Pikamac

1kBWC: Now Factually Accurate

2008-09-01T22:33:00.003-05:00

Thanks to the efforts of Ali, Molly and Seth the no-frills text list on the Blank White Cards page now has one thousand and sixteen cards listed (though the randomizer still seems a bit wonky). The inscrutable-to-non-blank-white-cards-players card shown above is perhaps the lucky thousandth card.

And really, why wouldn't it be?

Next benchmark: Ten Thousand Blank White Cards

List-Making Chain-Smoker: Follow-up

2008-08-11T22:43:00.002-05:00

I stopped my friend's office today to chat with him and he was on the phone when he let me in. His phone conversation continued on and I passed several minutes admiring the many nice things in his office. Eventually he said goodbye, hung up and apologized to me:

"Sorry, I couldn't cut that short... it was Rachel Corrie's father"

Followers of this blog will recall the microcontroversy surrounding my March 2006 post about Billy Bragg's reworking of a Dylan song to discuss Ms. Corrie's life and death. This blog doesn't have great circulation. Comments by those who don't know my middle name are few and far between but some random internet jackass somehow sought me out -- such was the keyword power of Rachel Corrie's name.

Back to my friend, his theater company is staging a production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on Rachel's diaries. Craig and Cindy Corrie may be in attendance at one of the shows and speak about their experiences and their daughter. Of course, controversy looms, even in our local theater scene. Picketers will not be unexpected.

Theatre 13's My Name is Rachel Corrie opens September 11th in Boulder, Colorado.

Just a Fancy Way to Say "Soybean"*

2008-07-27T20:41:00.001-05:00

edamame, originally uploaded by delilahismydog.

I am really, really excited about eating some edamame from the garden. Shannon says they may be ready to eat this week!

Edamame is totally the kind of food I would have sneered at had mom tried to feed it to me as a child. Like avocados. So did I have bad taste as a child or have my taste buds died off as I've gotten old, allowing me to be a more adventurous eater?

*This is exactly what dad said when I told him we had about 10 feet of edamame plants growing.

Zucchini Bread

2008-07-23T08:18:00.005-05:00

zucchini bread, originally uploaded by delilahismydog.

I made this bread early this morning. It's too hot to bake at any other time of day.

We have so much zucchini right now. I have made it into casserole, stir fry, curry, fritters, chocolate cake, and bread. I have put it in salads, sandwhiches, and sushi. I'm thinking zucchini pickles are next.

By the way, the loaves are made with two different types of flours. The one on the left (slightly collapsed) is for me. The one on the right is shannon's.

A Bad Neighborhood: I Want Some Deer*

2008-07-19T13:19:00.003-05:00

So, yesterday morning I woke up early, sent Shannon off to work, went for a quiet walk with Delilah and then settled in to shore up the plants next to the sidewalk.

I was just transplanting some sedums when I looked up and saw four cop cars pull up, right in front of the crack house across the street. I thought maybe it was time to start gathering my gardening tools and head inside, where I could hide behind the curtains and watch the shit go down, as any sensible person would do.

Just as I was picking up the last tool, I saw two cops running down the street from the opposite direction, carrying a fireman's axe. Delilah barked once and then hid in the house. The cops pounded on the door and said, "[Legal Name] I have a warrant for your arrest. Open the door immediately or I will break it down." Then they broke down the door. I was closing my own front door when I heard the cop yell, "Everybody get down! I have a gun and will shoot!"

After about 2 hours, the cops handcuffed Ms. Jaimie (aka Big Mamma, aka [Legal Name]), the guy I think is her current boyfriend, the guy who always brought over the drugs, and the woman who got in a fight with the Roller Derby Girls who live next door about a month ago and brought them all down to the station.

I'll trade one crack house and its denizens for a herd of deer.

Anybody?

Bad Neighborhood: Continued

2008-06-20T22:49:00.003-05:00

Originally, I though I would post a picture about how the new neighborhood was all environmentally sensitive -- this picture was taken directly across the street on the way to my car to drive to my work within walking distance. Some spiel about how the street was so close to nature that wildlife nibbled on our lawns.

Aww.

That was before the deer attacked a family member.

Yep, reared up on the back legs Bambulance-style against human and canine family members. Now the deer is Family Enemy Number One. My duty is to peg it with a volleyball.

Edit: The "peg with a volleyball" orders have since been rescinded. It turns out the reason the deer was acting so freaky was that it had two small fawns nestled in the next yard over.

A Bad Neighborhood

2008-06-16T22:06:00.003-05:00

On the way home last night, I said "ooh, a fox!" This was quickly followed by seeing three more foxes. This apparent pack of kits had taken this Ford as their territory and did not seem particularly bothered by my taking of pictures and intermittent squealing with cute joy.

Foxes are not generally found in packs and do not like the plural "foxen". They glared at me when I referred to them that way. They also do not particularly like being anthropomorphized.

Originals up on the flickr.

To Do List: The First 25

2008-06-08T19:13:00.003-05:00

By popular request, here are the first 25 in the ongoing series of things for me to do in life:

Drive in a demolition derby
Visit the Trinity Test Site
Eat at every restaurant within walking distance of my home and work
Become fluent in Spanish
Go to a drive-in movie
Record an album
Ride NASA's (or a private organization's) "Vomit Comet"
Own a pinball machine
Learn to play the violin
Fall in love for keeps
Drive in the Paris to Dakar rally
Form a publishing company (Recursive Press)
Appear in a movie
Publish collected Apple Sauce Brain Man collection
Stay in the ice hotel
Set foot on all seven continents
Participate in a giant food fight
Remove money as a concern
Spend a week in New York City
Write and then edit a novel
Punch a shark
See a shuttle launch
Learn to juggle
Take a four (or more) day train ride
Take a photograph a day for a year

Disclaimer: I stole some from Maggie.

CWA Panel 3403A: Simpsons Forever!

2008-04-09T22:20:00.005-05:00

Panel 3403A: Simpsons Forever! was held Wednesday, April 9, 2008 in CU's Macky Auditorium. It featured a single panelist: Simpsons Executive Producer and Writer Tim Long. Mr. Long began the session with a clip reel of his favorite Simpsons moments. These scenes included:

Homer jumps Springfield Gorge - Bart the Daredevil
The Land of Chocolate - Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk
Potato Chips in Space - Deep Space Homer
Homer in 3D - Treehouse of Horror VI
Gay Steelmill - Homer's Phobia
Marge and Homer Nude - Natural Born Kissers
Homer Builds a BBQ - Mom and Pop Art
Stupid Sexy Flanders - Little Big Mom
Butter Off Dead - Little Girl in the Big Ten
Catch Me If You Can montage - Catch 'Em If You Can
Protestant Heaven - The Father, The Son & The Holy Guest Star
Diversity Tales video - The Italian Bob
White Stripes guest spot - Jazzy and the Pussycats

Mr. Long began his remarks recounting his first day working on The Simpsons in 1998. The writers were pitching the scene D'oh-in in the Wind in where Homer goes outside in the nude to the dismay of neighbor Maude Flanders. Homer attempts to assuage her by saying "Come on Maude, the human wang is a beautiful thing!" Long continues: ''We realized no one had ever said 'wang' on TV... It felt like a war room during the Cuban missile crisis, like we were discovering a whole new world -- a world were things were only going to get dirtier and raunchier. That didn't happen.'' Long cited the FCC's tightening due new presidential administration and the fact that someone revealed their breast at the 2004 Super Bowl.

"We can no longer show a bare ass on television... I wrote an episode last year where Kent Brockman says 'Motherfucker'... I was debating with the Fox censor how clearly we could say that."

To underscore the position of the censors, Long then quoted from the Freedom of Information Act-ed complaints to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the Simpsons (available as a PDF from governmentattic.org):

While watching the world Series. Fox advertised for the Simpson. The Commercial shows a homosexual encounter with an alien. I think this is inappropriate for the audience that would be watchin this program.

Homer was asking Marge, his wife, why they took in this really annoying older mooch named Gil. She responded
nicely saying, "Christian charity, I guess."; And Homer whined and yelled back, "What does a porn star have to do
with anything?!!?"

During the annual Simpson Halloween Episode, there was a scene where 4 simpson characters, Bart and Lisa Simpson, Nelson, and Millhouse are playing Halloween tricks. One of these "Tricks" was to blow up the hotel where a major political-event was taking place "Republican National Convention". I have accepted that this show will take pot shots at the President on occassion however I believe that this crosses the line.

The Simpsons cartoon features two women in swimsuits. While there were no nudity, this scene certainly was inapropriate because women should be dressed conservatively and obey the wishes of their husbands.

I want to complain about The Simpsons tv show regarding gay marriage. Homer Simpson kissing himself and having little baby Homers running around was just totally inappropriate for 8 p.m. when kids are watching tv.

Mr Long then cited a January 22, 2004 letter from the Parents Television Council filing an indecency complaint against The Simpsons episode Today I Am a Clown:

Homer remembers that on the night he was supposed to take Santa's Little Helper to get neutered, he instead took the dog for a night on the town.
Homer: "On our way to the clinic I decided to give him a night his wang would never forget."

''I thought we'd be able to use 'wang' forever! When they came for the bare ass, no one stood up. When they came for 'motherfucker', no one stood up. Then there was no one to stand up for 'wang'," Long stated, followed by raucous laughter from the auditorium. He described the FCC's regulations as being so nebulous that the Fox censors twist themselves into making some interesting decisions. He mentioned the episode The Father, The Son & The Holy Guest Star where Homer is confessing his sins.
"The line was 'I masturbated a thousand times, and I have no plans to stop masturbating in the future'. The note from the censor said 'one thousand is inappropriate'. We asked, 'what about a million?" and the response was 'that would be fine'."

He then discussed that if the censor rejected a joke that the writing team would send something dirtier out of spite. An example from the episode Brawl in the Family in which Grandpa Abe Simpson is waking up in bed after his wedding night. The original line was "Wanna take another ride on the Abe train?" which was rejected. The writers replaced it with "Care to give honest Abe another term in the Oval Office?" which was deemed to be fine. Another example was a commercial for a Viagra-like drug on television. The original script called for Bonestra, which was again to be found to be too dirty. Knowing that the script was going to be read, not necessarily aloud by the censor, Long found it an "interesting writing exercise" to come up with something that didn't read dirty but still sounded dirty. The result, Jammitin, was seen in the episode Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass.

The floor was then opened up for questions. The first asked that in light of censorship, could The Simpsons go online for less restrictions? Long responded that episodes were currently available on the website hulu.com adding that no one's figured out the business model for online distribution. Regarding the opportunity for decreased censorship he said ''...we don't want to drop the F-bomb -- we'd rather just be funny. We're happy to cede that space to South Park and Family Guy.''

The next question concerned political commentary on the program, and if the writers were promoting a message. "Not really," Long said, "the writers lean left in general. The exception would be John Schwartzwelder who would be proud to be called a 'right wing maniac'. After the impeachment John thought Clinton would hang."

Regarding the broadcast of The Simpsons in Saudi Arabia, Long had initially heard that it was changed extensively, to the point of Moe's Bar serving orange juice instead of beer. He stated later he heard that it wasn't true: that the program was shown uncut. He said the show and movie were embraced world wide with the exceptions of Germany and Japan. Long had heard that in Japan having only four fingers (as the Simpson characters do) is associated with the Yakuza. "That's one of the things I want to believe because it's so cool!"

The next question asked what the Comic Book Guy's name was and Long stated quite plainly: Scott Albertson.

An audience member inquired about censor notes dealing with the many times The Simpsons slams Fox, its parent network. Long said that doesn't really happen. ''We had an episode about Fox News but people are hesitant to criticize a cartoon because they look silly. Besides, Fox is choking on the money that The Simpsons has generated.'' He noted ''The Fox network is extremely raunchy, but its sister network Fox News is extremely conservative. There's a theory that Fox deliberately sets itself up for huge fines in order to funnel money to the Republican National Committee through the FCC. That's another thing I'd like to believe 'cause it's so cool!"

Guest star Thomas Pynchon was the subject of next question. ''That was such a coup! You kind of test the power of the show sometimes. We wrote his part as a joke and he loved it. The second time he was on the show he wrote his own jokes! (These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.) These terrible jokes from one of the world's greatest writers... We had Mick Jagger on the show, but because everybody wants to be on the show we don't treat them very well. Jagger wanted a hotel room with a Jacuzzi. We found him a room with a coin-operated one: you had to feed quarters into it...''

The next question began "You've done a lot of episodes-"
"Too many!" Long interjected.
"- Where's the show going?"
The reply from Mr. Long was ''It just keeps going... as long as there's things on this earth you can make fun of we'll keep going - I have no other skills.''

Regarding any restrictions on The Simpsons Movie, Long said "They wanted us to make it good" but otherwise no. "Fox was afraid we'd come back with an X rated cut."

"Do you get more letters complaining about sex or violence?"
''The ratio is about 10 letters about sex to every 1 about violence.''

On the subject of competition between The Simpsons and other shows, Mr. Long said "The more the merrier," adding for the most part the relations between the various animated shows are pretty respectful.

A viewer then asked if the kids will ever get any older and Long said for the most part no (outside of flash forward episodes). ''They're pretty adorable at the ages they are now. Bart works as an underachiever at ten. If he was sporting a starter mustache that would be pretty pathetic. Not that there's anything wrong with starter mustaches.''

The next question dealt with The Simpsons Movie. Specifically: "How did you get away with showing underage Bart's penis?" Long replied that ''oddly enough, there's actually an exception for underage children. There's tons of research, including how much flaccidity is acceptable. The key is it was presented in a non-sexual way."

The final question of the day was regarding guest stars: how much do they get paid and how long does it take to record their parts. They get paid scale. ''Someone like Tom Hanks, who was in the movie, doesn't need the money. Most guest stars donate their scale wage to charity. How long it takes depends on how many takes they need. Typically it's about twelve to fifteen takes. When we had Mr. T on we had to do a few more, since all his lines were in Hebrew. I was really nervous meeting Mr. T - much more so than with most of our guests - because he's one of my heroes. He was telling me about his role in Rocky III, how he wasn't beaten by Rocky, but instead took a dive because his grandmother needed money for an operation. I mentioned I didn't remember that being in the movie and Mr. T said 'Scenes you don't see'. He had made up a movie in his head!''

Mr. Long then thanked the audience for attending and closed the panel. Fans stood four and five deep to talk to him after the panel.

Semiquotes: CWA Blogging Technical Footnote

2008-04-06T23:49:00.000-05:00

I felt a little guilty about the condensed remarks from last year's Michael Laine post: while it appears to be a transcript, it isn't. And after the posting was picked up, it was presented as a transcript on sites out of my control. The reality is that I can't type fast enough to liveblog, nor do I know shorthand (though it is on my list of things to learn) so I take notes longhand in a legal pad. Consequentially, I miss words - I know I'm not getting everything exactly correct. I'm confident I'm presenting an accurate summary of a speaker's remarks, but the editor in me screams that whatever is in quotation marks out to be sacrosanct.

Therefore, I've invented semiquotation marks. They're really two apostrophes together ''like this''. Look closely, there's an extra pixel of space in there. They're meant to convey that whatever is within them is not a direct quotation, but probably close enough so that the speaker would say "yeah, I said that".

Punctuation fans, please note that the semiquotation marks (or gist marks, depending on which sounds cooler) fall at the beginning of the quotation order of operations. Thus: Mr Jones stated, ''I'm reminded by something Lorem Ipsum said: "The first line in Citizen Kane is 'Rosebud'."'' Sure, it tends to look like ASCII art sometimes, but at least one knows when a quote is not held up to be accurate.

To sum up: semiquotes are pretty accurate, normal quotation marks are spot on and the nested single quotes are the concern of the person being quoted. I have to draw a line somewhere.

CWA Reintroduction

2008-04-06T21:22:00.000-05:00

It's that special time of the year again: the annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder. Each year in April the University of Colorado - Boulder hosts 110 panelists and 60,000 attendees for hundreds of panels in what The New York Times calls “a week-long extravaganza of discussion and debate”. This year is the 60th incarnation of the event and will be showcasing such luminaries as Former Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy J. Chamberlin, Time International editor Michael Elliot, M*A*S*H star and death penalty opponent Mike Farrell, skeptic James Randi, Air America host Rachel Maddow and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.

Pikamac coverage of last year's event includes my reading list and my scoop on the space elevator.

Auteur Theory and Pinball

2008-01-27T19:42:00.000-06:00

Kids don't understand the concept of authorship. It takes awhile walking the planet to realize that the reason one likes both Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen so much is because the same person wrote them. Or that the same guy (Alan Miller) programmed two of my favorite Atari 2600 games: Robot Tank and Surround. I think I was in Junior High before someone pointed out to me that many my favorite comics were all written by Larry Hama (actually, the comment was much snootier: along the lines of "I can't believe you buy comics based on characters rather than the writer").

And I thought those days were gone: I know if I've read an author before when I open a book. I know the province of a movie before the lights go down. Imagine my surprise when I found that my two favorite pinball machines were designed by the same person. It's bit like realizing Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine are both songs by the same band. The machines are The Addams Family and The Twilight Zone and the designer on both is a man named Pat Lawlor.

Even people who aren't pinball aficionados have likely played a game designed by Mr. Lawlor. The Addams Family is the single best-selling pinball machine of all time. Over 20 thousand machines are out in the world, shouting "The Mamushka!" But Mr. Lawlor's not only responsible for the two greatest pinball machines -- he's also the designer of more than a dozen instantly recognizable pinballs, including Funhouse, Earthshaker, Whirlwind, and No Good Gofers. Pat Lawlor is currently running Pat Lawlor Design, responsible for newer titles like Ripley's Believe It or Not, RollerCoaster Tycoon and most recently a pinball machine based on Family Guy.

Now, dozens of people are involved with something as complicated as a pinball machine. But Lawlor's machines all express similar design principles. The most obvious is innovation. Lawlor's first design, Banzai Run, featured an additional pinball playing field in the backglass. Twilight Zone had more related patents than any other pinball game (since eclipsed by Pinball Magic). In fact, every Lawlor game has something never before found in a pinball machine from Earthshaker's internal motor that shook the entire machine, to Addams Family's magnets under the playfield all the way up to the recent NASCAR game's circular racetrack.

The second hallmark of a Lawlor design is that the playfield is arranged to play in a horizontal direction as well as a vertical one. In addition to the standard flippers at the bottom of the machine, Lawlor's tables frequently include flippers on the sides of the playfield as well. These flippers target ramps, tunnels and other items that can only be "hit" from this horizontal perspective.

A third element in Pat Lawlor's designs is a sense of storytelling. Can a metal ball and two flippers present a narrative experience? Well, there's not a lot of character development, but players accomplish goals through play and are led through a sequence of events. For example traveling the country in Road Show or opening an amusement park in RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Finally, there's a host of more subtle features that distinguish a Pat Lawlor machine. Lawlor has a signature 'flow' which pinballers refer to as the path the ball takes as the game is played. Play is dynamic: the game pauses occasionally to give the player a breather before unleashing utter chaos. I'm thinking of the moments before multiball in Addams Family as the most extreme example, but even when the mechanized Thing picks up the ball is a welcome respite after a tricky shot. Perhaps most memorably, Lawlor's games are funny! Characters are unique without being annoying (unless their purpose is to be annoying). Situations are offbeat without succumbing to "wackiness". I often find myself laughing out loud in the arcade.

Do these factors add up to a distinguishable, recognizable design? I argue yes. Consider Lawlor's contemporary Steve Ritchie, best known for tables like Black Knight, Terminator 2, High Speed and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ritchie is inarguably a master of pinball design as well, but makes significantly different decisions: playfields are open where Lawlor's are more confined. Ritchie's 'flow' is vertical with an emphasis on ramps and loops whereas Lawlor's play tends to be more horizontal. Ritchie's tables lack the multi-level or mini playfields often found in Lawlor's designs. This is not to say Ritchie's pinball machines are wrong or bad, but they're obviously designed from a different perspective.

I'm not entirely sure François Truffaut would agree that a pinball machine can have an auteur like a film. But in many ways a pinball machine can be closer to a single author's vision than a movie can. Few directors are also screenwriters and composers, while a pinball designer's vision becomes a player's experience. Heck, an Addams Family pinball promo video shows Lawlor overseeing assembly of the machines, tweaking each one as he goes. Lawlor's signature (a red button) shows up just a surely as a Hitchcock cameo does in one of his films. Where David Lynch casts a musician in a supporting role, Lawlor includes a shot through the pop bumpers. I know I'm dancing about architecture, but it was a pretty nifty feeling to realize that pinball machines bear the creative stamp of one or two people, rather than a soulless committee in a corporate office somewhere.

[Photo from the upcoming documentary TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball]

Now my wrists hurt: Meditation on Pinball

2008-01-26T21:10:00.000-06:00

I got the urge to play some pinball this morning. I suppose I should say I was unable to suppress my urge to play pinball this morning. I'm one of those folks who can't pass a pinball machine without plunking a few quarters in. There was a pinball machine in the basement that I would play before I knew how to read. I'm pretty sure I logged enough hours in college to major in pinball - certainly more time than I spent in class. Pinball is ideal for the shiftless college student or layabout adult -- it's cheap, tactile and intermittently rewarding. Plus it's loud and bright!

There's a subtext to pinball that, I think, is the true appeal. The eponymous ball is perfectly spherical steel. Unyielding. Fast-moving. If you look closely at a pinball you'll see your own face distorted and looking back at you. A pinball player only has limited influence over that ball. Of the entire pinball playfield the only area you control is the tiny radius of your flippers. A playfield which is quite literally tilted against you. From the minute you put those quarters in you're going to lose. The game is designed that way. The pinball parlor owner is relying on it. It's as inescapable as gravity.

Except...

Sometimes you don't. Sometimes, only very rarely, through some combination of skill and luck a single game will last forever. You enter the elusive state some call flow. That three ounce ball bends to your will. You rack up more extra games than you can possibly play. You could go until ragnarok. Or at least until you have to pick your sister up from the airport. As you leave your machine and bequeath your free games to a spectator: you've won. You've proven your inherent worth on an un-leveled playing field.

Yeah, there's a lot of other ways to get this feeling. Winning a marathon, becoming a captain of industry, writing a best-selling novel are all perfectly good ways too. I submit there's no other way to do it in a laundromat, waiting for a dryer.

New Item in the Store

2008-01-23T23:28:00.000-06:00

There's a new item in the official Apple Sauce Brain Man Store: The Official Apple Sauce Brain Man 12 Page Sample comic!

Don't have time to read the four hundred-some comics in the ASBM archive? Just read twelve of them. Don't want to sit at the computer? We'll mail 'em to you. Right to your house! Or office. OR HOME OFFICE!

Each sampler is signed and numbered and I'll draw the cover however you want (limited by my art style, of course).

All this for the low price of Pi dollars. That's $3.1415 (rounded down to $3.14) and includes shipping.

Also: there's an Apple Sauce Brain Man Store now. I just made it.

Cheese Chess: It's Strategically Delicious!

2008-01-16T02:48:00.000-06:00

From the ever-awesome Molly comes this magnificent chess+architecture+cheese combination:

In addition to the traditional castles in the corner one will find a pair of stables, then cathedrals surrounding the queen's citadel and the king's keep (all set tastefully behind a row of villas).

It's important to note that the country this picture was taken in hadn't discovered milk products until circa 1995, so finding cheese is an achievement in itself, let alone making it into chess.

Check and mate!

Pikamac Year in Review: 2007

2007-12-31T23:29:00.000-06:00

First up, let's give people what they want:

That's right, the most popular post on the blog this year was March's Mudkip post. In fact it's Google's top image result for Mudkip (ironically, it contains very little Mudkip information).

Oddly, ten times more people viewed that page than the actual piece of journalism I did last year (April's Space Elevator post). Not too bad a year though, even with diminished blog content.

And now, the Of the Year results:
Game: Portal
Movie: Darjeeling Limited
Book: (tie) Insult Stickies & Limerick Stickies (I'm not sure any other book I read was published this year)
State: Colorado
Album: (tie) Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga & Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight
Tech: iPhone

R4DS - Sounds like, but isn't, Star Wars

2007-12-22T17:48:00.000-06:00

Inspired by James Kochalka's enthusiasm:

I googled it and lemme just say the R4DS is awesome.

Here's what it is: a little cartridge-sized doohickey that plugs into your Nintendo DS. Inside this doohickey is room for a tiny off-the-shelf miniSD memory card. The R4DS runs software from this memory card, like homebrew DS software, mp3s and movie files. It'll also run any and all DS software, so you can load it up with copies of all your games so you don't have to... uh, take all your cartridges with you when you're on a trip? I'm sure readers of this blog would only use such a device to play games they've purchased legitimately and not load up their R4DS with games they don't already own. Games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Electroplankton.

I bought my R4DS from an outfit called Sky2K and they shipped swiftly (though appear to be out of stock at the moment). I paired it with a 2gig miniSD card I picked up for $30 bucks at Staples. And every (legally purchased) game I've tried on it has worked perfectly. There's word that games that use the DS internet connection can be flaky, though I haven't tried those yet.

As someone who's misplaced those tiny DS carts, it's refreshing to have every game in my collection in my DS (while the physical carts are packed away safely in a box). nds-roms.com has proved to be a reliable source of game ROMs (but be sure not to accidentally download a ROM you don't have the right to play).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to tend my Electroplankton.

Community Generated Advertising

2007-12-20T21:31:00.000-06:00

I think this "internet" is here to stay.

Sure, there was doubt for a few years that it might go the way of Citizen's Band Radio and the party line, but few would argue that the world is going to become unmeshed from the data tubes that now weave through every facet of life.

In fact, I'm betting you're on the internet right now.

Furthermore (and perhaps more controversially), I think there's still money to be made on the internet.

Yeah, I missed out on the original wave of everything on the internet turning to gold. And the second wave too. I've comforted myself with the fact that I'll never have to worry about the value of my stock options.

No, the road to squeezing nickels and dimes out of the internet these days is through hard work and creative output. And I'm betting there's a million ways to do it. Well at least 365. In 2008 I'm adding a new blog to the Pikamac infotainment network dealing with squeezing these nickels: trying out the myriad ways of making money with one's computer and writing about it in the Pikamac trademark humorous and infotaining fashion.

As a sneak preview (since I haven't finished the design work for the new blog) I'd like to talk about a company called PayPerPost today. PayPerPost bills itself as a "marketplace for Consumer Generated Advertising". What this means without the buzz-speak is that they pay bloggers to write about stuff. Not stuff like the nature of reality or what David Leisure is up to, but actual stuff. Products and services.

Plenty of bloggers have criticized PPP's business model is getting bloggers to "shill" for their clients, but the idea of user-generated advertising is an interesting one. Since a particular advertiser is sometimes most interested in improving their Google PageRank, in many cases the comments a blogger is generating need not be positive. No such thing as bad publicity.

On some level I'm bothered by advertising on a personal blog, even though I've got the ubiquitous GoogleAds and such in the margins of this one somewhere. They're tasteful. Is generating content to order tasteful? PPP has very stringent disclosure policies which seem to dodge most ethical issues with "shilling". And the rates aren't bad either: not enough to quit one's day job, but enough that an occasional post can cover webhosting costs.

But there's where the fine line comes in: presumably if a blogger posts nothing but paid-for content I imagine their readership is going to sink like a stone. In that sense, outfits like PayForPost could be self-regulating (since many opportunities require a high Google PageRank). The company, perhaps proactively, is very concerned with blog ethics.

I'm getting Paypaled twenty bucks for writing this post. Is it "selling out" more than adding the GoogleAds (which I've yet to see a thin dime from)? There's a shiny disclosure bar at the bottom. And I promise not to make a habit of writing content to order. This one's for science (and the aforementioned $20).

Overheard...

2007-12-04T12:48:00.000-06:00

...in the parking lot of the Humane Society Thrift Store:

"Well, they can cure that now, so even getting malaria wouldn't be so bad... The guy in the parking lot is laughing at me."

Randall Munroe Has Won the Internet

2007-11-30T18:18:00.000-06:00

In a case of life imitating art, the Randall Munroe author of this famous and favorite
xkcd comic:

has built a ball pit in his house:

Further commentary is unnecessary.

Presidential Turkey Pardon

2007-11-25T19:40:00.000-06:00

Every year, the President of the United States "pardons" a pair of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day. These turkeys live the rest of their days in peace and comfort. This peace lasts approximately one year, as commercially bred turkeys reach full size in about four months and after that quickly succumb to congestive heart failure. Here's the names of the turkeys that the current president has spared:

2007: May & Flower
2006: Flyer & Fryer
2005: Marshmallow & Yam
2004: Biscuits & Gravy
2003: Stars & Stripes
2002: Katie & Zack
2001: Liberty & Freedom

As a counterpoint, here's a list of the people whose death sentences have been commuted by Mr. Bush in his terms as President and as Governor of Texas:

1998: Henry Lee Lucas

Mr. Bush has pardoned 113 people during his term as president (although after each person had already served their entire sentence) and commuted the sentence of four people (mitigating their penalty without vacating the conviction), including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"It All Started About 40 Thanksgivings Ago": 15 Things You Might Not Know About Alice's Restaurant

2007-11-22T00:01:00.000-06:00

The song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song. The name of the restaurant was Back Room Rest.

Alice Brock only owned the restaurant for a year before she and Ray divorced. The restaurant has remained in operation - it is now known as The Main Street Cafe.

The events Arlo Guthrie describes in the song are true -- at least the part with with Officer Obie and the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. The story about the Group W bench are uncorroborated... although that doesn't make it any less true.

Officer Obie served the Stockbridge, MA police force for 34 years. It's said in 1985 he was "asked" to retire after hitting another officer after an argument.

William J. Obanhein played himself in the 1969 Alice's Restaurant movie. But despite twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs (with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one), he's instantly recognizable for his modeling work. He posted frequently for Stockbridge's other famous resident: Norman Rockwell. That's Obie in The Runaway.

Mr. Obanhein passed away in 1994. When Newsweek asked about playing himself in the movie he said that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool.

Another person who played himself in the movie was Judge James Hannon, the judge who really did preside over Guthrie's case and really is blind.

Alice and Ray do not play themselves in the film but do appear in cameo roles. Alice can be seen in a bright pink blouse in the Thanksgiving dinner scene.

Ray Brock is played by James Broderick (Matthew Broderick's father).

Whitehall Street (where you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected) could have been better protected. On October 7th, 1969 Sam Melville bombed the induction center, shutting it down.

There are 2622 words in the eighteen and a half minute long song (counting the 47words37sentences58words as one, of course). Guthrie points out that 18 1/2 minutes is also the length of the famous gap in the Nixon tapes.

In 1969 Alice (remember Alice? It's a post about Alice...) published a cookbook. She's known for saying "Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good."

Arlo Guthrie raised the money to buy Alice's church and converted it into the Guthrie Center: a non-denominational meeting place. YouTube has a video of Arlo performing the song at the Guthrie Center in 2005.

In 2004, Alice illustrated a children's book about moose (Arlo wrote it). These days Alice owns an art studio and gallery in nearby Provincetown. She doesn't mind people stopping in and talking about "those days".

The Alice's Restaurant Massacree is probably the only Thanksgiving carol there is. Your local radio station is probably going to play it on Thanksgiving. If you're not anywhere local, where are you? Anyway, if you're not local then iTunes has four different versions and both satellite radio services are playing it throughout the day.

Wii Virtual Console: One Year Later

2007-11-18T16:38:00.000-06:00

Last November I spent the better part of a week discussing games I hoped to see on the Wii Virtual Console. For those who missed the original posts, the Nintendo Wii has a service that connects the video game system to the internet to download older classic video games (for a fee). For folks like me, with boxes of old discs and cartridges, this service is a great development. Let's see how well my wishlist paid off.

Alien Crush, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Military Madness, Kid Icarus (as detailed in my last post on the subject), Super Metroid, Paper Mario, Splatterhouse, Devils Crush, and Galaga '90

So ten out of my wanted 50. But I'm not disappointed. The vagueries of the software publishing world probably knock out half my list. Nintendo did release a good crop of games this year, including titles never seen in the US before AND NeoGeo games. I got Super Metroid, so I'm not complaining anyway.

Of course, the Wii isn't the only source for downloadable retro content. The PS3 offers arcade and original PlayStation content (Like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and MediEvil). And the Xbox 360 has been offering arcade games for download since 2005, plus board games like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone. Microsoft recently announced a handful of downloadable original Xbox games, including Halo and Psychonauts. I'm more excited about Psychonauts than anything Nintendo could release to the Virtual Console next year. It's a gem.

Apple Sauce Brain Man 24 Hour Comic Volume 2

2007-11-05T16:57:00.000-06:00

Apologies all around: the ASBM Twenty Four Hour Comic for 2007 has been completed, scanned and even uploaded to the internet for weeks now but I haven't actually linked it around. So here it is: http://asbm.pikamac.com/misc/asbm242.pdf
It's a four megabyte PDF file. It will undoubtedly make more sense having read last year's comic and even more sense to people who've been following the last ten months of daily webcomic history.

Post Five Hundred

2007-08-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

I aim to eat Warren Ellis's heart to gain his tasty, tasty courage.

It's no co-incidence that he does his best work in the pub.

Relatedly: a PSA that warns people not to post their pictures online.

And: It's about time to go to Burning Man ironically. Email me: anyone who's ready to do so.

(Happy Five Hundred posts everyone.)