The divine face of cheese

I'd read about the "Madonna on a slice of cheese toast" before, but I'd never really looked at it.

It's strange, why do people always insist on seeing the Madonna or Jesus in these shapes? I mean, I understand why we see faces, but why do so many interpret them as ''those'' faces?

To me, this looks much more like the image of a 40s film star. There's nothing in the image that says "the Madonna" to me. Although I would listen to an argument that it's Madonna.

But really, I think I'd have to say it's an image of Rita Hayworth. Despite a friend insisting that it looks more Greta Garbo-ish.

The best of the worst

Sometimes bad can be so bad, it actually becomes good.

Here's a fun compilation of the worst of cinema:

Credit: Jocke_Pirat on #uncyclopedia

The educating Internet

There are a few sites I visit very regularly: YouTube, Fark, icanhascheezburger... but those sites have a tendency to send me off to other corners of the Internet to find out more (well.. maybe icanhascheezburger is a bit less likely to do so)

A comment in the hover text of the latest XKCD led me to look up this thought experiment:

A plane is standing on a large treadmill or conveyor belt. The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyor moves in the opposite direction. This conveyor has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyor to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?

Which led me to lots of argument, the inevitable Wikipedia article, and a comprehensive explanation from an exasperated blogger.

So you see it's worth reading these sites so often. They lead me to further edumacation!

Although again, perhaps icanhascheezburger is a bit of an exception.

Message on a banknote

The idea of sending a secret on a postcard has stuck with me since I wrote about it a few of days ago. But I think that an alternative idea is more my style...

de-noted suggests writing a question on a bank note, and then spending it. Sending out a question into the world is an attractive idea, even if the answer would never come back.

And like PostSecret the idea has expanded into an of art-form, with decorated money released into the world to surprise their future owners... often with the art minus the question.

I've got to try this one.

Image © Codeine.
Used with permission.

A man walks into a bar...

...with a newt on his shoulder. "What do you call that?", asks the bartender. "I call him Tiny" said the man "because he's my newt"

OK, not the most complex of sites, but it made me laugh.

Unlike the joke, which is one of many deliberately bad jokes flying around the Uncyclopedia IRC channel this week.

There are days when the Internet can be just too much of a good bad thing

Credit: AAA^ on #uncyclopedia

Rule 35

I've mentioned Rule 34 before: "If it exists, there is porn of it."

A friend reminded me of xkcd's take on this:


And, of course, wetriffs.com does exist (now) and is quite a funny site in its own right.

And that leads us to Rule 35: "if it doesn't exist on the internet, it must be created."

xkcd is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Secrets

I've come across PostSecret a couple of times. It's a strange site, showing postcards each containing a secret that someone has written and posted in.

Many of them seem harsh and depressing, which I guess is inevitable, we don't usually keep the good things in life a secret.

But they are also strangely beautiful, and very touching. It feels like a real glimpse of the inner person.

Here's more on the project:

So what would I send? Hummm... I think that will stay a secret.

Sinister nursery rhymes

Did you know that the nursery rhyme "Georgie Porgie pudding and pie" refers to a notorious case of wanton sexual indiscretions and harassment in the 17th Century? Or how about "Mary Mary quite contrary" being all about the torture of Protestants in Queen Mary's bloody reign?

These are from another cracked.com list: The Disturbing Origins of 5 Common Nursery Rhymes.

To me, these explanations seem rather contrived, and I wonder how much the words have been fitted to the history in retrospect.

Or maybe future generations of children will be singing nursery rhymes all about the death of Diana, and the scandal of the valet and the "senior royal"

Photo by Flickr user Jacob Whittaker
Licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Mostly female

Apparently, according to the BBC's sex I.D. quiz, my brain is mostly female.

I was actually surprised to see that I was slightly above average in spacial awareness, and that my memory for objects was good. These are both things that I know I'm not good at. But then that's "above average" compared to people idly playing online of course.

My verbal fluidity was below average though, and I didn't do well at judging emotions from photos of eyes.

It's an interesting test though, well worth a look.

A lifetime lost

Here's a sad story. Paul Mawhinney has the world's largest music collection, more than 3 million records and 300,000 CDs. But all that takes a lot of looking after, and it's not something he can do for much longer.

You would think a collection like that would be in high demand. But sadly there are no buyers. Of course, it's the maintenance that's going to be a problem, not the price. But even so, it's so sad to see that no one can give this unique resource a home.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Anyone out there with a few million and a love of music?

Source: defgrip.net
Credit: Avatar

Where does the day go?

Time. I need more of it.

Facial art

This has got to be the best beard I've even seen.

© andybarker2008

This is Willi Chevalier, the winner of the "Partial Beard Freestyle" section of the 2007 World Beard & Moustache Championships

There are some great entries for this, although I'm not quite sure what is going on with the winner of the "Full Beard Freestyle" section... is that a bridge?

This is a site I'm keeping in my bookmarks. I'm fascinated to see what they come up with next year!

Credit: ApeOnThursdays on #uncyclopedia
Image: Andy Barker. Used with permission.

Spam, Spam, Spam

Part of my job at Wikia is helping to keep the wikis free of spam. Of course, this is a never-ending task. And as soon as something new is developed to help, the spammers find ways around it.

I knew that spammers used bots, but I didn't really have a clear idea of how this was done. Or, for that matter, how effectively.

So this demonstration of a spam-bot from pandasecurity was fascinating. The bot does so much, even coping with verification emails.

Looks like it's the anti-spammers move in the never-ending chess game.

Image by Flickr user Grumbler %-|
Licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Pointless harmony

Sometimes, one just has to ask... "why?"

Of course, the answer is always "why not?"

Embracing the user

One of the challenges of the interactive Internet is how should a company react when content is created using their property? This is a question that's being worked out on sites, and in court rooms, as the changes in how we use the Internet come up against laws written for a simpler time.

One reaction is to take that new content and embrace it. It's not going to work for all situations, but I tend to think this is a healthy way of dealing with the new media - sort of "if you can't beat them, use them for publicity".

EA Sports reaction to a YouTube posting of a "glitch" in the game Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08 is the perfect example of this. They took a fan made video and turned it into this:

Much better than a court case.

Credit: Aaron

A ruby ruse

When is a hoax not a hoax?

How about when you actually tell people that they are paying $1000 for an iPhone application that does nothing other than add an icon to their screen?

That's what the "I Am Rich"application did. Just add a nice little ruby to your iPhone... a sign of wealth that those of us who can't afford to spend $1000 on something so pointless can only covert.

Come to think of it, that applies to the phone as much as the icon as far as I'm concerned.

And is it a hoax? Not in my book. I have to think those that paid for this were wrong to complain - they got exactly what they paid for.

Credit: Splarka

Paying attention?

I think this is a video that has to be seen without comment...

I liked the gorilla sitting in the background. That's a reference to another study on perception. For this one, the idea is to count how many times the ball is passed between the team wearing white.

Of course, having just seen the first video you may not see the full effect of the second. But just in case... if you didn't see anything unusual, then try again without the counting.

Emerging

I didn't post yesterday, because I was giving my first ever public presentation. It was terrifying, but I think it went well.

The presentation was at a workshop on ""emergent democracy", a complicated concept, and one that Wikipedia totally fails to explain.

Learning about this led me to Minding the Planet, and an idea to use emergent democracy to decide on the actions of a group. Each group member would agree to give 15 minutes of time a week to whatever the group decided that time should be spent on.

I like the idea... but I'm the independent type. What if I didn't want to do what the group thought I should?

But then, I think that's where real emergent democracy comes in. It's not about voting in a group for what we should do, it's about doing it... or not. The decision emerges from the actions we choose to make.

And that's when I can see why I was asked to talk about Wikipedia. I talked mostly about discussions on the site, but really it's the edits that matter.

You have to be joking...

Some days online it's hard to tell the reality from the parody.

That says a lot about the human race, if you still care enough about them to analyse it.

The coveted keyboard

I would never have thought I would be even remotely tempted to pay $1,589.99 for a keyboard. But one with a miniature screen on every key?

The Optimus Maximus keyboard has just that. And each of those OLED screens can be programmed with your choice of font, image, or even animation.

I want.

Credit: chris.pirillo.com via LordKat