baratron: (perky)
Presented without comment:


Oh yes. Although it's a metal song, it should be accessible to the hearing impaired because the lyrics are on the screen.

In other news, I have three workmen in my house right now restoring our gas supply via a number of ugly external pipes. The people who restored this house two owners ago did a horrible botch job involving "repairing" the downstairs wooden floor with poured concrete, and digging it up will require a pneumatic drill and all sorts of additional risk assessments. So they're piping the gas in along the wall. They arrived just after 9 am and will apparently be here "all day".

I am still sick and would really require more sleep, except that Richard has had to go into work because his colleagues are busy breaking everything. Wasn't he too stressed out by overwork only last week? Hmm.

Songs!

Jan. 24th, 2013 02:33 pm
baratron: (lego)
Shop Vac - Jonathan Coulton. Kinetic typography animation by jmheather.
So ridiculously clever and geeky. Amazing use of fonts and clip art. Really worth watching!


ExpandSee below for Muppets, and new Eureka Machines. )
baratron: (wolfy)
Pink Science, '50s-Style. Interesting comparison of a "Lab Technician Set For Girls" to the hideously gendered "Chemistry" kits of today.

What Milgram’s Shock Experiments Really Mean: Replicating Milgram's shock experiments reveals not blind obedience but deep moral conflict, from Scientific American.

Maps of the 2012 US presidential election results, organised in a number of ways. Interesting but slightly freaky.

Positive pregnancy test diagnoses man's cancer. From Reddit, apparently.

BEST VIDEO OF THE ENTIRE YEAR!!! Two very good dogs teach you chemistry. This is beyond amazing. If you have ANY interest in chemistry or dogs, or even if you don't but you don't actively dislike dogs, WATCH THIS VIDEO.
baratron: (Skyrim)
Hey! Hello! - How I Survived The Punk Wars (Official Video)
The first video from Ginger Wildheart's new Hey! Hello! "pop" music project. Very sweary and quite hilarious:


You can tell it's a Ginger song because I was singing along to the chorus halfway through the first listen :) And it amuses me greatly since the chorus could, very easily, be adopted by campaigners for Real Science against Psuedoscientific Bollocks.
baratron: (squid!)
I am stressed and headachy. If anyone else is also feeling this way, please enjoy this photo of a bear falling from a tree onto a mattress, with accompanying story.

Machine pareidolia - exploring the tendency for humans to see faces in inanimate objects. (I'm curious - do people with faceblindness also recognise faces in inanimate objects?). Very nerdy. If you prefer the art version to the computer science version, please enjoy the Hello Little Fella! pool on Flickr. My favourite so far is this (though this, er, human brain has to be a close second).

I have a particular reason, even beyond loving Portal 2, for approving of the Perpetual Testing Initiative video. And yes, it HAS SUBTITLES.

I also have lots of political-type links that are anger-making, but my head hurts too much to want to inflict those on anyone else just now.
baratron: (octopus!)
Yesterday my Mac suddenly lost the ability to connect to the internet. I thought this meant that our ADSL was down, or the router had crashed (we've been having fairly lousy connectivity the past few days), but rebooting the router didn't help. It later transpired that I had perfectly fine connectivity from the eeePC. After trying various sensible things myself, I waited for Richard to get home - and it turned out the Mac's keychain had randomly corrupted itself. People who know about Macs say this is a Bad Thing.

The thing is, I'm sure that usually when users go to tech support people and say "I haven't done anything to the computer, it just stopped working", usually they have changed something and forgotten about it. In this case, I hadn't done anything at all. Half an hour previously, it worked. Then suddenly, it didn't. Huh.


I really need to clear out some of the tabs that are sitting around in my browser waiting for me to write about them. But I still don't have a lot of energy, so anything I say will be brief.

Videos:
Topless Robot: I Would Not Like to Fight 300 Naked Orcs, Personally. A load of level 1 characters in World of Warcraft teamed up to attack one of the toughest bosses in the game. The video is hilarious even if you don't know anything about WoW (as long as you're vaguely aware of video games in general, I suppose).

Sparkfun: Yarn Monster. Richard found this on Sparkfun's site and told me I should link it for all my knitting friends. It's a robot that turns messy yarn into neat balls. Awesome!

Storycorps: Q & A. Animation drawn over a real-life soundtrack of a 12 year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome interviewing his mother. May require tissues, may be triggery (e.g. if you are on the autistic spectrum and do not have such a loving, accepting parent).

Top Five Panda Cheese commercials. Very odd TV adverts for an Egyptian cheese, featuring an utterly adorable panda. Or is he?

Articles:
Fire and Ice on a Platter. I can't remember quite how I found this, but it's an article about the science behind the dessert Baked Alaska. It's very interesting for cooks and science-types alike.

Autism's First Child. Article about/interview with the first person ever to be diagnosed as autistic.

BBC News: A Real Good Samaritan and Your Good Samaritan stories. It made me cry.

Bad Science: Putting a number in its context. The rebuttal to the rather scary recent news story that 600 women had become pregnant despite the contraceptive implant. On a similar note, A new and interesting form of wrong. What's wrong with the recent Stonewall report that “the average coming out age has fallen by over 20 years”.

Silliness:
WALRUS ALLERGIES ARE A SERIOUS ISSUE. From [livejournal.com profile] sherlockbbc_fic.
baratron: (Luka)
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. I have been Ill and have not left the house since last Friday. It seems that wretched snot diseases are going round. Not sure whether this is a very bad cold, or flu modified by having had the flu jab, but it's nasty nonetheless.

I haven't managed to send Christmas cards to anyone due to a combination of my literature report and illness. I didn't even manage to buy Richard a Christmas card. So I drew him one instead. It's us in fuzzy animal form, with dino. I hope you like it.

Here are your Christmas presents:
Cute Explosion from Weebl's Stuff. Excessively adorable video with a catchy song... and a moral?

"Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by Twisted Sister. What? Glam Metal version of hymns, definitely recommended ;)

Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything.

Will write more when I have energy again.
baratron: (wolfy)
A video in which OK Go (them of the treadmills and Heath Robinson contraptions) play with DOGS and IKEA FURNITURE! (Seriously, everything they use is from IKEA. I worry about the fact I recognised this).

baratron: (lego)
I have reached a stage of ARGH with my work, so I'm going to post all of the links I have cluttering up my "working" Firefox profile :)

From [livejournal.com profile] epi_lj: Hollywood's Racism Exposed ... by Lego. Interesting.

From [livejournal.com profile] skibbley: New bisexual IKEA ad airs in Austria. It's amusing... apart from continuing to propagate the "bisexuals are cheaters"/"can't be monogamous" stereotype. Or does it? Maybe the boyfriend simply doesn't like to be in the flat when his partner is having sex with his girlfriend!

From Shana Logic: IKEA Let Loose a Herd of 100 Cats Into Store to 'See What Happens'. If you're really interested, the ad was shot in the branch of IKEA we used to go to when I was a kid (Wembley). We don't go there any more because there's one much closer to us now (Croydon).

From Beetlebau on #soc.bi: Night of the Living Trekkies (book trailer). Books have trailers now?

Finally, in case you haven't seen this anywhere else, and care: the Complete Pokedex for Pokemon Black & White.

*hits Refresh a few more times to see if anyone's replied to my message asking for help yet*
baratron: (Warning: Sick!)
Very silly song. No subtitles, unfortunately - but the video might be worth watching regardless:


Sorry that all I seem to be doing these days is popping in, posting a weird video and going away again. Currently in too much pain to type and have some sort of throat infection. Am too lacking in spoons for coherent content. Bah!
baratron: (boris)
What Boris Johnson Did At London Pride:
Real life (from PinkNews).

Photos: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.

Note also that Boris now has his own unique sexuality. And the Is Fatboy Slim a DJ? song is now available for download - 79p from amazon if you just want the main track, and the proceeds are going to Macmillan.

Fiction. Hilarious, assuming a basic familiarity with the wonders of Boris.

Auto-tune the News
V. disturbing. Apparently some people in the US put news programmes through a Vocoder-like software plugin, so the presenters and politicians sound like they're singing, then sing along, adding extra detail to the song.*brain explodes*

They're reasonably well-subtitled for something where music is essential to understanding. ExpandRead more... )

Dan and Dan:
This guy makes videos with himself. They aren't subtitled, but should be lip-readable. Also, in the Daily Mail song he holds up headlines to go with the lyrics. ExpandAnd again )
baratron: (baratron again)
I'm having a great degree of neophobia because it's all new and strange, so I've been downloading Mac versions of all of my existing software. OpenOffice for Mac turns out to be absolutely identical to OpenOffice for Windows and for the eeePC (whatever linux that is), so I'm delighted with that. Firefox too seems identical. Less happy with Opera, which doesn't quite behave the same way - that could be an Opera 9 versus Opera 10 issue, though.

I can now GET WORK DONE from home!! I actually logged in to the server at college and dumped X windows back onto the display here, and rotated molecules about on the screen. Oooh. Actually doing work would be easier if I had a mouse, however. The mouse that's supposed to be provided was out of stock so I've got to wait for it to turn up.

Also, there is a video making program called Photo Booth which could well be the biggest time sink EVER...



The subtitles on that video get out of sync with the speech in the middle but then sort themselves out again by the end. Very odd! I did them using YouTube's automatic English subtitler, and I guess I should have inserted a few more line breaks when I was going 'Er' and moving around. Not bad for automatic though, is it?

Wish it was possible to customise the GUI of a Mac like you can other unix-based OSes. I'll get used to it, of course - it'll just take more than a couple of hours to get comfortable.
baratron: (boris)
Boris Johnson vs 2 anonymous DJs - Is Fatboy Slim a DJ?


Features an extremely surreal video by Aardman Animations, including brightly coloured flashing things, a rotating owl, a headbanging red guy, bears with their claws out, and your actual Boris Johnson waffling over the top. About Terry Wogan, and bass guitars, and do DJs still do that weird scratchy thing that Malcolm McLaren did?

The purpose of this oddity is to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, which is definitely a worthy charity.

Enjoy the surreality, and perhaps donate a few quid in return?
baratron: (baratron again)
Just finished that email. That would be, er, 8 hours that I've spent dealing with this issue, which is basically a normal working day. Great. An entire day of possible productivity lost.

Going to try to go to the doctor in the morning, which will be interesting as I haven't gone to bed yet. Need to get some help with the many and varied symptoms of stress that my body is showing, as well as updating him about my current medication status. (I upped my dose of carbamazepine from 400 to 450 mg two weeks ago, and I need advice about what to do next.)

In happier and much more amusing news, here is an absolutely brilliant video! I can't remember who originally linked to it, but I'm pretty sure it's someone who isn't already on all my friends' lists: Video: Stop Sign Designed by Committee. Too true!
baratron: (baratron)
This video is making the news: HP Computers are racist. "Black Desi" and "White Wanda" show what happens when they move in front of a new HP laptop with a face recognition camera. The camera moves to track the light-skinned woman, but does not move for the dark-skinned man - even when he gets close.

Of course, the computers aren't really racist - it's a technology problem to do with lighting and shadows. Kudos for the video makers in pointing out the issue without losing their sense of humour. Still, you have to wonder - do technology companies not think to routinely test out "people recognition" technologies with people of many different appearances? including different ages, races, and the disabled, whose faces may not move in a typical way? If not, why not? If technology doesn't work in the same way for everyone, then it is a sort of racism by omission or lack of thought. Unintentional, but hurtful nonetheless.
baratron: (lego)
It's 4 am. Why am I still up? Evidently I need to post all the videos that I have cluttering up tabs in my browser history.

Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom. Incredibly catchy high-pitched silly song accompanying a video of cute creatures eating. I'm sure you've all seen this before because it was posted on livejournal while I was in Boston a month ago, but just in case you need cheering up and baby animals do it for you...

Again, I think most people have seen this already, but it is both Scientific and Musical, so therefore deserves to be spread some more. World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale (sound essential). Having got the audience to sing two notes of the scale by jumping between positions on the stage, it is amazing when he jumps to a third place (as yet untaught), and the audience intuitively sing the correct note. Some people have argued in the comments on Vimeo that it is Western-scale-centric to assume that this knowledge is innate and that people from other cultures with different tuning patterns would have a different expectation, but it's still really cool to observe.

There are also two videos where Bobby McFerrin improvises "songs", which are really interesting because he uses other parts of his body as well as his voice as musical instruments. He can sing in chords and use his chest as percussion. Song One. Song Two. I like the second song a lot.  

The Worst FanFiction Of All Time: Halos in Space (needs Flash, no subtitles). [livejournal.com profile] stellarwind tells me that some of the stories on FanFiction.net are so bad, people made videos with readings of them. This scares me. As does the grammar in the following excerpt: "Joe Chief had to fly fast and go a round tings liek alien ships and things. Then out of no where BOOM happend and the back of the espcape ship fell open n one of the army guys fell out and explodd in space then another one closed it and said "NOOOOO HE WAS MY BROTHER!" and then got tired and slept." My brain hurts now.

Lobster Magnet (needs Flash & has subtitles). A silly pastiche of bad shouty thrash metal, which apparently dates from 2000. Not sure how I've managed to miss it for so long. Features epic lines such as "Magnet's made of iron, lobster made of meat", "Don't put a lobster on a plate. He'll use his magnet to escape!" and "Left claw north, right claw south". Will probably appeal to people who like Homestar Runner and Weebl songs.

Finally, a video I found all by myself: Pok&Watch by MewtwoEx150 on YouTube (sound not necessary). Shows rather amusingly what Pokemon would have looked like if it had come out at the time of the Game & Watch.

Bed now, it's several hours past my bedtime :) Well, you know, I post to livejournal in bursts - nothing for days then 3 or 4 posts all at once...
baratron: (science genius girl)
Richard found a very cool video. Ruben's Tube demonstration. Hairy physicist sets up a tube full of flammable gas to demonstrate standing waves.

There is also a Mythbusters version, which explains the science more clearly, but isn't so fun to watch.
baratron: (bi_pride)
Linked by [livejournal.com profile] aegidian: Surreal song by Lemon Demon: 123456 Pokemon. Video by Neil Cicierega, who I believe is Lemon Demon, so I'm not sure why the song and video are credited separately, but... He still has too much talent, damn him.

Linked by several people: Take On Me: Literal Video Version. If you have seen people on Teh Intarnets saying PIPE WRENCH FIGHT!, it's because of this video. Should be hilarious for all 80s kids (and anyone older who had a secret crush on Morten Harket anyway).

Linked by [livejournal.com profile] wild_irises and [livejournal.com profile] firecat: McCain Can't Type, but YES WE CAN! People using assistive technology devices (including the very lovely [livejournal.com profile] stonebender) point out that "war injuries" are hardly an excuse for not using a computer. Also available with subtitles. Of course, it's pro-Obama.

More US politics, linked by [livejournal.com profile] xiphias: Obama as Batman. Not sure who's responsible for the painting, but the video rather makes it.

Linked by [livejournal.com profile] clawfoot, and possibly the best of the lot: Vinni Puh Goes Visiting. The Soviet Russian version of Winnie the Pooh cartoons from 1971. I like it so much better than the Disney version. Vinni Puh has CLAWS, like a real bear! And is brown, like a real bear! (Are there any species of bear that are blond?). I'm actually going to check out the rest of the posted Vinni Puh episodes, because it's awesome.

I got distracted and I've forgotten if I was going to post anything else. My computer is having 1:00 again, which means it's probably time for bed.
baratron: (richard again)
Richard is working late this week (2pm-11pm), so I see him for a while in the morning depending on when either of us manage to get up, but am devoid of wuzzieness in the evening. As a result I shall be watching videos like this one: "Carmensita," by Devendra Banhart, featuring Natalie Portman (linked by fellow wuzzie [livejournal.com profile] epi_lj). It features a mad singing wuzzie with vast quantities of hair, including some which you don't usually get to see! And he loves an octopus! Further analysis in The Guardian.

By the way, Richard's beard is currently longer than it's ever been. He may be going for some sort of personal record.
baratron: (face only)
There are still too many tabs open in my web browser. Unfortunately most of them are pages from the same health-related site, and I still lack sufficient spoons to write about it, so they'll have to stay there. Ugh.

Tor.com blog post: Science that made me smile. About the platypus, and how its genome turns out to be as bizarre as the creature itself. Linked by [livejournal.com profile] mactavish, I think.

YouTube video: Protecting and Maintaining Your Heterosexual House of Cards. A short and hilarious "documentary" which explains, among other things, while apparently-straight young men Do Not Make Eye Contact with each other. Linked by [livejournal.com profile] rosefox.

Advance Directives/Mad Maps/Plans For Not Getting Too Crazy. Advance directives are "official"-type documents that you give to a doctor while sane and healthy to tell them how you'd like to be treated when insane and unhealthy. Mad maps are more informal documents agreed between you and your friends/support people. Quite an interesting idea, especially from the point of view of preventing yourself getting too bad by having your own checklist of symptoms relevant-to-you. There's some really good stuff on page 2 with a bunch of headings that can be used. Anyway, random linkage in case it's useful for anyone.

Profile

baratron: (Default)
baratron

March 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
1314151617 1819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

Expand All Cut TagsCollapse All Cut Tags
Page generated Jul. 10th, 2025 04:44 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios