The internet’s smallest zombie apocalypse

If you have a few spare minutes this Christmas, I highly recommend spending them playing the fantastic little shooter, ‘Left 4k Dead‘.

It was created by a chap named Markus Persson (aka Notch) for the Java4k competition, an annual contest where entrants must cram as much awesome gameplay as possible into only 4k (that’s 4096 bytes) of pure Java code!

Loosely based on Valve’s ‘Left 4 Dead‘, this has managed to eat up a ridiculous amount of my time since discovering it this morning. You have been warned….

P.S. Markus himself seems like a lovely fella (seeing as he took the time to email me back to confirm I could link to his site), so check out his other projects and show him some love!

Obligatory Obama Victory Post

Congratulations Mr President-Elect!

p.s. For all of you who aren’t Barack Obama, I’m back in the UK next week.

The B stands for Barack

As you’ve seen by now, my blogging has become stupidly irregular. I put it down to a lack of constant access to the internets since I noticed that I’ve so far been charged over 30 quid for roaming data rates over here in America, but also I’ve been pretty busy!

Last week’s Palin rally was an interesting experience (I’ll post photos and a write-up later), and yesterday I was in Indianapolis for Barack Obama’s speech before he headed off to Hawaii to visit his sick grandmother, again please do expect a report once I manage to get the right drivers to get my bluetooth dongle working to transfer piccies from my phone!

Anyways, I’m currently at Purdue University visiting some of my girlfriend’s uni chums and I managed to snatch a few minutes of reddit time and caught this story earlier today.

 

A campaign worker who claimed she was the victim of a politically-motivated attack in which she was beaten, kicked and cut, now admits that she made the whole story up. 

According to Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard, Ashley Todd, 20, told investigators today that she “was not robbed and there was no 6′4″ black male attacker.” 

Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield Wednesday night and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. 

Todd claimed that the mugger even cut a backwards letter “B” in her check. 

But today investigators say Todd confessed that the attack never happened. 

 

She’s now been charged with filing a false police report, but if it already wasn’t bad enough that a volunteer for the McCain campaign was making this stuff up, it now seems that the McCain campaign actually fed this story to the media itself.

 

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain’s campaign office for details after seeing the story — sans details — teased on Drudge.

 

Oh dear.

I’m off to a Palin rally today

I have the tickets, emblazoned with the deliciously nationalistic “Country First” slogan of the McCain-Palin campaign, and can’t wait to see America’s number one Tina Fey impersonator in the flesh. In an attempt to blend in, and to honour the victory of the Canadian Conservatives earlier this week, I’ll be wearing my “Conservative / Conservateur” t-shirt with a now-vintage “Harper ‘05″ on the back, and if I can take any photos I’ll post them here asap. At the very least I’ll come back and let you know how it went down.

In the meantime, please enjoy this brilliant parody of A-Ha’s classic ‘Take On Me’:

Kudos: b3ta via dizzy

I hope my Canadian chums are enjoying the election

Despite the fact that I had earlier promised some insightful coverage of the Canadian election, I’m well aware that this hasn’t actually been delivered.

So, in typical last-minute style, I’m monitoring the results of today’s election via the Elections Canada website. If you’re still awake (which I highly doubt), do take a quick peek.

At the moment it looks like another Conservative minority government, and so far the Greens haven’t made their breakthrough into the Commons (with their leader Elizabeth May running in former Progressive Conservative leader Peter Mackay’s riding). Interestingly, the NDP seem to be picking up alot of Liberal votes, which will no doubt accelerate the process for Michael Ignatieff to become the next Liberal leader after Dion’s abysmal performance.

Thoughts so far? Well, my predictions are usally pretty far off the mark [see basically all of my previous posts] so I’m steering clear of possibly jinxing any of my good friends in Canada. I’m also not promising any post-match analysis, but I’ll see what I can do….

Current seat standings (308 total, 155 required for majority):

Conservative 144, Liberal 78, NDP 34, Bloc 47, Green 0, Other 2 (3 still to declare)

I wish I could take credit for this

Source: Aden Nak

Check out Aden’s ‘ph33r and loathing‘ blog (and give kudos for the 13375p34k).

I leave Britain for a few days, and look what happens

I can’t leave you guys on your own for one second can I?!

Brown’s latest reshuffle is pretty Ballsy (poor pun I know), what with the Return of the Mand and the metaphorical castration of Hilary Benn through the creation of a new Department for Energy and Climate Change for another of his apprentices Ed Miliband. As mentioned by James Forsyth at the Coffee House, this presents a good opportunity to push another rising Tory star into the shadow portfolio. I’d back Ed Vaizey for the new role, as when it comes to coming up with ideas to deal with climate change, two Ed’s are better than one…. (I make no apologies for the poor quality of punnery today).

I had the luxury of not having to stay up to the wee small hours to watch the VP debate last night, and I’m a little sad that the self destruction I predicted didn’t really happen. Palin performed way beyond many expectations, which I know isn’t saying much, and used her journo and (limited) broadcast experience to good use by talking to camera and picking a tonality of voice that was pretty appealing. But as with the Presidential debate, there were no knockout blows. The spectacle continues. (To be honest with you, the debate I’d like to see would be Obama vs Palin. The debates have been white-haired dude versus interesting ‘gamechanger’ candidate. It’d be interesting to see how they’d do against eachother….)

Yankee VPs or Canuck PMs? Tough choice…

Lucky for politics geeks like me, tonight we have two debates to watch out for potential personal (and political) self-destruction!

Obviously, the long awaited confrontation between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin in the US Vice-Presidential debates starts soon. Over here in the states the anticipation for this debate has saturated the broadcast and print media (not to mention the blogosphere), and could well be a turning point in the campaign.

Personally, I think this could go one of two ways:

1. Biden manages to waffle way off topic and over time, or perhaps is a bit too agresssive against Palin, and she smiles and fires back her brilliantly crafted crowd-pleasing non-answers and wins the day.

or

2. Palin gets wrapped up in the last few days of intense McCain briefings and can’t hold it against what would appear to be a hostile moderator (it seems Gwen Ifill has authored a book on Obama’s meteoric rise to the presidency, which is due for release on inauguration day next year), allowing Biden to simply keep his reponses short and sweet and wait for Palin to talk herself into the ground.

Either way, it should be fun to watch. I of course use the word ‘fun’ in its broadest possible sense….

On the other hand, tonight we also have the English language Leaders’ Debates for the Canadian Federal Election (which can be caught online at cbc.ca here). I’m waaay out of touch with Canadian politics, and so I could really do with watching this seeing as I’m heading up to Canada tomorrow, but it’s on at 9pm central district time so I think I’ll miss the beginning. I’ll try to catch it later though.

So there you are, a choice of live televised debates amongst political leaders to choose from. Will we ever see Dave, Gordon and Nick do the same on British tv?

Also, quick prediction: The new, 451 page ‘bailout bill’ is being voted on by the House of Representatives tomorrow. This is probably dooming it to success, but I think it might not get passed. There have been so many things tagged on to this bill that it reeks of desperation by the administration in getting this through. Also, following the pretty close beat-down of the original 3-page bailout bill, congressman could well be feeling bolstered after being seen as responding to their constituents concerns (well, the vocal ones at least) on the huge amount of money being handed over in this bill.

I’ve been wrong before, but hey, you gotta take a punt every now and then.

The end of an era

Well friends, I’m no longer a resident of trendy Islington (by which I of course mean Archway), and I’ve moved back ‘up north’ to my home town of Manchester. I’m aiming towards starting a masters at Manchester Business School next year, but in the meantime I’ll be on the hunt for a new job.

Just in case you didn’t know, I’ve spent the last year working in the communications department of a global company doing public affairs / internal comms / general techie-admin stuff. I’ve had a brilliant year and had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people, especially those way out in the regions (you know who you are), and I really feel I’ve learned a great deal in a short space of time, particularly bits of business insight / PR / brand reputation management etc..

Perhaps one of the most important things I’ve picked up is a bit more confidence, and I must admit that this has definitely been helped by this blog and the feedback I’ve had from my readers. I’ve always been a little concerned that my ramblings will be of little interest to other people, but I’ve been chuffed to bits with the encouragement I’ve had from many of you. Yay!

Anyway, that’s enough emo talk….

I’ll be spending the next 6 weeks in the US and Canada with my girlfriend and her family, so stay tuned for fantastically insightful commentary on both the Canadian Federal election and the US Presidential election!

In the meantime, I present to you the latest Obama campaign ad.

Warning: This video contains scenes you may find disturbing….

Twas the night before conference

This article from the FT waaay back in May mentions a section in the Labour Party rulebook that allows for a ’silent coup’ by a governing Labour cabinet.

4B.2e Procedure in a vacancy

(i) When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister
and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable,
the cabinet shall, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to
serve as party leader until a ballot under these rules can be carried out.

(ii) When the party is in government and the deputy leader becomes party
leader under (i) of this rule, the Cabinet may, in consultation with the NEC,
appoint one of its members to serve as deputy leader until the next party
conference. The Cabinet may alternatively, in consultation with the NEC,
leave the post vacant until the next party conference.

I’m not sure how accurate this is, seeing as I must admit the Labour Party constitution hasn’t been on my reading list lately. If it is for real, then it allows for a fascinating (but completely ridiculous) scenario.

Picture this:

The men in grey suits arrive at 10 Downing Street this Friday evening, the night before the Labour conference in Manchester. They walk in to see Gordon frantically packing his suitcase ready to trot off ‘oop north’. With sombre faces, their hearts racing, one strides forward to face the PM.

With a finesse finely honed through months (probably years) of practice, he calmly states “It’s over Gordon.”

Cue the sound of Gordon’s shiny new Nokia 5110 [hey, he's no techie] shooting across the room. The cabinet shift uneasily, eyeing up people who were previously colleagues united in disarray, now rivals for the top job in Britain….

Yeah I know, it’s not gonna happen. It’d be too interesting….