For those of you who love horror fiction and roleplaying, yet also don’t mind a bit of academic/philosophical speculation, let me introduce a wonderful resourse: Collapse volume IV. This is a special edition of an academic journal on philosophy, this time specialising in horror fiction. Those of you who have a particular weakness for Lovecraftian fiction (such as myself) may be interested in Graham Harman’s article, “On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl”, which starts on page 333.

Continue reading The Philosophy of Horror

Just today our ‘office’ made an order at Geeky Clean for their Zom-B-Gone soap. Apparently this soap will help repel zombies and we think that that is awesome. We, of course, want to make sure that this claims actually hold up. Once the soap arrives I’ll be using it everyday for a week to test the soap’s ability to repel zombies.

Continue reading Upcoming post – Zombie Repellent Soap Roadtest

I just have to say, anyone can buy me this anytime… You know, normally when you receive soap as a present you’re all like “what are you trying to say dude?” And they’re all like “your eau de dirty sock isn’t really working out…” (or perhaps more to the point “dude, we TOTALLY didn’t know what to get you…”). Well, this is completely awesome – it’s soap with d20’s in them. That’s right. I’ll just let that sink in a bit…

Continue reading Staying clean the nerdy way – d20 soap

I don’t really know what to say… It is a truly magnificant piece of lego engineering. The Lego Terminator is apparently part of a project to build movie themed lego constructs. The best part about it is that it talks! Frickin’ awesome.

If you visit the site (check the link below) you will see a video of the lego terminator in action. Is it the best lego model ever? Probably not… but its still pretty incredible. If you want to build one yourself there are full instructions on the website.

(Oh, and if you think the smile is a little creepy, you are not alone…)

Thinking Bricks – Terminator Robot

[Via Engadget]

The new video from the Microsoft campaign featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld is aout. I have to say, this is a lot better. The free willingness that these two guys have to make fun of themselves is just incredible (“You have  a huge house hovering over Seattle like some mothership, and I have so many cars I get caught in my own traffic…”). Its starting to become a little more apparent where they are going with these, but I’ll let you make up your own minds…

Came across a post on Wired today about Metallica’s u-turn embrace of the internet (probably because of the shining success Radiohead and NIN have had) and their new YouTube channel for fans.

Contained in this post is a fantastic stop-time Lego rendition of Whiplash

Dark Fantasy was a radio program which aired for a short stint from 1941 to 1942. The audio plays were written by Scott Bishop, an author who had penned a number of short stories of weird fiction for various magazines, and was later to go on to the more widely known radio production known as the Sealed Book. My first introduction to this series of shows was while listening to the Cthulhu Podcast, which included the story The Demon Tree, which was based on the old English myth of the Strangling Oak. I listened to this while on my evening constitutional. In the dark, with the trees looming, I found it instantly chilling. Some stories show a Lovecraftian influence, and some of the names of the characters and places show that Bishop must have been influenced by Lovecraft’s writings.

It is, of course, also filled with wonderful 1940’s radio theatre cheese, including warbling organ, sexist stereotypes etc. But that all adds to the flavour.

The whole series can be downloaded both free and legally from the good folks at the Internet Archive.

There are few things more outstanding than huge Lego constructs – and this one is an absolute doozy. A group in Hong Kong going by the name The Hong Kong User Group has built a faithful reproduction of the venues for the Olympics using, you guessed it, Lego pieces. The result is truly impressive, and well worth visiting the link to catch all the pictures of it.

One thing about this really upsets me though. How come nobody told me about Lego User Groups, hey? Why the big friggin’ secret? I have stacks of Lego to contribute, a good eye for detail AND mum gave me more deoderant, so that’s no longer a problem… So… where do I sign up?

Read more about it here.

Apparently the hugely awesome masterpiece The Call of Cthulhu came into public domain in April 2008… How could I miss it! I’m three months late! Anyway, here is a link where you can download the title in various formats:

The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

I. The Horror In Clay

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things – in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too intented to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu 1928

Lego is automatically awesome. It is Danish, and as such, it is, without question, immediately the best. No, I am not biased… bite me. This case mod, while not being a new idea, is an excellent implementation of a classic idea – Lego and computers.

Check out the site for the full details of how he put it together… really nice work.