James Titcumb » The lols

Buy a Lexus – Blind Your Fellow Road Users

James — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:46:53 +0000

Everyone who knows me will know that I am marginally prejudiced against people with expensive cars (BMW, Mercedes, Lexus etc.), but not entirely without cause.

One of my niggles (pet hates if you will) about them is their unnecessarily dazzling headlights. I just saw the advert shown on a website and made me think of the title of this blog post…

It confuses my why Lexus thinks these Bi-xenon headlights are at all a good thing? Surely blinding your fellow road users so much that they crash is a bad thing? Aren’t Xenon headlights the ones that look blue from certain angles as well, confusing me that there is police ahead?

So yeah – if you want to blind your fellow users, buy a Lexus. Or a BMW. Or a Mercedes. Or similar car.

Talk Like Apache Day

James — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:26:33 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Talk Like A Pirate Day, and here’s my rather geeky idea for another day. It’s Talk Like Apache Day!

Basically, you talk like an HTTP server (not specifically Apache, but “Apache” was similar to “A pirate”…). If you need help, here are some responses you can give people to confuse them.

Other ideas could be borne from this, such as Talk Like an MTA Day, or Talk Like SSH Day. I expect the later would have to be encrypted though…

Just imagine the conversation anyway:

You: Hi James, how are you?

Me: 200 OK

You: What?

Me: 304 Not Modified

You: I don’t understand…

Me: 304 Not Modified

You: You’re such an idiot…

Me: 400 Bad Request

Too Many iPhone Users

James — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:34:24 +0000

The Register’s recent article regarding iPhone Nano rumours seem to have caused the XKSN website to intermittently fail.

This is proof there are far too many iPhone Users.

I Beg To Differ…

James — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:22:18 +0000

Click for bigness!

eBay Pimping

James — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:55:41 +0000

Funny, but sort of worrying… I found this on Geekologie, and they got it from someone evidently named Claire.

Me for President!

James — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:08:07 +0000

Yep, I’m spearheading a massive political movement.

I am running for the presidential elections:

Click here to view a news story about it.

Conversations in Code

James — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:57:12 +0000

This is one of those little things that is cool about programming is conversations between a team of developers, written in comments in code.

// I've added in advertiser_name on 14/02/2008 as Sam wants to show the advertiser's name in the table
// Who are you?!?
// Sii: not me dude
// Must be Kelvin, foo'
// Kelvin: in Shaggy's famous words.. "It wasn't me" .. :)

Nintendo – The Fail and The Win

James — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:42:08 +0000

Lets start with the Win. It’s nothing really spectacular, but just a cool little effect you won’t be expecting (unless you’ve seen it before!).

Clicky McClick Here

And now the fail, I don’t really need to say too much about this one, except that they’ve realised the mistake they made, and have now renamed it to “Touch Dictionary”.

Me, Right Now

James — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:47:29 +0000

Yes, so forwarding has evidently reached blogs (nothing new, I know, it’s been around for some time), but this is my first one. From Mr. Raven himself.

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes. Don’t fix your hair. Just take a picture.
Post that picture with no editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable. Don’t go posting an eight megapixel image.)
Include these instructions.

Don’t I look a happy bunny! My beard is also a bit skwiff today, eep! And for anyone who is wondering, yes those are Team Fortress 2 posters on the wall, and no, they weren’t my choice.

Episode III: Backstroke of the West – An Untold Love Story

James — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:19:26 +0000

I came across this by chance on Engrishfunny.com, and it had me in stitches for a short time… I give you this hilarious video (note that there’s no sound in it!):

Teh tubes are clogged!

James — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:03:43 +0000

In Google Chrome, go to about:internets :)

Dear BBC…

James — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:08:44 +0000

With regards to this story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7560887.stm

I disagree with the final paragraph of the story:
“Shilpa, meanwhile, became a household name in the UK after the series.”

I have never even heard of Shilpa Shetty before this story.

Surely a household name, by definition, is something or someone that EVERYONE knows? For example, Hoover, BT etc.. I mean – even iPod is only JUST becoming a household name, and even James May knows what an iPod is, despite pronouncing it incorrectly in an episode of Top Gear.

I protest the fact that Shilpa Shetty is a household name, and you should replace the sentance with:

“iPod, meanwhile, became a household name in the UK due to completely unconnect events.”

P.S. I’m really REALLY serious about this, it has REALLY offended me so much – I’m crying right now… no really, I am…..

P.P.S. If you think I’m being serious, you’re wrong, it’s just a little jibe and hopefully I might give someone at the BBC a smile.

Small Car Parking Fail

James — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:16:33 +0000

Something that always niggles me a bit is that people really suck at parking – normally because they park forward. This small Ford Ka reverse parked, but even botched that one up! That makes parking fail.

The Definition of “Twattish”

James — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:20:22 +0000

Hannah’s definition of “Twattish”:

twattish /twætɪʃ/ :
- noun

the order of people associated with the religion of twat, who are all idiots and need to go back to their planet twat and learn how to un-twat themselves: My friend is a twat. He’s from planet twat. He is from the twat religion, and therefore twattish.

Where Am I?

James — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:34:32 +0000

A mars bar to the winner (except Sii who already knows the answer…) – click for bigness.

Translate Server Error

James — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:20:57 +0000

Teehee – As with most failblog posts, I can’t tell you if this is real or not, but it’s funny nonetheless:

Dora Aquapet

James — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:41:13 +0000

Heh… As seen on failblog (and all over the internet). Not sure about the authenticity of this… but funny nonetheless.

It’s Not Unusual… to use PHP4

James — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:24:14 +0000

http://james.had.your.mum/

James — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:46:09 +0000

If this BBC news story is anything to go by, this web address could actually exist soon. It looks like Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will be allowing registration of TLDs (Top Level Domains). For the immediate future at least, I doubt it will be very used apart from the big companies (hello Google!) due to the “low six-figure” price tag (in USD). This means that web addresses could change something like this:

http://www.google.com/ Â»Â» http://google/ or http://www.google/ or http://news.google/ etc.
http://www.microsoft.com/ Â»Â» http://microsoft/ or http://windows.microsoft/
And potentially personal addresses (when prices drop..) such as http://james.titcumb/

It’s certainly a revelation, but is it a good idea, thats the question… How will this be recieved by the general public? How easily will people take to typing addresses without .com or .co.uk or other TLDs? Since practically the dawn of the internet, these popular TLDs such as .com, .net, .org etc. have been a staple of the internet. Even phrases have been named after these TLDs, such as “the dot com crash” and so on.

The other extreme of course, is that it gets taken up a little too well, and it goes mad, and companies register TLDs such as in the title of this article. I’m a bit aprehensive until I read further into it, but if executed properly, I think it could work well, and would benefit the internet immensely.

On the third hand (?!), there’s the already heaving size of the internet. Capacity problems are being taken care of by the introduction of IPv6 to replace IPv4 at some point, and releasing TLDs generally will allow more combinations of domains (to a certain degree), but don’t you think there’s already just way too much information on the internet? Or perhaps there’s not enough… I think thats a whole other debate there, so I’ll put the lid back on that one for the time being.

Of course, part of this proposal is to allow non-Roman text in domain names. So instead of http://news.yahoo.co.jp/, we could see http://ãƒ‹ãƒ¥ãƒ¼ã‚¹.yahoo.co.jp/… The problem I see with that of course, is that I don’t have a japanese keyboard, so I’d have to use character map… which would take a while. Japanese keyboards of course have Roman letters. Although to me personally, it doesn’t matter as I can’t speak or understand non-Roman languages, but I’m sure it’d matter to someone out there!

Oh Boy – Gay Debate!

James — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:33:36 +0000

Firstly, I’m not a huge fan of gays really, I don’t like watching them kiss etc., but I’m quite happy to socialise with them. If you think that makes me homophobic, I think you’re wrong, but you’re entitiled to your opinion. However, this BBC article annoyed me. Those people at The World Centre For Banning Stuff have now decided to ban this advert for Heinz Deli Mayo, which depicts two men kissing. I mean really… who cares? And don’t even get me started on all those comments about religion… According to this American guy, SpiritandTruth7, I’m going to turn into a pillar of salt for sympathising with gays! Can you believe that?! I’m dreading being turned into a pillar of salt…

Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with the advert, but kudos go to Heinz for making it so controversial. I probably wouldn’t have heard of it until I found it in the supermarket, but I’m sorely tempted to get some Heinz Deli May now!

Image credit goes to David Firth.

Hannah says…

James — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:48:30 +0000

Hannah says:
my armpit smells like garlic

Farnham, Bon Jovi, and some graphs…?

James — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:22:22 +0000

Am I lazy? Yes, probably. Now that my Twitter digest posts are working again it tells me how much I’m not posting… and I haven’t posted here in a whole 4 days! Oh noes, whatever will become of me… Truth be told, I’ve not had much of a chance to blog to be honest, even about things I’ve wanted to blog about at work or at home.

I have just recently got back from a meeting with one of our partners in (stupidly busy, traffic-wise) Farnham, which ended sooner than I thought. I also thought I’d have little-to-no envolvement as I didn’t think I’d have any idea what anyone was talking about. On the upper hand, I actually had a reasonable amount of input (at least when the other tecchie guy came in), and knew more-or-less what they were talking about. All-in-all, a successful meeting I think.

Well, I’m back in the office now anyway, after getting aggravated at all the stupidly slow drivers on the A32 (30mph in a national speed limit, anyone?), and we have an hour to go ’til we depart to Southampton to check out the delights of the masterful Bon Jovi. Should be fun to see the classics such as “Livin’ on a Prayer”, “Bad Name” and “It’s My Life”, amongst others. I’ve never been a huge fan of Bon Jovi, but I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see him for free, courtesy of Netbasic! Looking forward to it though.

Oh, and while I’m bloggin’, check out dis shizzle: Rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs. A few of them are quite funny, but I think you have to know about the music to get some of them. Some gentle lols came out of me anyway…

The Lol’s

James — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:00:25 +0000

I’ve been getting lots of giggles from various “fail”-type blogs, namely English Fail and Fail Blog. For some daily lols, I recommend subscribing to these.

A couple that have particularly made me lol (both from English Fail) are:

When the Emulate IE7 button is depressed…

James — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:52:12 +0000

I was sent a link to a Microsoft KB article which related to IE8′s new standards compatibility mode. When I read through it, I don’t know why or what made me laugh, but I found this quote amusing and just had to make a picture out of it.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 end-users can work around these issues by pressing Emulate IE7 on the menu bar in the browser window. When the Emulate IE7 button is depressed, Web pages will display in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode.

Oh noes! The Emulate IE7 button is depressed! Must get him some prozac…

Apple is gay

James — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:09:35 +0000

It’s confirmed, Apple is confirmed to be the second gayest company ever. Well, taken slightly out of context, Apple is actually the second most gay-friendly company. But thats the same as being gay. This makes all Apple product users gay. Apple is gay. Even Macworld.co.uk says so.

Epic Fail: Noob lorries get stuck in field

James — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:22:16 +0000

Rather amusing I thought (although not for the lorry drivers I expect) to see a couple of lorries stuck in a field opposite our office. The truck on the far right is a Boarhunt garage lorry towing the middle truck out at the time of the photo.

Handset Horror at Netbasic

James — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:12:39 +0000

Over the past few days a war has broken out in the attic part of the office here at Netbasic. Jon and myself are now warring over handsets in extreme demonstrations. Initially, the culprits were simply knocking the opponents’ handset from the phone’s cradle, but it has escalated to total removal of handsets from the phone. The war began when I removed Jon’s handset and taped it to the underside of his desk. Unfortunately, due to my dire lack of taping skillz, the handset became un-stuck and dropped during an intense match of Team Fortress 2. In response to this, I again removed his handset and hid it last Friday in the server room, so he had to make do without a phone for the entire day.

The pinnacle of the war has happened today when I went out for some “fresh air” and came back to find a message from my girlfriend on MSN claming that Jon had stolen my handset. Luckily, she saw the entire stunt on my webcam which I have set up, so he was caught red-handed. I just hope this doesn’t elevate into a full-scale phone war.

Freaky Circumstances

James — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:49:55 +0000

So the strangest thing just happened. Hannah and I are watching Friends, one of the last few episodes where Joey loses a coin toss because “Heads she wins, Tails I lose”. I decided to play that with Hannah (silly mood of course), and something very freaky happened. Tossed coin… tails. Tossed coin… tails. Tossed coin… tails. Three in a row?? Pretty strange. I continued tossing the coin, and every single time it landed on tails! It landed on tails 18 times in a row! How strange is that?? It brings the show Derren Brown: The System to mind, where he tosses a coin enough times that he can get 10 in a row, as 10 of the same coin toss results in a row is bound to happen eventually. It took him several hours of coin tossing. It took me a minute or two to toss tails 18 times in a row. I promise it wasn’t a biased coin or anything, it was a genuine coin, and I was tossing it fairly and not doing any sleight of hand… how bloody strange?!

My New Favourite Website Ever

James — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:15:55 +0000

http://www.pornolize.com/

It’s absolutely hilarious. Enter any URL and it makes it into a filthy dirty page. I was in stiches for ages re-reading my blog and the Frosthold website.

Woosh… and your cleaning’s done!

James — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:16:25 +0000

What a gay advert. I mean really. That’s all I have to say on this matter.

A couple of funny pics…

James — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:13:38 +0000