Every now and then, the Internet really hits one out of the park

Yeah, this is going to have some links. Bear with me.

First, go look at this movie linked on BoingBoing. It's a promo film for one of Lockheed Martin's experimental airships, managing to be both cool and ridiculous at the same time - which is no mean feat.

Much is made of the somewhat overwrought soundtrack.

After seeing this, I really had only one response - "I need to see this set to the Benny Hill music."

As as was skimming down the comments to see how to log and and leave my first ever BB comment to that effect, I discovered that someone had beat me to the punch in the best possible way.

Yes. Someone has written the Benny Hillifier. Thank you, internet. Thank you.

The latest Who Rumor

Word on the internet street is that the new Who, Matt Smith, is signed for three years with an option on a further two.

Here's hoping both that that's true, and that he's that good.

(Did everyone catch that I just used the word "that" four times in a sentence - that was grammatically correct?  Crazy times!)

Link clearinghouse, longer articles edition

I meant to post this back when it was new, but why do things on time?  An analysis of the melt-down of the american auto industry, and why the Japanese industry seems to be doing fine in the same financial world.  The author's thesis, boiled down to two words: Labor Relations.

How Detroit Drove into a Ditch.

Also: an article on Ars Technica about why e-books area actually awesome, and why no one seems to notice or care, and why that doesn't matter, because e-books are inevitable.  I enjoyed this article immensely, not the least because I agreeed with everything the author said, and still disagree with his final conclusions.  My overly simplified rebuttal, offered preemptively: Yes, but ebooks, unlike, say, an MP3 playter or movies on an iPhone, are the only media where the digital version is *less* convienent, as opposed to more.

The once and future e-book.

Finally: If Programming Languages were religions.

Garfield without Garfield

Everybody has seen this, right? The short version: it turns out that if you photoshop the cat out of Garfield comics, the strip goes from being the definitive "bad comic strip" to something screamingly hysterical.

I felt this one deserved some special mention.

buttersafe shoutout

In all fairness, I should reveal that I am genetically related to 50% of the Buttersafe.com team. However, in no way does that make this any less funny.

Steampunk costumes?

Okay, I'll be honest. I'm super excited that a site like Clockwork Couture even exists, but really - is there actually demand for this kind of stuff? I mean, there can't possibly be Victorian Steam War reenactment guilds, can there?

(Note to universe: if not, hurry up and make it so.)

When did Steampunk go from being, essentially, a nerd joke to a full fledged subculture?

A technical side note

By the way, this blog is now also accessible at "blog.fortressofawesome.com"

A nice writeup of the latest EVE Online shenanigans

EVE Online (wiki link) is a game that manages to utterly fascinate me, despite my having no desire to play it whatsoever.

The short version, for those who don't know: it's a space opera massively multiplayer game. It's like Everquest or World of Warcraft, but if everyone was Han Solo (or Mal Reynolds, if you prefer), all with a thick layer of cyberpunk sauce.

(Side note: "Cyberpunk Sauce" would be an excellent band name.)

The thing I find so fascinating is the amount of insane social stuff that happens around the game. The game assumes - or at least *allows* - for the players to play criminals, and as a result, the sort of behavior that would get you kicked out of any other MMO gets you more or less a high-five in EVE.

For example, one of the major game-play components is that players can start and run corporations. Like banks.

So, Ponzi Schemes are all over the place. Also, banks that turn out to be Ponzi schemes, whereupon the investors find this out, form a space-posse, and murder the heads of the organizations and steal all their stuff, also commonplace. Meanwhile, the game developers are all grins, because that's the game they wanted to run.

(There's a story from a few years back, which I assume is true, where one of the larger banks in the game, with jillions of player's in game money in it, was revealed to be a Ponzi scheme. But, the story goes that this was revealed by the guy who was running the con, who proceeded to fold the operation, take all the money he's acquired, buy the best ship in the game, and then take out a huge bounty on himself. I mean, that's awesome.)

Anyway, some crazy stuff happened last week - crazy even by EVE standards. I'm not going to try to recap, but this Ragdoll Metaphyics column over on Offworld does a great job summing it up.

Also:

GTA IV, in the style of a ZX Spectrum game.

(Which, for those of us from the colonies, means in the style of a Commodore 64 game.)

Foxes! On a Trampoline!

You have to check this out.

BEST SPILL EVER!

So all of us who know and love Gabriel Helman knows that he has a problem with spilling stuff on his shirt, pants, etc.

Well, last night he topped even himself and dumped an entire burrito platter in his lap, hitting his shoes, rug, coffee table and a bit of the couch. WOW! It was so impressive that I am sad that I was too shocked to grab a camera to photograph the accomplishment. Who knew sour cream made such good boot polish?!

I think he met his 2009 quota :)

New Year Links cleanout

Ten Things that Started on Usenet.

Dig on this Photoshop filter.

LaTeX cheat sheet! Also, LaTex: Look Here First.

Was it a good day?

Kittens + Roomba = This video

I haven't played it, but this game looks awesome?

DUSTBOT! Yes! I totally had this guy!