NEWSLETTER: "THANKS TOM HANKS. T.HANKS"
This Week:
* GAME: The Kilobyte's Gambit
* MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS: 'Actor Your Age'
* CHALLENGE: Robot Pop music
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "We're saving the web
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | to make a larger web
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| for our spider army"
B3ta e-e-email 761 - 05 Mar 2021
Read this issue to your poor, suffering, mother:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue761
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: B3TA PEOPLE THIS WEEK
Fresh content from the content mines
>> The Kilobyte's Gambit <<
Matt Round combined an incredibly tiny chess
engine from miniaturisation genius Toledo
Nanochess and wonderful pixel art by Pinot W.
Ichwandardi to create "Can you beat 1024 bytes
of JavaScript?" And the answer is, you
probably can't unless you've learnt some solid
chess strategy.
https://vole.wtf/kilobytes-gambit/
>> Actor Your Age <<
Monkeon has made a movie recommendation engine
that asks for your age and then gives you an
age appropriate actor in a film that they
acted in at your age. He writes, "I am
grateful to Christopher Lee for helping make
the upper age it works for nice and high."
https://monkeon.co.uk/actoryourage/
>> Centuries of Sound - 1933 <<
Centuriesofsound AKA James has been making
collages of sound based upon the music from a
year. He's now in 1933 - give it a long long
listen. We phoned him earlier to ask what
years he was looking forward to? The sixties.
https://centuriesofsound.com/2021/03/01/1933/
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: FESSHOLE
Your confessions turned into useless likes
We asked you to stop confessing but you won't
so here's some that amused us this week.
* EGGS "Every Friday night for the last 4
years I've secretly thrown an egg on top of my
neighbour's roof. He went up to replace a tile
yesterday and said the mess up there was
unbelievable. There's no reason for this, I
think I need help."
* POT NOODLE - "I've written to Unilever to
complain that the sachet of soy sauce in a
king sized pot noodle is the same size as the
sachet in a regular pot noodle."
* NEIGHBOURS - "My neighbour hasn't secured
their smart TV, so every now and then I'll
cast some spectacularly hardcore porn onto it
- sometimes I hear a scream from them. No
regrets, they have a bloody yappy dog."
Link goes to the best of January - so that's
worth a click if you have no soul and laugh at
misfortune.
https://twitter.com/fesshole/status/13654300062985...
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: BOT OF THE POPS
Back online
Your editor's project to do the 80s pop charts
in real time fell off the internet because the
image code broke but he's fixed it, and it's a
classic week this week. It's the Joe Dolce /
Ultravox battle for number one that still
makes grown men weep to this day.
https://twitter.com/botofthepops
Also done a quick FAQ about the bots but the
too-long-didn't-read is "Python, Tweepy and no
he won't build your idea unless you pay him
then fuck it, probably will."
https://robmanuelfuckyeah.substack.com/p/rob-manue...
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Yes fascists are bad but do you know who also is
bad? The SEO genius that stuck watermarked stock
photos at the top of most Google image searches.
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: SITES IN BEEF
The delicious bone-stock of other people's content
* HOW TRICKY'S FIRST LP WAS MADE - Enjoyable,
longish read from the producer of Tricky's
Maxinquaye - it sounds like a bit of a
nightmare but you'll have an entertaining 15
mins.
https://www.marksaunders.com/blog/2021/2/26/blog-0...
* DID YOU KNOW IT'S STILL MARCH 2020? Today is
March 370th, 2020. Fact.
http://longmar.ch
* RECORD SIMULATOR - neat Javascript toy that
takes a YouTube video and plays it as a
record. Stick your own bollocks in it.
https://thomaspark.co/projects/needledrop/
* CAT DETECTOR - "Day 357 of the pandemic I
made the cat detector" writes Tim V. Looks
good, wonder if it'll detect a cat if you
point it at a dog with a sticker on its head
saying "CAT"? Coz that confuses us anyway.
https://twitter.com/Ajediday/status/13174527717639...
* MYSPACE IS BACK! Well a sort-of-copy that
people are using ironically, or nostalgically-
who knows and it now has over 100K users.
Maybe some B3tans could bring back Friends
Reunited? Or a social network where everything
is Hamster Dance.
https://spacehey.com/
* DIXIELAND QUEEN - always fun to hear
something familiar transformed in a silly way.
Hats off to the fucking lot of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch
* WHAT IF THE ONION WAS NERDIER? - Monkeon
writes, "I discovered this techie version of
The Onion the other day, which is mostly
pumping out relatable content for web devs
about crap Wordpress plugins and excessive
javascript libraries. Enjoyably sarcastic,
though you only really need the headlines. The
equivalent of Fry and Laurie's Open University
Blooper sketch for non-devs, I'd imagine."
https://theolognion.com
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Instead of getting rid of the Royal Family,
let’s make everyone Royal. Universal income for
all by expanding the civil list to everyone.
Arise, Sir Public.
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: IMAGE CHALLENGE
Robot pop
Daft Punk have called it quits, so there's a
huge gap in the pop robot market. Give us some
replacements in the form of puns, photoshops
and gifs. It's actually a good one this week,
Happy Toast and Dr Dunno have really pulled
out the stops and there's loads of good
entries. Click the fuck out of it ok?
http://b3ta.com/challenge/robotpop/popular
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Some free ideas for inspiration
* THIS JESUS DOES NOT EXIST - shove every
artist illustration you can find of Jesus into
a GAN for some mildly controversial fun. Do
other religious figures if you really want to
make some awful point that will probably
explode in your face like the dry jizz of
Piers Morgan.
* slAIde INTO MY DMS - Can AI get dates by
sliding into women's DMs? And that we're
capable of having thoughts like this means
that some techbro is probably already doing
it.
* PODBLASTING - search on Twitter for people
saying stuff like "I'm available for podcasts"
and invite them on a series of increasingly
strange pods that are just you doing different
stupid voices.
* MC TUNES READS AUDIOBOOKS - The latest from
MSCHF is to deep fake audiobooks by Gucci Mane
( *Harry Hill Shrug* ). Nice idea, but shame
they haven't done a version featuring a 90s
rapper for the middle-aged clicks. MC Tunes
reads Lady Chatterley's Lover. Hey, YOU could
do that.
* POP TUBE MAP - turn this thread into an
actual tube map. From Whitney Euston to Sister
Sledgware Road.
https://twitter.com/robmanuel/status/1366467816841...
OK, that's five ideas which is too many for a
rule of three but fuck it.
https://b3ta.com/mailus/
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FYI: The writers of Spinal Tap observed that
Eric Clapton was bloke name + train station and
ran that formula again and created Nigel Tufnel.
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: PATREON THANKS
We love all these people
*HEBTROCO* *JAMES O'BRIEN* *KATE* *MARK
MCCREADIE* *MR PHIL DONNELLY* *SHOWRAT* *SIMON
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EDITORIAL THANKS: Monkeon & Matt Round.
And thank you to newish Patreons Ben Rout, Tim
Clarke, Simon Balch, Clemence Saussez, Derek
Colley. Martin Pritchard, Stephanie Wissinger,
Dion Ashton and Paul Blanchard. Thanks to EVEN
NEWER ONES: Mark (Mavis), Joshua Rackstraw,
Mike Stringer, Eliot Beer, Harri Bionic, Chris
Lindley, Stuart B, Jon Morris Smith, Daniel
Malbon, James Heaver and Phil Lovell. Please
join the patreon so we can afford to buy
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