Oscar Nominations are out. Predict your winners here at TCAL!!

Lifted from Planet of the Blogs:

John Handelaar is looking for some people to support his effort to develop an Irish equivalent to the hugely successful UK site WriteToThem.com for contacting UK politicians. The Irish version of the site would allow people to contact their councillors, TDs and MEPs for free. If you are interested in helping out, visit www.pledgebank.com/faxyourtd BEFORE FEBRUARY 1ST.

Have a click.

it is stuffed with old clothes, batteries and a couple of electronics boxes. An antenna is affixed to the suit’s helmet.

Haha! Lets start the Austin Powers jokes now!

Full article here

Good lord Mr. Firth. Contains extreme animated flash violence. SOCK EPISODE 3: 10 DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOUP. David Firth’s FAT-PIE.COM.

The Guardian’s Julia Day reports that community websites showcasing user generated content are currently the fastest growing internet brands in the UK, contrary to the popular belief that the most successful are Google and Yahoo. These sites include advice on how to use the internet, on setting up websites and blogs, shopping guides, and community chat and photo networks.

And Piczo - the community and photo website for kids is topping the list. Unique visitors to the site grew 97 fold in 2005. Anyone have any stats on similar trends in Ireland?

Story.

You’ll need a bugmenot to read the guardian article.

Previous TCAL Piczo post.

Ninjaman. Not bad, and I like the way you can attack in slow motion in the air. Be sure to check the instructions.

Not new, but cool in a 5 minutes of novelty value kind of way - bouncing camera that takes a picture everytime it hits a surface. Satugo the worlds first bouncing ball camera.

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Direct .mov link. (via.)

Decent-ish space invaders clone. Chicken Invaders.

Tuesday morning extended reading break: Nice read over at The Washington Post about a kids entertainer; The Great Zuccini who takes home over $100,000 working just 2 days a week. This metafilter thread provides us with a link to The Great Zuccini’s homepage too.

Nice one. What’s Turtle.ie all about then?

1. To raise awareness of leatherback turtles in the Irish Sea
2. To act as a medium through which we can inform you of our research and of any exciting news regarding the project
3. And most importantly to act as a medium through which YOU can inform us of a leatherback turtle sighting or jellyfish stranding

Thanks dave.

Jessica Alba is this year’s No.-1 choice among American men looking for “long-term relationship material,” according to a poll conducted by AskMen.com.

The 24-year-old Fantastic Four star was followed by No. 2-ranked Sienna Miller and third-ranked Angelina Jolie.

Full story. (via.)

Note the question mark. This story is sweeping the internets.

New study results bolster the controversial hypothesis that certain cases of obesity are contagious. Over the last 20 years, some research has suggested that certain strains of human and avian adenoviruses–responsible for ailments ranging from the chest colds to pink eye–actually make individuals build up more fat cells.

Definately one of the strangest things I’ve seen on Scientific American, but they do go in for the more sensationalist stuff. Full story link.

I have no idea how I came upon it but I like it. www.stupid.com where you can buy ridiculous, often useless and amusing stuff. Check out the vintage section for the Shady Hand Visor (above), Dukes of Hazzard colouring book & Enron stressballs. And it is of course the perfect place to shop for the silliest holiday of all, yep, Hallmark Day…or, as some call it, Valentine’s Day. Hitched, shacked up or otherwise, it’s impossible to escape the tackiest ‘holiday’ of the year. Check out www.stupid.com for some brilliant gifts, ranging from the one-carrot ring (above) to some comfy Freudian slippers.

In a move that shows Hollywood is examining the benefits of a technology it long reviled, Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. is expected to announce today that it will sell movies and television shows online in Germany using peer-to-peer technology.

Full article at the Wall Street Journal.

A typically acerbic rant on progress from Old Rotten Hat’s Tom Farrell.

“They say “the more things change the more they stay the same” but on the contrary, when i went to buy a kettle in Argos they were all cordless and they all had ‘concealed elements’. When I was a lad the element inside a kettle was ‘concealed’ by the outside of the kettle. This is not enough. It is fair to say it was never enough. Large sections of the public wish to look inside a kettle and not see an element, was this not entirely obvious? For too long we have suffered from the exposure of elements to innocent children looking inside kettles. no longer. However some people with visible elements inside their kettles are still getting jobs in schools. WHY OH WHY?”

Director Richard Curtis has disappointed fans of cult British TV show Blackadder, by insisting the comedy’s stars are too successful in their own right to ever want to make another series.
…
He says: “When we gave up, there was a thought that one day, when we were old and angry with the young world, we might bring Blackadder back to rail against the modern world.

My main worry is they bring it back and do it badly and ruin it ala Star Wars. Full story. Vast Wikipedia Blackadder entry.

I got 20 and then stopped, satisfied that I had reached genius status. Intelligence test.

Project Censored specializes in covering the top news stories which were either ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year.

Fascinating stuff. Mid Monday morning serious click.

Direct link to How it should have ended’s take on The Lord of the Rings, landing on the main problem everyone who’s seen the films has with them. Howitshouldhaveended main site.