a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

The Fartsichord is possibly the classiest thing I've been involved with. It's an online musical keyboard, you can choose between two instruments and play, record and save tunes. The instruments are farts and burps.

I am so proud.

On completion Mr Tech immediately played the National Anthem and I giggled far too much.

I am a child.

Some other fun things that have ended up in my bookmarks recently...

Liquid sculpture, beautiful high speed photography

Musical rollerblading (video)

Flame Warriors, a pertinent oldie revisited following the disintegration of one of my online haunts

Ridiculously cute cat. I wish the photographer published them under a creative commons licence allowing derivatives, as I would very much like to play with these photos. There are some ace ones.

Apple campaign site from Greenpeace. I was genuinely surprised by some of the information here. Apple have good PR obviously.

Passport offices map, ignoring all the stuff about having to go for interviews for passports and the Government grabbing all manner of personal information from you for no good reason, what on earth have they done to Scotland?! It does look like they've redrawn some rather critical bounderies and claimed a large amount of lowland Scotland. Shocking!

Finally, a new song from DogHorse. A quite scary and sinister recording using Rachel North's lyrics, have a listen to The Rules of the Game are Changed.

Labels: dance, flash toy, neat links

Why is my prairie dog looking so excited?

Maybe it's the fez.
Maybe it's discovering he has a face on his bum.
Maybe he's been playing some of my new games.

Yes, I'm spamming more of my work stuff!

Flingaphant

Gunk it!

Find the poo!

Talking of spam, mine has been getting almost interesting recently. Not as many attempts to increase my penis size, more attempts to get me to advertise my site in the Sunday Telegraph, press releases for online toys of little or no interest to me and an offer to sell me blunkett.co.uk.

Why on earth would I want to buy blunkett.co.uk, particularly, I assume, for some inflated price? If I was in the market for a novelty domain name at least get an up-to-date one. gordonbrown.co.uk would make much more sense. As Bob suggested a couple of days ago, Golden Brown by the Stranglers is waiting to be tweaked for something there.

Anyhow, I digress. New toys. Play, have fun!

Labels: animangle, blether, flash games

One of the sites I was making lots of toys for last month has now been updated. One of the bigger pieces that I did some design and animation for is Rubik World. One of those point and click games with a couple of proper puzzles thrown in for good measure (well, it's Rubik, it needs a puzzle).

You get to fling sheep, twang tortoises and make a pretty rainbow at the end. Hints and tips can be provided if needed*; feel free to stick them in the comments.

On the same site there's a very silly quiz about banking made by the lovely Mr Tech with a jingle from DogHorse and a top dancing banker from Mushybees.

Apparently I like to bank with one hand on my mouse. Pffft. Filth!

* being honest, despite knowing the mind of the person who created the puzzles pretty well I still needed some hints and tips! I was never very good at Rubik's Cubes either though.

Labels: flash games

I stumbled across this post about A level results and these new fangled A star grades.

It struck me that we'll be running out of ways to differentiate between the different A grades soon, and I think the logical extension is to go the ebay way.

By 2010 the top grade should be
"A++++++++++++++++++++ would mark again!!!"

Labels: blether, penguin joy

Avast ye scurvy dogs and all that.

*ahem*

Following on from last years Pants Pirate Messenger DogHorse and I put together a wee* piratical presentation with nautical jigs and a salty prairie dog pirate. The Pirate Jig. 230KB Flash.

*because we forgot about it until about 4 hours ago. oops!

Labels: flash animation, flash toy

The otters came out to play for me last week and despite my camerawork not being up to their rather fast dashing about I managed to get a spot of video, now online with a snippet of Paul Whiteman and his orchestra as backing (hooray for public domain MP3s!).

Otterly Lovely.

I took lots of photos too.

The highlight of this visit were definitely the joyful otters and the red ruffed lemurs. After spending a while photographing butterflies in the lemur enclosure they graced us with their presence and were very fine company.

Labels: blether, photos, video

It's time to share a few links again. First up, the Annoying Stuff
ID card fears as staff hack into Home Office database
Oz 'pseudo-ID card' database racked by identity fraud claims
It's not always good to share
UK biometric passports hacked
IBM researcher slams UK ID card scheme
Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row

The Good Stuff albeit with an annoying cause
Parliament protesters fight ban
Lots of write ups and photos from the protesters online; some good starting points at:-
Rachel from North London - nice summary of the protests
Mark Thomas
Bloggerheads
Interview with Mark Thomas and Brian Coleman in Parliament Square.
Splendid point from Mark Thomas about how Coleman, protesting about the protesters, is the only one there breaking the law as he hadn't got permission from the police.

As an aside I'm thoroughly bemused by his attack on the protestors as people who 'couldn't get enough votes to be an MP'. I had no idea that the only way you could express a political opinion was to be an MP. Silly me, thinking that MPs are there to represent our political opinions.

The 'and finally' headline
ICE arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor

Edit: Blimey. Two posts in one day. That's a rarity, even when they're at either end as these are.

Labels: blether, disgruntled, news links, NO2ID

I have a new silly interactive oojimaflip online. Pick your nose and make silly faces with the Face Mash.

As it's possible to see from the above link my 'far too busy' work period is over. I still seem to have a lot to do as an awful lot of things got put in the "I'll look at that in September" virtual pile , but I have some free time and have made the decision to not let myself get so busy again.

This is a good thing, I think.

Finally, some old friends have just launched a web site about the bear rescue centre they're running in the Tat Kuang Si Park. If you're interested in wildlife or planning a trip to Laos check it out; Laos Bears. They've sent me some splendid photos of the bears so I'm hoping to make them dance in a Flash animation soon. I've already been playing with the bears, just a little.

Labels: blether, flash toy, neat links