Crackbook is an addictive social networking utility that gives you the impression you’re connecting with people when actually you’re just not.
(A little spoof I rustled up. Enjoy it. Oh - and see if you can find the secret pages).
I’m writing a weekly column on the ‘Best Of YouTube’. Cherry-picked video clips with fun and some might even say, witty, commentary. Find it here. Be sure to track back through the archive. There’s some good stuff in there.
» Clips For Kids
» Best of The Simpsons
» The Best (And Worst) UFOs
Thanks to David Allen’s cult time-management credo, I have a tidy desk, a clear conscience, increased output - and an unfolding love affair with my filing cabinet.
It is grey and it is ugly, but I love it. My new Bisley four-drawer filing cabinet dominates the corner of my all-new home office. It is the centrepiece of a new organisational system that has rejuvenated my perspective and changed my life. It is all I can do not to stroke it.
Published in The Guardian, August 05
Dissident scientists advocating a controversial theory of the universe are having a field day in the wake of NASA’s Deep Impact comet collision earlier this month.
Scientists promoting the Electric Universe model say their predictions for the comet mission appear to have been more accurate than NASA’s.
Published on Wired.com, Aug 05
Usenet newsgroups dedicated to piracy are seeing a resurgence in activity as file sharers seek less-policed areas of the internet to trade illegal data…
Published on Wired.com May 05
With an estimated five million people now connected to broadband at home, one early internet enthusiast is giving it up for good. David McCandless explains why he’s given it the boot.
Published on the BBC News Magazine, Feb 2005
Take your pick from a range of innovative white products that simply shout “Excellent!” and “Hahahahaha!” to anyone who sees them. On you. As you walk back from the train station. At night. Alone. Oh and be sure to take out our affordable Apple Insurance.
Some online games are so addictive, some players just can’t stop - even if their lives depend on it
Ahmar Ahmad has not been outside his home in Beckenham, south London for three weeks. He barely speaks to his brother Amir anymore, just a few words when they see each other in the morning. A year ago, the 30-something brothers, avid PC games players, came across an online fantasy war game called CastleQuest 2. That was when things started to go wrong.
Today, the brothers are the top-ranking players in the game and proud of it. But it has cost them. CastleQuest is set in a persistent real-time universe. When you leave, it carries on. So to hold onto their position, the brothers must play the game 24 hours a day, in shifts. Each shift lasts 12 hours. As one gets up, the other goes to bed. They know it’s odd. It would be funny if they could only free themselves from it, but they can’t. They are addicted.
Published in The Guardian September 04
Within 24 hours of its release, the MyDoom virus had flooded the world’s email networks, making it the fastest-spreading virus ever.
Published in The Guardian Feb 04
They first detected it at 13:03 GMT, 10 days ago. An innocuous attachment in an email sent from Russia triggered a minor alarm at the Global Operations Centre of Messagelabs, a leading email security firm. No one paid it much attention. Just another new virus, one of the handful that are trapped, analysed and blacklisted every day in the darkened bunker in Gloucester they call the war room. Little did they know…
The internet underworld of extreme drug use finds its voice.
“Everyone who was still left at the party began running like hunted animals. I wasn’t sure if Ray had a weapon at this point so I decided to just run away from him. We wouldn’t have been so scared to fight him had he not been naked and also a 6-foot-1-inch, 180-pound Taikwondo Black Belt. About five of some of my bigger friends restrained him by holding his arms and legs that were kicking furiously. This is when he started to speak as if he were possessed. He would repeat the same phrases in random order. He was saying shit like: “This is perfection, I am Jesus, I am the center of the universe, I’m gay, Come lie with me, Daddy Mommy lie with me, black people, fingertips, Cock!!!” and he would scream at the top of his lungs between saying these horrid things…”
“Possessed Rampage” by TJ
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=6839
On underground drug websites, there are tens of thousands of ‘trip reports’ - web-essays detailing the first-hand experiences of users of just about every drug you can image: synthetic, plant, household cleaning product. Speed, cannabis, ecstasy, opium, LSD, alcohol, Benylin, even caffeine, even nutmeg . Plus bizarre ‘research chemicals’ with exotic lab names such as 5-Me0-DiPT and 2-CT-2 that are too new to have earned themselves a street name.
Unedited, unfettered, often unpunctuated, trip reports make compelling, voyeuristic and at turns touching and harrowing reading. The writers have no inhibitions. Anonymity frees them (as do the drugs). Many are typed under the influence: pure streams of altered consciousness, running to thousands of words.
Published in Tank Magazine Feb 04
It will arrive next day by registered delivery in an unassuming padded envelope, promises the blurb on the British website. Inside, vacuum-sealed, will be 7.5g of AK47 - high-grade Cannabis Sativa. “Very strong nice smoke,” gushes the sales copy on the site. “Back by popular demand.”
Published in The Guardian Jan 04
The US army’s foray into violent PC games has been hailed a success. But it didn’t allow for one thing - cheaters
Christopher has been killed in action many times: 305 to be exact. But his most recent death was the last straw. Defending an Alaskan pipeline from terrorist attack, he and his nine-man squad came under fire from a sniper who picked them off, one by one, in just under a minute.
“We were lying on the ground, prone, in thick fog,” he says. “There’s no way he should have been able to shoot us, let alone see us. He must’ve been cheating.”
Published in The Guardian May 03
Robbings, blackmail, epilepsy, melodrama and chipshops - it’s all here.
In 1978 a small Japanese company called Taito & Midway released a stand up cabinet full of electronics and sporting a bright 14in screen. It was the latest experiment in electronic entertainment. For years, other companies had been toying with the concept of the “video game”, most successfully Atari with its electronic tennis game Pong in 1972. No one, however, had achieved true mainstream success.
So nobody paid Taito’s new gimmick much attention. It was called Invasion Space or Space Invaders or Space Raiders, or something. It was a silly black and white game where you shot aliens in spaceships. It cost an exorbitant 10p to play and had irritating sound effects.
But the world has never been quite the same since.
Published in The Daily Telegraph Dec 98
By day, Ed is a mild-mannered retiree. By night, he is an online superhero.
Apr 1997 - revised Dec 2001
For some, software piracy is a pathological, obsessive, illegal habit. For the software industry it’s a billion dollar nightmare.
Published in Wired April 1997
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Hi! I'm a London-based writer into technology, subculture, and anything strange and interesting. My work has appeared in over 30 magazines and newspapers including The Guardian and Wired. I edited the BBC webzine Seethru. My copywriting has won awards. Mostly though, I like to make jokes. All of which were recently published a spoof of the web, The Internet Now In Handy Book Form. I am now no longer funny.
Check out my spoof of the world wide web. It's funny yeah?
"You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll realise you didn't cry at all, but simply laughed again."
Charlie Brooker, The Guardian
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