update

Not sure if it’s really worth mentioning (I mean, how many people still read blogs?), but I’m still really busy with work, and writing things for the blog is becoming a bugbear. So I’m no-longer going to be going out of my way to put something up every day. Anyway, I haven’t written anything useful for a while, so you won’t miss a great deal.

I’ll still be posting, so please don’t remove the blog from your feed-readers, just not as often. And I’ll still link to interesting webpages and videos when I come across them.

poker faced rick

One of the guys I shared a house with at Uni, Rick Dacey, is producing a video blog from the Barcelona round of the European Poker Tour.

About 4 minutes in, Rick interviews a feisty female player named Liz Lieu. Nice one, dude.

the greatest site in the world?

Chuck Norris Facts.

My favourite: Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Via. MacBreak Weekly

the irregular quote of the day

Ario observes the web from the Altering Labyrinth: –

It’s often said that the only reason Iraq was invaded was because of the oil. That’s bollocks. Iraq was invaded to keep people blogging and stuck inside muttering profanities and neglecting their spouses (if they have any). I wouldn’t be surprised if Google was originally behind the invasion. But while almost every angry male (it’s almost always males) is cooped up inside it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It makes you wonder what is really going on outside.

facebook: the reinvention of elizabethan courtship

Another silly season musing: Ros Taylor has written a rather laboured Op-Ed for Comment is Free. She argues, slightly convincingly, that the closed nature of facebook’s UI, provides a set of social rules that hark back to those of Elizabethan Courtship.

In truth, Facebook has conventions every bit as rigid as those of the Elizabethan court or the 18th century salon. The site offers friends a limited range of social interactions – gift-giving, joining groups, writing on friends’ walls – and enforces them strictly. The social codes are as non-negotiable as anything in Austen. Offenders are threatened with exclusion. A range of conversational topics such as photo albums, bookshelves and Scrabble are imported from the real world for mutual entertainment. And then there is poking.

[…]

Facebook friendship is a little like the medieval convention of courtly love, and has about as much in common with the outside world. The strict codes and flirtatious little transgressions are partly a reaction to the anonymous heckling that blogging made possible. But mostly Facebook does what sophisticated, privileged societies do: they codify the ways in which humans can play out their friendships. Don’t knock it. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years.

I must admit that many professionals, who usually steer clear of the increasingly vicious blogosphere, do feel at ease on facebook. And one of the main attractions of facebook, over say the mindless MySpace, is that users can maintain a great deal of control over who can view their profile and interact with them. But I also feel that Taylor is inching herself across a very thin analogy here. Haven’t journos got anything better to write about?

the irregular photo of the day

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Day 6636: Tue, 6 March 2007, originally uploaded by one pic a day.

This was taken with a Leica M8, my dream camera.

bush gives us a history lesson. no, really

recommended reading

Chip Dale takes the increasingly annoying & omnipresent Rod Liddle to task.

missing the cubs

The Mrs. and the kids have been away in Tallinn now for 2-and-a-half weeks, and they’re going to be another month or so before I see them again. I’m really busy so I’ve been sort of okay, but then Mrs. tyger sent me some pics, and now I’m pining for her and my cubs…

Don’t forget Papa 😦

cameron to ban violent video games

Ah Ha! It must be the videogames!

Desperate Dave has hinted that he plans to ban violent computer games, as part of a crackdown on violent crime in Britain.

So much for progressive conservatism, eh Dave? *tyger sniggers* Seems to me you’re just another ignorant and conniving politico, prepared to jump on the video games are evil bandwagon, at the very earliest opportunity.

Now. Dave. Let’s go through this veeeeerrrrryyy sloooooowly, ok?

Just because those with a proclivity towards violence, happen to be attracted to violent video games (well, duh!), it does not therefore mean that violent games cause violent behaviour. Have you got that?

We have an age-criterion with regard to gaming. Promote it and enforce it. And stop being such a pompous dick.