Sorbian Easter eggs are jolly interesting

Sorbia is a totally real place and not at all made up. It's a region of Germany and has a population of about 60,000. And what they do best is paint Easter eggs. There's a strong history of Easter egg painting in Eastern Europe and Germany, but Sorbia is famous for its egg-decorating tradition.

Photograph by Aineias

Japan + fireworks + cruelty = television

I'm not being lazy and just posting some crazy shit that some Japanese guys got up to for no apparent reason. No, I'm not. So here's some crazy shit that some Japanese guys got up to for no apparent reason.

Okay, so the setup is that they got this chap and had him hang around whilst they constructed a giant rocket firework (that's the big tube on the right). He gets to press the button that launches it and then...

Ha ha, look at his face. He thinks he's going to die! Ha ha ha. Oh my goodness, he's shaking with terror! Ha ha ha. I wonder if he'll cry. Ha ha ha! Yeah, the Japanese have a pretty sick sense of humour. Ha ha ha.

Okay, so I am being a bit lazy.

Holiday

Yes, I'm on holiday. Back tomorrow (Tuesday)
Perhaps Wednesday... as I'm a bit tired

Professor Nishiyama: King of Science - Boomerangs

Oh boy. When I was looking up Professor Yutaka Nishiyama's "plofile" for that finger counting article the other day, I noticed that the picture showed a shitload of boomerangs in the background. Well, bugger me, but the Prof's written an article on boomerangs.

Yeah, it turns out that Nishiyama is the Honorary Director of the Japanese Boomerang Association and he totally knows how boomerangs stay in the air, so click on to find out in comprehensive, yet surprisingly concise detail how gyroscopics, the Bernoulli principle, angular precession and inertial moments make a magical bent stick come back. Interestingly enough "boomerang" is a Japanese compound word where "boom" means "to go" and "er-ang" means "to come back"... as far as you know.

http://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/zemi/nishiyama/math2010/boomerang.pdf

But that's not all. Some lesser professors (I'm looking at you, Alexander S. Kuleshov) might stop at explaining the flight characteristics of non-disposable branches, but Professor Nishiyama has come up with a boomerang design that will create world peace and he's translated it into seventy different languages. Suck on that, Dr Hugh Hunt. Die in a fire, Associate Professor Richard Kelso. And that's why Nishiyama is Professor of Awesome at Hell Yeah University. So click the link and print ten billion of these at work tomorrow - don't worry about what your boss says; it's for world peace so it's fine.

http://www.kbn3.com/bip/index2.html

Ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha! Oh wait, world peace. Right. Sorry

Nishiyama actually has book about why eggs are egg-shaped and why the number five exists, but sadly they're not available in English yet. But he does have a paper on the mathematics of stairway light switches so stay tuned for that little beauty.

Get your idea made into a game (by someone else)

You've no doubt noticed a whole raft of indie games bundles recently and you've possibly even noticed a fair number of 48 hour games programming challenges. Now a group I previously haven't heard of are coming together to create five games in 48 hours and you'll be able to pay whatever you like to receive all of them. Better still, you can contribute your own ideas and they will incorporate them into the games (provided your ideas don't suck).

The programming challenge takes place over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of April (the same as the Chinese Grand Prix), but you can submit your ideas any time up until them. Throughout the weekend, there will be updates, videos, journals and stuff so you can see the whole creative process take place.

Why not head on over to their website to submit your idea about a spaceship that can blow up planets but is crewed by adorable kittens?

http://indiebuskers.net/

Harry Hill without his glasses

Harry Hill without his glasses

I love Harry Hill and I particularly like how he's managed to take his rather niche and bizarre comedy and bring it to a mainstream audience. Last week on TV Burp he actually had an ITV audience happily cheering on "Now I like the dramatic jewellery of René Lalique, I like the organic forms of Émile Gallé's glass and then again I like the alluring femmes fatales of Alphonse Mucha, but which is better?" The real mystery is how a primetime TV can laugh along at a fight between the works of Art Nouveau artists, but that's the genius of Harry Hill.

And that was the last episode of TV Burp. After 11 years, it's gone. I'll bet Harry Hill is quite pleased as he's been privately saying for years that the show is driving him mental. You might imagine that he's got a huge team of researchers finding all the clips for him, but it is actually Harry sitting there watching through them all on his own.

But the greatest trick that Harry Hill has managed is to be invisible. Despite his highly distinctive look, he just need to remove his glasses and change his clothes and you'd never recognise him. Even the media don't. You never read anything about Harry in any gossip columns. Is he married? Does he have kids? Is he dating a celebrity? Nope, none of that. He is married and he has three kids, by the way. And his name's not really Harry Hill.

Harry has somehow made his way up from his obscure and esoteric Radio 4 show (Harry Hill's Fruit Corner) to mainstream TV success and a surprisingly large pay-cheque. But now that TV Burp is at an end, it'll be interesting to see how ITV try to keep hold of Harry and what show they'll have him fronting.

Sarah Millican is Harry Hill in drag

The official boardgame of the London 2012 Olympics - Monopoly

There's a lion? What happened to those shitty drip things?

With no apparent sense of irony the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games has decided that the official boardgame of the 2012 London Games will be Monopoly.

The game itself was unveiled at a special... wait, hold on a minute - didn't I already see an Olympic Monopoly set?

Yeah, I frigging thought so. So what's going on here? Ah, it turns out that one is the official boardgame of the London Olympics, whereas today's is the official boardgame of Team GB at the London Olympics. One wonders just how many official boardgames there are going to be.

It turns out that shabby lion is the mascot of Team GB. I've found the Team GB name a bit weird as it includes athletes from Northern Ireland. Great Britain is only Scotland, England and Wales. So shouldn't the team be called Team UK? I'm surprised there haven't been complaints about that.

Oh yeah and the lion is called Pride. Good grief.

Not nearly enough money to play - ha ha ha, satire

How many versions of Monopoly are there now? It's just getting ridiculous. I wonder just how many other Monopoly games there are going to be tied to the London 2012 Olympics. Are they going to make one for every team?

Jesus Christ. Did they spend more than five minutes designing this?

Cor, it's every bit as lame as you might imagine. It's hard to take the piss as whatever exaggeration I could think up to mock them will turn out to be in the game already. It's effectively its own satire.

Sadly there's no mention of drugs

Yup, the hotels are actually stadia and the houses are... uh what is that? Stairs? A podium doesn't look like that. What the hell is it?

The sheer density of trademark and copyright logos is quite unbelievable too. Just about every word on the board has a little logo beside it. I wonder if there's a record and if this has broken it?

We're going to jail for queue-jumping? Did they forget to redesign the cards from the Beijing version?

I'm half tempted to make my own jokey Olympic Monopoly board, but I doubt I could come up with anything more stupid and ridiculous than this.