Despite the malaise surrounding the closing of Reader, I’ve managed to find a few interesting things whilst perusing alternatives (incidentally, Feedly is fantastic… but why is the Firefox version different from Chrome? I mean, I get why iOS is different, but FF and Chrome should be closer than they actually are. That’s the one frustration of Feedly – you need to install an extension in order for it to work. I know I’m the only Opera user on the planet, but I don’t get why there can’t be a pure web version of this thing…) Anywho, here some interesting stuff:
- I Explain March Madness – Rob Delany describes March Madness, as he sees it. I loath the sport of Basketball with every fiber of my being, but if March Madness worked this way, I’d totally be into it. A sampling of the exhaustive breakdown for each day’s competition:
MARCH 18: For this game, the standard basketball is replaced with a vaseline basketball. It’s not really a ball, I guess; it’s more of a basketball-sized glop of Vaseline.
MARCH 22: “Theme Game:” Lord of the Rings vs. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
MARCH 25: For this special game, Larry Bird will sit in a lifeguard chair by one end of the court and Magic Johnson will sit in a lifeguard chair at the opposite end. They’ll take extensive notes throughout the game and then explain to each player and his mother in exhaustive, personalized detail why they will never be as good as them.
Brilliant.
- Grr. Argh. Martin. – Glorious nerding out here, trying to predict when George RR Martin will complete his Song of Ice and Fire books (precipitated by the notion that HBO’s adaptation, Game of Thrones, will catch up and overtake Martin’s book series before he can complete it). The one question I have is how or if the television series impacts Martin’s process at all. Not in terms of what will happen in the story, per say, but knowing that more is riding on this than just his book may motivate him to work a little harder. No idea how to model that, and I’m not entirely sure what that would mean in terms of quality… but Scepticmiscellanea’s predictions (for the entire series, assumed to be 3 more books) range from the optimistic 2019 to the more sanguine 2032. Incidentally, Martin is 64 years old right now. That might be another precipitating factor. Else we may find ourselves in another Wheel of Time situation (Mark says, as if he’s read any of the books in either series).
- Game of Thrones Season 3 – “Princess Bride Promo” – Speaking of which… The whole mashup trailer thing is overdone, but this is brilliant.
- Spider Bite – I see what they did there. (Note: this is not one of those gross pictures of a spider bite people post all the time, I swears. Really. Totally, completely serious here. Not trying to throw you off the scent. I can’t think of a way to do this that doesn’t make it seem like you’re going to see a gross picture of some unlucky schlub with an infected spider bite, but it really isn’t. It’s a cute little cartoon. For reals.)
And that’s all for now. Stay tuned for some SLIFR Movie Quiz action on Sunday!