After a bit of a damp squib last year, the corporate April fools seem to be back! There are a few notable absences (as well as fewer sites doing their own round-ups), but definitely a much wider selection than last year, and some very good ones too – so here we go!
The Guardian reveal plans for a second Suez Canal along the Egypt/Israel border.
Edinburgh Zoo had people in costume on their Panda Cam.
Volkswagen announced on Tuesday that they were changing their name to Voltswagen:
https://twitter.com/VW/status/1376868756782219266
QI launch an OnlyFacts account for over-18 rated trivia:
Jake Humphrey announced a long-form interview with the Queen:
Off Menu Podcast changing hosts:
Ant & Dec are changing to Dec & Ant:
Ordnance Survey discovered a new Scottish Island:
Innocent & Heinz launch Smoup:
The Good Roll launch left-handed toilet paper:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNHR-_hDVKU/
Dairy Milk with Sweetcorn:
ASDA launch Baked Beans mixed with Weetabix:
Lego launch “Smart Bricks” that move out the way so you don’t step on them:
Wild deodorant launch a sweat scent:
Jude’s ice-cream launch a salt and vinegar flavour:
Surrey Police announce interactive stab vests:
Subway launch “helping hand” leaving you a free hand to scroll while you eat:
Hot Tea taps in kitchens:
Argos launch a lawnmower that’s also a treadmill:
Birds Eye launch a potato waffle toaster:
Buckingham Palace to become office space:
Happy Beds launch a concrete mattress:
ITV announce a new show, “Dove Island”:
BMW are getting rid of indicators as an “under-utilised feature”:
Andover Police run a competition to win a Get Out Of Jail Free card:
BBC Morning Live got Gethin Jones quacking to improve his workout:
Surrey Road Police share accident after driver was under the influence of Calpol:
Sainsburys launch Free-From Coriander range:
Hampshire fire and medical services launch a flower arranging course for if your employees are poor at first aid or fire safety:
Pringles launch lip balms:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CNE8rG0KPhS/
McDonalds launch new three fries portion:
The Independent says scientists have developed living robots:
The Queen is abdicating and taking a job at Facebook:
https://twitter.com/Queen_UK/status/1377559313607184387
Terry’s Chocolate Orange launch lots of other fruits:
Digital Camera World announce new solar-powered DSLRs:
Lensology launch X-ray Vision lenses:
https://twitter.com/Lensology/status/1377561811923394567
Sky Mobile launch a pet tariff:
The grass at Wimbledon Centre Court is turned purple:
Frankie and Benny’s launch a meatball bath bomb:
Walkers launch chocolate Wotsits:
McCain launch upside down potato smileys:
Lipton launch a self-jiggling teabag:
The Baby Club tv show is launching The Grown Up Club:
Mike Pilavachi launches Soul Survivor SAGA:
https://twitter.com/mikepilav/status/1377574368004423682
Jeremy Vine gets someone to impersonate him in conversation with Ken Bruce:
England will compete in pink at the Commonwealth games:
Marmite, who normally do excellent entries, just seem to have launched a photoshop competition for where the Marmite lid might land next:
I’m aware that the Twitter and Instagram posts are self explanatory, but I’ve added a brief description before each one, just incase the companies go back and delete them after today.
*UPDATE* – more things either posted since midday or I’ve found them since midday!
Toilets Plus launch the FOMO loo:
Teletubbies launch their own cryptocurrency:
Tom Kerridge gives a recipe for mushroom ice-cream:
Paddington doesn’t like marmalade anymore:
The Post Office launch a collar to translate pets.
DuoLingo launch a toilet roll:
Matt Lucas told The One Show he was going to be in Line of Duty:
April Fools 2021
1 04 2021Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: April Fools, april fools day, April Fools round-up
Categories : April Fools round-up
Internet highlights – w/c 21st March 2021
27 03 2021A word invented by The Simpsons has been added to the dictionary.
Nurses share the worst baby names they’ve heard.
Things men only learned once they lived with women.
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Categories : The Best of the Internet
Internet highlights – w/c 14th March 2021
20 03 2021
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Categories : The Best of the Internet
Once Upon A Tyne – by Ant & Dec
14 03 2021I’m not going to claim that this was a high-brow read, it only took me five days. It was just reading a chat between friends as they went through the 30 years they’ve been on telly together. I was a bit too young for them in Byker Grove, but from SM:tv Live onwards I’ve watched most of their work and just enjoyed their “company”! And this book was the same, just felt like you were sat with them while they hung out and reminiscied.
I was concerned there might be a fair amount of overlap with their first book, but given how long it had been since I read that, it wasn’t too bad, that one had more of a personal focus, whereas this is mostly their career.
For the most part, each chapter covers a different programme they’ve been in together with a couple of bonus chapters for bits and pieces, and the royal family. I found the DNA Journey chapter interesting, probably because I never saw the programme!
It could have done with maybe one more proof read, there was one point they referred to the Queen as HRH instead of HM, and there was a sentence where I think a word was missing, but it’s not the end of the world.
The book is full of photos, which makes it really enjoyable (and even quicker to read!), and because of this, every page is glossy paper, and because of that, the book weighs nearly a kilo, even though it’s less than 300 pages – madness! Made it a bit tricky to read while falling asleep at night, but worth it to enjoy the photos properly.
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Tags: ant & dec, ant and dec, autobiography
Categories : Books I've Read
Internet highlights – w/c 7th March 2021
13 03 2021
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The Midnight Library – by Matt Haig
8 03 2021I was so so tempted to get this book last year, but exercised excellent self-control and waited until the paperback came out last month!
Nora is not happy in life, decides to end it, and finds herself in a library. This library is between life and death, and offers her the chance to try out all the different lives she could have lived if she’d done things differently. If she had or hadn’t done things she had regretted not doing or doing – be that a massive life choice or a tiny one. There is a book for every single life she could have lived – it’s an infinite library. When she enters a life she doesn’t go back to when the decision was made, she goes into what that version of her life is at this point in time.
With any book that has parallel universes, it’s going to be tricky to please everyone. I think this did a good job overall, a couple of bits bothered me, but I think I’m a very logistical person, so my mind goes into the mechanics of it all when maybe I’m meant to be focussing more on the story!
I guess I had two issues with the way it was done
- There’s a lot of talk about there being infinite versions of her life, but when she undoes one regret, possibly very early in life, she’s only presented with one version to try out. But there should be another infinite amount of ways it went based on all the other decisions in her life, and there’s never any mention of all the other ways it could have gone.
There is one point near the end where this is sort of addressed, but the only response given is that “it’s more complicated than that” as something else is going on, which was a little unsatisfying. - I found it very odd that when she went into a life, she had slightly different bodies, maybe fitter, maybe a bit more insulation, maybe some scarring, so her body has all the changes of the life lived, and yet in her memory, in her mind, she has no recollection of anything that’s happened since the decision that took her down another path. This means she often doesn’t know where she is, the names of the people around her, what she does for a living. To me it felt a bit inconsistent, but as I said before, I think this is because I look too much at the detail. And to be honest, without this, I don’t think the story would work, so it’s definitely forgivable!
The only other thing that bothered me a bit that with some of the first regrets that she tried to undo, she was suddenly HUGELY successful in whatever area that was – yes she may not have been happy, but she was the best at what she did, be that music, sport. This did settle down though as the book went on. Maybe, from my first point above, the book the librarian found for her was the most successful version of that subset of universes!
Please don’t see this as a complaint or a reason not to read this book I really enjoyed it! The concept was brilliant, and the ending itself really satisfying. As I said, I’m just picky when it comes to logistics!
As is often the case, and particularly with Matt Haig books, here are some of my favourite quotes from the book:
- ‘”And I know you’ve got mental-health stuff”
“Everyone’s got mental-health stuff.”
“You know what I mean.”‘ - “There was an old musician’s cliche, about how there were no wrong notes on a piano.”
- “A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.”
- ‘”You’re overthinking it.”
“I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.”‘ - “Human brains take complex information about the world and simplify it, so that when a human looks at a tree it translates the intricately complex mass of leaves and branches into this thing called ‘tree’.”
- “It is easy to imagine there are easier paths, but maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. […] Really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”
- “Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them.”
- “When you have worries about things you don’t know about, like the future, it’s a very good idea to remind yourself of the things you do know.”
- “The prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.”
There was also a quote that sounded like a retelling of 1 Corinthians 13 verses 1-3, but it contains relatively chunky spoilers, so I won’t post it here!
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Tags: book reviews, matt haig
Categories : Books I've Read
Internet highlights – w/c 28th February 2021
6 03 2021EU bringing in “Right to repair” to have appliances last for longer.
Why The IT Crowd is excellent.
All the sitcom references in WandaVision.
Women ignored for being women.
How TV shows hid or used actresses pregnancies.
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Categories : The Best of the Internet
Internet highlights – w/c 21st February 2021
27 02 2021Why you should get a cat.
How people have dealt with rude customers.
How people have dealt with rude customers (part 2).
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And Then There Were None – by Agatha Christie
23 02 2021I recently read the following quote from Val McDermid: “Agatha Christie is the gateway drug to crime fiction”, and am finding this more and more so to be true! Having read Murder on the Orient Express last summer, I asked for another for Christmas – my brother got me this and it was excellent!
I don’t know if this true of all of her books, but in the two I’ve read, they’ve started by introducing a whole load of unrelated characters, and then starting to tell the story, this means they can take a while to get to grips with, but in this one I kept a couple of post-its in pages with info that was helpful to flick back to frequently, eg the character intros, why each of them had journeyed to this tiny island, and the rhyme that gives the structure of the story, “Ten little soldier boys” (although it’s had other names in the past, which have also been the title of the book, but have since been deemed less than PC).
But fairly soon, all of them were familiar, and I was hooked! I kept grabbing it to see who was going to be killed off next (it brings out a very dark side!) and if the people I thought might be responsible really were – completely addictive.
I will certainly be asking for another for my birthday!
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Tags: agatha christie, book reviews, murder mystery
Categories : Books I've Read
Internet highlights – w/c 14th February 2021
20 02 2021Chocolate bars that have shrunk and grown over the years.
Things that are dirtier than we realise.
Plot holes that aren’t plot holes.
People showing their stupidity on the internet.
Pancake art.
Great outfits from Monica, Rachel & Phoebe.
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Categories : The Best of the Internet
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