Haven't posted in a lil while, as I've been on holiday (and completely forgot to set an out-of-office notice, whoops).

To keep things ticking over, here's a wonderful video game related parody of "Wonderful World". I'm sure the Satchmo would approve.

Amusingly enough, the mid-90s Nintendostalgia continues, with a team of geeks celebrating Obama's win in their own special way: Super Obama World!

Yes, now you can take control of the incoming leader of the free world (I say free, Britain costs extra) and defeat lipstick-wearing pigs against a colourful 16-bit backdrop! What better way to celebrate the President-Elect's technical-savvy and forward-thinking nature, than portraying him in a 15-year-old video game?

Still, could've been worse. I hear if McCain won, they were planning a Palin-themed version of Bejewled.

I was reminded today of a charming piece of trivia that everyone seems to know, but nobody is capable of substantiating. Namely that Dolphins and Humans are the only animals that have sex for pleasure. How on earth could anyone have developed this hypothesis? What would they use as contraception? Eel condoms? Quite probably not, as despite being roughly the right shape and size, sticking your manhood in an eel is probably not the height of pleasurable experiences - regardless of whether or not dolphin folklore contains the concept of vagina dentata.

So unless there is some form of sea urchin that just happens to induce infertility in certain species of oceanic mammals, they must be relying on more natural methods. It is possible that some intrepid zoologist just happened to notice that dolphin couples only mated at roughly monthy intervals, and thus concluded they had a natural understanding of the rhythm method. Or alternatively, they may be mentally disciplined enough to make use of the withdrawl technique. Were this the case, it would certainly add weight to the Catholic opposition to artificial contraception. If natural is good enough for the dolphins, its good enough for all mammals.

Of course, if Dolphins are capable of practising Catholicism, it offers an explanation as to why Sarah Palin believes Polar Bears aren't worth saving. Its not so much that they make use of contraceptive products, but according to Polar Bears International, infanticide is not unknown. And that's like a really late abortion, so they're probably Pro-Choice.

Seals, on the other hand, are avid followers of Richard Dawkins.

Quite possibly the weirdest, and yet somehow coolest, music video of all time was A-Ha's Take On Me (with the 90s cover version by A1 possibly being the worst video of all time).

As is the case with many awesome videos, it has next to bugger all relation to the song itself (unless "Take on Me" is something you yell when you're coming at a cartoon Norwegian with a pipe wrench). Well, some ingenious soul decided to correct this mistake, and produced a version of the song more homogeneous with the images on screen. Click below for truthly goodness!

Extra points have to be awarded for the use of the phrase "Pipe Wrench Fight" as backtime, but possibly missed a trick by not mentioning the "Nice Cold, Ice Cold Milk" poster that dates the video even more than the hairstyles (which are apparently still popular in parts of Europe).

Being a knowledge worker, every so often I find that there is a coworker looming behind me, wanting to pick my brains for some salient piece of info that they rekon I might posess. And its easier to walk over to someone else than do a Google search.

While I like being helpful, sometimes I hate having my flow disrupted (especially if I'm in the middle of watching the Daily Show through the company proxy). So I'm considering various tactics to reduce these interruptions. 

The easy way out would be to stop knowing things, but this might have something of a backlash at my next performance evaluation. And while I hate having to actually do things, I quite like money. 

But hope is not lost, cubicle dwellers, there is a solution! Through subtle use of Firefox's tabbed browsing feature, you can plant subtle hints to pesky office inhabitants that you might be slightly unhinged. Think of every unsavoury and yet fascinating topic you can, and browse to a site proudly naming the topic in its title bar...Wikipedia is a goldmine for this. Look up murder techniques, famous assassins, obscure religions focusing on "the other guy", heavy rock bands with umlaut fetishes, anything that your average Joe would shy away from like a coconut.

You'll end up with something a little like this:

Be sure to include at least one work-related page...don't want to look like a slacker. After a while, you'll start getting more and more creative:

You'll soon have more free time than you know what to do with. Just check you have some friends outside the office first, otherwise life could get very lonely indeed.

Disgruntled developers around the world were (at least partly) appeased today as Apple lifted the NDA on the iPhone API.

After opening the iPhone up to third-party developers, Apple has raised the ire of many a bedroom programmer by exercising what some might deem a draconian level of control over their App Store. Aside from complaints about (arguably unfairly) rejected applications, chief amongst developers' grievances is the highly restrictive NDA that effectively prevented anyone discussing the development process of their apps.

Any programmer who isn't gifted with a god-like understanding of all things technical will inevitably reach for community code samples and tutorials every now and then, so it is easy to see why this would pose a problem. Not only was developer collaboration curtailed (sacrilege in a community that abhors reinventing the wheel), but developers with rejected apps were not permitted to discuss the reasons they were given for the rejection, leaving others reluctant to even begin development for fear of their work being wasted. So frustrated were those using the API, that the site F*cking NDA was established to aggregate complaints from Twitter, along with numerous online petitions and blog entries.

In response to this, Apple placed a statement on the developer program site, announcing the removal of the gag:

Being in the midst of dabbling with the iPhone API, I was somewhat relieved to see this. Let the idea-sharing commence!

After last week's chaos, the mergers and US government handouts (let's just say they offered a chap some cod) prompted a jump in shares. Which was nice surprise.

BBC coverage of the event was, as usual, swift and to the point. With this page:

At first glance, it would seem the man is cheering the lift in the market. But look closer. Look at the expression on his expensively bespectacled face. Nothing, no joy, no happiness, not even a twinge of hunger. He's stretching. He couldn't care less.

Nice use of stock photos there, Beeb.

Well, it's been a pretty crazy week: banks collapsing, package holiday firms disappearing, the PM in trouble, and Microsoft confusing the hell out of everyone. Ironically enough, the only place where good things are happening is Zimbabwe.

Between out of work city boys, stranded holidaymakers and everyone generally running around tearing their hair out, the remaining few investment banks have come up with a plan to keep themselves safe. They are forming an intricate series of mergers, handshakes and loans that may or may not be to themselves in order to create a situation in which no government could possibly let them go under, lest the entirety of the British Isles is dragged down with them, sinking into the North Sea until the Japanese come along and reclaim the land as their own.

Meanwhile, 5000 people turned up at Lehman's on Monday to find themselves out of work and 400,000 people are fearing redundancy with the Lloyds HBOS merger (or takeover, or Pac-Man-eating-Ghost-thing, I don't get M&A). Not to mention jobs lost when all manner of other companies disappearing amid the chaos...like when you're in a hurry and lose your keys. And what headline did I see on BBC News on Wednesday?

"UK Unemployment Rises"

No shit, Sherlock!

Today was a big day for science, after 30 years, everyone's favourite looped underground tube was powered up for the first time. I'm talking of course, about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, rather than the Circle Line, which would be lucky to be in the top 100 (and I'm not even sure I could name 100 subterranean loops).

The news channels were dominated by stories about this marvel of technology, from breakfast till...right about lunchtime. The media seemed to be clamouring to get any experts they could in front of a camera for comment, anyone with a PhD and even a passing interest in Physics would do. Competition was no doubt fierce, and yet nobody was willing to speak to Brian Cox, just in case he said the "t" word again.

The BBC's man of choice (at least by 10ish) was Simon Singh, who was forced to dust off his background in particle physics and contacts at CERN to reassure the public that we weren't about to die in a swarm of tiny black holes. This of course left young geeks around the country confused, seeing as his fame in recent years has been based primarily on being That Guy With an Enigma Machine.

Tragically, while some tried to shoe-horn in their views on what amazing benefits any discoveries made using the LHC might have for the world (everything from a marginally faster Internet to winning Hawking some money), all the media wanted was reassurance that the world wasn't about to end. No matter how many scientist explain exactly why these experiments are safe, somehow the media gives illiterate whack-jobs more credibility, and parents have to try and calm their children's fears at bedtime. That said, kids have always had irrational fears: bogeymen, cupboard monsters, nuclear war from 1945-1989...I myself was once convinced that ET and Gilbert the Alien were in cahoots and up to no good. Still, somehow people (probably with similar irrational hatred of liberals) are convinced that CERN is evil incarnate and determined to destroy everything we hold dear, regardless of how ridiculous that sounds.

But that's the beauty of it. These experiments would never have gotten that much media coverate if there wasn't this sense of foreboding amongst the tabloid-reading masses. Without headlines like "Are We All Going to Die On Wednesday?" perhaps nobody would care, and perhaps some kids have now been spurred on to pursue a career in science, just so they can say "Nope, we're not".

Maybe some other famous experiments might have benefitted from a little scaremongering:

• "Pitch Drop May Cause Widespread Flood"
• "Are Pavlov's dogs conditioned to kill?"
• "Feather and Cannon Ball Plot to Overflow Human Civilisation After Repeated Abuse At The Hands of Galileo Galilei SHOCK"

And so on. However, I believe that everything aside, we may never be able to answer the true question out there, a question that may change the very nature of human understanding, that has baffled human minds since time immemorial. Is it a Collider of Large Hadrons, or a Hadron Collider that is Large?

Living in London has moulded me into one of those annoyingly self-righteous people who don't own a car. I may occasionally rent, but on the whole, public transport is good enough for me to manage. Its not so much about saving money, or saving the planet, its more about how I really hate driving.

This being the case, when I venture away from the bustling metropolis that is our capital city, I take the train. There's nothing more British than sailing majestically through the country side on a nation-spanning network of rails, within a powerful, proud, mechanical beast. At least not until mainland Europe got so much better at it than us...gits.

Of late, it seems that intercity (the purpose, not the model) trains have become vastly more crowded, with seas of embittered passengers lining the vestibule ends like a grumpy, somewhat uneven carpet - a sea of carpet, now there's a great mixed metaphor. I'd be tempted to say that this observation demonstrates how the Credit Crunch  and rising cost of fuel are making people cut back on the luxuries: staying in the UK for holidays, and dropping the family car for a family rail card. However, my observed rise in congestion coincides almost exactly with my being employed, so I now only really travel in and around peak times (even when I try to be clever and take Friday off to travel in the daytime, an ingenious idea, which it seems everyone else had too). Luckily, that was not the overriding point of this rant, so I shall move on.

My latest railway adventure was last Friday, and it was indeed and adventure, chock full of the excitement of watching the departures board patiently, hoping your choice of standing spot will be close enough to the unannounced platform to allow you to be first aboard, securing a space in the woefully inadequate luggage rack. A three hour journey into the wilderness of Northern England is ordinarily a scary prospect, but I was attending a friend's wedding, which was lovely, and a most worthy reason to stray from Southern Safety (pictures on Facebook, or possibly here, soon).

My reading matter for the trip was the eye-opening The Undercover Economist, one of a recent trend of Economics-lecture-as-entertainment type books. I was half expecting a poor cousin of the enourmously amusing Freakonomics (a fascinating and witty read that revealed many great truths and fallacies in the world, and made me far less likely to invest in property), instead I got something totally different; an accessible and humourous inside out look at economic principles, applied to simple real-life situations to show why everything seems so darned unfair. It explains why things cost what they do, that everything will work out in the end if left alone, and that governments will try their hardest to bugger that all up (despite being a necessary evil). Read it, and I guarantee you'll feel both slightly less miffed at the state of the country, slightly more miffed about the state of Cameroon, and a lot less likely to buy a large mocha-latte. But, I digress. We're back on the train.

One segment of the book described how products are often 'sabotaged' in order to sell more of the premium variation. An example of this was standard class on a train, designed to be sufficiently unpleasant that, if you can possibly afford it, you will go first class. As I was on a train, in standard class, at the time, I was shocked. I closed the book and sat there for a while with a glazed expression on my face, like I'd just been hit by, well, a train. But a train that was also a metaphor for hidden truth, a "Truth Train" if you will, much less funky than a "Soul Train", but on a nearby branch of the Intangible Mainline network.

Looking at the glum people sat at the end of the carriage by the toilets - feeling smug that I had pre-booked, paid less and got a seat - I realised why the open or on-the-day fare is so expensive. You're only going to sit on the floor once. After that, the few extra pounds for the far emptier first class won't seem like a waste of money.

I discussed this with the woman sat next to me. She said she would have gone to first class if the carriages weren't full of bodies, and that it is disgusting that they oversell trains like this. I resisted the urge to point out how much easier it is to get on the train via the door of the carriage you wish to sit in, rather than trapsing through the train, pushing past everyone who is making their way to their seat in a more efficient manner. I instead mumbled something about open tickets while secretly chiding myself for having a conversation about economics with a complete stranger.

I have several conclusions from the experience: always buy train tickets early. The product of the cost of a middle-aged woman's clothes and thickness of her makeup are inversely proportional to how much I'll agree with her views. Finally, rail companies have lots of clever tricks to part us from out hard earned money, but they'll still manage to screw it up along the way.

I've been attending my local gym since last October, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it: turn up, do stuff, do more stuff, realise I can't do any more stuff without keeling over, shower, leave.Of course, one needs to keep entertained during these periods of stuff-doing, and if the TVs are broke, people watching is the only option available. Unfortunately, there are only four kinds of people who go to the gym, so you can't create a game of bingo out of it. Still, for the taxonomists out there, here is an outline of the four major species of gym goers:

• The Reluctant: These poor souls aren't working out for the fun of it. They're here because their doctor told them it was either this, or death. You can spot them by their larger-than-larger-than-average bodymass, and the pained expression on their red faces. But don't mock them, they're making an effort, bless 'em.
• The New Lifestylers: This is the noble group to which I am proud to belong. Once out of shape and quite probably overweight, we figured it was time to do something about it (or risk becoming The Reluctant). So here we are, out of breath, out of shape and still overweight, but burning enough calories that we don't feel guilty about having dessert.
• The Professional: No matter what time of day, rain or shine, this guy is in the gym. Always lifting more weight than logical, or running at a rate that would reduce you to a quivering mass after mere seconds. They're decent people, though, and usually know pretty much everyone...despite having the scary huge muscles that push the veins out on their arms in that way that makes any self respecting couch potato cringe.
• The Poser: You never see this guy working out. He lives to swagger around the changing rooms, bollock naked. He has a washboard stomach and a massive cock and wants everyone to know.

I can't speak for female changing room habits, but I'm sure there's an equivalent of The Poser in there. Scientific rigour is an important virtue, but not worth risking a court appearance.