Simon Barker

My Latest Delicious Bookmarks – Online Cool Stuff! (13th July 2010)

Simon Barker — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:43:40 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online Delicious bookmarks between 10th May 2010 and 13th July 2010:

Sony Walkman NWZ-W252 Review » Coolest Gadgets – A good review of a new minimalist Sony Walkman mp3 player – they've come a long way since the original cassette Walkmans!

F1 tech changes to improve racing – New changes have been announced for the 2011 season of Formula 1, hopefully we'll see more overtaking happening, although I do wonder if overtaking using various devices designed for that purpose will actually be too artificial or 'gimmicky'.

Fascinating LEGO® Model of the Day: New Set Announcement: 10213 Shuttle Adventure – I used to play with Lego as a kid and now they are releasing a new model set in honour of the final Shuttle mission – I wouldn't mind spending an afternoon building my own Lego Shuttle! :)

The best 11 Apps available for Android « HTC Desire Fanatics – A cool site all about the new HTC Desire mobile phone and some good commentary on some of the Android apps that are currently available.

Arrived at the Great Firewall of China! | Itchy Feet Blog – The start of a travelling adventure to cure itchy feet! The first stop of the journey is Beijing in China and an encounter with the Great Firewall! :)

INFOGRAPHIC: The History Of Facebook’s Default Privacy Settings – I'm feeling more and more sceptical of using Facebook and as you can see from this webpage, they've been opening more and more of your information up to the whole internet as defaults for their privacy settings.

Time out « carocat.co.uk – Interesting to read about how someone's experience is of taking a time-out from the Internet – obviously there's good and bad points, but something that's good to do from time to time.

My Latest Delicious Bookmarks – Online Cool Stuff! (13th July 2010) is a post from: Simon Barker

Lost Series Finale Review – The Long Con?

Simon Barker — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:32:30 +0000

So it’s been a few weeks now since the Lost series finale in which we got all the the answers (or not), how was that ending for you? Do you still want more Lost Season 6 answers? Put it this way, had I been satisfied with it, I probably wouldn’t have felt the need to put my thoughts down here, so I guess at least it ended in being a talking point like it has been all the way through.

I think watching Lost has been like following people dropped in a fast flowing river, you get carried away in the moment, passing by lots of interesting stuff, but never get to stop and actually investigate the detail of what is actually there.

Has the joke has been on us all along? Especially after the creators/writers would smile away in interviews when the question of writing towards the known ending was asked. Perhaps they got bored with their own ideas that they’d throw into the series, so it was less work to not bother explaining stuff? Perhaps they had to just keep throwing random unrelated new stuff into the mix as a means of spinning out a 10 episode mini-series into 6 years or working in Hawaii – a nice little earner if you can get it eh?

Will I rewatch the series like I do with great TV series? Definitely not, I often wondered if rewatching all those character-fleshing-out flashbacks would be worthwhile once you already knew about them and now that I know none of the island story threads really tie together – there’s not even that reason to rewatch it, such a shame! You’re probably better off watching something like this 5 years of Lost in 8 minutes 15 seconds video, the final season wouldn’t add much more to its length! :)

Sure have mysterious stuff happening in the early series, but then explain some of that stuff, perhaps as happening because of their future actions in a later season – I thought we might get that when they were jumping through time, but again that idea seemed wasted when they go back and live in Dharma-ville, but don’t actually do much of consequence – then when they do and blow a hydrogen bomb…nothing happens but they get spit back out into present day time?!?!?!

So it’s Purgatory in the end afterall? All that time the casual viewers said it’s Purgatory, many of us loyal Lost fans had faith that it would be explained in a better way, but no, those people who stopped watching after 8 episodes were as good as right all along!

Also I wonder if the writers original basic idea was that the island was purgatory, but when so many people were guessing that answer so early on they had to come up with a slightly different idea, so enter the sideways timeline that was purgatory, I wonder if that was just so they “got one” over the viewers again?

Perhaps the moral of this story should be, if you don’t want a large number of your viewers to guess the ending way ahead of time, don’t try to be so damn mysterious and pose so many questions so that people speculate so much about potential storylines instead is talking about how good the previous episodes were?

Flash sideways wasn’t even an alternate timeline created from the bomb explosion, so presumably that detonation did nothing but explode? Perhaps I need to get back to watching the brilliant Fringe where Abrams’ writers seem to definitely know what direction they are going in and are actually moving story (alternate timeline plot) forward while still explaining stuff with a scientific rationale.

Surely great TV shows are ones that you know you will want to enjoy again? Ones that have story threads which get tied together into a good story, it rewards you for your invested time in it like a good book, not something that you feel conned out of your time (and perhaps money) – perhaps that is the true lesson of Lost, beware of ‘the long con’ as it can waste a lot of your time and money?

Perhaps the writers ‘lost’ interest in their own ideas as they were making it up as they went along? I get the sense from some of the smugness we’ve got from them as we’ve gone along is that the writers came up with some “cool looking ideas for scenes on screen” but then couldn’t think of decent reasoning for including it after the fact or they lost interest in it themselves. It makes for a pretty shoddy production after the fact to be honest. JJ Abrams likes mystery boxes, but what we have here is almost nothing but mystery boxes and when you open one, you just a bunch more of them inside.

I remember seeing an interview with Chris Carter about The X-Files, back in season 2 or 3 where he said something like they made stuff up as it went along and would write themselves into corners they couldn’t easily get out of – just look at the mess of a plot it got into with its conspiracy story!

I honestly think that they ‘bottled it’ when it came to the island ending, even shows like Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 had the guts to go up in flames (so to speak) at the end, Lost had the chance, but no they couldn’t even blow up/destroy “The Island”, just tease you some more with Hurley and Ben “protecting The Island” from that point on.

Overall, despite all the general negativity I now feel towards the series looking back on it all, while I was in the moment of watching the finale it was enjoyable, I didn’t expect much to be explained by that point, so with that low expectation, it was OK. It was mainly the last 5 minutes that truly ruined it mainly because in my opinion, the concept could have been done so much better if that’s the direction they wanted to go in – you’ve just got to look at Ashes to Ashes as a finale that played with the same concepts, but executed in such a better and more fulfilling way, go watch that instead!

Take a look the following video (at around 31:40) where the guys over at Totally Rad Show sum up my feelings on the Lost series finale pretty well on the whole experience!…

Lost Series Finale Review – The Long Con? is a post from: Simon Barker

My Latest Delicious Bookmarks – Online Cool Stuff! (10th May 2010)

Simon Barker — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:54:48 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online Delicious bookmarks between 25th April 2010 and 10th May 2010:

50 Inspiring, Awesome & Stylish Mac Setups | Mac.AppStorm – Here's some great examples of computer workstations/desk set-ups despite the general Apple-ness ;) – it inspires me to have a tidier and smarter looking desk set-up!

Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative | Epicenter | Wired.com – Some very good points are raised in this article about Facebook and its "so called" privacy settings, I would love there to be an better option than Facebook – I'm becoming ever more disillusioned by it all!

My Apology To GoPark.co.uk Sucks • Tim Nash “stuff” Blog – Interesting blog post illustrating how you perhaps should (and shouldn't) go around contacting people over a typo – ie. perhaps threatening legal action shouldn't be in your opening email to the person – it might just get people's backs up a little.

31 Gorgeous Girls of ‘Entourage’ | Fork Party – Entourage is a great TV show, there's lots of reasons to watch it, but just a few of the girls that have appeared on the show! :)

Six reasons why Steve Jobs is wrong on Flash | PC Pro blog – Some interesting feedback here on what Steve Jobs wrote in his "blog post" on the Apple website as to why they don't allow Flash on iPhone and iPad. Personally I'd be more inclined to agree with what Darian has written in this article as to why Flash isn't used!

Game Couch: No More Lightsabers – I used to really like these Star Wars games back around 10-15 years ago, but since then I swear it's a case of diminishing returns – it's a real shame as the Lucasarts Star Wars games of old were guaranteed to be great games. Why is it so difficult to get good Star Wars games these days (other than BioWare's brilliant The Old Republic games series), have Lucasarts sold out on their main franchise just to make easy cash?

Next Jen, Blog Banter: What franchise shift bothers you the most? – I remember playing the original X-Com games, this article raises some valid concerns about what might happen to the franchise as it changes into a first-person shooter.

My Latest Delicious Bookmarks – Online Cool Stuff! (10th May 2010) is a post from: Simon Barker

Google Clicking Politician, Stargate Universe, An Independent Filmmaker & Monkey Island? (Roundup)

Simon Barker — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:22:18 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online favourite bookmarks between 26th March 2010 and 6th April 2010:

Prominent UK Politician Encourages Google Click Fraud – Interesting with the UK election around a month away, a Labour politician is encouraging Labour supporters to commit Google click fraud! Yeah, these are the kind of people we want running the country!?!?!? But given the whole MP expenses scandal, what else can you expect from politicians?

Stargate Universe Review | Sci Fi UK – I'll admit it, I've been a fan of Stargate ever since I first saw the first episode of Stargate: SG1 (I saw the original movie, but the series managed to re-work the idea so much better than the people who did the movie), I also liked Stargate: Atlantis – it was all good fun action series that didn't take itself too seriously. However now with the latest series in the franchise, they've taken a whole new approach to it, it's darker, more serious and more character-based – it's certainly different, whether it ends up being better remains to be seen after only ten episodes so far – take a look at the Stargate: Universe season 1 trailer and see what you think to the look of it!

SEO Checklists – On-site SEO – Patrick recently spoke at Think Visibility 3 (March 2010) and gave a great talk on how to build good links into your website. This particular SEO checklist is a really useful document to read through and check that you've got all your bases covered on your existing sites and any new ones that you are setting up!

Telltale Games – Tales of Monkey Island – There are certain gaming franchises that will always mean a lot to you and Monkey Island is one of them for me. Ever since I first played the originals on my Amiga 500, I've enjoyed these games, so now that they've been revisited again in the form of these new episodic Tales of Monkey Island and also the Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition I'm definitely pleased to have more piratey goodness! If you also like Guybrush Threepwood, you can pick up loads of cool merchandise here like I have – can't wait to get my drinking vessel!

The Perils Of Being An Independent Filmmaker | SerenaObhrai.com – Serena Obhrai is not only a writer over at Zath, but also for theatre and short-film productions, as well as having been the director and star of her own zelda-inspired theatre production – take a look at her efforts at crowd-sourcing a short-film using Twitter!

Google Clicking Politician, Stargate Universe, An Independent Filmmaker & Monkey Island? (Roundup) is a post from: Simon Barker

April Fools, World Changing Tablets, Wembley Stadium & Facebook Features? (Roundup)

Simon Barker — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:40:51 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online favourite bookmarks between 17th March 2010 and 24th March 2010:

Top 100 April Fools Pranks and Gadgets | Walyou – April Fools is almost upon us again, so while we await what the creative people on the Internet come up with this year, here's a great list of the Top 100 April Fools Pranks and Gadgets that are already out there. If you like this kind of thing, you can also check out Zath's April Fools 2009 Roundup!

How the Tablet Will Change the World | Magazine – How will the concept of having a tablet device change the way the world does things? Just take a look at this article, it raises some very good points about Apple's iPad and whether we need one? Are you looking forward to owning a tablet device such as the iPad (as a Kindle replacement?) or perhaps a more work-focussed digital journal tablet device such as the Microsoft Courier.

Wembley Stadium Tour | SerenaObhrai.com – Ever since the new Wembley Stadium was built, it's somewhere that I've wanted to visit, unfortunately I've not had the chance as yet, but when I do, I think I'll definitely want to try and get on a tour of Wembley Stadium as it sounds like a great place to look round regardless of an event taking place there or not!

10 Ways to Enjoy Doing Nothing | Real Simple – Something I have seem to have real trouble with and that is taking some time out from working without feeling too guilty about it, well here's an interesting read on how to enjoy doing nothing and how it's a good thing to be doing – thanks to Serena Obhrai for recommending this to me!

iFrame Buster Script! | Frog’s Digital Design Blog – In the last year we’ve seen more and more social bookmarking and short URL companies implementing framed toolbars round sites that they’d ordinarily seen visitors to. This means that you’re effectively losing out on having visitors to your site, you can’t track these people as they are still officially on the toolbar’s website (boosting their stats and advertising income), but by using this script on your website, you can stop these toolbars from working so people see your site properly in full!

Opinion: The 7 Least Used Facebook Features – As any Facebook user is aware, Mark Zuckerberg and his developers like to keep changing things around and testing out new features in Facebook, but do you use some of these "Least Used Features" yourself? Do you know they even exist?

Arc Keyboard – Microsoft at CES 2010 Video | Mel Carson – UK Internet Marketing Blog – Microsoft – Memoirs – Do you need a portable, wireless keyboard? I’ve often thought having one to use with my media center PC, laptop or perhaps it could make for a good input option for a future tablet device such as the HP Slate?

April Fools, World Changing Tablets, Wembley Stadium & Facebook Features? (Roundup) is a post from: Simon Barker

My Delicious Bookmarks aka Cool Online Stuff! (15th March 2010)

Simon Barker — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:35:59 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online favourite bookmarks between 10th March 2010 and 15th March 2010:

Best of Dilbert and the internet | JakeHird – I'm sure most people have at least once seen a Dilbert comic strip, but have you seen one about the Internet? Well how seeing a whole bunch of them collected together in one place, all about the Internet, check them out, there's some very good ones among this collection!

ITV HD on Sky HD – How To Guide – Having Sky HD running on a big screen HDTV looks great for all the Sky HD channels that there are, unfortunately when you then go back to a standard definition ITV picture (because ITV HD is officially only viewable on Freeview HD), it really shows up how much worse the picture can be, especially when watching a football game. However, the good news is that you can get around this and view ITV HD on your Sky HD box – just follow how to guide and you can watch all those ITV football games in glorious HD goodness!

Fantasy F1 2010 | F1 FTW – Just like last year, F1 FTW are running a Fantasy Formula 1 competition that is free to enter and has a prize for the winner – unfortunately I didn't win last year, but I did finish 9th out of 29, so in the top third if nothing else! So if you fancy picking a team and taking on the Zath F1 team, then head on over to F1 FTW before the first race of the season!

F1 Calendar 2010 – Formula One Race Times and Dates for Google Calendar, iCal & Outlook – In the last couple of years I've really started to enjoy watching Formula 1 again (the first time since Damon Hill retired) and now the new 2010 season is nearly here. This calendar page allows you to download all the dates and then import them into your calendar of choice, mine being Google Calendar, I'm now ready for the season, just a shame that we won't get to see Formula 1 in HD until maybe next year if we're lucky!

Porsche 918 Spyder Hybrid Concept Car – Now how's this look for a hybrid car? I think I'd live with that Porsche, just a shame it's only a concept right now, but hopefully we'll see more environmentally-friendly sports cars in the future!

My Delicious Bookmarks aka Cool Online Stuff! (15th March 2010) is a post from: Simon Barker

My Delicious Bookmarks aka Cool Online Stuff! (10th March 2010)

Simon Barker — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:12:22 +0000

Here’s some of the cool webpages and online stuff that I’ve found whilst roaming around the Internet recently and decided to add them to my online favourite bookmarks…

Wayne unwillingly goes wireless for the weekend – An interesting blog post about what happens if you have an online business and you lose your landline broadband internet access…this reminds me I really need to figure out a better back up other than going to the local cafe to use their free wifi!

Apple Continues Its Crackdown On the iPhone App Store – It looks like Apple’s wielding its mighty axe again and removing apps from its App Store that it had previously approved, nothing like moving the goalposts eh? I’m guessing that removing these free website content apps is in preparation for the Kindle ebook reader replacement, the iPad? The less free options to compete with the iPad’s paid-only content the better? Or am I just being to cynical about this move?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Website Analytics Blog | Search Engine Chocolate – It may be over a year ago, but it’s still a blog post full of useful info, especially the presentation slides that have some good ideas for the use of advanced segments in Google Analytics! I now know what content my “engaged visitors” like the most!

Google facts and figures: Infographic | Frog’s Digital Design Blog – Google seems to everywhere these days, but just take a look at just how much they’re involved in now and how much they’ve grown in the past ten years or so, truly astonishing!

Parag Khanna maps the future of countries | Video on TED.com – Another great TED talk video to watch, this time it’s about countries/borders and how they are affected by trade and politics – it’s actually quite interesting how business can shape the world instead of countries directly. Also another TED video you really should watch JJ Abrams’ Mystery Box TED Talk, completely different but also interesting!

Google Buzz success or failure – In recent weeks I’ve already asked the question do we really need Google Buzz? – another social network being launching, but if you now take a look at some of the numbers of buzzes happening in comparison to Twitter retweets, it makes for interesting reading, especially considering the site in question specialises in social networks and media, surely their readers would be the most eager users of Buzz if the launch had been successful?

My Delicious Bookmarks aka Cool Online Stuff! (10th March 2010) is a post from: Simon Barker

Strange, Weird and Funny Search Phrases (Feb 2010)

Simon Barker — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:44:36 +0000

When you have a website and you start receiving search engine traffic, it can sometimes be rather surprising or even funny to look at some of the search phrases people are using to arrive at your site, quite often they must leave disappointed as the page they end up looking at can be quite removed from what they were clearly looking for!

With that in mind, I recently saw a blog post over at Piggynap in which Zoe showed us some of the best search terms her site in the last month, so I thought I’d do a similar thing here on my blog showing some of the strange, weird and funny search phrases people have used on our sites in the last month, so here they are and which pages they sent people to!…

Simon Barker

“is zath good?” – why of course Zath is good, in fact it’s great, I think you should visit it on a daily basis! Perhaps I should put that on the Simon Barker homepage?

“naked men jigsaw puzzle” – hmmm, not really something I want to spend too much time thinking about! This Jigsaw Puzzle For Sale page probably ended up being a little too tame for them?

“im looking for simon barker” – are you indeed? Well here I am, but I wonder if they found what they were looking on the Simon Barker Naked page?

Gadgets For Men

“dog-end or cloth-cat or sharp-end or bbq sword” – what a strange combination of things to be looking for! At least you found one of them by ending up at the BBQ Sword (Big Barbeque Sword) page!

“turd usb sticks” – I never realised there was a market for these things, perhaps it’s something I should branch out into, it’s certainly different from a Hacked USB Memory Stick!

Tech-Styling

“gadget for counting lots of people” – I’m not sure if this person will have got what they wanted really, you can’t really fit many people in this Money Counting Machine Jar!

“how to put dyson ball vacuum together” – Uh oh, it looks like someone’s been taking things to bits again that perhaps they shouldn’t have, I bet it seemed like such a good idea after those beers last night too! Perhaps you need to just buy a new Dyson Ball Vacuum afterall?

Strange, Weird and Funny Search Phrases (Feb 2010) is a post from: Simon Barker

Apple iPad – My Current Pre-Launch Thoughts

Simon Barker — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:41:12 +0000

We recently saw Steve Jobs unveiling the much rumoured and long awaited Apple tablet device which has been announced as the iPad – and that’s just where the opinions start. Some people think that the iPad name makes sense, keeps in line with the iPod branding, but leaves it open to lots of different uses, whilst others think it’s now a bland name and uninspiring.

This tablet device will come in mobile broadband internet and Wifi-only versions with different amounts of storage capacities, all of which will have an impressive battery-life of around 10 hours, including while browsing the web or playing HD video, so this could well replace many people’s need for a netbook computer, especially when travelling or sat on the sofa at home.

The iPad itself is no real revolution, it’s more of an evolution as it’s essentially an enlarged iPod Touch which a 9.7″ screen that runs a modified version of the iPhone operating system with wifi or 3G options available. What that also means is that current contents of the Apple App Store (all 140,000 apps) are able to run on this device straight away, with developers now being able to create specific iPad apps.

One of the main uses of the iPad looks to be as an eBook reader, which even includes a great way of moving pages, you literally flick between them like a book – is this the end of the buying the Kindle 2 in the UK, Europe and everywhere else?? You’ve also got to wonder about the timing of recently being able to buy a Kindle DX in the UK and Europe? Did Amazon see this coming and wanted to cash in on their e-book reader product while they still could?

The big question everyone must be asking is whether the Apple iPad will be the stylish netbook and Kindle replacement?

Or is it a product trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? Other than giving Apple fanboys another product to eagerly spend their money on? If you want a device that is this kind of size, wouldn’t you prefer to not be locked into the “Apple App Store Ecosystem” and for the same kind of money just get one of the best netbooks out there which would allow you to do more?

With the Apple iPad comes a whole host more opportunities and possibilities, there’s lots more to find out about this tablet device yet with many people having an opinion, do you think this type of tablet device is going to change the way we do things in all walks of life? Or do we not really need an iPad tablet device?

Apple iPad – My Current Pre-Launch Thoughts is a post from: Simon Barker

April Fools, World Changing Tablets, Wembley Stadium & Facebook Features? (Roundup)

Lego Fan Asks Girlfriend To Marry Him With Custom Lego Gift Sets

Simon Barker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:13:25 +0000

So what would you do if you were a Lego fan who was been lucky enough to going out with a girl who was also a Lego fan and you wanted to ask her to marry you?…

Why of course you would create some custom Lego sets of the special times you’ve shared together and of course create a a custom box set of the marriage proposal picnic that you had planned where you’re going to pop the big question of course!

Joe & Kristin got engaged at the actual picnic and you can take a look at some more of the Lego-related photos of the day on Joe’s Flickr page.

Via – Brothers Brick

Lego Fan Asks Girlfriend To Marry Him With Custom Lego Gift Sets is a post from: Simon Barker

No related posts.