Despite appearances, I’ve been doing so much stuff you’d feel kinda cheated if you’ve been patiently watching this space for any updates. Where have I been? Well, that is exactly what this post is about…

Over the past year or so, I’ve been thrust into the ever-changing world of social media and have been carried along by the cyberwaves of change. When I made the Deadlamb site 2-3 years ago, my direction was a relatively static, table-based html website (with a bit of Flash chucked in for giggles). Soon after, I started experimenting with Blogger blogs but could never get a design I was satisfied with. After learning a bit more, I found out how to install a Wordpress blog on my server space so I could finally host and design my own. This was fine for a while but times are a-constantly a-changing and it soon became apparent that to sit in just one space on the whole vastness of the infosphere is so 2k7.

I’ve only just got around to making a serious concerted effort to getting all these disparate profiles drawn together and this is what’s brought my attention back to HQ. Alongside the subtly brilliant page width adjustment and the smart, new background, I’ve added a few more picture links along the left bar, fleshed out the blog roll with some more of my favourite other sites, and squeezed in a couple more ‘featured images’ – just fo’ fun.

Let me tell you about where those new sidebar links lead and why you should definitely visit them.

Crunkfish

Started as part of a competition, Crunkfish is my Wordpress hosted weblog that’s now been going strong for over a year. Consider it the dark side of the Deadlamb psyche, being far more of an unfettered expression of my imagination than this relatively tame soapbox. It’s my outlet for random wordy stuff and a container for excitingly brilliant stuff I find and just have to stick somewhere. Here’s five reasons why you should read it:

1) Test your ability to tell the difference between American Apparel adverts and porn
2) Gain a valuable insight into the stupidity of mankind
3) And see how much more stupid people can be
4) Save having to read all of the Bible and just cut to the really juicy bits
5) Find out how I handled quitting smoking after almost ten years

Deadlamb’s Giblets

Tumblr is one of the easiest things to use in the world, which is why I use it for Deadlamb’s Giblets – my inspiration/mood board. This is where I paste my favourite images from the web. If I find it beautiful, amazing, heart-warming or (most often) sexy, it should find its way on to the Giblet wall. Emote yourself today, check out the Giblets.

My Lifestream

It’s all the rage these days to share every tiny piece of information about yourself to an anonymous public. However, this often takes place in various different holes across the web and (if you’re anything like me) you’re probably left thinking, “it’s so unfair that only a small portion of the world gets to see all this brilliantly cool stuff I’m finding or creating, how can I make sure everyone has access to my online life?”. The answer is FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is a lifestreaming service which aggregates all your activity made from a whole host of separate sites including Google Reader, Wordpress, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and plenty more. Anything worth looking at on the internet will go through that feed. Read it.

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It’s a binary watch, fuck knows how you’re supposed to tell the time with it, and it cost around £75 with free shipping from the Tokyo Flash website. It also comes in black, blue and orange and will guarantee you get laid.

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Upload a picture of yourself (or use one of their standard models, like I did) and play around with their excellent editing tools to make yourself pretty. If you come out at the end still looking like the ass-end of a dog with piles, panic.

Here’s my quick attempt using a standard image – the drab before is on the left, and the resultant sexy, spunky piece of fluff is on the right. Prepare to waste a hell of a lot of time with this one.

Go to Taaz and play around – click here

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You can see it full size by clicking here.

This is easily one of the best things anyone has ever done who isn’t me. You can do it to if you follow this link to Bitstrips, but it probably won’t be as good as this.

Fucking-A Galbraith.

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1. Taaz makes you look less ugly – is awesome

In case the page-spanning image and not-so-cryptic title didn’t quite explain the subject matter of the post, let me explain further: I bought myself a brand-spanking new Skypephone the other day and it is, to use some local slang, fit to fuck.

I’ve been meaning to buy one of these ever since I first heard about them on the internets but have kept putting it off for some reason or other. Why did I want one? Interesting question inquisitive reader, as I am not an active Skype user and really only have one contact. Of course, this happens to be my girlfriend so I have already found myself using it a lot, but the main reason for me wanting a Skypephone is that it just looks so damn pretty – as I think my own amateurish attempts at gadget pornography would attest.

Fortunately for my stretched finances, I have already been able to find a use for the little white and blue lump beyond simply photographing it and writing a blog post about it. Interestingly, this is the first low-end phone I’ve owned in about three years, having been wrapped up in various contracts and bogged down with hugely overpowered ‘mobile devices’, and it’s the first that I’ve actually felt inspired to explore. Maybe it’s the relatively cheap internet access fee, or it could be the fact that the central feature – the Skype connectivity – gives it a greater sense of internet integration than any other handset I’ve owned, but I’ve dived into the WAP/wireless features with far more aplomb than before. And I don’t do much of anything with aplomb.

So, in the last couple of days I’ve been browsing the web (nothing interesting there), watching mobile TV, downloading music videos (although the quality wasn’t sufficient enough to enjoy Cheryl Tweedy’s rack to the extent I would have hoped), and checking the weather – and I’m almost seventy-four percent positive that I will carry on using the phone for it’s range of online features.

Another bonus I didn’t expect to enjoy is Skype chatting. In the future, I strongly believe that every phone should display text message conversations in the standard IM format as this just makes everything sooooo much easier. The fact that chatting doesn’t cost me any extra money is quite cool, but nothing compared to the fact that you actually feel like you’re engaging your friend in a discussion rather than blurting disjointed 140 character long shout-outs.

Finally, I’m happy to say that it is the nicest looking phone I’ve owned so far and the interface is nicely stylised in a minimalstic fashion. The Planet 3 parts are typically garish as you would expect, but I’ll forget they existed as quickly as I did with Orangeworld on my other mobbies. Speaking of which, I’m not making any attempt to replace my existing Sony Ericsson with the Skypephone – simply because I can’t be bothered to go through the hassle of changing my number. As such, the shiny, new dude is still finding it’s role in my multi-digitised lifestyle, but there’s plenty of room next to my Eee PC in my man-bag so I’m sure it will either float or sink in time…

One thing that will make this an indispensable tool in the arsenal of my life 2.0 is if I could hook it up to act as a USB modem on my Eee PC (which is not a name that is growing on me by the way). Anyone know how to do this?

More images at my Flickr gallery by the way – special thanks to my Nephew Joe for taking the device through its paces…

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