Digital Embarassment

You know what's frustrating? Computers. Especially when you mess up something on a computer, because it might very well be public and digital, easy to preserve. Especially when you're someone who is supposed to be good with computers.

Take Facebook, for example. Facebook has a feature wherein you can give them access to your e-mail account, and they'll look up people that have exchanged e-mail with you and see if they have a Facebook account and allow you to add them as friends. Handy, right?

Well, suppose you are subscribed to a mailing list (for example, the Python programming list). There are hundreds (thousands?) of people e-mailing each other on this list. You probably aren't friends with all of them. But there they are.

By this point, you can probably see where this story is going, so I needn't continue. In my defense, I haven't slept in like two days, and the cancel/continue buttons are like right next to each other.

Hopefully most of the people will realize that I'm just some random guy, and not someone they know (although, I do have that very common name..). Of course, they might be like me, and just accept every friend request they get, because what if it IS someone they know but they just don't recognize the name?

We'll see.

Stay Of Execution

The start date for the Large Hadron Collider is now September 10th. Plenty of time to live it up in the meantime! ^_^

1 Day Left

Again, just over a day until the LHC gets turned on and the world possibly comes to an end. ^_^

At least I won't have to pay off these credit card bills...

Dr. Horrible captions

I don't know if you've watched Dr. Horrible with the captions on yet, but they're hilariously inaccurate. Here are some examples (captions first, actual spoken words second):

Act I:
A heinous crime, a show of course
A heinous crime, a show of force

I don't know.
It's not a no.

Act III:
I hate the homeless.
This problem that plagues our city.
I hate the homeless
-ness problem that plagues our city.

Everyone can blaze a hero's drill.
Everyone can blaze a hero's trail.
(A hero's WHAT?)

Hammer me nail.
Hammer, meet nail.
(I suspect the captioner is not a native English speaker)

Why?
Way!
(Hammer finishes the lyric after he comes out of being frozen. How is this not obvious?)

Captain Hammer would say that.
Captain Hammer will save us.
(Capstone line of the series, ruined in the caption)

So, I e-mailed Hulu and asked them wtf and where'd they get the captions from? Their response was:

I'm not certain what our source is -- I believe that we had found some open-content subtitles and performed some verification that they were correct before putting them up. I've watched the first few minutes of Dr. Horrible with the subtitles after we had put them up, and remember seeing that they were ever so slightly off in terms of timing, perhaps about a half a second too early, but I hadn't noticed anything actually being seriously inaccurate. If there's an obvious error somewhere please let me know and I'll send that information to our quality control folks.

So, mystery solved. They took someone else's captions, and didn't bother to check them. Because that would take effort.

Lazy, lazy.

Best Commercial (NSFW?)

Updated:
Show/Hide

(If you want something done right...)

Dark Knight

So, I watched the new Batman movie, and enjoyed it. I would have left out the Harvey Dent plotline, as it was fairly unnecessary, but overall it was good. Except that Bat-voice just didn't work for me. Here is a clip that gives you an idea of what I'm talking about:
Show/Hide

Kinetic Typography

SURELY, I am the last person to discovery the kinetic typography videos on YouTube, yes? So, there's really no reason to blog about it.

But here are some of my favorites:

Pulp Fiction

Who's on first? (A classic bit; I also enjoy its many variations)

Peter Griffin dislikes "The Godfather" (Probably my favorite of the bunch right here ^_^)

(There are a lot more good ones out there)

I don't know what took me so long to finally see these. I guess they're just not the type of thing I normally watch. ;-)

PAX update

The $5 off ($45 total) preregistration price expires soon. The exhibit hall (PDF) looks much bigger than I remember from last year. Oh look, Brawndo is going to be there!

Also, they've announced the Keynote speaker: "screenwriter and developer Ken Levine"

What what? Ken Levine, (sort-of) famous writer (e.g. Frasier, Cheers, Wings) who has a sweet blog I sometimes read? I didn't know he was working as a game developer.

That's because he totally isn't. They meant Ken Levine, who worked on BioShock (among others). [Unrelated sidenote: BioShock was only $15 on Steam this past weekend. Crazy! That's how I found out about the Penny Arcade game, and now we're going in circles...]

Also also, MC Chris dropped out as a musical act, but Jonathan Coulton will be there! So will MC Frontalot, The OneUps, The MiniBosses, and some people I've never heard of (Anamanaguchi, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, Freezepop).

What brought about all this seemingly-random update nonsense? Because the "Describe PAX in Seven Words" contest winners are posted.

• Saw you across the room. Horde, right? (Victoria Worthington)
• Lights sway: A Sea of DS’ glow. (Lisa Johnson)
• Where gamers go to be as One. (Scott Platkus)
• I *STILL* haven’t finished all this ramen. (Phoenix Gabriel, that's me!)
• I fell and accidentally flashed Wil Wheaton (Kate Newman)
• I stand in awe. Finally, I’m home. (Wade Larson)
• I’m only anonymous in my basement? Sh*tc*ck! (Matt Thrailkill)
• And the best of the haiku entries: The Omegathon | Twenty Omeganauts Try | One Victorious (Sean Martin)

Now, of course, I've already been notified, right? Well, here's the thing about me: I've got such fringe luck (in both directions) that I've come to expect the unexpected. Like the time I won a free copy of a soon-to-be-released game (unexpected) only to have the game company fold before its release (unexpected). So I was fully prepared for this to be a trick by some prankster (I know how easy it is to spoof e-mail, since I am a total computer nerd). But there it is, my name, on the official PAX site. That makes it real. ^_^

Of course, now the horrible thought is that they think I'm the guy that won the "Win your weight in ramen" contest (same booth from which I got my case of ramen). I'm totally not. They're going to find out, and they're going to kick me out of PAX.

Star Wars, Episode 37

Show/Hide

There are more like this.

Dr. Horrible returns

Show/Hide

Missed Dr. Horrible when it premiered? Catch it again on Hulu. Or get it on iTunes. When is that DVD going to come out?

UPDATE: Apparently Hulu put out a press release saying that Dr Horrible will be up for four months. But I can't find it.

Missed Opportunities

So, there's a Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (Episode One). Cool, right? But pricey.

Normally, it's $20, which is a bit too high for me for an episodic game. I'd gladly pay $10 for it though. That's the price point I'm waiting for. But, that's probably going to take a while.

EXCEPT it was $10 two weeks ago! For the weekend only.

Missed opportunities are frustrating.

Western Spaghetti

Show/Hide

Another excellent stop-motion from PES.

Buying a TV

So, today's Woot is an Emerson 32" LCD HDTV
$399.99 + ($5 shipping).

HDTV for $405? Count me in, right? Whoa there, cowboy. A couple of the posters in the forum sent me to this:



A Westinghouse SK-32H240S - 32 inch LCD with a better screen and way more inputs. (It's the inputs that do it for me), right now $430. No tax here in WA, free shipping (or $5 for expedited shipping). But wait, there's more! $10 off $200 in electronics knocks it down to $420, plus I can get another $30 off if I sign up for their visa card. So it's really $390 vs $405 shipped (both are refurbished). $15 less for a better TV. And the Buy.com one offers the ability to purchase an extended warranty for $50 (Woot does not have this option).

Am I crazy to buy this? With the extended warranty, it's $440, which is more than a month's rent. And I don't have a job at the moment, so it would come out of my meager savings... but it's a good deal. The people who bought it either love it or had it break (hence the extended warranty). And I've been meaning to buy a TV since I came back from Japan. The previous TV I wanted went out of stock before I bought it (missed opportunity!). This is the best deal I've seen since then.

What do you guys think?

Cheesecake Factory

I've never been to one. Is it good?

On Wednesday July 30^th, they'll be selling cheesecake for $1.50 per slice in honor of they're 30^th anniversary (eg, same price as in 1978).

Doesn't help me though, since the nearest one is apparently in Bellevue.

Font Conference

Fails for:

• Comic Sans not sucking
• Lack of Helvetica

Talk Radio

Graham has some theological questions.
Show/Hide

Large Hadron Collider is coming....

Not that the world is going to end or anything. I mean, probably not. Sure, some crazy people think that this will create microscopic black holes that will fall into Earth's gravity and feed on the core of the planet, growing exponentially fast until everything is part of it.^* How ironic would it be for our evolved intelligence to bring about our very destruction? Ha! But what are the odds that THIS is our Great Filter?

It is not far fetched to suppose that there might be some possible technology which is such that(a) virtually all sufficiently advanced civilizations eventually discover it and (b) its discovery leads almost universally to existential disaster.

• Nick Bostrom (May/June 2008). "Where Are They?". MIT Technology Review.

Have a good night! ^_^

^*The great thing about this idea is that we wouldn't necessarily even know it had happened until shortly before the world ends! Of course, it's unlikely to happen. LHC-like collisions happen all the time in our upper atmosphere. So, if microscopic black holes were going to devour us, they should have done so already, right?<sup>++

++</sup>Of course, matter is much denser here on the hard surface of the planet. The upper atmosphere is mostly empty vacuum, actually. But, that probably won't make a difference. Surely all the scientists have already thought of that, right?<sup>**

**</sup>Right?<sup>][

][</sup>Man, I hope the world doesn't end before PAX.

Awesome PAX Adventure!

PAX is BACK (August 29^th - 31^st), and I'm totally going! But wait until you hear why.

So, very shortly after my return from Japan last summer, I attended PAX (the Penny-Arcade Expo), which happened to be in Seattle that same weekend. It was pretty cool, although I only got to go for one day, and I missed all the big stuff (Jonathan Coulton, Wil Wheaton) but I did get to see the second Mike/Jerry Q&A which was great stuff.

I also got some swag, mostly expo cruft but also a big case of ramen! There was a booth promoting a Naruto game, and the booth was like constructed with cases of ramen (Naruto's favorite food). Well, towards the end of the day, the guys running the booth just started handing the cases off to whomever was standing nearby (bonus for the crowd and less for them to pack out later, win win). I followed the stream of attendees carrying cases of ramen back to the source and got my own. ^_^ Sweet!

Unfortunately, I had been spoiled by years of living in Japan, and American ramen didn't cut it like it used to. I ate fewer and fewer packets as time went on, only returning to them at the end of each quarter like the poor hungry college student I was am. But I couldn't finish them off, and now that case sits in my office.

So, that was last year. ^_^

THIS year, (a few days ago, actually), "Gabe" posted a new contest on the Penny-Arcade site. Write about your previous PAX experience. In exactly seven words.

It was Wednesday afternoon when I saw this (the deadline day), and to make sure that I entered before I forgot, I wrote something on the spot and sent it off.

"I *STILL* haven't finished all this ramen!"

And if you know me at all, you totally see where this is heading. ^_^

About an hour ago, I got an e-mail with the subject "Congratulations!"

If you're getting this email, then yes! You've been selected as one of the 8 winners for your 7-word submission!

Sweet!

[Name and contact information requested here, etc]

Thanks, and congrats!

-Robert

I totally won the contest. I won the hell out of it! I'm going back to PAX, baby!

Does... um, does anyone want to carpool to Seattle? :-/

Dr. Horrible (and stuff)

You already know that Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has all three episodes up and running. What you may not know is: it's not going to last. Quoth the Whedon:

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)

So enjoy them whilst you can.

Also, if you haven't read it yet, check out Captain Hammer's 8-page comic over on Bad Dark Horse Comics' myspace.

Finally, console me over the fact that all the Captain Hammer t-shirts were sold-out in my size. :-(

Barney's Blog.... RSS FEED!

It's the great Barney's Blog, now with syndication! Recent entries are hosted on TVGuide.com. It has ads and stuff, but hey! RSS!

(Also, the official site has gone downhill. No more old entries, no more sorting by month, etc. Man, I wish I had archived that when I had the chance. Wait, I^* totally did. The graphics are gone, and everything is out of order. If I were more motivated, I'd recover the old pages and archive them on some commonly used free service or something. But I'm lazy busy. ^_^)

* For certain values of I.