Our smiley little Willa is 62cm at 6 1/2 weeks old. This is well above the 99th percentile on the growth charts. Yes I am a tall chap, but this wee girl is way taller than I was at her age. So my question: have I unwittingly sired a dangerous 50-foot woman? At current growth rates she’ll hit 50 feet in about March 2031. Watch out world.
Everyone’s raving about Enthiran, and for good reason. This is the craziest robot fightin’ action EVAR. Mind to be blown it will be! (Thanks Mr 2Trees!)
And finally… AXE COP gets a movie! It is perfect at under 2 minutes in length. Remember, Axe Cop was written by a 5-year old boy and it is amazing.
Okay, so it’s clear this year is going to be a bit demented, yes even more than usual. Bloggery might keep on going. It does keep me sane some weeks. Linky will hopefully keep rolling on too, even though linky without the rest of the blog feels uneven. But, there are interesting things out there, and it’s just gone Friday, so.
Red Letter Media’s glorious analysis of why the Star Wars prequels failed as films has reached Revenge of the Sith. Watch it. It is a long watch, yes, but you can consider it a particularly enjoyable form of penance. (See also this lengthy (written) rebuttal to RLM’s first review – which seems to miss forest for trees, but YMMV)
Hi everyone, I’m Jenni. Since Morgue and Cal still have a baby I’m doing the Friday linky this week. I gave this a lot of thought, I mean come on. Morgue’s Friday Linky is a Big Deal. People have come to expect a certain level of awesome from the links and the responsibility of providing said links should not be taken lightly. I hope I don’t disappoint you.
A life coach authored article worth reading if you’re the type to evaluate your life as we head into a new year…why are so many people unhappy?
Meg Cabot (author of The Princess Diaries books) on The Princess Thing and how people are looking at it wrong.
Those of you who read my blog will know about this guy anyway, but I love this guy so here he is again. Mark, a gay, educated and sensitive to sexism man, reads Twilight. Hilarity ensues. He’s also done all of Harry Potter and is just starting the second book of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Jezebel has been running a rather excellent review of the best female comic creators of 2010. Check out Part one and part two.
For low effort, big impact reading try the Twitter length horror stories at Dead End Fiction.
I will abuse my linky writing power to bring your attention to this short animation done by my sister in law’s family. The narrator is my husband, Lee.
Looks like I’m meant to have another video in here, so here’s Tron: Legacy in 30 seconds.
And so concludes the Friday Linky – Jenni edition. You can check out my blog here. I hope you weren’t too bored.
[morgue adds: SO not bored! This stuff looks really cool, can’t wait to dig into it! Thanks Jenni! Go check out her blog for chat about writing, crafts, and other random things, including the always delightful Things I Love Thursday.]
The AV Club’s been running a great series, Whatever happened to Alternative Nation?, which is an account of the “alt rock”/”grunge” era from the perspective of a guy who grew up amongst it. Which is to say, he writes about my life, dude. Well written and worth a read for those who, like me, had their minds blown a bit when they first heard Smells like teen spirit in ’91. (Though I didn’t become a Nirvana fan for a few years after that.)
The washing machine itself – well. I grump about design a lot, sometimes on this blog even, and there’s a reason for that: poor design creates problems. Case in point. Poor design here is not with the washing machine itself, but with the manual. We sent for a repairman because when I tried to follow the manual’s instructions to check a filter myself, I was stymied. Here’s the instruction they give :
(full manual here)
So I pull off the service cover and I see the round thingy on the right, like in the illustration, and I look for the hose on the left. No hose. Nothing at all. Featureless washing machine casing. What the hell?
Turns out – have you figured it out yet? – the round thingy on the right *is* the hose on the left.
(I actually suspected that it might be and tried to loosen it. But it was locked in there very tight, and didn’t want to create two problems if it was something else that wasn’t meant to come undone, and the problem might not be anything to do with this filter anyway. So I figured, let the repair guy deal with it. Maybe you would have unscrewed the hose with more confidence. Fair play to you, and good luck with your future warranty claims.)
[EDIT: no, Cal informs me this is still wrong – the hose is actually around the rear of the machine. The round thingy is a separate filter. You drain the hose *then* open the round thing. Or something. THE MANUAL IS COMPLETELY WRONG. My brain cannot comprehend why this level of fail is commonplace.]
Anyway, I don’t need to tell any more of that story. Poor design is a pain in the backside. That’s it.
So, linky!
Inception – all the dream layers, unfolding in time relation to each other
I’m delighted to see, via Cat, that the Australian Museum website has a page about the Drop Bear. It’s about time this threat was given the scholarly attention it deserves.
On the IMDB, Spinal Tap is not rated out of 10, but out of a different, slightly higher number. Perfect.
Speaking of the importance of design – check out these magic wallets. They’re all very gimmicky, but’s there’s some extremely clever insights buried in these.
And speaking of D&D, how weird is it that this is a real thing: people cramming into a room to watch other people play D&D. The players are all geek celebrities, but that aside – playing D&D to an audience. We are in strange aeons now, dudes.
Did you like Anya out of Buffy? The actress, Emma Caulfield, is releasing her mockumentary Bandwagon in parts on YouTube. I love the self-sendup of LA industry types, and the Buffy cast/crew cameos. (That said, the foil character makes me uneasy.)
And finally… all of Billy Joel’s hits played at once!
Wire fans: Andre Royo plays Bubbles again in this short vid where he meets another trolley-pushing character called Bubbles (from a show called Trailer Park Boys that I’ve never even heard of before). The cognitive dissonance you experience watching this is because Royo is cleanshaven and, well, clean.
According to the agenda, I am speaking at approx 10am tomorrow at this conference. My topic will be boring. As in boring holes in the skull. Yes, I am squeezing a trepanation metaphor into a 10-minute talk about a web implementation. I must amuse myself somehow.
[*not really, see comments; oversimplified to make it look like I know all the most important people in the world, because knowing all the loveliest people in the world clearly is not enough for me]
From Chuck G: Danny MacAskill does crazy stuff on his bike and makes Scotland look like paradise.
From CJ who is also talking at the conference tomorrow, this great article on cyborgs: “But a cyborg revolution was happening the same year Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term. A hostile environment was being tamed by a newly and artificially capable people. It escaped notice and critique though, because the modified weren’t men, and then environment wasn’t space. The modified were women, and the environment was men.”
Kate Beaton linked to this blog about American book cover design, and this was the entry that blew me away. These designs are from around 1880 but look like something you’d see in the 1970s. Incredible.
Lots of people in academia will have had this circulated to them – a guy who (claims to) write papers for cheating students describes his work. (Making Light figures it’s on the level and makes some very smart comments about how this relates to privilege.) Best thing for me is that the guy’s article reads perfectly in the voice of Will Ferrell’s essay-provider character from Undeclared
Been having emails with the technicians working on my laptop. Apparently Flash 10 didn’t play nice with my graphics card. Stupid Flash 10! Various other problems are also either fixed or not fixed. (Intermittent bluescreen of death = not fixed.)
My lovely Cal found this Glee-as-horror-flick trailer, which works so well precisely because of Chris Colfer’s high-intensity portrayal of his character. You don’t need to watch the show to get the value out of this, I reckon.
Thomas Scovell writes smartly about identity, growing up, Facebook privacy, and media misrepresentation, among other things. A great essay.
Using Facebook relationship status updates to chart when during the year people break up. Chart from 2008, not many explanatory notes from the creators; presumably they would have figured out that the spike around April Fools Day is an artifact of people playing “I’m engaged!” trickeries and then ending the fake engagement. Either that or April Fools day is a high-stress day for relationships?
My laptop is in laptop hospital right now, so I’m timesharing with Cal on her laptop. I get 11pm onwards. This actually suits me pretty well. But I forgot to copy over my friday linky bookmarks folder, so here’s what I’ve cobbled together in the last 24 hrs…
Mr Ritchie shared this one – “Real in-game footage from the SNES release of Academy-Award winning motion picture ‘There Will Be Blood’, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano”
This one’s getting linked everywhere, for good reason: Charlie Stross points out some extremely weird stuff getting said in the UK House of Lords. Like, extremely, deeply weird. So weird that “I laundered money for the IRA” is a casual aside, quickly forgotten because of the rest. Read.
And finally… (first minute is the best bit, remaining minutes just bask in the awesomeness of the first minute)
