Thursday, July 25, 2013

deviantArt Updates 25/07/13

It's been over a year; must be time for another batch of questionable deviations. :D

 
Kicking things off today is something that may be scraping the bottom of the barrel, even by my standards: First!, while probably not the first thing I ever painted, is certainly the oldest surviving bit of artwork I have. As you can imagine, something I scrawled on a of bit of cardboard when I was about 7 isn't exactly the most spectacular of pieces.
 
Though really, Corporate - a fake, corporate desktop wallpaper I made last year - isn't a whole lot better. :D

  
That leaves it to Infinity alone to redeem this update - a cool little abstract wallpaper I whipped up back in February while messing around, as usual.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Spammy Snippets 11/07/13

Rock her hard on your first date

- Advice to live by.

COCKZILLA is the word

- It's got groove, it's got meaning.

I didn't know you were in porn :)

-Me neither. Shit, how did that happen?

Single Christians in your Area Are Looking For You

- But I didn't even do anything.

Katy Perry diet or scam?

- Uh, scam. Probably.

Why Wait - Have an Affair With a Cheating Wife Today

- Finally, the opportunity I've been waiting for.

Hot latinas banged by Germans

- Well, they are more efficient.

So hard you can break an egg

- I'm trying to wrap my head around the logistics that would be involved here, but I just can't.

"Obama grows great length through herbal supplements"


- Typical Obama.

This is not fables – the holy true is in our online medical shop!


- ....What?

(15) Sexual Predators In Your Area - VIEW NOW

- They wouldn't also happen to be single Christians, would they? This situation may be more dire than I'd previously been led to believe.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Clearoutageddon Part Three: Discpocalypse Now



I don't know if anyone remembers now, but ten years ago exactly we were now in the middle of an unrelenting free CD bombardment by every newspaper publisher in the UK and Ireland - the likes of probably hadn't been seen since AOL's heyday.

To begin with, this was actually pretty cool, especially for someone like me who had a very small collection of music, limited funds and a slow-ass internet connection. From the end of 2002 until around mid 2004, you could grab up to three random compilation CDs every weekend for the price of the (mostly) crappy newspapers they came bundled with, and have a new batch generally pretty decent 70's/80's/90's tracks to check out to for next to nothing.



A few relevant ads I found while digitising some VHS tapes. That 70's CD (from 2003) was pretty rad. A few years later though, the second and third ads were pretty much where things went.

By 2004 though, things were changing - the compilations became less frequent, the number of tracks decreased and increasingly they started being phased out in favour of shitty movies, single artist live CDs (for people with no taste), random CD-ROMs and the occasional BBC sitcom episode. Even though the frequency of these give-aways lessened over the next couple of years, for a family that bought a lot of newspapers and magazines anyway, this meant there was an ever-increasing pile of shitty free discs building up that no one could quite bring themselves to throw out.

After years of languishing in the cabinet under the TV, I finally decided the time had come to do something  about the sizeable disc pile in late 2011. Working under the assumption that, well, somebody has to want these, I decided I'd give them away (for just the cost of postage) on a local classifieds site. For my own convenience though, I decided not to offer them individually, but to pull a Best Buy and force bundles of them on people. Let's take a look at what was up for grabs:



In the movie bundle, and yes, the bundles were all themed, is a bunch of stuff I'd never watch, or use, including a hot new Vinnie Jones joint, a couple of DVD movie quizzes and promo discs for Spider Man 2 and Revenge of the Sith.



This lot I dubbed the Nature/Factual bundle. Up on top are a trio of BBC/National Geographic documentaries that I imagine are probably decent, but that kind of stuff just isn't my thing. The next four discs are all from the RTÉ Guide, Ireland's answer to the Radio Times or TV Guide (and a pretty poor excuse for a magazine overall). For wildlife enthusiasts we have not one, but two dawn chorus themed discs, as well as some kind of mammal-themed CD-ROM. And for lovers of terminally dull magazine shows is an episode of RTÉ's Nationwide on DVD, for some reason. In the bottom right are two audio "volumes" of Paul Williams Crime World - undoubtedly part of The Sunday World's ongoing effort to glorify, er, I mean expose Ireland's criminal underworld.



Also in the same bundle, but thrown in at the last minute, was this trio of even lamer, even less desirable stuff I found lying around - promo DVDs for eBay and the South East of Ireland and some kind of jewellery catalogue on CD-ROM from 2003. You know, factual stuff.



But wait, there's more! Even though I'd decided to keep this at one point, when the time came to dispatch this bundle (and I got a taker for it pretty much immediately. Goodness knows why.), I decided to bung it in there too. I barley even watched the last World Cup, when was I ever going to watch this?



The music bundle! I wouldn't go so far as to call this all dross (well, apart from the Westlife disc, obviously), because a. I never listened to most of it, and b. the two discs in the upper left are actually pretty decent, the Dave Fanning one especially; they were just duplicates of ones I already had. Notable also was the Anton Whatshisface dance DVD, not only for not being a DVD, but also for being the thinnest, most flimsy optical disc I've ever seen. If disc rot turns out to be a thing, I think I've found patient zero.