Buttersafe Expo

I feel strongly that all readers of this blog should try and hit this thing.

Tetris in HD is a work of pure, unmitigated evil

Seriously, go try this out.

I was going to say something snarky here, but I really can't beat this comment from Chris Harriman, one of the great thinkers of our time: "It turns out that the width of the playing field is extremely relevant.  This is a horrible creation."

Also, mad bonus points to whoever was on the ball enough to register "sovietrussia.org"

Sam's back in the saddle

Sam Raimi has a new movie coming out.  A horror movie where a bank employee is cursed for not giving a gypsy woman an extension on her mortage?  Yes, please.  Really, the only thing this trailer is missing is Bruce Campbell.  (And, let's be honest, that's a pretty big deficit.)

Watchmen credits

Short version: I thought Watchmen was spectacular.

And, the opening credits have wandered, loose, out into the interwebs. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this for the moment (but really, it doesn't actually give anything away.)

I'm having one of those "I'm glad I live today" moments

First, check out this video made by a 12-year old.

When I was twelve, I was writing unplayable text adventures in BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and doing stuff like this was, essentially, impossible, much less commodity software. Yay future!


Then, go read this article on Why TV Lost. It's a pretty fascinating analysis as to why that TV meets computers convergence that everyone was talking about in 1990 (when I was... twelve) didn't happen, and facebook happened instead.

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.