Titanium Software Unlimited

New Trick

2010-04-12T17:44:00.000+01:00

A selected member of the audience presses a large button in front of the stage.

This charges up a platform and, a couple of seconds later, it gives the magician a kick into the air, making it look like he has jumped up really high.

At the apex of the jump trajectory, the magician waves his wand and sparkles and stars issue forth from it in the direction of a coat hanger, to the extreme edge of the stage.

A T-shirt slowly materialises on the coat hanger, swinging from side to side.
The audience member gets onto stage, picks up the T-shirt, and shows it to the audience to prove that it's real. They get to take it home with them.

A special pheromone has been sprayed onto the T-shirt that makes it irresistible to wear.

Two days after the performance, the audience member will still be wearing the T-shirt. At the same time in the evening as the act was, it will dematerialise, leaving the audience member topless.

The clever bit is that, during the wearing time, the T-shirt will have stored up some of the heat energy generated by the person. When it gets re-materialised back onto the coat hanger, it wirelessly transmits the stored energy to a battery under the platform for the performance after the current one. In this way, this trick becomes the first illusion to be given the coveted "A" energy rating.

I might make a flash to explain this in more detail for when I submit it to the trick approvals department.

Gliding

2010-04-12T17:33:00.002+01:00

I going to buy a hang-glider and fly around wearing no trousers. I will shit on birds that are flying below me and they will fall to the ground under the weight.

In the photo, I *am* wearing trousers. Sorry about that.

Spatula man

2010-04-12T17:27:00.003+01:00

I’ve found a photo of “spatula man” or “fish slicer man” on google maps. I was telling you all about him last week. This is the guy whose wife married him thinking that she’d be Ok with his wooden spatula hand, but she kept getting splinters and realised that it really wasn’t Ok. She’d get him varnish for his birthday as a hint, but he wouldn’t understand. “Why have you got me varnish?” he’d say, “We don’t need to varnish anything?”

She was in tears when she spoke to me (in my agony uncle capacity) over google’s webcam application. Also, he gets words wrong and that’s bugging her. Like, when he’s talking about work, he’ll say “Yeah, I’m a real hard grifter”. When she points out his mistake, he’ll deny it and insist that he said “grafter” all along. In frustration, she recorded him talking and played back his mistakes to him. He told her, quite seriously, that the recorder was broken.

Whilst asleep she moved his spatula hand into a tin of wood varnish. He woke up saying that he’d had dreams about swimming and his wife found that he’d wet the bed with creosote. The weird thing was that his spatula hand was still unvarnished. She still can’t figure out what happened.

GeordieBorough has lowest gun crime figures

2009-07-10T14:36:00.000+01:00

Geordies have nipples on top of their shoulders and this is why frequently you see them walking around with milk dripping down their arms. The slippiness this generates makes holding things difficult which is why Geordieborough has one of the lowest gun crime incident numbers in the country.

Sieg Wan

2009-05-06T12:55:00.000+01:00

Sieg Wan is a cross-dressing gay half-german half-chinese fashion critic/advisor nazi who totters around in ill-fitting high heels.

Sieg Wan put on his jimmy choos and slung his prada handbag over his shoulder.
He tottered up to his pink mini, registration plate SIEG WANK, and flounced into the driver's seat.
After adjusting his make-up he moved the rear view mirror back into position and sighed,
"Trime to hrit the road, Sieg. A nazi's gotta do what a nazi's gotta do. Gotta strick to the mission, that's what I gotta dro. Sieging the Heil. That's the rife for mre."
Sieg revved the engine and saluted once, twice, three times a gay nazi, beeped his little nazi schwastika horn, and gunned it down the heilway.

Brown Tar

2009-04-23T10:05:00.000+01:00

Morganon Reichberg: I just did a terrible thing that will likely destroy any remaining respect that you may have for me.
I manipulated the coffee machine glands so that they might secrete some precious coffee, but they ran dry after they had filled no more than a 1/3 of a cup. What to do? In such situations, I ask myself, “What would Hitler do?”. My answer was to top up the murky brown tar with instant coffee and boiling water. After that I added milk and poured all of the sugar from the “Sugar” and “Sugar lumps” tins into the filthy concoction. The resulting drink is so thick that I am having to spoon it out like a yoghurt.

Henri Le Croissant

2008-07-21T10:51:00.001+01:00

Le Croissant, Henri

New responsibilities

2008-06-26T17:01:00.001+01:00

It's my new job. I broke the automated barcode generator and now every time anyone wants a new barcode they go through me. I get about 100,000 emails from AngelarkCorp a day. They get all the best barcodes. I'm very proud of the work I do. One day I hope to see a news article:

PersephoneCorp cure cancer with screening programme. The wonder drug was found in tube "MORGANONBARGELD02"

I'd be happy then and could retire. I text barcodes to ContanCorp because they don't get through that many a day and it's easier for the operators because they don't have computers in the tube warehouses, not even laptops. Laptops are outlawed by the leader of ContanCorp because a laptop once fell on his toe and it broke into 5 pieces (his toe).

What waspy fox?

2008-06-26T16:57:00.001+01:00

Are these fragments of your consciousness going to add up to anything? It sort of feels like you're feeding me pieces of a code that will at some point make me assassinate someone.

Cats tending an orchard

2008-06-26T16:49:00.005+01:00

A tiny orchard of bonsai cherry trees tended to by cats dressed in pinafores that walk around on their hind legs.

An oily man called Meachus

2008-06-26T16:49:00.003+01:00

"Help my hands are so oily I can not pick up food or put on a tie.
I can not turn a tap on or pick up a glass.
I can not wear gloves because they fill up with oil and fall off."

Andrew Morgan's ear wax polishing service

2008-06-26T16:48:00.003+01:00

We polish your ear wax while you wait.

"EAR WAX SHINE WHILE U WAIT"

"Wax while you wait." Wait for what?! For the guy to stop shining your ears?

Avoiding client social events

2008-06-26T11:03:00.002+01:00

Advice given to Adam Ferret for getting out of a pub social experience with clients:

Tell them a long, complicated, winding story with a hint of desperation on your face, like you're really lonely and want someone to listen to you. After 10 minutes or so they will have glazed over and you can leave.

If you are stuck for something, I will lend you this story. You must return it within a week whether you use it or not. Ideally, you would whisper "Copyright 2008 Morganon Reichberg" just after you've told it, but I'll be happy if you just think that instead.

Tell them that you married a girl called Ferret and that she's now called Ferret Ferret. Tell them that before you got married you changed your middle and first names to Ferret. So, the registrar/priest/whatever at the wedding said,

"You may now kiss the bride, Ferret Ferret, Ferret Ferret Ferret."

After the vows, a dog came crashing through the window, looked at you expectantly, and said,

"Ferret?"

Then you stared angrily at the dog and yelled,

"I'm Giles Wolf, damnit!"

and you shook your fist at the ceiling. After doing that, miniature wedding cakes fell from small holes in the ceiling and everyone cheered!

The wedding march started as you walked back up the aisle with your new wife. Occasionally, you caught someone's eye, clicked your fingers and winked at them, like the Fonze.

Your brother-in-law was wearing a pretty hat and one of the small cakes fell into the brim of his bonnet. He took out the cake and started eating it, all the time repeating,

"I like cakes!".

He had a look of glee on his face as he caught the flowers that your bride, Ferret Ferret, threw. He then stared at his feet.

A month later, that staring at the feet worried you so you asked him what was going on. It turned out that he has an allergy to rocks, but that he needs an injection of gypsum every day to stop a "heart cascade condition" from worsening.

At that point you realised that the life-long disease you caught in a trip to Kota Kinabalu has turned into a blessing. You can help your new brother-in-law because every Tuesday you secrete hypoallergenic gypsum from a tiny wound on your knee.

So every Tuesday just after work, your brother-in-law harvests your medicated knee juice (a week's supply) and uses it to help him live life to its full. He has never felt better and you have realised that in some mysterious way we are all connected.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-06-25T20:22:00.002+01:00

Employees at Titanium Towers rejoyced today after Dwayne Dung smashed the all time world record for being late for work. Preparations for the record attempt started last night with an email warning he would be late as he had an appointment at the STD clinic. Throughout the day employees wondered how long he would manage to stay away from work.

The previous record was thought to be around 11:45 and as this time approached employees started to wonder if the 'golden noon' would be broken. As it turned out though there was nothing close about the situation. Dwayne smashed the record finally entering the building at 14:17.

Today provided ideal conditions for the record attempt as Englebert was out of the office.

Mr Dung can expect to make a handsome amount from his efforts in sponsorship. Interested parties are thought to be Facebook, Wikipedia and a raft of video sharing sites.

Frivolous Friday

2008-05-23T08:43:00.002+01:00

I blog here before you now, at the commencement of an historic day at Titanium Towers. Directors, managers, business analysts and team leaders are boozing and shmoozing a select group of "users" in the sordid bars and restaurants of London town. Back in the office the plebs, the coughers, the immigrants, the guru and the knob are left to wreak their own brand of merry havoc. Once the source control police (AKA the guru and the coughers) have been bound and gagged, expect components to be checked in out of dependency order, spurious branches and a bevvy of pirate kittens adorning the GUIs. More later...

Recent Bugs/CRs

2008-05-16T11:53:00.006+01:00

Component	Summary
Ordering System	Deliverables to be despatched to next-door neighbour if recipient is ovulating
Fulfilment Module	Cherry picking compound into rancid fruitbowl spawns nectarine-housefly hybrid (constantly aroused)
Inventory Subsystem	Tube-rack 'TR0005' contents shown as 100% semen

Memoirs of a former Titaniumite

2008-05-16T04:51:00.005+01:00

Having recently been invited by one Adam Ferret to join Titanium Software's secret splinter group blog, I decided that today shall be the day that I make my first contribution to the Titanium Software secret blog of mystery and wonder.

Raymond Ely and I spoke recently and I was amazed at how fast memories of life at Titanium Software came back, a world of anticipation, concealed groups, secret email chains and lunches, social embarrassment, extended bouts of influenza, unrequited tea rounds, darts, pool and of course cookies.

Anticipation rears its ugly head in many ways at Titanium Towers but none more so than that of collisions between one Julian Sadman and various inanimate objects around the office. It appears that Mr. Sadman - along with no immune system (widely thought to be due to the lack of animal in his diet) - has no muscle memory. In my time at Titanium, Raymond and I would sit and wait in joyful hope for Sadman to bump into plants, desks, chairs and the array of boxes that surrounded Stephan's desk, often while sipping water and walking slowly back to his desk not realising that he had spawned a flurry of netsends between various Titanium employees.

It appears that Englebert is in the habit of employing uncoordinated employees, who are unable to control their feet and have low levels of spacial-awareness. Employees like Choyklet Dejestiw (from the former eastern block country of Polarmania) and Adolf (rumoured to have purchased his wife for 4 carrots, an old Atari computer and a deep welled vial of unknown compound/substance/matter) spring to mind. Adolf also has trouble with the word yes - it appears that it comes out as an extended "NO" usually preceeded by an extended "errrr" - causing ears within a 10-metre radius to weep.

I often wonder, have there been any more ill-coordinated additions to Titanium Software?

Stay tuned for more "Memoirs of a former Titaniumite" which are really just digitally regurgitated random thoughts from a previous life!

Titanium Awards

2008-05-08T22:43:00.002+01:00

The first award, "Most costume changes in a single performance" goes to.....

[drumroll]

Dwayne Dung

[applause]

for his Lycra, turnups then jeans routine

Recently in the Office

2008-05-08T22:29:00.003+01:00

It's 9:30 on a warm, sunny day

[Enter stage right Marcus Finland]

Marcus wanders over to desk

[Enter stage right Stephan Bernard Yotis]

Marcus: (To Stephan) Blimey, have the clocks gone back? You're in early aren't you?

A hush decends on Titanium Towers. Shocked developers sit in stunned silence fearing a reprisal. Stephan makes no audible response, but you can tell the evil mastermind has already started to craft a cunning plan.

To be continued...

Green Tea

2008-05-08T13:24:00.003+01:00

I've just made a cup of Dwayne's Japanese green tea. About to have my first taste now. I'm a bit nervous, but here goes...

Bleuch! It's bad! Well, actually it's ok. The second sip is better. It's drinkable. I could get to like it I suppose. Mmmmm. The third sip is even better. I like it. Oh my god, I love it. This is the best drink I've ever tasted! I must have more!

I feel....different. More powerful, somehow. I feel strong. Strong enough to climb and run and jump. Ha ha! I am strong!

And my senses are heightened. I see and feel everything. Time seems to run more slowly. I can anticipate things before they happen. This is amazing! I can make things happen with just the power of my mind. I am becoming omniscient. Omnipotent.

Hmmmm. I also have a strange desire to wear lycra...

Cookie Situation Resolved

2008-05-02T22:31:00.003+01:00

Employees at Titanium Software were relieved today after the long cookie drought ended. Despite there being no Friday meeting, employees were deluged with no less than 3 packets of cookies. Shortbread was an added (but ultimately unwanted) bonus.

Wary of recent calls for strike action Englebert provided not the standard Tesco cookies, but instead opted for the luxury M&S variety which had been made specially to order and which still contained slightly melted chocolate chips.

It is uncertain whether artificial flavourings in the cookies were to blame for an outbreak of strange cartoon drawing behaviour that occurred towards the end of the day.

New products

2008-05-02T16:50:00.005+01:00

This is a new design for the Flick Spin Ranger. Sales have been falling recently and a redesign is what Canny has told me will revive them by 500%.

This is Ray. Ray wears a wig and a dress with "erg" written on it. He has 5 little wheels instead of feet.

This is Ray's signature. Canny has told me that kids will only buy a toy nowadays if the toy has a signature associated with it. I don't know why.

This is Frederick the small elephant with bad hair.

This is Alfred Noble. He tap dances.

Email Woes

2008-04-29T15:23:00.002+01:00

Englebert: We are having trouble receiving emails from the guys at Banoffee-Adverts. Can you check why we are failing to receive them?

Stephan: Failing to receive them in what way?

Englbert: In that we are failing to receive them.

Stephan: Error at line 56. (A)bort (R)etry (F)ail?

Smallest satsuma segment... ever

2008-04-28T17:02:00.003+01:00

Today I found the smallest satsuma segment that I have ever seen. It is possible that the satsuma contained a smaller segment but that it was so small my eye couldn't resolve it. Damn it, if it were that small, I doubt any sane person would call it a 'satsuma segment'. Maybe a tasty bit of satsuma dust or something.

Anyway, to give you an idea of scale, the photo shows the segment next to my left-hand small finger. Unlike Adolf Coredump, I don't have giant fingers the size of sausages so it genuinely is a very small satsuma segment.

I measured the segment and checked in the Guinness Book of World Records and it really is the smallest segment that any human has ever found (and reported). I can't be bothered registering my find with the Guinness World Records authority because they are always pestering me about something and I don't have the patience to deal with them at the moment.

Bone Density

2008-04-25T13:37:00.003+01:00

I recently received a telegram from former employee Ciaran Morningtown via the social networking site forceBlock. Exiled in Australia after leaving his job in a cloud of controversy he reliably informs me he is now working for a company that makes websites for small vibrating devices.

"You would love it out here, they give you beer at work on fridays at your desk. I am designing a new 'Boys Gone Wild' site."

A refugee from Ireland, Ciaran started work at Titanium Towers two years ago.

When asked about his former workmates, he had the following to say about Julian Sadman:

"His bone density is similar to that of hydrogen. Christ man, eat a steak!""

If you would like to know more about Ciaran then stay tuned for further updates.