What with the Wii getting a reputation of having a younger demographic attached to it, it's nice to see a whole host of publishers doing their level best to tarnish this wholesome image beyond repair. First Manhunt 2 made us act out very blurry executions with the device previously used to groom ponies and make cakes, then MadWorld had us painting our screens with lashings of blood and now House of the Dead: Overkill has been honoured in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most swearing in a video game.

And "by golly", this "mother-lovin'" game has got a lot of rude words in it. Indeed, the naughty protagonists drop an impressive 189 f-bombs during the length of the exceptionally bloody title. Let me put that into perspective: there is a grand total of three hours worth of dialogue in the game, which puts everyone's favourite swear-word on an average of one per minute, or 3% of all the words used in the game.

Enough of these and the system may begin to be considered more adult (as distinct from "mature"), but for the moment it's not giving the Disney games and veterinary sims much cause for concern.

Alan Martin

House of the Dead: Overkill (via Joystiq)

Picture the scene: you're due to perform at the big sing-off tonight, and you desperately need to do some warming up. But oh no! Your neighbours are at home and have taken out an ASBO on your noisy antics. What do you do?

Well, Urusakunai Kara OK! to the rescue! This handy little microphone plugs straight into the back of your Nintendo Wii and allows you to sing along to your heart's content without bothering your neighbours. With the attached plastic sing-tube (for want of a better description), you can belt out "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for only your Wii (and not your neighbours) to judge you.

The device is washable, which is a relief for anyone who has to share your karaoke equipment. Personally I think I'll hold out for the giant Perspex Rock Band Drum box.

Alan Martin

Urusakunai Karao OK! (via Kotaku)

Apple's product release earlier seemed to happen at exactly 13:37GMT, which I've always had in my head as l33t-o'clock. I wondered briefly if that was intentional on Apple's behalf, and then put the thought aside after remembering that Apple probably doesn't run on GMT.

That disappointment was shortlived as various tweeters starting noting that it was Square Root day. Square Root Day occurs just nine times each century, and is when the day and the month are the same number, and when multiplied together make up the last two digits of the year?

So basically, today - 3/3/09 is like saying 3 * 3 = 9. The first of the century was the 1st Jan 2001, and then there was the 2nd Feb 2004. Before that, it'd been 20 years since 9th September 1981. After today, the next square root day will be the 4th April 2016.

People celebrating the occasion are expected tonight to carve square root signs into fruit and vegetables and burn them in a massive pyre. I'll be taking part. See you in Hyde Park at 10pm, yeah? We won't let some rubbish drizzle dampen our mathematical spirits!

(via Cnet)

Andrew Cheatle is a lucky chap. He lost his phone on a beach a couple of weeks back and assumed it'd been lost at sea. On a shopping trip to replace the handset, however, his girlfriend's phone rang. She handed it to him, saying it was some guy going on about a cod.

On the end of the line was fisherman Glen Kerley. He'd found a handset in the belly of a cod, and figured he'd try and return it to its owner. After going to meet him, he was reunited with his (rather battered) handset, and after it dried out, he was amazed to find it worked perfectly.

So what was the handset that survived a week in a fish? I wasn't sure, so I consulted the masses on Twitter. The wonderful @lovelychaos was first with the answer - it's a Nokia 1600 - a handset designed for use in developing countries. Well, I guess it's proved its worth!

(via the Sun)

You need this in your life.

It's an old VCR, modded with the innards of a toaster so that any bread you put in will be lightly browned. Best of all, the toast gets "VHS" stamped on it.

I'm waiting for a version where an old NES is modded, so that you can toast in that. It'd be the exact inverse mod of the Nintoaster. Here's a video of the toaster VCR in action:

(via Craziest Gadgets)

Here's something I doubt you'll see at MWC and probably for a very good reason. There's not many people who enjoy dropping their phone on the floor ,so any footwear company would be hard pressed to sell the idea of walking on it for several miles a day.

However, a chap by the names of mikeyberman has put together a guide on Instructables of how to make the perfect device for getting your phone into places you shouldn't - places without metal detectors presumably.

It all smells rather of some large publicity stunt, in fact, it is a large publicity stunt, of which I'm now a part, but what the hell - Google Earth has made it very clear to the world that the island of Galesnjak off the coast of Croatia is shaped a lot like a heart - or at least a love heart anyway.

The owner of the island, Vlado Juresko, had always had an idea about the dimensions of his 130,000 square yard piece of uninhabited real estate but only got the full picture once inundated with booking requests from couples all over the world who'd spotted it on Google Earth sitting in the Zadarski Kanal between Zadar and the Island of Pasman.

No word, as yet, to whether Vlad's managed to cash in on this potential bonanza but I trust he's got a team of Croat brickies, plumbers and joiners working round the clock in time to build the world's tackiest hotel for Valentine's Day.

(via Switched)

If you missed out on the thrilling, frenzied, staff-assaulting, dignity-sapping, blatant and aggressive looting of the once-proud Woolworths brand over Christmas and the New Year, there's still time to get yourself a bit of Woolies history.

Enterprising store manager Ed Adams, of the Petts Wood branch in Orpington, London, decided to nick/liberate the last remaining scraps from his branch's Pic 'N' Mix display counter - an 800g selection of "delicious nostalgia" he's now put up for sale on eBay.

The auction has a charitable edge to it, so we can't accuse people of polishing up the truth or glamourising the sequence of events to make money - proceeds from the auction go to the Retail Trust, a group which helps out-of-work Woolies staff, among other people.

The bidding is currently at £28 and your bag of carefully refined sugar will come with a certificate of authenticity from Woolworths administrator Deloitte. If you feel guilty about all the stuff you shoplifted from your local Woolies as a child therefore slightly hastening the retail giant's demise, this is your chance to make amends.

(Via TP&J)

This week's bizarre corner of the web is the This is why you're fat web site.

Subtitled "where dreams become heart attacks" it showcases "deliciously gross food" in all its saturated, multicoloured glory.

Savour if you will the "deep fried peanut butter-covered brownie wrapped in cookie dough", "the garbage plate", "The Romellete", "The Meat Ship", "hot beef sundae", "the bacon explosion" and "baconnaise - everything should taste like bacon".

If you've ever been caught out on your bike, riding into the wind, up a slight hill, almost in tears at how hard it is and WISHING with all your might that someone would invent a little engine to help you out at times like this, you're in luck - here's a little engine to help you out at times like that.

The Zoom Bicycles DIY engine enhancement kits come with anything from a 49cc to an 80cc engine to pop onto your bike yourself and eliminate all that tiresome pedalling, but the catch is the weight - the motor adds around 19lbs (8.6 kilos to you Euro-people) to the weight of your bike.

The husband in question is John Best, 34, who, if you ever believe what the News of the World says, was using his laptop in bed - while his wife was asleep - to indulge in a bit of M2M action in Second Life.

He had a great excuse for doing it. He said "it wasn't real life" which, to be fair, is 100% correct. Here's the NotW's superb visual representation of the story...

"I couldn't sleep a wink the rest of the night wondering whether this meant he was betraying me or not - that he'd rather have gay sex on Second Life than have sex with me," said pained Lisa, her pain probably lessened a bit by the money the newspaper's paying for the story.

So, what do you think? Is having sex in Second Life cheating? And if you're a man and doing it with a man, does it make you gay? Or doesn't it count? Is it all just a game? I've played Mario quite a bit and it certainly hasn't made me a plumber, for example.

(Via NotW)

Related posts: Second Life FILM? | Previous SL sex/divorce shame

The University of California is undertaking research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that will allow the creation of remote-controlled beetles. The beetles remain alive, but unable to control their bodies as the chips take control of their wing muscles via their optic nerve.

I don't know what it is about this story that terrifies me most. It could be the fact that beetles are so easy to mind-control that you can just stick a chip on them and they'll do your bidding. It could be that it would be incredibly cheap and easy to build a vast cloud of evil cyborg beetles and send them at your foes.

It might even be that there's these poor beetles in California, alive, and unable to do anything but passively observe the remainder of their pitiful existence as their muscles spasm upon commands from military generals. I think it's a combination of all three, so how about we end this post right about now, before I start shivering helplessly.

Remote Controlled Beetles (via Hackaday)

More beetle news: Forest fire fighting beetle-like robots in development | Scientists invent human gills after studying beetles

This cannot be real. Please let it not be real. Oh god... it is real. It appears that someone's created a ring that fits over an erect penis allowing you to move it in four directions to control an Atari 2600 like a joystick. An optional secondary ring lets you stroke the shaft to simulate button presses.

Thankfully it's not commercially on sale, but full instructions to make your own are provided on SF Medialabs' website, including a guide on how to remove the shaft from the original joystick and replace it with a tissue dispenser. Handy.

Instructions (via CrunchGear)

More on joysticks: New Street Fighter joysticks are better than a hundred-hand-slap to the face | Thrustmaster T.16000M joystick

The Dalai Lama isn't the first political leader to join the microblogging phenomenon Twitter, but he might be the first religious leader. Well, the first real one, anyway.

His Holiness, or @OHHDL as he's known on the site, has been networking like crazy, sending 46 updates and accruing 20,000 followers in just two days. Some of it is just sending out links to his other web presences, but there's a smattering of other stuff, too, including the wonderful statement: "I'm sure HH will be just as inquisitive about technology as he has been over the past 14 reincarnations".

Note: this post nearly contained a "Twibet" pun, but I thought better of it after seeing @natelanxon's rant this morning.

UPDATE: Sadly, as BritSwedeGuy points out in the comments, this account turned out not to be real. The post of first religious leader on Twitter therefore remains wide open.

More posts about Twitter: New INQ phone will have Twitter built in | Celebrity Twitter user Stephen Fry in LIVE LIFT TRAP SENSATION

Genius. Simple genius. Sky has teamed up with psychologist Donna Dawson to claim that watching broadcasts in HD via Sky+HD can help alleviate the symptoms of depression.

Of course, as men who have just spent an obscene amount of money on an HDTV and Sky+HD subscription, there is indeed something calming and enjoyable about sitting there, basking in the HD glow, smug in the fact that your picture has more pixels in it than the picture your neighbours are lumbered with.

But the completely ludicrous PDF guide to Sky+HD claims that "programmes with vivid, bright and sharply defined colours create a visual sensation for our eyes, which help to lift our spirits and energise us" - with Sky+HD's surround sound releasing endorphins that improve concentration.

If your journey home last Friday involved traversing Liverpool Street station, you might have had some trouble. The London station was forced to close for an hour and a half, from 7pm, due to an 11,000-strong flash mob mimicking T-Mobile's recent adverts featuring silent dancers.

Welcome to Niche of the Week, an irregular feature where we highlight the slightly more bizarre corners of the internet. Today we've got a blog which posts pictures of models on websites with headsets on, usually promising live support, or customer chat, or something along those lines, called, brilliantly, Headset Hotties.

You can't deny, this has Gary Cutlack written all over it. Unfortunately I can't verify whether it's his work or not, right now. I suspect the former. If you're not familiar with Mr Cutlack's modus operandi, then I suggest you go and visit Idiot Toys right now. It's fantastic.

Headset Hotties (via Instant Rimshot)

More niches: Trukz - a haulage-based MMO | Brokers with hands on their faces

In this modern day and age of impending global doom, it's important to recycle as much as possible. Today, that includes jumbo jets and if you head over to Stokholm you could go and spend a night in this particular 747 saved from the scrap yard and converted into a hotel.

Oh dear. Today is a sad day. We have been amused and entertained by a marketing campaign :(

The marketing campaign in question is that of ComputerTan, a supposed online tanning system that uses the deadly rays output by your PC monitor to bring a healthy orange glow to your face while you work.

It is, of course, a joke - perpetrated by UK skin cancer charity Skcin and designed to raise awareness of how bad it is to pursue the bronze-god look. The Times says some 30,000 people visited ComputerTan in its first 24 hours online, although whether it was 30,000 innocent, orange-faced receptionists hoping for a free top-up or 30,000 cynical tech-bloggers looking for a story about the gullibility of the common man, isn't made clear.

Don't delve into the site too deeply. It's not all as glossy and amusing as the intro video. It soon gets serious about things.

(Via The Times)

Related posts: Replacement skin | More replacement skin

Here's one to file under aaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Yes, that lady in the picture is holding a miniature robotic version of herself.

I'm not sure who the customers are and why it's a good idea but Japanese company Little Island offers the service and will make these things as detailed as you like. Naturally, the more you ask for, the more it costs but they do all come with the ability to talk and a fair range of movements.