Before seeing that Messiah video I posted earlier, I’d never heard of Derren Brown here in Canada. It seems he’s had quite a few interesting television specials. Here are a couple of clips:

This next one features Simon Pegg, which immediately makes it great.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula posted the beginning of the BBC special Messiah, in which Derren Brown travels from England to America to try and convince five paranormal leaders that he possesses the powers they apparently practice.

It’s a fantastic programme that really shows how people can be easily manipulated when someone knows how to pick the right targets, read people, and plant suggestions. It’s fascinating to watch.

My favourite bit comes near the end, when he makes a small audience and a professional medium believe he’s contacting the dead. I can ignore, or even see the entertainment value, in fortune tellers and palm readers, but I absolutely despise spirit mediums. It warms my heart whenever someone takes time to expose them as frauds. There are a lot of disgusting ways to make a living in this world, and taking money from people by pretending to relay messages from their dead mothers ranks quite high, as far as I’m concerned.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

A friend sent me this today, and I thought I’d share it here. It’s animated graffiti, and it must have taken an awful lot of work. You can find more of his surreal graffiti and drawings on his site.

Neil Gaiman mentioned Tim Minchin on his weblog the other day. I’d never heard of him before, but I spent a good chunk of the afternoon perusing his videos on YouTube today. He’s a lot of fun, both a talented pianist and hilarious comedian.

Here’s his solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict:

On having an open mind:

And a love song:

He’s worth checking out. He seems to be most famous in Australia, his homeland, and the UK. I hadn’t heard of him here in Canada yet.

I’ve spent the last thirty minutes trying to FTP to my site to upgrade my WordPress to 2.5, but my connection keeps getting dropped almost immediately after connecting. The closest I can get is through command line, but that also drops before I can do anything useful. The web interface, Plesk, only allows single file uploads, so that’s obviously not going to work either. It’s all rather frustrating.

This new version has built-in tag management, which is great. Ever since Flickr, I’ve been a huge fan of tags. It’s such a simple way to manage content. The new photo gallery tools are also interesting. I have very little storage with my hosting plan, so I just use Flickr for my photos, but it looks like a cool feature.

The most exciting part of this new version, however, is that they’ve finally stopped the visual editor from raping your HTML. This has haunted me in the past, so it great to see them address it. This, along with the new full screen editor, shows they’re trying to smooth out the writing process, which is something I’m glad they’re focusing on.

Here’s a preview of the new dashboard and photo management:

Tonight wasn’t a complete waste, though. I pulled out my new stock pot for the first time and made a huge batch of chili. After nine hours of what I can only imagine is some kind of black magic, my dinner was ready, and it was delicious. I used this recipe, and I’ll be making it again.

I stumbled upon this on YouTube just now and fell in love. It’s a demented short video from Looking For Group, a World of Warcraft based web comic, and it’s produced by Blind Ferret Entertainment. If The Little Mermaid was more like this, I think I would have enjoyed it a little more.

I’ve always loved the fiddle, and I really don’t know why. I must have inherited the interest from my dad when I was a kid. I suppose I got off easy, as I very well could have picked up his passion for fanny packs and Roger Whittaker.

I also love Primus, claymation, and all things devilish, so I was very happy to find this video just now.

Looks like it has a lot of potential, as long as Indiana doesn’t suddenly become Spider-man.