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February 16th, 2008
07:57 pm - Ludicrously Cute Game
Die Anstalt is a German Flash game that will eat a good hour or two of your time. The English translation is a little bad, but it is quite addictive and fun. ...and surprisingly good for getting me into "psychoanalysis head."
The premise: Stuffed animals are tortured by their owners as part of their day-to-day existence. The normal stuffed animal shrink has been called away for some reason to Japan. You are the guy filling in. Fix some stuffed animals.
Oh yeah. You can also buy these animals. I've been tempted.
Thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hakamadare for the link via del.icio.us.
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December 18th, 2007
09:44 am - A Spooky Yuletide
I've been sort of AWOL on this journal. Apologies. In partial reparation, I offer a choice few oddball tidbits. First off, those of you who still want to send out Christmas cards may want to take a look at some of the cards that Edward Gorey drew whilst he was still alive. A few years ago, I sent out one of his more understated cards, which was a sorrowful-looking man staring at "NOEL," which was written in the surf on the beach.
For those looking for even more speculative horror this holiday season, I recommend looking at the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's A Very Scary Solstice, which are various carols sung with alternate lyrics (such as "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men").
Somewhat less holiday-related, save that Dr. Who is still on my mind, I point you to a very real photo of Brits during WWII, which recalls a very particular ninth Doctor episode. Alternatively, those who don't want to click links to elsewhere can simply ( click behind the lj-cut )
That's it for me for now. Happy holidays!
EDIT: I forgot to also link to the significantly less-spooky but significantly more holiday-themed pictures for an ice hotel in Sweden that I found while browsing the web about a month ago. Kind of real-life meets Die Another Day sort of getaway.
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August 20th, 2007
11:27 pm - Amazing
Via Chase: Steam-powered rocket prosthetics.
That is all.
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May 15th, 2007
11:23 pm - Saudi Oil Woes?
My friend Chase pointed me to an incredibly detailed analysis of the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia. There's a lot of speculation in there, but the short version is that Ghawar is probably about 85% depleted at this stage.
It's a bit dry, but it's a fascinating read, and skimming through the comments ate up a good half hour of my time. Mind you, some of the comments are filled with gloom and doom, but it puts a new spin on the price of oil.
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03:11 pm - Something of an Update
First off, I'm not entirely dead. I've just been moving apartments. I'll be posting swan_tower and my new contact information under a custom friends lock for those I've actually met. If you don't see that post shortly after this one, feel free to comment here to be added to the filter and / or contacted.
Secondly, Jerry Falwell just died. This is quite unexpected to me, actually. I am of the opinion that he was a bigoted hypocrite who sowed more discord than he actually evangelized the teachings of Christ. That said, I hope that those who were close to him find some solace, and I hope that his death was painless. To wish him ill or revel in his death, regardless of my opinions on his politics, wouldn't be very charitable of me.
That said, Sylvester Stallone is quite alive, and he just pled guilty to drug charges in Australia. For an actor whose intelligence I have some respect for, that's just stupid.
Anyhow. I'm not dead, some news is happening, and I'll see if I can post more regularly now that we're moved. Ciao!
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April 19th, 2007
10:17 am - Magical Tomes?
Via John Joseph Adams, here's a link to Jeremy Tolbert's blog, where he is looking for names of magical texts, both real and imagined. An interesting request, I figured, and something that friends of mine might like to toy with.
jeregenest, please note that I've already pillaged at least a few titles from the Aerie library. :)
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April 17th, 2007
01:40 pm - Baseball! Pizza! Hilarity!
My friend Chase pointed me to this wonderful story of fun at Fenway yesterday. Watch the video. Really. Do it. It's worth it just for Don Orsillo cracking up as they come back from the commercial break.
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April 2nd, 2007
02:05 pm - Poetry Meme
I try to avoid posting memes, if possible, but ratmmjess noted that it's National Poetry Month, so I figured that I'd follow his lead and try to post a few poems this month that I've found particularly beautiful, inspirational, or otherwise nifty. (I'll also point to, as an aside, a seemingly controversial essay by Charles Bernstein, wherein he rails against National Poetry Month. To that end, I'll endeavor to point to examples of poetry that are not "easy" or "uplifting," strictly speaking.)
In any case, while working with poet, author, and critic Greg Beatty on a (presently somewhat stalled) series of articles which detail the Rhysling award-winners, one piece in particular spoke to me and has since become, arguably, my favorite piece of verse. It is still under copyright, though it is, for now, freely available at Strange Horizons, with the blessing of the author's wife. Moreover, like nearly all the Rhysling winners, it has been recently reprinted in The Alchemy of Stars, edited by Roger Dutcher and Mike Allen. (Or, if you wish to support the Science Fiction Poetry Association more materially, you can order directly from them.) I highly recommend this book, for the record; there is some beautiful verse there which really deserves to be more widely read.
In deference to the editors of The Alchemy of Stars and in deference to Mrs. Eng, I'll be removing the poem from this post in the not-distant future, but for now, I'll duplicate it below, for your ease and enjoyment.
( Storybooks and Treasure Maps, by Steve Eng )
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March 29th, 2007
12:53 pm - Pseudo-Update
First off, an entertaining link: Google Maps's response to how to get from Santa Cruz, CA to Santa Cruz in Spain. My favorite part is step 33. Also note that they give an estimate of travel time that is reasonable considering an average rate of speed on step 33.
In any case, life has eaten me, but I'm not dead. I'm in full-bore wedding-planning mode while still trying to work out, catch up on Strange Horizons and pack for moving across town. Perhaps I'll have some useful content here again someday.
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March 20th, 2007
10:45 pm - Hey! It's Spring!
Overall, a good day. My trainer kicked my ass repeatedly at the gym, I made a minor amount of progress on wedding preparation, swan_tower finally negotiated a next book with her editor, and I had a filling, high-quality Italian dinner. Now I attempt to be productive for an hour before I go to bed.
In celebration of all of these things, I'll point you at Big Media schadenfreude and a cool online map collection.
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December 6th, 2006
01:59 pm - Links (In Lieu of Content)
Clearing up my list o' links (and closing old tabs):- Weather-Beaten Melody, a nine and a half minute cartoon produced in Nazi Germany, but surprisingly good. Further, it was apparently subversive, which I wouldn't have picked up on, but those cool cats at Metafilter picked up on that nonetheless.
- Fimoculous, meanwhile, posted a list of the 30 best blogs you're probably not reading, from which I grabbed Corpus Obscura, which posts obituaries of not-famous people who did famous things. (Syndicated on LJ as
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) 1corpus_obscura.) - sapphohestia pointed me at the following:
- Via brisance, you can create your own snowman.
- Also, the newest History Carnival is up (and has been for a few days).
- Via jeffwik, the coolest D&D adaptation ever. No. Seriously. Ever. moonartemis76? Go read this.
OK. Enough for now.
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November 29th, 2006
04:09 am - Adieu, Google Answers
So sayeth google's official blog. It's unfortunate. I always thought that it was a nifty idea.
That said, I now try to take a nap before my next downtime-related action. *sigh*
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November 14th, 2006
12:38 pm - Wherein I Produce Meta-Content
I'm too lazy, apparently, to produce anything useful to other people at present, so instead, I'll just point to things other people on my friends list have produced of late:- that_cad pointed his readership to an amazing post on
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) refinement which seems to indicate that high fashion is thinking that Regency-era men's clothing is the way to go. I showed this to a number of people at swan_tower's Changeling game, and they swooned and asked for a link. Granted. - Speaking of which, the lovely and talented swan_tower has just completed her ten-month-and-change Changeling tabletop game, to much acclaim by the players. Those who are interested in novel game structures might find it interesting, even if you don't know swan_tower from a pine tree.
- ancientwisdom has put up a bit of his research into Robert Gates. It is, indeed, ironic that Ortega is on the rise even as Gates steps up as SecDef.
- peaseblossom noted that Absorbascon had Golden Age Wonder Woman Week last week. We are the poorer for not having read it while it was going up, but there are always the archives. ...and dear God. Wonder Woman was rather misogynist, wasn't it?
- jeffwik points to an old Donald Duck WWII propaganda piece called "Der Fuehrer's Face," which won an Oscar in '43 and features the Spike Jones and the City Slickers song of the same name, written by Oliver Wallace. The song, at least, brings back fond memories of listening to the Dr. Demento show in high school, where they'd occasionally play the old school satire by the greats like Jones and Stan Freberg.
Anyhow. Enough of other peoples' stuff. Now I'm going to get back to not producing my own things to post.
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November 8th, 2006
03:37 pm - Gods Be Good!
Not only are the political prospects of the country looking mildly positive, including Hastert stepping down from the GOP leadership since my last post, but it would appear that the major power outage that we haven't really been preparing for appropriately at work has been pushed back from next week to the week after Thanksgiving.
This is clearly a day for great celebration. Well... celebration for people other than Faith Hill at the CMAs.
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01:55 pm - Politics and Archivists
There are the obligatory things to mention. Friends of mine are justly happy about the next Speaker of the House. Similarly, Massachusetts gets its first African-American governor, who just happens to be a Harvard man. (Any of you folks happen to know which House? swan_tower and I are curious.) The key Indiana races went Democratic (including District 9, which is mine; go, Baron Hill!), Tester appears to have won Montana, and Rumsfeld is stepping down, to be replaced, apparently, by former CIA chief Robert Gates. Generally speaking, this appears to be a political shift and an interesting one, at that. Some of the concession speeches are worth watching.
I mean, this news is better than having found out that Britney Spears was divorcing Kevin Federline.
(Only tangentially related: If any of you are, like me, fond of loopy conspiracy theories, take a look at this one, which puts forward the idea that George W. Bush's grandfather was none other than Aleister Crowley.)
In any case, no. My current thoughts are on the various websites that will be going down between now and mid-January. This concern actually came to me when I saw this video yesterday. Apparently, the White House had been cropping "Mission Accomplished" from the video of the infamous speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May of 2003. ...at least the version of the video which is on the White House web site. This got me to thinking about the impermanence of items on such sites and the ways in which that is ... well ... wrong.
For instance, what if one wanted to see the White House site for, say, the very end of Clinton's term? It's not as if Bush's cronies have been keeping that site up, and while the internet archive sometimes has such things, it's not as if all of the lame-duck legislator sites will be kept for posterity. What about Senator Santorum's site? Senator Talent's? Defeated Indiana Representative Mike Sodrel's site? I don't think so.
I know too many anthropologists, librarians, political wonks, and historians to say that this information isn't important enough to save. Granted, individual candidate websites might not be the most important thing in the world, but certainly something like press releases should be archived, shouldn't they?
Of course, then we run into revision issues, as with the White House's editing of the video above. Most sites don't have the revision controls for their pages that, say, Wikipedia has (using as an example, in this case, the page for Mike Sodrel, my lame-duck Congressman). Software developers are very familiar with revision control packages, but not many other folks are. ...and I'll wager that most Webmasters are just as happy to be able to expunge old documents from their servers, particularly when it doesn't fit the image their employers want to project.
I've heard many times that the span of time we're in currently will be a black hole in history, as much of its literary and intellectual output is going to fall prey to data rot. I've mentioned this concern before, I'm sure. ...but the fact that there appears to be no good centralized archivist for this data makes me sad somehow, even as the Right stumbles and the Left cheers.
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November 7th, 2006
08:30 am - Voting
So I'm off to the polls soon. I recommend, before heading there, taking a look at how the Internet has voted for this product. It amused the hell out of me, at least. The HHG2G reference in the first column made me chortle.
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November 2nd, 2006
06:10 pm - Linkity Link Link
Being a brief collection of interesting links:- True Porn Clerk Stories: an oldie but a goodie. alidavis, an improv comedienne / actor moved to LA in the last few years, but around 2000 / 2001, she was a video clerk in Chicago, and she chronicles her adventures in addictive and provocative detail. Set aside a couple hours for this.
- Emergency Kindness: an informal network of (mostly) women who try to provide emergency contraception to those women in need.
- kitsune_zen went and put together a rundown of Indiana elections, which would have made my post superfluous. Hers, like mine, is Bloomington-centric.
- Brilliant parody by "Weird Al" Yankovic, which is actually off of his previous album, Poodle Hat. If you're at all familiar with Bob Dylan, go listen and watch.
- A list of tumblelogs. What is a tumblelog? This.
- The Perry Bible Fellowship: a raunchy but quite clever webcomic.
- Exclamation Mark: a blog which appears to be dedicated to nifty artwork found on the web. I can get behind that.
- A mathematician's beer glass if I've ever seen one.
OK. That's enough for now.
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October 24th, 2006
03:25 pm - Links
Cleaning up some links on my desktop and tabs in my browser:Enjoy!
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October 18th, 2006
06:14 pm - Cop Comedy Incoming
(Via IWatchStuff.com)
Simon Pegg and his crew are finally coming out with Hot Fuzz, and two teaser trailers are up here and here (Quicktime required).
If it's half as funny as Shaun of the Dead, I'll be happy.
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September 7th, 2006
01:46 pm - A Few Random Links
...to pass the time:
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