Episode 112: “We all know time goes this way, but what if it also goes this way?”
Weird 13 minute movie about time travel:
Hirsute from A.J. Bond on Vimeo.
Via Geeks Are Sexy
While my definition is somewhat different than that of the Society For Geek Advancement (I don’t think you have to have an interest in technology: for instance, what about movie geeks?), I do like the idea:
[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]
The Society For Geek Advancement was founded upon the principles that everyone should embrace their inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to be the geek that keeps on giving. The Society is connected with a Room to Read, a charity which builds libraries and schools in developing countries. If you buy an I Am A Geek T-shirt via the Geek Advancement site, part of the proceeds will go to that charity.
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Interesting links for May 13th through May 14th:
If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know? That’s the premise of TiMER.
Emma Caulfield (Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) plays Oona, a girl who lives in a world where an implanted device on your wrist counts down to the moment the wearer meets his/her true love. Everyone has a soulmate out there, somewhere, and each person’s timer will go off on the exact moment you two meet. But what if you have a timer and it remains blank?
I can’t embed the trailer here, but head on over to YouTube to check it out. I really like the look of it; it just feels like a weird and unique romantic comedy. Plus I love Anya, Anyanka, ehm I mean Emma Caulfield.
TiMER – Release Date: 26 April Tribeca Film Festival (USA), not yet announced for wide release
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As I mentioned in the SocialMediaCampLondon2 blog post a couple of weeks ago, that day ended with a Photo Scavenger Hunt. It turned out to be hilarious!
The rules were simple: Kat (from SafetyGoat) had created a list of items, which we had to find and take photos of, and each item would be awarded a number of points. You could score more points per photo if the photo was funny, or had at least one team member in it. I joined a team with Cristiano, Kevin and Farhan, and we called our team The Auto-Savers, in reference to Kat having lost the first version of the scavenger hunt list (because she closed the file without saving it).
The items on the list were ranging from simple to absurd; here’s a sample:
A jogger – 5 points
A Canadian flag – 10 points
Hamburger sauce – 10 points
Person with bright pink shirt giving thumbs up – 15 points
A unibrow – 25 points
Genuine celeb – 30 points
We had a great start, finding a lot of the items immediately. Here’s a couple of our photos:
A square (with team members!)
Person with bright pink shirt giving thumbs up
Kevin with onions
Someone on rollerblades
Me pouring a pint
The most surprising, amazing thing that happened to us though? We met Catherine Tate! (and unintentionally managed to annoy her) Our team had split up at the Waitrose in the Brusnwick Centre to find a couple of the items, leaving Cristiano at the front of the store with the camera to take photos whenever the rest of us had found something. We all came back to Cristiano discussing something about some item, only to have him shush us and whisper “I think Catherine Tate just walked past us”.
We didn’t believe him at first, but on closer inspection it turned out it was actually her! I walked up to her and asked her autograph, while Cristiano took a photo of us. She mistakenly thought he was paparazzi and turned irritatingly away from him; I apologized and said he was with me. We tried explaining the photo scavenger hunt, but by then she was already annoyed we had disturbed her shopping:
Still pretty cool, right? After that we wandered around for a little while, before heading back early to the pub to meet the other teams. In the end we won with a massive 470 points! If I remember correctly that was about 100 points more than the runner-up (so even if we hadn’t gotten our celebrity, we still would have won). The prize was a Hot Rod toy car and tickets to Spring Awakening (more about that another time).
It was a fun end to an already great day, and I love to do something similar again. Anybody else interested in organizing our own scavenger hunt?
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As some of my Twitter followers may have noticed yesterday I wanted to do something crcreative with butternut squash. I got a lot of replies back suggesting curries, but I settled on something (in my eyes) simpler: gnocchi.
I didn’t make the gnocchi itself from scratch, but everything else (= the sauce) I pretty much did. Here’s how it turned out:
For those of you who might want to recreate this dish, here’s the recipe:
– Gnocchi
– 300 gr Butternut Squash
– 300 gr Mushrooms
– 3 strips of Parma Ham
– 200 ml Creme Fraiche
– Garlic, Thyme and Pepper
First I put the butternut squash for half an hour in the oven (in a buttered oven dish). The gnocchi you just have to prepare as it says on the package (2-3 minutes in boiling water). Then it’s basically just throwing the mushrooms, parma ham and butternut squash together in a pan. After a couple of minutes, add the creme fraiche, the spices and some water, and Tada! That’s it!
Easy, right?
Episode 111: “Cowabunga”
Interview with the Cookie Monster… Need I say more? Enjoy:
[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]
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Last weekend was Yahoo’s Open Hack 2009, two days full of hacking, networking and fun. I’ve been to two similar events before (Over The Air and Mashed), but never ended up hacking anything together (choosing instead to make swedes and trailers). This time around I really wanted to make something.
I’ve recently been getting into PHP and have started messing around with APIs. And I had a cool idea for the weekend: Flickr Ego Tracker. An app that would track activity on Flickr photos that I was in and update me when someone commented or favourited. I was slightly optimistic about me being able to hack that in 24 hours though. While my programming skills are pretty okay, I had to read up on and try a lot of stuff I’ve never touched before.
Photo by Nate Lanxon – CNET UK
I didn’t end up presenting my app, but I still feel as if I actually did do something this year. I didn’t even play a single game on the Saturday night, opting instead to go on with my hacking. Maybe next time I’ll manage to actually finish something (although I am continuing working on my little project).
There were a lots of great apps hacked together that weekend, like Dan‘s London Undersound, an app that uses last.fm and the Oyster API to visualize what music you listen where on the underground, and Cristiano‘s ShouldIBackupMy, an app that would tell you whether or not you should backup certain data (fill in Magnolia and it says “Too late”, fill in Yahoo, it says “probably”, fill in google, it says ” Not really, but why not”).
It was a great two days and I do feel as if I actually participated in the right way this time. To check out more of the hacks (including the winners), take a look at the Open Hack wiki.
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I’m a sucker for the old musical Disney movies, so I’ve been looking forward to The Princess and The Frog ever since I heard about it two years ago. And now we finally have a trailer!
Like most of the other Disney movies, this movie is based on a fairy tale, with one key difference. Here the setting has been uprooted and moved to another location and time: The Princess and The Frog is set in New Orleans’ French Quarter during the Jazz age (1920s). Take a look at the trailer:
[Watch the trailer on MissGeeky.com]
I’m not too sure about the change of setting, but with both main characters as frog and the New Orleans swamp as a backdrop, I can see what the writers were thinking. I’m really curious to see/hear a bit of the music; in my eyes, it’s always been the songs that have made me love/hate a Disney movie.
The Princess and The Frog – Release Date: December 2009 (US), February 2010 (UK)
I’m wondering if these seats from Qayot were intentionally meant to look like PacMan; either way the result is wonderfully geeky:
[Via Shiny Shiny]
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