Dogs for hire by the hour

Hands up everyone who immediately mentally pictured a scene involving North Shields Fish Quay and horny handed sailors? You can relax because it's nothing like that.

Tokyo residents who are unable to have a dog of their own for whatever reason are queuing up to use a hire a puppy service to sate their puppy love needs. Any deposit? If there is you just pop it in the plastic bag provided.

via boingboing

Sneakiest primates have biggest brains

According to the New Scientist. Maybe that would explain the sneaky chimp's ability to urinate upon my living room carpet too? Oo-oo and, indeed Aa-aa!

Science for kids

This site is a decent set of school level science pages with some interesting pieces and experiments to do. My daughter asked me this very question the other day. I already knew the answer to that one and I'll be showing her the page as I'm not sure she believed me!

Make sure you read it all - I'll be testing you later.

via Presurfer

Splat The Ref

More cheating Swiss referee action with Splat The Ref. You get to throw juicy tomatoes at Arse Meier. Yay for childish revenge in the medium of Flash!

via the Flophouse

Apple unveils faster searching tool

Apple provided a sneak preview of the next version of its desktop software on Monday that uses metadata to speed up searches. Highlight of the keynote speech was a preview of the next version of OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger.

fuckmarrykill.com or, New Links uses it's daily swearing budget in one post...

Quality gaming action! It's fuckmarrykill.com.
Level of difficulty : hard. Especially when you have to choose between paris hilton and angelina jolie.

Vote for your favourite swear word

As you well know swearing seems to be a pastime of us NewLinkers but i do think we lack a little imagination in our choice of words. Clicky here for a massive list of choice gestures including a lot that are new to me.BTW you can also vote for you're favourite.
Only NSFW if anyone else can see you're screen!

Link pinched from MilkandCookies

The Empire strikes Bush

Must remember the never used search this site thingy.
Let's try again then eh?
Yet another Flash cartoon called "The Empire Strikes Bush"

Osama Bin Lotto

Has Bush already captured Osama and is he waiting for the right time to announce it?
This cool Flash short thinks so. OSAMA BIN LOTTO

One for Hippy Tony

He can make music like his forefathers with the help of the Indian Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine. Won't be long until he's appearing at the Telewest on the same bill as Brood X Denizens of the Tinterweb.

via Hal's Stoopid Links

New feature?

I've just been on the bStats site which is Blogger's stats stuff for BlogSpot Plus users. Except it isn't. The page says that it is only for the premium service users yet I've just logged in, got my blog list and added the code to the New Links template. It works. Yay!

We are currently using StatCounter which is a really good free stats service with data drill downs by country, referrer etc. The only problem with it is that the free service only keeps the details for the last 100 hits. The bStats service looks like it keeps everything as there are pages to see most popular page of the day, week, month and year. There isn't as much info available in the stats but the fact it keeps the info for longer means it may ultimately end up the better stats to use for New Links.

The bStats front page has this bit on it:

NOTE: bSTATS is currently free for Blog*Spot Plus users (hey, by the way, upgrade!) and not available for anyone else. If everything goes well, it will be available for others in the near future.

So are they preparing to roll it out for free to Blogger users now or have they simply left the back door open? I don't know so I've left the StatCounter code in place for now just in case the 'free' bStats gets pulled for whatever reason.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I found the bStats site via a post about bStats' temporary unavailability on the Blogger Service Status page.

Swearing Lego

Here's a little Lego video called Bork (4mb wmv) which is swearier than sweary John. The site has a few more Lego videos here and even has low bandwidth versions for Bungers. Tinterwebless Dogs will have to buy some Lego and make his own film.

SFW/C? Probably not. It swears. A lot.

via Attu Sees All

Official downloads chart launches

Official downloads chart launches and the first test chart has been published this week. What's number one? Why it's the Pixies' "Bam Thwok" - a new track made available exclusively via Apple's iTunes Music Store!

June Icon compo entry #351531

I promised more icon goodness this afternoon, and here you go. It can be used for Star Wars stories, helmet stories, and stories about rebels! Yay!

Star Wars. Games. Free.

A person called Bruno R.Marcos has written some Star Wars games and has them for free on his site. You still here?

via spinneyhead

One for bhell13

"Greetings Mortals!"

I thought I'd kick off my first post with some classics:
*Juvenile, stupid and mildly amusing.... Pee-mail!
*Productivity Begone! Some essential 80's games for your enjoyment.
*Warning this game is more addictive than....well something very addictive.
*and to finish, some pixel superhero icons and desktops.

Leave a comment on what type of links you want and ill see what I can do.

Hacking the Blogger Matrix

That's a bit of a coincidence! ;)

No sooner do I write the how-to for On This Day then Blogger publish an article talking about user hacks and requesting submissions. Synchronicity or what? Anyway I've submitted our hack.

New Links Space Expedition Announced

Bungers has been following the story of the first commercial space flight. I'm not sure he actually announced the successful conclusion so here it is : SpaceShipOne got to space! Yay!

After intense negotiations we have now received plans required to build our own version of SpaceShipOne. We'll be in space by the end of the week. Probably.

Underground Ring Thing...

Here's one to keep you all busy while you wait for the Victoria Tunnel Report™. It's a webring devoted to all sorts of underground shizzle. It appears we've stumbled across something that appears to be a fairly popular past time! Looks like you can also tour abandoned mental institutions, buildings and rooftops too. St. Nick's for the next one...? Or the real looney bin up in the woods near the airport? I hear it's run by someone called the "Umbrella Corporation"...

Viagra idea is no joke

Highland shepherds may be given free Viagra to swell the region's declining population.Part of the article says

"I was discussing the needs of isolated sheep farmers and...."

I thought you lot can insert you're own joke here as i've may have already upset at least half of the population of our planet with my last post. this is north scotland

One for the ladies

Are you a lady driver? Do you struggle with parallel parking? Then this may be of some use to you.It would help if you were a mathematician as well which just about makes this the most useless link on NewLinks.Ever. ;)

One for Merg

As he is a fan of crusty, hippy music like AC/DC here's a cover of Van Halen's Eruption for him - played on a violin.

via waxy

Now that's what I call a tunnel

We are going to have to fly to Ohio for the first international New Links Tunnel trip. The Cincinnati Subway System was never completed due to financial problems. Before the money ran out they did manage to build 7 miles of tunnel. This dwarfs our previous tunnel trips to the Byker Cully (approx 2/3 of a mile) and the Victoria tunnel which had less than a mile of the tunnel you could explore. In lieu of a link to the long awaited (delayed due to technical reasons - again!) Victoria tunnel report you will have to make do with the background info here.

via boingboing

Gmailster

This site allows you to check if the GMail address you are after is taken. Of course if you have a spare account you can just create one and find out so this must be for people who haven't got a GMail account yet - all 3 of them.

Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'

Fiddy Dent reckons that an Iranian woman has given 'birth to frog'. Hiiiii-ya!

Adding "On This Day" to Blogger

Latest update info here.

All the new features added by Blogger in their redesign have improved the design of the blogs no end with lots of benefits for those who have switched over. We implemented all the things mentioned in that article within hours of the redesign being launched and have been adding further hacks since. I've been meaning to write how-to posts for quite a while now and have finally got around to doing one. What with this and the long fabled Victoria Tunnel report allegedly coming on the same day you must be looking out of the window for the flying pigs now.

The first hack to be written up is the On This Day hack. That's because it is the simplest one to do, and by extension, the easiest for me to write up. So what does this hack do? Can you see the On This Day links at the top of the page? The interesting bit is what they link to - the On This Day pages at various websites which have famous events, births, deaths and observed holidays from around the world many of which are linked to good articles on the subject. The sites currently linked to are:

• BBC
• Wikipedia
• The History Channel
• Daily Bleed
• Internet Movie Database
• New York Times
• This page!

So for the minimal effort of inserting a little bit of code in your template you automatically get a link of the day style thing for every day you publish a post. Note that you don't need to be using the new designs to use this hack - it works equally well on the old templates too.

Onto the hack itself. The first stage is to ensure your dates are in the correct format. To do this go to the dashboard and then go to Settings / Formatting as shown here.

Set the date this format:

Set the date language to English. Mine is English UK but any of the English options should work. It may even work with other languages but I've never tried it. If you do want to try a different language make sure the date format you choose has the month name and year to ensure the script has the best chance of turning the date into a link.

Save your changes.

Now we are going to edit the template to put the JavaScript code in to do the date linking. Before you start you should back up your current template just in case there are any problems when you are implementing it. Done that? OK. Copy the following code and paste it just before the </HEAD> tag in your template.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function WikiOnThisDay(dateToMangle)
{
  var strMonthNames=new Array(
   "January","February","March","April","May","June",
   "July","August","September","October","November","December"
   );
  var DTM = new Date(dateToMangle);
  
  var nMonth = DTM.getMonth(); // 0 - 11
  var nDate = DTM.getDate(); //1-31
  var nYear = DTM.getFullYear();
  var strMonthNameProper = strMonthNames[nMonth];
  var strMonthNameLower = strMonthNameProper.toLowerCase();

  nMonth+=1;
  var MM = nMonth<10?"0"+nMonth:nMonth;
  var DD = nDate<10?"0"+nDate:nDate;
  
 var BBC =
  "<a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/" +
  strMonthNameLower + "/" +
  nDate + "/default.stm\">BBC</a>";
 var Wikipedia =
  "<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" +
  strMonthNameProper + "_" +
  nDate + "\">Wikipedia</a>";
 var HistoryChannel =
   "<a href=\"http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=" +
   (10272953+nMonth) +
   "&day=" +
   (10272965+nDate) +
   "&cat=10272946" +
  "\">History Channel</a>";
 var IMDB = 
  "<a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/OnThisDay?day=" +
  nDate + "&month=" +
  strMonthNameProper +
  "\">IMDB</a>";
 var DailyBleed =
  "<a href=\"http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/" +
  MM +
  DD +
  ".htm\">Daily Bleed</a>";
 var NYTimes = 
  "<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/" +
  nYear +
  MM +
  DD +
  ".html\">NY Times</a>";
 var HowTo =
  "<a href=\"http://newlinks.blogspot.com/2004/06/" +
  "adding-to-blogger.html\">How To</a>";
 return  BBC + " " + Wikipedia + " " + HistoryChannel + 
 " " + DailyBleed + " " + IMDB + " " + NYTimes + " " + HowTo;
}
</script>

Now find this bit of code in your template...

<BlogDateHeader>
<h2 class="date-header"><$BlogDateHeaderDate$></h2>
</BlogDateHeader>

...and replace it with this code.

<BlogDateHeader>
<h2 class="date-header"><$BlogDateHeaderDate$>
<br />
<small>
On this day:
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write(WikiOnThisDay("<$BlogDateHeaderDate$>"));
</script>
</small>
</h2>
</BlogDateHeader>

You can put any text or HTML tags you want around the JavaScript call so you can make it look exactly the way you want it to.

You may want to only display links for one or two On This Day sites so here's how to change what is displayed. First follow the installation above then find these lines in your template:

return  BBC + " " + Wikipedia + " " + HistoryChannel + 
 " " + DailyBleed + " " + IMDB + " " + NYTimes + " " + HowTo;

The BBC, WikiPedia, etc bits are the code for the links, the bits in quotes are just to put a space between them and the + symbols join it all together. Just remove the bits you don't want and any spare +.

Here are some sample variations. Note if I add any more On This Day links to the code I won't be putting more samples here - it should be easy enough to work out from the samples below:
BBC Only

return BBC;

Wikipedia Only

return Wikipedia;

BBC and Wikipedia

return BBC + " " + Wikipedia;

Save your changes. You can now either republish the blog to apply the changes to the whole blog or just wait until you post next to apply the changes to any new pages created.

This script has been improved and added to extensively since it featured on the Blogger Hacks page mainly due to suggestions in the comments. If you have any ideas for improving it further please leave a comment. It originally only featured the WikiPedia link but at the time of writing it now links to five sites. More would better so if you know of any sites that have On This Day pages let me know and I'll try and add them. If you've installed an earlier version of the code just paste the script above directly over the old one in your template.

Important Bit! The conditions of use of this script have changed since I first published it as many people were using the script without crediting us. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

This means you are pretty much free to do whatever you want with this script. However I've reserved the right to be credited for the code. To satisfy that condition you must leave the How To link in the code AND/OR link to us either in a post or in a blogroll.

If you're wondering at my use of 'us' rather than 'me' in the previous paragraph it's because this is a group blog with varied types of posts on all manner of subjects - so check out the rest of NewLinks!

Here is a list of blogs that have implemented the code and credited us. I was manually tracking usage but that's taking too much time and effort (I know I've definitely missed some!) so if you want to add your blog to this list please email me with the address of your site at the email address in my profile.
Look At This, Councillor Bob Piper, Supermum, Lifetime Gamer, Frugal (contributed a PHP version), Do You Dream In Colour?, My Oozings, The Experiment Lab, gOOg's blOg, Wardy Fireball, Piece of Shep, JACkory's Listening Room, Freedom_from_Censorship, Joe's Town, The Iowa Truth, What It Is Today, Ramblings of a MadMan, Mama's Little Slimen, Mama's Other Little Stuff, Jackington Viego, Online Business Journal, Virres Blog, c0dep0et, the Front Line, News From The Ministry Of Truth, Unmangled Target Smile, Musings from the unemployment line a Multifarious Mind, Baby Tales, Reflective Musings, new and exciting time wasting technologies, King Leonard, The Burning Bush, CNBlog, Random Geek Thoughts, Reservoir Blog, Bwana Bomba, The Leviathan and The Republic, Life In The Shadows, Set Your Intellectual Property Free, .ERN, Half-baked Rhetoric, A Bama Blog, Follow Me Here.

EDIT (3rd Feb, 2005): I've just found out the code I put above didn't work due to a couple of missing lines. The script has now been corrected so if you've installed it since I added the Daily Bleed link then you'll need to copy this script over the top of the script in your template.

Evil Animal Alphabet

Teach your kids their ABC's with the help of this animal alphabet flash anim. These images will be seared onto the child's mind forever thus making it one of the best ways of learning the alphabet known to science. Probably.

via b3ta again. Still I'll not feel guilty as we aren't as bad as the other sites that dump the whole newsletter as multiple posts every week and never credit them. Lazy fsckers.

And another gay test

This seems to be turning into a New Links series as this is the 3rd gay test we've featured - first two are here and here. This is the best by far to date.

via b3ta newsletter

eBay item #5504352731

Euro 2004 stuff for sale already!

Like the Beastie Boys?

It appears they don't like you. I'm sure we had something on the DRM shizzle on latest CD from them but I can't find it. Anyway it seems the latest news on the protection is that it is a virus - or at least it fits the definition of a virus pretty well in that it sneaks onto a machine and damages functionality. No self replication but close enough for me.

Stop Esso Exxon Mobil

The last time petrol got discussed here Bungers went for cheap fuel the rest of us said raise prices. Be I think we all agreed to tax cream cakes and that Esso were twunts - here's your chance to say so with the Stop Esso Exxon Mobil site. Upload a picture, put a speech bubble on it & register your protest.

Alternatively stick a nekkid laydee up there, put "come to newlinks.blogspot.com" and wait for all the hits! ;)

via the FlopHouse

More randoms incase you ain't seen 'em...

Random stuff from last night...

Now Mac users can use gmail properly too

After the release of GTray improved GMail beyond all recognition someone has written gCount for the Mac. You can tell it's for the Mac by it's 'trendy' lower case initial character. All we need now is a Firefox/Mozilla compatible one for Windows. What a hit whore that would be if we were to write one! I think I'll have a look at the mozilla plugin dev docs this weekend. ;)

David Beckham's Penalty Shootout 2004

It's obviously very hard taking penalties so see if you can do any better than Beckham by playing David Beckham's Penalty Shootout 2004.

YA from bhell13 who is obviously after the position of NewLinks roving sports reporter. ;)

Brown Wing Thing...

They're here! Religious meddlers and do-gooders The Silver Ring Thing descend on Birmingham today to interfere in the lives of the great British public. We covered this some time ago, and you know how we hate bias on this blog, so today I'm launching my new campaign : The Brown Wing Thing™

The Brown Wing Thing gives you the option to retain the sanctity of the easy pink, and all those other things that I'm sure they're going on about, whilst still maintaining the option for a bit of romp action.


So, if there's any British girls out their wanting to earn their wings, hold your ring aloft with pride!

Fear The Pie! - Part II

Not fearing the pie enough yet..? Here's a selection of more pies that you deffo should be fearing. Including recipes for 'hash' which is a cooked cow's leg and head soup. Yum yum! I'm off for some pork fat covered in chocolate.

Mini Euro 2004

A collection of mini football cards with Euro 2004 qualification ladder. If you print these out you can arrange them to your hearts content and pretend last night didn't actually happen.

Another one emailed from bhell13. Possibly the only person left in the country who can be arsed to look for links! ;)

Cheating Swiss Turd Burglar

The idea of Swiss neutrality died last night. Next time there's a European war we shouldn't allow them to sit on the sidelines like big girl's blouses.

It seems the Arse Meier has a website - with a feedback form here. Not that I'm suggesting owt like.

Thanks to Bhell13 for emailing that one in.

Follow up : iPod Your BMW

So that'll be the first seamless integration of iPod and automobile since the Smart i-move then...

Follow up: He's back

Well that didn't last long as he is back already.

Michael Eavis to point his 'Orgone' to the sky

Here's a link from Chops that I suppose we should send to BykerSink too! It's a Glastonbury update #2...!!

Arcane "cloudbuster" to shield Glastonbury

Beach blob mystery solved at last

Blobs have been washing up down Whitley Bay for many a year now, but recently scientists have been testing some of the real big ones like the Tasmanian west coast monster.

Disappointingly, they've put preserved blob samples a series of tests, and researchers have confirmed that the "giant octopus of St Augustine" from 1896, two Bermuda blobs from the 1990s and the 1996 Nantucket blob are also just the washed-up remains of whales.

Hotmail announces GMail

Hotmail is going to offer 250Mb storage. It's all a bit academic really unless Yahoo and Hotmail stump up somewhere close to GMail's 1Gb storage instead of a combined storage space of just over a third of GMails.

One for everyone except Bungers

One from the archives at Waxy.org so forgive me if you have seen this one before.It is a pilot for "kids show" supposedly bought by MTV though i can't see them airing it unless there is a serious amount of cutting.The quality of the video is a little shaky but well worth a watch. Kids Show
Not for the easily offended and probably NSFW.

And why not for Bungers? Well it is a MASSIVE 24MB download unless you have an hour or two to spare. ;)

Safe Sax

Well it would be if you listened to Kenny G anyway. But if you're not Glenn Hoddle you probably don't so that headline didn't work at all then did it?

If you are going to stick your iPod up your arse you may need one of
these.

Google Search: how to make bungers at home

lol!! Well, Steak and a BJ is always a good start...

Google Search: how to make bungers at home

Roo - mania part 5

BBC are reporting that there has been in upsurge in Rooney related domain registrations. The best thing about the story is the little table showing how many related domains there are to each England player. That'll be none for Heskey then!

I'm off to register HesFatHesScouseHellRobYourFuckingHouseWayneRooney.com.

AFI's 100 Songs

How come AFI have done a hundred songs already? Oh, not that AFI. This is the American Film Institute and this is the list of the top 100 songs from films. And at number 1 it's the gay national anthem.

Vietnam man hopes for hair record

Hippy Tony's claim to be of Asian origin is backed up by this article about his brother.Probably.

Paris watch

Paris Hilton has told a US radio station that she is in talks about a role in the follow up to D+D.Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

Drug Tax Stamp

Marijuana dealers in Kansas are supposed to pay tax on their drug dealing profits.They are supposed to buy stamps which they attach to their product before sale.As if.
Kansas Department of Revenue - Personal Tax Types - Drug Tax Stamp
This page has a list of FAQ for the drug dealers.

Ascii stereogram

I can't do these things at the best of times and this ascii text stereogram has defeated me. A prize (possibly!) for the best suggestion as to what it is.

Can't poop, won't poop?

Then New Links to the rescue once more. We've brokered a special deal as part of our new commercial awareness and have arranged for you to have some free laxatives.

Only drawback is they can only be delivered to a US address but as Dogs pointed out before that could be argued to be 'the world'. If they don't go for that I'm sure Merg will arrange for deliveries etc and bring us a big bag o' laxatives back from Amerkia.

via Sciatica