Archive for smile

Earliest recorded use of the world ‘Pixelated’

Apr 6 | by Sam Deeks | smile
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Has got to be Mr Deeds Goes To Town (1936), surely?

First of all it was the earliest screen appearance of the flat-screen TV in the 1960 ‘The Time Machine’ directed by George Pal. Now, we bring you arguably the first recorded use of the word ‘pixelated’ – the two little old ladies in the courtroom scene in the 1936 Gary Cooper classic ‘Mr Deeds Goes To Town’.

I say ‘arguably’ because of course, the lil’ ol’ dears aren’t really talking about the basic unit of the digital picture.  Nope, they’re saying ‘pixie-lated’ and they mean someone who’s ‘away with the fairies’.

But it would be a pity to let the truth spoil such a good soundbite, eh?

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First flat screen spotted in 1960 film ‘The Time Machine’

Apr 2 | by Sam Deeks | WOW!, smile
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Is this the earliest flat screen TV sighting ever? Or perhaps the first iMac?

George Pal’s 1960 film of H.G.Wells’ classic sci-fi story ‘The Time Machine’ has long been a favourite of mine. I’ve watched it dozens of times. But last week, on the train up to London, I spotted something new that I’d not noticed before.  There’s a scene where the Time Traveller stops in the year 1966, amazingly, on the very day that the world gets destroyed by atomic war (what are the odds of that?).

It wasn’t the awful ‘burnt toy cars floating in red porridge’ end of the world special effects. No – it was something in a shop window that caught my eye: the world’s first ‘tubeless TV’.  Not bad for a film made in 1960!

I can’t help thinking how much it looks like an iMac.

Snowing in Florida? Let’s investigate

Jan 9 | by Sam Deeks | WOW!, smile
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Has it really snowed in Florida? Or is this just another ‘wildfire’ Google trend gone mad?

Lets investigate.

First, there’s this picture which I’m told is of a man sunbathing in the snow on Daytona Beach.  Suspicious.

Second, there are several blog reports here, here, here, here, here (lols), and here as well as Flickr photosets that seem to show that it has, indeed, been snowing in the Sunshine State.

It could just be a moment of madness showing up as a Google trend.  Mind you, I’ve just been for a walk with my cat in the thick snow in the UK, so anything’s possible I suppose.

Personally, I believe the Daytona Beach News Journal.  If anyone should know, they should.

Snow in Florida.  Who would have believed it?

Monster Tuna picture? Nope. Just a bit of photoShop, Tokyo style

Jan 5 | by Sam Deeks | critical approach to online media, media, smile
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Someone caught the worlds’ biggest tuna – and forgot to take a picture? Huh?

Can you believe it?

I saw this news item on BBC website and immediately clicked, expecting (not unreasonably) to see a monster tuna.  All I got was some stock photography of a tuna processing plant.  I went to Google but couldn’t find any pictures, anywhere.  Just more text reports and fishery shots – like this.  What??  A story without a picture?  What’s that worth?  Like, er, nothing?  According to the BBC, their fish weighed ‘nearly four times as much as the average Japanese man’ so, in the absence of any real pictures, I thought I’d help out with my mock-up.

The whole thing smells fishy to me.  I mean, you wouldn’t believe your mate if he came back from fishing with a story about the 232kg fish that got away, would you?

So imagine my surprise to Google this – a 268kg tuna, pictured next to a small kid.  Hang on BBC – that’s 36kg bigger than your ‘record breaking’, invisible, monster.

I know which story I believe.

“hp computers are racist” – this is very funny and interesting

Dec 25 | by Sam Deeks | smile, what do you think?
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HP computer’s webcam ‘prefers’ white people to black people. Does that make it racist?

This is going viral on YouTube – and no surprise. The fact that the software / hardware can’t identify Black Desi but happily tracks and follows White Wanda is quite amazing. In the video, Desi is good humoured (if a little surprised).

In the wider world, however, this of course raises some big questions about the unchallenged assumptions that are what we mean when we say ‘institutionalised racism’. Whether or not it’s the truth, it’s all too easy to imagine a cluster of young, white geeky guys developing this technology. If it is true, then it gives us a glimpse of an unconscious aspect of racism: that if we’re white, we just don’t just think about being black.

In terms of online reputation, how HP handles this from here on in will be telling – and hugely important. All I can say is that I hope they deal with it with the same mixture of lightness, seriousness and openness as Desi and Wanda did.

On first investigation, I can’t find much response from HP.  There is this… and Mashable goes into more detail here….  Mashable seems to just want to write it off as a technological failing.  I disagree. I think it’s more revealing than that.

And is anyone else surprised that HP didn’t respond in the same medium (YouTube) the way that Domino’s did over that infamous YouTube video?

Adressbuch-Schwindler. Couldn’t have put it better myself

Dec 7 | by Sam Deeks | smile
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Expo Guide, World Business Directory et al – you’re a bunch of ‘Adressbuch-Schwindleren’ :-)

I love German, don’t you?  A real ’say-it-like-it-is’ construction kit of a language.  They don’t piss about with euphemisms and veiled descriptions for things.  They just bolt together enough words to get the job done (in the order that they think of them).

Business directory scams? “Address book swindlers” more like!

Fantastiche!

Swine Flu Kills Healthy People!

Jul 23 | by Sam Deeks | media, news, smile
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Look out Healthy People, swine flu wants to Kill You!

So says the Evening Standard headline I spotted at Paddington tonight. I love headlines – especially when they’re so deliciously over the top.

‘Swine flu kills healthy people’ is ’stating the bleedin’ obvious’ as Basil Fawlty might have said. It’s also the journalistic equivalent of ‘Defcon 4′. Logjcally, there’s only one place to go after that headline. “Official: End Of World”.

But it’s not just the apocalyptic that amuses me but those damn headlines that catch your eye like a virus you can never quite get rid of. Ones like the surreal and inexplicably pleasing “Fish Spillage”.

Years later, I still find myself trying to picture that event. ;-)

Skype Spam: top marks for politeness

Jun 7 | by Sam Deeks | smile
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skypespamSkype Spammer exhibits manners and sense of humour

I got interrupted with a Skype IM spammer earlier today.  You know, one of those guys who happens to be holding the countless millions of dollars left to you by the brother you never knew you had?

I thought I’d send a quick response summarising my feelings.  So I did – and got a chirpy reply back.  How nice.  Who said these scammers don’t have at least a sense of humour!

And that name rings a bell, too.

Keeping an eye on space rocks (and how they’re spelled)

Mar 31 | by Sam Deeks | smile
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I’m keeping an eye on how hard it is to spell ‘meteorite’.  Maybe that’s why NASA calls them ’space rocks’?

I picked this piece up on the NASA site via Twitter (following Astronautics).


Moral of this story is: don’t give up, you’ll get there eventually.

When Alan Shepard was asked what was going through his mind sitting on the launch pad at the Cape in his Mercury capsule, his answer was ‘The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.’ (Interestingly, John Glenn also said the same thing many years later after his return to space aboard the Shuttle).

What would be going through my mind?  That my spaceship’s been put together by people who can’t spell meteorite. :-)

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