World's weirdest, somewhat creepy presentation

Whilst browsing through other people's presentations for entirely innocent and not at all morally dubious reasons, I found this rather unsettling cracker from the Malaysian International Medical University.

Okay, so Dr Babar doesn't know much about font kerning (What? You neither? That's it; we're not friends any more) and his command of the English language isn't fabulous, but he sure as heck isn't afraid of a terrifying photograph or ten. Think "...and the body had to be identified from dental records" and you'll get the idea. Yikes.

Finally! A reasonable slide that completely makes sense. Wait, how on earth can bite mark analysis be of use in malpractice cases? Ooh, Dr Babar, I just don't even want to know.

Pop on over to slideshare to check out the rest of the presentation. I'm not kidding about there being some graphic images though.
http://www.slideshare.net/muneergb/bitemark

Oh and if that isn't enough for you, there's this obvious horse-shit. I don't think I've ever before wanted to kill someone I've never met or even seen.

Evolution Of A Species by Guy Gould-Davies
What people want from brands and how they engage with them is very different today than even 5 years ago. The result: planners have to approach brand building and consumer engagement very differently.

http://www.slideshare.net/Guy_Gould_Davies/evolution-of-a-species

Free game Friday: Wonderputt and Grow Cube

It's Free Game Friday! Free Game Friday! Freeeeeee Gaaaaame Friiiday! Yeah, it's got a song, but I'm not telling you what the tune is.

First up, let's play Wonderputt. It's a cracking little golf game that you can play in your browser. It reminds me of the EyeMaze grow games (more on them later). The animation is imaginative and rather fun.

Yeah, it's mini-golf and there's not much to it, but it's a charming and lovely experience for twenty minutes. Play it in your browser here:
http://www.dampgnat.com/wonderputt

Grow Cube is a very simple game. It's a puzzle where all you have to do is click the icons in the right order. Each click causes a reaction in previously placed pieces and there's some delightful animation that takes place when you do. It can be jolly hard to find the exact order to fully complete the puzzle.

It's part of a series of similar games by a Japanese chap. The art style and animation and thoroughly enjoyable and there are whole bunch of other game on his site if you like this one. The RPG version is particularly odd.

Play it in your browser here:
http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube

F1 bread car unveiled in Singapore for some reason

A Singapore bakery team have built an F1 car out of bread for reasons that aren't terribly clear. But that doesn't mean that I won't enjoy looking at it,

Every bit of the car is made of bread, even the wheels and steering. There is a metal structure underneath holding it together, but apart from that it's all baguette bodywork, panini panels and shitty puns.

There's even a video featuring the world's most stupid children.

The Periodic Table table

Theodore Gray works from Wolfram, publishers of Mathematica and that search engine thing. When reading a book one day, he was inspired to make a table containing all the elements of the Periodic Table.




Although he's done a pretty good job of it, he also managed to win the 2002 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for so doing.

The best Formula 1 show isn't on TV: The Flying Lap

Peter Windsor is a motorsport journalist who has been covering Formula 1 for forty years now. In 1985, he joined Williams as sponsorship manager before a stint at Ferrari as general manager. He returned to Williams as team manager in 1991. In 2009, he was part of the unsuccessful bid to get Team US F1 onto the Formula 1 grid. Over the years, he's written for many publications, won several prizes for his journalism and worked as a reporter for various TV stations covering F1.

For the last couple of years, Windsor has been hosting his own online motorsport show called The Flying Lap. It's broadcast live every week on the Smibs TV site and available for non-live watching and downloading shortly afterwards. Although it does cover other motorsports, it concentrates on Formula 1.

Thanks to his long association with the sport and his many friends, Peter Windsor is able to attract a brilliant line-up of guests: some are current drivers such as Mark Webber, some are past champions like Nigel Mansell and others are designers like Sergio Rinland.

F1 driver interviews are generally extremely dull. Snatching 30 seconds with a driver at a race weekend is never going to be revealing or interesting. They usually trot out the standard approved PR answers and we learn nothing. Peter Windsor's weekly show broadcasts for over an hour, so when you get someone like Mark Webber on there, you get to hear a relaxed driver usually sitting at home without a PR bod anywhere near them. They talk far more openly and honestly and you get to hear stuff they'd never say on TV.

Where I think the show excels is in featuring people you've never heard of, although once you've hear them, you'll wonder why you you've never seen them before and want to know more. Willem Toet (Managing Director of the RML Group) engineers and manufacturers many of the technologies used by the teams and it's fascinating to hear how that process works and how it's changed over the years. Paul Hembery (director of motorsport for Pirelli) is the guy in charge of the tires that every team uses and it's very interesting to hear how Pirelli goes about this. Craig Scarborough writes a blog that explores and details the parts on the cars and just how they work.

So get on over to the Flying Lap website and see some of the most revealing and fascinating F1 and motorsport interviews you're ever likely to see.
http://smibs.tv/the-flying-lap

Never underestimate the elderly

A few years back, I was doing some research for the biography of one of my relatives. I was at my club one night when I happened to encounter a lady who featured in the book. A former fashion designer, she had worked with all the big names in the 1960s and had gone on to further success as a fashion editor and novelist. She'd had a lengthy affair with my great uncle, so this chance encounter was a great opportunity to glean some insights for the book.

As a somewhat frail lady in her late 70s, I wondered how best to approach her. After all it was pretty awkward for a complete stranger to ask her about an affair that had been quite emotionally draining and had ended badly. As I stood there and pondered just how to introduce myself, the manager of the club appeared. He asked if I had met the lady in question and, before I could even reply, he took my elbow and guided me over to make the introduction.

The manager introduced me as a relative of her former lover and explained that I had a biographical interest. She looked me up and down and said "Ah, Jimmy. I used to fuck him."

Free Game Friday: Cherry's Quest for Coffee and Hubris

Yay! Free game Friday! It's the jolly day of the blog where I get to play games. It's like the end of term or something. And they're all free. Yay!

Cherry's Quest for Coffee is very much an old fashioned graphical adventure. It's quite easy and quite short, so there's little chance of you failing to complete it, but the charm of the game comes from it's slightly daft story and the lovely way in which it's told.

I'm looking at a woman who's looking at a car and I'm telling her
to look at the car. I'm like her god or something. Not a very good
god perhaps, but she does get to hear from me a lot

Cherry has run out of coffee and needs to get some more. There's just the small problem of the world having run out. Guess who's going to have to get some more.

Last time someone said that to me, I was in a gay bar and all
I did was unzip my... oops, I'm not drunk enough to tell that story

I have to say, it makes a very pleasant change to have such a minor goal in a game. I'm frigging sick of saving the planet or ridding the world of evil. So going out to get some ground beans is a quest I can really get behind.

Go and get it now from the developer's website:
http://maddoxic.com/







Hubris is a jolly pretty game. The minimalist aesthetic puts me in mind of Ico. It's really rather atmospheric and just a delight in which to wander around.

There aren't any puzzles, there isn't a narrative and you can't interact with anything. Heck, I'm not really selling this very well at all. It's more just an experience for you to enjoy rather than a game for you to solve and complete. The author describes it as “a short, atmospheric game like Dear Esther or The Funeral. There is no interaction or narrative, simply a world to absorb and (I hope) emotions to experience.”

Go get it here:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/hubris/downloads/hubris