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IRN-BRU

IRN-BRU

I picked up a bottle of this legendary Scottish soda pop. I feel like I’m taking quite a risk drinking this stuff, because, as per Wikipedia, “Irn-Bru is currently listed as a banned substance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA website lists Irn-Bru as containing the banned carcinogenic colouring Ponceau 4R, and Sunset Yellow FCF.” Also from Wikipedia, Stuarts of Buckhaven manufactures Irn-Bru flavoured pork sausages. Oh those silly Scotsmen!

And in the realm of television ads, I have learned that Irn-Bru has the power to make goths happy, and to make friendly snowmen angry.

2008 04 07 Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Robotic Terror

AUSTRALIA: How’s this for the Three Laws of Robotics? I’ll just quote the subhead of the article, because I don’t think it can be stated any better than that: “An 81-year-old Australian man has shot himself dead with an elaborate suicide robot built using plans he downloaded from the Internet.”

USA: This gentleman has built a robot to patrol his neighborhood and hunt down drug dealers, fending them off with a water cannon!

DENMARK: This seemingly harmlessgardening robot is equipped to “manually pick weeds, spray, or remove them using flames or a laser.”

All across the Western world, we are sowing the seeds of our own demise. In the words of XKCD, “It feels like a few short steps from here to the Robot War.”

2008 03 20 Uncategorized
politics
cyberpunk Comments (0) Permalink

Creepy Gnome Terrorizes Town

While we’re on the topic of Warcraft-related crimes (or potential crimes, in this case), take a good long look at this video of the creepy gnome which terrorizes the town of General Guemes, Argentina at night, wearing a pointy hat.

2008 03 11 Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Blasted Huntards

Man found dead with arrow in his chest. Southern California is positively medieval. We really need to do something about all the illegal immigrants from Gaul who come over here to commit homicides.

2008 03 11 politics
Los Angeles Comments (2) Permalink

Reverse Steampunk

Apparently, 1989 is just as archaic and fantastic as 1889. In our glorious imaginations we can explore the technologickal exploits of Isambard Kingdom Wozniak, and read The Strange Case of Fr. Root and Mr. Waterhouse by Robert Louis Stephenson.

2008 03 10 cyberpunk
literature Comments (0) Permalink

What is this foul swill?

Apparently Tabasco Sauce is too expensive for Denny’s. Or perhaps they lost their contract with the McIlhenny company. Whatever the reason, the classic late-night restaurant now serves this horrible stuff. This might be frustrating enough to take my business to Norm’s.

2008 02 28 Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

The Gas Wizard

Fiat Lux!

As I was browsing Flickr, I found this guy called gaswizard. According to his profile, he works for a company which “specializes in the restoration and replication of historic lighting from the 1830’s to 1950’s with a love for the gas lights.” The best part is that he constantly posts images on Flickr which relate to this work. Sheer Victorian Steampunk (or gaspunk?) goodness! There’s some vintage photos, some vintage ads, and some current photos. If you have a peculiar interest in history and/or interior decorating, I implore you to check out his pictures and be inspired. My only complaint is that they’re so low-resolution, but one can’t have everything.

I love how he shows us the interesting aspects of his profession. Or maybe it’s only interesting to me… Who knows?

2007 12 28 art Comments (5) Permalink

Ineffective Sharing

One of my favourite features of Flickr is the option to license images under Creative Commons licenses. (Basically these are less-restrictive versions of a normal copyright). I do this because I want to let other people use my images in their own projects.

Today I got a message from another Flickr user asking permission to use my image on a collaborative news site called NowPublic. This is great! She also sent me a link to a form where I could approve the sharing of my image. I thought this was odd, because I had already licensed the image under Creative Commons. They are free to grab it and use it anyway. So I checked out their link, and apparently they have a system where you can’t share images unless you sign up for an account on their site. I’m not interested in having an account on NowPublic, but I’d love for them to use my images.

So I wrote back and told her that she’s free to use my image, but I wasn’t interested in signing up. But it turns out that NowPublic is designed in such a way that images are automatically attributed to the person who shares them. So if she were to download my image from Flickr and share it on NowPublic, it would automatically be attributed to her. This strikes me as poor design. If I distribute my image with a Creative Commons license, I don’t want to sign up for an account each time somebody wants to use it. As long as they follow the terms of the license, they should be free to use it without my involvement.

NowPublic is cheating themselves out of a great resource by requiring artists to jump through hoops like this. A collaborative site should be designed to work with Creative Commons licenses, not introduce artificial roadblocks. I hope they manage to work around this problem, because the idea behind their site is quite promising!

2007 12 18 art
politics
intellectual property Comments (1) Permalink

The Tragically Hip

The Tragically Hip are one of my favourite bands, and I just recently discovered that they have a Youtube page with a lot of their videos on it. I hadn’t seen most of these, so it’s really cool. I recommend listening to the song Courage. It speaks to me in some way… Consider this quotation from Hugh MacLennan’s book The Watch That Ends The Night, which is adapted into the aforementioned song.

But that night as I drove back to Montreal I at least discovered this: that there’s no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.

2007 09 24 music Comments (1) Permalink

Internat’l Talk Like A Pirate Day: song 1

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, me hearties! The first song today is from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.

For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!

When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do,

For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!

2007 09 19 Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink