For some reason, I was never a huge fan of Will Ferrell. His turn in MTV’s parody of “The Matrix Reloaded”, however, first made me think that I should consider changing my mind. His dead-on characterization of George W. Bush seals the deal.
Apropos the Commander-in-Chimp, last night I was stopped at a light behind a bumper sticker which read:
My child is an Honor Student
My President is a moron
Alas.
If you’re acting as a carrier for viral marketing, you know you’re acting as a carrier for viral marketing, and you persist in doing it anyway, what does that make you? A typhoid moron?
Anyway, these ads for Xbox and Xbox 360 are pretty cute. (If any of the games released for the 360 at launch showed half the cleverness or ingenuity that the ads do, I’d have been standing in line to get one at midnight along with all of the other suckers.)
First, there’s a touching vignette about the transience of existence. This is followed by a meditation on the importance of a willing imagination. My favorite, though, is this cautionary tale about the dangers of hot-rodding. “Alles klar, Jungs?”
Original infectious vector provided by Faisal. Thanks, Faisal!
If you’re suffering an acute deficit of hearing the Preznit say what he really means, The Party Party has the rx for you. Given the veep’s recently-expressed feelings about the permissibility of torture, “Dick is a Killer” seems particularly timely. (Note that the server on which the songs are hosted seems to have a fondness for resetting connections: if you’re going to download them, you’re advised to use a tool that will recover gracefully. wget seems to fit the bill; others may, too.)
I have no idea who Eric Schwartz is, but his music video, “Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis“, pretty much sums up how sick I’m getting of being surrounded by pushy, aggrieved would-be theocrats who, when they’re not actively trying to tell me how to live my life, can only whine about how marginalized and persecuted they are. Please, give it a rest already.
The Gigapxl Project (“Gigapixel” wouldn’t fit on a license plate, apparently) is a fascinating study in what happens when an engineer with too much time on his hands decides to pursue photography with a vengeance. Popular Science recently ran an intriguing article on the subject.
The project’s web-site gallery is worth checking out; the photos don’t look all that impressive until you follow the chain of zooms and realize that their detail just goes on, and on, and on…
I have no idea who The Ministry of Unknown Science are, although it seems not beyond the realm of possibility that their Eric Trueheart is the same as the one who worked on the late, great, lamented Invader Zim as a writer.
In any case, their short film Kung-Fu Fuck-You is a work of brilliance on a par with the cutscenes in Rag Doll Kung Fu, and marks them as a group to watch.
No, I have no idea what the Leprechauns are doing there either.
Mark Russinovich, one of the more badass ninjas of low-level Windows programming and the co-maintainer of the excellent Sysinternals website, recently discovered, while testing his rootkit detector, that Something Unwholesome had made its way onto a system that should by rights have been clean.
Upon investigation, he discovered that he’d inadertently installed it himself when listening to a DRM-encumbered CD, the ironically-titled Get Right With The Man.
This discovery has led to a media furor and very visible tug-of-war, chronicled on Russinovich’s blog, with Sony and Sony’s purveyor of DRM technology, First 4 Internet. First 4 Internet’s programmers clearly don’t understand the nuts and bolts of deep-down Windows programming nearly so well as Russinovich, leading to their advancement of some blatantly false assertions which Russinovich has proceeded to casually blow out of the water. It’d be amusing if the stakes — to wit, users’ right to use media they own on computers they own without worrying that one is going to try subverting the other — weren’t so high.
Russinovich is one of my heroes; his autoruns is on my very short list of absolutely essential Windows utilities. And yet there’s a certain irony lurking just under the surface here. Free-software advocates have argued, sometimes stridently, that proprietary systems are to be avoided because they tilt the balance of power away from ordinary users and towards the Powers That Be. This episode would seem to offer evidence that even extraordinary users like Russinovich are at risk of being bent over the barrel for as long as they choose to be serfs in someone else’s kingdom. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess. I suspect it’s too much to hope that the experience will lead him to focus his considerable skills upon free software, but it sure would be nice.
Tim suggested that I make T-shirts declaring “SONY ARE PIGFUCKERS” as an alternative to having the phrase tattoed across my chest. I replied that I could probably cover my costs by selling a few. I’m not sure about an exact design, though.
There are two ways to purchase an electronic iTunes Music Store gift certificate: through the Apple Store, and through the iTunes application itself. Never, ever, do it through the Apple Store.
If an e-mailed gift certificate you purchased through iTunes is accidentally deleted, inadvertently tagged as spam, or otherwise lost, voiding and re-issuing it through the iTunes application is trivial. If the same thing happens to a gift certificate you purchased through the Apple Store you are, not to put too fine a point on it, shit out of luck. You will have to contact Customer Service by e-mail and detail your woes, after which they will credit your account with the amount spent and you can try again.
I have to admit that I expected better — much, much better — from a company which has made usability a cornerstone of its brand.
megaGAMERZ 3133T has just made reference to Krull.
Excuse me while I luxuriate in a moment of pure absurdist Zen.
“‘You owe it to yourself to check out the amazingly goofy Ragdoll Kung Fu.'”
One reviewer, whom the game’s creators saw fit to cite in their promotional trailer, called it “brilliantly stupid fun.” I don’t think I can put it any better than that. This game has everything, including obvious, bad bald wigs and dope-smoking ninjas. If, after playing it, you don’t think it was worth the $15, I can only shake my head in sorrow for the state of your soul.
The entertainment value of the game itself aside, the fact that a single developer working with friends in his spare time can create something like this and distribute it via Steam in a way that’s commercially viable offers hope that some spirit still lives deep within the shambling bulk of the game industry. Take heart in this thought as you wander the shelves of your local retailer, shifting your gaze passing from one soulless, overproduced, overhyped, would-be blockbuster game after another. It doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe it won’t be forever.
Chi Power!