Facebook did a little thing this week which caused me some concern, as it showed that the people behind Facebook either don’t know or don’t care about how they get in touch with their user base. Facebook (unfortunately) plays a significant role in my life. I was press-ganged by a…
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November 29, 2014 at 11:15 am | Articles, Opinion Pieces, Portfolio and Work, Technology | No comment
Tags: Facebook, Facebook's terms and conditions are notoriously terrible, How not to treat users, UX design
Disclaimer: before we get started, I’d just like to say that this article is in no way mocking the first world war – a great many people died in that horrible war and taught a lot of people about fighting for what you believe in by sacrificing all they had…
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November 22, 2014 at 12:44 pm | Christmas, Vaguely Topical | No comment
Tags: advertisements, Christmas, Sainsbury's, televison, TV
Some weekends I get a little bit distracted with silly little projects. I’ve spent a good chunk of the last weekend on such an endeavour: the Authentic Silly French Accent Translator. Right about now you’re probably wondering why I would go to such ludicrous lengths to build an interface that…
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November 16, 2014 at 10:01 pm | Projects, Technology | 4 comments
Tags: 'Allo 'Allo, French, I have way too much time on my hands, Inspector Clouseau, Peter Sellers, silly accents, The Pink Panther, translator, writing
So the British public is agog at the latest heart-warming bit of commercial advertising pumped out by John Lewis in a bid to win the war of sales via Christmas cuteness. Have you seen it? When I first watched this, my heart grew ten sizes that day. Or that might…
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November 8, 2014 at 2:05 pm | Christmas, Vaguely Topical | No comment
Tags: advertisements, Christmas, John Lewis, television, TV
It’s a funny thing, Halloween. It’s an American tradition that, through copious amounts of exported television, has embraced our dank British shores and seems to have taken root like some sort of gnarled evil tree. Personally, I actually hate scary things, and yet I have a contradictory interest in the…
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October 31, 2014 at 9:00 pm | Halloween, Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION | No comment
Tags: creepypasta, Goosebumps, Halloween, horror, John Dies at the End, Junji Ito, The Evil Within
I don’t play video games anymore. Some people grow out of video games, saying it’s kids stuff. I used to know a guy who was the complete opposite; his name was Jerry and he was into video games in a big way. He had this collection of video games that…
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October 31, 2014 at 12:00 am | Halloween, Video Games | No comment
Tags: Atari, creepypasta, Halloween, old-school gaming
Note: I actually wrote this about three weeks ago, but through laziness it’s been sat in my draft pile for a while. I figure that October is a good month to publish an article about a game that concerns ghosts, possession and demons. I’m sat here watching Dan Bull’s rap…
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October 11, 2014 at 12:04 pm | Reviews, Video Games | No comment
Tags: bitching about video games, Deadly Premonition, game review, Murdered: Soul Suspect
Last year I posited that, amongst all the terrible Engrish and awful crap that spambots generated, some of it was genuinely poetic. Since then I’ve noticed another trend from spambots – I’ve received emails and I’ve seen comments that look like they’ve been scraped completely out of context from a…
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October 4, 2014 at 12:00 pm | Spammers, Technology | No comment
Tags: creepypasta, spam, spambots
It’s been a while since we last rambled into a microphone, and since we last did that the video game community collectively shat itself inside-out via Twitter. This time we discuss #GamerGate (obligatory hashtag included) while firmly rooted to our fence, and if I see one more person write “you…
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September 20, 2014 at 10:58 am | Podcasts, The PAYNEful podSPLOSION, Vaguely Topical | No comment
Tags: Doctor Who, Duke Nukem, feminism, GamerGate, games journalism, Hellblazer, John Constantine, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, MGS, Uncharted, Uncharted 3 multiplayer
I’ll be honest, I’m not the most charitable of people. As a person who’s been bullied by “chuggers” (charity muggers1) into signing up to a £10 a month scheme at least twice, I’m always a little sceptical about parting from my cash. It’s very easy to be swayed by all…
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August 31, 2014 at 12:48 pm | Real Life, Vaguely Topical | No comment
Tags: ALS, Charity, Ice Bucket Challenge, MND
