Extra88

This is a pretty funny Slashdot comment but if you've never played a Real-Time Strategy game (like Warcraft), maybe not.

Excerpt:

Computer: UN Resolution... building....

Gamer (chatting): We are saddened that the motion to maintain our steel tarrifs has been blocked in its current form. You must understand that while we love free trade, we must protect the rights and conditions of our workers and yours from a race to the bottom. Would you consider reconvening in about a weeks time at my private retreat for further multilateral talks?

This list delivers some pretty funny stuff but I thought this headline was particularly choice.

D I T H E R A T I see the digerati dither, daily

HIDE THE SALAM

"Salam, if you're reading this, you've developed an awfully high profile lately. You might want to drop out of sight for a while."

Blogger Glenn Reynolds, clearly threatened by the idea that someone like Salam Pax, an Iraqi blogger apparently posting from Baghdad, might be attracting more traffic than him, Instapundit.com, 25 March 2003

http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008465.php

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Ditherati appears daily on weekdays. An archive is online at http://www.ditherati.net/archive/

Quotes of note? Send 'em to <quote@ditherati.net>.
Want to advertise in Ditherati? Write to <sponsor@ditherati.net>.

Not all are funny. You get new names every time you click the link.

Here's a sample:

5 Randomly Generated American Military Operation Names

1. Operation Strong Monster
2. Operation Ready-for-CNN Beaver
3. Operation Destructive Privet Bush
4. Operation Don't Piss off the Imperialism
5. Operation Bloodthirsty Republican Administration

The Iraqometer provides all the basic statistics of the war in one place. Numbers of casualties, surrenders, burning wells, bombs dropped, they're all here in a single, eye-pleasing (but ironic) display.

You can't quite call this an April Fool's joke because I don't think it fooled anybody but it's pretty funny.

ABC - The Reality Network

My favorite "new show" is The CAT .

Who is... THE CAT?
From the producers of The Mole comes a new challenge. Eight contestants, working together for a million dollar prize. But one of them is secretly.. THE CAT!"

The latest animated short set in the world of The Matrix is now available.

If you're off-campus, you'll probably want to just view/download it from their web site but if you're on-campus you'll probably get it faster from my machine.

Detective Story

On campus, click "detect_640_dl.mov"

This caught my eye A) because it mentions Taichung (where my brother and his wife are) and B) has a picture of a cat wearing a "surgical mask." Awwww. Everything's actually ok in Taichung, right guys?

I'm not sure how fast the SARS bug is spreading, but the meme's pretty infectious

April Winchell: Multimedia

This is a great site, this page has a bunch of MP3's of the most horrible, wacky and funny audio ever recorded, most of it was at one time called "music." Bad renditions of songs, along the lines of William Shatner's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, dominate but there are also TV show outtakes, "original" songs, and various kinds of spoken word pieces.

As you can imagine, I got this link from the April Winchell site.
Bizarre Record Covers

Here are just half of the categories!

BoingBoing pointed me to this Reuters story. Click on the story's picture to see a bigger version.

I believe these are photos from Kevin's next workplace ;-) I bet the all-Lego construction makes running conduit a snap!

From Wired:

Curious about the colon? Wondering about colorectal cancer prevention, early detection and treatment? You're in luck! As part of the National Cancer Education tour, a giant colon replica will be traveling to 20 cities in the United States from February 2003 to November 2003. The "Colossal Colon," a 40-foot-long, 4-foot-high replica, was modeled after a real colon taken from colonoscopy film footage.

I was browsing around the site of a usability wonk and came across his assessment of Band-Aid Liquid Bandage. Usability is cool and so is idea of liquid bandages so article was right up my alley. The short version is the current experience of using a liquid bandage leaves much to be desired but it does have its advantages.

Instead of the U.S. military's Most Wanted Iraqi's cards, these are cards showing missing historical treasures. I think it's a good idea to highlight what a loss to humanity the looting of Iraq's museums. I also think it's a good idea to "de-criminalize" the looters and to offer rewards for the treasures, no questions asked. It's our best chance of getting some of them back. It's not like we need to "send a message" to would-be looters so when the U.S. overthrows, their government, they know they'll be hunted down.

Here are a few Flash movies featuring a dour Swedish playwright and a happy little baloon. Enjoy.

August Strindberg & Helium

Here's a funny clip from The Daily Show pitting President Bush against Candidate Bush. Requires RealPlayer.

I feel bad for this kid, but not enough to not post this link. Make sure to watch the original and the one with added visual and audio effects. Seriously, I'm sure we've all done equally dorky things in private but damn, don't leave evidence of it laying around!

William Gibson was right when commented on linking to this story, "Nobody, but nobody does cults like the Japanese." Members of a cult named "Panawave Laboratory" believe, amongst other things, that humanity will be destroyed May 15th by massive earthquakes. They also think saving Tama-chan, Japan's "celebrity seal" will save humanity. Saving Tama-chan from what, I'm not sure, but there is a separate story about Tama-chan getting hooked in the eye by a fishing line. Tama-chan has more than a passing resemblance to a number of anime characters which I think better explains the characters than Tama-chan's celebrity status.

Gibson tried to link directly to a story but appears Mainichi Daily News uses some kind of dynamically generated URLs so his link didn't work. Currently there a couple of stories on their front page, including a nice photo essay layout, but it appears you can use their search box to look for "panawave" and have good results.

Part 2 of "The Second Renaissance" (that sounds funny) is out now. If you're on-campus, you might want to download from here but otherwise, AOL has so much bandwidth, you're probably better off going to the first link. Plus the campus link is straight to the large version and the official site lets you pick the size you want.

There was recently a story about a little bit of web page code which can crash Internet Explorer for Windows. Today I came across a bit of code which can crash Mozilla on multiple platforms. I thought, "hey, combine the two and you've got one super-crasher web page!" Clicking this link will crash either browser. If you don't have an unaffected browser, here's the code.

<html>
<form>
<input type crash-ie>
</form>
<fieldset style="position:fixed;">
<legend>Crash Moz</legend>
</fieldset>
</html>

[Damn, I need more categories or something.]

Someone mentioned this on Slashdot so I went to see if it was true. You can copy MP3s directly from one Nomad Jukebox 3 (or Nomad Zen) to another over FireWire. That's pretty cool. I know the FireWire spec was written to support device-to-device communications but you so rarely see it used. It does mention, however, that it won't transfer DRM'd WMA files. The Slashdot comment was in response to someone desiring iPod-to-iPod transfers and presumably if Apple made such a thing, they would have similar restrictions on DRM'd files.

These are so freaking cool. NASA is launching 2 Mars expeditions this summer and NASA missions always have patches so they got Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian! Unfortunately I don't think NASA merchandises their mission logos so only those working on the mission teams will have Daffy or Marvin swag.

I guess this wasn't created for anything other than to show how awesome this company's CG-fu is. It depicts a humanoid robot peacekeeper/cop in action in a "developing" nation.

Tetra

local link

This Slashdot Zombie flash animation is great. I think I mentioned this to some people before but I was pissed because I couldn't find it again. I rediscovered it because it got an honorable mention as a Slashdot t-shirt design (it's not that animated.)

Reversal of Fortune is on right now and we were wondering whether Sunny Von Bulow was still alive. Google turned up a great site DeadOrAliveInfo.com.

I was 'blog browsing and came across a post about London's Angle-Grinder Man. Angle-Grinder Man isn't much of a superhero but he reminded the blogger of other "single-issue" heros including Super Barrio! While most people could come to blows over who is the greatest masked Mexican wrestler, everyone can root for Super Barrio!

I had forgotten about this but it popped up again on BoingBoing. I know a lot of people think the octodog looks gross but I like it. I think food should come in more shapes, including cephalopods (yes, I had to spell check that), as long as the food isn't an actual cephalopod. Ick.

Man, I wish I had seen these a week or so ago. Homestar Runner pumpkin stencils.

I've never purchased anything from Computer Geeks Discount Outlet but I've seen the site a few times. I was just looking at it and a number of things struck me as humorous. On the front page there's a PC case with a handle on top. The copy says, "Why didn't anyone think of this before?" Yeah, I can't imagine. Then there's the Gift Guide which includes sentimental favorites like "2-Foot Round Floppy Disc Drive Cable." Also on the Gift Guide is the "Red and Blue Flashing Adjustable Ring" which looks like a fun little thing but the funny part is in product details. Product Requirements: Finger. I suppose it is to be expected from a site that uses a propeller beanie as it's icon.

Bruce Sterling and Cory Doctorow both crack me up. Saw this on BoingBoing today:

"One of my plane-trip books for tomorrow is the bound manuscript for Bruce Sterling's new technothriller (Me: 'What's a technothriller?' Bruce: 'It's like a science fiction novel, only it's got the President in it')..."

(Happy New Year)

Doctors removed a 175-pound tumor, almost double her body weight, in Romania. That's not even a close to being a record breaker but this quote from a doctor should get some kind of award.

"'She is very well, the lack of the tumor really suits her,' Ion Lascar, head of the plastic surgery department of Floreasca Hospital in Bucharest, told reporters on Wednesday."

When they find a woman whose tumor does suit her, watch out Cindy Crawford!

I hope you're not sick of the super-infectious "Hey Ya" by OutKast because this is a beaut.

A couple of fellows made a music video for the song using nothing but clips from A Charlie Brown Christmas

Just your run-of-the-mill annoying person vengance fantasy but it's still funny.

This is a zombie variation of the classic computer game of Life. Pretty entertaining and it reminded me of an entertaining book I leafed through while at B&N, The Zombie Survival Guide : Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

It looks simple, just tilt the bottle enough so you can see inside the yellow cap. Of course I can't try it because my local grocery store and Kwik-E-Mart still don't have any! Don't mistake the yellow NFL caps for iTunes caps!

This is really cool and gross; it's a cake made to look like guts. Actually it's many cakes, one for each organ, and each oozes a different colored & flavored sauce. The ribs are white chocolate!

The Electric Company Digital Archive has a whole bunch of mp3s and QuickTime movies from this wonderful children's show. I think I need to add "HEY YOU GUYS!!!" to the shuffle in my iTunes library.

Khaaan!

requires Flash

From a Reuters story:
"Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewelry called "JewelEye" in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam."

Yes, there's a photo with the story but I'm too lazy to copy it here. I'm generally not in favor of cosmetic body mods but this is a whole new category of wrongness.

Someone mentioned this on Slashdot so I found the "source."

<Geno> Dude...
<Geno> I was wearing my All Your Base shirt...and someone pointed out the craziest thing
<Geno> "Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb", when read Backwards, is "Bomb the US (united states) Up Set (upset) Somebody"


For those who don't know, here's the "official" All Your Base... site. But if you don't already know, it probably won't help.

This is pretty funny, they're cartoons inspired by the subject lines from spam mesages.

p.s. Happy 100th entry!
p.p.s. Well that's pretty lame, leaving the URL out and on my 100th entry too!

This is super-nerdy, super-cool. Pongmechanik is Pong "reimagined" with the paddles and ball moved around by strings on pulleys and controlled not by a modern computer (transistors, microprocessors) but by a series of telephone relays manufactured in 1958! It even has sound effects, one wooden block is tapped when the ball "hits" the wall and another is tapped when it hits a paddle.

Watch the video, it's really well done. I found the low-bandwidth version to be "good enough" but if the site is currently Slashdotted, check the comments from the Slashdot's story about it for mirrored sites.

For some reason a number of action figures and "collectibles" showed up in my Amazon.com recommendations (btw, I appreciate the recommendations feature, I think it does a pretty decent job, especially considering I'm a relatively infrequent shopper) today. "The Bride" from Kill Bill, yeah okay but these beauties really caught me off guard. It's the Pulp Fiction Geoms Set: The Gimp, including Butch, Zed, The Gimp, and Marsellus. There's a larger picture the more clearly shows their features including the bloodied visages of Butch and Marcellus. Yes, it's called "The Gimp" set because there are 3 other sets.

I'm not really complaining because some of it is kinda cool but this collectibles stuff is getting out of hand. This company (or Association, whatever), NECA, has figures and other items based mostly on movies and comics but also from other elements of pop culture. They have The Christmas Story figures and bobbleheads, which are stupid, but also a 40" Leg Lamp, which is awesome! Anyone would be proud to have this in their home, I mean, it's a major award!

Someone did a nifty job of stringing together the keywords & phrases from the GOP convention (things like "9/11" and "global terrorism"). I'd already seen this via an email forward before it showed up on BoingBoing.

Actually my real reason for this post is to see if MT still has a problem with posts containing links to .mov files.

Link to QT movie

I guess it works.

It's not as good as "The Exorcist in 30 seconds by bunnies" but this is still pretty good. And seasonal, to boot!

A short tale of a man's battle with roommates over the purchase of a pizza stone.

"I was regaled with stories of the pizza making, blissful world we could be living in if we only had that stone."

McSweeney's, fine purveyors of the funny, regularly have Lists. Today, I read Popular Songs Renamed Along the Lines of the Cattlemen's Beef Board Ad Campaign "Beef, It's What's for Dinner." from which the title of this entry was derived.

I'm referring to English Football (i.e. "soccer"), not American Football. I have a few of CNN's RSS feeds in my feedreader and I've noticed that the Recent list frequently includes stories about events in the English Football world. Why is Mourinho could face investigation supposed to mean something to me?

Heh, the front page has a graphic that reads "GET YOUR WEATHER ON CNN.COM" referring to their news coverage of weather. I read it differently, as "GET YOUR WEATHER ON" CNN.COM, like they're trying to be "down" with the slang. In the split second before I realized my error, I wondered what it could mean. "Pay attention to the weather?" "To go outside," as in "I gots ta roll an' get my weather on, yo?"

Yes, I'm a silly-billy.

BoingBoing links to an article about how the curved shininess of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. is a menace to local neighbors and can quickly sunburn passersby. Clearly this was just a test to demonstrate Gehry's ability to harness the awesome power of the sun.

The Matrix and Terminator movies have already taught us that blotting out the sun will only make matters worse so what are we to do? My answer: leave college-aged boys in charge of keeping the building surface clean. Within a month it'll be as dull as a Sean Penn Oscar presentation.

While it's still the case that The Mozilla Foundation is not going to be producing future versions of the Mozilla Application Suite (instead focusing on the functions as individual applications), they will be providing support to community-driven development of the Suite.

There's a lot of info flying around about Google's new web accelerator app, how it works and its affects. This article on
Google Web Accelerator's affect on web applications is particularly interesting. Basically since the accelerator will cause the Google proxy to prefetch not only images and embedded objects but also links, it may cause some actions being taken without you realizing it. Say you have a "Delete All Entries" link on your blog management web page. If you're using the Web Accelerator when visiting that page, Google may try to follow that link and therefore perform the action.

The comments on the article indicate that the "best practice" in web design is to use the PUT method rather than GET for any requests that could alter (including deletion) the content of the server. That's pretty straightforward when you're just doing normal <form method="put"> tags but I'm not familiar enough with other action request methods to know how it's done with them.

I found out from a blog about one crazy poll on cnn.com:

Who would you rather have overseeing operations at U.S. ports?

     Arab-based ports company

     U.S.-based mafia

I'm accustomed to their poll questions having limited, poorly phrased choices where choosing either feels like a lie but this is takes the cake. The punchline? Voters pick the mafia almost 2-to-1! I didn't think the Dubai ports deal should get a rubber stamp but, hello? Mafia?

The poll was associated with a story about organized crime connections with the Longshoremen's union. Mafia on the waterfront? I never heard such a thing! What's next, wiseguys involved in garbage collection? Go on, pull the other one.