Kinect for Windows is here!
Not that we have it yet, you understand. It only came out on the 1st of February, and in America, but I’m looking forward to the day I can edit blogs and sort out spreadsheets just by talking and waving my hands in the air.
Check out the basic info on the Microsoft Kinect for Windows website, if you’re curious.
How My Boobies Got Involved in Canadian Politics
Like I said the other day, I had this organic search traffic spike. Lots of people looking for Mike Crawley showed up, the majority of them from Google image search.
About 20 hours later, I saw the news that Mike Crawley has been named as the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada….
What this essentially means is that a whole lot of people were doing a quick spot of internet research on Mike Crawley, maybe looking for a picture of him to include with their blog post or news story, when they crashed into a couple of my photos along the way and got, um, distracted. “Important stuff, politics… oh look, boobies!” and so on.
So, if you’re here looking for Mike Crawley, Canadian politician, you just missed him.
If you want Mike Crawley AKA Photofrenetic, erotic nude and artistic nude photographer, then check out the gallery or visit his website.
That is all.
Pervs.
Related articles
- WTF Happened There? (machiavelliid.com)
- Liberals end 2012 convention with internal changes, new president, resolution … – Toronto Star (thestar.com)
WTF Happened There?
I just had one of those mad traffic spikes: not a StumbleUpon flashmob, not a run of Facebook click-throughs, but a burst of activity that comes mainly from organic search.
Look:
As it turns out, I had a lot of hits from people searching for Mike Crawley. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s an expert and because he does nudie photos.
There were a couple of hours there when it was all just busy, busy, busy – for this place, at least. I’m used to pootling along at no more than a hundred or so views a day most of the time, so this was pretty fucking unusual.
So who were those passing pervs? Will they be back? Did they find what they were looking for? What does it all mean?
Gun sales banned for Xbox Live Avatars
I’ve just found out on OXM online that the Gears of War Lancer and Hammerburst avatar items are no longer available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Apparently a new policy came into effect for all gun-like avatar accessories on the Xbox Live Marketplace from January 1, 2012.
If you’ve already bought guns for your avatar, you should still have those, but it looks like you won’t be getting any more. What a load of bollocks!
I am an adult Xbox 360 gamer and I don’t see the point of this ban. They put age limits on these gun games so why don’t they have the age limit thing on the avatar items if it’s that much of a problem? That way the people who don’t want their children playing around with TOY guns will be able to stop their kids’ avatars holding pictures of guns too. Lol.
I have six children and think it’s fair enough people don’t want their kids thinking its OK to play with real guns. Some parents think it’s bad to play with toy guns too. It’s not real when you play these GAMES. I mean come off it what’s next, are they going to ban kids from playing with toy guns and water pistols at all hmmm?
At the end of the day the avatars are only pictures and it’s safe to say kids have seen pictures of guns before, all over the place. And if they can still see guns on some Xbox Live avatars, given that guns already bought won’t be taken away, then what’s the point?
Army ads show men with guns all the time and show them as heroes – kids see that on TV all the time completely independent of anything Microsoft might do. I personally support the military because they’re sacrificing a lot to protect us, but if seeing pictures of people with guns is so bloody bad for kids, then surely everyone should stop advertising that way? Don’t be daft.
I’ve got a poster on our wall at home of Call of Duty characters holding guns and I don’t believe it does any psychological harm to my kids to see that piece of artwork. BIG DIFFERENCE between real life and games, BIG DIFFERENCE between interactive games and pictures.
***** 4nim4l *****
Related articles
- OXM story: Report: Gun sales to be illegal for Xbox Avatars starting New Year’s Day.
- Marvel Releases Superhero Items To Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace (splashpage.mtv.com)
- Xbox Live Avatar Marketplaces gets tattoos (vg247.com)
Spiderman Shattered Dimensions [Xbox 360 Game Review]
I’ve had this game out on rental for a while now and I really like it. There are a few glitchy bits to this game though. The worst of the glitches happens all the bloody time through the whole game whilst you’re swinging around – you go through things that you shouldn’t, and not only is the physics bad, but your view bounces from side to side like mental as well which can disorient you. It’s funny at first but got very annoying after a while.
On the electro level you get locked in a chamber where water starts to rise and is electrified, and you have to grab workmen and take them to turn the valves off. When I went to pick them up I had a problem, though – it wouldn’t let me pick the workmen up and even though I turned the console off to restart it, it still kept happening. So I cleaned the disk, and I’m glad I did because that sorted out the problem completely. It wasn’t a fault in the game, it was just some dirt!
It’s great fun to play Spiderman, even with the occasional glitches it’s one of those games that keeps you playing, if you know what I mean. You have loads to upgrade as well. With things like power ups and fighting moves as well as web moves, there’s too many upgrades to list so you’ll have to look it up :-P or get the game to see for yourselves.
I also like the fact you’re pretty much straight in there with the fighting – once you get through the gibberish that woman gives you at the beginning. She will pop up now and then to give you more useful info, but she just bores me at the start cos I want to get in there and get playing!
You won’t be disappointed with this game. From my point of view this is almost as good as the Batman titles (I would have said even better if it didn’t have a few glitches and minor niggles). But that’s just my opinion and I’m a big Spidey fan so I might be a bit biased. Definitely worth playing, even if you’re only hiring it like me :)
***** 4nim4l *****
Related articles
Heads up for a girly new sex toy dealer!
Just a quick one (fnar) to let the girly girls know about Pretty Little Sex Toys, an inoffensive new online sex toys & accessories store.
They’re very pink and feminine, with a compact ‘n’ bijou range of favourite classics instead of a huge warehouse full of alarming things you can’t identify at first glance. If you like the idea of sex toys or gentle bondage play, but don’t want to have to trawl through loads of fetish gear / toys for men / “realistic” veiny fake cocks, then this is the site for you.
They’re polite enough that you could send even a fairly twitchy boyfriend there to buy you a gift, safe in the knowledge that he won’t think you’re replacing him with a high-tech fuck-robot, and he also won’t be able to buy you anything disappointingly tacky (like he easily could in, for example, Ann Summers). Win-win.
If, however, you like your sex stuff freaky, filthy and fetish [huzzah!], then you might want to look elsewhere – more on that another day.
Image credit: Last NYC Hero
Related articles
- Random Ridiculousness: Woman Arrested For Assaulting Girlfriend With Strap On Sex Toy (bossip.com)
- How often should you clean your sex toys (wiki.answers.com)
The problem with “free”
For a month or 2 (OK, maybe more – my sense of time is hazy when I’ve been procrastinating hard) I’ve been the proud owner of a free .co.cc domain name and free 000webhost.com hosting. I haven’t made any good use of it, but it’s sucked up a fair amount of my time: checking to see if the registration had been activated, requesting activation, waiting, checking to see if the nameservers had been updated yet, waiting, twitching, reading the support resources, visiting the non-existent site to will it into being with my steely gaze, emailing support and waiting a week for a reply.
All I wanted it for was to poke around: instal WordPress.org, play with themes and stuff, test things I wasn’t sure about before I did them anywhere important. I didn’t see any point paying for something I was only going to use for fun and exploration. D’oh.
Top quality fun and exploration are well worth paying for. I wouldn’t say “oh, I’ll only ever use free sex toys because they’re just for fun,” or decide that my walking shoes have to be free because I’ll only use them to explore. So why was I focused on getting my test on for free?
Because the internet’s sposed to be free, yo.
No.
In the end I got pissed off and paid about £20 of our quaint English pounds to some guys online in exchange for a year’s hosting package that’s probably a lot higher-spec than I need, and includes a free .com domain name registration. I didn’t compare web hosting prices and find the best deal, I didn’t ask all my self-hosting friends for recommendations. Shit, I didn’t even tweet for help.
I just got bored bored bored of the dicking around with this free stuff and decided I was happy to pay someone who would do it a little bit faster and better; then I paid the first people I googled who looked… faster and better. And they were. I still had to live chat with a techie about getting my domain registration arranged, but that was quick and painless and live, dammit, so I wasn’t left frustrated and grouchy.
Oh, my aching internet-addicted bones.
I’m not saying all free stuff is bad; I have some excellent free or “freemium” stuff that I’m very happy with and whose support service is actually quite supportive. But I don’t want to embrace the false economy of saving money by doing everything myself, when my time is worth more than the fee for assistance.
So this morning I looked at my situation and grokked this: I could spend a few hours messing with my new setup and export-importing all my content and adding plugins and dancing with widgets. Or I could spend some cash and have my new site set up for me. I’d been intending to do it all myself, to benefit from the learning implicit in any new activity. But I realised the knowledge to be gained is largely “how to point and click”, and I’m pretty sure I could pick it up whenever if I needed to. So again, I’d rather spend a little cash and save the hassle than spend the time (when I could be earning money or chilling with my family) to do it myself.
Problem solved through the application of cash. So if you have cash, great – your takeaway is to spend more of it on saving yourself for the good stuff. If you don’t have cash, that sucks and I’m on my way. Leave me a comment (or email me) about who you are and what you’re doing for money; I’ll get back to you and help if I can.
Image credit: Gisela Giardino
Don’t be that dude, dude: Selling the Cloud [Video]
Don’t do that thing where you think that anyone who needs what you have will already know what it is.
Don’t be that twat who thinks “Duuhhh, you Luddite (or philistine, or newbie, or mouth-breathing meatbag 1.0)!” before and/or after every sentence.
Don’t assume that the only thing all those in-the-end-real people require is a targeted landing page iteration and autoresponder sequence.
Do use concrete data alongside, yes, fucking similes & metaphors; I love them.
Do allow yourself a little bit of mythos. It’s “the Cloud”, for fuck’s sake. Gods might be in there somewhere, playing What the Neighbours Did and sneering at our metaphysical shagpile carpeting.
But don’t overdo it. No unicorns.
Do watch the video, it’s fucking ace.
Burnout Crash will be Kinect enabled – but will it be good?
I am definitely going to get Burnout Crash, as I have Kinect already, so I’ll let you know if it’s crap :D.
I am excited. But at the same time, I know how it goes when they bring out a new version of a game I love. Here’s one example: Burnout Revenge was the most fun driving game of its time for me. But when they brought out Burnout Paradise, I thought it was SHIT — only my opinion!
It just seems like sequels often ruin the originals and create a less impressive track record. Is it just me, or do most people feel that way when they hear about a new game sequel being released?
*****the 4nim4l*****
Related articles
- Burnout Crash is Why Paradise Was Crash-less (1up.com)
- First Footage of Burnout Crash! on Kinect May Leave Burnout Fans Hopping, Mad [Video] (kotaku.com)
- ‘Burnout Crash’ Is Top-Down, Arcade-y, Kinect-y (multiplayerblog.mtv.com)
- Burnout Crash fall release re-confirmed by EA after erroneous UK posting (digitaltrends.com)
Call for guest bloggers
Pop quiz, hotshot. How many of the following are you?
- interesting
- creative
- funny
- excitable
- imaginative
- geeky
- sexy
- open-minded
- opinionated
- oddball
- honest
- eloquent
- obsessive
- insightful
- snarky
- freaky
- or Z, all of the above?
If you said yep to more than half of those, we want you. If you said yep to the last one, we really really want you.
I’m looking for new guest bloggers that will blow our heads off with their awesomeness. Or just spout some mad gubbins that entertains us. That’ll do.
Interested? Here’s how:
- Email mi@machiavelliid.com and tell me
- Who or what you are
- Where you blog (if you don’t blog anywhere, that’s fine)
- What you’d write about on here
- Where else we can find you (Twitter, Facebook, whatever)
- Write what you like, and people like you will read it. Send it to me or upload it to our guest blogger account as a draft.
- Don’t send us the same old stuff you’ve already had published somewhere else, please. If you want to get more exposure on a certain topic, write a new post about it.
- Include nice relevant, attributed public domain images where you can, cos everybody likes a good picture.
- Write yourself a byline/mini-bio/shamelessly self-promoting blurb that I can put at the end of your post. You’ll get a one-line intro at the start of the post as well with your name & a link to your main blog/site.
- If you want your byline to include a photo or logo, email me that too.
- Please don’t put affiliate links (like clickbank, go, affiliatewindow, etc) in your guest posts or bylines. I’ll remove them.
- If you’ve got a one-on-one deal with someone that they’re gonna give you a kickback for the customers that find them via a link in your post, that’s fine with me (and I may not even be able to tell, if they’re just using something like Google Analytics to count clicks & conversions). But if it looks like an affiliate system to me, I’ll remove the hyperlink.
- Stuff in as many non-affiliate links as you want. I’ll only remove them if they’re boring (drab p0rn, search pages, bad web services) or despicable (non-consensual p0rn, virus peddlers, predatory fearmongers).
- Be aware that I edit all posts on here, but I’ll check anything beyond spelling, punctuation & grammar changes with you first.
Still reading? Nice one. Email me now, then.
Catch me on the Front Side Bus
I’m massively happy to announce that I’m now the go-to girl for brains, robots, archaeology and freaks/feats of nature on Front Side Bus — if you haven’t checked it out yet, go there now. You’re missing all sorts of tasty science, gadget & geek news.
Here’s links to my first 2 stories for them:
Mrs Anne X Ample’s favourite websites
In my Saturday afternoon ennui, I’ve decided to look up URLs that sound like unreal examples. Here’s what I found:
www.example.com
Like example.org, this has been reserved so that it _can_ be used as an example in documents, presentations etc without leading anyone to a random site.
A random site like these:
www.example.co.uk
Doesn’t seem to exist, but http://example.co.uk does & took me to a Smartways Technology webmail portal that looked cowboy compared to the company’s website.
www.anexample.com
Don’t go there. You’ll have to shut your browser down to escape…
www.notarealurl.com
Exists & is a blog feeding images of reality straight to your unsuspecting screen.
www.nothere.com
“No there” or “not here”? Discuss.
Exists & is one of those keyword results pages. All photography & art related when I looked at it…
www.something.com
Exists & is a blank white page with the word “Something” on it. In black. Times New Roman or of that font family, top left aligned. Looks like 12 point size, though that’s hard to say when you’re viewing online cos it’s pixels really.
Any other good examples?
E3 2011: Battlefield 3 Gameplay (in-game footage)
The latest batch of videos from E3 with details on Battlefield 3 are very cool – powered by a new engine called Frostbite 2.0 – check this out!
The tank gameplay alone looks like it’ll be well worth the money:
There’s live demo footage here too:
The graphics (and the physics) are beautiful, the interactivity is a big step up from the previous generation, and it looks like I’ll be getting it for the Animal’s birthday.
Time for self-hosting? I need advice!
Today, this blog passed 10 thousand page views.
It isn’t a big number, and it’s page views (not the same thing as the number of identifiably unique visitors) but I was happy nonetheless. It’s nice to know that I’m not talking to myself anymore :)
When I started blogging all I was doing was posting spare thoughts, and photos from my modelling jobs when I worked with people nice enough to share the results with me. I had a handful of views a week. The only people I told about the blog were my friends and occasional photographers.
There was an occasional web traffic spike when something exciting happened (like my one and only burlesque performance, or our DIY home birth). Then I’d just had a baby and returned to work less than 3 months later; I rarely had the energy to write for myself when I’d spent all day writing for my living. But in the last few months, I’ve started to make time for this blog again.
The joy of blogging, to me, is that I do it because I want to, not because anyone else expects it. My recently-renewed blogging energy [or perhaps it's just the start of a manic episode] has made me think about what’s next: should I move to a self-hosted WordPress.org setup?
With WordPress.org, people who know tell me, I’ll be able to tweak anything I like and embed anything I want to. I can advertise the shiz I like, so I could earn back the hosting fees. I’ll be in control, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Here’s the problem, or the 2 problems really:
- I am not a web developer. My html is tourist-standard, I’ve never used WordPress.org before, and I know nothing about moving all this stuff over to another host. I’m scared I’m gonna screw it up.
- If I go ahead and self-host, I’ll feel obliged to try and make it earn me some money to cover the costs. Will that mean I start to see my blog as work? Will I start power tripping and checking my Klout more often than my email?
So I’m begging you, if you’ve already been there & done this, if you know what I need to know, please share it with me. I’m feeling kind of stuck and I’m not sure what I should do next. Help!
Related articles
- Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (onecoolsitebloggingtips.com)
Why I’m not a big gamer [but I like to watch]
- Image: Atsushi Tadokoro via Flickr
OK, I don’t play games much. I rarely find the time, for one thing; for another, I’m a natural observer [some would say voyeur, but that's because they're pervs].
I like to watch the game being played, ask lots of questions, get people to try stuff so I can see what happens, check out the physics and game logic… then I rarely pick up the controller, because I hate them. They’re fiddly, unfamiliar, and it’s frustratingly difficult to calibrate my movements to their sensitivity. Yep, that’s joysticks for you, vicar. [I'm sorry, my brain's just doing this today.]
Kinect has been a joy for me. I was wary of it, after my disappointing experiences with the Wii. But when it made my avatar fly through the air popping bubbles because I actually flapped my arms like wings, I was as captivated as a cargo cult’s most fervent devotee. They say “You are the controller,” but it felt natural enough for me to think there’s no controller at all. I’m pretty sure the repetitive movements and focus on the game put me in a trance state…
I still don’t play much, because the current generation of Kinect games lack the intricacy and evolution that draws me to watch and obsess over other videogames. But I keep a close eye on the state of Kinect hacking, and I’m looking forward to the day when all those threads converge into a node that will cough out some official Kinect games with a lot more to offer.
I want to fight with an invisible sword, shoot a gun by pointing 2 fingers and doing the “trigger thumb”, or create music by waving my arms and moving my lips. I want virtual Kinect hacking sandboxes for clueless geeks like me to learn how it all works. I want school hackdays with big cash prizes. All these things exist as seeds in the present, but they need to be grown big and whole and real.
Don’t let me down.
Related articles
- The 9 Best Kinect Hacks To Date (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
- Kinect for Windows demoed with PowerPoint (geek.com)
Marvel vs Capcom 3 (Xbox 360)
Overall rating: 1/5
Best points: lots of playable characters; controller configuration
Worst points: no 3D gameplay; can’t see opponent during special moves
I hired Marvel vs Capcom 3 from Lovefilm rather than buy it outright. I was looking forward to this title coming out, but was really disappointed after having a few goes on it. I hoped it would’ve had the same type of stuff as Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe had going for it, with 3D fighting and Freefall fighting. But Marvel vs Capcom 3 is all 2D gaming until you do your special moves…
Then it’s still just 2D gameplay, really, but with graphic effects that make it look more three dimensional. You can still only move in one straight line. The whole screen lights up around your avatar on a black background, and you can’t see the other player’s avatar because it gets hidden by flashy lighting. So you can’t tell if you’re hitting your opponent, and they can’t see their own avatar at all!
Me and a few of my friends got very bored very quickly, and this game reminds me of the 1990s Street Fighter days. I still think the original Street Fighter games are quality, but games nowadays need to be moving on – that was like over 10 years ago. Is it me, or are they going backwards not forwards with their thinking on some of these new games?
I know it’s easy for someone like me to comment on someone’s pride and joy of a game and slag it down, but it’s true: I think it’s crap. Gutted.
***** the Animal *****
Muppet Gay Bar Mashup
Comment is unnecessary. Watch.
tw1tterband – making tweet music together (sorry)
Ro0kin, who I’m always amazed is my friend cos he’s so uber-cool, has done it again. I just watched him join a band on Twitter a few days ago, and already they’re releasing a single. For charity. And they’re a “Twitter phenomenon” type thingy.
OK, I have no idea if they’re good. But I’m guessing they will be. I’ve been in bands with Ro0kin before, and it’s always been fun. I’m gutted I was too late to get in on this one. Plus there’s mandolins involved, which is rarely a bad thing.
What to do now:
Follow @tw1tterband – their single will be released at 20:00 UCT (that’s Coordinated Universal Time) on Sunday 6 Feb.
Check out the tw1tterband blog.
Donate to Macmillan Cancer Support via their JustGiving page.
Listen to BBC Radio 5 at 08:20 UCT on 6 Feb to hear voices instead of tweets.
Mom kills baby for interrupting FarmVille
Image by marketingfacts via Flickr
Jacksonville mom shakes baby for interrupting FarmVille, pleads guilty to murder.
This was the headline that made me choke on my morning tea. A 22-year-old mother shook her baby and possibly banged its head, because she was angry at it for crying while she played that stupid farming game. “This makes me quite upset” is understating the case more than a little.
I know it has nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with psychological maturity and individual circumstances like standards of living and education, but it makes me wonder: have other game crazes been as pervasive and soul-consuming as Farmville (or social games in general)? Check out this compilation of “social gaming addiction” headlines. Shouldn’t having a baby be more fun than any game? Did people once shake their babies to death for interrupting them at whist or skittles? No, even if only because you have to play these games with real people who would see you doing it and slap some sense into you.
Everyone needs at least intermittent contact with the big Out There. They don’t even have to go out; if they’ve already lost their sight, skin pigmentation and social skills from loitering in the long dark teatime of the internet, they could just invite someone round for cake. Might sound a bit Marie Antoinette, but it is that simple. You need people for social. You don’t always need media.
Frape: not just a poorly spelled milkshake/coffee anymore
Image via CrunchBase
I’ve noticed a new word lately: Frape. It’s a verb, and the F stands for Facebook. The bois (plural of boi, not French wood – see how I’m compelled to geek myself out of any cool points for my urban lingo?) have apparently been Fraping each other senseless lately and finding it the source of much traumatic hilarity. (I’m not sure there’s any established convention but I think “Frape” should have a capital F.)
A couple of nights ago Adz the Russian found Obri-On’s Facebook profile left open and posted a lengthy status update on Obri-On’s behalf lamenting his sexually transmitted illnesses and the unwashed state of his genitalia, complete with a link to Google images of herpes sores. This was apparently a kind of pre-emptive revenge attack; the bois are all in a state of constant paranoia, convinced that they could be Fraped at any moment. Since they often share a PC to compete with each other on Facebook games, this has left them more than a little squirrelly.
I must admit, I once Fraped a friend and changed his profile pic to one of him passed out drunk on a pile of empty bottles, his head nestled on a large stuffed toy version of Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. This, I maintain, was to teach him a valuable lesson about internet security. And incidentally about alcohol abuse too.
Has there been a Frape-related court case yet? I mean related to Frape as I’ve described it, not to horrible rape cases like those in Essex and British Columbia that have included posting photos or videos on FB. There’s been lawsuits against people for their own status updates, but I’m not sure if anyone’s yet sued for compensation after having their Facebook profile messed with. Sure it’s just a matter of time.
In the meantime, should you be so inclined, you can view and post examples of Frape at Facebookrape.org.
Related Articles
- Date Frape (joedawsons.com)
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