shinypixel.co.uk » Cobblers

Happy Birthday, Sonic

Rik — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:08:49 +0000

For those who missed it, Sonic The Hedgehog was 20 yesterday. To celebrate, here’s 10 facts (plus a bonus) which I randomly squeezed out onto Twitter last night and you may have missed. All of these are true.

No. 1: Sonic 2 was released on “Sonic 2-sday”, which was a Tuesday, which was a great play on words but also quite odd.

No. 2: The cheat codes for Sonic 2 in the UK were exclusively revealed in the VHS databurst on ITV’s Bad Influence!

No. 3: Rik once knew 10 cheat codes/glitches for Sonic 2. Play 19, 65, 09, 17 in Sound Test & A+Start in menu for level select.

No. 4: Sonic & Knuckles gives a series of “special stages” if plugged into any other MD cart, A+B+C+Start on title screen.

No. 5: Sonic CD had a cheat code that allowed you to play with the orientation of the 3D cloud texture on the title screen.

No. 6: The Sonic CD Wacky Workbench zones – the Past variant – had a secret statue in a room that threw you rings.

No. 7: Sonic 2 & Knuckles contains a bunch of new extra lives in hard-to-reach places that require climbing. Have a hunt.

No. 8: The Spring Yard Zone (Act 1, I think) is the only level in Sonic 1 to have 2 separate exit signs. (They both spin.)

No. 9: Extra lives in Master System Sonic 1 disappeared forever after collection, except one which gave 2 lives & didn’t.

No. 10: Tails’ full name is Miles “Tails” Prower, the quality of which as a pun is left as an exercise for the reader.

Bonus Mario Fact: Super Mario Bros. 2 was a completely unrelated Japanese game, with some sprites & title screens changed.

Sign Of The Times

Rik — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:42:06 +0000

Spotted on the way home through Central London late one night this week - looks like even our road signs are doing their bit to help out the Big Society.

A thing that annoys me about Firefox 4

Rik — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:16:00 +0000

I know that it’s tiny and insignificant, and I can see entirely why there isn’t room for the extra dot, but it’s still been driving me absolutely mental. Perhaps I should write an add-on to fix it.

(Is it obvious that making sure things line up is my job?)

It’s a Blimmin’ Miracle!

Rik — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:15:51 +0000

Continuing today’s impromptu Leslie Nielsen-theme on Shinypixel, here’s an oddity. Despite there never being – to my knowledge, at least – any gaming spinoffs of the franchises he starred in, the two collided when he once managed to grace the full back cover of ZX Spectrum bible Your Sinclair.

This appeared on the back cover of Issue 73, upside-down compared to the rest of the mag. (Just like the Student Radio Awards magazine, actually, but that was two-mags-in-one.) Presumably knocked up mega-quickly at the last-minute when an advert deadline fell through, I can totally sympathise with the frame of mind of its mystery author. Those were the days.

Cat Rock

Rik — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:21:25 +0000

Those following my Twitter account (and if you’re not, why not, eh?) may have seen this already. Pointed out by treblekicker the other day, it’s a one-note series of images depicting the above cat. And a rock. Cat rock, you see? (It costs $29.99)

Each one has a different slogan, all of which make exactly the expected amount of sense. As a bonus, there’s occasionally a Spanish cat which pops up all moody and black, accompanied by (I am reliably assured) some bizarre Spanish.

I mean, what’s not to like?

Cat Rock on Tumblr

CSS3, now with more ukuleles

Rik — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:26:59 +0000

I think that this man deserves a little love. You don’t hear much about Opera these days, which is strange given it’s often the best mobile/console browsing experiences available – even on platforms like Maemo where it’s not officially supported.

They also employ engineers that own ukuleles, and love the web so much that they compose songs about the new features in CSS3.

Next week, a checkout attendant sings a song about conveyor belts, backed by the Latvian Male Voice Choir.

Most Played

Rik — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:35:42 +0000

Here’s a selection of what’s currently most played on my N900, which is listened to for at least 2 hours a day here. How representative it is of the tripe that I listen to is for you to decide.

1. Lindstrom – Grand Ideas

2. Edvard Hill – Indeed I Am Very Glad To Be Back Home

4. Cliff Wedge – Go Go Yellow Screen

6. Wang Chung – Dance Hall Days (Extended 12″ Mix) [Why? It's miles worse than the 7"]

9. The Vengaboys Megamix by Nick Skitz

10. Q-Tex – E-Creation ’95

15. Skatebard – Data Italia

16. Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

17. WVKEAF – Jump (12″ Edit) [The link is mislabelled]

20. Terry Wogan – The Floral Dance

The Great Fashionista Swindle

Rik — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:19:08 +0000

Loads to say but not much time to do so, sadly. Most of my plans for this week have fallen through, mind you, so I might get the chance to exude some prose. In the meantime, here’s an excellent tune from a couple of years back which has been gracing the N900 a lot recently:

Dada Life – The Great Fashionista Swindle

This is the original mix – not the (worse) Laidback Luke mix that everyone claims is the original (but isn’t.)

As an aside, here’s what’s been keeping me up all night by rebounding around my head like a squash court:

Edward Hill – Indeed I Am Very Glad To Be Back Home

Aaaaarrgh!

Under Destruction

Rik — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:14:44 +0000

It’s hard to shed a tear for the demise of GeoCities, even though I should as it started my web design career. It’s difficult to mourn that which is long-forgotten, though – it’d be like becoming upset about for my cat who died years ago.

The truth is that I once had a GeoCities site, but all I recall about it was that the background was black, the URL was impossible to remember, the web FTP interface was unbelievably bad even for those days, and they had some Javascript that stuffed a shuddering GeoCities logo into the bottom-right corner. I have no idea what it was actually about, and slipping peacefully away into history is the best thing for it.

The Archive Team are to be applauded for their efforts, though. They’ve rescued all the under construction GIFs that they could possibly find and whacked them on one eye-bleeding page for posterity. I haven’t seen so much irritating crap in one place since I was last in a Starbucks, so naturally I picked out a few of my faves and archived them here too, y’know, just in case…

“More updates to come once I’m back from primary school”

“Who turned out the lights?”

Nothing says class like a 3D rotating construction sign (with only one side)

Nothing says “we’re not quite sure what we’re archiving” like saving ancient Javadoc .gifs for posterity

Hey, quit ruining my childhood memories!

This is just a little bit like that Catchphrase episode.

I seriously have absolutely no idea what is meant to be going on here.

Believe it or not, this was actually about as reliable as Mac OS 9 dialogs got in my experience.

Achtung! Awful designen!

Actually, I know a couple of people who could use this.

Operation Crisslefridge

Rik — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:14:28 +0000

Since this blog seems to be a natural home for white goods-related stories, here’s one about my fridge that transpired over the last week or so.

Y’see, I’d been waking up to find a puddle of water in the middle of the kitchen. It appeared regularly, of varying size, and puzzlingly appearing to leak from the corner of the fridge or freezer. Troublesome to mop up and unpleasant to step in, it proved unwilling to yield any clues to its whereabouts. The fridge appeared fine on inspection, and the freezer – though in need of a good defrost – wasn’t dripping at all. I turned it down a bit, the water became more voluminous, and the odd phenomenon continued. Did I have some aquatic ghoul slurping around my kitchen at night?

The origin of the mysterious fridgetoplasm was only revealed yesterday afternoon, when I opened the fridge door and the large glass jar of tap water kept there fell in half right in front of my eyes. It seems that upon turning up the fridge a while back, I’d frozen the water in the jar, which for whatever scientific reason had expanded outwards, snapping the jar in two and producing a slow trickle of water from the exposed ice-cube therein.

It must have been a fair amount of force to break the jar – it’s pretty thick – and clean enough that the jar held itself together until I jerked the door open. The wonders of the physical world, eh?

Location Crisslefridge was an ancient PD game for the Atari ST/Amiga (I think) which I spent some happy time playing back in the halcyon days of the early 90s, and thought was called Operation Crisslefridge ’til literally moments ago. Respect to you Gweez, wherever you are…

I’m Backing Britain

Rik — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:26:22 +0000

They’ve sampled Roger Miller, American sex-education films and John Peel, so you can imagine my glee when I saw this fantastic Brucie Bonus as I took an occasional surf to the weird end of town. It could only be the Cuban Boys, doing their bit to beat the gloom and doom with a rousing rework of a national anthem from the 60s.

The formula’s pretty simple: Sample ancient song, add tubthumping beat, mix in some sampled guitars, stir and recover. It’s similar stuff to Every Girl Has A Volvo yet it manages to surpass even that in so-bad-it’s-good catchiness. I’ve been stabbing repeat feverishly at the player on their website for the last fifteen minutes.

I’m Backing Britain isn’t yet available from their online store, so camp out until the relevant communicon arrives. Chalk another up to the Cubans for being the silliest people in pop, or as they put it:

This is not flag-waving nationalism but tea-sipping eccentricity.

Fiddler’s Dram!

Rik — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:32:06 +0000

Exactly what it says on the tin. This wonderful song holds the dubious honour of being the second most obscure tune I’ve identified in Pub Quiz “intro” rounds. (The first is Hold Me Close by David Essex.)

I also have an execrable though strangely listenable mash-up of this versus some random Dutch gabber somewhere. You’ll be thankful I’m not sharing that with you.

Pet-a-cat Cafés

Rik — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:29:03 +0000

It seems that Tokyo have the right idea. As an ex-cat owner that can no longer enjoy a feline presence in my current 2nd-floor flat, I’d certainly pop along to one of these if it opened in my neck of the woods:

Tokyo’s Cat Cafés (via GlobalPost)

Everybody’s Gonfi-Gon

Rik — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:40:36 +0000

The internet is a fertile breeding ground for new musical talent, allowing people to showcase their skills in ways they could have only dreamed of but a decade ago.

And there’s this.

Born in the 80s, Pt. 2 : Here Comes The Sun…

Rik — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:40:07 +0000

After my first Born In The 80s list, Neil sent over a Balearic video which inspired me to kick back and remember a few summery tunes from the 80s. (Well, ish. I’ve lost his original link, y’see, so you’ll have to put up with my poptastic selections until he reminds me.)

Close your eyes and imagine yourself back in the world of Black Lace, giant sombreros, pina coladas and Duty Free…

Sueno Latino – Sueno Latino

The Blow Monkeys, Amazulu and a glut of 80s holiday party tunes in order of descending quality after the jump…

La Passionara – The Blow Monkeys

Montego Bay – Amazulu

Agadoo – Black Lace

Tarzan Boy – Baltimora

(I’m so sorry… please forgive me…)

…and then of course there’s the one that got away. If anyone can find a video for Zambesi by The Piranhas, please let me know. The world needs to see it. Maybe.

Stick a deckchair up your nose

Rik — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:34:51 +0000

In honour of the 80s night I attended last night, here’s top tune of the night, and probably the only one I knew all the words to, too. It was unfortunately played only briefly due to being “obscure” (pah!), but here it is in full.

Phil’s Washing Machine Saga, Pt. II

Rik — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:42:08 +0000

…and so, we return to the continuing low-water mark of Shinypixel life that is the lack of laundry luck in the world of netizen Phil.

Tense developments abounded after a new handle arrived from the bowels of an Indesit warehouse. Whether through cackhandedness of co-ordination or subtleties of shape, it just didn’t seem to fit.

By early afternoon today, it didn’t look good… Tensions were running high:

hopefully me dad can fix the new handle on cos i’ve given up

The air hung heavy with atmosphere and Lenor for a couple of hours. Then:

fixed!

successfully opened the door after a load as well!

A happy ending for all concerned.

On a related note, Anthony notes that if Phil was in America, this is very unlikely to have happened, as most washing machines in the US are top-loading. Something I certainly didn’t know, and if you’ve bothered to read down this far, then hopefully you’ve learned something too!

Got anything tedious I can write about? Let me know at rik at shinypixel dot co dot uk!

groan

Rik — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:27:47 +0000

No time for an exciting update today, so here instead is that rare of things, a funny “Motivator”:

Sorry.

Phil’s Washing Machine Saga, Pt. I

Rik — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:07:05 +0000

In what I’m hoping is going to become a watermark towards the lower-end of Shinypixel’s editorial “interestingness” scale, I’m fulfilling a (perhaps foolhardy) promise to erstwhile netizen Phil by blogging about his problematic Indesit.

The other day, the handle snapped off his washing machine door with the clothes still inside. Quel horreur! Some thinking (and a Facebook status update) later, he retrieved the clothes with judicious use of screwdriver and pliers.

Unfortunate laundry situation thus averted, he’s currently awaiting a new handle from the manufacturer. How will it all end? Tune in soon for Part II!