NEWSLETTER: "YOU ARE ANOTHER NEWSLETTER CLOSER TO DEATH"
* IMAGE CHALLENGE RESULTS - old game mash-ups
* WINDOWS 11 SIMULATOR - try before you cry
* QR CODE STICK FIGURES - that actually scan
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the web
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | by setting the time
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| machine back to 2002"
B3ta newsletterbomb 1003, 2nd Nov 2026
Read this issue as a warning on what not to do:
https://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue1003
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE MADE THIS WEEK
Other than making DIY "owl" pellets again
* BREAKING QR CODES TO FURTHER SCIENCE -
lepetitg writes, "I am back on the QR code
bandwagon - I never left. I made a generator
that lets you make codes out of stick figures.
They also somehow scan. This is based on the
work of an incredible youtuber named Noel
Friedrich." We enjoyed how fucked up these
looked and it made us wonder: can you make a QR
code entirely out of gentlemen's penises?
https://qrsticks.greg.technology/
* THE REFORMER EXPOSED - christhebarker writes,
"With Nigel Farage setting up his own Reformer
newspaper, I thought it might be fun to make The
Real Reformer which updates daily with great
news stories about Reform UK PLC." Excellent
stuff. We don't follow politics much, so we hope
this is all about Chris's favourite political
party and how ace they are.
https://therealreformer.co.uk/
* I HAVE MADE AN ALBUM IN GERMAN, IT'S
INSTRUMENTAL. - fred zeppelin writes, "If you
ever wonder what it was like to hang out in West
Germany in the early 70s, drinking endless
coffees and sharing a joint with members of
Neu!, Cluster or the Baader-Meinhof gang, this
is my attempt to evoke such a heady time. And it
has tunes you can actually whistle. No judgement
but it's made without any software other than
Final Cut for editing." You know why we are
featuring this? Honestly, because making an
album in a video editing bit of software is
wilfully perverse and therefore interesting.
Next week: our mate Mike who once took a laptop
to a live drawing class and drew the naked lady
using AutoCAD.
https://thesonsofsilence1.bandcamp.com/album/neon-...
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: SPONSORED SLOT - Short Run Design
It's time to buy some curious stuff again
The Short Run Design "concept" is that Brant has
a load of interesting chums he met in his career
as a designer and they like making stuff. So
he's putting them in touch with an audience of
buyers, who like buying stuff, and ethical
capitalism happens. Well, at least, not
particularly evil capitalism. Signed-up sellers
include James Brown of Loaded fame, Brant's
chums who sell fish and himself with his own
wonderful hoody which we're wearing as we type
this. Ideal for a last-minute gift. And you know
you're getting something verging on the unique,
as each run is, well, short.
https://shortrundesign.com/
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: IMAGE CHALLENGE
Game Mashups
This week we've been combining computer games to
make new computer games: Alien 8 My Hamster. You
get the idea.
* 'HappyToast' has produced PacMan vs Lunar
Jetman to a level that you could pitch this to
someone and they'd probably go 'no', as they
couldn't clear the IP rights, but they'd want to
play it.
https://b3ta.com/board/11432583
* 'Christhebarker' has added Donkey Kong to Pong
to make Pongkey, and there's deffo something
here that you'd also want to play.
https://b3ta.com/board/11432496
* 'hYpe' has run with a silly title and made us
laugh so that can go in too. Third place, but
always first in our hearts.
https://b3ta.com/board/11432611
* See all the other images from the 'Game
Mashups' challenge - and if you vibe-code any of
this shit from these images, remember you are
scum, sub-human scum.
http://b3ta.com/challenge/gamemashups/popular
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: ZX81 BOOK CORNER
81 jokes written, now with previews
Pleased to see Moose Allain say lovely things
about your editor's ZX81 Joke book: "An amazing
piece of work, Rob. I love the pure dedication
to the idea and as someone outside the in-joke
there's genuine joy in 'decoding' each one.
There were a handful that were just too
specific, but even that's enjoyable.
Illustrations are ace, no doubt a challenge
within the constraints." If you haven't checked
it out yet, do check the publisher site as last
week we didn't have a book preview on the site,
and now we do, so you can see what you're
getting.
https://spelk.press/gb/products/81-jokes-for-the-z...
BTW: We're up for any publicity, like going on
Newsnight, or abseiling into a pit of ZX81s like
the Libby-Democrats leader looking for a
headline. Get in touch.
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: FESSHOLE
You won't stop fessing, what a personal disaster
The main challenge running Fesshole is the daily
reading. It's an absurd amount of text,
something like 300 War & Peaces we've shoved
into our eyes to choose what to post. And we're
never going to cheat and hand it over to public
voting (that stuff is stupidly gameable by bad
actors) or even AI (just yuck). So your editor
reads the lot. Some OKish ones this week
include:
* STATION TO STATION - "I retired today. My
first project is to visit every tube station
I've never used and have a meal at a nearby
restaurant or cafe. First stop is Grange Hill,
where I hope to eat a massive sausage."
* GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM - "I'm the captain
of a navy warship, and my family, which has a
proud history of naval service, thinks I joined
to continue the tradition. I actually joined
because I like Star Trek and this is the closest
I can get to being on the bridge of the starship
Enterprise."
* TIN MACHINE - "A band insulted me, the local
audio guy, all day, literally threw stuff at me.
Promoter was just absent. I may or may not have
put a pitch shifter on the singer's in-ear
monitoring. People walked out, demanded refunds
at the door because it was so bad."
Follow the account on Facebook so your
Restore-voting uncle has something else to read
other than slash fiction involving smol boats
and their cock.
https://www.facebook.com/fesshole/
Buy the two books which would look like a fruit
salad sweet from the 1970s if you arranged them
correctly. We'd do this at home but we kept
giving away copies at the gigs. We no longer
actually own either of them. For the best,
really. Cursed items that bring demons into the
house.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s
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: SITES IN BATH
Geolocated web projects in Bristol's rival town
* REALISTIC WINDOWS 11 SIMULATOR - For anyone
still stuck on Windows 10 because greedy AI
bastards have made upgrading your computer
unaffordable, this site offers a preview of the
wonders of Windows 11 to make you want to
instantly downgrade to Windows 95.
https://definitelynotwindows.com/
* PEW PEW SHOOTY SHOOTY URL - Turn any website
into a shoot-em-up. Actually surprisingly
playable, and also therapeutic if you pop in
your workplace URL.
https://destroy.spritefusion.com/
* WHAT TIME IS CLOCKS? This JavaScript tribute
to the old Network SouthEast clock even lets you
sound the horn for the maximum trainspotter
nostalgia. Whilst new to us, the site appears to
be from 2012, so you can guarantee it's slop
free.
https://aj-computing.co.uk/network-southeast-clock...
* A NON-AI TOOL FOR MAKING GIG POSTERS - AI slop
posters mean you don't care about the event you
are putting on. The cool kids now use Microsoft
WORD clipart, but if you can't remember where
you put the install disks, you can use these
tolerably ok-ish templates.
https://www.desloppify.diy
* JPEG COMPRESSION PLAYING CARDS - use these
playing cards to live in the world of overly
harsh compression, or Gen X eyesight, aged 50,
after a lifetime of sitting too close to their
Commodore Pets.
https://doublenever.world/products/hd
* HOW TO RUIN SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION - Our theory
on Shawshank Redemption being the number 1 film
on IMDb forever is: a) almost no one hates it.
It might not be your personal fav movie but it's
not like if you start watching it you aren't
caught up in the ride; b) it's a secular
redemption story that offers hope. Your life is
an unfair struggle but it'll all be worth it for
a moment of justice at the end, and people
relate to that. Anyway, this link is just a
joke, and we didn't want to pre-empt it.
https://motwc.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/deleted-sce...
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: FOLLOW-UPS
What happened next to 'Internet Steve'
* MATT ROUND'S CRISP SANDWICH DAY THING - Matt
is always a mixture of proud and embarrassed
about this project, emphasizing it is meant to
be cheesy, to give it a chance of working, and
it is working. Look at all the entries this
year.
https://vole.wtf/crisp-sandwich-day/
* "WHY I BUILT LOCAL WIKIPEDIA" - Last week we
linked Ed Jefferson's new project on how to use
Wikipedia data to find local interesting things
in your area and he explains the thinking behind
it here. The unsaid bit is it's clearly a
reaction to some wanker who made a rip-off
spoiler version using Claude and then went and
did a series of bows to the press like he'd
actually done some work and was an interesting
guy. Lol.
https://edjefferson.com/blog/minecraft-lima-and-th...
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: BEST OF ANON OPIN
It's more opinions for the opinion toilet
Our biggest regret is not giving Anon Opin a
better name as we truly love this little
project, as arguing the toss about opinions is
more fun in the comments than Fesshole.
Basically what do you say to an anecdote? Yes,
that's amusing, whereas opinions are
conversation starters, or stoppers, when we
complain about Duran Duran's third album again.
Three good replies this week include:
* KAREN THE COMMUNITY - "My name is Karen. For
the love of God please pick a new name to
disparage. Preferably a completely made-up one
so no one else is put through the crap we
receive." Best reply? "Would you like to speak
to the manager about this?" (thx Big Stevie
Cool)
* MY NAME IS BONO, SIMON LE BONO - "James Bond
was decent Cold War propaganda but it's well
past its sell-by date now and should be
discarded and forgotten." Best reply? "The
villain in one of Fleming's novels is a
mega-rich industrialist and card cheat who is
building a massive rocket for the government.
His actual plan is to destroy the country
because he's a Nazi." (thx Fraser Galbraith)
* CARB BORED - "I'll never understand people
who, when offered a sweet, say 'No thanks'.
What's that all about?" Best reply? "No, I don't
want a sweet or to get in your car to see your
new puppies either." (thx matt168)
Follow the account on Mastodon so that the
people who think Bluesky is a bit corporate and
fash-adjacent don't feel left out of the
griping:
https://mastodon.social/@anon_opin
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: SHIT VIBES CORNER
Claude, you have broken the internet
If you solicit stuff from the public, like we do
at B3ta, you are probably now overwhelmed with
vibe-coded shit. We find it quite hard to go
through the submissions looking for the humans
amongst the robots. We had over twenty obviously
vibraphoned-in projects sent in this week and
the problem with most of them is developers not
finishing the job. We'll mention two, which were
the best of the bunch and how they should be
finished.
* Benhowdle89 writes, "I made an answerphone of
kind strangers. Press play and hear a 30-second
message of encouragement from someone you'll
never meet, or leave one back after the beep. No
accounts, no ads, just voices. I listen to every
message before it goes live." OK, nice idea, bit
worthy, but the main thing wrong is the website
is stuffed with copy written by robots and it
doesn't feel right.
https://afterthebeep.fm/
* Arishumain writes, "I made Continuum, a daily
game where you place countries along a hidden
scale (population, area or GDP per capita,
depending on the day)." Genuinely nice idea but
this implementation is buggy. If we were cunts,
we'd fix it and publish it ourselves but we're
not.
https://www.scalargame.com/continuum
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Some ideas to vibe-imagine with your brain cell
* HYPER-LOCAL STREET PODCAST - we live in a
London street of 256 houses and don't really
know our neighbours and wondered about starting
a podcast where we interview them one by one,
starting at house 256 and counting down. Then
adding each neighbour as we go to a WhatsApp
chat list, until we're all friends. The project
becomes so successful and moving that it's
optioned as an inspirational Hollywood film.
Then we thought: can't be arsed. Still, you
should.
* THE REPLY GUY O TRON - probably shouldn't
build this because it's mean but it would be
very possible to make an app that looked for
people who reply and don't get replied to. You
know, the hopeful men in a lady's replies etc.
The app would use the Bluesky label technology
to label them "reply guys". Imagine the
discourse blowing up. Don't do this.
* WINGRAMP - In ideas we should act upon instead
of dumping here, we would like a version of
Apple Music that refuses to play anything from
about 1984 onwards. This really is possible
given there's some command line ripper for
streaming music services on GitHub.
This internet form could change your life,
probably won't, mind you, but it's good to
remain optimistic.
https://b3ta.com/mailus
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: PATREON THANKS
We love all these people. Almost romantically.
*STOOBERT* *JAMES O'BRIEN* *MARK MCCREADIE*
*DION ASHTON* *MARK* *24-7 DEATH* *DAVID GREEN*
*MICHAEL KITT* and *GUB~GUB*.
MARK ADAMSON, IAN SHEEN, RICHARD BARCLAY,
SPAZZCAPTAIN, MICHAEL TRINDER, MIKE STRINGER,
AUSTIN HOFEMAN, and NATHANIEL TAPLEY.
Tom Dolan, Kate, Chris Carline, lee burnett,
Paul Cherry, Matthew Wilkes, Kev Adams, Tom
Wright, DoHa, Rich, Dave Nattriss, Dan Stott,
Konrad Petrusewicz, David Ault, mattdawhit, Adam
Lloyd, ALFsplaining, Anna, Ashens, Chris Evans,
d_m0, Dave Tickle, David Catley, Derek Law, Emma
Lay, Eric von Borstel, Gia Milinovich, Greg
Neilson, Iain Brassington, Iain Ruxton, Ivan
Kelly, James Donnelly, Jason Stewart, Jim
Frayling, Jim MacArthur, Jude Evans, Kate
Devlin, Lumphammer, Martin Peache, matsimpsk,
Matthew Collinge, Matthew Morris, Nick Ross,
Paul Smith, peter wouda, pookong, Rich Pope,
Richard Beckett, Rob Mahon, Rob Vincent, Robbie
Lesiuk, Simon Holmes, Simon waterfall, the wub,
Tim Jokl, Tom Ryan, Wil Hadden, Byron Geoffrey
Farrow, Chef Twat, Craig Turner, fourstar71,
Jonty Wareing, Stevey Garland, Helen Gaskell,
Ben Ward, Andy Tillett, Stafford Lawrence,
omnipiss, This London Midlife, Claire Turner,
Phil Lovell, Jon Morris Smith, Stuart,
Mellyfish, Roy Santos, Phillip Spowart, Daniel
Calvin, Rich Corcoran, John Daly, Geoff Tidey,
nevillebartos, Ian Walker, Leighton Stevenson,
Funny_Hat, Gillian, Phil Bennett, Matt, Oni,
Katie Steckles, Simon Howard, Luka Mikec,
Stuart, Kier Fox, Peter Henningsen, tom
yeoldeforge, C Bond, Harri Bionic, mattcox303,
Gerry Spencer, Patrick Hudson, Robert van Dijk,
Richie Hindle, Ian Walker, Paul Martyn, John
Davies, Mark Arnold, Harry Simpson, Paul Pod,
Tom Loosemore, da.vidjam.es, Zoe
Trinder-Widdess, Jonathan Ellinsfield, James
Stratton, Chris Wicks, and Leonie M Smith's
Freewheeling World of Turquoise Floyd.
Also thanks to the 75 lovely people who didn't
opt to be thanked by name: NM, BB, JB, GT, SR,
JF, CW, LA, CJ, ES, MC, SF, JB, CO, MC, AD, AS,
AR, CN, DM, DS, HA, IS, JM, NH, PR, SM, MB, CK,
AC, DG, DC, NK, CA, IB, BS, CC, CS, CZ, DP, DE,
EN, GS, GF, IO, JL, JB, LB, LE, LJ, MM, MB, MF,
NJ, OL, PB, PW, PB, RC, RA, RM, SC, SR, SW, TB,
TH, WI, AH, CW, RP, TK, VW, BC, SE, and BB. You
are all legends.
And also thanks to our newest benefactors: Chris
Wicks, Leonie M Smith's Freewheeling World of
Turquoise Floyd, James Stratton, Jonathan
Ellinsfield, Zoe Trinder-Widdess, da.vidjam.es,
Mark Arnold, Patrick Hudson, John Davies, and
Paul Pod.
YOUR NAME COULD BE HERE - Remember you TOO can
contribute to the Patreon; it means your editor
can afford to write this newsletter thing as it
takes time and effort.
https://patreon.com/b3ta
EDITORIAL THANKS: Monkeon & Matt Round for
additional links; Monkeon for image challenge
help; and Dr Dunno for extra support.
And remember to subscribe, and tell your friends
to subscribe. And especially tell your mum.
https://b3ta.com/subscribe/
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: BONUS "TRUSS ISSUES" FESSHOLE
"Went to a student party in St Hugh's College,
Oxford in the mid 1990s. A random petite blonde
girl I didn't know invited me to go and 'frolic
on the lawn'. I don't really remember her name
or what she looked like, but I am now
perpetually worried I may have snogged Liz
Truss." Best reply? "The snog you remember may
just be the tip of the iceberg." (thx Miss
Anthrope)
