Bad news everyone - I've produced another video review. This one somehow stretches to 12 minutes, and covers a "Digital MP4 Player". Which is a chinese-built device for playing video in incredibly low quality. This one's split into two parts, just like Kill Bill!





If you managed to sit through all that, award yourself 20 Ashen points. Save up 250 points and you can have the Science Fiction author of your choice professionally murdered!*

(*Offer not valid in Ireland. Terry Pratchett costs an extra 25 points as his hat is bulletproof.)

Labels: Review, Video

Here's something I made the other morning to amuse my nephew:



I'm now off to sulk because b3ta bizarrely referred to me as "Dancing Yak" in their newsletter, and my girlfriend keeps taking the piss as a result. Bah.

Labels: Edit / Dub, Parody, Video

I recently worked for a local council, which has an online "Marketplace" system where employees can buy and sell items privately. You know the sort of thing - an intranet noticeboard where you can advertise your old lawnmower for £25, and discover that someone is collecting old jam jars for charity.

Now, as in any office environment, one of the ways to alleviate the soul-crushing tedium that consumes you is to check the Marketplace every five minutes. Sadly, it was very rare that anything interesting was posted - usually it was just a woman saying 'If anyone needs a plasterer I know a good one!' in order to provide free advertising for some relative or other. But occasionally, an obscure item for some kind of niche hobby would come up. This would give you a full 15 seconds of wondering what the item was for before realising it's a car part.

I began to wonder if I could invent some kind of ridiculous technical-sounding device and convince people it was real, by offering it for sale on the Marketplace. Because if someone's selling it and there's a photograph it must be true, right? So at 9:24am on 11 May 2006 I posted the following advertisement:

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For Sale:

Set of 4 Aeylind GL3 cabrinators. These are good quality, third series cabrination units with reinforced lode housings. They are in excellent condition - There is some heat discolouration on the rear units, but otherwise they are flawless. A spare crosslink protector is included.

They are currently tuned asynchronously but can easily be recalibrated if needed.

Am looking for a quick sale in order to upgrade to 5th series, hence low price of £200 ono.

Please note that these are NOT the XC models with onboard hetrodynes. I will not split the set so please don't ask!

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Now, the more observant among you may realise that there is no such company as Aeylind, and I completely invented the verb "cabrinate". The items in the photo are actually joysticks from an arcade machine (similar to this), turned so the bottom plates are facing the camera. I only have two, so I had to merge two pictures together.

At 10:07am the first e-mail arrived from a Martin B:

What are these? I googled them, but nothing came back.

Of course nothing came back, Martin - it's all a load of wrong-headed bollocks. From this point on I had to abide by the rules of Gentleman's Wind-Up Etiquette:

1. All enquries must be answered. You must provide more detail than is actually asked for, and the information must become increasingly ridiculous with each successive response.
   
2. All responses must be ad-libbed. Repetition is allowed if you encounter the same enquiry more than once.
3. If anyone questions the veracity of your claims, you must immediately admit that you are attempting to fool them with lies.

So I responded with the following:

Hello Martin

They're used to regulate field distortion when detecting (and gauging the properties of) airborne Halen particles. You could actually get away with only using two of them, but a set of four provides much more stable readings as they can run at a lower temperature.

Cheers

Stuart.

This seemed to keep him happy. I named Halen particles after rock star Eddie Van Halen.

At around 10:30am the phone calls started. 'Hi mate, those cabrinators you've got on the Marketplace - what are they for?' I simply quoted the above, and nobody questioned it. I took about four calls and received three more basic e-mail enquiries before midday.

As 12:00pm approached I thought I should reach out to the silent majority who had spotted the advert, but dared not enquire. I decided to answer some questions that hadn't been asked, in order to further confuse the situation. At 11:58pm I reposted the advert with the follwoing addition:

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Further information answering questions asked so far:

They have been used for approx. 150 run cycles.

The bearings are totem-class with large bore slipthrough, as with all series 3 units.

They have a maximum load capacity of 17 qp/h with a minimum throughput ratio of 6.

They have the newer "Nelson" style connectors which should fit all housings made after 2003. Adaptors for the older style "Hodgson" fittings are not included.

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qp/h stands for Quarter Pounders per Hour. In mainland Europe, it is known as rc/h - Royales with Cheese per Hour.

The lunch hour produced a new bevy of calls and e-mails. Everybody seemed happy with the Halen particle explanation - well, either that or they didn't like to question it. However at 12:53pm the original enquirer, Martin B, e-mailed again to ask:

your ad is a wine up, isn't it?

Ah - the first person to catch on, assuming he meant "wind up". In accordance with rule three of the Gentleman's Wind Up Etiquette, I had to respond with:

Oh, absolutely.

Martin B was the only person to register incredulity, and earns the title of Lord High Crapbuster as a result. I decided to post a final listing on the Marketplace:

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The set of Aeylind cabrinators has now sold.

Many thanks to everyone who expressed an interest.

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But it didn't end there. The calls dried up around 2pm, but the e-mails kept coming. One of my favourites came from a social worker:

You've got our office scratching heads big time......
just what do cabrinators do????

That made me very happy for two reasons - I love the image of a whole office crowding round a monitor trying to determine the properties of fictional items, and I own shares in a company that makes scalp cream. However, I did worry that the writer didn't specify whose heads were being scratched.

Cabrinator enquiries continued the next day. At 1:09pm on 12 May a lady called Teresa B asked:

I know you have sold your cabrinators and I'm not after any, - its just that there are four of us in this office and we wondered if you could tell us what they are actually for please? - the description sounds fascinating but none of us could work out what on earth they do and we will be thinking about it all weekend if we don't find out!

Hope you can help :))

What a nice lady - of course I can help. I sent her the standard response about Halen particles and field distortion, but Teresa wasn't easily waylaid by my stupid falsehoods:

Thanks for that Stuart - unfortunately that has led to a couple more questions:

1) What are Halen particles

2) Why do they need to be measured

Sorry!!!

Elaboration was needed, as was industrial strength bullshit. My response:

Halen particles are a by-product of all the different sorts of wireless communication methods knocking about these days - mobile phones, wireless internet, crexen, bluetooth etc. Sometimes, when their signals converge, they form Halen particles, which can disrupt reception.

If a wireless internet connection stops working or mobile phone reception is poor in a certain part of a building, you can try detecting the flow of Halens and moving equipment out of the way.

Also, some people believe that absorbing too many Halen particles can give you headaches, although there's no proof of that.

Bad science? WORST SCIENCE. I particularly like the word "Crexen". This was enough for Teresa, who went away confused but happy.

I received a couple more e-mails, then that was it. I feel this endeavour proved the following points:

1. People will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, as long as you sound authoritative and put in some practical details.
2. People in offices are so bored that they'll follow up any old crap they see advertised in a vain effort to inject some interest into their day.
3. Most people are stupid, but not quite as stupid as me.

Labels: Article