mssv

  • Free, as in Beer

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    2–3 minutes

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    2 comments on Free, as in Beer

    As a big fan of museums, I’m always eager to hear news of how well they’ve been doing since the government scrapped admissions charges. Today it’s been announced that since the charges were scrapped in 2001, visitor numbers have increased by 75%, or 6 million. Considering that it used to be fairly pricey to go…

  • Jingle Rock Bell

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Jingle Rock Bell

    Bell rock jingle rock Bell jingle rock Rock jingle rock Bell jingle bell Rock bell Jingle Rock rock bell Jingle rock, jingle rock Bell bell bell Quite possibly the greatest Christmas song ever – Jingle Rock Bell (Jingle Bell Rock sung using only the words ‘bell’, ‘jingle’ and ‘rock’.

  • Rosetta

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Rosetta

    I was idly flicking through a book someone gave me about hieroglyphics when I decided to look up the Rosetta Stone in the index. I was initially consternated and then outraged when I couldn’t find it – what sorry excuse of a hieroglyphics book was this if it doesn’t have anything about the Rosetta Stone…

  • The Night Before Launch

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    3–4 minutes

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    A reworking of ‘The Night Before Christmas’, Syzygy-style.

  • Excitement

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Excitement

    There’s an advert on TV for I, Robot where a typically breathless voiceover proclaims that in the movie, ‘Will Smith defines excitement’. For some reason I can’t get out of my head the image of Will Smith beginning the movie by reading out the definition for ‘excitement’ from a dictionary.

  • A (Brief) Tale of Two Games

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    1–2 minutes

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    In the past couple of weeks I bought Half-Life 2 and Sid Meier’s Pirates!. This is pretty exceptional for me since I can’t actually recall the last time I bought a computer game. After buying a new graphics card for HL2 (the game simply laughed at my pathetic attempt to get it to run on…

  • Happenings

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    1–2 minutes

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    Lots of stuff has been going on with my life lately which I should have mentioned here but just haven’t had time. I was interviewed by the Times a couple of weeks ago in an article on alternate reality games and a pop neuroscience book which I contributed to called Mind Hacks has been released…

  • A Passage to Bangalore

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    5–7 minutes

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    1 comment on A Passage to Bangalore

    (First part online – other parts being written) A Passage to India has always been one of my most hated books. Perhaps it’s because we were forced to read it in school. Perhaps it was the way in which our class had to take turns read out aloud the entire damn thing. Or perhaps it’s…