| Electric Letter #4 |
Like this? Get it right in your inbox - which means you get extra bonus stuff like things to win - by popping your email address in the little box up there at the top of the page.RollZero Electric Letter #4 - May 26, 2009 Hi there, and welcome to the only weekly email that can provide you with the precise emotion you experienced the first time you saw a drawing of a dinosaur. You don't need to remember what it felt like - we do all that for you, and then we redeliver it once every seven days for you to enjoy again. Why? Because we love you. Some have suggested that it is impossible to fall in love with a collection of names and email addresses. We challenge those people to walk a day in our shoes. No - we challenge them to walk a day in our hearts. To wear our hearts on their feet and walk around for 24 hours - even on wood chippings or gravel - then give them a good rinse and put them back. Then they'll understand. Then they'll remember how they felt when they first saw a dinosaur. Scared. Fascinated. Aroused. Probably not aroused. Anyway, let's shut up and get on with the links. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- RollZero shizzle How would the customer services department of IKEA react to a letter informing them that one of their sofas contained a wormhole to Paris? Quite pleasantly, it turned out. http://www.rollzero.com/chads-letters/190-a-letter-to-ikea Our columnist Pixelsmith (which is always a strange thing to write when it's yourself, but bear with us/me) may be one of the only people to like phone banking. At least he did until his bank started making him shout instructions into the phone like an idiot instead of pressing buttons like a normal person. http://www.rollzero.com/pixs-column/202-stupid-phone-banking The Geek Adventure, which is the tale of two British nerds pootling around Europe to stay with people they met though playing World of Warcraft, nears the end of its stay in Sweden. http://www.rollzero.com/videogames/geek-adventure/204 There's only one reason that a £16 stereo could top a consumer satisfaction poll. It's that Tesco, which sells said device, is an evil superpower which has infiltrated and possessed its customers' minds. Murphy Simmonds gives a rant to that effect in the latest Angry Tech post. http://www.rollzero.com/the-shed/199-tesco-value-stereo Fancy revisiting last week's Electric Letter? Of course you do. http://www.rollzero.com/pixs-column/215-electric-letter-3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Micro-sense The Twitter wisdom of Chad Bradley "I am enjoying the internet. It's like Teletext but not as good." "There is no such thing as a bad cheese. Only cheese I like less." "Where would the baking industry be without eggs? Lost, that's where. It's just a shame they come out of a chicken's bum." "Woops, typo! Of course, I meant to say 'the banking industry'." "I'd really like to meet Sting. Does anybody have his phone number?" "Have been thinking about variants of Snakes on a Plane. Sheep in a Jeep. Crab in a Cab. Clam on a Tram." "Rats on a pedalo." "Once you get past the spikes there is surprisingly little meat on a hedgehog." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Things from the Unibrain The Everything Calculator We are confused by Wolfram Alpha. On the one hand, it seems to be an attempt to take all known data and convert it into a common language so the whole lot can be put on the same calculator. On the other hand... well actually there isn't another hand. It's just the first one, and frankly that's mental enough. All known data? This thing is way over our heads (we need it to be able to answer questions like "how many pineapples are there in Brazil?" before we can attempt to grasp it) but mark our words, in a decade or so it's going to be built into every robot we make. Which at least means our ultimate demise at the hands of the machines will be humanely swift. http://www.wolframalpha.com/ Rubbish T-shirt wins internet "Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women." So reads an Amazon user review of a T-shirt with some wolves on it. Lots more people then added their ludicrous reviews, at which point irony was converted to cash, increasing the sales of the garment by 2,300 percent. That's almost 2,400 percent, percent fans. T-shirt: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mountain-Three BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8061031.stm Slo-mo skateboard explosions What's the main thing that skateboarding videos are usually missing? In fact, what's the main thing that all kinds of video are usually missing? That's right - explosions. See skateboarding people skateboarding their skateboards on things which are exploding, in slow motion. Gets into its stride after a minute or so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VGbAOOEego Petulant Creationist parents We all know that the Earth was created in 1871 by benevolent spirit beings from Zorkon-5, but there's no need to go on about it on a science trip consent form. http://imgur.com/x0r1u.png Extras meets Bambi That bit from Extras where Ricky Gervais witters on to Patrick Stewart about acting and stuff, synced up to footage from Bambi. Is it still called "footage" if it's a cartoon? We don't know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2WWeq9 Your links We asked you to send us in your stuff so you could win a real life videogame about Wolverine the mutant man. You did, and we put all the entrants(' names) in a hat (sock) and picked one out with our (wizened, broken) fingers. The winner is Chloe. Well done Chloe, you have been freed from the fearsome clutches of the RollZero sock. Here are a few of the links we liked: A spinny-roundy skyscape. Rotate it to the bottom and there's evidence of human life. It's a bit like what Chad Bradley saw through his IKEA sofa. Sent in by Chloe, who once dined with Elvis. http://www.fukhaos.com/labs/ceu.html An Onion report about an annual parade of ninjas. Sent in by Lucinda, the only Ukrainian woman to have walked on the Moon. http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ninja_parade Beach cleaners foolishly blow up a dead whale. Sent in by Joe, who we hear looks great in a jumpsuit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_t44siFyb4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ear Cake What is ear cake? Well, it's two things. First off, it's the aural equivalent of eye candy. Second, it's the name of a section of the Electric Letter which wasn't a section before but now is. We thought that separating off a musical link from the rest of the links would give it extra gravitas. And we were right! Fasten your space helmets because you are about to experience 4.2 Gs on the Hawking Gravitas Thermometer. This week's ear cake is the Dubstep Mix of Hometown Glory by Adele. We like Adele. We can't help it, she's got a nice voice. We like her better remixed, though, especially when it's all dark and brooding and melancholic. http://songza.com/~4qvk36 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begone But please, don't stray too far. Our walkie talkies only work at a maximum distance of 400m. If you love us, if you really mean it, ask a friend to sign up for the Electric Letter. No, tell them. Show it to them on the internet and tell them to subscribe, with a hammer held to their head. Obviously don't hit them if they refuse, that would be a crime. See you next week! Love, Pix. Send us a link, or say hello: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Follow us on Twitter: @chadbrad, @pixelsmith or @gm_wint Banish us forever: [SUBSCRIPTIONS] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lastly You know Youtube? You know the Youtube comments box? You know how annoying it is when people argue with each other in the Youtube comments box? Well it's very annoying. But we found the following argument inexplicably hilarious. The video's almost worth watching, as it shows some bloke flying into a sort of huge cloth bollard in his stunt plane (don't worry, he lives to fly another day). But it's not as good as the debate below, of which excerpts are reprinted here with the express permission of a piece of A4 paper we wrote the words "yeah it's fine" on. Video description: Steve Jones had a roller-coaster ride in 2007, winning in spectacular fashion in Porto but finishing 12th in Istanbul and crashing so heavily into a pylon in Monument Valley that he was forced to retire from that race. He hit the pylon just a few meters above the ground. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46wfa4g Comments (annotated in italics): what planes do they use? [reasonable question, but you've just created a monster] edge 540 i think No, its the Extra 300S that they use Jones is flying an Edge 540. Looks like an Extra 300 to me [this person is unnecessarily angry] watch the video with sound....at the beginning he flat out said he is flying an EDGE 540!!!! nope, its an Extra 300s, lol [what is this lol for?] the extra 300 has 2 seats, the one with an s is single so they fly better and faster by themselves, im not crazy bout planes, i just know that because steve jones just gave an hour talk on the red bull air race XD it was good, told us to google this :P First of all he says he's flying the '540. Second, IF [capitals, looks like he means business] he had been flying an Extra in the 2007 season, it would have been the 300SR, not the 300S. Finally, and above all, this is actually a video of the plane in question - especially at 1:15 you *clearly* [asterisks, he definitely means business] see it is a shoulder-winged Zivko EDGE 540, not a low-winged Extra 300SR. Pause at 1:15, google pictures of both planes and you'll notice the obvious differences too :) [smiley face, this means he's happy to get his hands dirty with argument but he also rises above it all like a nobleman] yea, but there are clips of him from everywhere probly [probABly] in different planes in alot [a lot] of the clips and im on about when he crashes, he told us in person that it was an extra 300s on the dessert like track, im just going by his word, the guy who was flying it lol :L After seeing the full video in HD frame by frame, I think it is obvious he is flying the Edge 540. (look at the canopy and the position of the wings). The markings are also identical with his `01 540 (N24KC), and completely different from his `94 300S (N8JX) which had horisontal white and black stripes along the fuselage. Video material aside, according to Red Bull race records he was flying his Edge the since Budapest 2006. He was flying his 300S in 2005 and half the `06 season tho :) I am an Airplane nut and have models of the Edge 540, Extra 330 and 300s and he is flying the Edge 540 in this entire video clip. [I have every album by Britney and you don't and on the b-side of Womanizer she definitely says "New Jersey" not "a new jersey" that is the final word from a huge fan thx] I've got a cessna 150, I dont think it is.. maybe a 182 So that's why at the beginning of the video he says he's flying the Edge 540 huh? Cessna 150's, 182's are high wing aircraft, the one he's flying is a mid wing. Besides, a Cessna couldn't maneuver like that if your life depended on it. The wings would literally fall off. [Although it can still be a bitch when the wings figuratively fall of your plane.] I agree with bigtoyota. Skatergmail if you have a cessna 150, how the hell will you mistake an Edge 540 mid-wing with a cessna 150? Common sense tells me its gotta be a C150, nothing else has the sheer speed and agility. are you guys joking? thats an edge540 not a cessna. a cessna couldnt do those manouvers! [Our favourite comment of them all. Is it a joke? It's impossible to tell] I can't believe how poorly you all are at id'ing aircraft,,, It is clearly an original Piper Cub. To the pilot,,, if your flying your cub over water like in the video, you should purchase some floats for it. and don't fly so close to those buoys, there could be pelicans near them.
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