Author: Chuck
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Social Piranhas
Boing Boing.net mentioned a new show called “The IT Crowd” from Graham Linehan, creator/producer/writer of “Father Ted.” Their angle was the Electronic Frontier Foundation and that it appeals to the sysadmin crowd, but I think it’d be funny even to non-geeks. (Speaking as a geek; your mileage may vary). The first couple of episodes, and…
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BasTards™
I never signed up for the local FasTrak™ thing, even though it seems like it’d be right up my toll lane — it’s futuristic high technology of the future, using lasers and high-frequency cosmic rays to automatically detect your car; it’s tailored to absent-minded types; and it’d be another bill to pay. But I never…
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Hachijuhachi!
Continuing my fixation on things Japanesey, here’s a video from YouTube about sushi etiquette. Big laughs with two Fs. (Okay, it’s more wry than big laughs, but it’s worth the wait.) Also on YouTube is that SNL sketch where Chris Farley’s character goes on a Japanese game show. Update: I removed the video because the…
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Oil-guzzling babies (and, suitably, ghost dogs)
Considering how much I love Pom Poko and tanuki, and I got Taiko no Tetsujin mostly because it had dancing kitsune in it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen all of this stuff sooner: My new favorite website is The Obakemono Project, which is like a web encyclopedia of Japanese folk monsters and spirits. Each one…
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I was young and I needed the money
A while ago I was digging through some boxes and found the remainders of my old comic strip. I trot them out whenever anybody gives me half a chance, so some of the people reading this have already seen them. If you do a Google search on “Spectre Collie,” most of the links are to…
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Bettie Page
The trailer for the movie The Notorious Bettie Page is up at Apple’s site, and I’m intrigued. Here are the reasons I plan on seeing this movie: I don’t really know anything about Bettie Page, and I’ve heard the movie isn’t just a boring biopic. Come on, look at her! All accounts say Gretchen Mol…
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Wondercon
The Wondercon is next weekend! How exciting is that?!? Come on! We can see clips from the new Superman movie! And Frank Miller! And Kevin Smith! And there’s going to be “exclusive Star Wars programming,” which as far as I can make out from the website means that Lucas Licensing is going to be recruiting.…
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Pathetic.
Another mark in the “Blizzard is evil” column: their “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” handling of a guild in World of Warcraft that advertised itself as “GLBT-friendly.” In brief, when a player sent a message over general chat recruiting people into her “GLBT-friendly but not GLBT-only” guild, she was given a citation for violating the game’s…
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Mokuyoubi
Today there’s an SFist post about Google China and how it, apparently, proves that Google has gone from being hero to millions to as corrupt and evil a mega-corporation as :spit: Disney! Ah well, I hope I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that every web search I do makes me complicit in tyranny.…
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A pox on your Xbox!
According to USA Today, the scarcity of Xbox 360s will likely continue through Spring, just in time for the release of the Playstation 3. Fine, then, Microsoft! I don’t want your damn computer box anyhow! I’d pretty much resigned myself to getting one, since I’ve got more discretionary income than common sense or time. I…
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At What Price Progress?
Today (or I guess, yesterday) was the first day in a long while I’ve made real tangible progress with my work, instead of just doing research or clerical and maintenance work. So instead of downloading and installing and re-installing and reading documentation and uninstalling and re-re-installing, I actually wrote a good bit of code. About…
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Strategery
I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that SimCity game, don’t you, Chuck? This one has samurai; who doesn’t like samurai? This one…