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!

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.

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.

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…

Entertaining material from the web, or lazy blogging? You decide!

• The Trial of Han Solo: Funny but perhaps overly long video that delves into the whole Greedo shot first thing. By the end, some good points are made. (Related: What If Greedo Really Shot First?)
• Best Action Scene of All Time?: I don’t know about that, but it’s pretty awesome (and pretty damn funny too). Alas, it does not appear to be available on DVD. Damn you internets! Why do you torture me so!
• The Losers Looks Like a Winner: As CHUD notes, “The Losers looks like a better movie version of The A-Team than The A-Team movie.” That sounds about right. On a related note, does anyone else think it would be funny if Katee Sackhoff was hired to play Face in the forthcoming A-Team movie? No? Just me? Huh.
• That’s no moon, it’s a space station… : Scientists told then president Eisenhower that Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars, was actually an ancient abandoned spacecraft.
• My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement: An interesting look behind the scenes at record companies.

That’s all for now…

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…

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…

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!

<br

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…