The monkey buds…
I guess this is where I introduce myself, the part where my words etch themselves into the lenses of your eyes. I should say something profound. I should write prose that makes you ponder the human condition. Instead what you are reading is the literary equivalent of a throbbing hangover. It is the morning after and you realize that the beautiful specimen you spent last night with was your best friend’s dog. I apologize for what you are now feeling, and for the peanut butter.
If you’ve made it this far without clicking away in horror I say: “Hi, I am buddingmonkey.” What services does a monkey bring to Not Often? I would throw virtual feces at you for asking such an insulting question, but since you are a guest in my article I guess I shall be cordial. My primary focus will most likely be games, game development, and game culture. It is something I am passionately involved with, and I will be happy to provide you with my insights. What you do with those gems is up to you.
In addition, I will scour the dark recesses of the internet, the belly of the beast if you will, and give you something I find stimulating. I will try to keep from linking to anything that might cause you to enter shock, but I make no promises.
To start things off I present you with GNILLEY; a game where you shout, loudly, to perform any action:
PS Don’t trust the brown adder. Anyone with a name like that is a bedwetter.
Wednesday Roundup for 02/24/2010
...Yeah... This is totally not Wednesday. Nor will it be in the future. Based on my schedule, I think the best course of action will be to bump it up to Tuesday, so we'll have a short one next week as I adjust to this. I also realize I'm late at this post, but I assure these were items I saw until Wednesday. Also, I'm trying out yet another new format, and all links should open in a new window (or tab) so you can just click them and not have to back track to this page.
First up is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, which is a great webcomic that I'm pretty sure updates daily or something quite close to it. His comics are great (don't forget to mouse over the red button underneath to get a bonus panel) and the videos are equally impressive. One aspect I particularly enjoy is the skepticism shown by Zack Weiner (I don't think that's his real name). The themes in his comics range from superhero problems to the hypocrisy of the Catholic church, from math equations to weird things to yell during sex. There's a fair amount of math content that's similar to xkcd like graphs and charts, but there's also masturbation jokes that really just level the playing field. Today's offering is a comic regarding being invisible at the school for the blind, which is a brilliant idea, and well executed without many pictures (like the comics I'm going to attempt to create).
From BoingBoing: This video regards the use of mud as a computer input device. The wikipedia article has since changed, but just know that the attractiveness of Count Duckula was rated as "alluring [citation required]." Did you know the penny is getting an update to look really weird and who uses a penny anyway? I really wonder what it was like cleaning up after this video (starts immediately). Finally (finally!) a domino problem finally solved with self righting dominoes.
From Bad Astronomy: A crazy video of a rocket exploding ice crystals with pressure waves, be sure to watch in HD and it shows the moment of craziness more than once, so you don't have to rewind.
From Buttersafe: The cutest comic I've read all week, really digging this artwork style, too.
From The Onion: A quick blurb about gay marriage and a startling reminder that we're all just bricks in the wall. Also, you should really be subscribed to their rss feed so you can read all of their articles and videos and if you're not subscribed to their radio news podcast, then you're an idiot.
From Make: Online: These are ridiculously beautiful iPhone cases (did I mention my birthday is coming up soon?). Did you know you can tune a guitar with light? (warning: very geek heavy) Crayon rockets, need I say more? I'm a sucker for awesome clocks. Live music production using video loops of a guy's head... plus the music is awesome.
From LifeHacker: A brief history lesson in fashion that makes almost too much sense (also check out the Geologic podcast for more fashion tips at infrequent intervals). Here's a great headphone management idea that I want to try. Lastly tonight, a creative use of dishwashers, which I assume means you can get your whole meal ready and have hot fresh dishes to put it in.
See you next Tuesday!
Friday, a look back
I found this button on the internet. I clicked it and I was transported to 1995...
Also, tell all your friends about this site, as the updates will start flowing soon. Here's a good way to link them to the site:
http://5z8.info/start-trojan_h5t7s_INCREDIBLE-DEAL-CANT-MISS
(brought to you by shadyURL, I dare you to click it...)
Wednesday Roundup for 02/17/2010
Sorry this one's running a little late, folks, but we're still working out kinks in the system. Also, I was a tad over-zealous in this week's links because I got stuck at Valvoline for an hour and had my phone so there were quite a few things that got labeled as "interesting." I'm also going to try a format change and I'll need feedback on what you guys think. I'm going to post the links grouped by website, rather than just in random order (actually, last week's links were in order from oldest to newest as I found them).
We will start, however, with a focus on a particular blog so you can get a feel for the content that they provide and today I'm going to cover a small network of blogs. I must say that the icanhascheezburger craze has gotten out of hand. However, there are some great parts of their network and today's featured section is Totally Looks Like. The premise is simple: put two pictures next to each other that look similar. This can highlight hilarious similarities, such as Snape (as played by Alan Rickman) does look like Trent Reznor from Nine inch Nails, especially in this picture. Like every other piece of the cheezburger network though, the content on TLL can be hit or miss; some random celebrity looks like some other random celebrity that no one cares about. Other times, the comedy gold ensues. Today's featured link from them is a recent post concerning some advertising showing a product from a fast food establishment looking suspiciously and unfortunately like a medical condition that no one would want, but could possibly result from said food product. There are plenty of other blogs under the cheezburger umbrella (that makes for an interesting mental picture) and some of them might be featured in future roundups.
From Make Online: A great art piece featuring my favorite beverage, coffee; Lego effects to make a picture change; Lego innovation that using some creative problem solving; The reason missiles fly straight; and the craziest bike I've seen in a while.
From BoingBoing: Great rum marketing (really wish I could find that package); Basketball mascots gone wild; Someone with a praying mantis for a pet; Some jerk selling weapons (this was posted on BoingBoing, but I thought I'd direct link so you didn't have to find it, let me know if this technique works for you); Only two days left to get the games from this indie bundle for only $20 (direct link); and hopefully the last Hilter remix video we'll see for a while (this was the first one I saw, classic!).
From This is Why You're Fat: The reason I'm not a vegetarian (don't tell me you didn't drool).
From Insanewiches: Even though I'm not a vegetarian, this still looks really delicious (I drooled over this one, too).
From the James Randi Educational Foundation: A piece that really brings the Mars rover mission into focus, see also xkcd.
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: A great video was posted this week on their youtube channel, I think one of their best so far (all of them are pretty good, and one of my favorites is one of the first ones they posted).
From the Onion: I love the midwest, and I love that the crawl underneath the news is a bunch of really funny headlines.
From Slashdot: I've seen projects that take a PS3 and XBOX360 and stuff their guts into a laptop, now someone's done it with a Wii (direct link). I think this would be a smart move for video game console makers, just think of the possibilities! A portable system that you can dock to your TV, and it would still look great! Portability and performance!
From Passion for Puzzles: Also posted on Make (surprise, surprise) this crazy robut can solve a rubik's cube way too fast.
Of course, none of this content is my own, it belongs to the people who posted it first. Also, these aren't necessarily the first time these things have been posted, but for the most part I'm linking to where I heard it first.
P.S. Production is going well on the first planned podcast. Details (and a podcast feed) to come...
Wednesday Roundup for 02/10/2010
Well, I promised content, and content you shall receive. I'll be posting infrequently on the best of the internets that I find, starting with my finds for the past week. This will also give you a peek into the other blogs that I subscribe to. Hopefully I can do this every Wednesday morning and it will track back to the previous week's Wednesday, so this week's roundup takes us from the 3rd to the 10th. I don't want to get too much into each blog right away (that would make this particular post way too long), but they all post great things, and they're worth subscribing to.
We'll start with Richard Wiseman's blog. Richard Wiseman is a notable skeptic who has appeared all over the internets and has some great youtube videos (my favorite is colour changing card trick) and a few books that I'd like to review someday. He frequently discusses magic, illusions, psychology, and everybody's favorite: SCIENCE! This He does a puzzle each Friday on his blog and they're pretty fun. The post I'd like to highlight from him this week is a simple optical illusion that's very effective. I really like when such a simple idea looks as good as this one does.
From This Is Why You're Fat: The site is pretty self explanatory, but I do want to make some of these someday, and living this close to the great white north does leave my mouth watering at the thought of poutine in a calzone.
From Failblog: The most confusing backpack I've ever seen.
From BoingBoing: Combining three things I hate: Twitter, haiku, and quitters.
From Make Online (and others): Too bad I already ordered my wedding cake, this one would have done nicely. I think it really says a lot about my relationship.
From Make Online (and others): The best zombie defense is a good zombie offense.
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Don't forget to mouse over the red button at the bottom for a bonus panel of this great comic and if you don't know what a prolapse is it ruins the joke but don't look on google images for the answer.
From BoingBoing: There's a video from this year's competition linked from that video, be sure to watch both as you can never have enough dancing robots in your life.
From Dudecraft: Great stop motion video about t-shirts, really creative.
From Dudecraft: Flow chart describing happiness.
From BoingBoing: This video actually made me laugh out loud, which is rarer than you'd think in an era where everyone is so quick to "lol".
From Dudecraft: I could watch this video on a loop all day; it's like meditating.
From The Onion: Don't forget, Valentine's day is fast approaching and here are some deals to help ease the financial burden of an overpriced made up holiday.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this week's roundup. Let me know if there are format issues or if you have any ideas for posts throughout the week or just whether or not you like this bit.
The Birth of the Brown Adder
So let me start off by saying that I'm deeply humbled to be invited to post on NotOften. Why do you ask? Any imbecile can set up a blog. Yeah - it's not that. As people can tell you, I have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth. A lot. If you want an awkward situation, I'll be more than happy to provide it - 5 minutes before you want it, in fact. So it's nice to see someone still has marginal faith in me. Hopefully I won't make too many of those types of posts here, but, ya know, if I slip up every now and then, maybe it'll just make things more awesome. Right? ... right?
Anyhow, I've got a couple of ideas on what to write so far. I'd like to start a semi-regular column called The Needle, where I'll post a review of some album I've listened to recently. Don't worry - I won't be a pretentious bastard all the time. Some will be dead common albums, while others will be a bit more eclectic in taste. The bottom line - they're albums that I really like or really hate. Another idea is a series of posts called Nerdgasm, where I go off on some cool new gadget or hardware innovation. Basically, I'll do a half-assed job of what Engadget or Gizmodo will post, and expect you guys to be mildly interested. Maybe I'll also post some stuff on the life of a grad student, cause, you know, I'm one of those.
Any other ideas? I'm up for a lot of challenges (not really). But perhaps you guys will have better ideas than me.
“The Man Who Had No Eyes” by Jeff VanderMeer
I'm going to try recommending some stories and authors that I find interesting from time to time.
I recently found out about the work of Jeff VanderMeer through one of the various blogs I follow and decided to look into his work. From the post on Boing Boing, I went and downloaded the soundtrack to his latest book "Finch," done by the band Murder by Death (the vinyl is available and my birthday is coming up, *hint hint*) with some lovely haunting tunes that make me excited to check this book out. However, after finding out that this is the latest of his books to be set in the world of Ambergris, and being the completion-ist that I am, I needed to start at the beginning. After researching on Wikipedia, I found a collection of his stories in "City of Saints and Madmen." The article mentioned some stories that got lost in different editions of the book and the one that I don't have in my paperback reprinting is "The Man Who Had No Eyes," but I found it on the internets for free.
I highly recommend that you read that story, and try to figure out the code at the bottom. If you can't decipher it, please, PLEASE DO NOT click that link that will get you to the answer. Contact me and I will tell you how to decipher it but don't click the link at the bottom until you are done because I clicked the link to the answer and I have regretted it. The experience would have been that much more complete if I had just figured it out. I really can't explain it, you have to read it and solve it for yourself. I warn you ahead of time, some of the numbers in the code are wrong. I don't know which ones the are particularly, but just keep doing your best (it's only a few that are wrong, you should still get most of the story) and when you're done, go look at the answer so you know what you missed. Just thinking of it now boggles my mind to think of how clever Mr. VanderMeer is.
To be honest, I haven't gotten very far in the book "City of Saints and Madmen" because I don't have much time to read; I spend most of my time listening to audio fiction which I will begin to review either here or on the podcast that should be starting by the end of the month. The first story was an excellently creepy love story with a bizarre ending that wasn't so much a twist as it was just disturbing and honest. The second is what's been taking me so long since it's the history of the town of Ambergris going back quite a few generations and I'm getting bogged down in the names and details because I was also taking a history class in school at the time. It's interesting, though, because it's told by a narrator who feels he needs to leave footnotes upon footnotes to tell the reader what's important and which parts to skip, which I find amusing. The style is good enough to carry me through the tedious parts and long descriptions, but there are also enough action sequences (battles and love affairs etc) to keep me interested as well. The narrator throughout the history section almost reminds me of Johnny Truant from "House of Leaves" which I will review at a later date.
It's hard to define what genre these stories belong in; it's too easy to say fantasy, but there are no dragons or anything else outright fantastical about them, and it's not really sci-fi, but it's not anything really recognizable. There's also something about his writing style that keeps me turning pages. He definitely has a way with words and if you read "The Man Who Had No Eyes" and enjoy it, I highly recommend "City of Saints and Madmen," the soundtrack to "Finch," and everything else this guy does. If you don't like that story, then at least listen to samples of the soundtrack. I hope to review his other books in later episodes of Tuesday's Story (or T's S as I like to call it) as soon as I get around to reading them.
Hello!
Hey everybody! I think some introductions are in order or I'm going to call everyone partner. My name is bunches and I am the fiance of the overlord of this website. I was told to just post whatever interests me and since I am studying to be an anthropologist most of my posts will probably rants about cultural things. People on the internet like rants right? You get to pwn people in rants. Well, that is all for tonight.
-bunches
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