Retro Yakking

Around half a million households are set to lose Freeview channels permanently today as the latest in a series of pointless updates is to be rolled out at lunchtime.

The update is ‘necessary’ to upgrade Freeview to a format that can broadcast High Definition television some time in the future. We’re not being told quite when yet, but best estimates show it’ll be long after HD television is obsolete and consigned to the rubbish bin along with analogue, the cathode ray tube and VHS cassettes.

The upgrade will allow greater access to Five, bringing it to homes that previously could not receive the channel. However, it is also set to leave around 460,000 households without ITV3 and ITV4 permanently, and an awful lot of technophobes with a massive headache.

(more…)

Were you quaking in your boots at the thought of this summer’s killer squirrels? Well, they’re nothing compared to what’s coming this autumn: deadly spiders.

These aren’t your regular, run of the mill house spiders, though, these are genetically mutated monster spiders the likes of which haven’t ever been seen on these shores. The result of interbreeding between regular spiders and Bulgarian jungle spiders — the latter of which can grow up to a metre long — has spawned a breed of megabeasts that will swallow your cat whole in an instant.

What’s more, their superglue-laden webs could easily trap a human should they be foolish enough to walk into one. Tarantulas have nothing on these guys, who’ll think nothing of consuming your television, DVD player and even XBOX 360 - and man, are those things huge.

(more…)

Internet giants Google are this week celebrating their eleventh birthday, and to mark the occasion have changed their logo from the standard ‘Google’ to ‘Goog11e’ - pronounced Goog-eleven-ull.

Google, set up in 1998 as a directory of cricketing terms, was originally one of a number of domains bought up in September of that year by founders Geoff Boycott and Ian Botham; others included sillymidoff.com, shortthirdman.info, plumlegbefore.co.uk and slowleftchinamen.org.

As time passed, it became apparent that the majority of these domain names were woefully unmemorable for a non-cricket watching audience, so the shorter and catchier Google.com became the most widely used. Google have since sold all of their other domain names to assorted village cricket teams dotted around the UK and Australia.

(more…)

Well, we haven’t had one of these for ages, have we? It’s time for Harry Yack to once again steal the keyboard and highlight some blogs/bloggers out there that have recognised Retro Yakking in one way or another, or have just caught the eye since… well, whenever the last shout out was, probably some months ago.

First up is Lily at New Strange World Today, who’s really been getting into the blogging thing of late. Her site deals with everything from the supernatural and psychic to sleep disorders and self-medication - in fact, anything that might be termed a bit strange, hence the blog’s title. So if you’re into slightly darker topics and are looking for a light, conversational style, then Lily’s site might just appeal to you.

(more…)

You thought you’d seen the last of it a good month or two ago, but records show the number of new swine flu cases is once again on the rise.

Cue a barrage of over-the-top Daily Mail first page headlines and panic-inducing propaganda, as the predicted autumn increase in cases, a second wave of the disease, looks to be in its infant stages.

There have so far been around eighty deaths from swine flu in the United Kingdom, still far from the originally predicted 60,000 by the end of the year. That figure was revised when it was found the disease is less dangerous than first thought, mostly because it doesn’t really turn you into a pig, as many suspected.

Government advice is not to worry too much, for this will lead to mass panic buying which will only succeed in injecting much-needed cash into the economy, digging the country out of the current recession. Of course, it would be financially beneficial for them to keep the western world in this state. Well how do you suppose it started? — That bloke from the University Stupid Conspiracy Theories

(more…)