GromBlog

Arm Wrestling Freud
Arm-Wrestle Sigmund Freud. Why not?

Funky backgrounds
Ok, I've gone on about how cool Drempels is. It gives you a constantly moving desktop with psychedelic patterns. Almost as good, I've now discovered how to make any Winamp3 visualisations run on your desktop (ie:underneath the My Computer, recycle bin etc icons). If you have Winamp3 installed - fire it up, play some music then follow these instructions;
Go to Winamp - right click - go to 'Windows' -> 'Visualisation Studio'
When the Vis studio window is open, click on 'Open Editor' (in the bottom left hand corner).
Under Settings, click 'Display'.
Look for 'Overlay mode' & 'Set Desktop to colour', make sure both boxes are ticked, click 'default' button in between them both.
Close the editor window.
Now for the only tricky bit - Resize the AVS(visualisation) window so that it is the about half width and height of the screen and then drag it to just outside the desktop, so it's out of view but not minimised.
You should now have the coolest pc desktop you've ever seen.
If you have any problems with these instructions then let me know & I'll help you with it.
Enjoy.

Prelinger Archives
I think I first mentioned the Prelinger archives about 6 months ago but since then, this amazing resource of old public information, educational, amateur, industrial & advertising movies (available to d/load for free) has grown hugely since they gave other people the ability to add their own archives. My interest was obviously drawn to the section on stag films (1950's pr0n). If you liked those links, you should check out the rest of archive.org - the wayback machine is always a favourite of mine (see how websites used to look - here's fark from 2000.

Tony takes a lesson from Bill
Tony Blair seems to have been taking a lesson from Bill Clinton on his recent visit to Iraq if this dubious photo is anything to go by.

'MISS, THEY TOLD ME TO DO IT'
'He is a sensible, popular boy and it is not something he would do naturally.'
Yeah, Right!

Big Boys Toys
The Deith Group sell loads of new arcade games, pool tables, air hockey tables, roulette tables and my favourite, the classic table-top Space Invaders game which is able to play 8 different classic games like Breakout, Galaxian, Frogger, Pac-Man etc. Since my house is way too small to house one, I wonder if I can convince a load of people at work to chip in for one for the office?

New Playstation photos
Sony have recently announced the next Playstation and I've finally managed to track down some photos of it. From what I know so far, it's not actually the PS3 - instead this machine comes with a 120Gb hard drive and is aimed more at being able to record from your tv.
Kaye - do you have any more info?

Primates For Sale
Lots of you who have met me in person will know of my fondness (or affinity if you want) for monkeys but even though I've wanted to own one since childhood, I'd never buy one - this lot don't share the same concerns as me though.

Honest Job Ad
Australians have a reputation for no nonsense attitudes which is more than backed up by this job advert.

80s Commercials
Another remider of childhood Saturday mornings - X-Entertainment brings you hundreds of 80s Commercials to download. They're all American ones but quite a few will be familiar to us Brits.

Wrong wrong wrong!
Just when you've found the most beautiful thing in the world, someone comes along and does this with it. I despair, I really do.

Gator - the facts
Unless you've been using the 'Interweb' for less than a day, you will have come across 'Gator' in an advert, pop-up, pop-under, redirect or other irritating means of getting your attention. You may even have been forced to install it whilst trying to install some other piece of software that you actually want. It's a truly nasty piece of software that can be described as 'bloatware', 'adware', 'malware' or any number of other bad names. The Cyber law dept of Harvard University has done a study into Gator which makes for very interesting reading. It's not all gloomy though, have a look in the lawsuits section to see how badly they're doing in the courts at the moment.

The DisneyTattooGuy proclaims himself to be Disney's #1 Fan - he also wins another title - Prince of Shattoos. (for the best examples of Shattoos - a term I love - see Kaye's old Shattoo site which really should be resurrected)

Death Metal KARAOKE
Not sure if I haven't already posted this but if not, grab a microphone, turn up your pc speakers and sing along with GROWL KARAOKE. (for best results, put on some headphones and sing along in the office - your work mates will all want to join in)

I'm blogging this. Someone needs to buy me this t-shirt.

A Quarter Of... Remember all the sweets that you used to get from your local corner shop? 'A Quarter Of...' is a brilliant online sweetie shop where you can get loads of those childhood favourites. Their latest news is that they've tracked down a new supplier of Sherbet Pips (one of my all-time favourite sweets). They've even got a section on 'Whatever happened to...' which covers, Texan Bars and Spangles. They even have suggestions for modern equivalents of old classics (they recommend Spearmint Mojos as a replacement for Stripey Pacers).
My dentist will hate them.

Matrix Web Easter Eggs
Even though I haven't been to see it yet, The Matrix Reloaded is already quite a phenomenon. Follow these somewhat lengthy instructions to get cool extras from their website. (best for CGI/hardcore Matrix fans):

- Enter the high-bandwidth version.
- In the upper right hand corner there is a MAINFRAME area, click the yellow dot to the right and a side panel will open up.
- In the side panel there is a small grey square box, click it and it will turn green.
- Move your mouse over it again and it will turn green again, click it.
- The words "BINARY ACCESS" will flash on the screen and you'll get a new panel. Slide it open and enter 01101111.
- The light will turn green, press enter.
- Enter 1010-0011-1011-0001-1010-0100-0010-1000 into the new panel.

Randomly-generated Websites
If you want to make a quick , basic website in a hurry, you could do worse than look at Strange Banana's random webpage design generator. The page gets re-built every time you refresh the page and will use different colours, layouts, fonts etc each time. All you have to do is grab the source code and alter it as you wish. Nice. (cheers Al)