The Lost Realm

The latest in the never-ceasing parade of Am-I-Hot-Or-Not rip-offs: Rate my Kitten. As an example of the cuteness on this site, just look at the current top two images. Sure, not every image is quite so cute, but the site is definitely making an attempt for the cutest site in the universe record.

One day I'll get my stuff together and finish BLAT so I can put up all the cute photos of my cats. Because that's what the Interwebnet needs most: more cat websites.

The television has almost become as commonplace as the telephone in our lives, but it wasn't always seen as a useable technology. Reading over this article on the state of television from 1936 shows that not only was television once a lot worse than it is now (even with my terrible reception), but that it was reguarded as a silly concept that would probably never be used by anyone:

…President Roosevelt's face not only came and went, it came and went under water.

Today, we obviously know better; aren't we clever. Well, to be honest, no we're not. We're still making silly comments about new technologies that are having developmental difficulties. Who knows which of these “silly devices” will become the telephone or television for our children? Certainly, many of these technologies will fail and die, perhaps for no reason at all, but one or two of them are going to become an important part of our lives. One or two of the things we laugh at today are going to change the world.

At some time or another in our lives, we've all wished we could be someone else. In my case, that other person is Spiderman, but that's probably just my inner geek speaking. Regular readers will already be used to it and have ignored this entire paragraph.

David Still is a particularly odd man, in that he invites people to use his identity to email people. His website contains a number of example emails you can send (while pretending to be him), plus the replies he recieves from the startled recipients. I'm not sure if this is a social experiment, an unusual art form, or just some really intricate email harvester that will result in us all being inundated with “BUY VIAGRA ONLINE!!!!” emails for the remainder of our lives. Either way, it's funny stuff.

NASA has just announced that their scientists have discovered hidden ice reservoirs under the surface of Mars. More recent news seems to indicate that there is also huge, alien machinery embedded into the icy caverns. It is theorised that if we can just find the right action hero to activate the machinery, we will be able to create a breathable atmosphere, thereby saving the mutants from asphyxiation and leaving Mars with a lovely blue sky.

Oh, wait… maybe that was a movie.

• Google: cool.
• Dilbert: funny.
• Dilbert Google doodles: neither cool nor funny.

Google's doodles are usually a nice distraction, but this latest series have been particularly bad. Obviously there is some universal rule we are unaware of: combinations of usually cool things with usually funny things creates unprecedented levels of averageness.

I can't say that any of my maths exams were ever quite this interesting. A teacher invigilating a mock exam decided to surf some porn on his laptop. Sure, this isn't something most of us would do, but he thought he could get away with it. After all, invigilating exams is one of the most boring tasks in the known universe.

The problem came about when the teacher realised that he'd left the laptop connected to a screen that the students could see. Now that's what I call a great career move.

My favourite line from the story? “Mr Jowett is currently on sick leave.” Unfortunately, it didn't say if the students scored any better than usual.