But ever generous, I had to share the pain joy, go play Valentine Crush yourselves. [Via MetaFilter Projects.]

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

Enjoy.

[Via]

[Just hit F5 to stop the fun.]

Update

Instructions now in Italian!

Filed under things I keep going back to enjoy – a wee while back Ellie double dared her son Jacob to audition for American Idol. It’s so good I’m even prepared to open Internet Explorer (it won’t work in Firefox or Opera). If these two performances don’t make you smile broadly and want to adopt/date/manage/offer a starring role to (delete as appropriate), then you’re either dead or a republican.

Other bright and shiny things

A quick game of Hangman from Steven DeGraeve whose Color Palette Generator is one of the most useful design tools I’ve come across. You type in the url of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. For example, if you enter the header image from the next link you get a lovely rich palette of colours to kick off your design.

Talking of spicy, Quick Indian Cooking does what it says on the tin in providing quick, easy recipes for Indian food. Definitely one to keep an eye on. I suspect that Saturday’s menu chez Daisy will include traditional Bengali fish cakes, Macher Chop.

While we’re still in the kitchen, here’s a sweet photograph of saucepans. Yes, saucepans.

That’s it for now. Himself has a really bad dose of flu and ever the generous soul has shared it with yours truly so I’m off to make another pot of hot tea before collapsing back into a heap on the sofa. Bonne nuit.

The host I’ve happily been using for the past two years has been having dreadful problems of late, including a random Trojan download (yikes! and a big thank you to Stroppy for the alert and detailed information).

Happily, my brother has just started blogging, needed hosting and has generously offered me free space in return for providing customized WordPress themes (great fun) and 24/7 tech support. Bless.

So I’m switching to VidaHost, which if the first 24 hours is anything to go by will be rather good – support emails replied to within minutes and includes a friendly security phonecall (the purchaser IP in Qatar and the address in the UK needed checking) and remaining totally unfazed while for the first five minutes I thought he was a fellow blogger ringing to say he was on his way…

If your eyes have glazed over by now you might like to cheer at the news that the post title was supplied by Jane and Roy‘s reaction when we arrived for supper last night. I’ve not seen them for a few months so their amazement at the weight loss to date was embarrassing but much appreciated.

See you on the other side.

Hopefully…

So many pictures look great this way but here we go with:

• David has taken some fantastic shots while teaching in China. I’m not sure how long it was stay up on the museumr site (pun intended) so here’s a link to the original picture from the Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture at Tóng Lǐ.
• By way of congratulations, here’s one of Nagl’s famous cows (read more about that here and especially here).
• One of my favourite shots by Ali, heart in the door.

Recent lack of blog posts? Lots to say, no way to say it and anyway it’s totally unfit for human consumption. You’d thank me if you knew. Really.

HiveLive is a new way to share information via the internet. Signup by invitation only for the minute but you can apply for an invite or I’ve 20 invites to give away (leave a comment).

HiveLive is great for families, friends, clubs, associations, small workgroups, researchers, collectors, small businesses, bands, studios, non-profits, and more.

I’ve only had a very quick peek so far but love the clean interface and the community feel. And as with any good small startup, the development team are very involved and keen to hear feedback.

Question of the day: Why doesn’t Google invest anything in Blogger? [via Gordon]. More irritatingly, why does it not allow non-Blogspot commenters to save their information (name, email, url) instead of being forced to select “Other” and have to type them in each time (or select with Firefox’s auto remember thingy).

And finally : things you don’t want mama to know about

Or anyone else for that matter. The clues:

Plush girlfriends for boys too BIG for teddy bears.

Once you go plush you’ll never go back.

and

Why hug your pillow at night when you can ‘hug’ one of these?

That should ring enough alarm bells for the more sensitive amongst you that Teddy Babes is Not Safe For Work, especially since you might choke on your cappucino on discovering that a plushmate will cost the discerning man an unbelievable $740.

I feel especially ikky looking at “Akiko”, not only does she not remotely resemble any Asian I’ve ever met (“exotic temptress” or otherwise) but I’ve a colleague of the same name and I can’t decide whether to email her the link or not. Nah, maybe not.

Oh and ladies, fear not: Teddy Babes are not forgetting us:

Q: Will there be a male Teddy Babe love doll?

Possibly. This, again, depends on initial consumer response; but a male Teddy Babe has already been designed and is pending development.

Time to start saving the pennies then, eh?

Topics so far:

• What is a programming language
• Server-side vs. client-side programming
• Installing PHP on your computer
• Write your first PHP script

It looks as if more tutorials are on the way plus there’s a blog and a forum. Excellent stuff.

is for Aaayyeeee! And you thought bungee jumping was a bit mad. (They’re all speaking furrin but don’t worry, you ain’t missing much. Boys and their toys and all that.)

is for Aaaaww. The Dachshund with narcolepsy. [Via Jim at Squoogy.]

is for At last! Motivated by this article in which techcrunch weighs up the merits of nine web-based feed readers I’ve dusted off my registration details for rojo.com and will get to the bottom of why all this rss feed stuff is so popular. By jove, I will!

is for Asinine. Yahoo ads can’t be viewed by those outside the US? Block ‘em all then!

is for Always use protection.

is for Astonishingly Stupid Marketing People. Maybe not as bad as the Hoover free flights fiasco (yet) but the marketing team who set up the Chevy Tahoe Apprentice wheeze.

The all new 2007 Chevy Tahoe is more capable, more responsible, and more refined. Now, you’re the director and it’s your job to communicate this message by creating the best Tahoe online commercial for your chance to win.

Did they not stop for one nanosecond and realise that they’d get entries submissions like this one? Or this one? Ooh, or this? Hang on, or this? Oh no, there – are – more! And more! Just one last one? This one’ s for the ladies. [Via MetaFilter.]

Daily Kos, Eco-Geek and Total Tactics are collecting the files should they “disappear” (although I don’t think the above are listed anywhere, you have to know the url to view the contributions). So maybe it wasn’t such a stupid marketing thing after all. Who knows?

And yes, I had a go too [NSFW]. But I’m betting you lot can do much, much better.

* To get the url you have to use the “send to a friend” form and use an email address you can access.
** Non Amerikuns/Canucks will need a postal address.

[tags]Chevy, apprentice, commercial, dog, Arabic, human sling, techcrunch, rss, blog, feeds, Firefox, Yahoo[/tags]

How to get your name in lights. Temporarily.

Have you played Grant Robinson‘s Guess-the-Google yet?

It’s an infuriatingly entertaining game in which you are presented with an automatically generated montage of pictures from a single word google image search and you have to guess what the word is. Easy eh? Well yes and no. Sometimes the word jumps right out at you, other times you stare at the screen in bewilderment and start typing gibberish because you’ve no idea what the word could possbily be.

When you’ve finished a round of games your total score is totted up and you can enter it onto the scoreboard and compare your performance against others playing at the same time.

But with all these young turks playing alongside it’s not likely that wrinkly old grannies like yours truly will ever get a score high enough to make the scoreboard.

Until now. I started playing at 23:59, got an average score of 359 and checked the scoreboard. Number 1!

Sods law dictates that I’d get a lower score in the next game (not being very hip meant that I feverishly typed in braids, plaits, dreadlock, dreadlocks and finally dreads) but still. I ruled the scoreboard for a precious few minutes and I shall bask in the glow for days.

So that’s the tip o’ the day – start playing online games just before midnight and watch those scoreboards tremble.

[tags]guess-a-google, google, images, game, cheat, high, score[/tags]

First up, the most amazing ukele playing you’ll ever see. Agreed! Give that man a recording contract immediately! Oh wait, you can already buy Jake Shimabukuro‘s cd. But is he playing a cavaquinho or a ukele? You decide.

Amazing trumpet playing this time… or is it? Watch Ed Thompson’s performance right through to the end. And then go visit his website.

In the “there’s always one” category, How to lose your job in 26 seconds.

Moving on to politics now, and folk wonder why Americans are becoming ever more unpopular outside of their own country as an Australian newscaster asks Americans which country to invade next (language NSFW).

But of course, we know that there are just as many Americans who would have questioned the need to invade any country at all and are out protesting on the streets as we speak.

And it’s not all Bill O-Bloody-Reilly, thank goodness for Jon Stewart. Here he is in a rare double interview, Bush v Bush.

[tags]video, videosift, Jake Shimabukuro, Ed Thompson, Jon Stewart[/tags]