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Link Dump
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Link Dump
Yes, there have been a lot of these lately. At this point I figure I should just stop apologizing for it and embrace it. So here you go, links:
  • Echo: LoadingReadyRun has been at The Escapist for a while and they can be hit or miss, but some of their more recent videos are really great stuff. Split Decision and A Stitch in Time are pretty good too.
  • Right on Cue: Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to Andy Rooney: "Rooney ends this with a jibe that notes his ignorance of Lady Gaga is fine, because kids are ignorant of Ella Fitzgerald. I suspect that he gives himself too much credit." Heh. His notion of "Digging In The Crates" is an interesting one and I think he may be right.
  • Soldiers returning from war surprise kids, loved ones: As they note: "There is a 100% chance you will cry within 30 seconds of this video."
  • I don't know what the hell is going on in this video, so I am presenting it to you, without comment.
  • F**k You: Cee Lo Green's profanity laden song is pretty great. And of course, the follow up videos have begun... Also of note, this song, which is completely unrelated, but awesome.
  • Sun Chips Bag: These videos are all over the place at this point, but this one's pretty well executed, precisely because the guy doesn't say anything.
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on August 25, 2010 at 07:37 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Link Dump
Interesting stuff seen lately:
  • Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars: Amazing list of recurring edits on Wikipedia. Should we mention House MD's lack of asian diversity (8,000+ edits and counting). Should "wee" link to the Nintendo Wii or to the article on urine (20,000+ edits and counting)? A goldmine of almost unintentional hilarity.
  • A Tale As Old As Time: No comment necessary.
  • Predators Teenage Son: A while ago, I participated in an amazingly nerdy debate about aliens and predators, and this video reminded me of that geekout (specifically the part about whether or not the predator would win in a hot dog eating contest when competing against an alien).
  • Extra Credits: If you're not familiar with Daniel Floyd and James Portnow (and now Allison Theus), they produced a series of great videos about video games on YouTube and are now part of The Escapist, posting new videos every Thursday (instead of twice a year, as they were doing before!) I don't know that I always agree with them, but it's always interesting watching.
  • Double Feature: I was getting sick of my current lineup of podcasts, so I started looking around for some new movie podcasts and found this one, which is pretty good stuff (and a large back catalog for me to work through). Any other good movie podcasts I should be listening to? (Besides Filmspotting, Creative Screenwriting, Filmically Perfect, Left Field Cinema, and The Treatment? I already know about those!)
That's all for now, see you Sunday.
Posted by Mark on August 18, 2010 at 09:08 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, August 08, 2010

Link Dump
I have about 5 posts brewing right now, but none are quite ready for the show, so here are some links in the meantime. That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on August 08, 2010 at 08:27 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Link Dump
Well, it's actually been a while since the last link dump, so here's a few interesting links:
  • God of War Movie Trailer: If it were directed by Wes Anderson, that is. Excellent spoof of indie movie tropes.
  • I Write Like: David Foster Wallace, apparently. Mayhap I should finish off Infinite Jest sometime. Actually, it looks like they updated the algorithm. I still get mostly Wallace, but I'm also getting lots of other folks (Lovecraft, James Joyce, etc...) which is a bit strange. I mean, I write like everybody! I'd like to know more about how they determine the key indicators for each writer.
  • Film Longevity: Box Office vs. Oscars: Sam Stoddard (of the excellent but sporadic All Movie Talk podcast) takes on two inevitable movie topics:
    1. Those snooty Academy Awards! Why do they always nominate obscure art films? In 20 years, nobody will remember them. When the films of today have stood the test of time, they’ll have been forgotten. The films people will remember, see, and cherish are the ones that dominate the box office!
    2. The public is stupid! Every year they turn the most mindless drivel into cash cows. But the fame these movies have will not endure. When the films of today have stood the test of time, they’ll have been forgotten. The films people will remember, see, and cherish are the ones that win Academy Awards!
    These claims are obviously at odds with each other. They can both be false, but they cannot both be true, except in cases where the movies that win at the box office are also the ones garnering awards attention.
    He then goes into a relatively thorough examination of the Oscar Nominees and Top Grossing films for each year, going back to the beginnings of the Oscars. Fascinating stuff.
  • KFC Drive-Through: Doublelicious all the way. You know, the great thing about laughter is that it just happens. You don't have to think about it or explain it, which is a good thing, because I have no idea why I laughed so much at this.
  • Cognitive Surplus Visualized: Wow.
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on July 28, 2010 at 09:31 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Link Dump
Just some interesting stuff I've seen lately: That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on July 07, 2010 at 09:31 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Yet Another Link Dump
Apologies for all the recent link dumps. Time has been short. More meaningful content to return shortly. In the meantime, enjoy:
  • 2 Guage Shotgun: When I was in high school, I really hated Biology. So after the class ended, my dad and I took my notebook up to our range. Fearing that the 12 guage shotgun wouldn't do, we broke out the 10 guage and proceeded to annihilate the notebook. Some scraps around the edges remained, but otherwise, it was pretty thoroughly destroyed. Now, these guys have a 2 guage shotgun and manage to pretty much vaporize half a board of clay birds. Supposedly the gun was mounted to a boat and used for hunting duck, but I don't really understand. What good is a vaporized duck (or a duck riddled with shot)? I guess if you have a large flock and a longer range, it would work, but still. Amazingly powerful gun.
  • Cardboard Mechanics Installation: Sometimes when I watch these videos, I wish there could be an easy way to keep tabs on the people that made them. Did they ever amount to anything? What did they end up doing with their lives? In this case, it's clear that the creators have a pretty thorough understanding of mechanics and how to get things working, but what are they going to do with all that knowledge (besides make a video like this)?
  • The History of the Typewriter: As told by Michael Winslow, of Police Academy fame. I have to wonder how close he actually is to the real thing (I wish they would've included that for comparison's sake, but then, I guess the video is long enough as it is).
  • Super Mario Brothers with Violin: It's the white tux that really cements it. Still, pretty good for what is presumably an improvised performance... Also of note: Beatboxing Mario. It's amazing how many new viral Mario memes appear every week. Here, look at these Mario themed Filing Cabinets! What about Stop Motion Mario? Marathons! Dance Pads! iPads! Crossovers! I'm consistently intrigued by how much love Mario gets, even today, well over 20 years after the game originally appeared (though it's a bit telling that 90% of these things are referencing the first game and not the sequels, especially not 3d sequels...)
  • The Most Badass Alphabet Ever: This is old, but still awesome. I won't ruin it by quoting anything, but it's great.
That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on June 20, 2010 at 08:50 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Link Dump
Some more interesting stuff: There you have it!
Posted by Mark on June 16, 2010 at 09:47 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, June 06, 2010

Link Dump
A busy weekend and the Flyers storming back in the Stanley Cup finals means less time than usual, so here's a few links that I've found interesting lately:
  • Subway To Start Tessellating Cheese: Remember when I posted this comic a while back? It's apparently from 2007, and according to what appears to be an internal weekly newsletter, Subway will begin tessellating cheese on its sandwiches. A consumer triumph.
  • Trailers From Hell: This has been around for a while, but it's well worth checking out for movie fans (it tends to lean towards horror, but it's not exclusively that genre). Basically, it consists of a bunch of famous directors doing a commentary on the trailers of their favorite films. While some well-known movies are featured, there are tons of obscure films as well. The people doing the commentary tend to be horror director mainstays, including Joe Dante, Kaedrin favorite Don Coscarelli, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, John Landis, and a bunch of others.
  • Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion’s free culture: Shamus posts this excellent 15 minute TED talk about how the fashion industry doesn't use copyright, and various implications to other areas of IP. Interesting stuff about a subject I'm always fascinated by...
  • Heist!: An intriguing bank robbery in Buenos Aires that Hollywood should be paying attention to...
    On the afternoon of (Friday!) January 13, four gunmen walked into the Banco Rio in Acassuso (part of greater Buenos Aires) and took the staff and customers hostage. There was a tense six hour long siege by the police, expertly handled by the robbers - they let each hostage call home, so that family members showed up at the scene; the calculation was that the police would be more reluctant to storm the building immediately if hostages' relatives were watching. They made sure to release three hostages right away as a gesture of goodwill, but of course the three released included the security guard and police officer already in the building. While one of the robbers stayed on the phone, negotiating with police, the remaining ones got busy cracking open safe deposit boxes. Towards four in the afternoon, the police delivered six pizzas and some bottles of soda, the fruit of all those hours of negotiation, which the robbers passed along to the hostages. And then they went silent.

    After about an hour of no contact and no news, an elite police bank-storming squad stormed the bank, only to find a group of bewildered hostages sitting scared in the smoke. There was no trace of the gunmen.
    I love the cat-and-mouse games robbers play with the police in situations like this, and this one has a few exchanges of that going on...
  • Pulsate: This thing had me transfixed for much longer than it should have. My favorite thing to do was to position my mouse in the center of the space and click several times in succession, creating a series of concentric rings. Then I'd move the mouse to one of the corners (quickly, as you have to do it before the original set of rings makes it there) and do another series of rings. Do it for a couple other corners and presto! You've got an Aphex Twin song.
  • Soviet Space Center: A photo tour of a decommissioned Soviet Space Center. The post isn't in English, but the photos are great.
  • Nothing New to Report: At first, I thought this was the same newspaper, over and over again, but there are probably tons of copies of the same one in use in Hollywood. I can almost guarantee it's due to the fact that someone had to clear all the stories in the newspaper once, and never wants to pay for the rights again. Understandable for what should be a throwaway prop.
  • Duck Hunt Behind-the-Scenes: Pretty sure that's what happens.
That's all for now. Possibly something more substantial next week!
Posted by Mark on June 06, 2010 at 05:07 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Yet Another Link Dump
Sorry for all the link dumps, but I've not been feeling especially inspired as of late. Anyway, some interesting stuff I've seen recently:
  • The Enemy Within by Mark Bowden: You wouldn't think that the story of a computer worm would be this interesting, but it is.
    The struggle against this remarkable worm is a sort of chess match unfolding in the esoteric world of computer security. It pits the cleverest attackers in the world, the bad guys, against the cleverest defenders in the world, the good guys (who have been dubbed the “Conficker Cabal”). It has prompted the first truly concerted global effort to kill a computer virus, extraordinary feats of international cooperation, and the deployment of state-of-the-art decryption techniques—moves and countermoves at the highest level of programming. The good guys have gone to unprecedented lengths, and have had successes beyond anything they would have thought possible when they started. But a year and a half into the battle, here’s the bottom line:

    The worm is winning.
    Zoinks!
  • And I, for one, welcome our new printer overlords.
  • Mann Co. - Form letter from a company of awesome people.
  • Periodic Table of Fictional Elements - Sometimes I think I'm a nerd, and then someone goes and makes something like this..
  • "Adam? ...is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge?" - Heroic tale of refrigeration and data recovery. "I share this experience with you, the internet, in the hopes that it is useful."
Posted by Mark on May 19, 2010 at 09:48 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Link Dump
Stuff I've found interesting lately: That's all for now!
Posted by Mark on May 12, 2010 at 07:00 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Link Dump
You know the drill - some interesting stuff I've seen lately on teh interwebs:
  • Robot Exoskeleton: Power Loader: Towards the beginning of the video, some text starts scrolling across the screen that says "This is the power loader. The prototype robotic exoskeleton is designed to allow the wearer..." and I totally thought the next screen was going to say something like "... to act like Ripley at the end of Aliens!" but alas, the video was serious.
  • Google Predictive Search is amusing sometimes. I'd hit that. [via Nick Holmes]
  • A Sincere Letter of Thanks to Roger Ebert: Ebert trolled the video game industry again last week with his long-standing assertion that video games can't be art. Kevin Beverage from GameSpy brilliantly skewers both Ebert and the general response:
    Noting the content drought on many game enthusiast websites, you selflessly decided to peel the crusted top off of the cesspool that is the games-as-art debate, to present us gamers with the opportunity to wallow in our own intellectual feces for a solid week-and-a-half. And with bony fists raised in impotent rage and eyes fixed unflinchingly on our navels, we took up the call.
    Heh.
  • David Thorne: Awesome Person: Also apparently a "fucking legend". [via Nick Holmes]
  • Man At Very Top Of Food Chain Chooses Bugles: Somehow, the Onion never ceases to be funny.
    Acting on an impulse from an incredibly complex forebrain that has evolved over millions of years, Atkinson then took note of the Bugles' amusing conical shape and placed one on each of his opposable thumbs like little wizard hats.
  • Super Mario Crossover: Awesome concept - play Super Mario Brothers with other NES classic characters, like Samus, Simon Belmont, Link, etc... Awesome idea, and well executed too. I kinda wish I still had a gamepad for my computer though (and that it would work for this)...
  • Lawn Mower of the Future: Why didn't I ever think of this?
That's all for now!
Posted by Mark on April 28, 2010 at 08:26 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Link Dump
Yes, another one.
  • Dear Subway, Inc. - I always thought they shaped the cheese like that because they didn't want to use as much cheese. This guy has a somewhat more optimistic outlook.
  • The Videogame Car - Apparently it's much harder to drive like that in real life than it is in GTA4.
  • Why records DO all sound the same - The unknown knows of the music industry. In all seriousness, it's pretty interesting how modern music mixing and mastering techniques are used to smooth out and "louden" music tracks.
  • 5 Year Old Baseball Star - This kid is better at baseball than I ever was, and he's only 5. He can consistently hit an 85 mph pitch (since he's so small, he actually gets pushed backwards).
  • Transformers Crossover - This felt vaguely infuriating until I realized that it was Anikin Skywalker, not the real Star Wars.
  • Auto-Tune Some Pizza - How is it that Auto-Tune never gets old. Ok, well, it does, but still, this was pretty funny.
Yeah, so, sorry for the gratuitous link dumps of late. Just not especially inspired right now. Hopefully something more interesting on Sunday.
Posted by Mark on April 14, 2010 at 09:04 PM .: Comments (5) | link :.


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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Link Dump
Perhaps I've been doing these a bit too often lately, but here are a few interesting links I've seen lately:
  • Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief: The title pretty much says it, but as near as I can tell, this guy is like a one man Ocean's 11. I hope Hollywood is reading, because you could make a pretty good movie out of this stuff.
    ...Blanchard slowly approached the display and removed the already loosened screws, carefully using a butter knife to hold in place the two long rods that would trigger the alarm system. The real trick was ensuring that the spring-loaded mechanism the star was sitting on didn’t register that the weight above it had changed. Of course, he had that covered, too: He reached into his pocket and deftly replaced Elisabeth’s bejeweled hairpin with the gift-store fake.
    It was two weeks before anyone realized that what was on display was actually a fake bought at the on-site gift-store. The article is great stuff. (via Galley Slaves, who also has some interesting comments about Wired magazine and editor Chris Anderson's willingness to run stories like this...)
  • Google Search for Recursion: Get it?
  • Archer: Why was I not informed of this show?! It's like The Venture Brothers, but for James Bond (rather than Johnny Quest). This show definitely owes a lot to the Venture Brothers, and it's perhaps not quite as good, but it's still quite funny.
  • Birdemic: Shock And Terror Official Theatrical Trailer: "A towering achievement in human creative expression." - IMDB User Review (via CHUD, where Devin notes "every so often, ineptitude and fate converge on the event horizon of cinema's black hole (read: anus) to produce an experience so bafflingly sucky and confusing it borders on the remarkable")
  • 'Battlefield Earth' Screenwriter Is Sorry About That: More for the headline than the article itself, but the guy does seem to have a sense of humor about himself and his work.
  • 160 Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes: Awesome.
That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on March 31, 2010 at 09:34 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Link Dump
Another installment of links I found interesting on the internets:
  • Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer: Brilliantly skewers Oscar bait movies and trailers. Particularly notable in light of recent posting and also a recent link dump.
  • The Video Game Bosses' Lament: Classic. Dracula's voice is the best.
  • Press X to Jason: I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler for anyone who wants to play Heavy Rain, but I have to admit that it's pretty funny (besides, you won't really get it until you play the game). I eagerly away the inevitable sequel: Press X to Shaun.
  • Why DRM doesn't work: Yet another variation on the theme. Also of note.
  • Actual PC Games: Well, to be honest, Stalin vs Martians sounds pretty awesome.
  • Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter?: Tammy Erickson takes the not-so-original assertion that "most people's tweets are neither interesting nor fun to read" and makes an interesting argument about what kinds of tweets actually do work. In short: "Individuals who are most skilled at using this peculiar 140-character medium are those who do notice the small details of life, who capture the moments that others of us miss, who slow down to watch and listen while most race on, and who personalize the events they see." She makes use of a great anecdote along the way. In case you were wondering, I'm not especially interesting on Twitter.
  • Cinema 4D tutorial - Balls Mapping on Vimeo: Sometimes you read a headline and think you have to be misinterpreting what it means. In this case, your mind might not go there, but the video certainly does. And it is hilarious.
That's all for now. See you Wednesday...
Posted by Mark on March 21, 2010 at 04:31 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Link Dump
Entertaining material from the web, or lazy blogging? You decide! That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on February 24, 2010 at 08:59 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, February 07, 2010

Link Dump
I'm wiped out from playing football in 2 feet of snow this morning (going to be sore all week), eating all day, and gambling on trivial things during the Superbowl (I correctly chose the under in the "mentions Hurricane Katrina" but that got offset by taking the over on "number of times Archie Manning appears onscreen" and I ended up losing by 1 point in the overall contest). So here are a few things I've seen recently. Enjoy.
  • How To Report The News: Newswipe's absolutely brilliant takedown of the conventions of the television news story. It's only got 1 million views! But it fits with some of the other links in this post, so there.
  • This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post: Not quite as spot-on as the previous link and it's about blogging so the audience is more limited, but it's still pretty clever.
  • The One and Only Right Review: Shawn Elliott's sarcastic video game review is pretty funny. On a slightly related topic, I've recently discovered the GFW video game podcast archive, which is something of a treasure trove. In it's heyday, it was an amazingly fun podcast. In fact, it probably deserves it's own bullet point:
  • GFW Radio Compilation: This is a pretty good place to start, and it's 4 hours of good stuff. Going through the archives at 1up is a bit difficult (note that most of the best talent had left by the end, so the ones that show up when you subscribe in itunes or the like are mostly not the best episodes), but once you get back to 2007 and early 2008, it's pretty great (not that I've listened to all of those, but still). While ostensibly a video game podcast (for PC gaming, no less), that only really represents a fraction of some episodes. They joke around about tons of topics and other geeky culture. It's very great stuff. Geekbox is ok but not quite as great as GFW, and Out of the Game is also pretty good, but they don't seem to post those very often (last episode was in early December).
Well, that's all for now. Top 10 movies of 2009 will probably be posted next week, if I can manage it...
Posted by Mark on February 07, 2010 at 11:22 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Yet Another Link Dump
Interesting stuff seen on the web recently:
  • My Neighbor Robocop - For fans of Robocop and Anime.
  • Good Copy Bad Copy - Interesting documentary available for free online. It's about copyright and remixing and mashups and whatnot. It's got some interesting info in it, but it kinda trails off into different areas as it proceeds... but those areas are interesting too. The Brazilian mashup scene seems to be quite interesting in its own right, but that's probably a different documentary than what this one is trying to focus on...
  • Death Metal Rooster - Not much to say here, it's a Death Metal Rooster. Behold its glory.
  • Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal - A few years ago, I posted about this story of the guy who figured out that the seemingly random blinking lights on the Press Your Luck gameshow were actually not so random. He ended up winning over $110,000. This 11 part documentary goes into detail on exactly how he did it, and is a fascinating watch.
  • I don't know how to describe this without giving the joke away, but I want to go on a mission to institute something like this in my work cafeteria.
  • In Defense of the Fistfight - "It was Jerry's bad luck that I had resolved to start punching people again."
  • Disney's James Cameron's Pocahontas Avatar - I've seen Avatar twice. The first time, in a regular 3D theater, I found myself enjoying it despite a lackluster story. The second time, in IMAX 3D, I found myself much less willing to forgive the story. I don't want to make this post a review of Avatar, but I think this is a movie that will depreciate over time, especially once we get used to the effects. A lot of critics will be eating crow over this, I think. Interestingly, critics who waited a while before posting their thoughts on the film seem to have a more considered reaction to the film. Dennis Cozzalio's review is one of the best I've seen, and he addresses this subject in his post too. To me, it's not that the film is derivative (so was The Matrix, and I loved that) and it's not that I don't necessarily agree with all the politics. It's just that it's all executed so poorly. Gah. I should write a proper review at some point, but I fear I won't get around to it.
  • Is it ethical to eat plants? - Whenever I talk to someone about vegetarianism, I would always make a half-hearted joke about how plants are alive too and that the only real difference is that they're rooted in place and unable to even attempt escape. Well, it turns out that there is a rather nuanced argument to be made that if you don't eat meat on ethical grounds, you also need to account for the ethics of eating plants. Plants act in a surprising way to external threats, often engaging in activities you would normally only ascribe to more intelligent animals:
    Plants can’t run away from a threat but they can stand their ground. “They are very good at avoiding getting eaten,” said Linda Walling of the University of California, Riverside. “It’s an unusual situation where insects can overcome those defenses.” At the smallest nip to its leaves, specialized cells on the plant’s surface release chemicals to irritate the predator or sticky goo to entrap it. Genes in the plant’s DNA are activated to wage systemwide chemical warfare, the plant’s version of an immune response. We need terpenes, alkaloids, phenolics — let’s move.

    ... Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.
    It's an interesting article. (via Schneier and Collision Detection too)
That's all for now. Stay tuned for the start of Kaedrin Movie Awards season...
Posted by Mark on January 20, 2010 at 07:09 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, January 03, 2010

Link Dump
Just a few interesting links I've run across recently:
  • This review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace has been making the rounds everywhere, but it really is brilliant stuff. Clocking in at around 70 minutes, the review goes into every detail, meticulously and hilariously tearing apart the story. I wasn't sure what to make of the funny voice and the dead wife references, but by the time I finished the review and went back and watched his reviews of the next generation Star Trek movies (which are uniformly bad (update: the movies are bad, not the reviews)), I think I kinda like it. In any case, this guy has clearly done a lot of work on these reviews. The amount of archival footage he pulls makes me wonder just how much time he's spent watching the extras on various DVDs. In a lot of ways, the Star Trek reviews are even more impressive in that respect, as he pulls from the entire run of the TNG series, in addition to the movies. Anyway, the other notable thing about these videos is that I now crave pizza rolls, for the first time ever.
  • A couple of other funny reviews of bad Christmas movies: Santa With Muscles (which has to go on my Holiday Horror list next year) and Santa's Slay (which I actually enjoyed... clearly moreso than the reviewer, though I wouldn't call it great or anything).
  • 5 Star Wars Status Updates: I kinda wished Porkins would show up at some point, but whattaya gonna do? Still, pretty funny.
  • Let me tell you about Demon's Souls: Funny review of the apparently difficult game:
    I’ll tell you what happens in Demon’s Souls when you die. You come back as a ghost with your health capped at half. And when you keep on dying, the alignment of the world turns black and the enemies get harder. That’s right, when you fail in this game, it gets harder. Why? Because fuck you is why.
    I go back and forth on whether or not I want to play this game. Reviews like this (and there are a lot of them) make me think I'll immediately hate the game. Other times, like during the recent Brainy Gamer podcast, it feels like I'd love the game. Perhaps I'll just wait for the price to come down or rent it or something.
That's all for now. Happy New Year!

Update: It appears I forgot to actually include the link to the Demons Soul's review. It's there now. Also, added a quick clarification about the Star Trek reviews...
Posted by Mark on January 03, 2010 at 08:32 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Friday, December 18, 2009

12DC - Day 5: Friday is Holiday List Day
Even though it is infrequently observed, Friday is list day, so here's a couple lists...

Not So Random 10
Holiday music generally gets overplayed, but let's see what comes up:
  • Shostakovich - "Suite #2 For Jazz Orchestra - Waltz #2"
  • Vince Guaraldi - "Linus and Lucy"
  • Bobby Helms - "Jingle Bell Rock"
  • Weezer - "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"
  • John Lennon - "Happy Xmas"
  • Tchaikovsky - "The Nutcracker Suite"
  • Gary Hoey - "Carol of the Bells"
  • Bruce Springsteen - "Merry Christmas Baby"
  • Vince Guaraldi - "Christmas Time Is Here"
  • Sufjan Stevens - "Come on! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!"
Yeah, so some of those are reallly overplayed, but what the hey.

Holiday Link Dump Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for what passes as a Christmas tree around here as well as Egg Nog madness.
Posted by Mark on December 18, 2009 at 07:57 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Link Dump - Video Edition
Just a few interesting links I've run across recently:
  • Seeing Science Through Fiction: A talk with Neal Stephenson, Lee Smolin and Jaron Lanier at the Quantum to Cosmos festival. They talk about lots of interesting stuff. Also of note is a panel discussion featuring the same folks and more, though that one isn't as interesting (and is preceded by some awful babbling). In other Stephenson news, he does have a book coming out... in 2011. It's supposed to be titled REAMDE, though no one seems to know what it will be about (there is speculation that it might have something to do with deliberately mispelling "readme", a commom filename).
  • The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc.: In this world of vampires and werewolves, you can never be too careful. This video is pretty awesome, and I'd wager that it's probably a lot better than New Moon! (via Hey! Look Behind You!)
  • The Legend of Neil: So this is pretty old, but I just found it. It's about Neil, who was playing Zelda and accidentally got transported into the game. Moral of the story, don't drink and play Zelda. It's pretty funny, with lots of in-jokes and dirty humor.
  • Johnnie Walker - The Man Who Walked Around The World: For a commercial, this is pretty amazingly well done. It helps that you have an actor like Robert Carlyle, but I wonder how many takes it took (or if there were any cheats)...
That's all for now... Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!
Posted by Mark on November 25, 2009 at 09:16 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Link Dump!
Time is a little tight due to the Phillies making the World Series (Go Phils!), so here are a few links I found interesting recently:
  • The Fightin' Phils Polka (mp3): This is rather awesome. Let's go Phillies!
  • How habitable is the Earth?: Charlie Stross attempts to argue that a planet like the Earth would not be considered habitable from the perspective of prospective interstellar colonists. The point of the post is a good one (Earth would only be habitable to humans for a fraction of its existance), but the specifics of his thought experiment are rather dumb.
    I want you to imagine that, instead of being a perplexed mostly-hairless primate reading a blog, you're the guiding intelligence of an interstellar robot probe. You've been entrusted with the vital mission of determining whether a target planet is inhabitable by members of your creator species, who bear an eerie resemblance to H. Sapiens Sapiens. To gauge the suitability of the target world you've been given an incubator that can generate decorticated human clones — breathing meat-machines with nobody home up top. When you get to the destination you're going to transfer them to the surface and see how long they survive. If it can make it through 24 hours (or one diurnal period), congratulations! — you've found a potential colony world; one so hospitable that a naked and clueless human doesn't die on their first day out.
    His first strike against Earth is that 78% of the planet is covered in water, and that randomly dropping "meat-machines" on the planet will cause most of them to drown. Is it just me? Am I the only one who thinks that's dumb? Prospective interstellar colonists would be looking for a planet that looks like the one they came from. Human beings have well established conditions for comfortable living, that's obviously what we'd look for. The planet we're on now seems to work reasonably well, so if we found a planet where a small percentage of the surface is really habitable, that's still pretty good. Also, he finishes off his post with a note that there's only a 1% chance that a prospective interstellar colonist would consider Earth a good planet. Well, isn't 1% ok? Sure, it's astronomically small... but we're talking about astronomy here! Ultimately, he's making a good point, but the rhetorical strategy here... I just didn't care for it...
  • Wallowing in Misery for Art’s Sake: A.O. Scott takes the New York Film Festival to task for its schedule, and in so doing, he coins a new term that I rather like:
    The cumulative picture of the human condition that has emerged since opening night is dominated by sadism, guilt, violence and despair, a panorama of pessimism notable for its exhausting rigor and relentless consistency. ...

    This year’s New York Film Festival can be understood as an unusually powerful and disciplined presentation of an aesthetic ideology we might call festivalism. There is some irony in the name, since a central tenet of festivalism is an abiding skepticism about the nature and value of fun. That’s not what movies are for!

    But the festivalist mentality does not simply rest on a taste for depicting or witnessing human misery — social, sexual, economic and psychic. Rather, the embrace of such harsh thematic content reflects a commitment to a dogma of artistic obduracy. T. S. Eliot said of modern poetry that “it must be difficult,” an imperative defiantly reflected in a program, harvested mostly from other festivals, that pushes the boundary between the challenging and the punitive.
    "Festivalism." I like that. Rather, I like the word. I don't really enjoy what it represents. The only thing it doesn't really capture is how "Independent" films also seem to traffic in the same sort of thing. I really miss the middle ground films that had mainstream appeal, but were independently produced by genuinely talented artists. We catch glimpses of this sort of thing from time to time (Paranormal Activity is a recent example), but they seem to be much less frequent.
  • A Conversation on Blogging Ethics and Online Film Journalism with C. Robert Cargill, Devin Faraci, and Peter Sciretta: Great audio conversation that was originally planned to be a 20 minute thing but which ballooned into a 2 hour epic. I think the one thing missing from the conversation is, well, not to belittle the industry, but there isn't really that much to report in the movie business. People read these sites more for commentary than just news. Finding out who is cast in the next Twilight picture might be news and it might bring in hits for your site, but ultimately, that's not a big story and it doesn't take as much effort to uncover than, say, an intrepid reporter who breaks a story on the Police pushing drugs at a local beach. That reporter has to go undercover, investigating the beach, taking trips to Utah to follow leads, impersonate doctors and maintenance workers, and so on, to get the story. I love Devin Faraci, and he does set visits and travels to film festivals and whatnot, but the types of stories he makes out of that sort of thing are entertaining more because of his perspective than the actual facts of what he reports. There's a big difference between that and the beach drug story... In any case, it's a fascinating discussion, and well worth a listen (they get into a lot more than I'm talking about here).
  • Video Games Video: Interesting little video covering, well, kinda sorta the early history of video games, with original animations and set to technoey music. A fun watch.
That's all for now. Go Phils!

Update: Well, shit.
Posted by Mark on November 04, 2009 at 05:51 PM .: Comments (1) | link :.


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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Link Dump
Just a few links I've found interesting recently:
  • Quentin Tarantino's Top 20 Movies Since 1992: In preparation for Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino helped program a week of movies on Europe's Sky Channel. He hosted the series and talked about movies, including a list of his 20 favorite movies released since he started directing:

    Battle Royale (incidentally, I would never have pronounced Fukasaku properly)
    Anything Else (really?)
    Audition
    Blade (note: no, it's not that Blade, this one.)
    Boogie Nights
    Dazed & Confused
    Dogville
    Fight Club
    Fridays
    The Host
    The Insider
    Joint Security Area
    Lost In Translation
    The Matrix
    Memories of Murder
    Police Story 3
    Shaun of the Dead
    Speed
    Team America
    Unbreakable

    It's an... interesting... list. Some no brainers in there, and some really odd choices too. But odd choices are what makes a list like this interesting and worth compiling in the first place, right? I'm positive most of these movies wouldn't show up on a list that I compiled, but then again, I'm not an amazing filmmaker. On the other hand, when considering how many movies Tarantino no doubt watches, I find it hard to believe that this list would not change drastically from day to day. Heh.
  • Fast Food Mafia: A group of sketches that imagines fast food mascots as if they were notorious crime bosses. Ron "The Don" McDonald looks like an alternate design for the Joker.
  • Don't Press the Red Button: Pretty much speaks for itself.
  • The Wrath of the Killdozer: This guy must have been a big fan of Theodore Sturgeon (incidentally, Sturgeon's book? It's about exactly what you think it's about.)
  • Great Moments in Physics: Even though I know most examples of this type of story are probably false, I love reading about them...
Posted by Mark on August 26, 2009 at 07:45 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Link Dump
Just a few links to stuff I've enjoyed recently:
  • What If Greedo Really Shot First?: It doesn't get much geekier than the Star Wars fan outrage over Greedo shooting first in the special edition Star Wars films, but somehow this IO9 post manages that feat with no problems (via Batrock).
  • The Farewell Dossier: I'm always fascinated by those Cold War espionage stories, and this one's a doozy. Essentially, the Soviet Union needed some software to run their newly procured oil pipeline hardware. The US had such software, but wouldn't sell it to their rivals, so the Soviets simply stole it... not realizing that the US had sabotaged the code.
    The orchestrated subterfuge was one of the most successful US inter-agency efforts ever undertaken, and it was executed with such skill that it was never detected. Some condemn the deliberate explosion as thinly veiled terrorism given the lack of an open war with the Soviet Union, while others insist that ill-gotten goods are the plunderer’s problem. In any case, it clearly demonstrates that software piracy can have very serious consequences.
  • A little while ago, Yahtzee reviewed inFamous and Prototype, two similar games, by comparing them to one another. In the end, the two games ended in a tie, so Yahtzee suggested a humorous and presumably rhetorical tie-breaker: "which of the two studios could produce the best image of the rival game's main character wearing women's lingerie." Amazingly, the two game studios in question complied. The results are... funny. Take a gander.
  • Speaking of inFamous, the developers apparently released a series of interesting statistics and fun facts about the development cycle for the game. A couple examples:
    • Number of babies born: 10
    • Number of diet Coke cans consumed: 17,472
    • Number of diet Pepsi cans consumed: 13,104
    • Number of trips to Starbucks: approximately 18,200
    Once again, Coke beats Pepsi. Score. There are some other interesting stats included as well
  • How to Hack Your Brain: This is apparently part 1 in a longer series... this one focuses on sleep and how inefficient our standard schedules are (most of the time spent in a standard 8 hour sleeping session is not spent in REM sleep, which is the most important part). I would love to try the extreme Uberman polyphasic schedule, which calls for a total of only 2 hours of sleep a day (but evenly spaced in 20 minute increments throughout the day), but it does not seem feasible in a normal working schedule. I suspect there's something more to this subject though and it probably warrants closer examination.
  • Asian Poses: I'm not sure a lot of these are uniquely Asian, but then, some probably are. I particularly enjoyed Nyan Nyan. (via Kottke)
Posted by Mark on July 29, 2009 at 08:21 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Link Dump
A few interesting links I've run into recently:
  • Easy Solutions #1: This is easily the most brilliant yet demented thing I've read in a long time. My favorite part is the subtle ways in which the devious story you concoct are supported by longstanding film franchises. For example: "If she questions this flaw in your time travel logic, because you cannot change the past, simply reference Back to the Future."
  • Eternal Monsters of Filmland: Devin Faraci makes an argument that the current rash of horror movie remakes is not new and is indeed indicative of a modern set of eternal monsters, placing Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Kreuger alongside such horror mainstays as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy (this classic trio has literally hundreds of movies to their name, including dozens of remakes and reboots). The big thing holding back the modern trio? Copyright. An interesting idea.
  • KHAAN! The Greatest Syllable Ever Told: This article about a "15-minute meticulously re-spliced creation in a never-ending loop" of William Shatner's infamous cursing of Star Trek villain Khan features a 2 minute excerpt from the film that is mesmerizing...
  • What does "The Usual Suspects" mean?: The ending of The Usual Suspects is generally a topic of contention in film nerd circles, but this interview with writer Christopher McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer adds a new wrinkle to the debate:
    McQuarrie says only after finishing the film and preparing to do press interviews about it did he and Singer realize they both had completely different conceptions about the plot.

    "I pulled Bryan aside the night before press began and I said, 'We need to get our stories straight because people are starting to ask what happened and what didn't,' " recalls McQuarrie. "And we got into the biggest argument we've ever had in our lives."

    He continues: "One of us believed that the story was all lies, peppered with little bits of the truth. And the other one believed it was all true, peppered with tiny, little lies. ... We each thought we were making a movie that was completely different from what the other one thought."
    I think I've always considered it more of a mostly true, peppered with little lies, but the neat thing is that it probably works either way...
  • 50 Films You Can Wait to See After You're Dead: Perhaps a bit harsh on Death to Smoochy and The Boondock Saints, but otherwise an interesting list. On the other hand, why subject the dead to such horrors?
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on July 01, 2009 at 08:53 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Link Dump
A few links for your enjoyment:
  • Aliens Board Game: Ok, I admit, this is pretty much the reason I'm doing a link dump tonight instead of something more substantial. Longtime readers know I love this game, so cut me a break...
  • Tank! - I wonder how many people will get the reference.
  • Patrick Duffy Compilation - There are no words.
  • LoadingReadyRun - Watchmen Watching: Who watches the watchers of the Watchmen?
  • Texts From Last Night: It's like bash.org for people with cell phones.
  • Business Card Fail: This is... awesome? This can't be real.
  • Kevin Smith Part 1 : Sellling Out And Salty Language: What can I say, I'm a sucker for Kevin Smith interview type stuff, and there are several followups to this one. In addition, I love those Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs and have watched them multiple times (the first set is brilliant, the second is not as much, and the third, well, he spends like 45 minutes answering a question about his dogs, which started to grate at about the 20 minute mark. Anyway, the first Evening is highly recommended if you like Smith's brand of raunchy humor.)
  • Carousel: Utterly amazing short film by Adam Berg (no credits on IMDB at this time) consisting of "an epic ‘frozen moment’ cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass and bullet casings." It's kinda hypnotic... amazing stuff.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for more Friday the 13th madness on Sunday...
Posted by Mark on May 13, 2009 at 08:11 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Link Dump
It's actually been a few months since a link dump, so here are a few interesting links:
  • Uncomfortable Plot Summaries: This is everywhere lately, but it's very funny. My favorites include LotR ("Midget destroys stolen property.") and how every Neil Gaiman movie features pretty much the same plot summary. Actually, these remind me a lot of the classic Rinkworks Movie-A-Minute ultra-condensed movies.
  • Playing Columbine: Interview with Director Danny Ledonne: A followup for my review of Playing Columbine is this interview with the director who is also the one who created the game at the center of the film.
  • Video Game Documentaries: They Keep On Coming: Speaking of Playing Columbine, it seems that video game documentaries in general are becoming more and more common. This post at Spout features a bunch of upcoming documentaries, some of which sound very interesting...
  • The GAF Collection: The folks over at the NeoGAF video game forums have a photoshop thread where people post photoshopped game covers in the style of the Criterion Collection (perhaps continuing a trend from a few months ago). Some great stuff here, including several great covers for Shadow of the Colossus, Flower, and Metal Gear Solid, among many others.
  • DeepLeap: A mildly addictive single player word game (along the lines of a scrabble, but without a board). My high score is only in the 400 range or so, but it's a lot of fun...
  • Craig Needs a Friend: I'm not sure how to describe this one, but this Craig guy is hilarious, as is his mode of communication.
  • Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit: 4 moons caught crossing the face of Saturn in one photo. Amazing stuff.
  • Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable: Clay Shirky's musings on the current state of the newspaper business. I can't think of the last time I actually read a newspaper. I remember at one point last year, someone bussed some inner city high-schoolers into my neighborhood and guilted us all into buying a subscription to the Philly Inquirer (apparently, the Inquirer would help pay college tuition for the high schoolers based on how many subscriptions they sold or something). However, I generally found myself grabbing the paper right from my doorstep and placing it in the recycle bin on my way out (i.e. most of the time, it didn't even make it into my house).
That's all for now. Coming up on Kaedrin, it seems I haven't gotten over the whole Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, so expect to see some more slashers and SWH style posts in the near future (not six weeks worth, but just a few to tide you over for the next half year or so).
Posted by Mark on April 19, 2009 at 06:38 PM .: Comments (6) | link :.


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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Link Dump & Notes
Hooray for link dumps. Everyone likes link dumps! Right? RIGHT?
  • 6th Annual Oscar Liveblogging on Sunday! Yes, I know, the Oscars are a boring, essentially meaningless awards show in which a bunch of self-congratulatory Hollywood insiders pat themselves on the back for making crappy movies. But that's precisely why I liveblog it - it's much more interesting that way! I suppose the fact that I get drunk every year helps too (it's not my fault, really! Have you ever seen those music performances on the Oscars while sober?). It's also one of those rare occassions where a live event coincides with my blogging schedule, so I feel obligated to oblige. Anyway, feel free to drop by and join in. Previous installments are here: [2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004]
  • What's the deal with all the fake, retro-style book covers for other media like Movies and Video Games? Not that I don't love them, but it's just odd that they just started kinda happening lately... Here are two of my favorites. The Highlander poster is hysterical, while the Mirror's Edge poster calls to mind the old-style Criterion Collection art.

    Mirrors Edge and Highlander

  • Man in the Box - Star Wars vs. Sports: I've always maintained that sports nuts are just as nerdy as star wars geeks (or any other nerdy faction). Seriously, sports nerds are probably better at statistics than most star wars geeks. Of course, I say this as I approach the constitutional amendment phase of my fantasy baseball league.
  • Alternate History Search Results: John Scalzi does a live reading of his story, and it's pretty funny! It reminded me of Wikihistory, a hilarious story written in the style of an online message board for time travelers.
  • A Dialogue With Sarah, Aged 3: In Which It Is Shown That If Your Dad Is a Chemistry Professor, Asking “Why” Can Be Dangerous: I think that's pretty self explanatory, but it's funny too.
That's all for now, see you on Sunday!
Posted by Mark on February 18, 2009 at 07:10 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Link Dump: Top 10s and Some Nitpicking
Time is short, so here are a few links to end of the year movie lists and the like. Still not sure when I'll get to my top 10, but it probably won't be this week.
  • The 2008 Top Tens - Movie City News collects and aggregates 286 top 10 lists, ranking the movies by number of list mentions and a weighted version that considers how high on each list a given movie was ranked. The top 5 movies on the list are WALL-E, The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk and The Wrestler. Not a bad list, though at most, only two of those will be appearing on my list. One nitpicky frustration - why on earth did they put all the data in images? It makes it a lot more difficult to find a movie you want to know about.
  • The 19 Best Movies That You Didn't See in 2008: An interesting list of the underdistributed, sometimes underrated films of last year. Except for Speed Racer, which was horrible. Honestly though, this year's list isn't as good as last year's list, which I take as just another sign that 2008 was not a particularly good year for movies.
  • jim's ten best favorite movies of 2008: the movie - Jim Emerson's top ten is presented in the form of an 8 minute montage of clips from his favorite movies. I was able to name 4 of them (probably because I haven't seen the other 6, and I have to say, I didn't see anything in his clips that indicated that I was missing anything). Kind of a stereotypical critic's list... but I'm greatly looking forward to his 2nd annual Exploding Head Awards (that's a link to last year's awards - he hasn't posted this year's yet).
  • Speaking of Jim Emerson, he's been doing some spectacular nit picking (don't miss Part 2) on The Dark Knight, particularly with the first sequence in the film which culminates with a school bus merging with other school busses. If you still haven't seen The Dark Knight, don't read his posts! They will put you in the wrong frame of mind to watch the movie (or any movie, for that matter - at least, any movie you're watching for the first time). Now, these are nitpicks, but I do believe that Emerson has a point. I love the movie, and I'm sure regular readers wouldn't be surprised that it will be my top movie of the year, but it isn't perfect. There are several sequences that cheat in one way or another, whether it be through editing or awkward camera angles or any other number of filmmaking tricks. Emerson's argument boils down to a question of whether the filmmaking tricks employed in TDK impair suspension of disbelief. I would say that when I view a movie, I have a certain sense of moviegoing goodwill. When I watch a movie, I want it to be good, I want to be sucked in and immersed in the world a film creates. But sometimes there are things that happen in a movie that are simply unbelievable. These movies knock you out of the movie's world and force you to recognize that you're actually sitting in a theater (or on a couch, or whatever). These moments work against my moviegoing goodwill. Usually a single moment won't do it - it's a culmination of things. After a while, my goodwill runs out and the movie simply can't recover. The Dark Knight obviously grated on Emerson. He found himself wondering about all the details of the various things that were being presented to him. He claims this was a sorta unconscious effect. He knew he didn't like the movie, but couldn't explain why until he'd seen the movie a few more times on DVD/BR, where he could really dig into it. That's when he started noticing all of the shots or edits that worked against his suspension of disbelief. Now, I didn't have that problem. Indeed, I've seen the movie 5 times since it came out, and while a couple of things jumped out at me during my first and second viewing, I didn't really start to think about it until the 5th viewing, at which point some of the imperfections became more clear. But even then, it wasn't enough to ruin my moviegoing goodwill. Even reading Emerson's well thought out objections, I find that I can see his point without granting that it ruins the movie or the suspension of disbelief that is required to watch it. I'm interested by this sort of thing, because I think people like the movies they like for less rational reasons than we're willing to admit. There are a lot of great movies that I can nitpick to death, but still love anyway. So when I find myself trying to explain why I dislike a movie with something like "Well he fired 8 shots out of that there revolver! You can't do that!" or "...giant humanoid robots really don't make any sense" I think what I'm really trying to say is that the movie did not pull me in and immerse me in it's own world. The frustrating thing about this is that I think this can be dependant on mood. Context matters, and there are certainly times when I'm muchmore willing to suspend disbelief than I would normally be... and vice versa. Well, I've babbled on long enough, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Didn't mean to get off on that tangent there. That last subject is perhaps something I'd like to revisit at some point, but it will not be tonight...
Posted by Mark on January 28, 2009 at 08:30 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Link Dump
For obvious reasons, time is a little short these days, so here are a few links I've found interesting lately:
  • Still Life - This is a rather creepy short film directed by Jon Knautz. It has a very Twilight Zoney type of feel, and a rather dark ending, but it's quite compelling. Knautz went on to make Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer... alas, that film, while containing a certain charm for the horror aficionado, isn't quite as good as this short.
  • Zero Punctuation: Assassin's Creed: I've seen some of Yahtzee's video game reviews before, but while they are certainly entertaining to watch, I've never quite known whether or not they were actually useful. It can be a lot of fun to watch someone lay the smackdown on stupid games, and Yahtzee certainly has a knack for doing that (plus he has a British accent, and us Americans apparently love to hear Brits rip into stuf), but you never really know how representative of the actual game it really is. Well, after spending a lot of time playing around with Assassin's Creed this week, I have to say that Yahtzee's review is dead on, and hilarious to boot.
  • A Batman Conversation: It's sad and in poor taste, but I bet some variant of this conversation happened quite frequently about a year ago.
  • MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits: Look! I'm only like 2 months behind the curve on this one! MGK posts a bunch of parodies of book covers from famous SF and fantasy authors (I particularly enjoyed the Asimov, Heinlein, and even the Zahn one).
  • Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008: Self-explanatory, but there are some pretty cool pics in here...
  • Books as Games: I realize most of my readers also read Shamus, but still, this faux-review of Snow Crash if it were created as a video game before it became a book but in the present day (it, uh, makes more sense in his post) is pretty cool.
  • "Sacred Cow Slayings" Rumored at Sony... Is PlayStation In Jeopardy?: It figures... I finally get off my butt and buy a PS3 and then rumors start appearing that Sony is about to can the program. I don't think it will happen, but this news is obviously not comforting...
  • Keanu Reeves wants to make a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop. No comment.
Posted by Mark on January 07, 2009 at 08:56 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Another Link Dump
I try not to make a habit of just throwing up a bunch of links, but when time grows short, it's difficult to give certain subjects the thought and attention they deserve. I've started a couple of posts, but they're both turning out to be monsters. One is a review of Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Anathem, which I finished this week and have been thinking about a lot. It might take me a bit to sort through it all. The other is a discussion of ratings systems for movies - a subject that seems relatively simple at first, but which grew more complicated the more I thought about it. Unfortunately, I was traveling for most of this weekend, so I didn't have much time to devote to either of these ideas... and this week promises to be busy as well. In the mean time, here are a few things I've run across lately that are worth watching or reading:
  • The Website is Down: This is a hysterical 10 minute video that featues a bunch of supposedly true stories from tech support hell. Supposedly a sequel is in the works, but this one is pretty funny in itself.
  • The Last Lecture: Ostensibly a talk about achieving your childhood dreams, this talk wound up being much more (the childhood dreams angle is what he'd call a "head fake"). It's actually quite heartbreaking when I think about it. The talk is given by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specialized in Virtual Reality. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer about a year before he gave this talk, but during the presentation, he is extremely upbeat and humorous, choosing instead to focus on his message rather than his medical situation. He died this past summer, which is why watching this video now is a bit heartbreaking. It's a long video, but it's well worth a watch.
  • Authors @ Google: Neal Stephenson: While promoting Anathem, Neal Stephenson stopped off at Google for a Q&A that turns out to be quite interesting (as usual)... Another long video, but interesting if you're a Stephenson fan.
  • The Dukes: A new indie heist movie? Why have I not heard of this until now? It sounds great though... Consider this near the top of the list I posted about the holiday movie season. Hopefully, I'll find some time to go see it this week...
  • Crosstalk: The state of horror cinema: Noel Murray and Scott Tobias of the Onion A.V. Club discuss the state of horror cinema as of October 2006. Things haven't changed too much, but I've been thinking a bit about the state of modern American horror films (another potential post that I haven't spent enough time thinking about and researching), so I found this discussion interesting.
So there's at least two and a half hours of compelling video content there as well as some light reading. Light posting will probably continue through Wednesday's post (which I believe will be a recap of a ridiculous discussion I had with my friend Roy at a discussion board - let's just say it involves aliens and breakdancing)... Next Sunday's post may be a bit light as well, but we'll see. That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on November 23, 2008 at 07:06 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Sunday, November 09, 2008

Link Dump
It's been a little while since the last link dump, so let's see what's queued up in my del.icio.us account:
  • Saw V hit theaters this Halloween and seems poised to make the Saw franchise the top-grossing horror franchise of all time (in unadjusted dollars). I have to admit that I lost interest towards the beginning of Saw III, but I don't really get the hatred this series seems to have garnered by critics and horror fans. I think Dellamorte over at CHUD brought up an excellent point a few weeks ago:
    IF YOU GREW UP IN THE 1980'S YOU CAN'T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE SAW FRANCHISE: If you think the Saw films are shit, but have a soft spot for Friday the 13th Part V: The New Blood, or any Nightmare on Elm Street sequel past the third film, or pretty much any of the Halloween sequels, then you can't suggest that the rapid-fire sequels that have been born of the 21st Century deserve to be ridiculed any more than the rapid-fire releases of the 80's.
    Exactly. I actually thought the first Saw was a pretty good movie. The sequels seem to be repetitious and unoriginal, but so what? Weren't most of the the 80s horror movies (especially slashers) repetitious and unoriginal? And didn't they get the same sort of curt dismissal as the current crop of remakes and "torture porn" films? To me, part of the joy of horror movies is that even when they're bad, they're good. Sure, that won't work for everybody, but some movies aren't made for everybody. The other movie series Dellamorte mentions in his post is the High School Musical series, which I have absolutely no interest in... and that's ok. The only thing that does bother me a bit about the Saw series is that studios seem to have ceded Halloween to the series instead of trying to challenge it with new and interesting movies like Trick 'r Treat (or so I've heard, because I can't find this thing anywhere!) There's probably a lot to be said about the state of modern American horror movies, but I don't think it's as clear-cut or simplistic as this sort of discussion usually tends to play out. I suppose the studios are still focused on remakes and reboots, but there are still plenty of interesting American efforts going on (it would perhaps be nice if those movies didn't have so much trouble getting made or distributed though). This seems like fodder for a longer post...
  • A Cartoon-off between XKCD and the New Yorker. Hilarious. I think the New Yorker cartoonist really gave XKCD a run for his money, though it should be noted that XKCD was deprived of one of the key components of its success (the alt tag!)
  • PG Porn - James Gunn, who directed the excellent horror flick, Slither, recently started this series of short films that are basically porn films without the sex. Basically, some typical porn plotline starts up, complete with bad dialogue and stilted acting, then something horrible happens. The first episode, titled Nailing Your Wife, stars Nathan Fillion (of Firefly/Serenity and I suppose I should also mention Dr. Horrible fame) and real-life porn-star Aria Giovanni. It's kinda twisted, but darkly funny. Amusingly, it seems to have caused something of a controversy because some people can't comprehend black comedy.
  • I know it's after the election and all, but this politics by way of D&D post is hilarious, and of course, the Obama/McCain danceoff is amazing.
That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on November 09, 2008 at 08:29 PM .: Comments (1) | link :.


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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Link to Someone New
Just another set of blogs I have never linked to before. Enjoy. That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on September 10, 2008 at 07:49 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Link Dump and Quick Hits
Just a few links that have caught my interest lately.
  • Denise Jones, Super Booker by John Scalzi: The idea of superheroes and the legal system has been done before, from Watchmen to The Incredibles, but Scalzi takes it a step further here in this short story. It basically takes the form of an interview, and is quite funny:
    Q: So you’re saying that if Chicago were attacked by a sewer monster or something, the mayor would have to go through you to get help from ArachnoLad.
    A: No, Chicago keeps ArachnoLad on a retainer. The Evening Stalker, too. Most large cities have one or two super beings under contract.
    Heh. Also amusing is the story behind the story, which apparently took 13 minutes from completion to publication. Speaking of Scalzi, I'll probably be writing some reviews of his novels at some point in the near future, including his latest, Zoe's Tale (which I just finished and liked, though perhaps not as much as his other novels).
  • They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson: Another short story. It's been floating around the web for a long time, but it's brilliant, so if you haven't read it, check it out.
  • Kids: Neptunus Lex has a conversation with one of his daughter's friends. The highpoint is when they talk about Top Gun. Heh.
  • Like everyone else, I've been messing around with Google's new browser Chrome. It's nice and everything, but I'm not sure it will catch on, and I don't know if Google even really cares if it does. They built the browser on top of Webkit (which is the same open source rendering engine that powers Safari, which is itself based off of the KHTML engine that powers Konqueror), and their biggest development push seems to be with their Javascript interpreter (named V8). Indeed, after playing around on some Ajax heavy sites, it does appear to make web applications run a lot faster. I suspect Google just got sick of folks saying that Gmail was slow or that Google Apps are buggy, so they wanted to drive other browsers to improve their Javascript capabilities. So by creating a new browser, Google is hoping to spark a new competition based around Javascript interpreters. Or, since Chrome is open source, why not just incorporate their JS code into other browsers (I'm sure it's not that easy, but still)? Oh, and sure, Chrome has lots of other dohickeys that are neat - the multiprocessing thing is cool, as is incognito and a bunch of other features. But none of those things is really unique or gives Chrome the leg up on other browsers. To me, their biggest selling point is the fast JS interpreting. If Chrome becomes popular or if other browsers take the hint and improve their JS implementations, the end result is that things get a little easier for web app developers, who no longer have to worry about slow, unresponsive browsers and can shoot for the moon.
Posted by Mark on September 03, 2008 at 08:11 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Thing Goes Zombie
I generally try to avoid just posting a video, but this is awesome:


Amazing stuff. Has stop-motion animation always been this prevalent? From mainstream (Robot Chicken) to amateur (the vid above, and maybe the Marvel vs. DC stuff), it seems like I'm seing more and more stop-motion these days. [Thanks to Roy for posting the vid on 4k]
Posted by Mark on August 27, 2008 at 08:55 AM .: Comments (4) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Link Dump
Well, I lost power for a good portion of the day, and it's looking like I might not have much time tonight, so here are a few links:
  • After the Coup by John Scalzi: A short story that takes place in the Old Man's War universe. I haven't read it yet, but it looks interesting.
  • Watching the Watchmen Trailer: A Detailed Analysis: Amazing shot-by-shot breakdown of the Watchmen trailer. While you're at it, might as well check out the Watchmen Video Journals over at Trailer Addict. I've been following the production of Watchmen for some time now, and am really looking forward to the movie.
  • 2008 US Movie Box Office: Interesting chart of 2008 movies, arranged by weekend gross. As you might expect, the first weekend is almost always the largest for any given film. You can see the various spikes as well, notably the Batman spike.
  • Libra: I've been messing around with this application which lets you catalogue your library of books, DVDs, music, etc... It's a neat little program, though it clearly needs some work. For instance, it crashed about 10 times while I entered my DVD library into it, and it also seems to crash every time I search for "Cryptonomicon." The search results were also very strange, and I found myself sometimes having to find the item on Amazon first, then using the ASIN to find it in Libra. It would also be nice if it used a richer data source as well, because you really don't get much meta data with it. You can add tags to each item... but you have to do it manually. Probably not something I'll maintain, but it's interesting, and it provides a neat export functionality - see my DVD collection here (Some DVDs still not entered, but this is a good portion of what I have).)
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on August 10, 2008 at 03:55 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Link to Someone New: Web Comics Edition
I've recently run across some interesting webcomics, so I figured it was time for another edition of linking to someone new:
  • Abstruse Goose: Another minimalist nerd comic, but it's actually pretty good. Just don't compare it to xkcd (which is, of course, impossible - especially when he creates comics like this). This SETI comic is brilliant.
  • Theater Hopper: Topical, movie-themed comic. The latest one features a rather obscure reference, but most of them are great, and he's apparently been doing this for over 5 years (sooo, I'm a little late on this one, but it's good anyway).
  • Stolen Pixels: Ok, I cheated. I already linked this, but how can I not link to Shamus' new, video-game themed comic? Great stuff so far. Now featuring legitimate webcomic navigation!
That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on July 23, 2008 at 08:10 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Link Dump
Time is short this week and I will be travelling this weekend so no entry on Sunday (perhaps one on Tuesday when I get back). Anwyay, here are some links to chew on while I'm away: That's all for now. Again, probably no entry on Sunday, as I'll be out of town with no access to internet...
Posted by Mark on June 04, 2008 at 10:44 PM .: Comments (2) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Link to Someone New: Philly Film Fest Edition
You know the drill. Blog reading often becomes a closed loop where you find yourself constantly reading and linking to the same group of blogs. I'm as guilty as anyone (plus, I have a tendency to not link other blogs at all), so in an effort to combat the blogging equivalent of inbreeding, here are links to several blogs I've never linked before, all of whom have also been blogging about the Philadelphia Film Festival (for reference, see my posts):
  • Melissahead saw a bunch of movies that I didn't see (and one that I did).
  • Futuregirl had a little more overlap with my schedule, but also some that I didn't see, including Film Noir, a rotoscoped animation film, which was something I wanted to see but couldn't find the time for...
  • Philly Chit Chat attended several of the events and big screenings with guests... and took lots of pictures too!
  • David Dylan Thomas saw lots and lots of films and has a significant overlap with my schedule... plus a whole lot more (including some that I wish I found time for, like Vexille) We seem to have similar tastes, with the potential exception of The Wackness....
That's all for now. If you have a blog where you've been writing about the PFF, feel free to let me know...
Posted by Mark on April 16, 2008 at 06:29 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Link Dump
Time is short, so just a few interesting links that I've run accross recently:
  • Wikihistory: So what would happen if time travel was invented a hundred years from now? Why, time travelers would start an internet forum... among other predictable things. Hilarious.
  • True Measure of Code Quality: Heh.
  • Agent to the Stars: John Scalzi's first novel was originally published online, and it's still there. I actually haven't read it yet, but I think this might be the only Scalzi SF book that I haven't read (and I've enjoyed all the others...)
  • I Love You, but You Love Meat: I was bored by this article until I saw this line:
    She and her daughter have “meat parties” when Mr. Benson goes out of town, she said.
    Heh.
  • The Sports Guy Glossary: I'm not a huge sports fan, but I have come to love Bill Simmons. Even when he's writing about a sport I absolutely hate (i.e. Basketball, unless it's Villanova basketball, in which case: Go 'Nova!), I'll read it. There are some times when it's all sports, but most of the time he's making so many pop-culture references that it's entertaining. This page has lots of his classics, including sporty stuff like the Ewing Theory (to be renamed the Tiki Barber Theory) and stuff almost completely unrelated to sports, like the Guidelines for Underrated Movies.
  • CES 2008 panel on SF influence on technology: The panel features Neal Stephenson, Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway and other neat stuff), Lucy Lawless (she's a Cylon!), and Walt Mossberg (journalist). Interesting stuff...
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on March 26, 2008 at 08:35 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Link Dump: SF Edition
I have a few ideas of longer type posts, but nothings gelling at the moment, so here are a few links I've run across lately:
  • Mind Meld: Today's SF Authors Define Science Fiction - It's an interesting question, and there are lots of interesting answers here (don't miss part 2). I tend to favor a more broad definition that some of the authors, something akin to John Scalzi's or David Louis Edelman's definitions. It's hard to say though. How does one classify something like The Baroque Cycle. The whole thing takes place in the distant past, and there's not much in the way of scientific speculation (the characters are speculating I guess, but we're not), but it's clearly got a handle on science and technology and Stephenson is clearly a SF writer. I don't know that a definition that excludes The Baroque Cycle is a bad one, but I'd kinda like mine to do so.
  • Fledge is a Singularity Skeptic - My problem with the singularity is that no one really knows what it would look like. We can speculate and doing so makes for fun SF, but still, I share Fledge's skepticism for a lot of it:
    The proponents of AI argue that if we just add levels of complexity eventually we will have something approximating the real thing. The approach is to add more neural net nodes, add more information inputs, and [something happens]. But my sense of the human brain (which is partly religious and partly derived from my career as an MRI physicist specializing in neuroimaging) is that the brain isn’t just a collection of N neurons, wired a certain way. There are layers, structures, and systems within whose complexities multiple against each other.
    I'll say that I think a singularity is possible, but I have no idea when. I'm pretty sure it won't be happening in the next 15 years, as Verner Vinge has speculated. Of course, he freely admits the possibility of singularity failure...
  • SF Starship Size Comparisons - Interesting. I always thought Star Destroyers were larger than they are...
  • Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains - Not as comprehensive as it sounds, but still fun. References to the obvious (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc...) and the not so obvious (Futurama).
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on March 02, 2008 at 08:08 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Link to Someone New
It's that time again. I had planned to do a big review of an Anime movie I saw, but time is short, so I figured it's time to send some traffic (all 7 readers) towards some new corners of the internets (at least, they were new for me!). Enjoy.
  • Final Girl likes to watch slasher movies from the '70s and '80s. She recently made the acquaintance of Kelly Hu, star of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (a better role than Deathstrike in X2? Sure!) Also, she's got some updates on Neil Marshall's new flick, Doomsday (Marshall helmed Kaedrin favorite The Descent). I probably discovered this blog during the 4 Weeks of Halloween, after I'd watched some obscure horror film and looked up some reviews... and of course, she had reviewed said obscure horror film because she's awesome like that.
  • How To Spot A Psychopath has a neat post detailing the The Six Ugliest Space Lego Sets. While you're there, stop by Dan's Data if you've got an interest in computers and gadgets.
  • SciencePunk has an interesting post about Zombies and the science of siege warfare. This post reminded me of something that always bothered me about the movie 28 Days Later... (a film I like a lot, despite what follows here). In that film, the "Rage Virus" is frighteningly fast-acting. An infected human succumbs to the virus within only 30 seconds. This is all well and good, and horrific, but it seems pretty counter to basic epidemiology. I'm not a doctor or scientist, but it seems to me that the reason diseases spread is that there is a long incubation period, wherein the host has a chance to spread the disease. This period is effectively nil for the Rage virus, so I'd think that the disease would be relatively easy to contain. At the very least, I don't see how it could leave England (I guess there's a chance, given the Chunnel and France's historically weak defenses against invaders). Of course, this detail was explained in the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, which posits the existence of carriers who are not affected (much) by the virus and actually depicts the transfer of the virus off the island. Wait, what am I saying, who watches Zombie movies and seriously considers things epidemiology or even plot holes?
That's all for now. I'm travelling this weekend, so Sunday's entry may be a bit sparse (unless I find some time tomorrow to write something up).
Posted by Mark on January 30, 2008 at 10:35 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Link Dump: The Lost Edition
Not lost as in the TV show, but lost as in, where am I?
  • The Key to Reserva: Breathtaking short film (about 10 minutes) based on a "lost" Hitchcock script, directed by Martin Scorsese in the style of Hitchcock as if Hitchcock were making a movie today the way he would make a movie in the 1950s. It's hard to explain, just watch it.
  • Lunatic at Large: This script, commissioned by Stanley Kubrick in the late 1950s and lost when he moved to England in 1962, has recently been uncovered by Kubrick's son-in-law, who is attempting to get it made.
    There were a couple of false starts. Mr. Hobbs originally approached the French company Pathé — partly because the French hold Jim Thompson in the same esteem as Edgar Allan Poe and Mickey Rourke — and after that arrangement fell through, he formed a partnership with Edward R. Pressman, a New York-based producer, and the London producers Finch & Partners. Mr. Pressman, who is expected to announce the completion of the deal today, said the film would be directed by Chris Palmer, from a finished script by Stephen R. Clarke.
    Interesting.
  • The Best 19 Movies You Didn't See in 2007: (Not technically "lost" but close enough!) This sort of list is strange. After all, how does this guy know I didn't see these movies? But it's actually a good list. I'm usually pretty knowledgeable when it comes to movies, even offbeat and obscure ones, but there were a few surprises in here for me. How is it that I never heard of Fido? I've seen 6 of the films on the list, and most were pretty good. I've got a couple others coming from Netflix. Interesting.
  • All Movie Talk: This exceptional, now defunct, podcast is actually the source (directly and indirectly) of two of the above links. It's the only film podcast I've ever seen that even comes close to rivaling the excellent Filmspotting. It's less timely in that it doesn't cover recent releases in the way that Filmspotting does, but that really only serves to make the episodes more timeless, and I'm currently devouring their archives at a frightening rate. These guys really know their stuff, and you can really learn a lot about film and film history by listening to their show. Incidentally, the hosts are the guys behind Rinkworks, so you get a lot of funny asides and "how to" segments (for instance, I just listened to a segment called How To: Be the Slasher, a handy guide for slasher villains who don't know how to terrorize teenagers in a proper fashion). Anyway, it's a great podcast, and well worth listening to for those interested in film. It's a shame they had to close up shop, but it's certainly understandable - this sort of show has got to be a lot of work.
That's all for now. 2007 Kaedrin Movie Awards are coming (in typical Kaedrin fashion, the 2007 movie wrapup happens in 2008.)
Posted by Mark on January 02, 2008 at 09:51 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Link Dump
I'm a little brain dead right now, so here are a few things that have caught my eye recently:
  • SFWA's Awesome T-Shirt: Was this funnier when I didn't know the origins of the t-shirt? Maybe, but it's awesome anyway. (Via Scalzi)
  • The High Frontier, Redux by Charlie Stross: A total buzzkill, but worthwhile reading on the likelihood (well, unlikelihood) of colonizing space. Needless to say, we won't be sending out the colony ships anytime soon. It's detailed and interesting, and there are a ton of comments.
  • How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes?: I got 48 out of 91 on my first try. I kicked myself for not remembering most of the remaining ones.
  • Retro-Future: To The Stars!: Classic scifi illustrations from the 1930s to 1970s, many from former Soviet countries.
  • Air Traffic Video: John Robb points to an awesome video that shows all air transportation flows over the US. It's mesmerizing.
  • Infringement Nation (.pdf): Interesting article on how everyone regularly commits copyright infringement without even knowing it (i.e. this is without even taking into account p2p downloads, etc...):
    To illustrate the unwitting infringement that has become quotidian for the average American, take an ordinary day in the life of a hypothetical law professor named John. For the purposes of this Gedankenexperiment, we assume the worstcase scenario of full enforcement of rights by copyright holders and an uncharitable, though perfectly plausible, reading of existing case law and the fair use doctrine. Fair use is, after all, notoriously fickle and the defense offers little ex ante refuge to users of copyrighted works.

    In the morning, John checks his email, and, in so doing, begins to tally up the liability. Following common practice, he has set his mail browser to automatically reproduce the text to which he is responding in any email he drafts. Each unauthorized reproduction of someone else's copyrighted text-their email- represents a separate act of brazen infringement, as does each instance of email forwarding. Within an hour, the twenty reply and forward emails sent by John have exposed him to $3 million in statutory damages.
    And it goes on from their, until we reach this conclusion:
    By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John's activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer -- a veritable grand larcenist -- or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years.
    I wonder how much I've tallied up as a result of quoting his article on this blog entry? In any case, it sounds like we're in need of some copyright law revisions.
  • The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings: I recognize the name, but I've never read any of the comics he's illustrated. Nevertheless, you don't need to read comic books to enjoy this smackdown. (via Galley Slaves)
Posted by Mark on December 09, 2007 at 06:30 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Link Dump
Some interesting stuff going on recently:
  • Chainmail Bikini - The highly anticipated new webcomic from Shamus (who did the brilliant DM of the Rings comic) and "recovering goth" Shawn Gaston. The first comic is up, and it's great. If you liked DM of the RIngs, you'll like this too...
  • Unusual Weapons Collection: My favorite is the second one.
  • Perceptions of Risk: Bruce Schneier's post illustrates yet another failure in risk perception when it comes to bird flu (which hasn't killed anyone in North America, while the boring regular flu kills tens of thousands), similar to an old post of mine (which was inspired by Schneier's book).
  • Why scary games are better than horror movies: Clive Thompson's recent Wired article taps into something that I think is really true: it's much easier to get tensed up and paranoid while playing a game than it is while watching a movie.
    For several years now, I've found that my favorite horror experiences aren't coming from movies any more. They're coming from games.

    Why? Partly it's because films have become much less artistically interesting. With a choice few exceptions -- like the superb The Ring -- I've found that modern horror movies have been offering less and less suspense, and more and more gore. Maybe it's due to the rampaging success of Saw, which gave birth to the current trend toward torture-chic and metric tonnage of blood in scary movies.

    In contrast, the best scary-game designers have quietly perfected the interplay of tension and release that makes for a truly cardiac horror experience. They have, in a sense, become even more faithful interpreters of the horror tradition movies than Hollywood directors.
    In some cases, it's because the atmosphere is scary, in others it's just because you feel that your character is an extension of yourself (this is apparently much easier to achieve with video games because you are actually controlling your character - it's much more difficult to do this in movies, which are more passive). In particular, I remember thinking this while playing Aliens vs. Predator 2 a few years ago. That game absolutely freaked me out, every time I played it. Of course, that game plays on the tension established in the movies (especially the nerve wracking motion detector from Aliens), but they did a really good job of establishing a creepy (and yet familiar) atmosphere. It doesn't help that Aliens are absurdly fast and come from surprising directions. I might just have to reinstall that game...
  • I Feel So Special: James Grimmelmann had a paper break into the top 10 downloaded papers at a legal website. It was downloade 12 times. "To put that in perspective, this video of a hamster eating Cheerios was viewed ten thousand times in an hour yesterday." Hehe.
That's all for now...
Posted by Mark on September 09, 2007 at 05:42 PM .: Comments (5) | link :.


End of This Day's Posts

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Link Dump
As has been fashionable lately, time is short this week, so just a few links: That's all for now.
Posted by Mark on August 01, 2007 at 11:39 PM .: Comments (0) | link :.


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