Annals of the Homestarmy - Gathering Darkness

"I Did Some Wonder Loaf": SOOOO Glad I Missed the 1960's

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 02:46:43 -0600

[Warning: NSFW] While preparing for an upcoming article, I was looking the original lyrics to the classic Beatles' song “With a Little Help from My Friends”, I came across what must surely be the single funniest thing ever posted to YouTube - the funny stuff kicks in at about 35 seconds, and gets funnier as Mr. Cocker becomes more incoherent. Freaking hilarious.

Who's on First? - Kinetic Typography

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:05:45 -0600

If you've known me for very long, you probably know that I have a deep love of the classic skit "Who's on First?" - no matter how many times I hear it, it continues to make me laugh. So when I found a youtube video that combines that skit with my love of kinetic typography, I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Of course, not all kinetic typography is equal - here's a good example of someone that clearly didn't catch the point of KT, they're just making words spin around an axis...

Parenting tips from AoD, Radar, & Calvin and Hobbes

nospam@example.com (Radar) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:33:00 -0600

Poor AoD is home today tending his "monsters" while Mrs. AoD is at a scrapbooking conference. He and I exchanged this conversation below that I think all parents should read [edited for content]:
Continue reading "Parenting tips from AoD, Radar, & Calvin and Hobbes"

Music Videos Live!

nospam@example.com (The Mad Giggler) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:45:41 -0600

Straight from thRhett's Reader Shared Items:

http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/2008/10/06/literal-interpretation-of-a-music-video/

For those who don't remember the original (or are too young to remember):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWXyEHoN88

They do indeed still make music videos, they just usually aren't as entertaining as those from the 80s.

Making Things Explode is Cool!

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:45:32 -0600

Who cares if the passengers would have survived? Watching these guys ram cars into a concrete barrier at high speed is Just. Plain. Fun.

Google Barbie says: Maths are HARD!

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:07:20 -0600

You would think that all those Brainiacs at Google would be able to do simple math - 81+50 is what, again?

Thanks for Describing It, But What Does that MEAN?

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:49:50 -0600

The following list of books matched a search time on Safari - but I'm not entirely sure what to make of the circled description...click the thumbnail for full-sized version.

Blog Maintenance

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:57:40 -0600

Our blog has finally outgrown my Pentium 3 with 256MB of RAM - I'm shuffling things around to make it work a little better. In the meantime, you may see some outages or other strange messages. Please bear with me.

Hey, I'm in New York, Too!

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:33:09 -0600

Here I am coming out of the Subway at Times Square -

Spent most of the day goofing around in Times Square, here I am at night doing the classic "tourist" pose -

We should meet up for lunch somewhere, Radar...oh, wait, NEITHER OF US IS ACTUALLY IN NEW YORK.

Proof Radar is NOT in New York

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:24:56 -0600

Radar called me today, at 1:25 PM, from "New York"...what a liar!

(Note: I did "Photoshop"[1] this image a little bit to protect my cell #, the other people in my call history, as well as the party that's hiding Radar during this time of lies - no reason to punish anyone else for Radar's sins - but there should be enough there to see that it's clearly an 801 area code number, and we all know Radar doesn't own a cellular phone.)

[1] Okay, technically I suppose a I "The GIMP'd" it. Do you think Adobe likes their flagshop product being a verb, or do you think they're like TiVo and feel it "weakens their brand"?

Err...

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:57:33 -0600

IBM today announced that, effective immediately, it is instituting a new corporate policy that formalizes the company's behavior when helping to create open technical standards. Such standards enable electronic devices and software programs to interoperate with one another.

The tenets of IBM's new policy are to:

* Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.

An invitation-only summit is planned for November, under Yale University's auspices, that will flesh out recommendations from the online discussion and begin steps toward improving the standards-setting environment.

Thanks for the Vote of Confidence

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:41:52 -0600

On the phone last night with MrsTML, the following conversation took place:

MrsTML: How was racquetball?
TML: Good. I won 2 out of 3 games.
MrsTML: Oh...Radar's back still hurts?

Neal Stephenson Webcast Tonight

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:39:25 -0600

Since, for some reason outside my realm of knowledge, we have no D&D tonight, I thought I'd pass on this information about a Neal Stephenson webcast going on tonight.

In case you're not a fan, Neal Stephenson is often considered one of the "fathers of cyberpunk" - both Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer were very formative books for me as I tried to join "that whole internet thing" back when I was in High School; and if you haven't read his short story "In the beginning was the Command Line", you can download it here - in addition to being written as a compelling narrative, it has an interesting historical element to it. You should also follow the links discussing the work of The Long Now Foundation, if you're not familiar with them. The Rosetta Project is particularly interesting, but the entire concept of "the seed of a very long term cultural institution" fascinates me.

Way To Go Microsoft

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:46:36 -0600

A stirring advertisement for their .NET technology:

Continue reading "Way To Go Microsoft"

Ranting About Toilet Paper Ads

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:02:00 -0600

I can't even recall how I ended up here, but I laughed for a good while about the writing.