NEWSLETTER: "NEWSLETTER TIME - READ IT, MAIL BITS TO COLLEAGUES, FUCK OFF HOME"
This Week:
* CALENDAR - Tory George and his leather chaps
* PODCAST - Room 404 actually happened
* CHALLENGE - Literal Song Titles
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________ ____ __ ___
____/ _)|_ // /_/ _ | "In 535 issues' time, our
___/ _ |/_ </ __/ __ | issue number will be
__/____/____/\__/_/ |_| someone's cashcard PIN"
B3ta space fax 465 - 4 Feb 2011
Read this issue on Rupert Murdoch's The Daily:
http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue465/
e-wedding: [email protected]
e-funeral: [email protected]
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: SPONSORED LINK
Magic telly thing - Boxee box by D-link
We've gone through numerous solutions to
watching DIVX downloads on the main telly
through the years. Burning CDs and playing them
on DIVX DVD players. More recently, copying them
to a thumbdrive (Mr Sticky) and playing them on
a USB DIVX DVD drive. And most recently we've
gone Boxee crazy, a magic, magic box that
streams your media from your home network. It's
changed our life. Or at least means we have to
do less fiddling to get stuff to play.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0043EV3M...
>> Sponsor B3ta <<
Sit on our cyber-face and wee'll guess your
advertising weight.
http://b3ta.com/mailus/
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: WHAT B3TA PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MAKING THIS WEEK
ConDem cal, internet, Room 404
>> ConDem Calendar 2011 <<
Our sexy ruling overlords, brought to you in
calendar form by asciifaceofbob, with a little
help from Waspbox. "Get yours now!" exclaims
asciifaceofbob.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/ConDem_Calendar_2011
>> "The Internet has been wheel-clamped!" <<
So claim Joel Veitch and top celebrity chum Phil
Zimmerman. After watching this, it's hard to
argue with, well, with anything. Baffling.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/The_Internet_Has_been_Wh...
>> Room 404 <<
Room 404 is a podcast, where nerdy guests talk
about four vintage gadgets they'd like to
recover from the vaults of Room 404, plus one
current techy thing they'd like to consign to
oblivion. "To be honest grabbing some geeks on
Skype and getting them to talk wistfully about
old computers is pretty easy," confesses Ewan.
Still, this is a rare instance of somebody
making one of the things we ask for at the end
of the newsletter, so massive kudos to him.
http://room404.thepodcastcorner.com/
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: WHO'S THE KING OF ANNOYING CELEBRITIES?
A special quiz
Your Ginger Fuhrer and Tom Scott are working on
a secret and evil project to work out the
answers to lots of important questions by doing
a quizzy / surveyey combo. Lots of questions,
lots of answers, including the one about celebs.
Top-voted answers so far include: Jedward,
Jordan, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Piers
Morgan.
http://www.b3ta.com/kingof/
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: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
I'm glad nobody saw me
Last week we asked you to fess up incidents that
till now have remained anonymous because nobody
saw you. Except me. In the bushes. With my
night-vision goggles:
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/nobodysawme/
* SPEAR HEAD - "I was snorkelling and
spear-fishing just near the cliffs in Babbacombe.
I'd caught a couple of nice fish and left them
on a rock. When I next came up there was a gull
snacking on my hard-won catch. I tried shouting.
No reaction whatsoever from a gull. So I aimed
the spear-gun, and pulled trigger. The initial
result? Missed the gull by a smidge. The rest of
the result? The discovery that spear-gun string,
when used in air, is actually *very* elastic.
The spear missed my head by much less of a
smidge. Interestingly, in the moment that it
took the spear to come back, I had time to
imagine how ridiculous a way this would be to
die and what the post-mortem report would have
said... but not to duck. I think that the gull
flew away, although it may have just fallen off
the rock laughing." (BeatsWork)
* BALL BONCE - "Was walking back from football
when I saw my whore of an ex-g/f strolling along
with some of her skanky chums. Without even
really thinking about it I gave the ball a real
punt in their direction - even cackling to
myself as it left my foot - but as it flew
through the air realised it was a bit of a
childish thing to do, so hid behind a bush. It
walloped her in the back of the head and spilt
Pepsi all over her clown-caked face. The ball
ricocheted off her noggin, over a garden fence
and was nowhere to be seen. They looked around
in confusion then, after a minute, carried on
walking. I was about 19 at the time and it's
probably one of the most immature things I've
ever done, but it still makes me laugh." (Regger)
* POO TONGUE - "Got back to my car after a long
day at work, only to discover an enormous bird
poop right in the middle of my windscreen. I had
nothing in the car to clean it off with - no
water, no tissues, no scraper, nothing. But I
couldn't have driven as I wouldn't have been
able to see anything. So I cleaned it off with
my hand. Then, as I pulled out my keys, I had a
bizarre moment of brain-fade and thought "What's
that all over my hand?" and cheerfully licked it
to find out. Followed by hacking, gagging and
spitting to try and get the bird poop out of my
mouth. I am an idiot. An idiot who was lucky not
to be ill. An idiot who was also very lucky not
to be seen by anyone." (biscuitbiscuit)
>> This Week: Needless to say, I had the last laugh <<
Do your best Eamonn Holmes impression and tell
us your tales of smug oneupmanship and merciless
humiliation:
http://www.b3ta.com/questions/lastlaugh/
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: SITES IN BRIEF
Stuff we like that wasn't made by our mates
* HOW THE DAILY MAIL WORKS - Long, long blog
entry, but interesting and quite damning. To put
it bluntly, they make stories up.
http://goo.gl/acMZq
* METAGAMES - Andy Baio of Waxy fame has been
compiling a special list of games about other
games. We're very proud that something we
produced for E4 makes the grade - Janey
Thomson's Marathon, a game only complete-able by 3
hours of furious button-waggling. Includes video
of some poor sod actually doing this.
http://waxy.org/2011/02/metagames_games_about_game...
* HEADLINE OF THE YEAR - and quite frankly a
great idea for one of these "pornographic
movies" that we keep hearing about.
http://yfrog.com/hs1jncwj
* WRITING ON BANANAS WITH BIROS - everyone loves
doing this and it was only a matter of time
before there was a shitty website dedicated to
the art. Apple should make writing on the iPad
as pleasurable as this and they'd earn enough
money to buy back the world economy from China.
http://bananalala.blogspot.com/
* THE MIDDLE-CLASS HANDBOOK - can you spot
yourself? Can you spot your friends? Or maybe
our readers are too common and need the Pikey
Scum handbook instead.
http://bit.ly/gqA4sZ
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: VIDEO SCHMIDEO
Like Spotify but with moving pictures
* THE UK EXPLAINED - the difference between UK,
Great Britain, England, The Crown etc, for our
foreign readers who don't know and, frankly, for
us, as it's very confusing.
http://goo.gl/NKFzG
* YOUTUBE SATIRE LOLS - "This about sums up
YouTube for me", complains Mictoboy.
http://goo.gl/MSHSW
* STAR WARS REDUB - The Dayjob Orchestra lend
surreal new meaning to A New Hope. Chewbacca's a
lesbian?
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Latest_vid_from_Dayjob_O...
* FIREFOX CLEANS WINDOWS - Do you see what we
did there? Anyway, the main thing to take away
from this is that foxes have enormous, meaty
tongues.
http://www.b3ta.com/links/firefox_attempts_to_clea...
* BBC CAT LADIES SKETCH - We thought this was
going to be horribly woman-hating for a moment,
but no, pleasantly surprised:
http://goo.gl/vb0Lb
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: FUNNY NAME CORNER
Kuntz and Manhood redux
* SURELY WE'VE DONE THIS ONE BEFORE - but Google
says no. We know who we're booking to do the
food at the next B3ta/Bilderberg retreat.
http://www.randykuntzcatering.com/
* REGARDING MANHOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE - beanojam
writesm "it gets better as it's named after the
surrounding area; the Manhood Peninsula." BTW:
another person who we'll leave nameless
twittered in to complain about our even-handed
write up last week, as he'd been expelled from
the school and was still peeved by it. Expelled
from Manhood. he. he.
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Results from the Goth Challenge
Last week we wanted you to get dark.
Your favourites included:
* BEARS - gloomy outsiders exist in all sections
of the animal kingdom (drbroon)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/10317504
* GAME - the find-the-goth game all the family
can enjoy (HappyToast)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/10317332
* DARK - the classic American Gothic given an
extreme gothic makeover (Captain Howdy)
http://www.b3ta.com/board/10317877
All these images, and the highest as voted by
you can be found here:
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/goth/
>> New challenge: Literal Song Titles <<
I am the Walrus. Big in Japan. Dancing Queen.
Foxy Lady. Take song titles and interpret them
literally, using the magic of image manipulation
software. Challenge suggested by sandettie light
vessel automatic.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/literalsongtitles/
>> Bonus Challenge <<
Design a logo for the Cat Survival Trust and win
prizes!
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/catsurvivaltrust/
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: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Follow-ups on previous stories.
* JOEL IN THE DAILY MAIL - and it isn't his
wife writing a sob story, "My husband gave up
cigs and became addicted to pork" but all about
the advertising project he's engaged in with
Samsung to prove that their SD drives make very
effective paper aeroplanes.
http://bit.ly/dNsEy7
* MORE SWEARY TRANSLATE LOLS -
barandis_arkenstone writes, "A
Hungarian-speaking friend told me to add some
trees to the mix when I mentioned the
translation of cheese from this week's
newsletter."
http://goo.gl/rRCYQ
* BETTER LAPTOP BATTERIES? - Matt Fowler writes,
"The Pandora open-source community-hippy-type
tiny-computer-thingy is now available for
much-more-immediate purchase than previously, is
very ace at running emulators, and gets a
genuine 10 (ten, yes, really!) hours of battery
life. The device itself is about the size of an
original 'fat' Nintendo DS. Runs Linux
(naturally), has a SNES-set of game controls
plus dual analogue nubsticks, and a qwerty
keyboard. It's about £370 inc VAT and P&P to the
UK." Co-incidentally, Craig, the chappy behind
Pandora, has been in regular touch with B3ta for
years - older readers will remember the rather
fabulous GP32 he imported from Korea, and Craig
promises to get a Pandora in the post to us so
we can check it out properly for B3ta readers:
http://gbax.com/pandoraprivate.html
* I USED DIET COKE THIS TIME - Black Moon, whose
excellent Coke & Mentos vid we featured last
week, writes, "I had too many comments about the
last one being normal Coke and not Diet, so I
felt compelled to do another variation on the
theme." Oh Black Moon, Black Moon, pandering to
internet pedantry is truly the way to insanity.
http://goo.gl/mtVjj
* B3TA iPHONE APP UPDATE - App developer Jon
Grant says, "After a long wait, B3ta app v1.2 is
finally ready for download on the app store!
This version is mostly bug fixes and caching so
that it doesn't break if it can't connect to the
site. There are some UI improvements too. Try it"
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/b3ta/id400451018
* CHARIDEE COMEDY NIGHT - B3ta buddy Boyce
Bailey is running a benefit gig for MERU. Writes
Boyce, "MERU is a charity that exists to improve
life for children and young people with
disabilities. If you like laughter, or disabled
children, there's a tip-top line-up, 9th Feb,
The Star Inn, 2 Cheam Street, Ewell, KT17 1SA.
Doors at 8pm."
http://goo.gl/dWXzu
* OLD SCHOOL B3TAN RAISES MONEY FOR PROSTATE
CANCER CHARITY - your Ginge Fuhrer has bunged in
£25 as he says, "Prostate cancer frightens me -
it gets so many men. Hopefully this is some
payment into a karmic bank to prevent it wiping
me out."
http://www.justgiving.com/Liz-Alvis
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: STAR IN NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE
Make something "sick" and tell us about it.
Maybe poison a rabbit or something. If you are
in B3ta then people will see your stuff.
Things we'd really like to see include:
* ALCOHOL THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE CRAP
THE NEXT DAY - and women think they have it hard
with pregnancy? The real morning sickness is
hangovers. Let's claim this phrase back for
alco-men.
* WASHING MACHINES THAT DON'T BEEP LIKE 1980s
DIGITAL WATCHES FOR YOU TO UNLOAD THEM - we're
quite happy to let our washing moulder. It's the
incessant beeping that pushes us closer to a
horrid murder/suicide incident that'll at least
make people remember us for something other than
shoddy kitten-based animations from the early
2000s.
* THE WHITE STRIPES TO REFORM - we're missing
them already. The campaign starts now.
Send your love, hate and indifference via the
super futuristic 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.
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£1 join fee: [email protected]
£2 leave fee: [email protected]
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THANKS:
This issue was written by Rob Manuel with David
Stevenson. Stuff sent in by quim-faced cunts,
@TheMichaelMoran, The Vomiting Hitchhiker,
yanmaniadotcom, SnowyTheRabbit, itsallaboutcake,
@jamsandwich, @danielbevis, Meglos, Stashie,
miltonlives, Pazuzu, dirtyscarab. Top Tippery by
A Vagabond. Additional linkage and image
challenge by Fraser Lewry. Mike Trinder is QOTW
bloke. Subjlols via Afinkawan.
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TOP TIP:
Pour cement into a bucket and stick a broom
handle in the middle. When turned upside-down it
makes an ideal - if somewhat cumbersome -
"umbrella" for very thin things about a foot
wider than a broom handle.
