majiksznak

Thanks to Gregmita for this gem: Would the world's speed-walking champion run if attacked by samurai?

Just in time for Halloween: a doll head pencil sharpener.

Make your very own Christopher Walken Halloween mask.

I can confirm that Guitar Hero 3 is pretty awesome. I spent the evening unlocking the main setlist songs on medium. It looks like the difficulty has picked up where GH2 left off, though it's been a while since I tried 2.

I love the storyline, which culminates in a guitar duel with Satan himself where you must defeat him at playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

The guitar battle, by the way, isn't as bad as I thought. Throughout the career mode, you get to do battle against Tom Morello, Slash, and Satan. Instead of Star Power, certain strings of notes give you attacks you can use (by tilting the guitar up) against your opponent. Here are the different attacks I've seen:

• "Lefty Flip" switches the order of the notes on screen (from green, red, yellow, blue, orange to orange, blue, yellow, red, green)
• You can have them break a string (they'll have to repeatedly tap on a certain fret to "fix the string")
• You can make it so they have to jam on the whammy bar a bunch of times before any notes will register
• "Amp Overload" makes the notes start blinking and flickering, making it a bit harder to hit them
• "Double Notes" adds an extra fret you have to press for each note
• You can increase the difficulty level temporarily

Basically, you have to earn these attacks and save them all for the end of the song so you can use a bunch in rapid succession to make your opponent screw up.

They went all out with this game: they got original tracks, so you hear the original singers, which is pretty cool. The Sex Pistols got back together just to re-record "Anarchy in the UK" just for this game... There's an unlockable video where they talk about how some douche lost the masters, but that they love this game and got into the studio to do a new recording. Very cool.

Tom Morello and Slash both came up with original tracks just for their guitar battles.

Which brings me to Tom Morello... Ok: we get it. You're good at making weird noises with your guitar. That doesn't mean anybody wants to hear it. The Morello battle track is by far one of the most annoying pieces of music I've ever heard, and I listen to Aphex Twin.

The guitar in the PS2 package is wireless, which I didn't expect, because I didn't already know everything to know about the game before its release. It was a nice surprise. Also surprising is that the PS2 GH3 controller looks way cooler than the Wii, PS3, and XBox 360 controllers. At any rate, I now have a red Gibson SG-styled wired guitar and the sleek black Kramer Pacer-styled wireless guitar.

Guitar Hero Party, anyone?

Hey! This turned into a review. 8.5/10.

Album Art Battle. Mildly NSFW, vastly entertaining.

The Onion on iRobot's new military robot. BTW, iRobot is the company that came up with and manufactures the Roomba robotic vacuums.

If the fear it instilled in my cat is any indication, this machine will be a wild success.

From Blame It On The Voices.

So, for the first time in a long time, a hard drive of mine seems to have failed. Fortunately, it was one drive in a RAID5 array, so I haven't lost anything (but if one of the other drives fails, I'm pooched). The drive was about 3 months old. Does anybody know of any drive diagnostic tools I can play with to see what may be wrong?

Graphics demo on an oscilloscope.

I've posted "Intermission in the Third Dimension" by Don Hertzfeldt before. Now, here are Welcome to the Show and The End of the Show.

Gallery of unnecessary quotation marks.

There's a word for seeing meaning where there is none: Pareidolia. Use it the next time you see Jesus in your toast!

Tons of people actually believe in UFOs and ghosts. Super.

Pac-O-Lantern with ghosts! I can't believe I've never done this...

Goth Raggedy Ann & Andy.

Stephen Colbert's potential legal problems surrounding his fake presidential campaign.

Andronika found a kickass music video.

So, my poor old Roomba Red is lame and has to be put down. One of his wheels just doesn't have the energy it once had, so it turns around in circles when it wants to go straight. It panics, thinking it is stuck, then shuts off with a sad set of beeps.

I contacted iRobot and they told me the only option was to euthanize it, and that surgery wasn't in the cards for my 3 year old Roomba.

While this doesn't speak well for the longevity of iRobot products, the company is not unsympathetic to those facing a visit to the back yard with their Roomba and a shotgun. iRobot has offered me a large discount on a few of the newer models to keep me as a customer. I'm thinking about the Roomba Scheduler.

Just... don't tell Red, OK?

Row, row, row your boat, awkwardly down the stream.

The Foo Fighters cover Stairway to Heaven. Poorly. On purpose. Also from Andy.

Here's a misleading People Magazine cover that Andy pointed out.

Another clever music video. D.A.N.C.E. by Justice. Thanks, Andy.

Trust the Japanese to make jokes about Tetris. They are actually really funny.

Leopard guided tour. They've made some clever changes to the interface, and boy does it look pretty.

Time Machine is the wildest implementation of backup software I've ever seen. The presentation is elaborate with a bunch of 3D effects, but it actually makes sense and makes it quite easy to access old files.

The note font is completely retarded. It's stupid like Comic Sans.

I fear the new Mail graphics template options will result in annoying new messages from clueless Mac users. :(

At any rate, I look forward to playing with it, and I will desire my very own Mac even more.

Have people stopped talking about the Leave Britney Alone video yet? They have? Ok.

In case you missed it, it's a dude named Chris Crocker who has a complete emotional fucking breakdown online over Britney Spears. If he is acting, he is good.

Here's Seth Green making fun of Chris Crocker.

Also, Chris Crocker's dad: "where did I go wrong?"

Finally, an interview with the drama queen herself on Jimmy Kimmel's show.

Utterly disturbing.

Samorost and Samorost 2 are beautiful "figure out what's going on" flash games. Thanks, Amanda!

Fucking awesome Budweiser commercial. Thanks, Buster and Sheky.

Vader in Love. I love the "DUNK" sound every time his helmet bonks on something.

Good Religion: an article on the Amish capacity for forgiveness.

A woman with the IQ of breakfast cakes cleans an automatic door.

So, I went to see the Edmonton Opera's production of Carmen, and it was quite good. Embarrassingly, I had no idea Bizet was French (it's Georges Bizet), so I was surprised to hear them singing in French...

It was really well done, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

When I saw an "its vs. it's" mistake in the surtitles, I was floored... There was also an odd translation: I am 90% sure I heard Don José threaten Escamillo by saying that "it will be raining blows" (in French). The translation read, "you will be caught in a thunderstorm". Funny!

At any rate, I tipped them off via email, and they kindly thanked me, thus proving that the generally rotten attitude of forum-posting bottom-dwellers hasn't spread to the world of Opera.

My hat is off to you, and a million thanks for getting in touch with regard to the CARMEN surtitles...your message was forwarded to the surtitles woman, and checks and changes will be made. It's such a crazy thing: having just returned last night from doing OTELLO in Quebec City, I know all too well how our francophone director for CARMEN could have become so caught up in other details that he missed out on some of the errors high above the stage. Hope we'll have most things repaired by the time I get to see the show myself for the first time tomorrow night. Thanks again.

Mildly demented animated chalk art. Very cool.

I had never had the pleasure of seeing how fresh sashimi can be. Nasty.

The benefits of atheism from daylightatheism.org.

These atheists don't seem angry.

This is the most insane Japanese show I've ever heard of. Dude is locked in a room with no food, but tons of magazines. His only way to survive is to win contests and have things mailed to him. He gets let out when he wins 10,000 yen in prizes from magazine mail-in contests...

Audio CD with a vinyl track on top. Wild!

This dude is a little intense... The front of his truck said, "He who sinneth is of the DEVIL". It wasn't reversed, so it was a bit challenging to read. Also, I was afraid of him. Also, he looked like the kind of guy to write that kind of stuff on his truck.

Cockatoo dances to the Backstreet Boys, but he ain't got no rhythm!

People getting punched just before eating. It's funny because it's not for real and there are celebrity cameos.

Awesome video of a gag where people are convinced they are not reflected in a mirror.

Oh great, now the atheists are angry. Well, this one is anyway.

I get angry when religious leaders opportunistically use religion, and people's trust and faith in religion, to steal, cheat, lie, manipulate the political process, take sexual advantage of their followers, and generally behave like the scum of the earth. I get angry when it happens over and over and over again. And I get angry when people see this happening and still say that atheism is bad because, without religion, people would have no basis for morality or ethics, and no reason not to just do whatever they wanted.

The Fermi Paradox might be shortened to, "Hey: if the galaxy is so big, how come we haven't seen any aliens?" This article about the Fermi Paradox and an ounce or so of Laphroaig made my thoughts wander to Mars and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

The article touches on the morality of expansion, which reminded me of how certain factions in the Mars Trilogy had protested human colonization and terraforming of Mars because they considered it wrong to fundamentally alter the planet, whether or not life already existed there or not.

What do you people think of this? Is there a good argument to be made against terraforming Mars if we are pretty sure it contains no life? What about if we prove that some sort of life, however primitive, exists on Mars?

This contamination or corruption of life is already something we've had to deal with. Consider Lake Vostok (Also see Wikipedia's Lake Vostok page: when drilling core samples in the Antarctic, researchers stopped short of punching through to an underground lake which never sees the light of day and may have been sealed under the ice for 500,000 to 1 million years. Core samples seemed to indicate the presence of microbial life, though this is contested. Drilling through would contaminate the lake.

Right now, nobody seems to have decided what to do about it.

Well, I finally saw 300, and it was completely fucking awesome.

Also, I did not realize how perfect Kevin Gillese's beard was when this happened. Now I do.

Finally, the iPhone has dropped to $156! Get yours here.

Wait, what?

Hilarious movie posters.

You should all go buy Portal. I played through it twice, once with developer commentary. It was one of my favourite gaming experiences of all time. It really forces you to think differently, which I haven't experienced since The Adventures of Cookie and Cream.

The low-down on Halo 3.

Portal: the flash game. Portal is VALVe's shiny new 3D first-person puzzle game.

I wouldn't call it "unbelievable" (as they do), but this paper toy is neat. I also wouldn't fuck up using the word "bind".

Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologists. I'm really disappointed now.

It seems like every website is trying to "Web 2.0-ize" their styling. This usually means "making it really bland" instead of "making it neat and tidy". I remember disliking the new Something Awful style mostly because I'm old and now I can't tell what's going on. Today, I happened to witness such a change between pages. Cracked is the newest fashion victim. What do you think?

This video features a Karate guy kicking a "Drunken Boxing" Kung-Fu guy repeatedly in the face. I actually thought Drunken Boxing was a bullshit style invented by Jackie Chan for the movies, but Wikipedia says different.

Here's another video featuring Karate vs. Kung Fu. The quality is terrible and seems to worsten throughout the video, but man: those guys are fast as lightning.

The 6 most terrifying foods in the world.

Casu Marzu is a sheep?s milk cheese that has been deliberately infested by a Piophila casei, the "cheese fly."
...
Its translucent larvae are able to jump about 6 inches into the air, making this the only cheese that requires eye protection while eating. The taste is strong enough to burn the tongue, and the larvae themselves pass through the stomach undigested, sometimes surviving long enough to breed in the intestine, where they attempt to bore through the walls, causing vomiting and bloody diarrhea.
...
This cheese is a delicacy in Sardinia, where it is illegal. That?s right. It is illegal in the only place where people actually want to eat it.

Monk supports most of his weight on one finger.

Mel Blanc on Letterman circa 1981. The voice of Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny, etc. if you didn't know...

In case you haven't heard, EA has bought Bioware and Pandemic. It's a pretty big deal. For those of you who aren't aware, Bioware is a critically acclaimed video game company from Edmonton.

Awesome dancing. All it takes is pelvic thrusting, people!

Ann Coulter fails to shut her pie-hole.

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say," Coulter said later in the show. "That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express."

I don't know about you, but I don't think you should dance around this much when playing trumpet.

Finally! I'm going to be able to reject mail before I've read it based on how stupid it is.

Here are a few articles about language:

• The future of language (talks about the future of the past tense)
• The extinction of the irregular verb

They both talk about the simplification and thus impoverishing of the English language. Thanks to Lizard for that second link.

Insane video of the paparazzi surrounding Britney Spears. That is absolutely mental. A swarm of assholes waiting for her to hurt her children or for that elusive upskirt or nipple-slip.

Edmonton hockey team: The Swastikas. To be fair,this was in 1918 when the swastika hadn't been picked up by global douchebags.

I took a couple of pictures of a ladybug that I was happy with.

Sweet endo... in a car!

It's called an endo, right?

Cuckoo! DONG! Cuckoo! DONG! Cuckoo! Click. Tom Cruise.

Hoff, NO! Poor guy.

From an article on the weirdest insects:

The twisted-wing parasite (Strepsiptera) is an order of insects who display a gruesome lifestyle. The larval stage parasite will climb a flower and wait for an insect pollinator (bee or wasp) to come along. They climb aboard the bee, burrow into its body, and change into a second-stage larva. They feed off the blood and organs of the host. An adult male parasite will emerge from the host and search for a mate -a process that takes such little time that he never develops a mouth. The adult female remains in the host?s body for the rest of her life, never growing legs or wings. She mates by pushing only her reproductive organs outside of the bee?s body! Her offspring will emerge and look for new hosts.

Eww eww eww!

Ok, I've resisted watching this video long enough. Turns out it's awesome... I give you, TECHNOVIKING (captioned). Also sort of funny: TECHNOVIKING dancing to Beat It>

The DRM backlash is in full swing. Radiohead and NIN have released DRM-free music and bypassed the record companies, Yahoo is telling record companies it will not distribute DRM-infected music, and of course, Apple has tons of DRM-free music available.

Jumper looks like a pretty cool movie about how Darth Vader can teleport.

I saw a bus ad advocating breast cancer screenings on the way to work today. The trouble was that the words looked like they came from a middle-aged creepster:

Get screened, ladies. it's your breast defense.

The bold type was on the ad too, by the way... Between the shitty pun and the use of the word "ladies", it's enough to make anyone wince.

Check out the trailer for Bender's Big Score: the Futurama movie. Woo!

Superficial twat wants a rich guy:

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful
(spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy.
I'm not from New York . I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at
least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind
that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think
I'm overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could
you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around
200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won't get
me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married
to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as
I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I
get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars,
restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won't hurt my
feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I'm 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east
side so plain? I've seen really 'plain jane' boring types who have
nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I've seen drop dead
gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What's the story
there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment
banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they
hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for
MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest
way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I'm being up front
about it. I wouldn't be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn't
able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a
nice home and hearth.

And the answer:

Dear Pers-:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully
about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.
Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your
bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I
see it.

Your offer, from the prospective[sic] of a guy like me, is plain and simple a
crappy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you
suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring
my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my
money will likely continue into perpetuity...in fact, it is very likely
that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't
be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning
asset . Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation
accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty
hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in
earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy
and hold...hence the rub...marriage. It doesn't make good business sense
to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case
you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were
to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's
as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So,
I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful "
as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to
believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K
hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then
we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way.
Classic "pump and dump."
I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of
lease, let me know.

Top 50 dystopian movies of all time. This list makes me realize that dystopic future stories are my favourite kind...

Smart shows you why it's good not to have back seats. Very convincing.

Chile has opened the world's longest swimming pool. Looks awesome!

Freeman Dyson interviewed. He is asked what he thinks of Richard Dawkins:

I think Richard Dawkins is doing a lot of damage. I disagree very strongly with the way he's going about it. I don't deny his right to be an atheist, but I think he does a great deal of harm when he publicly says that in order to be a scientist, you have to be an atheist. That simply turns young people away from science. He's convinced a lot of young people not to be scientists because they don't want to be atheists. I'm strongly against him on that question. It's simply not true what he's saying, and it's not only not true but also harmful. The fact is that many of my friends are much more religious than I am and are first-rate scientists. There's absolutely nothing that stops you from being both.

Very well executed spot the differences game.

Rocket-powered x-wing flies for a few seconds. I won't spoil the ending.

Bollywood Thriller is probably the best thing I've ever seen.

Awesome insults from b3ta.com.

She's a pure mutant, man.
a face like a dropped pie.
Ass Master.
Eat a bag of shit. Eat a FULL bag of shit.
a face like a plasterer's radio.
It looks like someone set fire to their face and put it out with a spade.

Stoners are dumber than kids. I should hope so. Still: funny!

God vs. the Dinosaurs.

A site that makes fun of products geared towards Audiophiles. This shit is hilarious.

...the mat create[s] a very specific energy spectra that mechanically dithers the laser...

Thanks, 9000!

Found some more killer t-shirts: Han Solo, Boo Boo Walker, Oh Nooo.

Be sure to check out David's adventures in Africa.

Astroboy movie! Coming in 2009?

Sony wants you to buy songs once per device you have to play them on... Because they're jerks. (Source not verified: I'm quoting the Slashdot article)

Wow. Did you know sex toys are illegal in Alabama? That's shockingly backwards.

Run DMC on Reading Rainbow! Link from BoingBoing.

Eva Longoria is pretty funny. Here's her "sex tape". Safe for work.

David Letterman interviews Paris Hilton. Hilarious.

Vader's got some mad skillz. I can't say anything about it: just watch.

On Friday I was lucky enough to go see the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra do a tribute to John Williams. Williams is really good at what he does, and I quite like the scores he has composed played live by the ESO. Not only that, the nostalgia kick from remembering classic films of my youth was great.

Members of the 501st (Vader's Fist) showed up to stand behind the ESO during the Star Wars pieces. While The Phantom Menace was a vile raping of my childhood, the music was well done, and Duel of the Fates (The Darth Maul fighting Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon music) was great to hear performed live.

Pictured: some stormtroopers and Darth Vader after he found my lack of faith disturbing.