Transistorized

Raking Over Old Tweets From 2008 From Someone Who Doesn’t Even Exist Now

Last year, a Ruby programmer called why the lucky stiff disappeared. Not being part of the Ruby community, the whole story still fascinated me; see the posts Eulogy to _why and The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff for two opposing views on the subject.

The other day, I decided to see whether there had been any sign of him. Short answer: no. Long answer: no, there hasn’t. But in my travels, I noticed this tweet from him, which a lot of people seem to like:

“when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.”

It’s such a deliciously seductive idea. And yet it’s so fundamentally wrong.

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Don’t Worry, Iggle-Piggle

“The night is black,
And the stars are bright,
And the sea is dark and deep…
But someone I know is safe and snug,
And they’re drifting off to sleep.

Round and round, a little boat, no bigger than your hand,
Out on the ocean, far away from land.
Take the little sail down, light the little light,
This is the way to the garden in the night.”

Why do I love In The Night Garden so much?

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More Than Meets the Eye

I never watched Transformers as a kid. As a now-28-year-old male geek, this is tantamount to sacrilege, but it’s true. I’d avidly watch Wacaday, and then lose interest in Transformers shortly after the opening theme tune. The only eight year old boy in the world who found giant robots and battles boring. And as for the toys, I was too busy playing offices to notice.

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Lookalikes

Dear Sir,

I was on the Argos website the other day, and noticed a startling similarity between the new Argos logo, and the Complico logo from The Peter Serafinowicz Show.

Complico

Argos

Could they by any chance be related?

Yours,
John Hoare

P.S. God, it’s shit.

(With apologies to @divaschematic.)

The Young Ones: Building the Fourth Wall

MIKE: This calls for a celebration. Vyv, throw another record player on the fire.
VYVYAN: Oh, certainly, Michael.
RICK: You bastard! That’s my record player!
MIKE: [to Vyv] You said it was your record player.
VYVYAN: No, I didn’t, Mike. I said “Let’s throw Rick’s record player on the fire, that’ll be good for a laugh.”
MIKE: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it is yours, Rick.

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hello hacker fucker

Whilst we’re on the subject of hidden messages in games, here’s a one from another great game – Mad Professor Mariarti.

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Brilliant Game Easter Eggs #2846482

I love easter eggs in games. This Gamespot article mentions some great ones – and I’m a sucker for this one in San Andreas – but I’m still a BBC Master man at heart. With that in mind, here’s one of my favourites – from 1989’s Repton Infinity.

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Amplify: Brand “Thinking”

As some of you may know, I used to write for a site called Noise to Signal. It covered everything, really – telly, films, gaming, you name it – hopefully with at least a vague modicum of intelligence.

Yesterday, I received the following little email. Because I’m nice, the name is redacted – but company is very much not.

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Hi-Dee T.V.

Fancy a scan from Which Video, July 1983, on high-definition telly? Shut up whining at the back there, I’m going to post it anyway. Clickity-click to get a larger version:

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Moderation For ‘Em

Of all the things that I like to pretend I’m knowledgeable about, there is at least one thing I can claim I have direct experience of – forum moderation. I’ve been dealing with occasionally hair-rasing moderation on NOTBBC since 2003, and moderating Ganymede & Titan’s forum since 2007. (There’s also been a fair amount of comment moderation, but that can be a slightly different art, depending on the site – when comments are attached to an article, I think it’s reasonable to have a slightly firmer hand.)

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