The Harvester of Good 'Ol Fashioned Sorrow

08 February 2010 @ 02:50 pm

So, Discovery Channel, a while back, released this, one super great and fairly nerdy commercial.

This then inspired the super great and truly nerdy XKCD to create his own version, some of which is fairly straightforward, and some of which it helps to have knowledge of the geek-o-sphere and the webcomic itself.

The relative simplicity of the art-work led to an animated adaptation.

And most recently this video, with the preeminent nerds and geeks of the moment. The parts that they narrate can sometimes make the joke a bit funnier, as the jokes are of the inside kind. With Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Bruce Schneier, Jason Kottke, Google Zurich, Hank Green, MC Frontalot, Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Mr. Toast, Miss Cellania, Team Genius, Phil Plait, Allan Amato, Maddy Gaiman, Charissa Gilreath, Belinda Casas, Chuck Martinez, Jeremy James, Joanna Gaunder, Lee Israel & Octavio Coleman Esq. of The Jejune Institute.

Tags: science, television, webcomic

Mildly Popular | Show Off

07 February 2010 @ 11:26 pm

PicDump Sunday

Image Source,Photobucket Uploader Firefox Extension

( What would you do for a Blondike Kar? )

Tags: picdump

2 OMG SUPER POPULAR | Show Off

06 February 2010 @ 12:58 pm

Nakatomi Space

Worthy of particular emphasis is Weizman's reference to a technique called "walking through walls": Furthermore, soldiers used none of the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, and none of the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. Indeed, the commander thus exhorted his troops as follows: "There is no other way of moving! If until now you were used to moving along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!"

I found this fascinating as a middling student of military history and tactics, there is always the refrain about soldiers being trained for the last war, ie our current troops being trained for Cold War tactics with stationary strong points and tanks and supersonic sub-orbital stealth fighters when most of these are highly useless currently. Since almost all of the most important battles of the 21st century have taken place in highly dense urban environments, I find this kind of reporting extremely intriguing, as it shows a sense of flexibility that armed forces of industrial nations are not known for.

John McClane, a New York cop on his Christmas vacation, moves through a Los Angeles high-rise in basically every conceivable way but passing through its doors and hallways.
McClane explores the tower—called Nakatomi Plaza—via elevator shafts and air ducts, crashing through windows from the outside-in and shooting open the locks of rooftop doorways. If there is not a corridor, he makes one; if there is not an opening, there will be soon.
What I find so interesting about Die Hard—in addition to unironically enjoying the film—is that it cinematically depicts what it means to bend space to your own particular navigational needs. This mutational exploration of architecture even supplies the building's narrative premise: the terrorists are there for no other reason than to drill through and rob the Nakatomi Corporation's electromagnetically sealed vault.

The author goes on to explore this using architecture on your own terms with a few other movies Bond and Borne as well as the Parkour movement that are all about not following the laws set down by modern architecture and urban planning.

3 OMG SUPER POPULAR | Show Off

05 February 2010 @ 11:25 am

LolCat

Tags: comic book

Current Music: Steve Earle - Marie

Show Off

04 February 2010 @ 07:52 pm

Night Market Scavenger Hunt

So a few weeks back I attended an event, The Lost Horizon Night Market. It was a pretty great concept for a happening. The party organizers rented a bunch of U-Haul trucks and in the back of each of these they had a separate concept going on, ie one was a noodle truck, one was a silent movie truck, one was a rocking chair truck and one was a hot tub truck and so on. All of these were parked in a warehouse in the wilds of the Brooklyn.

It was a pretty awesome concept and the people who organized it and participated were pretty great as well. The only real problem (which ended up being a big problem) was the bottlenecks created by the party infrastructure. I visited all of the trucks, but didn't get the full experience from many of them because you could only fit a small number of people in the back of any of them. So you had to stand around waiting or peering over people's shoulders and that was too annoying for my ADD addled self. I did participate in one activity though, a scavenger hunt, operated by a lady with a little red wagon.
( Scavenger Photo Hunt! )
So after I had completed the scavenger hunt, I returned to the Hunt Master and got my prize of a dollar. If I wanted to continue competing for another prize, I could. So, I did. All of the buses had clues and a word of a sentence stuck to them. Once I had all the words in order, I could come back and get my prize.

( Cluedo! )

Tags: new york city

Current Music: The Offspring - Half-Truism

3 OMG SUPER POPULAR | Show Off

03 February 2010 @ 06:46 pm

Picdump Wednesday