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February 2008

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Fri 2/29/08 6:32am #

Iron Man Trailer

This is going to be a very good Superhero movie.

I want to hear your


Thur 2/28/08 10:55am #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Mini-rant on in car DVD players (appeared in my twitter yesterday)

» Heroclix last night, the Green Lantern and Deathstroke figures from the new Crisis Set. Very nice pieces. Lots of play/strategy options with each.

Reruns from the Twitter feed:

Keming n. the result of improper kerning. (Think about it ;) link

• Three yearold sumarizes Star Wars:

• Perspective Man - Funny 1 Page Comic... Perspective Man: Click Here

I want to hear your


Tues 2/26/08 10:31am #

Random Non-Sequiters

You have new Picture Mail!

» As mentioned in my mobile post box earlier today, I picked up the Justice League New Frontier Double DVD Boxed set with Hal Jordan Action figure at Best Buy today. Hal's a tiny action figure, but quite nice looking. With any luck I'll post some more pictures later this weekend.

Super busy week at work is over, hooray. It's nice to come home and have enough energy to do a thing or two.

This evening I worked on writing an image manager for Adam and Comfort's website. I've been working on a site with them for the launch of The Uniques their Independent Comic Book. The image manager I wrote is going to handle all the sketches, fan art, wallpapers etc. that will be available on the site (most of which is done and looking quite spiffy).

I've also seen a press proof of The Uniques first issue and it looks great! The website for the comic and creators should be up early next week. The Uniques #1, 35 pages of Superhero goodness, will be available both in print and as a CBZ file for purchase when the site launches, so save up a few pennies this week in anticipation of that! Details will be on Adam and Comfort's Blog as well as here on mine, and then on finer comic blogging site everywhere (we hope)!

Unfortunately, blogging on my own blog is going to be a little light again this week as I put my energies toward helping put those finishing touches on A&C's site. Things should be back to normal around here soon I hope, thanks for sticking around!

I want to hear your


NCW #

New Comic Picks for 2/26/08

ACTION COMICS #862 $2.99
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #9 $2.99
BATMAN #674 $2.99
BLUE BEETLE #24 $2.99
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 9 $2.99
INFINITE CRISIS TP $14.99
JLA CLASSIFIED #53 $2.99
JSA CLASSIFIED #35 $2.99
TEEN TITANS #56 $2.99
SHARK-MAN #2 $3.50
WIZARD MAGAZINE #198 RED HULK CVR $5.99
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #1 (OF 6) $3.50

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List

I want to hear your


Sat 2/23/08 11:00am #

Code Talk

» More playing around with combining RSS feeds for the mobile section at the top of the current blog page.

I learned alot about multi-dimensional arrays this morning and figured out a way to combine RSS feeds on my site so that I don't have the time delay involved in using Yahoo Pipes to do that. I also figured out how to convert the RSS timestamp strings into a unix timestamp that I then put into some code I found that will sort multi-dimensional arrays. I do not fully understand how the multi-dimensional array sorting is functioning, but it does appear to be working, so hooray for that.

What does this mean in layman's terms? Besides Twitter, Utterz, and Jott posts in the mobile section, I can now send emails to the mobile section via Mailbucket.org and they all get combined into one.

Combining the Mailbucket Email to RSS functionality will also let me CC my blog when I send people emails. Which means, when I email a friend a link or a note, I can choose to also have that email show up automatically on my blog. Don't worry though, YOUR emails to me won't show up on the blog. :)

I want to hear your


Fri 2/22/08 11:05pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Wow, pretty much no posts since Tuesday. That's kindof crazy.

It was the busy week of the cycle at work this week so that explains most of that volume drop, the odd part is, until I just looked at my blog and my last post having been on Tuesday at Lunch, I hadn't realized just how fast and how much of a blur this week was.

This weekend is going to be pretty busy as well, but next week, thankfully, unless something unexpected comes up should be a much lighter week, so there should be a few more posts posted herwithin.

I want to hear your


Mon 2/18/08 1:00pm #

Today's lunch time Amusement

(UPDATE: I've been told it's Badminton.)

I want to hear your


Mon 2/18/08 11:17am #

Videos

The Interogator. Not Bad. (Youtube)

I want to hear your


Mon 2/18/08 10:22am #

Random Non-Sequiters

Joke image I made that was part of an email exchange I had back and forth with a co-worker last week. It amused me.

(Pretty good episode of the Colbert Report too.)

I want to hear your


Mon 2/18/08 9:47am #

Lyrics


"Crystal Ball"
Keane

Who is the man I see
Where I'm supposed to be?
I lost my heart, I buried it too deep
Under the iron sea

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall

Lines ever more unclear
Not sure I'm even here
The more I look the more I think that I'm
Starting to disappear

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Oh, crystal ball, hear my song
I'm fading out, everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong

I don't know where I am
And I don't really care
I look myself in the eye There's no-one there
I fall upon the earth
I call upon the air
But all I get is the same old vacant stare

Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball
Save us all, tell me life is beautiful
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Oh, crystal ball, hear my song
I'm fading out, everything I know is wrong
So put me where I belong

iTunes

I want to hear your


Mon 2/18/08 8:48am #

Let's Go Surfing

Matttel Infinite Heores these are the figures I mentioned in yesterday's post. the line features: Batman, Killer Croc, Batwoman, Reverse Flash, Shazam!, Wildcat, Black Hand, Hush, The Question, Power Girl, Jay Garrick Flash, Weather Wizard, Hawkman, Black Adam, Thanagerian Cops,Commissioner Gordon, GCPD Cops, Supergirl, Wonder Girl, Bizarro, Black Canary, Hal Jordan and Green Arrow, Mirror Master, and Wally West Flash. Sounds awesome right? Not really, they are only 3.75" tall, so I'll probably only buy a Green Lantern. it's too bad too, because they are awesome looking figures, but 6" scale is enough for me. I see no need to buy yet another scale.
via Action figure Insider

Videos

iBand. Two iPhones (Guitar and Piano) hooked up to a Nintendo DS running something called Electroplankton. (Youtube)
via Gizmodo

A co-worker sent this Animaniacs Presidents Day Tribute. It's cute and Edukashunal.(Youtube)

I want to hear your


Sun 2/17/08 11:26pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I wrote some really cool code today and am very pleased with myself. Nothing Earth-shattering and nothing that hasn't been done a thousand times by a thousand other programers, but it was new for me.

I can do something today that I couldn't do yesterday, and that's cool.

The code was primarily for a friends' website I'm working on, but it's also something I've wanted to integrate into my site, and I'm looking forward to that.

» I saw Jumper at the theatre last night. As I mentioned in my Twitter, it wasn't a deep movie, but I liked it. Hayden Christensen plays an Anakin type character in this film. Samuel L Jackson doesn't so much act, but personify cool as the villain and the whole movie comes across as a delightful bit of superhero (in the general sense, as there is no spandex herein) wish fulfillment for so inclined members of the audience. I could see this movie serving as a great foundation for a TV series in much the same way as the Buffy movie did.

At the very least I hope they make a Jumper II. Don't expect a deep movie, but Go See!

(Oh yeah... I almost forgot, a large part of the plot takes place in Ann Arbor, Michigan... so if that's a cool thing for you, and it was for me, then there's an extra reason to go see.)

» I didn't go outside at all today. In fact my curtains have been pulled all day too, so I also haven't looked outside all day either, but I hear over IM that it's quite awful outside.

Let's Go Surfing

» Toy Fair Photos are starting to roll in to the major Toy sites.

Green lantern Series 3: Yellow Suit Sinestro, Star Saphire, Batman as Green Lantern and Cyborg Superman. DC Reactivated: GA Superman, GA Batman, GA Hawkman, Woder Woman. Mattel DCU Pictures Commissioner Gordon and 2 Gotham Police Officers - 3 Pack, Black Adam, Cyborg, GA Flash, Weather Wizard, Para Demons, Hawkman, Wonder Girl and Black Canary.

The Commissioner Gordon 3 pack is a nice army builder package, as are the Parademons.

I want to hear your


Sat 2/16/08 3:11pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Alot of people ask me, "Chris what do you think of Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo." (Ok, nobody asks me that...but...) I say, "I don't like it, I don't like it at all." Microsoft has quite a nice business going on right now with the OS's and the Office Apps etc., and they've been trying to be a Yahoo and a Google on their own with MSN for sometime. It hasn't been working (and that's not even true really, since lots of people use MSN, the only issue is they are not #1 or #2), so instead of continuing to compete they are trying to buy their competition. That just doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

» I saw an article that Starbucks was going to have Free Wi-Fi, reading the details however, reveals that you have to have a Starbucks debit card to take advantage of that. That's not quite what one would think of when one here's the term "free wi-fi". Technically true, but not really.

» I use Google Reader as my main window onto the day to day of the web. One nice thing about using RSS feeds thru a program like Google Reader is that like email, the new article arrives in your "Reader Inbox" very shortly after it's created. the downside to that is if you click on an article right away, often noone has had a chance to comment on it. Since often comments have more useful information than the articles themselves, I like to "star" (favorite) articles of interest in reader and come back to them in a couple days to see what comments were left on them.

» I installed the Greasemonkey addon to Firefox on my Eee PC and then installed the Google Reader Minimalistic script from userscripts.org. The combination of those two extras makes Google Reader usuable on the Eee PC without going into fullscreen mode, as it hides that big header section at the top of the Google Reader page. If you are on the Eee you may also want to install Fullerscreen as it helps maximize your screen real estate on the mini-marvel too.

Let's Go Surfing

» Return of the Ford Fiesta to the USA. Looks nice, But will it be cheap?

» Nice Shot of the Space Shuttle Discovery as taken from the International Space Station

» Extremely cool fan created Googlebot logo. Forget Skynet, I think it's Google that's going after Sarah Conner.

» How Close Are We to Star Trek Technology?. These articles come out every few months but I find myself skimming over them each time anyway.

» Mr. Bond, Say hellow to my little friend. Hoo Ha!

» Spokentext.net is a neat site I just discovered, you can upload text, word docs, pdfs, etc. to it and it will convert it to a machine read spoken MP3 file using your choice of voices. It stores the file for 7 days with the free account, but you can download the mp3s and keep them, or repost them somewhere else before that time expires. To try it out, I uploaded the text to the Tell Tale Heart. The MP3 File is 12 minutes long. It will last unil 2/22/08.

Video

» Sarah Silverman, "I'm F-cking Matt Damon" (Youtube) (NSFW)

» Karate Kid in 5 seconds (Youtube) (Mildly NSFW)

» Like a big toy commercial, it is, see it we will, mmmmm, yes. (Myspace Video)

I want to hear your


Thur 2/14/08 9:33am #

Thoughts on February 14th

I think Valentines day is a lovely holiday, plus it has the decency to not take over the whole month with itself. Some holidays are absolutely hoggish with the calendar, taking up weeks, months and entire seasons. The other nice thing about Valentines day, it doesn’t drag every person or relative you know into celebrating it with you. A significant other, a kid maybe and, at worst, a sentimental mother and you're probably done.

In some ways, the original commercial holiday is one of the least commercial holidays now.

I want to hear your


NCW #

Comic picks for 2/13/08

BOOSTER GOLD #0 $2.99
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 11 $2.99
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #5 $2.99
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #21 $2.99
SALVATION RUN #4 (OF 7) $2.99
SUPERMAN #673 $2.99
TINY TITANS #1 $2.25
WONDER WOMAN #17 $2.99

Ambushbug/Lobo Minimate
TOYFARE TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED CVR #128 $4.99

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List

I want to hear your


Tues 2/12/08 10:35am #

Iron Man Adventures

3D animated cartoon. Aimed at kids, but better overall than the Direct to DVD Marvel movies have been.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

I want to hear your


Sun 2/10/08 2:03pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Not alot of surfing this weekend. I've been busy with other things mostly.

As always I'm working my way though a huge backlog of RSS stared items. Most of the links below orginated in mid January on other sites. But hey maybe you weren't on the net much that week and now they're new to you.

» I have a little bit of that Michigan winter funk going on right now. There's a good 4 months or so of the year that this state can be just downright depressing to live in. We're solidly in about month 3 of that right now.

» I bought the Mxtkpyltx action figure that came out this past week. It's very nice as these things go. Pictures of that eventually, I would imagine.

» Watched this week's Bill Mahr Real Time this morning. The show was losing relavance last season, and this season without it's writers it's been pretty bad too. Bill went off the rails at the end of his show on his healthy food crusade topic, much to the confusion/uncomfortableness of his guests.

Let's Go Surfing

» I like the design of this two piece desk. The same sort of thing could probably work well in wood.

» Nice size comparrison of the MacBook Air and the Eee PC

» Stand-up computing harness/table, not a bad idea, and a pretty good price point at $34.95. You could probably make it for cheaper, but it would hardly be worth the time.

» Cuepropter.com is a very nice javascript based web based telepropter application. You paste your text into the window and then it will fullscreen scroll the text for you as you read/film yourself.

» Paul Dini on modern American Movie Animation. Lot's more than the excerpt below at the link.
via The Beat

Your primary objective as a modern animation feature storyteller is to get the audience members emotionally charged (i.e., distracted from logic gaps and not thinking too much) so they will be ready for your big finale. This usually consists of the hero defeating the villain (almost always by some initial violent action of the villain that the hero has “cleverly” used to boomerang back on the bad guy; real heroes never being allowed to slay dragons on their own these days) and the villain falling to their death from a great height, the only acceptable way for a baddie to meet their end in a cartoon (Gaston, Frollo, the bear in “The Fox & The Hound,” Scar, the poacher in “Rescuers II”, anyone notice a trend here?). If the villain can trip over the edge while trying to get in one last cowardly stab at the hero, so much the better. The demise of the bad guy puts everyone in a good mood, so the sidekicks fire up the juke box, or strike up the band, or simply break into song, and while the hero and heroine share a modest kiss, everyone rocks out over the end credits.

I want to hear your


Fri 2/8/08 1:11pm #

We don't just need change. Change is too small a word. We need a new start. These sorts of things are taking it too far. Party over country, is taking it to far. Winning over civility is taking it too far.

Change is too small a word.

Somehow we need a new start.

I want to hear your


Thurs 2/7/08 5:39pm #

Googly Goodness

• Google Docs lets you embed Presentations now.

You can do this at Google Docs from the publish tab.

• Google Docs Spreadsheets also has a neat new data collection feature.

  • You open a new spreadsheet
  • Hit the Share tab
  • Select the Fill out as a Form, radio button
  • Add Questions
  • Add your email addresses
  • And send it out
Each person will get a link to, or actually see the html form in their email. They answer your questions, hit the submit button and then the spreadsheet will be updated with their information.

Live results of the survey are listed below.

I want to hear your


Wed 2/6/08 1:34pm #

Dark Knight Movie Trailer in Legos

(Youtube)

I want to hear your


NCW #

Comic Picks for 2/6/08

ALL NEW ATOM #20 $2.99
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 12 $2.99
DETECTIVE COMICS #841 $2.99
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #12 $2.99
METAL MEN #6 (OF 8) $2.99
NIGHTWING #141 $2.99
NORTHLANDERS #3 (MR) $2.99
SUPERGIRL #26 $2.99
TEEN TITANS YEAR ONE #2 (OF 6) $2.99

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: SERIES 5: VENGEANCE 2: THE JOKER AND MR. MXYZPLTK 2-PACK Action Figure

According to Diamond Comics Shipping List

I want to hear your


Tue 2/5/08 12:02pm #

A is for Asus

Step aside Apple there is a new innovator on the the block.

  • E-DT $200-$300 Desktop
  • E-Monitor 19" to 21" LCD Monitor with computer built-in for $500
  • E-TV 42" LCD TV with built-in PC for $200 more than a normal 42" LCD TV.

I need to start saving my pennies to give them to Asus.

I want to hear your


Tues 2/5/08 9:30am #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I watched Juno last night. I thought it was an enjoyable quirky little movie. After about a half hour I noticed that basically the lead was a pint sized junior version of Janeane Garofalo. Although aimless, the characters are entertaining, and if you like creative conversational referencing in that Clerks sort of swearing way, you'll enjoy this film too.

Juno was good, but I don't think it should be an Oscar nominee for Best Picture.

» Also watched another episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Not last night's episode, but the one from two weeks ago with the Terminator in the bath. I like the show so far. It's not the most spectacular show ever, but it really hearkens back to the old 80s hero on the run adventure shows, a format that has been missing from the airwaves for awhile.

» Today's Super Tuesday. If someone runs away with the nomination and it all gets decided tonight, will they lay off the coverage for awhile? It seems like 8 months or so is going to be a long time to watch only two candidates bicker back and forth continually. Here's hoping the TV News machine is going to have to find something else to also cover.

I want to hear your


Mon 2/408 9:05 am #

Superbowl Commercials

I watched them all online this year, didn't have a chance to watch the game.

  • Bud Light Breath Fire - cute
  • Diet Pepsi What is Love - What is 92?
  • Bridgestone squirrel - cool
  • GoDaddy.com Danica Patrick - Bla
  • Fed Ex Pigeons - cool
  • TideStain - Cute
  • Iron Man - neat
  • Audi Godfather - Whuh?
  • Sales Genie - lame
  • Under Armour - Lame
  • Gatorade Derek Jeter - Bla
  • Dell Red - Bla
  • Cars.com - Whuh?
  • Budweiser "Rocky" - What is 80s?
  • Toyota Badgers - Whuh?
  • Leatherheads - Looks Lame
  • CareerBuilder Heart - neat but creepy.
  • GMC Mountain Top animated Ink thing - So um, they make cars or do they make rocks?
  • Chronicles of Narnia 2 - Looks good
  • T-mobile Barkley/Wade -eh
  • Doritos Mouse Trap - odd
  • Zantac - Sideffects may include lack of interest.
  • Cars.com Witchdoctor - bla.
  • Garmin - Napoleon -bla
  • Life Water Thriller - Is that Michael Jackson? wow that plastic surgery has gone too far.
  • Bud Light Mencia - mencia sucks.
  • Planters Unibrow - Food ads shouldn't make you sick.
  • Pepsi Justin - Nice one.
  • Lexus Doughnut - bla
  • Semi Pro - bla
  • Sales Genie Pandas - meh
  • Vitamin Water Shaq - eh
  • Ice Breakers - Lame
  • Career Builder Spider - lame
  • Walle - eh
  • Bud Light Fly - Lame
  • Sunsilk - bla
  • Coke Carvill/Frist - huh? Who cares.
  • Zohan - tell me more?
  • Bud Light Cavemen Wheel -lame
  • Bridgestone Richard Simmons - Whuh?
  • Hyndai Genesis - bla
  • ETrade Baby - well done
  • NFL - bla
  • Coke Balloons - Neat
  • Toyota Big Wheels, I don't know if I want a Toyota, but I definitly want a big wheel.
  • ETrade Baby 2 - very very well done
  • Taco Bell Platter - bla
  • Victoria Secret - NICE!
  • Gatorade Thirsty Dog - eh
  • Amp - Lame

Superbowl Ads

I want to hear your


Sat 2/2/08 4:18pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

» It's been a faily speedy week.

  • I haven't done alot of surfing recently.
  • I'm acquiring quite the backlog of RSS links to scroll though.
  • I haven't missed a beat with the Writer strike in effect. There's so much to watch, read and listen to even without network tv that it's just crazy comprehending it all
  • Speaking of TV, I've been enjoying Miro this week. I've moved my watching of the nightly news into my studio as I've been downloading NBC's newscast everyday now.
  • As anyone visiting this blog may have noticed I've been enjoying tinkering with my mobile update section at the top of the current blog page. I've got Utterz messages posting to Twitter which are now included in the above stream, just incase I feel the need to rapidly post a longer audio rant. Utterz is supposed to undergo some transformation on Monday, so that may be interesting as well.
  • Still on the mobile blog topic, I will probably add some form of video posting to the above also. I haven't tried Utterz with my camcorder function of my phone yet, but if that doesn't work I may rig up something via Youtube, which I know I can post to from the phone and then scrape the videos I want out of the RSS feed.

All for now, a couple links and a smattering of videos below.

Let's Go Surfing

» 30 Days of Night Vampire Girl. That's a pretty disturbing action figure.

» Sixty-one Music Discovery Service. Not Pandora, but an interesting site still.

» Very nice Flash Based tutorial on using uTorrent Bittorrent Client to Send/Seed Files for others.

» Pocket Guitar for iPhone. Neat.

» This chair with built-in storage is a neat idea.

» Slick computer/chair bubble.

» I like the idea of thes pen top eating utensils even if I can't see any practicality to them.

» Can uz has a Cheeseburger in a can? Yes u canz. Best product idea ever.

Video

» Macbook Air parody ad. (Youtube)

» Propaganda Techniques Film. (Youtube)

» PC Program that turns Rockband set into a real Drum Station. (Youtube).

» Super Mario combined with Halo. Real Game. Cool. (Youtube)

» $1 Camera Stabilizer. Neat Idea. (Metacafe)

» Why you can't swar with predictive text on your cellphone. NSFW (Youtube)

» It's Business Time? (NSFW) xxx

» Dog vs. Balloons (Youtube)

I want to hear your


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