Oct 30, 2009

Hey Jude Flowchart

hey jude

Best flowchart ever? I think so.

via kung fu grippe : (via thememegeneration).

This post part of Blogtober 2009, a post a day, yada yada yada.

Oct 30, 2009

Honda – The Cog

This WebRidesTV video is a commercial made by Honda to showcase the Honda Accord. It is a two minute video that shows Honda Accord parts interacting with each other similar to a Rube Goldberg machine.

via YouTube – Honda – The Cog.

Like Apple, everything just works.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. Might have something else later.

Oct 29, 2009

For verbal diarrhoea.

Spotted on Level 4 of the Centenary building at the School of Computing and Information Systems, UTas.

Pure genius.

This post part of Blogtober 2009, where I post something on my blog every day. If you’re reading this from Posterous, why not read my actual blog instead? You’ll find it at: http://www.bennylingbling.com/

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Oct 28, 2009

Borderlands, Steam, and one screwed up release date.

rage

Yep – the above image was pretty much me at 6:30am this morning. (Image credit Whirlpool forums)

Having done lots of study the previous day to make up for what I had hoped was going to be an excellent day of FPS/RPG fun, I was greeted with the words “Pre-load complete; unreleased” when I looked at Borderlands in my Steam Games.

Shock turned to horror as I visited the Steam page for Borderlands, which happily, even casually, informed me that the unlock date had been pushed back a little over three days.

Horror turned to pure anger (much like the ragetoon above) when I realised what Steam had actually done – screwed Australian gamers over once again.

The official Steam comment is nothing short of abysmal:

Sorry for the confusion, guys. There was a slight mix-up with the release dates. North America will be releasing in an hour or so while Europe, Australia, etc. will be releasing 12:01am GMT on the 30th.

The count-down you see on the page now should be accurate.

A SLIGHT MIX UP is the understatement of the year.

Here’s a quick recap as to what’s happened in relation to Borderlands so far:

  1. Firstly, it wasn’t available for preorder in Australia, when it was in the US.
    Steam later said this was an issue with their store, which they then rectified by adding a new item to the store: “Borderlands Australia”.
  2. This, combined with the fact that there’s a “borderlands_low_violence.ncf” file somewhere among the Borderlands files, lead people to assume that Borderlands is censored for Australia. However – this isn’t the case.
  3. Internode then broke the news that there was a wrong version of Borderlands that Australian Steam users received. They managed to confirm with 2K Games that the Australian version was indeed censored. This was then wrong, however – “The full violence version of Borderlands was successfully rated by the Classification Board. [...] Just to reiterate, Aussies will be playing the full violence version of the game, complete with gibs and all.” This was further confirmed by the fact that new Borderlands installs on Australian Steam accounts contain no such “borderlands_low_violence.gcf” file.

So. Here we are – 3 days out of the official Borderlands release in Australia, all while our US counterparts are playing the game.

That’s not the real issue here, though – it’s the fact that, up until ONE HOUR before the game unlocked (that is, 5am this morning), the countdown on an Australian Steam client showed the US countdown. This just doesn’t make sense, especially when you take into account that there was a separate “Borderlands Australia” store item created in the first place.

Don’t kid yourself if you think that Steam don’t have the technology to have two separate countdown timers, oh no – when they can clearly differentiate between different regions based on IP address, remember things like credit card details, account passwords – don’t tell me they can’t have two separate countdown timers.

Sigh.

Enough about that, though.

I’ve played Borderlands for a good 3 hours now, and can say it’s completely awesome, and deserves all the credit it gets.

This post part of Blogtober 2009 (where, I think you’ll know by now, I post a blog post every day of October 2009) – Borderlands is one of the best games of 2009 (that I’ve played).

Oct 27, 2009

Left vs Right | Information Is Beautiful

Left vs Right

A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).

via Left vs Right | Information Is Beautiful.

Click to embiggen.

I’ll admit that it was this diagram that finally made me understand the difference between right and left wing politics.

Not that I’ve ever been that interested – I’m not your most faithful West Wing fan – but it’s one of those things everyone should know.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. We’re pretty much there.

Oct 26, 2009

So, I met Matthew Reilly yesterday…

…and I don’t feel special for it.

I think something has to be said with regards to this – Matthew Reilly, of all people.

It’s not that I don’t think he’s a literary genius – I do, he’s absolutely brilliant in all respects, it’s just that, well, it didn’t lack the “sparkle” I was expecting.

I’m not actually sure what I mean by “sparkle”, by the way. He was an excellent, captivating speaker, and he managed to keep the auditorium enthralled the whole time (much the same way he does with his books), so it’s definitely not that.

After his talk, we waited for him to sign books. This isn’t unusual – hugely popular authors like Mr Reilly have huge lines to get his autograph on a couple of books. Personally I managed to get The Six Sacred Stones and The Five Greatest Warriors signed, completing my Jack West Jr trilogy (he had previously signed my copy of Seven Ancient Wonders), but I also managed to get my Scarecrow trilogy signed as well, which was a plus.

I don’t know – maybe meeting him revealed someone who I just wasn’t expecting, the guy with the DeLorean, the life-size Han Solo in carbonite, the guy who takes pictures of his TV in order to use them as his screensaver… Actually going and meeting that guy who managed to keep me up till 3am in the Uni exam period, hooked on The Five Greatest Warriors, was something else.

It was funny – because when it was my turn to get my books signed, I had hoped I was going to say something witty. Something snappy. Instead, I managed to mumble some lame attempt at a joke that went something along the lines of “No, I wasn’t waiting for The Five Greatest Warriors because I had resolved to just forget about it, making the release date come all the more faster” or something along those lines.

There was also an awkward moment at the start where I went to shake his hand, but he had a pen it it – I partially withdrew my hand, only to have him put the pen down and shake my hand. Sigh.

In any case, I don’t think I’ll enjoy the Matthew Reilly books as much now, but not because he’s a crappy writer or anything like that. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing, you know? I don’t mean this in the sense that he’s a bad guy – it’s just that sometimes, the mystery keeps you going. Keeps you in the game. Now that I feel like I know the man that little bit better, there’s no more mystery.

I think it’s the same with Dan Brown, another fiction writer I also enjoy (although some say I shouldn’t). If I ever met him, I don’t think I’d enjoy his books as much anymore – and again, not because he’s a bad writer, but because – there’s no more mystery surrounding him. He’s no longer some person who sits at a desk, pumping out good-quality book after good-quality book – instead, he’s just some guy, with glasses, who does this, and talks like that. (Having not actually met Dan Brown I’m not sure what mannerisms he would have, so I’m doing my best here :p)

Just one of those things, you know?

I’m yet to talk about why I didn’t enjoy The Five Greatest Warriors as much as I did some of his other books – but that’ll come later, I’m sure.

This post part of Blogtober 2009, where I try and write at least one blog post every day. Most of the time they’re not hugely substantial – a quick snap there, a quick viral video there – but this time, substantial comes into it’s own.

Oct 26, 2009

I met Matthew Reilly today.

I’ll post up some more thoughts on this tomorrow (wait, make that later today), but it was… interesting, to say the least.

You’ll forgive me for the unusually short and cryptic post. I’ve been playing Killing Floor, some coop survival horror game that’s free this weekend on Steam. Sadly my time with the game will run out in about 6 hours, but that’s okay. It was incredibe fun while it lasted :D

More tomorrow, I swear.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Oct 24, 2009

Technology, eh?

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Here’s a story about what I spent doing the night after my first exam for semester 2, 2009.

Borderlands was was preloading on Steam with the Left 4 Dead 2 demo , Stargate Universe S01E05 was downloading in glorious 720p, and my intertubes were a little clogged. With nothing else to do (study was postponed until Monday), some NCIS (the original) was in order. Unfortunately, this didn’t satisfy my geek curiousitys as much as I wanted it to – while it was certainly enjoyable, I needed something else.

Problem number one: on my Mac, I use a Fluid-based SSB (Single Site Browser) tied into Google Reader for my RSS feeds. The exact reasons why are probably best left to another blog post, but it works, and I’m happy. The fact that it’s Reader inside an SSB isn’t the issue, however.

Read More

Oct 23, 2009

Another one from the camera roll.

When you think about it, the iPhone camera can take pretty good pictures sometimes. Here’s one I managed to capture one lazy Sunday evening. For those of you that don’t poke your head out that often, it’s Elizabeth Mall.

What I like about this shot isn’t that fact that it’s blurry, but because the blur adds a sense of realism to the shot itself. If you look closely, it’s like the blur only affects the edges of the photo as well, while the centre is still in focus (relatively speaking).

So, there you have it. The iPhone 3G camera can be decent at times – for a geek like me, it’s a shame it’s not a better macro camera. It’s also a shame I don’t have a 3GS, but that’s another story.

This post, part of Blogtober 2009, just goes to show how damn lazy I actually am. Sleep beckons, gentlemen.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Oct 22, 2009

Production as performance.

What I love about the approach is that it’s show­ing us a com­pli­cated, vir­tu­oso per­for­mance, but mak­ing it really clear and acces­si­ble at the same time. It’s enter­tain­ing, but it’s also an exer­cise in demystification—which of course is exactly the oppo­site objec­tive of every music video, ever. Their pur­pose has been to mys­tify, to mas­quer­ade, to mythol­o­gize in real-time.

via Making music without a mask « Snarkmarket.

Had a long internal battle with myself over which of their (Pomplamoose’s) songs to link – it was between September by Earth, Wind and Fire, and Single Ladies by Beyonce (ugh, which I’ve only just discovered I linked to by mistake in another post. More at the end of this post).

As you can see from the video above, September won out – not because I don’t think their version of Single Ladies wasn’t great, because it is (on more levels than one), but because to me, September better represented what the production-as-performance genre is all about – “subdivision of the video frame, lots of gear, performance, but above all performers” – who, by all appearances, to be normal; there’s no smoke machine, nor any hi-tech special effects.

It’s this kind of stuff that makes YouTube great. Like the Awesome Stopmotion Music (and it’s subsequent redux, coming soon to this blog), such pop-culture references, more commonly known as “memes” have absolutely exploded, and yeah. It’s great :D

Right, so I only just discovered that I linked wrongly to Pomplamoose’s Single Ladies cover, when I was actually supposed to link to the Bottle Bank Arcade, part of the Fun Theory Redux. I’ve since rectified this error, you can now watch the Bottle Bank Arcade on the original post. My apologies for this.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. We’re almost there – and I’ve gotta start pumping out some serious posts, instead of just Pressing stuff from WordPress’ excellent, but making-me-a-lazy-blogger tool, the Press This bookmarklet. Ah well.

Oct 21, 2009

This.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where it is at.

Somewhat similar to what was said about Borderlands a while back – “screw exams, there’s Matthew Reilly awesomeness to be had!”

This post only somewhat part of Blogtober 2009. I can’t tell – all I know is that there’s a MR book on my desk, and I want to read it :)

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Oct 20, 2009

Get In Touch.

I feel silly writing a guide to sending me instant messages, but bear with me, I have reasons. If you’re going to PM me on Head-fi, MacTalk or any other forum I frequent, chatting with me via instant message (MSN, AIM, etc.) is more efficient. You can find my IM details in my forum profile.

via Instant-messaging me (IM’ing me) – Truth is Stranger than Fiction.

As part of my Dynamic Web Development study today, I revamped my contact page on this blog. (I am, of course, kidding. Call it procrastination, call it a distraction, call it anything you want – but it definitely wasn’t study.)

This continued (funny how these things snowball, isn’t it?) onto me introducing a new page – elsewhere. I am elsewhere on the internets, and this “Elsewhere” page is designed to let you know exactly where. It involved a good evening’s worth of hunting down my online profiles, identities, and what-have-you, but I think it was worth it. I’m pretty much contactable in every way possible now.

That being said, not EVERY single online profile. Off the top of my head, the Elesewhere list is missing my never-updated Tumblr, my Steam profile, my forum profiles (Mactalk, OCAU), my Youtube, Vimeo, as well as stuff that I haven’t touched in years (Ubuntu Forums, Gentoo forums).

What prompted this mass online-identity updating and linking was a post by one of the people I follow on Twitter who had a list of all her networks on her Posterous page. I thought it was an excellent idea, so inbetween episodes of Stargate Universe, I managed to get it done.

Maybe I’ll update my Elsewhere page to point to those eventually. And if I join even MORE social networks, I’ll add those to the list, too.

For now – catcha round on the interwebs.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. A post a day – and a page or two thrown in for good measure.

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