Dylan Smith

All women love ABBA & the Grease soundtrack.
All men hate them.

This post was prompted when I was sent the new Vodacom Summer TV ad:

Before the opening words “Summer loving” could be completed, I had already become the victim of a mini-sick. My body seems to reject this music. And I don’t think I’m alone.

Fellas: ever remember being on a dance floor at a club somewhere when an ABBA or Grease tune comes on and all the girls squeal with excitement? If you ever thought “Wow, I love this song. I’m so excited and I know exactly how to dance to this without feeling like a complete tool”, please let me know so we can disprove the conjecture.

That’s right, folks. You’re looking at the first watch I ever owned. The enigma known as the Casio W23 that was bequeathed to me upon the occasion of the celebration of my 8th year. According to the legend, my mom got it at the Pick ‘n Pay Hypermarket in Durban North.

Of course, anyone who lived in Durban in the 80s knows that when you bought a new watch, you removed the rubber “factory” wrist strap IMMEDIATELY and bought a Gotcha, Rip Curl or Billabong velcro strap from your local surf store. You then spent the entire afternoon trying to install your new watch strap, which usually involved fruitlessly attempting to squeeze those annoying metal pins that hold the strap in place back into the holes in the watch body with a butter knife; holes which were about 3 microns in diameter, and required an electron microscope to find. The fact that the velcro strap was about 3 times the thickness of the original strap didn’t help much either. Ultimately, you’d end up standing in the driveway waiting for your dad to come home, clutching the watch body, velcro strap and 2 slightly bent pins in your bleeding fingers.

I wore it from the age of 8 until my 20th birthday, when I was presented with a Rip Curl Tidemaster watch. The only reason I agreed to take the Casio off my arm was because the Rip Curl knew the exact tidal movements and phase of the moon at any given time, which seemed like pure witchcraft.

This watch was so awesome. It had local and alternate date, time and day of the week, a stop watch, countdown, alarm and a light. It took 12 years of abuse, and came out the other side with only a slight chip in the glass face, and a light that no longer worked. And, believe it or not, I only changed the battery twice in the entire time that I owned it.

Come to think of it, I only changed the velcro straps about 3 times as well, which sometimes resulted in a tangy aroma around left wrist area. Don’t judge me.

And as I type this, the date and time just hit 11th November, 11:11:11, an occasion which I waited for all year round when I wore the W23. Why? Because, due to the layout of the display, the watch would read:

11-11
11:11:11

Why that was (and still is) so fascinating is beyond me, but I hope you enjoyed that little bit of nostalgia.

I was shooting photos of the fountain in Piccadilly Circus today, and I noticed this little guy in the corner of one of my throwaway shots. His expression is classic!

Yesterday the BBC reported that Rick Astley has been named as a nominee for “Best Act Ever” at thsi year’s MTV Europe Music Awards. The internet has spoken and MTV have listened. So can the “Rickrolling” meme really break through into the mainstream?

Rick is up against U2, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Green Day and Tokio Hotel. Certainly formidible opponents, but I’m fairly confident Rick is going take the award. And what a sweet, sweet thing that will be. Not because I particularly like Rick, but because I can’t wait for Bono’s reaction to being beaten by Rick Astley.

After all, remember how much Bono HATES being #2?

Oh please, oh please…

I’ve accepted the fact that I’m a neat freak. So much of a neat freak, in fact, that when my Recycle Bin is empty but the icon still appears to show that there is stuff in there, I empty it again. Well, Windows didn’t like it when I did that…

When trying to purge my already-empty Recycle Bin, I got this disturbing request.

Ok, just what the hell is THAT!? Luckily I didn’t do my usual knee-jerk-click-of-the-OK-button, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting this right now (well, at least not from this computer).

So there you have another undocumented feature of Windows: the ability to send spine-tingling bursts of pure adrenaline through your body at any given moment.

Cnet News has an interesting article about Google Chrome, and Google’s agenda behind the browser.

They propose that Google did some research indicating that when Google’s search pages responded faster, people tended to search more. More searches means more AdWord impressions and a direct boost in revenue.

Could Chrome be Google’s new weapon in churning out more search result pages? With an internet population with high-speed browsers, Google could very easily end up boosting it’s SERP output and therefore it’s bottom line.

I’m not naive enough to suggest that Google expects the entire internet to suddenly start using it’s browser. That is where Open Source comes in. By releasing Chrome’s source code for free, Google is essentially giving the development community some fairly advanced technology in the hope that it gets integrated into competing browsers (*cough* IE8 *cough*). That way, they don’t need to win the market share war. If all browsers are faster, Google still wins.

This also goes some way to explaining why Google can’t rely on Mozilla anymore. Firefox users see the browser’s Add-On feature as a major plus, but we don’t see any of that in Chrome. Add-Ons are a major cause of Firefox performance headaches, and I doubt Google would be able to convince Firefox to drop Add-Ons. Perhaps Google plans to introduce an Add-On program with tigher controls over performance, so that it’s primary objective of speed is preserved?

It certainly makes for interesting times.

This is one of the coolest uses of YouTube I’ve ever come across. Samsung Canada have create a “choose your own adventure” series of video clips, leveraging YouTube’s new overlayed link system. Very original idea, and well executed.

Yep, I got slapped.