This looks like a great documentary. I went to school with a guy who was big into his magic. His nickname was "Presto". 18 years old and he would be doing magic tricks for people in the halls before class. Thinking back, he took an awful lot of shit for this thing he was deeply passionate about.
The last time I saw him, it was when Uri Gellar played in Dublin back in 2007 or so. He'd gotten all into Nu-Metal, he'd been arrested a few times and I'm fairly sure he was off his face on meth at the time.
Still - this looks like a great documentary.
# Saturday Apr 30, 2011
They're all either giant toothy grins or saucy 'ooh!' faces. Still, fascinating.
# Wednesday Apr 20, 2011
Tons of great tips in here. I particularly like this one from Josh Sprague: 'learning to say "How much," "That's too high," "This one" and "That one" is way more useful to the short-term traveler than "Hello, how are you?"'. And also 'Eat it before asking what it is.' (via Justin Mason)
# Wednesday Apr 6, 2011
My GDC Microtalk, 2011. from brandonnn on Vimeo.
Brandon Boyer sums up everything I love and hate about videogames - I wish I could frame his talk and hang it in my house.
# Monday Mar 28, 2011
We need more parents wilfully ignoring health and safety in favour of giving their kids a more amazing childhood.
# Thursday Mar 10, 2011
Episode of the BBC radio show, Endnotes, focusing on David Foster Wallace. Features a load of interviews with DFW himself, a bunch of other authors and his editor, his agent and his sister. I've yanked the audio from the Vimeo so I can listen to it on my iPod. Download it here.
# Wednesday Feb 23, 2011
Looks amazing, right? Well, here comes the buzzkill, David Jaffe, who says:
If the GAME makes me feel like the trailer, hail to the new kings! How amazing!
If the GAME, great as it may be, is nothing like the trailer then here we freaking go again. And I'll say it again:
If our medium isn't capable of generating compelling enough content that trailers have to sell something totally different than the actual product they are advertising, then we have a very serious problem.
# Thursday Feb 17, 2011
"We engage in unnecessary, often criminal behaviour and justify it by calling it 'the craic'."
Context.
# Tuesday Feb 15, 2011
A collection of the abuse recorded by girls playing videogames. If you've ever spent any time on Xbox Live, you know how ridiculous it can be, but you've never seen anything like the stuff these girls put up with. E.g. "im going to stick an egg in ur vaginal canal and punch it-"
# Tuesday Feb 15, 2011
You have no idea what a big deal The Producers was in my house growing up. I didn't get half the jokes, and I had no clue what the hell a Nazi was, but goddammit, I knew that Kenneth Mars guy was funny.
# Tuesday Feb 15, 2011
If you didn't think Civilization IV had an embarrassment of riches, last night, Christopher Tin's 'Baba Yetu' -- the theme song for Civ IV -- became the first ever piece of music written for a videogame to ever win a grammy.
# Monday Feb 14, 2011
"Games like Bulletstorm cause violent behavior and, since rape is a violent crime ... ergo, there is no question that [violent videogames] cause an increase in rape." - all this without a single report that links violent videogames to criminal violence of any kind.
By the same logic: "I'm eating an apple. Apples are fruit. Bananas are also fruit. Ergo, I am eating a banana. Q.E.D. PEACE OUT, BITCHES."
# Saturday Feb 12, 2011
Remi Gaillard recreates Mario Kart on hte streets of France. Better than I'm making it sound, I promise you.
# Saturday Feb 12, 2011
The second part of Kirby Ferguson's incredible Everything is a Remix series. Two things: 1. 'Sorry about colonialism' is a great name for Avatar's genre. 2. I know Kill Bill is like the film version of a nerd's scrapbook, but I personally find Death Proof almost completely unwatchable.
# Wednesday Feb 2, 2011
Jersey Shore is coming to Italy
Sources connected to the show tell us they will be scouting locations in Italy -- similar to the way they did it in Miami -- to find the right locale.
One source connected with the show says they've already lined up some of Vinny's Italian relatives to host the "Jersey" crew for an authentic Guadagnino dinner.
Called it.
# Tuesday Jan 25, 2011
The real question “isn’t how did it get there?” but “what are the penguins building?”
# Monday Jan 24, 2011
'The real question "isn't how did it get there?" but "what are the penguins building?"'
# Monday Jan 24, 2011
Community is so good, even its throwaway jokes are gold.
# Sunday Jan 23, 2011
Illustrator Aled Lewis has put together a series of images of videogame characters put into real-world settings, and some of them are terrific.
Check out his full Flickr stream for more.
# Friday Jan 21, 2011
What does it say about a studio whose worst movie is merely great? It says that you can put together a fantastic 7-minute montage of great Pixar moments and still only have scratched the surface.
# Tuesday Jan 4, 2011
What a great idea - a calendar that you draw a face on each day to represent your mood.
# Sunday Jan 2, 2011
Yet another amazing Tumblr. “‘I love downloading PDFs. Even if the menu is totally out of date, it’s worth the thrill.’ — Absolutely no one.”
# Friday Dec 31, 2010
Yet another amazing Tumblr. "'I love downloading PDFs. Even if the menu is totally out of date, it’s worth the thrill.' -- Absolutely no one."
# Friday Dec 31, 2010
Great tumblr: “A tribute to character actors with ‘distinctive’ looks”. Any site that starts with the mighty Rondo Hatton is alright in my book.
# Thursday Dec 30, 2010
Great tumblr: "A tribute to character actors with 'distinctive' looks". Any site that starts with the mighty Rondo Hatton is alright in my book.
# Thursday Dec 30, 2010
Come Here to Me, easily the best Irish blog right now, talks about the history of Dublin Mean Time, when Dublin was 25 minutes ahead of Britain. "Incredibly, prior to October 1916, there had been some hostility to the idea of synchronizing our watches with Britain. In August 1916, a letter appeared in the Irish Independent arguing against it on nationalist grounds! The writer noted that “the question is whether we should give up this mark of our national identity to suit the convenience of shipping companies and a few travellers”."
Whoa.
# Saturday Dec 18, 2010
I'd probably join Harry Crane as "Chaotic Neutral". I have no idea where my wife would be. Also, could there be a whole new alignment, just for Pete? "Really Evil, like a Cold, Dead-Eyed Sociopath-in-Waiting" has a certain ring to it.
# Tuesday Dec 7, 2010
Still as funny as ever
# Tuesday Dec 7, 2010
Still as funny as ever
# Monday Dec 6, 2010
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Oh shit. This is like the time when I read Cryptonomicon and developed an irrational fear of my CRT exploding in my face.
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Oh shit. This is like the time when I read Cryptonomicon and developed an irrational fear of my CRT exploding in my face.
# Sunday Dec 5, 2010
I try to avoid linking to The Big Picture because pretty much everything they post is link-worthy. But seriously, this photo is just breathtaking.
# Saturday Dec 4, 2010
The most balanced take on the whole thing I’ve read – great questions for all the players in this game.
# Saturday Dec 4, 2010
I try to avoid linking to The Big Picture because pretty much everything they post is link-worthy. But seriously, this photo is just breathtaking.
# Saturday Dec 4, 2010
The most balanced take on the whole thing I've read - great questions for all the players in this game.
# Saturday Dec 4, 2010
I am scarily obsessed with this soundtrack.
# Wednesday Dec 1, 2010
All great, except for the francesinha which, as sandwiches go, is total bullshit.
# Wednesday Dec 1, 2010
All great, except for the francesinha which, as sandwiches go, is total bullshit.
# Wednesday Dec 1, 2010
I love when porn gets topical (see also: Who's Nailin' Palin?), but seriously, did the makers of this Berlusconi-themed porn really think about what they were associating themselves with? Nothing is guaranteed to kill a boner quite like the image of a creepy, demented 74-year old midget throwing a fuck into a bored-looking prostitute.
If nothing else, think of his balls. Ugh. That's my next 10 boners completely ruined.
(via the awl)
# Saturday Nov 20, 2010
I love when porn gets topical (see also: Who's Nailin' Palin?), but seriously, did the makers of this Berlusconi-themed porn really think about what they were associating themselves with? Nothing is guaranteed to kill a boner quite like the image of a creepy, demented 74-year old midget throwing a fuck into a bored-looking prostitute.
If nothing else, think of his balls. Ugh. That's my next 10 boners completely ruined.
(via the awl)
# Saturday Nov 20, 2010
Gloriousnoise has come across a copy of Kentucky Fried Chicken's amazing Corporate Rap from 1987. It's great, but it's no KPMG Corporate Anthem.
Also, as an aside: I realise this is entirely a Pavlovian thing, but does the slab font Kentucky Fried Chicken used in the 1980s feel nice and comforting to anyone else? No? Just me? I guess that explains a lot.
Man, I'm hungry now.
# Thursday Nov 18, 2010
Jesus, the country is fucked.
It's a far cry from Glenroe, I'll tell you that much.
# Friday Nov 12, 2010
Cute video, but it always weirds me out the way that internet nerds romanticise/fetishise manual labour. My first job was in a printing company, and the monotony of it almost drove me insane. For example, that girl sending the bundles of notebooks through the plastic wrapper is a nice shot, but for weeks on end, she probably goes into work and does nothing but that one action. Keep that in mind when you're watching the video.
# Thursday Nov 4, 2010
Whatever you’re doing, stop it and watch this now. Ghostwatch was the scariest TV special I’ve ever seen and it still scares the fuck out of me today.
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# Monday Nov 1, 2010
Trust Stephen Fry to be behind the wheel of one of the first mainstream hypertext books where the form is just as interesting as the content.
# Wednesday Oct 20, 2010
Bill Murray at the Spike TV Scream awards. "It doesn't mean anything. It's the only thing I had that was clean".
# Tuesday Oct 19, 2010
In short, a drunken impulsive prank. Favourite line: "To bide me some time, I remember shouting as I snatched the glasses off the bewildered man's face that I was with Channel 4 doing a comedy stunt. Looking back, I'm not exactly sure what that meant or why I said it."
# Monday Oct 11, 2010
'"Well," Violent J says, "science is… we don't really… that's like…" He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, "OK, an analogy": "If you're trying to fuck a girl, but her mom's home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom's home? Fuck the mom. See?"'
# Saturday Oct 9, 2010
Alan W. Pollack's exhaustive analysis of the music of The Beatles. He wrote these over the course of 11 years, starting in 1989, in weekly posts to the rec.music.beatles usenet group. For example, in his 'Notes on "Hey Jude"', he says "The bridge features a Bach-like walking bassline which, by the way, is a key source of the perceived contrast between the bridge section and its surrounding verses; the bassline of the verse, after all, simply follows the roots of the chord changes." Fascinating and edifying. Bonus.
# Friday Oct 8, 2010
This kind of ridiculousness gives me the wiggins.
# Monday Oct 4, 2010
Gorgeous remake of a game I played to death on the Commodore 64.
# Thursday Sep 30, 2010
