The man who planted trees

For Cat's 30th I got tickets for a few plays from York theatre royal's Takeover 09.On Tuesday we saw the first of the plays, The Man Who Planted Trees.

At first I was a little apprehensive, I knew this was a family play (hell it involved puppets), but the crowd was decidedly... young.

I shouldn't have been worried! The play was utterly beautiful, a wonderful little ecological tale performed brilliantly by the actors/puppeteers involved. They had a fantastic combination of a lovely tale and plenty of silly comedy to keep even the attention of even the shortest of attention spans (I'm talking about the kids', not mine).

Young or old, I definately think you should go see this, especially if you can take some young kids with you. :D

The stuff of nightmares

Teletubbies and left 4 dead mashup.

So very very wrong

Emails from crazy people

Was going to write a little opinion piece up here this evening, but ended up a lot more tired than I expected after a trip to Leeds and a few chores.

So instead, here's a link to another fun website: Emails From Crazy People.

Enjoy.

SMBC Theatre - LOL Cats: 50 Years later

Here's an amusing sketch predicting the future of LOLCats courtesy of SMBC Theatre, a comedy sketch show created by Zach Weiner of the awesomely funny www.smbc-comics.com and friends.




Find more here : www.smbc-theater.com and don't forget to subscribe to their RSS feed!

Bang goes the theory

Finally, TV gets some science again.

Tonight I watched an episode of Bang goes the theory, it's kinda like Braniac in that you get lots of zany experiments being done, but they also have quite a lot of documentary style investigations into how tech's being used in the real world.

An especially impressive experiment was a challenge to take the theory behind smoke rings, and attempting to up it in scale until it was a vortex cannon powerful enough to knock down a wall several feet away:



Doesn't really go into the detail of the science enough really for me, but is very enjoyable and you can always delve in deeper if you want to later.

Definitely worth a watch!

Mmmm curry

I love curry and cooking curries, but just can't keep all the ingredients you need to cook them
so I usually have to rely on those sauce in jars.

Sometimes they just don't cut it, so then I use Rafi's spicebox. You choose the curry you want and they measure out all the fresh ingredients for you, customised for the amount of spiciness you like, and put it in an airtight heat sealed bag for you to take home.

All that's required is then for you to cook it up with the meat and vegetables of your choice, add in some creamed coconut and/or tomatoes, and preferably leave it overnight to let all the flavours come out (not compulsory).

The closest thing I've ever had to restaurant/takeaway curry. If you're even in York, pop down Goodramgate and grab a curry or order online!

The Ten

Ran into an interesting piece of text, well just a list really, called The Ten. I found it by following some links on a fun little music video called Why don't bees go to heaven that was kicking around on reddit.

It's a really nice and positive take on atheism, stressing that just because there is no god that doesn't take any of the magic out of life. Take a look at the site and give it a read and see what you think.

I'd skip 10:9 if I were you though, that'd take a lot of the fun out of this infinite universe for me ;)

If only this picture was real

If only this picture was real. It would be super-epic-awesome.

That site has a lot of ace pictures on. Another one to add to the Google Reader methinks.

Ben There, Dan That

An English point and click adventure.

An English point and click adventure that's funny & has good puzzles.

An English point and click adventure that's funny & has good puzzles and is FREE.

Why are you still reading this? Go play it!

Then go and buy the sequel for a measly £2.99!


WARNING (Or recommendation, depending on how childish you are):- Contains swears and fart jokes.

The Wozard of Iz

Having obviously no first-hand experience of the 60s, I really enjoy finding those rare oddities that give you a small taste of the extremes of the culture born in that decade.

The Wozard of Iz is one of those oddities, something a friend pointed out to me a while back, but I've just had a chance to listen to again in full. A fantastical synthesizer-driven alternative version of The Wizard of Oz. Full of crazy sounds helping to put forward some interesting thoughts and ideas.

Download it here for free, give it a listen and see what you think.

Auditorium

This extended break has given me a chance to trawl through the hundreds and hundreds of starred news posts in google reader that I didn't have time to read when they first hit. Most of them weren't worth the time, the item well out of date, or the items just plain boring. Hidden amongst those however are several gems.

Auditorium is one of those gems.

A decidedly minimalist game, all you're presented with when you start playing is a thin stream of light, a circle, and what looks like a bar from a graphic equalizer. Quickly you realise you can move the circle, and dragging it into the stream of light affects the direction of the light. Experimenting further a few beams of light hit the equalizer bar, and a haunting piano melody starts to play.

OK, it's got my attention.



Next level, I have two circles, but with different direction arrows. No problem. Next level I learn that you can affect the power of your circles by dragging the edges. Oh and more equalizers for more instruments, nice. It starts to get a bit samey, I guess to make sure that people are comfortable, but I began to lose interest. Eventually they throw in some additional gameplay elements and my interest piqued again. Didn't take long before I'd finished the levels in the free flash game, and a teaser level from the levels available in the full version clearly shows the developers have more tricks up there sleeves.

I'm going to pick up Auditorium when I have the time to play it, it's a really beautiful game both visually & aurally and is a perfect puzzler for spare moments where you fancy a chill-out. Helps that the price is a very reasonable $10.99 too.

Water Brain

Water Brain is a fantastic 3D animation by a Chinese animator, really unique style with plenty of influence from both steampunk and classic Chinese literature & culture.

The quality of the animation and the ideas contained in the film are outstanding, shows amazing talent and god knows how many hours of hard work. Well worth spending only 15 minutes of your time to sit and watch!

Micheal Jackson Tribute Mix

Now this is more like it. No hyperbole, no drama, just a clever mix of some of Michael Jackson's best music.

Nice one Jaguar Skills.

OMFG cute

Got this in my reader back in March, but only just got around to watching it

SOOOOO CUTE.

Alice & Kev

I was resisting getting the Sims 3, having got enough timesinks in my life already. :)

Then I came across this blog : http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com.

This guy's experiment with taking a couple of sims and trying to apply real-life poverty & health problems has resulted in a very captivating story. By just using a relatively simple game framework and applying an expanded & implied narrative to the events, a couple of characters far more interesting than you'll find on many TV dramas have evolved.

Makes me want to get a copy and see what other surprises this game holds.

So wrong,.... but can't look away....

Was going to post about something else, but just now my good friend Mr Coates just sent me this link to a guilty pleasure of his: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

It's full of terrible terrible disasters that you just can't look away from, ranging from permullets that have to be seen to be believed, to the creepiest baby photos you've ever seen.

I'm going to have nightmares about this stuff, but I just can't look away.....

Check out my new glasses.

Except they aren't my new glasses. :) Click the image on the right for a bigger version. This shot was taken with Glasses Direct Virtual Mirror software, available here.

It's technically very impressive, it tracked my face pretty well considering I just used a built in laptop web-cam, and I wasn't particular accurate when calibrating it.

But with my experience of working on e-commerce software and building e-commerce websites what impresses me is that it's the start for solving a very big problem with selling stuff online: some goods just have to be tried on before you buy them.

Now I just need a website that will let me scan my awkwardly shaped feet so I can buy shoes online that fit me.

Deafened Chinchillas

In my many years of programming I have, as has just about everyone else I know, cocked things up on occasion.

The biggest mistakes come with that flushed, red-faced sort of feeling. But everything I've done in the past has been rectified with minimum impact: be it knocking up a quick database script to fix mucked up data or a humble apologetic phone call to a client informing them of the best course of action.

But at least I've never caused multiple explosions or deafened a bunch of chinchillas.

Puts everything in perspective really doesn't it?

Riceboy - an epic fantasy webcomic

Bit of a short post today as I'm poorly organised and a bit tired after a Left For Dead session on the 360.

But here's a link to an absolutely fantastic webcomic called Riceboy. http://www.rice-boy.com/see/index.php?c=001. It's a fantasy epic with very strange characters and creatures, and a wonderfully imaginative world. Definitely recommended for people that like things like Lord Of the Rings and Bone.

Finished reading it a few years ago, and have been meaning to pick up the print version but it's a little out of my price range at the moment ;). Maybe I'll just read the online version again.

Mangafox - check it out before it's shut down

Found a nice little site today that's perfect if you fancy browsing some manga for free.

Mangafox has an excellent wide-ranging collection of manga from popular stuff like Dragonball & One Piece to very obscure but interesting one chapter oddities like A Cat That Loved A Fish.

Navigation through a manga is made very easy with keyboard shortcuts to speed things up and avoid strain on that mouse hand, just use the left & right arrow keys to flick through a manga.

Unfortunately there's no way it's legit. Most of the bigger titles have a haphazard mix of chapters from different scanlation groups and I know that many of the more well know titles available on mangafox have been licensed in the US, so I don't expect the site to stay up long. So I recommend you enjoy it now whilst you can!

Oh and if you find something you really like, buy it from your local comic book store and help support the writers & artists!