Silliness:

How to make a steak, from the raw ingredients – she's called mumu by the way (the raw ingredients that is.)

Silliness:

Found on Richard Dawkins website, but much funnier than The God Delusion: it's Mr. Deity.

The long-held war on pigeons has settled into a bitter battle of attrition, but perhaps these new ideas can bring some progress.

Tom, Justin and I wondered about overclocking a toaster once, but this is just plain silly.

Proof positive that someone else agrees with my opinions on play and people; i.e. that they've forgotten how to do it, and we can sell it to them repackaged for adults as "exercise".

Happy Birthday!

Today is my darling sister's birthday, so happy birthday Charis!

Silliness:

Pack up and go home, madness is endemic and you may as well embrace it.

Lesbian Koalas; do I need to say anything else?

Geekiness:

Amazing things built using lego, I believe I've already mentioned the factory.

Silliness:

Here's a guide on how to convert pictures to ASCII art.

Chimps seen using spears to hunt, they'll be coming for us next.

Geekiness:

Fish swim amazingly quickly and efficiently, could this be the start of a new submarinal mode of transportation?

Silliness:

This is the most bizarre thing I've seen in a long time; a park in South Korea dedicated to soft-core porn and penises, you have to love the fact the children get in free.

Abstinence is sexy, apparently.

Hoorah!

Today's Ellie's Birthday, so happy birthday dearest.

Silliness:

iTunes discovers probably fraud by incorrectly identifying a record.

Too much time, too little sense – the search for a desktop background image.

Urban etiquette, a simple quide.

A list of reasons that Geeks make better lovers, it was just a shame it came a week too late for valentine's day.

Geekiness:

Just the word abandonware inspires feelings of free goodies to come, and some of them are really good.

Do you need a really natty wallpaper?

Silliness:

Ok, so perhaps this is a bit much, but it's still funny. The truth behind Calvin and Hobbes.

People in Somerset ain't too bright it would appear, this one shot footage as he broke the law, and included the bit where he went home again.

What an awesome idea, if you think you may want a change of career, pay to have a go at it.

Ellie's Link:

Hugs are good for you, especially if you're a woman.

So, I was watching the video about Crackdown over at on10, and a thought occurred to me.

I don't want to criticise the developers, the game looks interesting and could be a lot of fun. But when they were detailing the plot something jarred. Here's a rundown of the plot, the city's gone to hell – the police are running scared and you're thrown in to sort everything out. The city is dominated by three gangs, a Hispanic gang, a Russian mafia clone, and a Triad / Yakuza clone. You play the American / Western European super cop sent in to sort the bad guys out.

What is wrong with this picture?

Thankfully there isn't a predominantly black gang, but that's about the only concession to modern day enlightenment. I don't want to criticise Realtime Worlds, the game looks fun, and this sort of implicit racism is definitely to be found almost everywhere else in games. There's also a case to answer that in the real world Hispanic, eastern European and Oriental gangs exist, and do make up a large chunk of organised crime. That's not really what's bugging me, what's bugging me is that in most games bad guys are depicted using what really amounts to very lazy stereotyping. What sort of game is it? Combat game: you get Evil Arabs, or Nazis. Espionage: You get fat white industrialists. Urban: gangs of ethnic minorities and fat white cops. I suppose this goes hand-in-hand with the kind of wafer-thin plots we've come to expect; but I think a mature intelligent group of people deserves better storytelling, and more interesting characters. If gaming is going to continue to pander to lowest-common denominator social stereotypes then it's going to have to get used to being treated as a second-class art form.

Even something as simple as having a lead character who wasn't a square-jawed American / Generic Western guy with huge biceps would be nice. How about an Indian? You don't see a lot of heroes from Mumbai, that would be cool; a Bangladeshi woman would be awesome. Perhaps she could stand against evil corrupt influences coming in from Australia.

Hell, making the bad guys not instantly identifiable by their badly acted accents and ridiculous street fashions could even be a feature. Keep the player on their toes you know?

Enough of me ranting, I'll let y'all go now. (PS – check out the Crackdown demo if you've got a 360, it looks cool.)

Silliness:

Clean out your minds, it's not porn.

Weirdly hypnotic, video footage taken from the solid rocket boosters on the shuttle as it comes down to earth.

Geekiness:

Is this the geekiest way to propose? Quite possibly.

People really do need to get out more; here's a language written entirely using whitespace (that's, tabs, spaces and newlines to you non-techies.) I love the sample app.

Silliness:

This is supremely mental, apartments which are difficult to live in, to keep you mentally active in your old age.

Can you feel the charisma oozing off Barack Obama at the moment? It's creepy, I'd vote for him, but that would be some sort of fraud.

The Republican election mantra as it will be in 2008 laid out in cartoon form.

The KKK weren't all about lynching you know, they were also Ferris wheel aficionados.

Isn't their a law about this sort of stuff? Or is being permanently stoned obligatory for animators?

Silliness:

Awesome low-impact housing in Wales.

Danger warnings translated for our understanding.

Oh look, conclusive proof that god exists, bananas are just the right shape. (I was trying not to laugh too loud at this one.)

Speaking of translating symbols, here's a list of army hand signals decoded for you gratification.

Ellie's Link:

It's valentine's day everybody, so the love of my life has dug this story up The world's most expensive pizza, marvellous – and frankly a little disgusting sounding.

Silliness:

An alarming quote from Goering with modern day relevance.

Oh goody, huge contracting companies are likely to be less than ethical, and take all government money. Thank heavens we're in the UK, and all we have to deal with is Capita…

This is how you fold a T-Shirt… Pay really close attention.

If you've got a flickr account, print yourself out some cards.

Geekiness:

Downloading doesn't have an effect on music sales according to this study, who knew? Oh wait, I've been saying this for years.

Silliness:

Actually incredibly insightful research methinks, so not really silliness. (ignore the occasionally alarming adverts!) Don't tell kids they're smart, tell them something else.

Geekiness:

I'm not sure which category this comes in under, but it's time Gillian McKeith left us all alone and stopped being an irritating fraud.

One of those, "isn't that really obvious" ideas; how insects can fly so confidently and gracefully.

Silliness:

Ah human nature, what a marvellous thing. Some people are arseholes, some people are just too damn cool.

Have you ever wanted to know where the design for the CND symbol came from? Me neither – but here we go.

Ah, duelling, what a marvellous sport – perhaps it should be legalised to try to cut down on all these spare people we seem to have lying around?

Ellie's Link:

So, do you want to redeem your clubcard points on groceries or a degree?

Silliness:

I was despairing of finding any proper silliness today, but thank you florida.

Geekiness:

Really cool images generated as time-lapse photographs of arcade games, you've got to love the tempest one.

Upgrading to Vista's caused a backlog, here they all are in one chunk.

Silliness:

If you were thinking that your studio flat was small, try this on for size.

Soundbyte philosophy, 11 important quotations.

I'm glad we've got these established; the international rules of manhood.

I foolishly wasn't noting down my silly links today – but here's one I did get, a folding chair. (and I mean really folding.)

Geekiness:

Pills are not as good for you as fruit and veg, shock horror (to some, to many obvious.)

Ever wondered why America got involved in the war? Because we gave them all our secrets.

A meteorite which is older than the sun, how cool is that?

Silliness:

So why do people in different countries drive on different sides of the road? Here are the historical reasons.

Myths about the developing world dispelled with great enthusiasm and clarity. Taken from this series of talks about almost anything.

Films enacted quickly by bunnies.

Geekiness:

I'm intrigued, about the iname concept that is.

Alarmingness:

Ah, the "War On Terror" is there anything it can't excuse?

Courtney love is not happy, and I can't say I blame her – I had no idea recording contracts sucked so badly.