30 Mar 09 First Person Shooters good for the eyes
Interesting article on livescience.com about how playing PC FPS can improve the eyes ability to perceive ‘fine contrast differences’ in tests. This is the ability discern slight differences in shades of gray, or contrast sensitivity, and could make the difference between seeing the car in front of you or not seeing it, if driving at dusk or in fog.
In the new study, her team tested the contrast sensitivity function of 22 students, then divided them into two groups: One group played the action video games “Unreal Tournament 2004″ and “Call of Duty 2.” The other played “The Sims 2,” which is richly visual, but does not require as much visual-motor coordination…
..Those who played the action games showed an average 43 percent improvement in their ability to discern close shades of gray — close to the difference Bavelier had previously observed between game players and non-game players — whereas the Sims players showed no improvement.
Yay, another positive sideeffect of gaming! 
link: http://www.livescience.com/health/090329-game-vision.html
29 Mar 09 A ukulele ode to Mrs Pontipine
What started as a joke in the office, er…. perhaps should have remained one!!
This is my ‘tribute’ to Mrs Pontipine, a stop motion puppet with children, from Cbeebies ‘In the night garden’. I guess this is what happens when you have a kid and start watching childrens programmes through adult eyes (or maybe its just me?)
I feel a bit mixed about this song actually. Half of me is quite proud that ive written and recorded my very first song. But the other half feels nothing but shame for writing and recording a song about essentially wanting the fuck a puppet from a childrens TV show! 
(i must also point out that the’ teeny tiny hole’ as actually a location within the show – honest!!)
Tags: In the night garden, Mrs Pontipine, Ukuleles
28 Mar 09 WANT!!!!!!!!!
I do love things that hit the fizzypop bonus multiplier!!
http://homedecor.cafepress.com/item/sock-monkey-ukulele-flamingo-wall-clock/118435551
thanks to J-hob for making me aware of this thing of great beauty
26 Mar 09 Fresh from the flickr feed IIIX
How cool is this Planet Of The Apes Story LP?
VERY!!
“Get your hands off me you damn dirty ape!”
Tags: dirty ape, LP, Monkeys, planet of the apes
25 Mar 09 Next H.U.G meeting
25 Mar 09 Is this the future of gaming?
OnLive is a new video games on demand service that may just change the way you play PC games. The brainchild of Rearden Studios founder Steve Perlman, formerly of Atari, Apple, WebTV and more, and Mike McGarvey, formerly of Eidos, the technology looks to revolutionize the way computer games are brought home. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on the latest video game hardware that will make games like Crysis playable at nearly maxed settings, let OnLive’s servers handle the processing. All that’s required is a low cost “micro console” or a low end PC and a broadband internet connection.
They claim to have got round the issue of lag and if this is the case, (and this is a BIG IF) it could end the console wars once and for all!
I am excited!
via Kotaku
24 Mar 09 Robo-Monkey!
or Monkey-bot (i cant decide!!)
Futher to the Ukulele-bot and my desire for a monkey robot, my Canadian ukulele monkey robot correspondant Ukulelezo tipped me off (ages ago, i admit!) to this beauty…
Its like ive died and gone to some kind of handmade robotic monkey workshop heaven!
more robots here
Tags: Monkeys, robotaday, Robots, ukulelezoe
24 Mar 09 Ukuleles i’d like to…
Or should that be ukulelist? (theres a few of them around!)
But anyway, I gone done made a T-shirt
**sniggers**
13 Mar 09 Unicorns!!!
This is like one next step above My lovely Horse
er…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agyTFHAZxFo
13 Mar 09 Once you stop…
Its hard to start up again 
What can i say!!
Ive been ill, Mrs Zyms been ill, Zym 2.0 has been ill (we’re all tip-top again now though!), ive been very busy at work, ive been busy at home, i’ll been too busy watching catching up on BSG & Heroes, ive been busy with the Hull Ukulele Group
Excuses over!!
Things are going well. We had the 3rd meeting of the Hull Ukulele Group on Monday, and it went really really well. Twenty twp peple turned up, uncluding some N00bs, so se split the group into ‘beginners’ & ‘everyone else’ for the first hour to try to quickly bring people up to speed.
By the end of the evening, even the people who had previsouly never played a note in their life were happily strumming along to ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘You are my sunshine’
We also had a bash at WIUO’s version of ‘The Bucket’, with Al’s Twiddly bits’ – i think it will take a bit of work, but it has the potential to sound great
More later…
