me at the mouth of the valley. And I tried every strategy I could think of, I tried rushing guys to the mouth, I tried setting up turrets at the mouth, I tried hanging back and waitin ...

This post over at Eschaton (which means, interestingly enough, 'The End Times') reminded me of a conversation I had with Rob in Croatia: "Did you donate to Sarah's charity-run thing?" "Yeah, I've been donating to all manner of charity things recently, like, runs and moustache-growing and tube-hikes and sailboat races and, y'know, like, I respect that people are trying to do good and help make th ...

From: Sarah To: Dan hey dan i need some help. the run that me and jayne are doing is less than two weeks away and we're still only halfway to our target of raising 500 pounds, which frankly isn't that much and i'm a bit surprised we haven't managed to get there yet. so i've slightly changed my strategy - i'm now sending out emails to everyone i know asking them to log on and donate one pound, ...

I'm not a morning person, by anyone's definition. If you were to only ever encounter me in the morning, you'd be convinced I was the meanest, surliest, grumpiest, quietest person you'd ever met (when I'm actually the nicest, happiest, loudest person you've ever met). I don't say a lot in the mornings. I don't even really think a lot in the mornings other than how badly I want to go back to bed. ...

1. I imagine the words: "You can have some of my heroin if you have unprotected sex with me." would do the trick. 2. "I'd like to file for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaivour, your Honour." "Please state what behaivour you found to be unreasonable, Mrs. Coogan." "Well, he stuck his dick in Courtney Love, for starters." "Divorce granted, case closed. Next!" ...

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I tore this out of the Metro to show this to some mates, chortling merrily to myself....on the way to an all-night session of Dawn of War. Ruff! ...

Well, it's over. After forty years, twenty eight seasons, 540 hours of TV, ten films, over 500 books, several dozen computer games, an animated series, a ride, an exhibition, countless toys, a collectible dinner plate; the enormous franchise machine that is Star Trek ground to a halt not with a bang, but with a whimper. I love Star Trek. Not as in like a show, but as in like a place. It is a pl ...

I'd love to be outraged, but it's such an amusing example of the self-importance of teenagers (and subsequent bollocking for same) that it's just too delicious not to share. In a similar vien of everyday stupidity taken to enormous heights, Nathan Fillon tried to buy a comic book for his mom (which he was on the cover of!) and came across the Comic Store Geek from Hell. His revenge? Mobilizing ...

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Just before my nephew was born, I went over to Dublin for my sister-in-law's baby shower. Part of the party (for which I was mostly wrecked on whiskey sours) was an empty book that was passed around, into which all present had to write a message to Felix (who was of course at the time both nameless and genderless) that he could read when he was older. I contributed two pages: One was Superbunny, a ...

If you listened to the show last week, you'll recall that at one point I joked that one of my fears regarding the London bombings was that there might be a 'militarization' of London's streets; that is to say, that people would start arming themselves and having firefights on buses. I was just kidding. It was an excuse to have Al Pacino say: "Say hello to my little friend!" and then loop some gunf ...

"In later years, he came to appreciate the fact that his role inspired thousands of students to pursue a career in Engineering, something for which the Milwaukee School of Engineering granted him an honorary degree in engineering." ...

Ingredients 1 Bottle Pimms 1 Bottle Lemonade 1 Bottle Canada Dry Ginger Ale 1/2 Bottle Rose's Ginger Wine A Cucumber Some mint Some apples A lemon A lime Some mandarins Some grapes (red & white) Strawberries Rasberries A Chocolate Orange Ice. Lots of ice. Dice the fruit. Don't just chuck it in there, the flesh needs to be exposed to the Pimms for full soakage. Now add 1 part Ginger Wine to 3 p ...

I think the primary sensation I felt over Thursday and Friday, and I know I'm not the only person to have felt this, was a sort of blanket confusion about how I should be feeling. I knew I should be in a state of shock, outrage, fear, indignation, sympathy. But I didn't feel any of those. Everything felt horribly normal. I walked home through Regent's Park at about one-thirty. It was raining. The ...

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Well, I'm a happy bunny, because last night UK Gold started re-running The A-Team from the first episode. I love The A-Team. While I loved MacGuyver and Knight Rider more when I was I kid, after having watched them all quite recently, I have decided that, as an adult, The A-Team kicks their asses. Yes, Michael Knight has a kick-ass talking Trans-Am that he's constantly getting inside...but he al ...

While there haven't been any memos or discussions about it, the men in my office seems to have come to some kind of collective informal psychic agreement that ties are now optional (I'm assuming this is just for the summer months- presumably a similar psychic agreement will put them all back on when it starts to cool). `twasn't always so. In fact, on my three month review, my boss said I was do ...

No you fucking DIDN'T! I did NOT just open hotmail and have the crazy frog tune start PLAYING through my headphones WITHOUT fucking ASKING! FUCK! This has gone TOO FUCKING FAR! Gaaaaaaaah! ...

Er, apologies for the lack of, er, updates and things. I'm currently in San Diego, and will be moving on to New Zealand in fairly short order, so there's unlikely to be any updates for a while, although I'll try and do the occasional ah, blog-card when I can. Oh come on now, quit crying. I know it's going to be tough, but you can get through this. Be strong. I'll see you soon. ...

I'm not an artist. This is despite my best efforts. While I'm sure art is a skill you can improve, I'm equally sure that some people have little bits of their brain that contain artistic sense, and mine is missing. I've tried to draw, honestly, I have, I just can't. If I were to draw a picture of a person for you today it would ...

Is it me, or is there an extant market for a Dominatrix Yoga Instructor out there? Seriously. I mean, you've already got this incredibly fit woman telling you to get into and stay in various positions (the most common of which is Adho Mukha Svanasana- "face down dog"). If you get it wrong, she'll chasten you, and then come over and wrench you into the correct position, followed by: "That's good! ...

Many drunk people just waste their time completely, chewing the fat with their mates, playing pool, buggering about. Not I. I'm highly a productive drunkard: ...

Now, this is true: I've always been told, since I was about five, that falling objects with the same surface area (that is to say, discounting the effects of wind resistance on said object) accelerate at the same speed, regardless of their weight. I even remember once getting a Trivial Pursuit question wrong, because I thought that, obviously a heavier object should fall faster than a lighter ob ...

It's very, VERY rare that I see something on the web so funny that I have to actually cover my mouth and hold my nose to prevent myself from laughing out loud and having my colleagues realize I basically spend all day looking for funny shit on the web. All Star Wars computer geeks (ie- anyone reading this) must click here now and download this video. I almost crapped my daks. Ahem. I really ne ...

Right, I'm just popping off to Oslo for a bit, which means I have to break my 'blog every weekday' resolution that I've so far been doing fairly well at. But I'll be back next week with some hopefully amusing stories and photos. bing! ...

Some people leave no path behind them in this world. Some people think punching out a few sprogs will do the trick. Other people make albums or write novels or leave a mile-long trail of shotgunned dead. My legacy is secure, however, because I've done this: ...

It?s happening again. It?s funny how we fall into relationship patterns. Like, you can see the same mistakes occurring, almost before they occur, over and over, with different partners. You try to blame them, but when the same mistake keeps happening, you have to at least consider the possibility that it?s you. It all started with LA Gyms, in Golder?s Green. We started out great, y?know? We?d s ...

I would happily support Yet Another Hike in tube prices if, and only if... they used the money to hire James Earl Jones to replace the automated voice that tells you what station you're at. Just imagine how much perkier your day would be if every morning you got to hear Darth Vader's voice coming over the PA: "This.....is Great Portland Street." ...

"Charles and Camilla waited twenty years, baby. I think we should, too." ...

I wasn't particularly suprised when "Researchers" discovered that the region that inhibits impulsive behaviour is not completely formed until the age of 25. I'm still waiting for mine to kick in. After spending a few years looking thoughtfully at the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, Dr Jay Giedd was inspired to say: We'd thought the highest levels of physical and brain maturity were reached by ...