[Monday 01-05-09]
The NYT sells front page ads. This isn’t as shocking as I thought it might be. Major papers all over the world do it, why not us? Major US papers have been doing this for a while. But, as the national paper of record, everything that happens at or to the New York Times is historical.
Similar to Bschra (Bschrau?), I’m fully of the belief that print will never recover in any meaningful way. I’m still a news nerd, though. Therefore I should still be held rapt by developments like this. Oddly enough, I’m not. The blind hubris and short-sighted greed of the newspaper industry’s daily failure to innovate just makes me not care anymore.
[Sunday 01-04-09]
Thanks, Statue of Liberation Through Christ.
Wal-Mart dropping hyphen: Yes it is. But it’s a branding change, not an official namechange. Quoth the AP’s ugliest website ever:
In a recent SEC filing, the company identified itself as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Thus AP is leaving unchanged, Wal-Mart.
“mongolian cat”: OH,
HELL NO. Pallas’ Cat in full effect.
B reactor monument: In my post on this (number three for this term) I said Enrico Fermi had a “giant bran.” HA! Glad to see B Reactor getting some love.
inurl:blog/ page=articles: Someone’s Google Fu is strong.
Die in a fire addendum: I’ve been getting a disturbing number of results for The Incredibles and … you see what I’m getting at? This is the internet. I think I have a new rule: If it can apply under Rule 34, I probably shouldn’t write it.
[Thursday 01-01-09]
Indulge me in some nerdy fawning, if you will. I didn’t care about COD4 until I realized it was already on sale in places.
I am surprised at how of portrays war. Until the fourth installment, the series had langored as another damn WWII shooter. But the careful attention to detail makes me understand why it was one of 2007’s top sellers.
Most of the combat involves infantry maneuvers, shooting bad guys in the head, throwing grenades etc. There are enough weapons to accommodate most playstyles, but manages to eschew the path of awesome indulgence by getting too futuristic and keeps thing simple enough to avoid falling into the treacherous depths of overwhelming gunporn.
But the what really seals the deal is a sudden, beautiful meta moment. One of the major POV characters (an SAS guy) is escorting an informant to safety after a chopper crash. His mustachioed captain calls in support from an AC-130 gunship. Fire rains down from the heavens, the evil nationalists die in a variety of fires and you assume you’ve simply got a short run to safety.
Wrong. A loading screen appears and you soon find yourself looking at the IR monitor from within the gunship.
That’s right. The smartbomb/air power doctrine that turned war into a video game is being simulated in a video game. The circle is complete.
(It’s also really fun, too.)
[Monday 12-15-08]
HA! Wrong day, but that’s alright.
“Tor” German gun.
Not just any German gun, a 60cm self-propelled beast. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but I assume it was some sort of siege mortar for blowing the hell out of distant fortifications and probably burning books.
600mm is 23 inches. The main guns on the Iowa-class battleship were 16-inches across (403mm), although they came in clusters of several, which is probably a force multiplier … or RMA . German railway guns of the time generally ranged from 120-280mm. In summary, ladies and gentlemen, is a big-ass gun.
Its nickname? Tor.
Indiana Jones alien conspiracy
The only suspicious thing was how this film got greenlit.
Hijacked oil tanker
Try Somalia?
The greatest thing online
Is me … or this. (I’d avoid the links on the page)
Scherenschnitte snowflake
Not my department.
World in the balance double up
Did you mean world out of balance?
[Sunday 12-14-08]
HOLY CRAP IT SNOWED! W00000000007!!!11!!11!
Oh wait … snow in Vancouver is invariably lame.
… on one thing: Wet floor effect.
Blah blah Reddit blah blah Logo Design Love (AWESOME!?): Rejected Obama logo designs.
My favorite is finalist #2, the bubbles, badass rounded sans and populist undertones. It reminds those little chunks of design I used to see on old commercials, but was really too young to process. Undeniably modern (somewhere between the late 1950s and ’80s modern), but still energetic and idealist enough to not totally turn me away.
So, yeah, probably was too far from tradition.
[Thursday 12-04-08]
You know, Slate’s column that - rather appropriately - explains things that might not make sense at first blush.
Why is it that whenever the police catch a panty thief do they generally offer to return the undergarments to the probable owners?
I know womens’ undergarments are expensive, but would a victim of this troubling crime really want them back? I’m assuming that the perpetrator took them for some nefarious end and thus I really wouldn’t want to be associated with the item.
[Friday 11-28-08]
Alright, it’s not that good a movie. Where it triumphs is in design. Everything is mid-century retrofuturism with a perfect color palette. Despite the criticism of its social message – which I take issue with – I think it’s really one of Pixar’s best efforts.
(I still need to see Wall-E to decide if it’s the most awesome or not)
[Wednesday 11-26-08]
OK. They just leased it for this, but still – how awesome is it that they can commission satellite photos?
Summary: Here it is, lolz!
That little speck on the right in all the darkness? Yeah, that’s a 1,090 ft. oil tanker. Bigger picture in the article.
[Monday 11-24-08]
Madame, you forget yourself!
As per Kaci’s internet superiority challenge, odd facts about my reading:
- I am an incredibly light reader of printed media, but I am gluttonous when it comes to the internet.
- In the same vein, I rabidly consume international press offerings: I wear out the Guardian and NYT almost every day.
- My favorite guilty genres are post-cyberpunk and overwrought high fantasy. (Hell, I can even differentiate the two from their siblings).
- I really only have the attention span to read one book at a time and I never keep a list or backlog of books.
- I will read anything that has won the Booker Prize if I’m at a bookstore and remember the name enough to be interested in it.
- Contrary to essentially everyone I’ve ever known, I can’t stand bookstores. They’re way too much input at once.
The last two almost contradict, but not enough to bother me.
And, in the half-assed interest of spreading this fearsome meme further, I tag anyone who cares to post about their own crazy reading habits.
