Great timewaster.

At the moment the card is just a card that can contain a balance, but I think Starbucks could improve upon it in a simple way. Most of the time we all order the same drink every time we visit a Starbucks and although we get really good at knowing what we want, we order it from a different person every time we visit. If you order something really simple like a “Venti Latte, decaf” this isn’t a problem. But if your drink is a “Venti Latte, with Peppermint syrup and an extra shot – but the extra shot is decaf” it usually takes a little longer. Similarly, if you often visit Starbucks with your family it can be time consuming for them to note down all your drinks.

My solution is simple.The machine already has to contact the internet to check the balance of the card, so instead of merely retrieving the balance – the machine could also pull down a “favorite order” that the user has set-up on the Starbucks website. With all the details of your order shown on the screen, mistakes are less likely to be made in the incredibly busy environment that the Baristas are usually working in.

To make it worth doing, Starbucks could introduce “tiered” cards. The basic free Starbucks Gift Card could contain one drink. A “Silver” card could contain 3 different drinks, and be available for £2.

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A “Family” card could allow two different “orders” to be created. Each order being allowed to contain 4 drinks for £4.

Finally, a “Gold” card could be available for £10 and would allow 4 orders, each containing 4 drinks and the ability to set a “favorite drink” that would be free with every 20 drinks purchased.

Obviously all these numbers/prices/incentives could be altered/dropped, I have no idea about business models etc. I just think that even just the core idea of being able to save a “usual” to your account is pretty cool.

Here is a Daft Punk sprite enlarged from the artwork for “Da Chip“. “Da Chip” is an 8-Bit remix album of some of Daft Punk’s greatest songs, and sounds awesome. If you like that kind of thing.

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Click to view Full Size

Original can be seen here.

Of course we won first place didn’t lose the hardest, and Yahtzee described it as:

“The character creator and cutscenes are fairly well done, and the actual game is competently made, if rather shallow and predictable.”

Which we are perfectly happy with. Thank you to Dan, for all his hard work on this project. Enjoy the game.

Here is a dog as the Joker. I’m not sure I need to say anything else.

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It’s not a perfect ’shop but it came from a random comment in a lesson.

I have absolutely no reason to have a blog, all the random thoughts that I have get Tweeted, so I don’t really have a lot to write about.

I’m not funny to read like Ryan, and I’m not chatty like Natalie, so I really don’t have anything to say here. I used to write vaguely techy stuff for ShadowGremlin, but that was a blog that not many people read either.

Anyway, here is a Buster Sword that I made in Photoshop.

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I think it turned out ok. So yeah, Post ideas?

I’m staying at  home and so not actually appreciating the full concept of being a fresher at uni due to not being as independent as some of my classmates.  However, living at home unnerved me as well, as I thought I would be the only person commuting. This has not been the case, as it is about 60/40 and most , no nearly all the people I hang out with are commuting.

I still need to get better at going to all the fresher parties though. The last one I went to was ‘Bierkeller’ and was great fun but I have to always leave early as to be able to hitch a lift with my parents. Another thing I have avoided is drinking alcohol at these parties by making a number excuses, such as I have taken painkillers. This was sometimes true. The actual fact is that I can’t handle alcohol. Had many, embarrassing or bad experiences and wish not to encounter them again. I do tell the new people I have met but they insist I’m just a light weight, so do I throw up in order for them to realise or just carry on insisting that I do NOT drink and thus in most peoples eyes, a boring teenager.

He’s over at Foster Incorporated so go wish him a happy birthday.

Foster Incorporated

I.

She had trawled iTunes for the worst sort of music possible to accompany the process, music in quotation marks, “Meditation Trax” where the waveforms of synthetic pan flutes and the built-in Casio drums compete with one another to abrade the tissue of the brain. She would never choose this kind of music under any other circumstances. She is buying it because she has to. This music is appropriate. Even she resents it.

She is in the car now, holding the seatbelt away from her belly, aware of the extent to which there is no overlap between the sets “car designers” and “pregnant women.” I’m pushing the speed limit, one, sometimes two miles per hour, and it makes me feel like the tattooed despot of some post-apocalyptic road gang.

Between contractions she has managed to fish out the yoga bullshit from her bag, looks at it, decides against it. She reaches up to the visor, where the disc holder is strapped, and produces Doolittle. It is in immediately, and Debaser scours away the surreal fog which has thus far clung to the proceedings. “Fuck yoga,” she says, when her body allows her to speak. She looks out the window, shaking her head. “Goddamned yoga.”

I accelerate to thirty-five miles per hour.

II.

I have always felt that I was too conservative in naming your brother, in naming him comfortably, in giving him a name without sufficient destiny. I determined that this would not be your fate, Ronia. You also have a Q, in Quinn, so that when you are forced to append some meaningless form or other with your middle initial, you will deposit a Q thereupon – unleashing it, very nearly unsheathing it, young lady, to dazzle thine enemies.

I need you to be thus armed because I fear your mother and I have played a trick on you; we have brought you to a place where hidden weaponry is sometimes necessary. In our defense, and I recognize that it may be insufficient, this was the only world available to us.

III.

You are alive; you are alive. May I be worthy of you.

- Penny Arcade. So much more than just a Webcomic about Videogames.

Read it here.

“Use 112 if you’re on a mobile phone; the reason given is that any mobile service provider will pick up and route a 112 call, no matter what tariff you’re on, whereas if you use 999 then you’ll only be able to use your own mobile provider.”

“In PC World a price ending in .97 means that the item has been discontinued and is being sold at a clearance price, making it ineligible for further reductions such as staff discount.”

Random facts rule.