Trailer here. I just never got into Firefly. Buffy, definitely. Angel, for a while. The Astonishing X-Men is fantastic. So I think a movie form of Firefly sounds great. The trailer certainly looks cool. Then again, so did the trailer for Attack of the Clones.
After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google’s image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it’s surprisingly addictive.
It sounds interesting, but it never loaded for me. Either the server’s overloaded, or the programmer broke Google.
Now playing: Robert Earl Keen - Farm Fresh Extras (Hidden Track)
Wired News: Rolling Camera Eyeballs Danger
The Eye Ball is controlled by a wireless remote control about the size of a large PDA. Using the control unit, which has a color display, officials can manipulate the camera to get a view from any angle they want — to check out a space where they believe suspects may be hiding or explosives may have been planted.
The camera has a three-hour battery life, can rotate at four revolutions a minute and capture 55-degree horizontal and 41-degree vertical views. The camera is built into the top half of the device and can be rotated, while the base of the Eye Ball remains static once it has landed. If the Eye Ball lands upside down, officers can flip the video feed. Using a video-out port in the remote control, video and audio can be saved to tape or DVD for use as evidence.
I’m sure I’m not the only parent who can envision uses for the technology, especially if they added audio capabilities: Hey, Cut It Out! At $1500, maybe not, but it’s only a matter of time. GPS used to be government-only, too.
It’s truly amazing to me how much play Indiana’s decision to uniformly apply Daylight Savings Time has received. The governor ran on a promise to join the rest of the country (except for those wacky Arizonans, of course). Sploid says Indiana To Finally Succumb To Daylight Savings Time Scam. Outside the Beltway says Indiana Succumbs to Daylight Savings Time. What’s with “succumb”? Are the Hoosiers finally giving into the great siege machines of the Clock Changers?
I understand where Indiana’s coming from, situated as it is straddling two time zones, with significant population residing near Louisville, KY (EST) and Chicago, IL (CST). I also know from personal experience what a pain it is to the rest of the world to deal with a region that doesn’t play along, having worked on a project involving Arizona a couple of years ago (are they two hours ahead this week or three?). More importantly, given that we are not an agrarian society anymore, and artificial lighting is pretty darn ubiquitous, has the justification for changing the clocks to maximize usable daylight run its course?
I really hate Bratz, the little hoochie-momma dolls that make Barbie a great role model for young girls (or girlz) by comparison. I’ve never been moved to rant about them; I just refuse to buy them for any young relative (luckily my 2 year old isn’t in the target demographic, at least I hope not). Apparently, the Bratz weren’t using adequate protection, as now we have Baby Bratz. James Lileks was moved to rant, and as usual he rants with the best.
I froze. The Bratz are now Baby Mommaz. Yes, the hooker-in-training dolls have children. Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys. The Baby Bratz are as bad as you can imagine: “Bottles with Bling.” Judas on a stick, why not just refit the Bratz so they have Real Oozing Gonorreal Flow Action?“They know how to flaunt it, and they’re keeping it real in the crib.”
What exactly is the penalty for failing to keep it real in the crib? Someone busts a cap in yo Pamper? I know I am old and so out of step it’s a wonder I don’t just appear as an indistinct smear, but was it really necessary to push the Age of Sultry Hussyism down to the infant stage? And who, exactly, are the Babyz flaunting it for? Are we going to see a commercial with Elmo in sunglasses, sitting with his legs sprawled, spanking some pliant Babyz with one hand while gumming down some mashed crack?
Only Eliot Spitzer could make me feel sympathetic toward a spyware distributor. The latest target for the hyper-kinetic AG is (alleged) spyware distributor Intermix.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued a major Internet marketer Thursday, blaming it for secretly installing software that delivers nuisance pop-up advertisements and can slow and crash personal computers.Shares of the company, Intermix Media Inc. of Los Angeles, fell $1.01, or 21 percent, to $3.79 in midday trading on the American Stock Exchange.
Spitzer accuses Intermix of redirecting computer users to Web sites where ads get displayed, adding unnecessary toolbars to Web browsers and delivering unwanted ads that pop up on computer screens.
I’m certainly no fan of spyware, and if Intermix relies on that particular business model, shame on them. But is it really up to Eliot Spitzer to protect the world from its own stupidity? He’s already established himself as the uber-SEC, relying on the exchanges’ physical presence in his state to go after securities law issues that are really national in scope. Now he’s taking on another national problem, one that even he admits requires a national resolution.
More than 3.7 million downloads were made to New Yorkers alone and although there is no national estimate, Spitzer seeks a nationwide resolution of the case.“When dealing with these types of online practices, effectively you’re talking about a nationwide resolution because it’s very difficult if not impossible to isolate your practices based on a state,” said Assistant Attorney General Justin Brookman.
Precisely how Spitzer believes a New York court applying New York consumer protection and tort law is to apply a nationwide resolution remains unclear.
The AG faces an uphill battle here, as he appears to concede that much of the software was installed following some form of consent, although he claims it was “vague” and included in a “lengthy” license agreement. The amount of spyware on my PC dropped to zero after I (1) started actually reading those licensing agreements and (2) installed a free program that looks for spyware. All without Eliot Spitzer’s help. Then again, Spitzer’s not a big fan of markets, even though he comes from a town built upon them.
It’s not like he’s doing anything else these days except blaming Everyone Else In The World for his problems, so it seems appropriate that Barry Bonds has a blog. Only four more days until the Barry Bonds Fan of the Month. I’m thinking that "Home Run Counter" will be stuck on 703 for a while. Maybe forever.
It’s beginning to look like Apple is an autocratic regime run by a power-mad dictator. First Apple goes lawsuit crazy against websites run by full-bore acolytes of the Cult of Mac. Attempting to track down the source of leaks of trade secrets seems legitimate, but attempting the legal smackdown of Apple’s biggest fans, a tactic Apple wouldn’t try against well-heeled outlets that don’t worship at the white plastic altar of all things i-, doesn’t make much business sense. Now Apple Stores are removing all titles from a leading tech publisher because the imprint had the temerity to publish a biography of Our Dear Leader:
John Wiley & Sons, a leading publisher of technology books, said Apple Computer has removed all its titles from the shelves of Apple stores in apparent retaliation for the upcoming publication of a biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Yes, Wiley is publishing iCon Steve Jobs: The Second Greatest Act in the History of Business, but it also publishes Macs for Dummies, written by a NY Times columnist. This comes as Apple is increasingly drawing the ire of the music industry, which thinks it can get a better deal from cell phone carriers eager to sell $3 over-the-air downloads. Given that a disproportionately large share of Apple’s profits come from iPods and the iTunes Music Store, Stevie J. could be managing Apple’s image straight down the tubes of profitability.
Via Virginia Postrel
Listening to (in iTunes, of course) The Chemical Brothers:Leave Home:Singles 93-03[5:06]
[composed and posted with ecto]
I realize that many Christians look askance at the application of math to dogma (i.e. just how did Noah fit all those species on the Ark?), but here’s a quantification of transubstantiation, the doctrine that during communion the bread and wine literally transform into the body and blood of Christ:
If you conservatively assume that these are the End Times and that Jesus will soon be completely consumed (a detail that I do not believe is a part of mainstream Christian dogma), then he weighs twenty million times more than you, and contains ninety-two billion times as much blood. (20,282,528x and 92,000,000,000x).
(If you assume that only the priest drinks the wine instead of every supplicant having a sip, then the blood ratio is smaller by around two orders of magnitude, depending on the priest/non-priest ratio.)
By comparison, the largest living animal on Earth is the Blue Whale, at a paltry 150 tons (a mere 2,500� bigger than you). It is believed that the largest dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus, weighed only 90 tons.
However, perhaps Jesus, like Wolverine, has amazing regenerative powers (in which case, it’s surprising it took him three days to return from the dead. But maybe he was just taking a little time-out.)
I’m told that the average person sheds 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime, and that 70% of household dust is dessicated human. I will leave further research along this line of thinking to others.
Travel to Baltimore was uneventful, as expected. Thanks to Southwest, Baltimore is about the easiest place to get to from Louisville. My initial destination was the Admiral Fell Inn, a historic hotel (the building dates from circa 1900, although the hotel itself first opened in 1985) in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore. Fells Point is famous most recently for being the location used in the NBC series Homicide. Anyway, Fells Point is named for brothers William and Edward Fell, who arrived from England in 1726 and 1730:
Edward Fell sailed from England to the colonies in 1726. He was a real-estate man and owned property on both sides of the Jones Falls. He named his town Jones Town, after David Jones, the first man to settle here. As Baltimore grew and began to swallow neighboring villages, Jones Town became known as simply Old Town.Edward’s brother William had remained in England, but after hearing of his brother’s wealth, he crossed the Atlantic in 1730. When William arrived, he bought a 100-acre parcel of land and built a mansion and shipyard. William had five children, including an only son, Edward. Young Edward got more from his uncle than a name; when the elder Edward Fell died in 1738, he left his nephew his land. In 1745, when Baltimore Town and Jones Town officially joined to form Baltimore, William Fell served on the board of commissioners that watched over the jurisdiction. William died a year later, and he too left his estate to the young Edward Fell, uniting the estates of the English brothers. In 1763, Edward Fell named this enormous holding Fells Point and gave the streets English names, such as Shakespeare and Thames.
The younger Edward Fell is generally referred to as Admiral Fell, although there is no evidence he was ever captain of anything, much less an Admiral, although he was a captain of commerce.
Thus the Admiral Fell Inn. So I get in the cab and say to the driver “the Admiral fell in.” Which seems really funny when you’re operating on about four hours sleep, fueled by a combination of coffee and Benadryl.
[composed and posted with ecto]
