September 2004 Archives
Why do people buy vanity license plates that tell you what model of car they're on? That has to be the stupidest class of vanity tags in existence.
On the other hand, I love vanity tags that play on the model of vehicle, like the legendary white Volkswagen Rabbit with an "ML8 ML8" tag.
Watch Lost.
That is all.
It is Frankenstorm. It is the Storm Which Will Not Die. The storm system once known as Hurricane Ivan has wound its way back to the Gulf of Mexico like a slasher-flick psycho killer and may resume tropical storm strength. WTF? I just hope it's not going anywhere near Mississippi again; last time, I was just glad that it passed far enough east to avoid any damage to my parents' home.
I don't know who scares me more: The obsessive fan who has written up a detailed history of the Transformers universe [via Engadget], or the team of scientists developing algorithms for the operation of shapeshifting and/or merging robots [via del.icio.us].
The last three years have seen some pretty awful commecial (and political) exploitation of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2003, but someone has hit a new low. The ads for the comemmorative coins depicting the WTC towers, covered in silver recovered from a vault at Ground Zero, absolutely disgust me. This has to be one of the most sick, evil, ghoulish commercial campaigns I've ever seen. Even before Lewis Black on The Daily Show went off on them last night, these commercials left me shaking with rage and disgust. Now I'm seing the bastards' ad banners on the web. Makes me want to call the fuckers up and ask them how they sleep at night.
Another Ramone is playing the great gig in the sky; Johnny died of cancer yesterday.
Hears about this on NPR yesterday: The British Library has scanned their collection of Shakespeare's plays in quarto form and placed the images online. These are the oldest survivng copies of the Bard's plays, since none of his written manuscripts survive. These quartos are the first printed editions of Shakespeare's work. Looks the the Library has done a nice presentation of the online version; you can even view different printings side by side.
I had a great time at the Renaissance Festival last weekend. I've been fiddling around with the photos I took over the weekend, and have finally put them up in a new online gallery. Feel free to take a look!
This may be a long season.
I'm heading off to Kansas City for the Renaissance Festival this weekend. This is going to be the first time in months I've been out of the greater St. Louis area, so I'm probably disproportionately excited about it...
The demo for the upcoming world-domination game Evil Genius is now available for download. I tried the demo last night, and it rocked. Basically, it's Dungeon Keeper as played by Doctor Evil. You get to build a secret underground base, recruit and train minions, fend off attacks by do-gooders, and eventually capture and taunt an enemy superspy. The full game, in which you eventually get to construct a doomsday device and hold the world hostage, is supposed to hit stores by the end of the month.
I find myself with a surfeit of Gmail invites. From what I can tell, everybody else does as well. Anyway, if you need a good web-mail account for non-eveil (or at least non-boringly-evil) purposes, leave a comment.
