Comparison radar 04

There was one vital bit that links this comparison that I couldn’t get a hold of. The connection was a clip from an episode of Dexter’s Laboratory entitled Ultrajerk 2000. Dexter builds a Hal 9000 style robot to help him but the robot, like its inspiration, malfunctions and attempts to take over the lab and kill Dexter. The connection between Hal 9000 and GLaDOS (from Portal) was in that episode of Dexter. Ultrajerk is a visual half waypoint between Hal and GLaDOS but you’ll have to take my word for it.

Hal 9000



GLaDOS

Digital protesting vs physical protesting

It’s the fifth anniversary since the start of the Iraq war, or at least it will be on Thursday. No doubt you will have caught one program in the plethora of Iraq, ‘where are we now, that’s right, just showing you this so you can keep tabs,’ season.

I went on a, what should have been called ‘Leave the Middle East alone, they all cool’ rally but was in fact called, the less catchy, 'Troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, don’t attack Iran and stop the oppression of the Palestinian people’ rally. Phew. I think my name is better. Anyway, it was a miserable day, raining and freezing but there was still a pretty good turn out.


Speeches were made, some better than others. I took particular offence at a speech given by ‘the girl that organized all dem walk outs at schools before the invasion and ting.’ She sounded as if she’d just been pushed out on stage rambling on about, ‘nukes were bad and so was America, yeah, that’s right, cos, eeer, um, they’ve got like a military industrial complex init.’

That evening I had a discussion about the effectiveness of public protests. I went on the million people march before the war and here we are reflecting on the five-year anniversary. Since that time, Green Peace, Amnesty and others have petitioned me via the interweb.


Click here to add your name to a petition to stop such and such. And lo, a few weeks later I’d receive an email explaining that the petition was a big success and bill x was passed in the House of Commons. Wow, direct, digital protest and it works.

Despite the meagre coverage the protest on Saturday got, having pictures of Parliament Square packed with protesters still makes the hairs on my hunch back stand up on end. The moment it looks like people don't care enough to take to the streets will be the day that those who have the power to change something will have nothing to convince them to do so. The only difference now is there are two mediums to get your protest across, each feeding the other. Protesting in the flesh is still more fun...for now

Comparison radar 03

What's this? The Tabula Rasa launch trailer and that ingenious, news-reel style footage from Starship Troopers bare more than a passing resemblance?

Comparison radar 02

Watching the second trailer for the Iron Man film you could be mistaken, if you were of proper geek breeding, that you were in fact watching the teaser trailer for Starcraft 2. The former will of course be utter Red Leicester but if anyone can convincingly portray an arrogant, alcoholic on the big screen, I trust in Robert Downey Jr:

Digital Bushcraft

It’s got to the point now where I can predict, with quite some accuracy, plot developments, which adverts signify a return to ‘normal’ programming and lines of script from any given TV show(s). I attribute this freakish and frankly useless power to being raised by television. When I was younger the Internet wasn’t the shiny, interactive, social cohesion platform it is today. It was more like web 0.5 than web 2.0.

The biggest technical advancement in my home was the advent of cable television provided by the now long debunked Cable London (who’s logo incidentally was a kind of Pac man made out of dots). Anyway, I remember the first day well. No longer would I have to succumb to the schedules of the tyrannical, terrestrial channels. I could watch cartoons well beyond the 4.30 – 5 cut off point.


Stranger still, my dad tells me that I passed a test on Shakespeare with flying colours despite never having read any of his plays all thanks to the brain melting box. I suppose it follows that if I was retaining information from TV, on another level I was learning the conventions of television itself.

As the years progressed it became easier and easier to identify what kind of episode any given series would be trying out within the first few seconds. Would it be the evil twin, the protagonist being framed, death of a significant character, plot twist or redemption episodes? Hmm. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, I just did.

I could also accurately predict that when a Sky advert was shown the actual program would either start immediately after or depending on the length of said Sky advert there would be one very short ad immediately after. Ooooeeeeooooo.


So far we’ve talked about this ability as it relates to the confines of TV land, you can just imagine how much I’ve gone on to freak myself and those around me out since the advent of the interweb as we knew it a few years ago to the present day.

I find myself drawing connections to completely unrelated things from starkly different media. Apart from impressing geeks and scaring my significant other, whether this digital bushcraft; bringing wholly unrelated bits and combining them into something new, will every prove useful is still debateable.

Toiletron, guardian of the loo

Recycling today as this story has already featured on Digg. Using Aviary, the toilets below have been combined to create a potent, porcelain, powerhouse. Whether Aviary is as powerful as the Spark is anyone's guess:

If you Stumble, you might Tumblr

I’m finding I like Tumblr more and more. It’s like giving someone the ability to unscrew my bulbous scalp and stare directly at the pulsating, grey goo encased within. Through the useful ‘share on Tumblr’ button, everything I come across is posted directly on to my personal Tumblr page.


How’s this different from submitting stuff to your Facebook account you say? Or maybe you don’t but lets go with it anyway. Whereas submitting stuff to Facebook is somewhat lame due to the space it takes up in your mini feed, Tumblr allows you to connect several RSS feeds directly, turning a Tumblr page into a sort of, cyber, stream of consciousness. I get all my Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr etc updates put on there, plus, any interesting stuff I find randomly through StumbleUpon.


My Tumblr page is comprised of a nonsensical collection of random oddities. A bit like my mind, no, very much like my mind. Where Twitter allows you to post thoughts and actions this allows images, videos and links to be posted directly, thus making it one seamless cerebral experience. Like I said before, it’s as if someone is taking a gander at my grey matter…and I kind of like it.