|
Welcome, Guest. Please Login.
|
||||
|
||||
| 1 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Celebrity Stiffs League / The 'Google Test' of fame on: Mar 5th, 2010, 4:42pm |
| Started by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | Post by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | |
| Back when I started this website I realised that occasionally people would submit names of celebrities who were unknown to me. I thought that a good way of determining whether someone was famous or not would be to google their name and see what came up. If there were several different sites which discussed the person, or if they had a wikipedia page, then they would count as 'famous'. Most of the time I haven't needed to do this and I've used google to confirm spellings, 'alive' status etc. Today I had 3 new names to approve: Angela Lansbury, Placido Domingo and Blake Fielder Civil. I had heard of the first two so that was no problem. I'd never heard of the latter. Apparently he used to be Amy Winehouse's husband, so I should have heard of the name at least. He passed the google test easily so he's been approved. |
|
 Reply  Quote
|
|
| 2 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Obituaries / Arthur C. Clarke on: Mar 19th, 2008, 9:51am |
| Started by Mike D | Post by Mike D | |
| As I said last year when Kurt Vonnegut died, I don't like it when I score points for the death of someone who's work I admire. Arthur C Clarke might not have been consistently the best science fiction author, but he wrote some amazing books. When he worked on the 2001 film with Stanley Kubrick, he became part of one of the most influential SF films ever. His early classic books include the amazing City and the Stars and Childhoods End. He also wrote about a matrix-like world of virtual reality in a short story, but I can't remember its name. [Edit: I think it was the Lions of Comarre, where a computer in a mysterious city lets people live through their own 'dreamed' version of reality] |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
| 3 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Celebrity Stiffs League / 2007 Competition on: Jan 10th, 2008, 2:37pm |
| Started by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | Post by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | |
The 2007 competition is now over. The following medals have been awarded:
Points were scored for: * Boris Yeltsin Former president of Russia and famous alcoholic. (15 points) * Bernard Manning 'Controversial' comedian (15 points) * Luciano Pavarotti Overweight opera singer. (15 points) * George Melly Jazz musician. (10 points) * Ingmar Bergman Swedish film director. (10 points) * Brooke Astor American Socialite (10 points) * Charles Lane American Actor (10 points) |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
| 4 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Site News / Anti-spam measures on: May 16th, 2007, 12:34pm |
| Started by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | Post by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | |
| I've noticed recently that there has been an increase in 'spam-like' registrations on the website, where the email address looks 'phoney', usually appearing to be a sales or admin address from a company. To avoid too many such accounts clogging up the system, I have implemented a basic 'captcha' system on the registration page. All the user has to do is count how many objects are in the picture and enter the number in the box. Hopefully this should reduce the number of 'spambots' registering without preventing anyone from taking part. Unfortunately at the moment, this doesn't work with things like screen readers or other accessibility software but hopefully this will change in the future. |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
| 5 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Obituaries / Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007 on: Apr 12th, 2007, 1:03pm |
| Started by Mike D | Post by Mike D | |
| Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist, died yesterday aged 84 after sustaining injuries after a fall. He was one of my favourite author. Although he was best known for the book Slaughterhouse 5, which centres around the bombing of Dresden, he wrote plenty of other book which are nearly all well worth reading. Cat's Cradle and Sirens of Titan probably show off his science fiction credentials, though he never liked being described as a SciFi author. BBC obituary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6547399.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/629620.stm |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
| 6 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Obituaries / Larry Grayson on: Mar 20th, 2007, 10:16am |
| Started by Mike D | Post by Mike D | |
| I was listening to the podcast of The Now Show on my way to work this morning when I learned that Larry Grayson was from Nuneaton. If you go to the town, it all George Elliot this and George Elliot that, naming pretty well everything after her. The town seems to be keeping rather quiet about Larry. According to wikipedia: Quote: It was said that he had been incensed at an objection by one councillor at a Nuneaton Town council meeting to the idea of a monument for Larry in the town. Apparently the comments made were unpleasantly homophobic. Larry asked his family to ensure that no memorial to him was ever to be erected there. He is buried in an unostentatious grave with other members of his family in Nuneaton,the town he loved. which kind of explains it really. |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
| 7 | The Celebrity Stiffs League forum / Site News / Website Relaunched on: Jan 21st, 2007, 6:15pm |
| Started by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | Post by Stiffs.org.uk Admin | |
| The new and debugged Stiffs League website is up and running again. The problems which occurred before Christmas have hopefully been sorted out. Unfortunately the data files which were corrupted contained the current teams for this years competition. I have had to revert to an older backup from a few months ago so any recent changes will have been lost. I have also changed the competition slightly so that only 10 celebrity names are required. This should make it easier for people to set up a team. There is another change to the rules: No copying from The Death List at http://www.deathlist.net/ . This basically removes all element of competition from the game. At the moment there is nothing built into the game to prevent this but from now on I am going to be more strict in disallowing celebrities who aren't household names but are on this list. |
|
|
Reply Quote
|
|
