Month: April 2006

Dungeon Escape! is a “very silly and very low-budget flash tribute to the classic laserdisc games like Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace, and Super Don Quixote.” Surprisingly hard for such a low-tech game…

There’s one day left in the Firefox Flicks contest, which challenges you to:

Create a 30-second ad, in any style (live action or animated), that brings Firefox to life for the millions of Web users who have yet to discover Firefox and the better Web experience it delivers.

One ad in particular is already making the Interweb rounds, and although it’s a bit politically incorrect, it’s still pretty funny. Check out the YouTube video…

Note: I’ve removed the embedded player, as it takes too long to load and the static image is kind of ugly…

Priceheat is “A one-click Amazon price checker, a bookmarklet, a widget, price comparison 2.0.” Drag the priceheat link to your bookmarks bar and when you’re on an Amazon item page, click it to see a comparison of prices at other sites.

I know that there are many similar price comparison sites, like Froogle, MySimon, and Price Watch, but priceheat is a very easy and elegant solution when you know exactly what you want.

The YouTube video Titanic: Two The Surface mixes scenes from Titanic with a bunch of other movies. Surprisingly enough, it doesn’t suck too badly, although Celine Dion is unfortunately piped in near the end. Check out the video in the embedded player below:

Dead-Frog – A Comedy Blog reports that Rob Corddry Hates You:

In Rob Corddry’s Wednesday report on The Daily Show entitled “Racist Like Me,” he ends his report saying people might say of him that “he’s a pretty decent guy, unless of course, you’re one of these things. In which case I hate your guts.”

The complete list contains nearly 200 items:

Black, Guatemalan, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Irish, Haitian, Pakistani, Indian, African, twins, French, Estonian, Dutch, Moroccan, Unitarian, Dominican, Hungarian, Hispanic, Lebanese, Lebanese Christian, Lesbian Christian, Chinese, Latvian, Polish, Costa Rican, Penobscot Indian, Sicilian, Hmong, Black Hmong, circumsized, fatty, Tlingit, Inuit, Luxembourgian, Jerry Lewis, Ecuadorian, TiVo list pauser, Hawaiian, NPR Listener, Turkish, Japanese, Buddhist, Sue Grafton, Greek Orthodox, Amish, Belgian, Mohawk Indian, Hindu, Mary Kate & Ashley, Puerto Rican, gay, bisexual, lesbian, bi-curious, college lesbian, Sunni, Seriously stop pausing this, What do you think this is Lost?, 4 8 15 16 23 42, PT Cruiser owner, Nepalese, Boy Scout Troop 19, Canadian, Hawken School Class of ‘89, Colombian, from either Dakota, Stephen Colbert, Scientologist, Hungarian, elderly, Mahjong enthusiast, Hoosier, Pig Latino, Ephesian, Philippian, Corinthian, Quebecois, Welsh, Highlander, Narnian, Jedi, Australian, Malaysian, Danish, Eritrean, Mormon, Greek Orthodox, Korean (North), Korean (South), Newfoundlander, terrier, Navy SEAL, Jewish (Reform), butch bottom, pre-op transexual, post-op transexual, hermaphrodite, metalhead, Michigander, Michiganian, Kool-Aid Guy, Jewish (Conservative), ambidextrous, encephalitic, microcephalic, homodontic, omnivorous, marsupial, Jewish (Orthodox), carnivorous, vegan, Jim Belushi, size queen, chiropractor, Jewish (For Jesus), red-headed, asthmatic, spastic, adopted, Cablinasian, ectomorphic, hemophiliac, Serbian, Croatian, Kurdish, Pacific, slander, Aleut, Albino, Texan, toddler, Seventh-Day Adventist, Samoan, diabetic, Zoroastrian, Swiss, Zambian, Flemish, Corsican, South African (except the Whites), someone who only gets their news from The Daily Show, Hutu, Tutsi, Kazakhstani, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Moravian, Aborigine, Oaxacan, Lakota Indian, Sioux, English, Austrian, Malaysian, Mennonite, Carny, Bolivian, Micronesian, Puerto-Rican, Cuban, Canadian, Guyanan, Guyanan (French), Tanzanian, Portuguese, Toll booth worker, Jordanian, Peruvian, Israeli, Arab Israeli, Mayan, NASCAR Dad, Maoist, Soccer Mom, Finnish, Druid, Persian, Comp Lit major, Iranian, Honduran, Deadsiluap, listpauser@yahoo.com, Star Bellied Snitches, Swazilandian, Norwegian, drifter, Basque, Paraguayan, Tongan, Albanian, Libyan, Greek, Azerbaijani, Kashmiri

Woo hoo, I made the list!

Hilarious, as usual. If you didn’t catch the video link earlier, check it out here (embedded Windows Media Video, looks like the list at the end got cut off 🙁 )…

Google and Sony Pictures are collaborating on The Da Vinci Code Quest:

Beginning on April 17th you will embark on a quest that requires skill, intellect, and perseverance. For 24 days, you will encounter unique challenges. These daily puzzles will pull you deeper into the world of The Da Vinci Code.

As Google Blogoscoped points out, the “quest” is available as a Google Personalized Homepage module. Although it sounds a little cheesy, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt for now and see what it’s like next week…

The Kentucky Derby will now feature a $1,000 “ultimate” mint julep:

The sweet cocktail will be made with one of the state’s finest bourbons and served in a gold-plated cup with a silver straw to the first 50 people willing to put down the cash at the May 6 race.

Mint from Morocco, ice from the Arctic Circle and sugar from the South Pacific will put this mint julep in a class of its own, the distillery selling the drink said.

This is almost as asinine as Millionaires24.com e-mail, which I’m still not sure is for real…

Google Calendar went live yesterday; more information at the overview page.

I’ve been using Rainlendar as a calendar application and am pretty happy with it. However, I still haven’t been able to find anything that synchronizes all of my devices and software. Some day…

By the way, I also came across Simply Google, which collects all of Google’s offerings on one page, making it easy to take advantage of all of its search features and applications.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t yet watched last Sunday’s episode of The West Wing, then you may want to read no further.

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to me, but apparently the results of the election in last Sunday’s West Wing episode were not as writers had originally planned:

Lawrence O’Donnell, an executive producer of the show, said he and his fellow writers had declared Santos the winner only after the death, in mid-December, of John Spencer, who portrayed Santos’s running mate, Leo McGarry. At the time of Mr. Spencer’s death, the plot for last night’s episode had been set: the election was to be won by Alan Alda’s Arnold Vinick, a maverick Republican (modeled a bit on Senator John McCain), whom many Democrats (including the Democrats who write the show) could learn to love.

But after Mr. Spencer died, Mr. O’Donnell said in a recent interview, he and his colleagues began to confront a creative dilemma: would viewers be saddened to see Mr. Smits’s character lose both his running mate and the election? The writers decided that such an outcome would prove too lopsided, in terms of taxing viewers’ emotions, so a script with the new, bittersweet ending — including the election-night death of Mr. Spencer’s character — was undertaken by John Wells, executive producer of The West Wing and E.R.

I was sad to hear of John Spencer’s death, but I’m torn about the writers’ decision to change the storyline so dramatically. I suppose it was unavoidable, but I think I tend to side with the Airbag Industries post where I found this article, which contends that this was too formulaic an outcome. Now if they go and somehow make Josh Vice President, then the show will truly have Jumped The Shark, albeit just before its cancellation…

Dr. David Holmes, a psychology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in England, has come up with a mathematical equation that “adds up to the perfect posterior.”

The magical figures are (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V. Though the equation looks rather complicated, it is, according to the scientist, simple.

It assesses shape, bounce, firmness and symmetry – all factors that add up to the bottom line.

S is the overall shape or droopiness of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.

V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures the skin texture and presence of cellulite.

That’s all well and good, but without some frame of reference, a numerical value doesn’t have much meaning. To that end, Dr. Holmes offers some examples:

Kylie Minogue, whose celebrated bottom relaunched her career with the help of a pair of hotpants, would almost certainly score a perfect 80.

“Kylie would score amazingly well on sphericality and symmetry. Her bottom is pretty much perfect in these areas, more so than the likes of Charlotte Church or Jennifer Lopez, who have more curvy posteriors,” he said.

OK, I can now wholeheartedly endorse this formula (Kylie Minogue is teh hawt!). 😉