GromBlog

Irony of Ironies
In a fantastically ironic twist, 'Garlick Enterprises Inc' are amongst those who have complained about the stink from grape waste near their business.

Banner Ads We'd Like To See
Self-confessed geek humour site Valley of the geeks has an excellent couple of articles full of Banner Ads We'd Like To See and Banner Ads We'd Like To See pt.2.

Spyware-free RealPlayer
I'm currently rebuilding my pc in an effort to finally get it running as smoothly as it should (hence the lack of posts yesterday). I'm loath to install anything that I don't actually need (the 150Gb of mp3s and movies don't count ;o) )but I'm really making a concerted effort to keep the machine spyware and bloatware free. To this end I thought I'd share a linkwe posted a while back for a Spyware-free RealPlayer which you can get through the BBC. Finally a proper use for my tv license fee - public broadcasting at it's best!

Celebrity (not very) lookalikes
Can't stop laughing and clicking at this site. Splitting Images is a UK celebrity look-a-like agency but I really want to know who'd want a Bella Emberg-alike (anyone remember her?) or Mikhail Gorbachov's wife. Other highlights (lowlights?) include Xena's older, alcoholic, lemon-sucking sister or the poor bugger who actually does look like Jaws (not the fish - the baddie from James Bond).

The Singhsons
Not sure if this is a piece of fan work or if it's from a real episode of the Simpsons but the opening sequence of the Indian version, named The Singhsons is brilliant.

More remix mahem It looks like Jay-Zs hope that people would "remix the hell" out of his latest album is being forfilled. After the Grey album, blogged a few weeks back , there now comes Black on Black. A mix of Jay-Zs Black album with Metalicas Black album. I'm sure Metalica are dead pleased.
As people only seem to be remixing it with other "colour" albums, expect a remix involving Orbitals Green and Brown albums any time soon, probably called "the moldy looking off-brown-greyish album" or similar.

Three side notes to the last post
1. I met David Blunkett in St Lucia a couple of years ago - It was in the sea in the most beautiful setting imaginable - one of my life's big regrets is that I wish I'd drowned him then so that he couldn't further erode this country's freeedoms but I was getting married so I was in too good a mood at the time.
2. The previous post was about qwghlm.co.uk - it's an url I'd love to have since it's a geeky reference to god-like (IMHO) author Neal Stephenson.
3. Nosing around qwghlm.co.uk I noticed that the author Christopher Applegate has linked to pri.me.uk for which I'd like to thank him - cheers mate!
(NB. if anyone else happens to bump into Blunkett - please feel free to punch him for me - or tell him to go join the tories who would agree with all of his policies.)

The Daily Mail-o-matic
The Daily Mail-o-matic is one of the many cool toys on qwghlm.co.uk. It'll appeal to anyone who reads the Guardian. Also check out the freedom-hating Blunkett policy maker to remind you how similar the Tories are to Labour these days.

Sweet Shops
I know we've blogged AQuarterOf.com before - a place where you can get the yummy sweeties of your childhood. Well - if for any reason you don't like that site - perhaps they don't do the right sort of lemon bon-bon or something then you can get more sweeties from this site!

Space Imaging - the View from up here
Here's a collection of rather cool images taken from satellites - it's weird how the Taj Mahal looks like a factory from up there.

Transformer Pr()n
Aarrgghh! What is it with nerds and pr()n? This time it's that nerdiest of cartoons the Transformers whose turn it is to be turned into pr()n stars.

Virgin Mary Pissoirs
The word urinal is far too dirty to describe these - you could only describe the Virgin Mary toilets with a word as magnificent as Pissoirs.

Creative Sushi Lunchboxes
Aren't these lunchboxes the cutest pieces of raw fish and rice you've ever seen?
Almost a shame to eat them.

Ba-ba Ca-ca!
Just for Grom, here is a little picture of something he's probably getting quite used to now. Luckily you don't get the smell.

See-Thru Concrete
LitraCon is the sci-fi name given to Aron Losonczi's invention see-thru concrete. Imagine having solid concrete walls that let shadows pass through as if the wall was made out of paper. Check out these photos to see it in real life.

Disposable email addresses
Everyone wants your email address these days. Trouble is, you don't want the spam. So what do you do? One answer I've just tested is head over to Jetable.org for a disposable email address. Type in your real email address, tell them how long you want it to work for (max. of 8 days) and it will give you an email address on their server which will automatically forward to your email account - you receive it in your inbox even though it's addressed to a jetable.org account. It's not an anonymous forwarder though, all mail headers are retained but it'll help to stop the spam.

Smallest commercial motherboard yet?
Case mods are gonna be getting a lot smaller very shortly as these photos of the new 'Nano-itx' motherboards show. This mobo is only 12 cms sq and yet feature everything a pc needs except storage, memory a cpu and a power supply.

From the Dept of Heroic Failures
OK this happened a week ago, but I've been on hols so I only read the results today.
You may or may not have heard about the DARPA Grand challenge. A "challenge of autonomous ground vehicles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas" -- read robots*. A gruelling 200km journey, unaided, accross the dessert but with a whopping $1mil for the first team to complete it.
There was all sorts of controversy when DARPA changed the rules (as some believe) to favour the large companies who entered, and then more when they released the route the challenge would take.
15 teams got through the selection process, and on the 13th of this month they all gathered just outside LA and set their bots off.
Now given the vast prize fund, I didn't think anyone would make the entire distance in this first comp.
How right I was. A shocking number didn't even make it out of the start area. The bot that went the furthest managed a huge 7.4 miles, before grounding itself and bursting into flames.
Schadenfreude takes the egde off a dull day.
*that's the proper definition of robot not remote control a-la "Robot Wars"

More bizarre USB goodies After posting about the numerous silly USB devices we've found in the past two years, it's come ot my attention that the iDuck USB rubber duck comes in a variety of colours and not just the red, horned Devil duck. We've also found a USB noodle cooker, a USB heated blanket (which even comes in an Elmo design), a USB Drinks coaster (for heating drinks) and a USB ashtray with extractor fan (which I think we've posted before).

How fast do you have to be going to do this??
If you ever wanted to see why you shouldn't speed on the road then take a look at these photos - as the title of the thread says, "How fast would you have to be going to do this?' Apparently there are more photos which include the bodies but (thankfully) they aren't included on this website.

New Archos Product - it rocks
If you haven't heard of Archos yet then you're missing out on the biggest improvement to entertainment since the Walkman. Ok, so they're not as pretty as iPods and they have the same sucky battery life but an awful lot of the teething problems (like the battery life) look to have been solved with this prottype of their next machine. Details are sketchy so far but Shane's rumours page has detailed culled from this video.
There are too many features to mention but basically it's a pocket size hard-drive based video & audio player/recorder which will now act as a USB Host so you can connect loads of devices to it and it'll act as a pda. Or for the same price you could buy an iPod which looks nice and plays music - your choice!

How long will it take you...
The Japanese consistently come up with more inventive computer games than anyone else - the hallmarks are cutesy graphics, personification of animals or nature and very simple controls - Vanilla fulfills all of these criteria but how long will it take you to figure out what you have to do?

GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery
Whilst trying to settle an argument with a friend over Amiga vs Atari I just stumbled onto GUIdebook - a Graphical User Interface gallery. It's got all the desktops and icons for virtually every Operating System that you can think of (except Microsoft Bob). Weirdly compulsive.

Beetroot Urine
Beetroot p1ss - unusually for this site, that's not the name of some obscure death metal band. No, it's just that it has come to my attention the eating lots of beetroot on an empty stomach makes your plss turn pink. Luckily, I hate the stuff so it's not an experiment I'll be attempting myself.