Mr Speaker

mrspeaker's head in a monitor You find yourself at the entrance to the Hompage of Mr Speaker. In a darkened corner sits a trunk containing HTML5 games and some JavaScript tidbits. Next to it you spy a mastodon account. Exits are North, East, and .

Kentucky Fried Chicken Feet

the presented feen

Imagine, just imagine, you discovered the most awesomely best thing in the known universe. And then, on that very same day, in that very same shop, you discovered the equally most awesome thing in the known universe. And THEN, imagine realising that if you combined those two most best things together, that the blinding goodness of mixed elements would multiply together to create a result of such intense and astonishing goodness as to render all other things in the known universe to be pretty crappy in comparison.

Well, I did that.

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Oil Watch – revisited

oil signI've really been slack at preparing for the oil-drought fuelled end-of-the-world. Work and all you know. But what with oil prices getting up over $60 a barrel, I figure its time to have another look around at what's going down in the peak oil circles. (You know what... I'm upgrading my concern levels over peak oil. I'm making it a proper noun. Peak Oil. That'll give it some authority for sure.)

One thing I noticed is that Peak Oil is getting heaps more air time (or pixel time, at least). When I'd consult my primary sources on Peak Oil in March, the articles where spaced out every 5 or six days. 20 hours ago... 5 days ago.... 2 weeks ago.... and so on. Nooow however, they are pouring in at a rate of more than one a day! Holy Moly!

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Life imitates meat – “Bake”

Life Imitates Meat. The second article in an in-depth series that looks at the fascinating world of meat, created in it's own image.

Part Two: "Bake" - High Foods

notproduct BakeI can't help but to compare and contrast "Bake" with the first not-product review of the series Squid Chews. Both are chewy and cardboard-y meat-snack substitutes. Both have after-tastes of diet coke mixed with drain cleaner, and both leave you with a sense of disbelief that such a product could make it to market.

"Bake" however, really takes the concept of chewy fake meat products to a whole new level. It is a product in itself that refuses to tip its hat to any animal product before it. It carries a meat free moniker and makes no claim to be squid, pork, elephant, or "other" - In its own words it is simply a "series food for leisure time".

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Air CSS Battle – a DHTML odyssey

-Air CSS Battle-

Guide your laser controlled missiles and destroy the annoying floaty ships and planes. Watch out for the wacky mines, and try and hit the star-thing that gives you more time. Good luck.

 

Just what you always wanted, a dhtml game inspired by Air Sea Battle of Atari 2600 fame. The coolest part of Air Sea Battle was the excitement introduced by 2 player simultaneous play. I've discarded that sole redeeming feature and replaced it with the far less captivating "ticking-clock" element. Ticking clock - works great in the movies.

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Greasemonkeying around

who is that masked manHow would you feel if you came in to the office and read that World War III had started? Or that you had been voted "Least sexist person 2005"? Or the government was banning alcohol? You'd feel pretty bad, I bet. But, what if you could make someone else feel like that? Then you'd be smiling, wouldn't you! With Greasemonkey and Firefox you too can revel in this kind of childish joy!

What we are going to do is "inject" our own stories into proper web sites. So when our annoying co-worker goes to www.times.com the leading story reads "This just in: annoying co-worker is, um, smelly". With accompanying humourous photoshopped image of co-worker. Great stuff!

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Greasemonkey and WordPress

the grease monkeyGreasemonkey is enabled! Or so it says when I mouse-over the little monkey face that sits at the bottom of my browser. Greasemonkey is an extension to Mozilla Firefox that lets you apply your skillz to munging up web pages in ways that will make graphic designers cry and cause web-enabled, P2P, e-commerce, tech oriented, um, solution providing, pro-active businesses to issue cease-and-desist orders.

It will mostly be used for good however, and here, by way of demonstration, I'll do something nice and add some functionality to the WordPress blogging software.

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Calculator Chicken

Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs. Windows vs. Macintosh. After a decade of intense psychological duelling, a clear winner has emerged in the ultimate operating system battle: "Calculator Chicken"...

...One thing that computers can do fairly well is calculate. Give them two numbers - even really big ones like 383821 or 64342 or 128793 - and they can add them up fast. They can subtract, multiply or divide them really fast too. And it's easy for programmers to make them do it. It's like, one of the first programs you learn to make - a calculator. It was probably the first program made for Microsoft Windows, and probably the first program made for Apple Macintosh.

Computers have changed a lot since those calculators. Macs look all shmick and super cool, Windows looks like a shiny MacDonald's playground, and they certainly look a lot better than they did in 1990.

But do you want to know something weird - until recently they both contained the same calculator programs they'd had since the beginning of computer time. Check them out:


<-Old School Windows

         Old School Mac->



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Thought Thieves

thought thieves"Think about it: how would you feel if you saw your hard work being passed off as the property of someone else?" I'm sure the folks at Apple have been pissed about that for years. Perhaps they could take the opportunity to enter Microsoft's short film competition on intellectual property theft: "Thought Thieves"

Yep, if you've put a CD you own on your iPod, or taped Home and Away to watch when you get home, you are not just infringing copyright - you are a thought thief.

Thankfully, with Microsoft leading the way on Digital Rights Management, they can be our very own thought police. In fact, thanks to juicy chunks of the Free Trade Agreement we got - you wont have to be afraid of accidentally making a backup of your songs. Windows wont let you. And if a naughty song manages to gets on to your mp3 player, DRM will delete it for you. So you've nothing to fear.

And don't worry about the rights to the short film you make getting into the hands of those evil thought thieves - the thought police handled that in rule 7 on your entry form:

I will formally licence on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so.

They thought of everything. I just hope they got permission to use that title from Orwell's publisher.

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Beer o’clock. Beer o’clock.

beer oclockull time employment. The destroyer of spirits, and crusher of dreams. What is it for? Surely it serves a purpose greater than paying your taxes. For we all know that wherever dark, oppressive forces rule - the flower of nobility and art sprout through.

And for the employee, that flower takes the form of the Friday Afternoon Beer. The closest most of us will ever come to pure enlightenment.

So to ease the quotidian burdens that lay ahead, here's a handy tool for tracking your time 'till enlightenment: Beer o'clock - The Firefox extension. A little app that sits patiently, alerting you periodically, reminding you of your purpose in life. Keeping you focused. A great productivity tool.

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