You can view what Netflix recommended to me in all its pretentious glory. “Mind-bending” means so many things to so many people, I guess. What you can barely see at the top of the photo brings a facepalm: “Like: Step Up 3″
I wonder how many players get the Shakespearean reference at the bottom of their screen.
The general readership of this bloggh can be broken down into:
1 – People who like Star Wars.
2 – People who want pictures of grandkids.
I’m hoping there’s a third category:
3 – People who are awesome at Excel.
Here’s the dilemma:
Our school secretary has a major Excel sheet of each kid that lost materials and did not replace them by the end of the school year. We have a mail merge letter created to send to these families. The issue I’m running into is that Aaron Aronson is on line 1 of Excel owing a Math textbook and then Aaron Aronson, same kid, is on line 2 of Excel owing a Social Studies textbook.
As it is, the mail merge makes one billing letter/statement for the Math textbook and then another letter for the Social Studies textbook. We want the two letters to be one. The secretary is preparing to do an insane copy and paste job. I’m looking to be like Tron and warp into the grid and yell, “I FIGHT FOR THE USERS!”
Have you seen the article about Nazi scientists training dogs to talk? One apparently said, “Hungry! Give me cakes!” It’s sad that, when I get home from work, I’m on the same mental level as a Nazi dog.
Don’t be surprised when we start seeing the Gorilla Grodd threat make it to the front page like it deserves. We can’t rest in our victory over Red Skull. It’s not like we have an unending supply of heroes to thaw out and guys in red spandex have as many identity crises as guys with green rings.
He just can’t quite get up enough motorcross motivation now that he’s heard acid is eating the lining of his stomach.
Days ago I had turned on this mask’s distortion mic. Seconds ago I was vacuuming when it beeped out of standby (a sound very similar to a police siren starting up) and started to cycle back at me a distorted vacuum growl.
Yep. I jumped.
“Can you play this PowerPoint CD on your DVD system? I need it in five minutes.”
The cords! The cords!
Did you see the accusations from Google that Microsoft is using data from Google searches to improve Bing? David Pogue has a great article about the Bing Sting.
Basically, when users type a Google search into Internet Explorer, Explorer records which ones you click on (if you have opted-in to send your data for higher quality products) and feeds that data to Bing to improve results. Google employees spent two weeks typing in nonsense words like “hiybbprqag” and deliberately clicking on results inside Explorer to skew Bing’s results. Here’s the defense from Microsoft where they explain clickstream stuff.
What I don’t get is why Google doesn’t just yell, “Gaqrpbbyih” and send the troublesome imp back to the 5th dimension.
All I know is that the Babelfish has kept AltaVista going. It’s still there! Oh, nostalgia. You remember web searches before Google?
The Steelers are going to win the Super Bowl. Just ask Madden 2011.
I’m considering a CoverIt Live post that day. Any takers?
Madden’s done a decent job (the software, not the yelling guy) for the last 6 out of 7 Super Bowl predictions it has made. It’s like how Watson beat Ken Jennings. The guy running the project said that Watson was more like the computer from Star Trek than HAL-9000.
I submit for the jury V’ger, Nomad, and M5. The crew of the IKS Amar doesn’t share your optimism. Why’s that? They’re dead, you pointy-eared monster!
Let us not forget our own entanglements with the BlogghBot 3000.
What’s funny is IBM (makers of Watson) was the inspiration for the name HAL. (Shift the letters down a value.)
I’d like to rent Kennedy Space Center to work on my Firefly transport. NASA hasn’t set a price yet, but it can’t be that much, right?
Because if this is what they do to Street Fighter, I’m not having it.
And…
Thank you, Bastien Vives. Now I can’t sleep.
…
Eek!
Dead Space 2 is coming out and the design team has released footage from a focus group of older moms watching footage from the game with the specific purpose of disturbing them.
“Your mom’s gonna hate it” is the tagline. Somehow that sounds more like angsty pre-teen and less like an intelligent gaming experience.
I guess both my kid and I are at a different stage. We’ve spent the day watching Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century and playing ilomilo.
ilomilo’s whole focus is to reunite two friends so they can have tea. (Not being sarcastic.)
Sherlock Holmes takes place, as you guessed, in the 22nd century and is what happened after Holmes fell into Reichenbach Falls. All of the stories are based on the short stories of Doyle, but with a sci-fi spin (sound familiar?) The East India Trading Company is now a lunar colony and Lestrade’s great-great-granddaughter is New London’s best inspector. (Watson? He’s some kinda cyborg. He wears a trenchcoat to not draw attention to his mechanical soul.)
Only four episodes are on Netflix. Here’s a sample, though:
Very few news sources will tell you that the people of Sudan voted this week to split the country in two. It’s big news that will hopefully lead to peace after many years of genocide. A vocal minority in North Sudan have threatened to step up a cleansing, but hopefully that doesn’t happen. Why is it always countries in the north, like North Korea, the North Vietnamese, and North Carolina?
What our news sources are going to focus on is how Marvel is designing mascots for the NHL (like they did for the NBA).
Looking at the photo, doesn’t it seem like Cobra Commander plays for Montreal?
“Bwaaaaahhhh!…Bwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!” e mundial.
We’re hanging out with two excellent world travelers today from Brazil and I am digging Portuguese. It shares similarities with Spanish, but has some cool slide things going on. Last night we had a deep conversation (not sarcastic) and it was boa to be able to dust off some of the linguistics parts of my brain.
The translation app on my friend’s iPad definitely helped. I felt like a stenographer at the United Nations.
Something that we found, still connected to the brain, is a great parody of this analysis of the Inception soundtrack:
MIND-BLOWING!
Coming to Facebook early next year: The Ministry of Silly Games.
Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, who have done some pretty funny games since their big Python heyday, are helping turn their sketches into a Facebook game.
No reports yet if your Dead Parrot has wandered into a neighboring farm, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw “Booyor needs four more shrubbery to complete a Trojan Rabbit” notices.
I think I share my father’s distaste for change.
Let’s get something straight: I am extremely thankful for the new copy of Office for Mac. I know that I am old because I am really excited about a word processor.
I get that the new Office does everything in ribbons instead of toolbars. I can follow the rationale and appreciate it.
But what’s up with the icons in my dock?
They’re ribbons. I get it. They just look…different. Shockingly so. I have yet to open Word yet (checking for updates and all that), but I trust that it will be shockingly different.
But what’s up with the Excel icon? Is it two greater than/less thans performing Cirque du Soleil? If only I knew someone who worked at Microsoft that I could ask…
The moon
Beacon for lovers. Setting for weird Georges Melies films. Reminder of Chairface Chippendale’s far-reaching criminal influence.
In 1962, JFK said that we choose the moon (remember the cool site his library set up?):
George W. Bush had said that he wanted NASA to focus on getting us back to the moon. While a lunar base would be cool, especially as a construction yard (although would we want more space junk?), it’s a place we’ve already been.
Obama spent Columbus Day signing his space vision into law. We’re going to have a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in 2030. Those dates don’t feel like they have the same sense of urgency as the Space Race. We’re not afraid of a Sputnik fleet brainwashing our teenage girls, only to be saved by rock and roll, anytime soon.
What works is providing a challenge for NASA. Now they have to hit a moving target.
What? You say the moon orbits around the Earth, which in turn orbits around the sun? Don’t tell the Internet commenters that. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that trolls hate science.
“Don’t burden me with your Kepler ellipticals, boy!”
The real benefit of the program is that there are some vocal experts on landing on asteroids. Steve Buscemi is already putting together his Aerosmith mix tape in anticipation of being selected. The asteroid program is said to rely heavily on commercial help. Richard Branson is wringing his hands in Burnsian delight.
Which one’s the crazy one?
If you want to fund the program, sell advertising space on the module. Send the GEICO gecko up. Better yet, to gather the most news time, put Kim Kardashian up there with The Situation, Nancy Pelosi, and Glenn Beck.
The only danger would be if they could work out their differences, populating an asteroid with their own twisted culture. Then we would definitely need the nuclear option.
The big question is what will happen when the next administration takes over. Will the next president scrap Obama’s plan like he did to Bush’s Constellation project?
The funny thing is that I’m so immersed in my alternate history right now (27,000 words!), I keep thinking Woodrow Wilson wins the next election.
And now back to my alternate history.
I decided to try out the special code found inside my GoGurt box (yes, I have the same diet as elementary school kids) and I found a playlist generator in the same mindset as Pandora:
Power. Speed. Energy. All factors that I consider in my music selection.
I also consider how cool I am on a spectrum of Chilled to Frozen. I usually am the median Super Cool.
The GoGurt music generator said that my best fit is the Nickelodeon iCarly version of Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls”.
An interesting change in lyrics: instead of “suicidal”, Sean is “in denial”. It’s like when Moe Syzlak wrote a better version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give it Away”.
I haven’t redeemed the code yet. I’m going to see if my wife wants Hannah Montana’s “Hoedown Throwdown”.