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I don’t know if they’re actually airing these adverts Stateside, or whether they’re a web-only phenomenon for the moment, but Penny Arcade drew my attention to them today. Colour me unimpressed. If the intention was to shake off Vista’s sales blues, or to generally ‘connect’ with the wider consumer in a way that Apple does so well but Microsoft almost never does, but I’d have to classify this effort as a failure of sizable proportions.

Maybe it’s me; maybe I just don’t ‘get’ Seinfeld-style humour, or maybe it’s that Bill Gates really doesn’t remotely inspire or entertain me (making skiploads of cash every nanosecond might inspire some people to revere him, but not me). From my perspective though this is a fairly poor attempt at deadpan humour which leaves me with an impression of Gates being even more of an arrogant but incredibly dull grey suit than I thought before. Worse - it seems his thinking is that acting like a dull grey suit in wacky surroundings will somehow make him endearing and amusing, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s equivalent to your Uncle Henry who, despite bearing an unnatural affinity with tweed, thinks he can transform into John Travolta when he hits the wedding reception dance floor. Deeply painful to watch.

Tip to Microsoft - if you want endearing consumer-friendly ads, write Gates out of the script next time, he’s a dead weight.

*edit: I know this is old news but I’m behind a little, very busy lately!

You’ve no doubt heard about the first tests of CERN’s LHC today, but the folks at Reddit are clearly ahead of the game on this and are making sure that the scientists are adequately prepared for the discoveries that may be around the corner. They’ve taken the prudent step of sending CERN a crowbar, a copy of the Half Life Strategy Guide, and a ‘training headcrab’, together with a simple note:

“Get this to Gordon Freeman. He’ll know what to do.”

When pan-dimensional hell breaks loose, we’ll know who to thank for our ultimate salvation.

I blogged a little while ago about the soul-crushing tedium that was my brief, never to be repeated experience with EVE Online. Well, happily Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation has waded in with his size 9’s and had me cheering from the stands in between chuckles.

Amen, brother Yahtzee, amen.

This is one of my favourite recent ZeroPunctuation episodes, after all what’s not to love when he can somehow find a way to include a Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich reference in a MMORPG review?

The Muppets were cool. But, times have changed and now we have Fur TV, a distinctly adult, brazen take on the kind of belly laughs you can get out of glorified sock puppets. I’ve caught it a couple of times on TV recently and the first time I randomly came across it I almost choked on my late-night cup of tea. Like all shock-comedy I’m not sure it’ll be long-lasting, but damn is it funny right now. It’s made in the UK too!

Warning: I’ve posted clips that are some of the ‘cleanest’ on offer (for example, there is no pimping in either of these clips), but if you’re easily offended, don’t watch

The Guernsey Festival of Comedy was great last year, and so we snapped up tickets to this year’s local stand-up event, since the only other way we’d get to see acts like this is to travel to a major city. Paul Tonkinson was headlining this year which made it a no-brainer, we’ve seen him on the Comedy Store before and he’s always excellent.

As expected it was a great night, Paul didn’t disappoint in the slightest and thus crowned the evening off perfectly, but the other acts were really good too. In particular Janice Phayre, whom we hadn’t seen before, but who I can best describe as a hyperactive ball of slightly filthy Irish comedy energy. Great stuff.

There were actually some empty seats this time around which was surprising, and I hear that they still have some spare tickets for one or other of Saturday’s performances (Friday is sold out), so if you’re local and you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend it.

And just on a weird tangent, while searching for an image for this post I randomly came across The Bezathon. Awesome