richardirvine.com

Author: Richard Irvine

  • Links

    As children we all loved Garfield, only to grow up and realise his “cynical” take on the world appeals mainly to people who live alone with only a freezer full of ice cream for company. So, you’ll love Garfield minus Garfield. Do you think this would work with Wal and The Dog?

    Portishead are back, and The Observer reckons they’re better than ever.

    Spin The Black Circle is a very frustrating game. It reminds me of the games you used to get on fish and chip shop walls, kind of a cross between the golf and the ball pinging ones.

    Popless is Onion AV Club’s Noel Murray documenting a year where he refuses to listen to any new music, instead documenting his (extensive) record collection. He’s a very experienced reviewer and great writer, which is lucky, ‘cos it’s almost March, and he’s only up to C.

  • Cross post – Open your own 80s video shop

    The original is on the Aucklandista site

    Remember video shops? Rewinding, fixing the tracking, due back by 12? As a lad, I’d spend hours in the corner video shop trawling the likes of Joysticks and Brewsters’s Millions to find the perfect tape for that weekend’s slumber party (it was a more innocent time back then, team).

    If you ever wondered what happened to the films on those clunky black tapes, and struggle finding them nowadays among 50 copies of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, you’re in luck. Turns out they’re all available on DVD in the Queen Street JB HiFi‘s bargain bin for seven dollars each.

    Today’s perusal uncovered sub-Top Gun flick Iron Eagle, featuring Louis Gosset and a kick arse Queen theme tune, Steve Martin’s The Jerk, which was technically made in 1979, but remains a stalwart of ’80s video shops nonetheless, David Cronenberg’s weird-ass Videodrome, which bought James Woods and Debbie Harry together at last, and, um, Streets of Fire. Ahem.

    This bin is AMAZING, and if I’m heading past I have to cross the street for fear of enthusiastically emptying my wallet all over it. I picked up Friday the 13th and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes on one particularly vulnerable day – I blame the “I’m Cheap, Buy Me!” stickers. The stock seems to turn over fairly regularly, and is fully worth a trawl if your self-control is any better than mine.

  • Link: The Onion writers

    If you find The Onion as screen-splatteringly funny as I do, you’ll want to check out this podcast of how they do it.

    Turns out they write about 600 headlines a week, then battle in the writers’ room for which ones go in. There’s a whole lot of of intellectualising goes on, and while part of me thinks they’re over-analysing and should just get on with it, I guess that’s what you gotta do to create a long running, consistently hilarious paper / website.

  • New Toy

    New Toy

    My place of work has been so goodly kind to shout me a shiny new Okta Touch.

    First thoughts: It’s sexy. Real sexy. Sexy as really cold beer on a hot day. This is my first real PDA, and all my ‘I just want a PHONE, man’ thoughts melted effortlessly away in no time.

    It’s got a touch screen, and despite not having an ‘I’ in front of its name, its really well put together. The OS is more complicated than my old Nokia, but it’s not bad. I can do everything with my thumb, pretty much, I was worried I’d have to use the stylus the whole time, which is less than ideal for tapping out a quick SMS. It’s got touch-screen Qwerty keyboard, it’ll be interesting to see if I can get any actual writing done with it.

    Here’s the Stuff and Geekzone reviews. I’ll post more thoughts as we go.

    It IS missing a bottle opener, though.

    140208 UPDATE: Hmmm yes, I still like. The TouchFlo (many, many manhours would have gone into that name, team) bit where you phone, text and email contacts in a few strokes is magic. Flipping this nicely animated menu around with your thumb makes you feel like Buck Rogers ordering a pizza. A pizza from the future.

  • Link: Five cues that Robert Plant is ready to have sexual intercourse with you

    From Merlin Mann’s 5ives:
    1. gently enquires as to where you like to put the turkey baster
    2. repeatedly offers to demonstrate “how Blighty squeezes the lemonade”
    3. stands in your front yard, pants-less and swinging a garden hose in lazy figure-eights
    4. makes rapid “milking a cow” gesture while screaming something incoherent about Robert Johnson
    5. drops his semi-erect penis onto your dessert plate

  • Cross post: Fisking the Herald on the Northern Busway

    You can read the original over on the Aucklandista

    For Aucklanders, traffic is big, right up there with property prices and ‘How’s my hair?’. THAT big. So when I moved to the Shore (love makes you do crazy things, team), getting to work weighed heavily on my mind. I mean, Shore traffic is crap, right? The Northern Motorway is one big car park, right? Turns out I was wrong, the Shore is a haven of public transport – but not according to the Herald. Jump to find out why Granny Herald is talking out its delivery bay.

    (more…)

  • Lookalike – is it just me?

    Has anyone else drawn comparison between alleged murderer / vigilante Bruce Emery  and the Michael Douglas character from Falling Down?

    In other, related questions – am I a terrible person?

  • Narrowneck beach, anniversary weekend

    PICT0297

  • Link: You suck at Photoshop

    A nerd’s life comes apart in front of your eyes, while explaining best clone stamp practice. I love that he’s turned a boring old Photoshop tutorial into a mini tragedy. Genius.

    Episode one / Episode two / Episode three

  • Facebook infestation hits New Zealand beaches

    Facebook has taken over from Sharks as the slow news summer shock horror story. The Sunday Star Times reprinted curmudgeonly Tom Hodkinson’s rant from the Guardian, changing its’ title from ‘With friends like these…’ to the much more measured “Why Facebook is EVIL!”.

    Reading the SST front page story I learned Sophie Elliot’s boomer era father doesn’t understand the internet as well as his late daughter, and felt sad a reporter rang a still grieving family for quotes to support their angle. Reading Tom Hodkinson’s rant, I learned that shadowy far right libertarians are mining the worlds’ friendships for profit, and felt a sneaking admiration.

    Facebook can be annoying with its vampire games and people you hardly know sending you *HUGS!*, but evil? Really? Peter Griffin beats down Hodkinson’s rant here, but I’m more concerned that both Fairfax Sundays featured front page stories from social networking sites this week – that just seems lazy to me. Along with Bebo, Facebook’s an easy (and unimaginative) source for reporters to find victim’s background, without even leaving the office (or browser) – just the thing for slow news summer.