The Iain Lee Column – The Magic of the Internet
I remember the first time I ever had Pesto. I was 19 years old, at a friends house in Glastonbury. We had pasta and I was asked if I’d ever had this mysterious smelly thing before before. ‘Of course’, I lied, not wanting to look uncool. ‘Oh good, help yourself then.’ With that, I got the tiniest teaspoonful of this green speckled sauce and placed it on the side of my plate, nowhere near my food, immediately making me look uncool. The people I was with looked at each other, laughed and then someone spooned a whole lump onto the pasta twists and stirred it up. This made me look even uncooler than I looked 30 seconds ago, when I thought I was as uncool as it could get. Why the reminiscence on this? Well, because I was trying to think of the first time I used the internet, and I just can’t remember it. Both pesto and the www are pretty much a daily part of my world now, but one has left a much more significant impression than the other. I’m trying to make up for this by finding as many wonderful things online as I can, and this month I have got some great stuff for you. First up, while we are all recovering from Olympic fever, it seems for some it will never go away. One of the stars to come out of this whole exercise in physical punishment (not like that, steady) is Mo Farah who seems like the nicest man in the world. Unfortunately, he may be nice, but he constantly has people and things chasing after him. Don’t believe me? Check out this simple yet wonderful site. http://mofarahrunningawayfromthings.tumblr.com/ My favourites are Mo Farah running away from Benny Hill and Mo Farah running away from many Mo Farah’s. Utter genius. Mo pops up a lot on the net this month, as you might expect. He makes an appearance on The Poke, a good-natured spoof of red top newspapers. In the article, he is being sued by a burger chain for stealing their golden arches logo and using it as his victory celebration. Check out the story here http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2012/08/15/mcdonalds-to-sue-mo-farah-over-victory-pose/ and then have a look at the rest of the articles. Very clever and funny. Fancy a break? Well, the odds are you won’t be going for a Kit-Kat. There are only really a few variations in the UK, and I for one am bored of them. The 2-fingered salute, the 4-way street and the chunky. Occasionally, if we are lucky, some new flavour might come out for 3 months, but really, come on chocolate boffins, put some imagination into it. If we lived in Japan (aka the BEST country in the world) we would have hundreds of different variations on this Great British invention (I have no idea if it actually is a British invention, but I’ve still got Olympic fever, so forgive me). How do I know? Well, I’ve been to Jen Kens Kit Kat Blog, of course http://jenkenskitkatblog.blogspot.co.uk/ Jen went to Japan, ostensibly to teach, but really it was to study and write about all the mental flavours of Kit Kat they have. Pumpkin Cheesecake, Bitter Strawberry, Pudding (very generic) and the revolting sounding Apple Vinegar – all are painstakingly documented here for your pleasure. Thanks Jen. Hey, this is old but I just found it. Remember the X-Files? Well, apparently Scully used to say ‘Oh My God’ a lot! http://youtu.be/-Dw3m-vIj7A My 2 and a half year old son has taken great delight in sticking googly eyes all over my house. I really cannot tell you how much pleasure it brings me walking into a room and finding these sticky blooming things stuck everywhere apart from on pieces of paper. I blame Mister Maker (a joke for the parents there). I was very surprised to find that this naughty and irritating activity is now considered to be a legitimate art form and even has it’s own website. http://eyebombing.com/ Is the home of what is called eyebombing, sticking googly eyes (available from any arts and craft shop) onto things. Stick with. It builds up and becomes more and more fascinating and amusing. I had a lot of complaints that last months column did not feature enough cats. Or sinks. So, here are some cats. In sinks. http://catsinsinks.com/. As ever If you’ve got any exciting websites you want to share, email me iainATiainleeDOTcom ——— You can read Iain Lee’s very own take on the internet here on the 123-reg blog every last Friday of the month. A familiar face on television since he got his first break landing the job hosting Channel 4’s thrice weekly topical comedy show the 11 O’Clock Show at the age of 25, Iain is also an award winning radio presenter, top podcast creator and a genuinely funny guy with an eye for the bizarre.
The Iain Lee Column: The Magic of the Internet
I have been struggling to recall what life was like before the internet, and I honestly can’t remember much of it at all. It’s just a hazy blur of moping around, standing at bus stops and reading things that I believe we used to call books. Sounds hideous, doesn’t it? The www has enriched our sad, pathetic lives by allowing us to access ANYTHING we want. The world is out there and we can peak at it anytime. Want to take a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel, then tap in this catchy little URL http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Pano/CSN/Visit_CSN_Main.html and you can. If you’re curious as to what every Beatles song played at the same time sounds like, then go here (I warn you now, it sounds blooming awful) and if you have ever wondered the height of every American president, then you need to visit the Presidential Height Index which is here – Abe Lincoln is the tallest at a staggering 6ft10! With all of this knowledge and art available to us at just a few taps of a keyboard, why then do we spend 98% of our time looking primarily at pornography and pictures of cats (statistics from The Office Of Made Up Statistics)? These two things dominate our online experience. Luckily, no one has yet managed to successfully combine these two experiences. …Oh hang on, I just Googled it. They have. You can find that for yourself, you mucky little things. There is no chance of me fouling up my history folder on my browser with filth like that. Again. By the way, if you own more than one cat you are mental. If you film your harem of cats and put those films on YouTube, you are completely certifiable. If those videos then get nearly 30,000,000 views, you’re still mental but also a genius, a bit like Ronald McDonald. Japanese cat-o-phile Shirone Koshiro is all of these things. Why are these films so popular? I have literally no idea. Have a look and see what you think. Speaking of mental, after a plea for websites that I could write about in this column, I received loads of suggestions (send them to iainATiainlee.com – you know replacing AT with @ so the spammers don’t get me please). But as soon as I saw the subject heading ‘Women Laughing Alone With Salad’, I knew this month’s search was over. Whoever came up with this site is either a lunatic on a par with The Joker from the hugely popular Batman series of comic books, or a genius on a par with Brainiac from the virtually unknown Superman series of comic books. It is literally pictures of women. Who are laughing. On their own. Whilst being near salad. Even thinking about it is making me chuckle. Seriously have a look now, because this will be your new favourite website of all time ever for today. It’s websites like this that make me think some people have way too much time on their hands. Why would you do this? Why? Finally, I feel bad for pointing you in the direction of that unlistenable Beatles ‘thing’ at the start of this piece. Let me try and rectify that by playing you the most amazing mash up of songs by the 60’s mop-top-pop-quartet. Every note comes from Liverpool’s finest and Hank Handy really has done a fantastic job. Magical. You can read Iain Lee’s very own take on the internet here on the 123-reg blog every last Friday of the month. A familiar face on television since he got his first break landing the job hosting Channel 4’s thrice weekly topical comedy show the 11 O’Clock Show at the age of 25, Iain is also an award winning radio presenter, top podcast creator and a genuinely funny guy with an eye for the bizarre.
The Iain Lee Column: The Magic of the Internet
The internet is an amazing place. It can unite, inspire, move and arouse. There are an infinite number of sites to look at and an amazing amount of information out there, waiting to be accessed. Why then do I only ever really look at 4 sites – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and eBay? I have to confess, I am a massive eBay addict, despite the fact it’s written with a lower case e and then a capital b. That makes no grammatical sense whatsoever and is actually quite annoying. Still, where else am I going to spend money I don’t have on tat I don’t need? I have made it my personal mission to delve deeper into the www and find gems that are hidden away, waiting for someone to stumble across them, dust them off, and hold them up to the bright sunlight of scrutiny. OK, I got a bit lost in that metaphor (or simile, I’m not fussy) but hopefully you get the idea. I find good stuff. I show to you. You like. Recently I have been marvelling at 19th century technology via 21st century machinery. The photograph has taken many shapes and forms over the years, but it’s always going to be a part of our lives and with the sale of Instagram for $190 billion , photos have never been cooler. The best sites are the ones that keep on giving. Well, actually, the best sites are the ones with free knockers, but let’s try and keep this clean. www.dearphotograph.com is deceptively simple. At first glance, it’s people taking photographs of them holding up photographs. Wow. AMAZING! But look closer, it’s so much more than that. It’s pictures of ghosts. Author Taylor Jones has collected hundreds of photos of people standing in the site where old photos were taken, whilst holding those old photos up in the same position they were taken. There, got it? No, because it is bloody hard to describe. OK. Imagine you have a photo from the 70’s of your mum stood on some church steps. You then go back to those same church steps, armed with that photo and a camera. You hold the photo up so it looks like mum is still on those steps, and snap, you take a photo of that! There, that should help get an image in your head. I was thinking of explaining this with a comparison to the ‘Crush Your Head’ guy, but how on earth a reference to a long forgotten character in cult Canadian sketch show Kids in the Hall with help is anyone’s guess. But it’s sort of similar. Have a look http://youtu.be/1pKXMcfx1d8 While I may not have sold this site too well, it’s definitely worth checking out. It starts off cute, but as I kept looking and reading the stories that go with them, I started to get very emotional. I’ll be honest, the picture of an old man holding a baby with the caption ‘This is how my granddad used to hold me…now I am holding him’ had me in tears. But shh, don’t tell anyone or I will have to kill you. And then take a photo of it. If you want proper spooky pics, then have a look at this www.scienceofghosts.com – this is genuinely amazing. Do ghosts exist? Of course not, don’t be silly, but this corner of cyberspace almost convinces me they do. Some of the pictures need a bit of concentration, but when you finally ‘see’ that head of a dead man hovering behind a 2 year old in a garden (I realise I needn’t have put the word dead, as ghosts do tend to be rather deceased by definition) a tiny little bit off wee will leave your body. Or what about the wedding photo? Nothing there, but hang on, I can see something behind that dudes trousers, and if you look up a bit…IT’S A TINY DEAD MAN POKING OUT FROM BEHIND! Again, it almost definitely isn’t because I am not a 12 year old girl and so I KNOW FOR A FACT that ghosts DO NOT EXIST. It’s a shame, because I’d love to meet one, but it just ain’t gonna happen. Some paranormal photos that aren’t quite so impressive can be found on www.ghostphotos.org This site claims to contain pictures of ghosts. I can tell you now, they aren’t. They are just very, very bad photos. Circling a blob and saying it’s a man’s face, does not make it a man’s face. It makes it a blob. Seriously, I have never seen such bad ghostly images in my life. One is titled ‘Ed eating a peanut butter and jelly’ and that’s all it is. A man wearing braces, eating a sandwich in a really blurry photo. THAT IS NOT SUPERNATURAL OR SPOOKY ON ANY LEVEL! It is, however, very funny that someone could think these pictures were worth sharing with the entire world. Worth having a look just for a giggle. If you’ve got any sites you think I should be looking at, please let me know iainATiainlee.com (you know replacing AT with @ so the spammers don’t get me!) You can read Iain Lee’s very own take on the internet here on the 123-reg blog every last Friday of the month. A familiar face on television since he got his first break landing the job hosting Channel 4’s thrice weekly topical comedy show the 11 O’Clock Show at the age of 25, Iain is also an award winning radio presenter, top podcast creator and a genuinely funny guy with an eye for the bizarre.
A world of possibilities…
The internet truly offers a world of possibilities. You can connect to friends on the other side of the world, you can purchase almost anything your ever wanted (and lots you never needed), you can watch video, listen to music, you can even remotely control appliances within your home. The internet is fantastic at giving power and knowledge to everybody and anybody, but the one thing it can’t guarantee is protection for the stupid. That may sound harsh but sometimes, as the wonderful Darwin Awards have been showing for years there are some people in this wide world who are just beyond help. If the Darwin’s used the internet to make more aware of the fact, the internet itself is now doing its best to highlight the shortcomings of more and more people in this world we live in. In the past week we have seen stories of the internet cafe robbers who left themselves logged in to Facebook and now the iPhone thief who uploaded his own family photos to the phone’s Photo Stream on iCloud. In days gone by we may never have learnt of such stupidity yet, the internet is full of tales like this in ever growing numbers. Yet don’t confuse stupid with ignorance. There is nothing to be ashamed of about being ignorant on certain aspects of the online world. Even this blogger – a so called expert – gets caught out every now and then, the topic, the possibilities are so vast. In fact, that is why 123-reg is here. We aim to make the internet simple and make its possibilities accessible to all. We aim to educate and inform via this blog. Not just on our own products, but on the wider world wide web in general. Via our support site, we also aim to guide and hand-hold our customers attempting to get the best out of our products and each and every tweak to our site and product range is designed to open more doors and more potential revenue streams to our customers, whatever their level of understanding. The internet is a world of possibilities, waiting to be tapped. Your 123-reg account is the most resourceful tool you are ever likely to come across to use it wisely and use it well. If you have any particular aspect of 123-reg products, of the world wide web, or technology in general that you think needs explanation let us know.