This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.
It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.
This might upset some folks, but I think it’s beautiful. “If iPad were a dish, there are no problem”
Made me sad that I didn’t know they were in town until they were already here. I’d have loved to have protested outside Twitter with a “God Hates Failwhales” sign.
I have not the words. Has to be watched to be believed.
Michelle Obama? Wicked hot in a moustache.
A fantastically brilliant, stupid, and downright British arts project. Every hour, a different Briton stands on the “Fourth Plinth” in London’s Trafalgar Square and does whatever they want. The live webcam is somewhere between fascinating and deathly dull. In summary: Amazing.
Dollhouse may not be as dead as thought. Fun with US TV politics means that what “FOX Broadcasting” (the TV network) ordered, and what “20th Century Fox Television” (the production company) produced for sale to secondary markets and DVDs, haven’t lined up, so there’s this mysterious not-to-be-aired 13th episode.
But let’s face it, Dollhouse is still probably not coming back.
Sadly falafel-free, but still disturbing.
Slow news day in the UK, clearly. Channel 4 News covers the Jon Stewart / Jim Cramer kerfuffle.
Bizarre Ted L. Nancy-esque flyers. Made me smile.
As a former Somervillain, this makes me very happy.
A .zip file which contains itself. Fun!
Unicode has a codepoint for *snowman*‽ ☃
Ever wondered what the international pictogram is for “girl on girl fisting”? It’s like xkcd porn.
That’s the way to do it. “Nary a sheet of tin has rolled of our own production lines in over 30 years!”
A grumpy “message to the future” uncovered when a pond was dug up in a back garden. I hope the author is aware their hard work was in vain.
Suggested advertising slogan for Boston: Avoid “the impossible dream” with this contraceptive pill.
(Alternative slogan for lovers of mildy obscure late 80’s British pop: Avoid increasing “the plastic population” with this pill.)
I try hard to resist linking to every single animation Weebl posts, but this one was too good not to share.
Collected facts about Barack Obama. This needs to be a Chumby app.
Bizarre tale of a plagiarised nature article appearing as dialogue in a trashy paperback romance.
Pac-man as interactive fiction.
> eat
You have eaten another glowing dot!
Best use of a Phil Collins soundtrack EVAR! Quality bit of viral advertising from Cadbury’s.
Impressive shattering of all stereotypes about beauty queens *and* South Carolina.
Holy flaming crap! This is just spectacularly awesomely awful. Your email represented as human avatars hanging around a beach. The trailer has to be seen to be believed.
Wikipedia page for the guy at the front of the line for the iPhone in New York. He’s quite the line-sitter!
Supreme Court judge Justice Antonin Scalia: “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.” No, really. Frightening.
Photoshop lets you have your cake and eat it.
Most bizarre thing spotted in a Hollywood gift-shop so far.
I’d seen this advertised in Private Eye, but this is the first time I’d looked at the website. An alarm clock that wakes you up gently with one of 50 recordings by Stephen Fry.
The Scottsdale, AZ police department is running recruiting ads in the mens room at Fenway Park. I saw one last week, but really didn’t think it was an appropriate time to whip out my cellphone and take a photo.
A couple of hundred HD-DVD fanboys did an organized reverse-boycott, all purchasing HD-DVD discs on Amazon on the same day to try and prove… something. Not quite sure what. Really it emphasizes how lousy both formats are doing that a sales graph can be moved so dramatically by a few hundred customers.
Well, I didn’t see *that* coming. My ISP, the venerable and awesome Speakeasy, has been purchased by electrical retailer Best Buy. Wonder if their CSRs will have to start wearing blue shirts…
Found while buying the Gang of Four book from Amazon. “Encapsulated Big Fat Opening: Creating a sandbox environment for a female to request the pleasure of your company while still claiming encapsulated intentions.” Bizarre.
Why am I only finding out about this *after* Christmas? This could have filled stockings beautifully.
Hands getting sweaty from too much Wii-playing? Here’s your solution!
New in the freezer section at Stop & Shop. "Diana Ross & The Temptations' Salisbury Steak Dinner" not pictured.
Shepard Fairey-style propaganda posters for dog-lovers. Some of these are great.
“The brainfuck language is an esoteric programming language noted for its extreme minimalism. It was designed to challenge and amuse programmers, and is not suitable for practical use.”
Too old to get a job, but not old enough for social security? “Rob” a bank, and get the state to provide your food and shelter.
I’ll write more reviews shortly (before dashing out to see another four shows today), but I just thought I’d comment that it’s just so wonderfully Edinburgh that the pub named after the prostitute-murdering pair Burke and Hare is now a strip club.
I just can’t see many punters in Milwaukee going to “Jeffrey Dahmer’s Titty Bar”.
Best! Wikipedia category! Evah! Everything you need to know about Bat Bombs, Anti-tank Dogs and the Oregon Exploding Whale. Suck it, Brittanica!
Recaplet of last night’s Apprentice, the boardroom of which was one of the finest, most superbly bizarre and duck-behind-a-cushionly cringemaking bits of television ever.
Nicely done map of the British motorway system in the style of the London Underground map. Not particularly *useful*, but man, is it pretty.
Yikes! It’s kind of creepy that seeing some of these blank tapes reminds me of the ZX Spectrum games I had pirated on each kind!
It’s the Elmo sticking plaster for tough-guys. Genius bit of targetted marketing, right down to the “designed to fit easily in a toolbox” packaging.
Following on from Ian Brown’s cameo in the last Harry Potter film, Jarvis Cocker and a couple of Radioheadies are going to appear in the next one,
This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.
I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.
