Fancy a new dekstop wallpaper? Check out Veer’s wallpapers where all 250+ are stupidly stylish and totally free (for personal use).

Holy crap! Have Apple just launched the most desirable pocket gadget since the original iPod? Answer: Hell yeah!

There is a cool video of Steve Jobs announcing the nano here.

Justin says:
  she is a dream
Justin says:
  lets get her drunk and \missing text/

Introducing Shout Out Louds. They’re fucking great, ok. In fact I like them so much I’ve actually purchased their album instead of just downloading it from the dark side of the net. They’re a mixture of everything that is cool to listen to at the moment… Maximo Park, James Blunt, Kaiser Cheifs, Magic Numbers, Coral, with an added bit of David Gray, Travis, and possibly even The Verve for good measure. They’re nice and lively and won’t get you depressed like Coldplay will.

These people will like Shout Out Louds: Justin, Alex (do you even read this still?). These people may like Shout Out Louds: Ed, Joyce, Muf, Hazel. These people won’t like Shout Out Louds: Rey, Jay.

The best way to listen to their stuff is to download and watch the music videos which are way higher quality than the streaming Windows Media ASX crap. Let me know what you think!

Now when you post a comment to lud.icro.us it’ll appear straight away without being moderated. I haven’t had any comment spam (yet) so this should be quite a safe move.

Update: Ok now it’ll appear straight away without being moderated :)

It’s true. The developed world cannot get enough of Google, and that’s why whenever Google launches a new service or piece of software nowadays it makes it onto the front page of the world’s top news websites.

This is all the more strange because Google Talk is (like most other Google services) still in beta.

So today - in a “Girl Next Door” stylee - I found out that the barmaid down at our local pub is in fact an internet porn star. How great is that!?!

Ok so she’s nowhere near as fit as Elisha Cuthbert and she’s not exactly a porn star, but she does do nude modelling and she has her own pay-to-view website, so you may as well call it porn. She isn’t all that attractive in fact, but she does have a very impressive tattoo on her back. I would give you a link to her site but there are two reasons why I won’t.

1. I don’t think Google thinks highly of sites that link to porn, and I don’t want to disappear off the bottom of Google’s rankings
2. It’s almost guaranteed that someone would figure out where she lived and worked and then I’d get my ass kicked (probably whilst in the pub)

On a related note, Pornstar would be a great name for an ale. “A pint of Pornstar please!”

Shit. Turns out that this guy was innocent.

I’ve not posted anything on lud.icro.us about the recent London bombings and the associated terrorist investigations, and I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first let me say that I saw on the news that a man was shot dead in full view of the public on the London Underground today (BBC News article). You hear of things like this happening quite often nowadays, but never, ever has this happened in the UK, and never in such an uncontrolled environment.

They [the plain-clothes police officers] pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him

Holy fuck people, that’s just unheard of. These plain-clothes police officers follow a guy into the tube, give him a warning and then slaughter him when he disobeys them. All this in front of a train station-full of commuters. They’d better have a good reason for killing him otherwise all hell will break loose. Unless they had very good reason to believe he was involved in terrorist activities, police would not have been allowed to fatally wound a man just for disobeying police orders.

As for me not posting about this stuff before, it’s because I’m no good at it. I don’t do this shit well because I don’t know what to say. I don’t like just telling people about it, because there are plenty of news sites and tens of thousands of blogs out there which will do just that, and it hasn’t affected me personally (so far, God bless, and prey that it doesn’t in the future) so I can’t possibly give any heartfelt opinions or stories. And that’s why I may not mention the London bombings or any other possible future terrorist activity again.

Well done Microsoft, for picking a spectacularly bad name for your forthcoming operating system. Windows Vista, I simply cannot comprehend life without you. Win98 4eva!!!11
(via slowdown)

This online animated cartoon series called Making Fiends is so utterly obscure and wonderful and crazy and beautiful and fucked up and funny and engaging and spooky and unique and bonkers and lovable and mysterious and absorbing that I don’t really know how to describe it without sounding like a twat.

Testemonials:

pirateyam says:
  omg i LOVE making fiends
pirateyam says:
  i watched it for like an entire morning

Bon says:
  i’m sure it’s the second or third best thing in the world

Justin says:
  classic

Quicktime movies of over 400 different Live 8 performances.
Some guy has compiled a list of links to the (high-quality) Live 8 videos on the AOL servers. I guess they’re only supposed to be streamed via the AOL website so you see all the advertising which goes with them, but this way is much better :) You’ll need a phat connection though, most of the files are around the 100 mb mark!

(via Slowdown)

Does anyone want a free Flickr pro account? I have 2 free 1 year pro accounts still to give away, but I’ve got no-one to give them to. If you would like one, hurry up and email me (johnbillion at gmail dot com)… they expire on July 15th!

Update: Only one left!

Update II: All gone!

Award for the ‘Lamest FlickrBlog Post Ever’ goes to Trucks. How exceptionally non-exciting. It wouldn’t be so bad if the photos were of interesting trucks, but they’re not, they’re normal everyday freight transporters parked up in laybys. Not sure why Heather of Flickr bothered linking to these, maybe it was a slow day at the Flickr office!

job. first day, induction. with 6 stupid people. example; talking about sleepers on railway lines, “that’s what you do at night, innit?“, everyone else laughs. yes, good one. truly you are the pun king.

roseability.net - frustrating people since february ‘04

Best. Dream. Ever.

A few years ago if a piece of software or a web service carried a beta mark, most people except developers would keep well away from it. It was like a little warning sign to say something’s not quite ready, but you can take a look if you’re willing to take the risk. The risk that it’s not been fully tested and therefore anything could happen (eg. the world could explode).

Nowadays however, I seem to be using a huge number of beta products without even trying. Gmail is in beta. Flickr is in beta. Google News, Odeo, Windows AntiSpyware, Kinja, Google Maps; they’re all in beta but I, along with hundreds of thousands of people, use them every day. Ok so Google is responsible for most of them, but you get the point :)

I’m currently using a test version of Firefox called Deer Park Alpha 1 which suggests to me that ‘alpha’ will start to be applied to software still in it’s developmental stage, moreso than it has been previously. Alpha used to be a no-go zone for everyone but the most hardcore of developers, but with Deer Park being usable and with a lot fewer bugs than I expected, I predict that it’ll become the new beta. The only problem being of course… what happens when everything is alpha? You get pre-alpha, but then what? There aren’t any letters in the greek alphabet before alpha…

I’ll be switching on comments on some posts from now on. Feel free to comment, or not. I know I will be!

As a starting point I would like to hear - in your own unique words - how lame you think the lame Lotto ad is (because I know you all agree with me), so comments are activated on that post now. Also Shough wants you to be friends with him too.

When I heard that a brand new Half-Life 2 full conversion called Eclipse had just been released for free download, I went along to the website and downloaded it almost straight away. Why? Because damn it looks sweet! Check out the amazing screenshots!

Now I’m not much of a gamer but Half-Life 2 is one of my most favourite PC games, so I’m gonna give this a try. As I’m typing this it’s installing itself on my machine, and hopefully it’ll be ok as I’ve been having some problems with my CPU lately (on it’s last legs I think). I’ll finally be able to put my new Radeon 9800 Pro to the test, too, as I completed Half-Life 2 in it’s entirity with just 32mb of graphics power!

From the Eclipse game website:

You play as a young Sorceress named Violet who has learned the secrets of Telekinesis. This allows Violet to easily find objects in the environment that she can pick up and throw. Use Violet’s power of Telekinesis to help protect you as you journey over distant lands in search of the ancient teleportation device near the Standing Stones. Battle your way through hordes of orc-like creatures known as Keepers as you make your way through the enchanted Blackmoor forest. Find Violet’s ancestral burial grounds in the Barrow and unlock dark secrets that will aid you in your final stand at the Standing Stones.

Stand by for regular updates and (hopefully) more pictures of the lovely Violet :)