Month: January 2003

An Alaska woman was shocked to receive part of her dead father’s leg in the mail instead of the gourmet “LobsterGram” she was expecting.

I love The Onion…

Not surprisingly, Asian bootleg DVDs of The Two Towers are already appearing in many markets. Take a look at this webpage that archives the horribly mangled “Engrish” subtitles in the movie. Screen captures of the worst offenders epitomize the substandard translation prevalent in these kinds of bootlegs and are damn funny in some cases…

The Times Online reports that “German youths have taken up a dangerous new pastime: firing potatoes as fast as a rocket from ‘bazookas’ made from drainage pipes.” The Kartoffelkanone are in some cases powered by the ignition of hair spray, and “at a range of 200 metres they could split a man’s head at 15 metres and penetrate a wooden wall at 90 metres.” And here I thought only American Rednecks armed with pumpkin launchers delved into the ballistics of produce…

Shockwave.com presents an extremely addictive game: BLiX.

I can see it now – Cool Runnings meets Pollock with a touch of The Miracle Worker. That’s how I’ll pitch a movie that tells the compelling story of a Kenyan team competing in the “Olympics of snow-sculpting” in Quebec City, Canada despite never having seen snow. I can see it now, they can score “Chariots of Fire” to the final chiseling of the snowy rhino horn, while in the background Rip Torn, playing the grizzled, down-on-his-luck snow-sculpting veteran that mentors the underdog Kenyans, laughs maniacally as the villainous Finnish team falls through the ice as a final insult to their sneering cockiness. It practically writes itself!

In case you’re wondering, it’s frowned upon to let your seven-year-old drive the Lexus home during rush hour. You live, you learn…

Someone’s in trouble…

I finally found a review on DVD X Copy, an application that purports to be able to “back up & copy DVD movies,” the first time I’ve seen any software package make that claim. Apparently, it works as advertised, which surprised me a little. However, 321 Studios is already being sued by the MPAA, which was the first thought that came into my mind when I read about this.

ThinkGeek is selling the software separately and as part of a DVD burner bundle. I’m thinking of jumping on this, although if the company goes under, development may never progress and outstanding bugs may never get fixed. It is pretty expensive, $99 at most places, but DVD media is getting cheaper and it would pay for itself pretty quickly once I start “backing up” movies. So far the recording process only works on one layer at a time, meaning that multiple layer DVDs need to be spread onto more than one disc, so that is a bit of a pain. I imagine that newer generations of the software and DVD-Recordable drives will remedy this, though. Any thoughts or comments?

Kottke.com has a great post on stereographic photography, including the above do-it-yourself example with Lisa and Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons. The post includes a larger version of this image (which I had trouble getting to work), some more examples he made, and some interesting links to galleries and information on stereo photography.