The first annual Gorton street Mastermind championship
The first annual Gorton street Mastermind championship, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
It’s come down to a tense final (also the first round) between Harry and
Rachel.
Monthly archives: September 2012
The first annual Gorton street Mastermind championship, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Walk and Talk the Vote
The West Wing cast reunite for a campaign video. Sweet.
The Brave Archer
One of many old martial arts movies available on YouTube.
Making Jesus famous?
I’m an atheist*, but there’s something about the motto of King’s Church that offends me. It’s even the URL of their website- ‘Making Jesus famous‘.
It’s the sheer arrogance of it that rubs me up the wrong way. Who could possibly believe that they could make the second most famous fictional character in the world any more well known?
I reckon far too many religious leaders are all about aggrandising themselves and feeding their egos. Their god, whichever one they claim, is only ever a prop.
*I was going to say ‘affirmed atheist’, but there’s something about the phrase that suggests we have to go through our own version of baptism or confirmation- where a man in a white lab coat anoints your forehead (preferably with whisky) with a Doctor Manhattan style hydrogen atom and calls upon you to renounce all fairytales.
Risky Heroes
Risky Heroes, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Who are the Risky Heroes? King Street, Manchester.
If only we didn’t let women do ‘men’s jobs’
We were talking about the shooting of two Police officers in Mottram and I pondered, “I wonder who’ll be the first to say it’s all because we’re letting women do men’s jobs?” Then I thought a second or so longer and said, “I bet it’s Carvath.”
It was Carvath- In a civilised society PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes would still be alive | Richard Carvath.
Richard Carvath has a habit of taking down his posts, particularly the more stupid ones, so, just in case it disappears, here’s a taster of what he wrote-
It disgusts me that Bone and Hughes were sent out to respond to a burglary. Look at the photo of Nicola Hughes above; she was a little girl who should never have been a police officer at all. What kind of a society are we that we send out such young, small women to investigate burglaries, patrol our streets and respond to violent criminals (most of whom are men much stronger and harder than they)? A sick society is what we are, sending the weak and vulnerable to do men’s work. Women doing our frontline policing is wrong not only for the sake of the women involved but also for society’s sake, because we are all less safe when we have women rather than men trying to protect us from violent criminals. The sad truth is that in a civilised society the female Fiona Bone and the female Nicola Hughes would still be with us, because if we were a civilised society we wouldn’t permit our women to engage in frontline policing at all.
In Carvath’s “civilised” society two Police officers would still be dead, because an unarmed man is just as vulnerable as an unarmed woman when faced with 10-16 shots and a grenade explosion. Unless, of course, Dick-world is controlled by patrols of Robocopish, heavily armed, God-fearing, hetero Cop heroes.
Daily Blog 09/17/2012
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Holy Crap, It’s A Baja Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royces always seem sort of untouchable. If you see one, it’s usually immaculate and maintained in a standard fitting its absurdly highbrow image. Not always, though.
No, sometimes it’s way, way better than that, like this Baja’d-out Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow
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Personally, I dread Thatcher’s death. It will be a nightmarish blend of the hysteria that followed Princess Diana’s tragic accident and a month-long political broadcast for the Conservative Party. “She put the ‘great’ back in Great Britain,” our impartial media will lecture us; those who dissent will either be purged from the airwaves or demonised as spiteful lefties. Senior Labour politicians will feel obliged to join in the serenading of a PM who, in many cases, laid waste to the communities they represent. I hope she goes on and on.
Marcus Brigstocke’s still relevant religion rant 1
It seems appropriate to repost this, given the riots using a stupid, very badly made film as an excuse.
Ooga chaka
Ooga chaka, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Just your average corkscrew.
Daily Blog 09/13/2012
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‘It Makes Me Sick’: Actress in Muhammed Movie Says She Was Deceived, Had No Idea It Was About Islam
The story of the Muhammed movie which sparked deadly protests in Libya and Egypt gets weirder. The actors who appeared in it had no idea they were starring in anti-Islam propaganda which depicts Muhammed as a child molester and thug. They were deceived by the film’s director, believing they were appearing in a film about the life of a generic Egyptian 2,000 years ago.
Daily Blog 09/10/2012
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Tabloid Watch: ‘None of the newspapers checked the facts with us before publication’
At the end of last week, several newspapers claimed the EU wanted to ‘ban’ classic cars.
The Kindle Fire is now available in the UK
The Kindle Fire HD might be a smaller iPad alternative, at least as far as content goes. On top of ebooks, it also handles full colour content, audio and video and has a touch screen. You can tie it to your Lovefilm account and, unlike Apple, Amazon appear to treat their customers as grown ups when it comes to how they watch their content.
I’ll have a tablet eventually. I don’t know if it will be a Kindle Fire, but it’s on the list. It’s also a potential platform for the content I create, so I’m going to keep an eye on the specs.
Daily Blog 09/06/2012
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Amazon announces Kindle Serials installment-based publishing program | The Verge
As an update to Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon has announced Kindle Serials, an installment-based e-reader publishing program. The system will let buyers pay once for a piece of ongoing fiction, then receive further chapters for free; the launch price for all installments of each title is $1.99. To start things off, Amazon will be republishing works by Charles Dickens, one of the best-known serial authors. Dickens is already in the public domain and books like Oliver Twist are offered for free on Kindle now, so it appears only the new titles will cost money.
RIP Michael Clarke Duncan
The actor has died at 54, after a heart attack.
I’ve not seen Green Mile yet, but lately we’ve been enjoying his turn in The Finder.
Introducing Peter Irwin Kyle
P.I. Kyle (he likes to be called P.I. when we talk about his professional achievements) is the latest addition to Spinneyhead’s publishing arm. Whilst you won’t be seeing any of his work for a couple of months, P.I. already has a couple of projects under way.
P.I. is our science fiction and fantasy author, and some of his stories will bounce back and forth between the two genres. At present he is working on the first tale of Kam the Wanderer, a steely thewed adventurer in the Conan mould who shall be discovering the strange devices, abandoned cities and bizarre creatures left behind on his world by the Ancients. Mr Kyle’s other project is an updating and expansion of the Heavensent tale which was serialised here on Spinneyhead several years ago. The dieselpunk tale should become a three novella long alternate technothriller taking place on a planet with one giant continent split by a massive mountain range.
That’s enough about P.I. for now. I’ve got to go and lock him in the cellar and force him to keep typing.
A few pointers to future weapons tech 1
Just a few things I spotted this morning which could be coming to a battlefield, or thriller, near you one day.
Mind controlled quad-copters. These are being developed to give the wheelchair bound a new view on the world, and maybe provide other tools to make their lives easier, but mind interfacing weapons have long been a sci-fi staple, so you know someone out there’s developing this technology with entirelyy different types pf blades attached.
Using Android phones to call in airstrikes. Okay, the article rubbishes the idea, so it’s unlikely to be used practically. But as a plot device it is quite cool.
BAE’s Striker helmet gives fighter pilots ‘X-ray vision’. Just the latest iteration of the move to a completely UAV air force?
I’m leaving my MP3s in my will
Bruce Willis is ‘considering iTunes legal action’ against Apple, so that he can own, and do as he wishes with, the content he’s paid them for.
The issue of ownership of digital products has been around for years, and iTunes’ licencing has long been contentious, but most of us have just carried blithely on buying songs and stuff and expecting to be able to keep them forever. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased anything from iTunes, so I’m safe from this particular problem. My MP3 purchases have been from emusic and Amazon’s MP3 store, which I believe are more realistic about DRM and all the other stuff that makes life hard for customers. Most of my music, however, has been ripped from CD, a process I’m about to start all over again as I convert them to the higher quality FLAC standard.
If you don’t slow down you’re gonna crash
Via a comment thread on Jalopnik, this is just a selection of the car carnage served up by long running German tv series “Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei”
Where do I find more of this?
Update I’ve now watched 9 of these compilations. So many car crashes from just one show. What I’d like is to see a few full episodes, with subtitling, just to see if Cobra 11 is as campy and dumb as it looks from these clips.
The White House brew house
Barack Obama has started brewing beer in The White House kitchens. There have been so many requests that they’ve now published the recipes, which utilise honey from the first beehives on the White House’s lawns.
Mitt Romney would just buy a brewery, and then have them change their recipe to the blandest, most insipid bilge possible.
via BoingBoing
Louse Vegas
Louse Vegas, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester.