NEWSLETTER: "GET YOUR COCK OUT, IT'S FRIDAY"
This Week:
* MUSIC - Free (although not legal) MP3s for all
* GAME - Rotatey Flickr thingie
* WEEBL - Jonti rags on gingers
-------------------------------------------------
________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ |
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | "We're saving the
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| web... together"
B3ta email 268 - 16 Mar 2007
Read this issue in your browser:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue268/
Subscribe: [email protected]
Unsub: [email protected]
-------------------------------------------------
: SPONSORED LINK
Viral Award Alert
B3tards: Your stuff in London's ICA. A Channel
4 commission. The adoration of your peers & the
great global unwashed. All up for grabs if you
enter the Germ awards NOW. Deadline 31 March.
Categories include Best Video/Still
Image/Interactive Viral. Joel Veitch vid on the
homepage too, so that’s worth a butcher's.
http://snipurl.com/channel4germ
>> Sponsor B3ta <<
Want this space? Then talk to us.
http://b3ta.com/mailus/
-------------------------------------------------
: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK
Spoofs, searchers, tape art and pic tiles
>> CSI: Pie Ami <<
Weebl and Bob are back and spoofing the
runtiest twig of the mighty CSI oak. Yeah,
you'll probably have to have seen CSI: Miami to
get it. Great opening credit sequence though.
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/CSI/
>> Instant music search <<
"Fuck a duck," says cr3, "I've made the best
even better." And indeed he has, making marked
improvements to his free internet music
searchers. Now you can see the results as they
come in and preview as and when you want.
Here's a search for some KLF:
http://www.b3ta.cr3ation.co.uk/site/music-plus/ind...
>> Big Tape Art <<
"I seem to have created art!" ejaculates
jrfstancer, "Artwork which only appeals to
programmers and web monkeys. I'm having
problems connecting to my target audience.
Where are all those ZX spectrum fans who like
to buy original artwork?" Perhaps reading this
very newsletter, you never know. Incidentally,
just to be clear, these are really big pictures
of tapes. Not actual tapes with games on as
that would be piracy. And piracy ain't cool,
kids.
http://www.jodiandjody.co.uk/
>> Rotating tile random pic <<
This is flipping awesome - if you'll pardon the
pun - the game grabs a photo from flickr then
scrambles it up. You have to rotate it to make
sense once again - if you can before the time
runs out. Nice one, Philipp Lenssen!
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/rotate/
-------------------------------------------------
: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Strict Parents
Last week we asked for the loopy things that
your parents had told you not to do:
http://b3ta.com/questions/strictparents/
Here are three things that have been banned
for all the wrong reasons:
* DRUGS. WELL, SORT OF.
"Not my parents, who have among other things
baby-sat for Ozzy Osbourne. Mrs Spoon's on
the other hand: her parents used to be strict
Catholics - as in Mother was a nun and Father
was a trainee priest. As she was growing up
there were numerous acts of parental lunacy
but this one wins. They were ridiculously
over-paranoid about drugs - even the
slightest mention and they'd flip out. So,
one day her mother is in my missus' bedroom
and finds a wrapped up foil thing. She goes
fucking apeshit. But not in front of my
missus: no, she has to be sure first, so off
she goes to best mate's house to consult with
other parents. As no-one can identify the
contents of the mysterious foil, but it
smells kind of sweet... A whole week later,
having had no luck with parents, her mother
heads over to see the doctor, foil wrap in
hand. The doctor has a look, takes a scraping
from the edge of this stuff, has a sniff -
same slightly sweet smell, a little bit like
strawberries. He's not really sure what the
kids are into these days. Best to open the
thing up and see if there's a better sample
anywhere. As the doctor opens up this tinfoil
flower, rather familiar looking words appear:
Petit Filous. Strawberry Flavour." (Sonic
Spoon)
* SCATTER CUSHIONS
"Being much younger than my brothers (they
all left home when I was 5) meant that I had
to play on my own. One day when I was about
7, I was pretending to be a cat, creeping
around the house, stalking imaginary prey. I
finally pounced, killed and ate my imaginary
rat (i.e. jumped on and wrestled with a
cushion then stuffed it under my jumper). I
then went to sit in front of the electric
fire for a sleep (still in cat-mode). My
mother came in to the lounge, saw me lying on
the floor and went ballistic. Shaking all
over; her red face inches from mine, "You're
pretending to have a baby aren't you. You're
giving birth aren't you. Give me that
cushion; give me that cushion; don't you dare
play this again. You are not having cushions
again." *slap* Despite protesting that I was
pretending to be a cat. I was not allowed
near a cushion for a long, long time."
(pottybeaver)
* JOKERS
"My Dad was convinced that the Joker in a
deck of cards was in some way evil, and he
would burn them. Until, that is, the
otherwise uneventful Christmas when,
demonstrating his belief, he inadvertently
set fire to his beard." (Borusa's Weetabix)
>> This Week's Question <<
We'd like your experiences of cross dressing.
Relax your gender stereotypes here:
http://b3ta.com/questions/crossdressing/
-------------------------------------------------
: SPONSORED LINK
Goodbye Cellulite
Girls! Is cellulite making your life a dimply
misery? The trick is to love your big butt -
and whack some Nivea cream all over it.
http://snipurl.com/GoodbyeCellulite
-------------------------------------------------
: SITES IN BRIEF
Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates
>> Jet from Gladiator <<
Wankers of a certain age will remember Jet from
Gladiator, specifically how enjoyable it was to
see her lycra-clad arse every Saturday
afternoon. She's now working as a
psychotherapist, complete with photos of
herself in a state of undress as the page
background. Classy. We're betting she'll be
signed up by some reality TV show within a year.
http://www.dianeyoudale.co.uk/products_services.ht...
>> Shit CGI News reader <<
Before Ananova was the number 1 news
destination for stories about farting donkeys,
it used to feature a disembodied head reading
the news in a robot voice. It was crap. Good to
see that the newspapers in Norfolk are keeping
up with late 90s technology. (Thanks Ashen)
http://www.newsfastuk.info
>> Great URL, niche service <<
Has your Action Man's hair lost its lustre?
Help is at hand.
http://www.flocktastic-hair.com/
>> Neat music mixer <<
Always happy to see incremental advances in
interface ideas for using computers to make
music. Expect to see mixers working like this
small flash application in your favourite sound
editor soon. Fun too.
http://www.datadreamer.com/2daudio/projecttwo.html
>> Hello my future girlfriend <<
Long term meme-watchers will remember the old
webpage with the creepy boy who was looking for
a sex partner. He's now an adult, read his
rather interesting interview here.
http://www.trendpediawiki.com/Hello_My_Future_Girl...
>> Duck cocks <<
Your Ginger Fuhrer visiting the Kentish Town
City Farm the other day and was rather amused
to watch a randy duck attempt to rape a lady
duck. Mrs Duck was hanging none of it, and
nipped Mr Duck in the groin, twanging his penis
a good couple of inches from his body. Sadly we
weren't able to catch this on video (so a
billion views on YouTube isn't ours), but we
did find this news story pointing out that
ducks have exceptionally large penises. Who
would have thought it?
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRe...
>> Endless social networking sites <<
Another week, another website launched for us
to share our media and infringe copyright. This
weeks top choice is Scribd, with the seemingly
uncompelling idea of sharing Word docs and
PDFs. We're linking it as we uploaded the Sick
Joke Book and were rather amused by the option
to have it read out by a robot voice. Hearing
jokes about Harold Shipman rendered so dryly
amuses us. Your mileage may vary.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11010/B3ta-Bumper-Book-O...
>> South Park interview <<
Enjoyable interview with Parker and Stone, the
creators of South Park, covering their
laissez-faire attitudes to people sharing their
show online and mentioning The Simpsons writers' reaction to their (quite
fair) mocking of The Family Guy.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/116787.html
>> Cyber stalking <<
Great article about using the web to hunt down
a bloke posting threatening letters to students.
http://www.advocate.com/currentstory1_w.asp
-------------------------------------------------
: VIDEO SCHMIDEO
>> French beatboxing <<
What appears to be a hopeful from the French
version of Pop Idol engaging in a
phenomenally-skilled bit of vocal gymnastics to
wow the judges. Can't see it crossing over into
any kind of mainstream pop career but who knows
with the French, eh? They're unpredictable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
>> Distinctive laugh <<
People with distinctive laughs are great, as
you can pick and choose whether you're laughing
with them or at them. Here's a girl, who
actually sounds like she's laughing backwards,
chortling over that 'Dad at Comedy Barn' clip
that was doing the rounds a little while back.
The humour in that? The guy's deeply weird but
infectious laugh. Anyway, lovely stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch
-------------------------------------------------
: FUNNY NAME CORNER
Chicken cock
Ok, this isn't actually a funny name but we can
no longer tell the difference between people
with silly nomenclature, and photos of things
that look like cocks. Mountainloz scribes,
"this is a crudely manufactured cock that i
found in a pack of tesco healthy options mini
chicken fillets that i was getting for my
sandwiches, what do you reckon, naturally that
shape or was someone having a laugh? It was
tasty anyway."
http://www.b3ta.com/board/6970773
-------------------------------------------------
: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Results from the Kid's TV Challenge
Last week we wanted you to subvert kid's telly.
So you did.
Your favourites included:
* JURASSIC PARK - Flee in terror as Barney goes
on the rampage (Polygraphic)
* BUTTON MOON - Mr. Spoon regrets an offer from
NASA to use the Space Shuttle Challenger (rogan)
* MIFFY - In which Miffy encounters a stiffy
(Custard)
All these images, and the highest as voted by
you can be found here:
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/kids_tv/
>> New challenge: Real Life Board Games <<
What happens when board game play occurs in
real-life surroundings? Colonel Mustard in a
police line-up, anyone? Crank up Photoshop and
get juxtaposing.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/board_games/
>> Your challenge ideas <<
We want your image challenge ideas. Then we
want you to vote on the challenges suggested by
other people. It's easy.
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/imagechallenge/
-------------------------------------------------
: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Follow-ups on previous stories.
* GODTUBE - Last week we asked you to upload
god bothering videos to Jesus's own version of
YouTube. Psythor writes, "I did, and I got
banned." Watch them here if you like.
http://jamesomalley.co.uk/blog/
* NEW BERTIE BASSETT OUTRAGE - thehotpie takes
time out of his clearly busy schedule to
complain, "They've changed Bertie Bassett to be
an all liquorice thing now, instead of a blue
goo, black liquorice sandwich. I am disgusted!
I complained and they replied, 'The Bertie unit
has been altered from a blue unit to a black
unit, and is now a liquorice sweet and not
aniseed, as it was previously. Market research
has led us to adapt the recipe for this unit to
appeal to a larger market.'"
* KITES IN SPACE - the_mad_major screams, "We -
as in the military - routinely use very large
kites, wingspans in excess of 28 feet, in
order to conduct surveillance operations. I
believe the current World Record is something
like 13,600 feet by some punter in Japan."
* GOOGLE WALKER - we asked for a site to help
us plan travelling by foot, Silverfin informs,
"Not necessary for Londoners, as there is the
excellent walkit.com. Apparently they have
plans to expand and include other places at
some point." Woo, this is truly fantastic and
we can't wait to put it to use.
http://www.walkit.com/
-------------------------------------------------
: FRIDAY GAME
Binary Game
Girls! Unlike the sponsored link for Nivea butt
cream, this link isn't for you. It's for boys,
very geeky boys who like nerding out on binary.
We found it quite satisfying as it made us feel
clever.
http://forums.cisco.com/CertCom/game/binary_game_p...
-------------------------------------------------
: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Make something cool and tell us about it. If
you are in it then people will see your stuff.
Things we'd REALLY like to see include
* MELTING DOWN MONEY - pub chat reaches us that
the metal contained in a two pence piece is
actually worth more like three pee. Can someone
melt about £10 worth, and attempt to flog them
on eBay for £15. Yes it's illegal, but fuck it,
it would make an interesting little story.
* DR L33T - rework Gloria Estefan's dancefloor
classic for the nerdster 2.0 generation.
Preferably with Gloria doing a sex dance round
some bearded teenager installing uBuntu on his
Macbook.
* AUTO-BUKRA PORNOTRON - enjoyed this nerdly
link that uses magic space age technology to
recognise faces in photos and replace them with
another image. Can someone hack it up to add
burqas to pr0n stars? Cheers.
http://thelaughingman.net/
* CONSERVAPEDIA HACKS - joederville asks,
"Further to GodTube, why don't we all write
bogus articles for Conservapedia? I've already
claimed that Simon Pegg is a Mormon and that a
right-wing US journalist has been denounced as
a witch in Cornwall." FYI: Conservapedia is
Wikipedia-style site filled with creationism
and nonsense of that ilk. And they're
threatening court action to anyone behaving
like this. Oops.
http://www.conservapedia.com/
Send contributions via the mail form.
http://www.b3ta.com/mailus/
BTW: If you've sent something in that hasn't
been featured then don't be put off - we look
at everything you send us.
-------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: [email protected]
-------------------------------------------------
THANKS:
This issue was written by Rob Manuel with David
Stevenson. Top Tippery by mutster101. Blame
giantrobot for the subject line. Additional
linkage and image challenge by Fraser Lewry.
Mike Trinder is QOTW bloke. Yays to b4ta. This
weeks secret message is from Fraser Lewry who
says, "Read this nice description of Slashdot
users, which could be applied to many
messageboards..."
http://snipurl.com/secretlink
-------------------------------------------------
TOP TIP:
Windscreen Wipers not doing the job? Doesn't
mean you need new ones. Clean all the grease
off with vinegar, they'll be good as new. Stick
that, Halfords.
