First there was the audition tape and then there was the dubious return of Brian Atene and now finally the real Atene has returned.
He seems like a decent if slightly odd fellow and I do hope that his new found fame does allow him to help The Christopher Reeve Foundation in the way he wishes, my own order for the Superman dog tags in aid of The Christopher Reeve Foundation has gone in.
I agree with Geekhorde at Metafilter that he would make a good voice actor.
I’m so disengaged with my home town of Devizes it’s unreal. Somehow I had totally missed the fact that tonight was the opening of the Devizes Christmas Market. I don’t even know if it’s going to be a fixture in the Market Place up until Christmas or is just a one off for tonight.
Anyway I was walking into town to post off some packages and remarked to myself that there seemed to be a lot of people on the streets this evening and that many of the kids appeared to have very cheap looking lightsabre toys. Then I stumbled upon a burger van and a Punch and Judy show stationed outside the job centre or whatever the hell the New-Labour title is for it now. 
It was then that I knew for certain that something was going on in town tonight and sure enough there is an outdoor Christmas market going on selling the tackiest cheapest crap possible. These Devizes market traders really know their customers.
Bruce Schneier has alerted us to the fact that in order to rent a car in the UK fingerprints will be now taken by the rental company.
It seems that the taking of biometric information is entering the mainstream and will likely become more and more commonplace.
Our next Prime minister Gordon Brown backs call to extend 28-day limit on detention.
FAR! FAR away, the Google lives, in a land which only children can go to. It is a wonderful land of funny flowers, and birds, and hills of pure white heather.
Google wants people to stop googling or at least stop using the term googling as they view it as diluting their trademark much in the same as what has happened in the past to Xerox and Hoover.
However it would appear that not only have people been googling long before the search engine was even a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but the Google also has existed for a long long time as well, in The Google Book by V. C. Vickers. [via]
BBC News: Is this the perfect comedy face?
Scientists have used computer software to come up with what they say is the perfect comedy face.
The University of Stirling team blended together 179 different facial aspects of 20 top comedians.
They said soft and feminine features, typified by Ricky Gervais, were more likely to make people laugh.
I don’t know about you but the guy in the computer generated photo looks more like a serial killer than a comedian to me.
Who knew that chickens could be such a controversial topic?
Ryan North that’s who. But he believes in fictional Jimmy Wales so his judgement is suspect especially given he’s the source of the latest bout of controversial chicken chicanery.
And still no mention in Wikipedia’s Chicken topic of the little-known phenomena of a chick armed with a revolver, shotgun or a bazooka.
Britain: the most spied on nation in the world
David Murakami Wood, from the Surveillance Studies Network, said: “Surveillance is not a malign plot hatched by evil powers to control the population.
“But the surveillance society has come about almost without us realising.”
He added: “With technologies that are large-scale, taken for granted and often invisible, surveillance is increasingly everywhere.
Privacy International: Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World ((Graphic depicting stats.))
Wow the return of Brian Atene! Good to see that he has a sense of humour about his 15 minutes of fame coming 20 years too late. I can only imagine what Full Metal Jacket would have been with him in it. LOL.
Double Wires – Really rubbish low-grade graphics but addictive gameplay. It’s like we are back in the 80s again.
Frustrating when you seem to be doing so well and then you swing yourself up and fling yourself so hard that you end up going in an arc backwards off the top of the screen.