Outjesting boredom since 2004.
Avast there, ye land-lubbin’ surfin’ types. Now, we done promised the last pirate post would be the last. And the one before that,
’tis true, aye. But never trust a pirate where there’s rum involved!
Rum? Arrr, lads, rum for us all! Get your practice in, this Sunday is
INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY
[via the excellent Grumpy Gamer]
My Japanese might be bad, but it’s probably going to be good enough soon to get me a job translating video games. All together: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US! Some great of Engrish/Japlish to be found here.
Pic: Engrish.com
Been a while since I’ve updated the t-shirts – I have been busy, with, among other things, beginning to learn Japanese. So Irasshaimase
to you all 🙂 Am doing it through language tapes, and at the moment
“we” (my tape friends and I) have introduced ourselves and are at the
generic-language-course coffee shop, ordering a drink. Makes you wonder if they could build a mall full of the coffee shops
from every language course and stick them all next to each other. How
surreal that would be, especially if you wandered into the wrong one… Anyway.
T-shirts. Japan, as you all probably know, has its weird side,
particularly when it comes to crazy merchandise. Hello Kitty being a good example. If you want to get that kind of stuff
over here, websites like JBox (link) import a range of Japanese market stuff
that runs from bizarre to… a zone of bizarre that’s indescribable in english. (Although JBox isn’t as scary as
partner site JList,
which includes adult stuff….) Anyway, JBox does a nice line in
Japan-inspired t-shirts, like the Domo-kun one below. Some of the
t-shirts are naffly
wide of the mark but some are very neat – there’s a great Totoro one,
showing the famous anime character. If you’re interested in Japan, you
should also sign up for JBox’s well-written newsletter, too – it’s a
very interesting and frequently astonishing read. Link.
Pic: JBox
At some point, I think I’d like to learn a lot more about clouds. For the moment however, here are some pictures, taken from behind my house at the weekend. On Saturdays, I can hear the rippling sound of the crowd when Arsenal score, because I live very close to Highbury, their stadium – the building, in case you’re wondering, is Arsenal’s new
football ground (link for general info, plus a nice render of what it will look like here),
which will seat 60,000 people and cost £357 million. Pictures were taken with a Ricoh Caplio digi-cam, as my Optio hasn’t arrived yet – pleased with the results, though.
…I feel like I should have at least one picture of the tube.
Now
that the blog’s been getting lots of hits, I’ve not done anything on it
in a while…<ahem>. Partly this is because I had to give Pentax
the Optio S4i camera back, so not been taking any pictures this week. I
have shelled out for my own one though, so I should have that next week
<grin>. I’ve also been busy playing with a “Portable Media
Center” (yes, the American spelling is part of the product name). A
Creative Zen one, which runs a special stripped down version of Windows
XP Media Center Edition. It’s essentially a portable music *and* video
player. First impressions: big and ungainly, even when compared to hard
drive MP3 players. I remember seeing a quote from Apple’s Steve Jobs
denying Apple would ever make one because “there’s no video equivalent
of headphones”, and the first thought in my head on seeing the Zen PMC
was that it’s just not going to be useable…
However, when you start using
it, it’s much better than you’d expect – watching the Simpsons on the
Tube, for instance, is brilliant. The mini Win XP MCE operating system
is nice and slick – it’s very easy to use, much better than most MP3
players (including Creative’s Zens… More impressions and pix soon.
Link to official Creative site here.
Traffic to the site has leap to previously unheard of levels, such as double-figures… 😉 Partly because the excellent Josh Rubin’s Cool Hunting linked to me (“we’re not worthy” he thinks, showing his age), as did “gay internet society pioneer” (his own words, not mine) Honeytom. Honeytom is another of my friends blogging in the third person (which makes me think a spin-off comic is not unlikely. Perhaps it could be Honeytom, sidekick Darloboy taking on the “Wired Jester”). Seriously, Honeytom remains one of the best written blogs in Cromer, and possibly the whole of north Norfolk…. Honeytom also deserves some kudos for being the one who prompted enough curiosity (and petty jealousy) in me to get my own blog started…. So now you know.
My first t-shirt post
highlighted excellent online store MoreTVicar, and in particular, a
brand called Eieio. I’ve just had an e-mail from one of their
designers, James, asking me to show off two more of their very cool designs (shown
below – click for an enlarged version). The speakers one in particular is very neat…
Eieio are also working on their
website, www.eieioclothing.com, which will feature an online store, and should be up at the end of September.
Pic: Eieio
Baseball might be one of the dullest sports ever invented (any suggestions for other contenders, please e-mail me, but not with ‘Cricket’ or ‘Golf’, as I did consider these)… Anyway. Baseball. Dull. But, unlikely as it this sounds, it
has had a huge influence on fashion. One of, if not the, best trainer
ever, the Converse Allstar, was originally a baseball shoe. T-shirts,
with a white body and coloured arms, are based on baseball
shirts… It’s a lot impressive a legacy than nylon Football
shirts.
Baseball overshirts are also very cool, and, ever the canny marketeer,
George Lucas’s online Star Wars shop is selling some neat-looking
‘Sith’ baseball overshirts, with ‘Vader, 77’ on the back. They’re not
cheap, even with the devalued dollar, but they do look good. There’s
also (American) Football and Basketball Star Wars sports tops. Take a
look here.
As it was a bank holiday last weekend, I drove out to Oxford. As well as going punting (well, I was sort of a tourist), I went out to see the white horse at Uffington. It’s made from chalk, and spans the side of a hill, and was originally constructed “2 or 3” thousand years ago. (More info here.) Excellent views over the Berkshire downs. The weather was great, and I got some nice pics of very ‘English’ countryside. “Chocolate box England” as my Mum says….
The Wired Jester 