Geekdom – Restraint

Triumph 31

May 25, 2010 – 3:39 pm

Saturday was my birthday, which capped off a week of the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I thought ’shingles’ sounded like some weird hilarious skin condition that made you look like a lizard or perhaps the roof of a country home. I am pretty doped up on painkillers at the moment but I believe it is fair to say I was off base there.

Anyway.

Saturday was my birthday! I received very nearly a hundred birthday greetings and well-wishes, which I am totally floored by. Thank you all so much.

Audra got me a present! It is a toothbrush!

Let me tell you about this toothbrush!

It is the ORAL-B TRIUMPH PROFESSIONAL CARE 9900, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Do not mock this toothbrush, it is SERIOUS BUSINESS! Witness this FLOSS-ACTION HEAD!

IT MEANS BUSINESS. Does YOUR toothbrush come with this much stuff?

I DON’T THINK SO! Does YOUR toothbrush have a base station that wirelessly monitors your use of the oscillating-rotating technology-enhanced brush using the 2.4 GHz ISM band?

IT IS UNLIKELY! Does YOUR toothbrush include a separate ProWhite polishing brushhead and a massage mode for optimum gum health?

If it does, you are the proud owner of a ORAL-B TRIUMPH PROFESSIONAL CARE 9900 and I would like to meet with you regularly to discuss how much better our toothbrushes are than everyone elses! Do you remember life before the ORAL-B TRIUMPH PROFESSIONAL CARE 9900? I hardly do. Can you imagine, MANUALLY moving the bristles around on the end of a stick like some kind of barbarian?

Neither can I.

So, thank you, Audra, for this amazing birthday gift! Thank you for elevating me over all of those people I once considered ‘friends’ to the lofty position I now occupy, which I do not think is hyperbolic to describe as ‘godlike’.

Also posted in SCIENCE! | Tagged birthday | Comments (1)

#93: Watch Grey’s Anatomy

April 15, 2010 – 9:09 am

The World’s Most Popular Goals (as compiled by 43 Things) is simultaneously fascinating and depressing.

As you might figure, health and weight issues top the list:

#1 lose weight 37876 people
#28 eat healthier 10505 people
#31 get in shape 9647 people
#32 Quit Smoking 8897 people
#49 Lose 20 pounds 6818 people
#55 Lose 10 pounds 6098 people
#63 exercise more 5282 people
#64 Lose 30 pounds 5274 people

These make me just want to give everyone on 43 Things a big hug:

#4 Fall in love 25197 people
#16 Make new friends 13138 people
#27 be more confident 10606 people
#65 make more friends 5273 people
#73 love myself 4640 people
#84 Stop caring what other people think of me 4051 people

We discover that it isn’t easy being German:

#12 Learn Spanish 16100 people
#24 learn french 11036 people
#30 Learn Japanese 9952 people
#57 learn italian 5915 people
#71 learn german 4703 people
#88 Learn another language 3906 people

…and we examine our culture’s ongoing existential crisis:

#5 be happy 22713 people
#22 To live instead of exist 11181 people
#43 identify 100 things that make me happy (besides money) 7449 people
#46 decide what the hell I would like to do with the rest of my life 7068 people
#59 live passionately 5608 people
#94 figure out what i want to do with my life 3711 people

Also posted in Misc | Comments (0)

Suck my diiiiiiick, I’m a shaaaarktopus

February 12, 2010 – 4:56 pm

Q: What’s badder than the Battle of Tannhäuser and more dangerous than a swimming pool full of thumbtacks and facehuggers?

A: ROGER CORMAN’S SHARKTOPUS, motherfucker!

oh no little man what are you going to do it's a fucking SHARKTOPUS

News of Sharktopus’ imminent approach came to us by way of Karen O’Hara’s Twitter:

Just got off the phone with the legendary Roger Corman who’s doing a new movie for us this year. Yes, it’s the long-rumored SHARKTOPUS! . . . Spent half an hour discussing what a sharktopus should look like, how many mouths it should have and how it should kill.

THAT’S RIGHT

HOW MANY MOUTHS IT SHOULD HAVE

SO FUCKING AWESOME ASDJFIASDJFASIOFDOAFWKO

Tagged sci-fi | Comments (1)

overdrawn at the irony bank

December 18, 2009 – 11:00 am

i⋅ro⋅ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
–noun, plural -nies.

the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
pointing out to a heckler who is having a laugh because you’ve seen almost half of the Wikipedia list of films set in the future that not only is the heckler in one of the films set in the future, but that this film was in fact heckled by robots in the even more distant future.

Tagged ha!, sci-fi | Comments (0)

If I am not me, then who the hell am I?

December 18, 2009 – 9:27 am

A moment to remember screenwriting legend Dan O’Bannon, who left us yesterday:

Dan O’Bannon, one of the scriptwriters behind such seminal SF flicks as Alien and Total Recall, has passed away in Los Angeles following a bout of ill-health, at the age of 63.

O’Bannon was a lifelong SF enthusiast, and got his first experience of filmmaking when he worked as writer, editor and special effects producer on John Carpenter’s brilliant, cynical debut Dark Star. O’Bannon and Carpenter had studied together at USC prior to the film’s 1974 release.

He went on to do special effects work on the first Star Wars film and was involved in the early stages of comic writer Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to bring Dune to the big screen in the mid-‘70s. But it was when he began to concentrate on writing over production and effects that his career really took off. O’Bannon is credited with writing the original screenplay for Alien (alongside Ronald Shusett), and his influence on that film extended to bringing into the fold a certain Swiss artist called H.R. Geiger, who had also been involved in the failed Dune project.

O’Bannon’s other hits included the gloriously OTT Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by the O’Bannon-Shusett partnership. He was also involved in a number of cult classics, including Lifeforce, Heavy Metal, and Screamers, while his Moebius-illustrated comic The Long Tomorrow was the inspiration for the art style of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

O’Bannon changed the face of science-fiction (and horror, inventing ‘fast’ zombies in his 1986 directorial debut Return Of The Living Dead), and I’ve been hoping for years that he’d make a return to the big screen (possibly with the perpetually-delayed Silvaticus 3015) to show all these modern ’sci-fi’ writers what’s what.

A public memorial for Mr. O’Bannon will be held sometime in the next few weeks at my apartment in the form of a movie marathon. Interested parties please reply within.

Tagged braaains, movies, RIP, robots, sci-fi | Comments (0)

I see you.

November 19, 2009 – 7:38 pm

Is there any place as universally disliked as a hospital? Sure, no one loves a dentist’s office, but the pathos of an intensive care waiting room can’t be compared to anything else.

The last time I was in an ICU, I wasn’t visiting. I woke up with no idea where I was, or how I had gotten there. Now, I can’t help but feel helpless when I hear the machines and smell disinfectant. I was not prepared for how shaken the visit left me.

…

Back in the real world, I’m slowly getting decisions made for the next iteration of my work’s website. Our daily traffic numbers are six digits long, so I’m taking my time with these.

Which microformats do we want to markup our existing content with? hCard is a gimme, but what about hAtom for press releases? Do we want hCalendar for the schedule of events, or even hResume for biography pages? (And how much work is it going to be to microformat-enable fifteen years worth of content?)
Frameworks! We’re happily invested with jQuery as our JS framework of choice, but do we want or need a framework for CSS development? Typography and print? Wordpress theme development? Maybe even a fluid grid system? For my last project (which launches today, in fact) I used Tripoli, Carrington, and 960 — and while Carrington was amazing (and 960 was pretty good), I’m concerned by the lack of development on Tripoli. The typography is great, but I hate using dead projects. Maybe I should fork it.
Do I care if our site validates? CSS 2.1, or should I say fuck it and jump right to 3.0? (Seriously, CSS 2.1 is for suckers.)