Higgypop's Blog

The world's funniest joke (scientifically proven)Fri 13 Jan 2012 at 15:18

So, here's the world's funniest joke ever told...

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm, soothing voice, says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"

Now, I will attempt to enhance this joke and make it even funnier...

A couple of blond Irish fishermen are out hunting dinosaurs in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and his seveteen eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his celluloid telephone system and calls 9999 AKA emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm, soothing voice, says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?  ...P.S. I'm a dog" (dogs can't normally talk or use a phone which is funny).

Songs from The X FactorSat 26 Nov 2011 at 12:38

The most frequently asked X Factor music question is "what is the contestant introduction music?", it's a classical piece of music which is used quite often in film and TV but recently X Factor have owned it.

The piece is call 'O Fortuna', part of a composition entitled 'Carmina Burana' by Carl Orff.

Carl Orff - Carmina Burana (O Fortuna)

Also frequesntly used as an introduction to an act is Craig Armstrong's 'O Verona', taken from the 1996 movie Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Craig Armstrong - O Verona

"Your Saturday night starts here" shouts Dermot O'Leary as he walks on stage at the start of the show to a song which featured in the 1998 movie, Godzilla.  It's a reworking of the 1974 song 'Kashmir' by Led Zeppelin.

Puff Daddy & Jimmy Page - Come With Me (Instrumental)

As part of the contestant's introduction music, the dramatic introduction to a Michael Buble song is used.

Michael Buble - Cry Me A River
 

Celebrations

Here's a selection of songs which get played regularly during the audition stages, usually when a contestant gets through to the next stage...

Christina Aguilera - Beautiful

Mariah Carey - Hero

Mika - Happy Ending

Daughtry - What About Now
 

Sob Stories

X Factor wouldn't be complete without its sob stories, the poor contestant who've had a tough life and they just want to be a successful singer so they can give something back to their poor family... or something.  You know a sob story is on the way you're introuduced to a contestant during the auditions stages and one of these songs is playing in the background...

Sia - Breathe Me
 

Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla
  

Other Songs

Here's a few other bits of music which are regularly used in segments on the show, often in the live shows when they review what has happened during the week in rehearsals.

Craig Armstrong - Finding Beauty
 

Craig Armstrong - Ruthless Gravity
 

John Murphy - In the House, In a Heartbeat
 

The countdown to Red CupsMon 07 Nov 2011 at 23:08

This year Starbucks in the UK are treating us to Gingerbread Latte, Toffee Nut Latte, Eggnog Latte and Praline Mocha all served up in the now famous festive red cups.

I'm not the only person who gets excited about the return of the Red Cups, a couple of months back me and three friends were stood outside a closed Starbucks late one night wondering when the Red Cups were back, this was the inspiration for countdowntoredcups.com.

I built the site in a couple of hours and guessed a return date, usually the end of the first week in November, I created a supporting Twitter account and Facebook presence and the site its self was full of social plugins to help it go viral.

Within a few days of launching the site it was ticking over with a couple of hundred visits a day and appeared high in Google for Red Cup related searches.

It only took about 5 days for the site to get its first bit of attention.  It was discovered by two radio presenters from Xfm who shared the link on their Twitter accounts and also mentioned it on air.  Xfm is owned by the company I work for but what was great is that they found the website totally independently, the first sign that it was going viral.  Obviously this on air mention created a midweek spike in traffic, only to be followed up by another spike at the weekend when the site was mentioned on BBC Radio 5 Live.

The site continued it's growth in traffic, picking up more likes and more tweets - including lots of retweets of the hashtag #redcupsarecoming.

I was amazed a few weeks later when I had a day which dwarfed the previous highs created by the radio mentions.  Starbucks sent out an email newsletters to their subscribers, at the bottom of the email was the phrase "Red Cups are coming" - a tease from Starbucks and enough to get thousands of people heading to Google to find out exactly when they were coming.

With my website ranking higher than Starbucks' official site for Red Cup related search terms, it was countdowntoredcups.com which gave them the answer, and of course they then shared the site via Facebook and Twitter with their friends.

A week before Red Cup day, Starbucks put a-frames outside their stores promoting the pending arrival of Starbucks, again this led to more curious Google searches, this steadily grew over the week until November 2nd, the day before the Red Cups returned.

November 2nd was a huge day for the site, it picked up around 1,000 Facebook likes in a few hours and out performed previous day highs by around 10 times.  At this point the site was truly viral with groups of friends sharing links driving more and more people to the site.

I use Google Analytics on the site which lets me see who visits and when, there have been several visits from employees at Starbucks including five visits from their headquarters in Seattle, so the site hasn't gone unnoticed.

The site was also spotted by journalists at Fox News in Chicago who contacted me and asked if I would take part in a TV news feature about Red Cups, asking why people get so excited.

In total, during its 50 day existence, the site was visited over 50,000 times, over 10,000 of those visits came in the one day on the 2nd.  Those visits generated around 60,000 page views.

The site received over 3,000 Facebook likes and was posted to Twitter over 200 but was but was talked about in tweets and retweeted hundreds more times.  54% of visitors to the site came from the UK, 45% from the US - the remaining visits came from 57 other countries around the world.

The site's biggest problem was the bounce rate, 82% of people who visited the site vanished again as soon as they'd seen the timer - this means they didn't spend much time on the site (average 36 seconds) or click on to more pages (average 1.3 pages per visit).

Starbucks also ran some social media based promotion for the Red Cups this year, a Facebook game let fans of the cups compete to get the drinks at stores in their town a week before anywhere else.  It would be interesting to know how the game compared in comparison.  Next year, I'd like to grow the site and make the most of the buzz and try to increase engagement, repeat visits and the time spent on the site.

» Visit CountdownToRedCups.com

I went to CamdenMon 31 Oct 2011 at 20:50

There were freaks of all kinds there ranging from goths/emos, vampires/emos and the freaks who wear canvas trousers and flip-flops, I'm not sure what they're called.

My first impression upon arriving in Camden was that I was on holiday, everything is so bright, tacky and in your face that it reminded me of somewhere like San Antonio forward slash Ibiza.

I don't know if there were more freaks around because it was approaching Halloween, it was hella-busy.  The high street seemed to have gone pretty big on Halloween - there was non-spooky crap in all the shops, most of which just usually sell t-shirts that light up and smoking equipment.

The first thing I did in Camden was buy a cannabis lolly, I'm kind of scared of drugs but wanted to fit in so £1 for a lolly from a little market stall seemed like a good way to get down with the freaks.  Plus getting stoned on lollipops seemed like a pretty "me" kind of thing to do.

After wandering up the high street I met up with a local gay who showed me round some more, we went to some amazing places… Starbucks which was really busy, then another coffee shop which was quite and nice but semi-weird cuz there were steps going down to a basement estate agent within the coffee shop - who does that?  Get your own shop loser!

There was a hot girl in the coffee shop and they gay said "I like her", get off…
a) I saw her first
b) she's not for you
c) etc.

We then went up Primrose Hill, it's like a standard hill, you know…  a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain, usually with a distinct summit.  It was a sunny day and there was an amazing view of the whole of London.  Could pretty much see every major landmark in London, apart from my flat, which I hope will one day have one of those blue plaques on it which says "Steve Higgins lived here…"

Primrose Hill was kind of magical and the amazing view inspires you to think deep and meaningful about your life.  That's why our next stop was Morrisons.  My friend is lucky to have one quite close to his house, later we cooked lasagne from scratch.

One of the most amazing things I saw in Camden was a pigeon which flew vertically downwards, I've never seen this before and it was totally unexpected.  I was just enjoying a coffee next to the canal and it nosed dived behind me, it was the best stunt pigeon I have ever seen!

It was amazing.

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