Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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The weblog of Seth Johnson -------------- INKSLINGER.ORG -------------- OD ARCHIVES -------------- FEEDS Posts:  Shared Items:
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Saturday, October 26, 2002
Via MeFi, a link to ZippoTricks; the Internet has indeed created communities for everyone. At least this one has a bit of style--and the video is pretty darn cool, too.
Though there are some who disdain it as "Newsfilter", here's an example of exactly why I visit Metafilter six to eight times a day:
A MeFi user links to the story of western journalists being ejected from Iraq. Within two hours the related MeFi comments thread has pointed to a great story on Iraq's attempts to manipulate foreign journalists, CNN's story on the ejection, the story that got CNN in trouble in the first place.
Bonus points for the CNN employee who shows up in the thread to comment and pass along Iraqi denials that any of the above is actually occuring.
I noticed that I was hit with a Google search for "Bad emoticons" this morning, and I'm disappointed to see that I rank only second in the search. Therefore, I would like to present:
The Official Bad Emoticon Collection*
Man withdrawing money from ATM: BB--o()*
Bus driver who hates cookies: LL8vv#!!!!
Cat struggling to understand a difficult passage in Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology: &f~
Little girl thinking of pecans: Ss..=>
A hydrophobic magician's assistant: 6==(/u\)==p
Secretary from the Southern Poverty Law Center after
three beers: rrQ : &^ZN
Record store clerk told he has to work overtime
again: ttttttto
Walter Cronkite interviewing Joey Ramone: )@=****|/
My sister eating really hot peppers: Hh8?re#
Juggler getting a divorce: ---jO@^vX
* Note that all emoticons are bad and that these are presented for entertainment purposes only.
Since I can't find a way to link directly (and permanently) to Bruce Sterling's latest post on the Infinite Matrix, I'm goint to reprint it here:
10.25.02
These "Edison's Ark" guys are upset because the Patent Office is obliterating its old paper records and digitizing them.
http://www.edisonsark.org/PatentArt/ index.htm
So they're like, digging stuff out of trash cans and putting it on the web. Huh?
http://www.edisonsark.org/PatentArt/pages/kibler2050185.htm
What does he mean, "huh"? Look at the site. See how much information is being thrown away by the Patent Office as they scan in the original images to make the new digital versions. Seems pretty straight forward to me--Edison's Ark is doing the Good Work, covering for the Patent Office's screw-up.
I don't mind things being digitized, so long as they're digitized properly.
It has been correctly noted that I'm getting a bit...worked up...about Vice City. But hoping that you are as well, I point you toward this spoiler-laden thread in the IGN forums, where questions were answered pell-mell by IGN and Rockstar folks.
The high points: the whole city is NOT open at the beginning; according to the Rockstar rep answering questions, there are no current plans for a PC version; hidden packages are back; no spike strips!; 4-5 different helicopters; pizza boy delivery missions(!); the game supports widescreen and DTS.
Friday, October 25, 2002
The new season of BMW's online Hire films has begun with a John Woo-directed short, "Hostage". Worth watching, for those who can handle a 100MB download (or low-qual streaming media; whatever.)
For those who do download the film, I found it interesting that the QuickTime file comes with the surrounding dashboard somehow embedded in the file. Has anybody ever seen this before?
Excellent review by Bezzy of the new game Mutant Storm. In what little spare time I've had this week I've been checking out MS, and I highly reccomend you go download the demo--and then buy the game. And get Space Tripper while you're at it. NdY4eVa!
The website for 24 has been updated and revamped in preparation for the second season. Some interesting tidbits worth digging around to find, but most everything is in a holding pattern until after next Tuesday's premiere.
I've rewritten this post three times, trying to express my sadness at death of Senator Paul Wellstone and his family in a plane crash last night. I've always lived on the wrong side of the border to vote for Wellstone, but I had the pleasure of meeting him while working at the Minnesota State Fair, and he was a good man. The political scene and the country is poorer for his loss.
Blogger is back up. My post from earlier, in case any of you were following the threads:
Well, apparently Blogger was hacked this morning. For more info see HERE and HERE, as well as this /. thread. Hopefully information will be forthcoming at status.blogger.com as well. Let me know if you see anything strange on this page (passwords are already all changed, but...)
Folks around the web are linking to the fantastic Stereotypes, but it's well worth poking further into the site of its creator, Eric Myer for more great photography.
Thursday, October 24, 2002
BEWARE--Recursive linking: I linked to Readcomicsinpublic last week, and today that page returns the favor by quoting my post (they were even nice enough to email and ask permission.) Well let me point you back to RCiP, if only to read this week's analysis of Global Frequency.
Comedy Central not showing enough Saturday Night Live for you? Then check out Saturday Night You, where Net comedy writers take a swing at writing the next week's SNL before it shows. The sketches are of varying quality, but it's fun to poke around.
There are a lot of men out there who don't have a bunch of things, and it makes me sad (from robotwisdom).
Scary, scary vision of a potential Net Apocalypse where strains of powerful worm viruses battle for domination (via boingboing).
HURRAY!
Not one but two talk radio stations in Vice City! I'm irked that they're not releasing them on disc, but really, how long will it take me to make my own?
Just one of several Vice City articles on Gamespot.
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Frontalot meets Hawking? We can only hope it's not a battle, for such a thing would rock us all to our dooms.
Also, in hopes of helping the Frontman Google up, visit Libaire. They make bags.
"Ghostwriters Work with Moose": The story isn't quite as quirky as the headline implies, but it's still an interesting article about the work being done behind the lines to script press conferences connected to the sniper shootings.
I know, I know--Apple "Switch" ad parodies are last week's Web, grandma-speed stuff. But I think enough OD readers will enjoy Will Ferrell's "Switch" parody from the MacWorld Expo that it's worth posting.
Sweet: you can download the video from the Shuttle's External Tank camera. I'm such a sucker for space spectating; I could watch this footage over and over. And probably will.
Via Mefi comes this map of the world's remaining wilderness (PDF link); whenever in the future I argue for arcologies and people just laugh, I'll show them that map...
The Merrimac Ferry has finally been sold. I'm glad I got a chance to go for a ride before the era ended. (Thanks to Trabbold for pointing out the story.)
A rather brief telling of Batman's origin, but a Net-exclusive one. We'll see if today's Bat-relaunch works or not--Jim Lee doesn't make it an instant home run for me...
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
Cripes. Courtesy of a hit to this page from someone at apple.com, I've discovered that I rank above Lileks in a search involving him. I gotta stop linking to him so much...
-ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
young macgyver
heh. Hehheh--
BWAHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...
National Novel Writing Month; I have a couple freelance jobs that might come in, but if they don't I think I'm going to take a novel idea I've been toying with and take a run at it. 50,000 words in 30 days. Scary.
Just got back from seeing Spirited Away with JP, Karla and Chris. Excellent. Well worth seeing in the theater, the better to focus and enjoy the details. In my opinion, a league better than Nausicca or Mononoke. I suppose one of these days I should check out Kiki's Delivery Service...
A sweet blog being kept by a scientist doing research in Antarctica: Life in the Freezer. Excellent photos.
Monday, October 21, 2002
AnnoyanceFilter: an excellent collection of useful links. The pressure for me to switch to Mozilla gets stronger and stronger. If it provides an easier way to keep my bookmarks aggregated and organized as I move them between my home and work computers, I just might be sold.
I've long been a fan of PT Barnum, Harry Houdini, and American entertainment of the late nineteenth century. So it was neat to find a terrific Milwaukee history page that could shed some light on the Wisconsin history of both dime museums and Houdini. Fun reading.
Thanks to Dr. Chris I had another opportunity to visit the Valley of the Kings yesterday, this time with my digital camera in tow. I've shrunk most of the pictures down for my friends with lower bandwidth, but click on any of them to see larger versions.
Although I was a little more prepared this time, it's still pretty amazing--and pretty intimidating--to be that close to so many enormous predators. Any superiority complex you might have just melts away when you're walking back alone from throwing away some garbage and see a dozen big cats staring at you from less than eight feet away on either side of you with only a chain-link fence preventing you from becoming a tasty snack.
Actually, the tigers were really friendly, and would come right up to the fence to be petted and nuzzled. Chris noted, probably rightly, that if they ever got out they would just inadvertantly play with you to death. It's the lions that would kill you indiscriminately because they felt peckish.
Feeding them was also fun, and ten pounds of chicken disappeared like a handful of popcorn. The tigers were surprisingly dainty with the chicken--they'd take it through the fence and use a paw to make certain that it didn't touch the ground. Then they'd push it between their jaws, snap! the bone in half, and crunch it down in two or three bites. I also watched a tiger eat a real meal, cracking open a ribcage and using his raspy tongue to literally lick apart a deer carcass. Strangely, watching one animal eat another wasn't quite as disturbing as I might have thought it would be.
One thing I really paid attention to this time were the sounds of the sanctuary. In The Fellowship of the Ring, when the Fellowship is fighting the cave troll in the Mines of Moria, many of the noises made by the troll are directly sampled from tiger chuffs. I captured a bunch of the sounds--roars, chomps, hisses, purrs--and I hope to be able to convince our sound guy at work to take a trip down there with me to get some good wildsound for our games.
The cats aren't the only animals at VotK; I got a lot of other great pictures to add to my "Animals in Extreme Closeup" series:
Sunday, October 20, 2002
Metafilter user posts a link to a story about Japanese agoraphobes, agoraphobes start coming out of the woodwork of MeFi's userbase.
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