>
Fri - January 13, 2006Rye And CokeSome people have asked why I haven't mentioned
the election. Really, though, what is there to say? There are two losers, and
one of those losers - either the lying thieving loser or the homophobic nazi
loser - is going to be the new Prime Minister. Not really worth wasting words
on. BUT
- if you have to pick a loser, well, this pretty much puts it all into perspective:
 Posted at 09:18 AM Read More Wed - January 11, 2006Silicon SacrementThe new Apple/Intel TV ad is on-line, and there
is something semi-humourous in a cheesy sort of way when they handle the big
silicon wafer with the same reverence that one might expect when the BIg Gold Albums were loaded onto Voyagers I and
II.
The real humour for us retrogrouches, however, is the call-back to the time when the Intel "bunnies" were the source of mocking and derision from the gang in Cupertino - a far cry from the church-like veneration seen here. What comes around goes around, I guess. Posted at 11:07 AM Read More Thu - December 29, 2005All Praise Him!Apparently we Canadians are boring when it comes
to Christmas. We decorate our homes with lights and garland and other
pedestrian stuff ... stuck in a rut of traditionalism and repetition. But in
Alabama they
really
know how to go to town with the festive decor. Our intrepid reporter south of
the 49th snapped this awesome Giant Jesus of Doom in a (surprise!) trailer park
in northern 'Bama.
 In case it isn't obvious at first glance, that is not a cigar in the big guy's mouth, it is an apparently blood-encrusted sword:  While I can't claim to understand the gestalt surrounding the sword in the mouth, I can certainly appreciate it's visual impact. Posted at 11:02 AM Read More Thu - December 22, 2005Now That's Different!Rick Mercer truly is a god. Many apologies to
anyone reading this south of the 49th parallel ... you will probably all scratch
your heads and say "What the hell is wrong with Canadians, anyway?" but for the
canucks in the crowd, this one is a real
hoot.
Posted at 10:18 AM Read More Sat - December 3, 2005Feeling OldSo "Band-Aid" is 20 years old today. The song
has held up
much
better than the atrocious North American rip-offs
We Are The
World and
Tears Are Not
Enough (Brian Adams should be thankful each
and every Christmas that no one south of the border has heard that particular
piece of aural vomit) but I gotta think that every single person in this video
cringes mightily when they see the cold hard evidence of how they looked in
1985. Well, except for Phil Collins (who has looked the same pretty much
forever) and Brian Ferry (who would look like Morrissey's fruitier brother no
matter
what he
tried).
Anyway, enjoy. Posted at 08:19 PM Read More Thu - December 1, 2005Ho Ho HoThis video has been circulating around the 'net
... posted on web sites everywhere, but usually lacking in details and (thanks
to that mope last year in Colorado) often dismissed
as a hoax or a fake.
Luckily, you have have shown some obvious taste in your browsing habits and have come to a site where we take these things a little more seriously. To wit: 1: This is not a hoax. This display is run by Carson Williams, is no hoax, and is run by off-the-shelf light sequencing software and hardware. 2: The details are definitely impressive. The display has 16,000 lights, and draws a stunning fifteen amps of power when all of the channels are triggered. While the "Showtime" software and controller modules make the wiring easy, the programming of the sequences took about 700 hours of creation and tweaking time. Carson was kind enough to share the programming with the world, and you can download the load files for this entire display if you want to play with them yourself. Finally, the song is Wizards of Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, not Mannheim Steamroller. If you want this particular version, you need to rip it from the Lost Christmas Eve CD - the version that is commonly available via Gnutella is from a different CD and has a slightly different timing so it will not work with this sequencing file. NOTE: The video above is a Quicktime file, and you need DivX/3ivX to view it - if you have the latest version of Quicktime, then you should already have these. I converted it to allow for easy embedded browsing on handheld devices like Blackberries. If you prefer the original Windoze Media file, you can check it out here. Posted at 11:17 AM Read More Tue - November 29, 2005Fill 'Er UpI stopped for gas today, and found myself oddly
comforted by a reminder of the fact that some things are touchstones of
stability in our turbulent world ... gravity always works, Stephen Harper is
slightly less odious than Josef Mengele, and Windoze is pretty much useless no
matter
where
you deploy it:
 Posted at 10:45 PM Read More Fri - November 25, 2005Carpool HumourWhen I first saw this video clip a few months
ago, I thought it was the worst thing that I have ever seen. Tragic.
Upsetting. Senseless.
Now I think it is too funny for words, and watch it to cheer myself up on bad days at work. There is a distinct possibility that I am a very bad person. Posted at 12:28 PM Read More Wed - November 9, 2005Auntie Em! Auntie Em!Yeah, so there was this tornado dealie today. I
am pleased to report that the entire staff at Geek Central survived intact.
Blogging activity will resume
anon.
Whew.  Posted at 06:30 PM Read More Mon - November 7, 2005Nerds 'R UsIt isn't listed on the official
Star Trek site
yet, but you can already order the
Ultimate Star Trek
Collection if you know where to look. This behemoth will
hit the streets on November 15th, but ordering now saves you
1400 bucks
(U.S.) off the list price. Yes, for a mere
$2,499.99 you can own pretty much everything ever produced under the Trek banner
on 212 shiny new DVDs.
It's a bargain, I tell you. A BARGAIN. Posted at 10:08 AM Read More Fri - October 28, 2005Rubber Band ManThe office supply biz on the high side of the
49th is somewhat
monolithic.
Staples is pretty much it. There are a few Office Depots here and there, and
Grand & Toy continues to sort of groan along, but it is pretty much Staples
all the way. Which means that (aside from those horrid "Easy Button" spots) we
are not privy to the massive advertising war that rages in this particular
business arena on television screens south of the border. This stuff must be
big money, because the ads have reached the status of veritable mini-movies ...
these guys are pulling out all the
stops.
Which, in a probably-annoying-to-the-reader somewhat roundabout way brings us to the point: Here in the Great White North we haven't seen the Office Max "Rubberband Man" commercials, which is too bad, because they have some serious appeal. Your mileage may vary, though ... I am a complete mark for the whole thing with "teaser" ads leading up to the real deal, and I have been a closet Spinners fan for years and years. That Philadelphia soul sound just grooves. If you want to get the full effect, watch the teaser ads first - they ran for about a week in massively heavy rotation before "The Party's Over" was unleashed in all of it's 60-second glory. The "making of" short is also oddly enjoyable - mostly because they don't insult your intelligence by narrating it. We can see what is going on, thank you very much, and it is nice to see someone respect that for a change. Posted at 05:09 PM Read More Tue - October 11, 2005Wed - September 28, 2005Adventures In JournalismDon Adams' sad passing was accompanied by a bit
of an odd appearance in the local newspaper here. When I say "local newspaper",
of course, I mean "local newspaper that claims to be the largest in Canada".
You would think that the largest daily newspaper in Canada and self-proclaimed
bastion of journalistic quality would take the time to check the stuff that
appears on their front page ... but you would be thinking wrong. Check out this
front page lug:
 Now, you do not have to be some sort of television trivia lunatic to see the problem here. Hell, people I know who profess not to watch TV and were born after the show was dead and gone know that it is KAOS, not CHAOS. Worse, the wire story that appeared as an obituary in this same newspaper specifically mentioned the "evil agents of KAOS". So what is the problem? Do they not have a proofreader? A fact-checker? Someone on staff who might have watched TV at least once in their life? I mean, how hard is this supposed to be? Un-fucking-believable. Posted at 02:00 PM Read More Fri - September 9, 2005HomeThere is a new wave of online content services
popping up - companies taking the plunge and trying to bring the booming mobile
media market (the amount of money spent on cell phone ring tones and wallpaper
is Europe and Japan is
staggering)
to the desktop. They think that eventually people will be willing to pay to get
their favourite videos and songs on-demand ... the thinking is that people are
willing to pay for this content on their phones, so eventually (if all the
planets align and - one supposes - pigs start to fly) they will be trained to
pay for this content on computers
too.
Will this ever pan out? Who knows. My thinking is "no" simply because of conditioning and expectations. People have been paying for phone content from the word go. Fine. But people are also used to getting media on their desktops for free, and "free" is a concept that has a lot of inertia. Hope springs eternal, however, and the latest attempt at cracking this market is Video-C, coming to you from across the pond and offering new music in a "video magazine" format. Because they are in the U.K., these guys have a couple of things going for them that might boost them from "another failed start-up" to "somehow surviving". One, Brits are already used to paying for TV. They pay a license fee to watch the telly, and it isnt that big of a stretch to imagine them paying for on-line video. Two, Europe has a cell-phone music-n-graphics market that is already over 1000 times the size of the same market over here. People are paying for content there, albeit in a different format. So who knows? Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that, while the service will eventually be subscriber-based, at this point in time they are trying to attract eyeballs by offering a lot of their key content for free. One such item is a fabulous new single from Simple Minds called Home. This release seems to have fallen between the cracks in North America, and I am betting you haven't heard this yet, and you really should. You can check it out here in startlingly high-quality video and sound for absolutely free. Better yet, selecting the "progressive / broadband" option will boost the already yummy video quality up to near-DVD clarity. Give it a spin. It really is a nice piece of work. NOTE: This feed is Quicktime, but if you are somehow bereft of the format, you can watch in either Real or Windows Media. Obviously, though. using either of those will give you video and audio that both looks and sounds like shit. Also, if you have Quicktime Pro (or know someone that can get it for you *cough cough*) you can save the "progressive" feed as a full-quality QT file for your future viewing pleasure. Have fun. Posted at 05:28 AM Read More Tue - August 2, 2005WozThe other half of the original Apple braintrust
gets immortalized this week when the Steve Wozniak PodBrix minifig goes on sale.
Tomi is making 300 signed and numbered units available on Thursday, August 8 at
9:00pm (EDT). PodBrix.com is the place you want to be.
 Posted at 01:08 PM Read More Mon - July 4, 2005Thank you very muchSmartie Red chimes in this morning with a link to
a giant Elvis mosaic made from Post-It notes.
Time to lock those supply cupboards ...
Posted at 09:19 AM Read More Sun - June 26, 2005Sunday school specialI know it is totally childish, but this sort of
shit cracks me up.
Click on the picture if you want to make your own - and when you are done you might want to spark up Photoshop and take out the URL from your finished work for extra-realistic effect. I thought about it, but decided to leave it in for reasons pertaining to journalistic integrity. Posted at 05:39 AM Read More Fri - June 24, 2005Mon - May 16, 2005Countdown to E3 - T minus 2 and countingThe much-anticipated 2005 edition of E3 opens in
Los Angeles on Wednesday. The geek community as a whole (and the gaming
community in particular) are all awash with excitement, drooling over the
prospect of
three
next-generation consoles being shown this week. Tonight Sony and Microsoft have
dueling press conferences - Sony will give a sneak peek of the PlayStation 3,
and Microsoft will try to undo some of the damage that they brought upon
themselves with the MTV debacle.
Nintendo will not appear nor part with any secrets until tomorrow - their press bash is traditionally held on the very eve of the show. But - when the first members of the media walk towards the front steps of the convention hall tonight, there will be no doubt at all who the real star of the week will be. Link is back, and he has bad-ass written all over him. 2005 is going to be a very good year ... .  . Posted at 05:54 PM Read More Thu - April 28, 2005Firefly lives ...Firefly was an awesome television series - one
that was smart and fun and assumed that the viewer was of at least average
intelligence. So of course, it was cancelled. Fans can now officially start
rejoicing, though ... the movie version of Joss Whedon's latest series is
crawling towards the light of day, with the full trailer available on-line now.
Posted at 09:01 AM Read More Fri - April 1, 2005Wed - March 30, 2005Come to the dark side ...What does a young Lord of the Sith do when he
gets the munchies? Wonder no more! This just in from our intrepid
correspondent Zale ... M&Ms will be hitting the stores this week in a
special "Darth Mix " featuring a new colour blend (riffed
from the colours of the Mandalorian armour of the Fetts, I believe), dark
chocolate (get it?) and some SWANK packaging. The
"Shrek"
M&Ms were cool, but these are
righteous.
 Posted at 12:47 PM Read More Wed - March 2, 2005Holy Kryptonite, Batman!"Boogiewoogie" dropped us a line to point out
this truly warped collection of vintage comics covers. Two
categories - one featuring covers that will baffle you with their world-class inanity, and one that proves that
Superman is quite the dick. Have
fun.
Posted at 10:59 AM Read More Fri - February 25, 200533Deep Throat (no, not THAT Deep Throat) dropped us
a line to point out that the first episode of Battlestar Galactica is
online at the SciFi Network's web site. With DVD-style "deleted
scenes" to boot. Sadly, it is in Real Player (*cough cough low res cough*)
instead of a proper format like QuickTime, but it is better than nothing.
Enjoy.
Posted at 10:02 PM Read More Fri - January 28, 2005May the spud be with you ...Coming to stores near you, just in time for the
May release of Star Wars Episode III ... Hasbro's DARTH POTATOHEAD. No
lie.
 Posted at 01:28 PM Read More Wed - January 26, 2005Waiting for the great leap forward ...Propaganda posters have always been fascinating
on a number of levels - from examples of cultural art to illustrations of
interesting periods in history. Check out this cool collection of inspirational
and political images from the formative years of China as a communist power -
the art is cool, and the page also serves as a great basic primer as to what
went on in one of the most secretive regimes on the planet during one of their
most secretive times.
Posted at 11:26 AM Read More Sat - January 22, 2005Tempest, teapot, blah blah blahThe latest raging shitstorm to come out of
Redmond is the reaction to the on-line postings of this somewhat innocuous
screenshot / demo screen:
Supposedly, this is the first look at the new version of Windows Mobile (codename: Magneto), and it would seem to be an accurate one because letters full of legalese are flying out of Microsoft telling the owners of various news sites and blogs to cease, desist, and knock it the hell off. The burning question here ... what is the big deal? There are no ground-breaking elements on the screen, no big secrets ("Whoa! Microsoft has a Start Menu? I'll be damned!"), and if you have ever seen Windows SmartPhone you will realize that this is just a redesign to bring the two flavours of on-the-go Windows into a common look and feel. In fact, if it wasn't for all of the thinly-veiled threats from Microsoft, I would have been tempted to assume that this was a SmartPhone screen and some smartass was trying to pass it off as a real scoop on the new version of Mobile. So why all the fuss? Mystery aside, Neowin , Engadget , and MoDaCo have all received missives regarding the horrible crimes they have indulged in by posting this image. All three are respectable and above-board sites that probably do nothing more sinister than boost sales of Microsoft products in the long run by getting people interested and excited about new products. What possible upside can there be to play this game of legal brinksmanship? And is this the start of the much-feared "online libel chill" that bloggers have been quietly worrying about? Stay tuned ... Posted at 04:58 AM Read More Thu - January 6, 2005The worst album cover of all time - period.This is just wrong on SO many levels
....
 Posted at 04:14 PM Read More Sat - January 1, 2005The worst album covers of all time - a continuing series
The penultimate entry. Up next .... number 1, and quite possibly the most frightening thing you have ever seen. Stay tuned! Posted at 02:52 PM Read More Wed - December 29, 2004Mon - December 13, 2004Wed - December 8, 2004Mon - December 6, 2004Thu - December 2, 2004Tue - November 30, 2004Mon - November 29, 2004Fri - November 26, 2004Fri - November 19, 2004Wed - November 17, 2004Northern Lights DeluxeOne of the crappy things about living in an urban
sprawl is that it just doesn't get dark at night. Too many flipping Moonrays.
So most people pretty much missed out on the aurora storms on November 8 and 9.
Luckily, it still gets pretty dark in Nebraska, and this
guy has a pretty nice camera.
Posted at 07:39 PM Read More Tue - November 16, 2004Meanwhile ...Someone is selling the "miracle" sandwich on
ebay . 10 years old, partly eaten, face of the virgin mary, will
bring you big winnings at the casinos. Really. I
swear.
 Posted at 09:11 PM Read More Wed - November 10, 2004The populace speaks.Concrete proof that at least one dog is smarter
than 54 million American
voters.
 Posted at 04:43 PM Read More Start worrying now, kid.This newspaper clipping started making the rounds
as an internet attachment last
week:
 I immediately assumed it was a hoax or a doctored photo. What woman in her right mind would complain about the effect of construction noise on her unborn child while SUCKING ON A BUTT IN THE PHOTO? Worse, these sorts of shots are ALWAYS posed by the photographer, so she is actually MAKING AN EFFORT to display her baby-destroying habit. No way, right? Sadly, this one turns out to be 100% genuine. This photo, cutline, and article appeared in the September 20th edition of The Times of Roanoke, Virginia exactly as you see it here. Better yet, the furor that this bimbo touched off was so intense that The Times actually had one of their columnists write about the whole mess the following week: Mellissa Williamson came to her door smoking a cigarette Thursday morning. It was a sign that the Southeast Roanoke woman didn't know or didn't care about the furor her photograph had ignited since it appeared in The Roanoke Times on Sept. 20. The photo showed her seven months pregnant and smoking a cigarette. It accompanied a story about unpopular "traffic-calming" measures under way on Bullitt Avenue, where she lives. The caption said she worries about the effect of jackhammer noise on her unborn child. She couldn't have touched off a controversy more quickly if she'd called President Bush an Islamic extremist. Dozens of calls and e-mails came to The Roanoke Times impugning her reputation and criticizing the paper for printing the photo. At least one syndicated talk radio host mentioned it, and the picture proliferated on Web sites, with the remark like, "Yeah, the noise is what the baby needs to fear." You can read the rest of Joe Kennedy's Times article here . And yes, the woman is a selfish and clueless piece of trash. Poor kid. Posted at 02:22 PM Read More Fri - November 5, 2004 |
Quick Links
Categories
Calendar
Archives
Geek-approved!
The DS WPA Project
Penny Arcade Frag Dolls Salon Mark Cuban Cowboyz 'n Poodles Engadget FSM Gizmodo AdJab Think Geek  GeekFeed 
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category: Published On: Jan 16, 2006 10:50 PM |
||||||||||||||
