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May
21st
Tue
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Spametry

Man, the crap I hold on to… and share. Like stinky farts.

Many years ago before I had spam filters, I had to manually remove unwarranted shit from my inbox, One day I decided to recycle it and started stringing together the subject of each spam mail with the idea of making some stupid poetry out of it. This appears to be as far as I got, some lines better juxtaposed than others…

My name is Nadezhda
I wish to find the prince
I want to get acquainted with you
Where are you my prince!
I want to get acquainted with you
Meet that someone special today
The favorable offer for you

Set love energy to max
Unlimited power in mating
Fulfil your full potential in bed
Do it like a Cazanova
She wants your ideal loveing machine
No silly exercises needed to add inches to your manhood
YOUR LADY DESERVES IT FIRM
Wet and ready for you all night

Russian ladies for any taste.
Cool!

You want me? Come to me.
I want you now, tell me reciprocate and get me!
I will be glad if you write to me

Hi cool man!
I wish the good and sated day!
I wish to find my second half
I’m lonely woman
I want only love
I wanted to write
I do not know what to write to you
I can find that that I search
To handle me, use your heart.
I will wait for your reply fast
I’m single and looking for a good man
May be we are for each other
I hope you are also interested
Rolex please

Hi handsome man
I have decided to get acquainted
I want to get acquainted with you
I am a very nice and interesting person
I want to find new friends
I really want to find my true love
I want to know you better!
Do you want to know me better?
Perhaps you could be my new friend
I hope that you will consider
I’m out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.

Hello my new friend
I received your mail
I have decided to write to you
You were great
Why did you leave early?
I never got acquainted the first with men

People judge you from what you wear
Stop settling for less
You no longer have to watch your diet
No more belly fat on you today
Lose weight without moving a muscle
Don’t be the only guy not using these
You Will Be Glad If You Choose Our Soft.

You don’t know me
I want to love
Impotence will never come back into your life!

Get the Royal Treatment Here!
New job
Get more for your work
More paid, less work

A talk required
Need a serious talk

How many orgasm can man do?
How many orgasm can man do?
How many orgasm can man do?
How many orgasm can man do?
More orgasms.
Satisfy your lover.
Satisfy your lover.
Satisfy your lover.
Can she have multiple orgasms?
Can she have multiple orgasms?
Can she have multiple orgasms?
Can she have multiple orgasms?

Re: Impotent info
You got no strength any longer to satisfy your loved one?
When you feel that your manliness is already dead, contact us
We know how to destroy even the most destroying ache

Re: Take care of your manhood
Make sure your bulge is significant
The longer your love instrument is, the longer the pleasure lasts
Your tremendous penis will always be on her mind
She is bound to lose her mind over your great size

Tired of having a peanut in your pants?
Be the largest man around
Enjoy the delicious taste of having a monster in your pants.
Your perfect mega beast will be 10 inches at least
Women love making love with monsters even when it hurts.

Having pack of this in pocket means having success with four or even more girls a night
Become virile like a rabbit!
More drive for in-out sticking
Gain more steadfastness

Heat in your pants
Your excitement will break ceilings
Fulfill your true organ growth potential
Reveal your full male power

Its time to focus on something new
The bedroom doesn’t smell like intimacy anymore? Change it.
Your bed is empty? Maybe you should enlarge your little friend.
The night is a time to have fun in bed. Make this fun lasting!
Make her come triple tonight

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Jan
30th
Wed
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Pac-Rat

Pac-Rat

Nov
1st
Tue
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Donkey Kong: the alternative ending.

Donkey Kong: the alternative ending.

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You go, girl! Jumplady seeks Man in role reversal.

You go, girl! Jumplady seeks Man in role reversal.

Oct
29th
Sat
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Feel Fit

GOOD FEEL IS RARE. Feel is in the eye (and all other senses) of the beholder; one person’s meat is another’s poison. So much is ‘red hat’. But ‘Feel’ can mean the difference between remarkable and unremarkable.

Take the iPhone and the Nexus One. In terms of first impressions – visual engagement – the iPhone exudes class before you even touch it. It’s visually stimulating and inviting. Its smooth, shiny façade is dark and mysterious and runs right up to the edges: a smooth, shiny silver frame. It has an attractive symmetry and no clutter: just a small slit at the top and an indented spot at the bottom.

The Nexus sports a banal grey surround, a tiny trackball and buttons that already look worn through use. It all looks rather… meh.

To the touch the Nexus feels cheap. Its matt plastic casing has an odd, almost greasy feel to it. The first time you use the Nexus you have to remove a panel at the back to insert the battery. This act not only feels wrong and unnecessarily invasive, it makes the unit feel more vulnerable.

The iPhone is a solid, sealed unit (arguably a ‘Convenient’ Fail when it comes to changing the battery). It feels streamlined and evolved – an object worth holding and stroking even when you aren’t using it (as people seem to unconsciously do). It’s a good size and a pleasing shape. It has a good weight and balance appropriate for its form. The iPhone is such an even, refined object. It’s almost natural, like a pebble polished over geological time – or curiously unnatural, like an alien artefact from a past vision of the future.

The Nexus feels fake. Its trackball seems extraneous and in use it feels too loose and cheap and slightly gritty, like the ball’s rolling over dirt. It feels like someone’s used, abused and broken it before you.

Sliding between ‘pages’ on iPhone feels good enough to do without reason. It’s all in the details that are so easy to overlook. When you slowly, slightly slide the icons they move smoothly; there’s a slight acceleration, deceleration and momentum. If you let go, the icons snap back with a reassuring speed and, most importantly, a bounce when they hit the edge of the screen. Not only does all that feel good, it makes the icons feel like they exist. (This also reinforces an emotional attachment to the iPhone.)

The Nexus icons move with a disconcerting judder. They start and stop immediately and the whole thing feels uncomfortably jerky. It feels like it doesn’t matter how delicately you stroke the Nexus, the icons move at the same speed.

On the iPhone, however, the speed of the icon motion depends on the speed of stroke. This analogue quality again reinforces a sense of substance. (And the fact that the iPhone acknowledges how you use it in this way is an ‘Alive’ overlap.)

On the Nexus, if I attempt to pull, say, a list of contacts down when I’m already at the top, nothing happens. On the iPhone, there’s a bounce – a tactility sadly missed on the Nexus. To a strict ‘white hat’ wearer this is unnecessary; there’s no point in being so… playful. To those of a sensual disposition, this is essential.

None of these ‘Feel’ Wins make the iPhone any easier to use – any more convenient – but they do make it feel better to use and give it character (an ‘Alive’ overlap). Most of the time convenience is most important, but it’s easy to forgive and forget inconvenience if the feel is strong.

In terms of aural stimulation there’s little to hear. The iPhone’s few basic default sounds are as rounded as the device looks; the Nexus noises are more sparkly, prickly. The sound of the Nexus camera firing is scary, aggressive – so much so that I almost dropped the Nexus the first time I used it to take a picture. The fanfare reinforcing the Nexus shutting down is clipped, which feels clumsy.

Making something feel awesome – so good it’s used regardless of context and purpose – can take time. The something in question needs to be repeatedly used and refined and it can be challenging to identify where the feel might be improved, let alone how to improve it. Making something feel at least ‘not shit’ is a good place to start.

The senses need to be engaged in a consistent manner otherwise not only is feel undermined, the overall illusion is too. To the eyes, ears and touch, a battle tank should feel substantial, like it means business, like it’s capable of fulfilling its known role. (There’s overlap with ‘Drama’ and ‘Convenient’ here; the tank is dramatically enhanced to accentuate its presence and needs to be obviously a tank.) A tank that looks too pretty and fragile, that sounds like a clockwork mouse, that doesn’t handle like it has substance – it isn’t plausible – it isn’t a tank.

The aim is to create the illusion of substance from light. The virtual isn’t real but it needs to feel like it is. The better the feel, the better the connection to the intangible; the more you care and the more likely ‘like’ or indifference turns to love.

Sep
8th
Thu
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Boost Your Quarrel Word Armoury

I threw together a spreadsheet that Quarrellers might find useful.

http://is.gd/6vl4E8

It’s all the two- and three-letters words you can make in Quarrel (124 two-letter words and 1,292 three-letter words, stat pervs). You owe it to yourself to know the best of these as they can help you earn prisoners, slay giants and even turn a whole match around. Why, the mere knowledge of their meaning (definitions not included here BTW) may even enrich your life and make you see the world in a whole new light.



The words are spread over two sheets in tall columns and sorted by score (I couldn’t think of a better way to arrange them). You can always re-sort the spreadsheet.

  • SHIFT-click column headings A and B to select them both.
  • Select Data > Sort Range from the options up top.
  • Click the Data has header row box.
  • Click + Add another sort option to add a second sort option.
  • Change the sort by and then by order to what you want, remembering to ensure that A > Z or Z > A are consistent.
Sep
1st
Thu
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Moments of Being Quarrel

SO HERE I AM again, quarreling at Calamari Cove, this time with the Elite – Rex, Helena and Kali – and playing in last position (my preference).

It’s been a real roller coaster ding-dong battle. I’m browbeaten and down to my last territory and only two troops (who really ought to be hugging each other for comfort right now) plus one ‘in the chamber’ as it were.

On the face of it, the situation is bleak. But, as is my wont, I haven’t quit because I still believe I can win (because I have before in equally grim circumstances).

Helena’s just wiped out Rex and Kali and is now turning her attention to me, the final thorn in her side. She attacks with seven troops. This is it. Seven against two. Of course I’ll lose. (But I might not.)

I add my Backup Troop for good measure. Now it’s seven against three. Of course I’ll still lose. (But I still might not.)

Eight letters are dealt before me. My gaze tarantellas back and forth across them, picking out potential. I spy J and my heart skips a beat. I see U and G to make JUG and my heart’s racing. I don’t even see the rest of the letters. Helena could have made JUGULAR before or after me for all I know.

The drum rolls, the tension mounts and her troops shout…

“JUG!”

BUT I MADE IT FIRST! To win and take FOUR prisoners! I brought down a giant Helena! I’m on the rebound! BOOMshakalaka! I am invincible and emboldened and come back from the dead to storm the island and win the match in style.

Do you HEAR anyone singing? Do you even SEE a fat lady?

No.

Because even when the bastards have ground you down and are circling to pick at your corpse… NEVER. Give. Up.

That’s Quarrel. A metaphor for life, clearly :D

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I’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS. I have nested copies of hard drives from every PC I have ever owned for the past 20-odd years and I recently, accidentally found an anonymously-titled recording dating back to 1996. Hearing it again brought a smile to my face.

I first came across this curiosity when I misdialed a telephone number shortly after BT made one of its many changes to area codes and telephone numbers in general. Instead of my ear being met by the cheery voice of a friend I was greeted by this slightly eerie, official-sounding delivery and my imagination went wild.

To this day I have no idea what it means. It’s probably something utterly innocent, like a power station check or an even more banal reality. But it’s much more fun to believe that I tapped into some secret, significant government installation somewhere in the UK :D

Aug
17th
Tue
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What’s Your Flavour?

IT HAPPENS A LOT with sweets and me, especially with Jelly Belly but just as easily with, say, fruit sherbets (or sometimes ice cream or, better still, gelato). My mind and taste buds are expecting one flavour, like lemon or lime, but, when engaged, are (typically pleasantly) surprised by pineapple or apple instead.

What’s not so pleasant is when you expect sweet only to be met by savoury. Which got me thinking about colour and flavour expectations and reminded me of when I was a kid and we’d speculate on the flavour of what we’d see while on a lengthy car journey.

The little red car ahead is strawberry flavour. Those Highland cattle in that field are caramels. That speed limit sign is liquorice ripple ice cream with strawberry sauce (or, these days, red pepper stuffed with feta and black olives).

Some obvious colours and likely flavours follow. (I’m struggling to identify some savoury variations here and there.)

Cherry • Chilli • Cinnamon • Cranberry • Pomegranate • Strawberry • Tomato

Apricot • Carrot • Frankfurter • Honey • Mandarin • Mango • Orange • Pumpkin • Physalis

Banana • Cheese • Egg • Grapefruit • Lemon • Mustard • Pineapple • Sweetcorn

Apple • Broccoli • Gooseberry • Grape • Lime • Pea • Rocket

Cool Mint

Blueberry

Bubblegum • Crab • Raspberry • Rhubarb • Rose • Violet

Aubergine • Grape • Plum

Caramel • Coffee • Peanut Butter • Sausage

Beef • Chocolate • Cola • Gravy

Blackberry • Liquorice • Olive

Bread • Cauliflower • Coconut • Cod • Chicken • Cottage Cheese • Cream Soda • Cream Cheese • Fennel • Garlic • Lychee • Marshmallow • Mashed Potato • Meringue • Milk • Mint • Pear • Scallop • Sherbet • Turnip • Vanilla • White Chocolate • Whipped Cream

Jul
5th
Mon
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R:\MOVE *.* V:\

The world is becoming increasingly intangible; more virtual, less real.

  • Will the tangible increase in value as a result?
  • Will we become less stimulated by the tactile?
  • Will we become less attached to the tangible, less attracted to physical possessions?
  • Will we become more frivolous and compelled to consume the more readily available; more consumed by the more conveniently made, stored and disposable virtual goods?