When I was a child which was oh so long ago, neither parents nor teachers had any reservations about smacking recalcitrant children. These days, however, it is considered not only improper but also illegal.
As the father of two children, one of whom is in his “terrible twos” and can be quite a handful at the best of times, I thought I’d share a method that I found to be quite effective. We’ve used the usual means of discipline - ‘time outs’, ‘naughty step’, holding back rewards until he displayed desired behaviour etc. all with a varying degree of success but, recently, he seems to be merely tolerating these methods as nothing but interruptions to his day.

There’s one method that I’ve found to be quite effective and that’s simply to take him for a car ride. I find that taking him out and having a chat gets him to calm down fairly quickly. The theory is that by removing him from the immediate situation and providing a change of scenery, he’s allowed to focus on something different. Once he has the opportunity to change perspective, he becomes much better behaved and is getting a good understanding of his place within the family and what we feel is acceptable and appropriate behaviour.

The best thing about it?
(more…)

Did you know that, according to the figures, more people play World of Warcraft than live in Switzerland? In fact, at over 10 million subscribers, there’s about as many people playing Blizzard’s all-conquering MMO as there are people who live in Belgium. Maybe more by now. Azeroth could feasibly have it’s own representation at the United Nations.

While personally I’ve managed to kick the habit on account of trying to focus on getting writing done and not introducing Alliance scum to the taste of a freshly conjured shadow bolt, there are some who are not so lucky. For some people, it is an all consuming obssession that pervades their lives, threatening their jobs and destroying their relationships. There is no hope for these people.

Or perhaps there is - World of Wifecraft
(more…)

So have you seen the video for Weezer’s single “Pork and Beans?” You haven’t? Well it’s all over YouTube which is quite appropriate really seeing as how it features references (and the stars of) some of the most “famous” internet and YouTube celebs. We’re talking the Numa Numa kid, the Star Wars kid, Miss South Carolina, Afro Ninja, “All Your Base…” and loads more. 24 of them in fact. You can watch the video after the jump:
(more…)

Only a couple of weeks until it’s all over for another year. Time to re-blog an old drunken doodle.

© Tabula Rasa

Or an ancient and mystical device used to awaken the Old Ones from the aeons-long slumber?

When that quality carbide ball touched the surface of the paper, it was not ink that came out. From a distance I heard the screams of men and the cackling of innumerable ravens. I stopped, cold and sweating profusely. I looked down at the Bic Crystal black medium ballpoint pen which I held in my hand, only to see darkness. I dashed it against the wall, recoiling in horror. I saw in the corner of my eye my faithful notebook, which now lay on the ground. Once unmarred, I saw now the small mark which I had made with the devil’s own pen. It spread across the page like a plague, and looking at it I gazed upon true horrors. For, what I thought had been ink was in fact a portal to a dark, unforgiving dimension. A portal whose maw was now widening to engulf all hope and joy in the world.

‘God, what have I done?’ I exclaimed as I weeped and fell to my knees, ‘What have I done?’

From beyond the Dark Gate I heard these words, words which I can never forget. A terrible, booming voice said to me, ‘Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn!’

I ran, blindly stumbling, away from that place and never looked back. My only hope is that none shall follow in the path I’ve walked down, too blinded by hubris to realize my follies.

If you have problem, if no-one else can help and if you can find it, then perhaps you can use… a Bic crystal ballpoint pen.*

*Disclaimer: Amazon cannot be held responsible for any damage caused to Interstellar Vehicular Personnel Transportation Units due to erroneous substitution of the aforementioned product as an alternative power source to trilithium-dioxide crystals.

Despite the feverish protestations of my fine Kargallian friend, no known number of these “crystal pens” will serve to power my stalled Lancer Category WarHawk Galactic Fighter. Grk’Tkoth had better not be around when I get back to Star Base XT-3. I know exactly the correct “power port” of his to stick these useless devices! Three thumbs down!

You might like to try our cut-price Uranium Ore instead.

that you’re going to get asked this week is this:

Who would win in a fight: a minotaur armed with a trident or a centaur with a crossbow?

Hint: if you answered centaur, you are quite clearly so very, very wrong.

From the same people that brought you “Gulf War Part 2: The Return” comes Zombie War

(via Bill Martell)

Via John August (writer of The Nines) I find these great little videos by the “Script Cops”. Very amusing.

Watch all three here.

I’ve never seen Mary Poppins.

I’d probably be more inclined to watch it if this was a representative trailer for the film:

A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) is very friendly. She’s a chatterbot, designed to process natural language and respond to it. The program has won awards, specifically the Loebner prize (claiming top spot in 2000, 2001 and 2004) which is awarded to the most humanlike chatterbot entered. We were recently discussing artificial intelligence and it turns out that no-one in the office had heard of the Alicebot so we had a look and, appropriately, a quick chat.

Realising that anybody who could write this type of program was obviously a bit of geek, I asked what I figured would be a very geeky question, namely “What is your Prime Directive?” (ref. Star Trek and Robocop amongst others). This was the resulting, slightly surreal and disturbing conversation: