patch_bunny found the next best candidate to Al Gore: Max for President. =:D

A cheesy, fun TV ad from Britain, with a suitably cheesy ending: The Wooly & Worth Show. And a couple more good ones here, including quite a stylish one for Levi's, "Mr Spaceman". As otter3 noted, Dragon Tamer DS looks like it could be fun - it's a title in the spirit of Monster Rancher, with sound being the influence determining the dragons created. (The Japanese trailer embedded there includes one guy using the sound of a flushing toilet) The graphics look quite impressive for a DS, too - nicely detailed 3D, smooth motion, and plenty of design elements for dragon fans to enjoy.

Interesting idea: someone's taken Sky Captain and spent a few weeks re-editing it to remove a good deal of dead weight, and re-inserted a couple of the deleted scenes. eg: "Deleted Polly being a klutz, always doing the wrong thing. Now she's a competent reporter. Deleted scenes of Dex for pacing. Deleted any dialogue were a character says "I'm going to do..." Now they just do it."

circuit_four spotted a new work by the creator of Grow Cube, apparently commissioned by a recruitment agency. And really, who can't love a game that features an orange lava bunny/puppy?

Ye gods and little fishes, I'm actually caught up on FA. ^_^ Had to take the cheap way out with the journal entries, though - that would've added days otherwise, and FA journals tend not to be as substantive as LJ. Still, the 1,900 or so images did prove most rewarding.. here are some I thought particularly worth sharing, including Matoc's "Moko Moko the Fire Bunny", which is actually just about worksafe, maybe. =:) Two of them are definitely unsafe for work. Can you guess which? =:D Apparently, both the Kurdish and Persian words for "rabbit" - karwesh and khargoosh respectively - translate as "donkey ears". ^_^;

Quite a welcome measure of reasonability in DC: the lobbying reform bill is now live. ^_^ The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 closes quite a few lobbyist loopholes, requires earmark sponsors be identified, last minute "dead of night" provisions can be challenged, and indefinite, anonymous holds are gone, replaced by a six day window, after which the senator's name would be identified.

One SL event I wish I'd known about in time: "Phil Holliger from the Medical Research Council Molecular Biology Lab in Cambridge will give a talk on "New polymerases for old DNA: molecular breeding of polymerases for damage bypass and amplification of ancient DNA" . Holliger works with ancient DNA - DNA samples retrieved from specimens of forensic, paleontological or archaeological interest. Hollinger will describe a new method of repairing damaged DNA, which he recently tried out on a 60,000 year-old cave bear."

I'm entirely atheistic, but the communal role of religion in society can be, and indeed, often is positive - and folks like the Universal Unitarians (who, ISTR, counted something like a sixth of their members as atheist or agnostic anyway =:) are a good bunch. So, I was pleased to see this description of a Water Ceremony last Friday: "In it, each participant brings water from someplace that is special to them, and explains why to the whole congregation. The water is poured into a communal vessel to symbolize the coming together of the community."

Quite an interesting, if unsurprising, look at the real nature of economic activity in SL. Of about 600,000 active residents, 295k spent nothing at all. This table gives a breakdown by total spending during the month.

Monthly spending, August 2007 Transaction size, L$ Residents 1 - 500 131,339 501 - 2,000 49,440 2,001 - 5,000 37,639 5,001 - 10,000 26,231 10,001 - 50,000 42,774 50,001 - 100,000 9,065 100,001 - 500,000 6,916 500,001 - 1,000,000 649 over 1,000,000 416

From the wildlands of Nova Scotia comes this fantastic tale of one student body's reaction to bullying over a pink shirt: 'The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up. The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying. "It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David. They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.' Not too surprising, given nobody expected it too soon anyway, but it's been made official: SL puppeteering is on hold until "at least Q1 2008", in favor of client bugfixing. Coming soon: AjaxLife for iPhone.

If you've engaged in any landscaping or major building on SL, this thread might be worth a peek. It's a nifty use of megaprims, achieving construction beyond your boundaries, out into the screaming void where no sim space exists; it's apparently even possible to venture into this non-space as a result.

SL Insider ran a good little piece on how things are falling into place for the initial release of the server code. ("Philip Rosedale, in his talks at SLCC this year, estimated that server-side simulator software would be open sourced within approximately twelve more months. Development staffers whom we have spoken to inworld and who have spoken on the matter on the development mailing list around the same time are estimating 1-2 more years.") The key bit: "Ultimately what will be being released, so far as we have been told so far, is the basic software that runs on the simulators. Not the asset system or user management or other things like that. The ability to install the software onto a Linux system of your choice, and pay for interconnection to the Second Life grid."

I noticed HMV's changing their stores quite considerably, in the face of stiff competition from net.retailers. It'll be most interesting to see how other mass music retailers react, as downloads progress; as pleasant as low online prices are, it'd be a sad loss if most physical music chains went the way of Tower Records. 'HMV's first next generation store opened in Dudley last week, with another opening in Tunbridge Wells on Wednesday. The new store set-up is designed to help the business meet new challenges, as CD and DVD sales go into decline.

The new plans see the business change its tack, introducing juice bars, Macs for surfing the internet and checking MySpace and Facebook sites - an attempt to bring digital into retail. "The new design reflects the way customers consume media and the way they spend their time," said HMV chief executive Simon Fox. "It's becoming an entertainment store rather than a music and DVD store."'

And with remarkable timing, loganberrybunny noticed that Branson has sold the Virgin Megastores. The 125 UK & Irish stores will be lucky enough to undergo an inexplicable rebranding. (The US stores had apparently already been sold off earlier this year) Here's an article on the sub-prime credit crisis, but from a more fundamental perspective - that of financial derivatives. Now, I'm hardly a vulpine, or even a canid, but.. oh, my. These two pics of one "Vixianna" push a few buttons with me, and then nibble and twiddle them for good measure. Definitely suggests an enjoyable TF outcome.. ^_^ You can see the guy's full gallery here, all of similarly outstanding quality. (All worksafe) Twinkle, twinkle, little bat How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly, Like a teatray in the sky.

rigelkitty noticed a story roohbear might be interested in: AOL HQ moving to New York. "AOL, the Dulles-based Internet pioneer, yesterday said it was moving its headquarters to New York, transferring the leadership of a company that fueled the growth of the Washington area's technology industry over the past decade. The company said that while senior executives would depart for Manhattan, most of the 4,000 employees at the Dulles campus would remain."

And this is something I'd never heard of, despite being a fan of Doctor Who for years.. as the contributor to doctorwho noted, perhaps the folks at Suchard didn't quite give the design as much checking over as they could have. =:D

To compensate for the recent LJ outage, paid members can claim three days of paid time here. (Unfortunately, this doesn't include the userpics addon. It's a very welcome gesture all the same, given the outage wasn't due to any fault of 6A)

dronon found a fighting game with a bit of a difference.. not so much fighting, really, as catfighting. In Rose & Camellia, battles are conducted by means of face-slapping..

You've probably seen those Japanese cat costumes - here's the logical outcome: one based on Hello Kitty. And razzlfraz found (purely accidentally, of course) a curiously fascinating look at Adult Treasure Expo 2007, a Tokyo sex toys convention. Technology naturally plays a prominent role, but so does a passionate eye for aesthetics, sometimes resulting in quite mysterious devices, and some less mysterious. ^_^ Very good CG animated short for a music video: I Lived on the Moon, in a style reminiscent of Tim Burton. At ComicCon this year, Lea Hernandez related the spectacularly clueless line "In explaining the [Bratz movie], [Avi Arad] insisted that Bratz are 'X-Men for girls' — it's just that their superpowers are singing, fashion, soccer and cheerleading." - and from that, the question "Golly, I wonder which one is Wolverine?" sprang forth. So here's Wolviebratz. =:D

The first new Futurama DVD arrives on Nov 28 2007. ^_^

A good posting on the tepid support the Democratic presidential candidates are offering for gay marriage.

An electric car worth a look: the Think City.

atomicat spotted this superb riff on American anti-drug TV commercials, and includes a helpful guide. Lunch: a relatively light and very simple affair. Just some grilled chicken nuggets, a small pile of collard greens, and some quartered mushrooms, steamed in the microwave with a little garlic salt. (And the messy splurts: ranch dressing, tomato ketchup, and balsamic mustard with chili oil) Engadget readers note that FairUse4WM strips iPlayer downloads' DRM. Of course, you still need a Windows system to get the files in the first place. Annoyingly, iPlayer appears to be another P2P app, so if you're already using your outbound bandwidth, that'll be competing for it. OpenLeft seems to be establishing itself as a good venue for serious leftward political discussion - take this entry, on some possible future geopolitical scenarios, or this one on the varied voices pushing for and against the impeachment and trial of Bush and Cheney. The comments are particularly well considered, whether one agrees with their suppositions or not.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, the FBI and IRS investigation into Ted "Tubes" Stevens took a brilliantly ironic twist: "Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week's end."

And it looks like my notifications have gone missing again. Please feed them if you see them around. (Curiously, it all seems to be working normally for replies in others' journals, but not mine)

If you want some rather good - and free - retro electronica, produced entirely on a Synclavier 9600, look over here for "Light and Dark Sides of Indigo Blue". Well worth the time - and if you want a copy of the CD, they'll apparently send you one for the cost of shipping. (Many thanks to rabitguy!)

I submit that there must be a movie version of Buster Wilde.

Kerry meets up with one of the key supporters of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth here, in a Foreign Relations Committee meeting. Mr Fox strongly opposes 527s, and is "very concerned with the amount of money that is going into politics". It's delightful viewing. =:D

Pixar commissioned some absolutely gorgeous 1920s Parisienne style posters for Ratatouille, and the artist's been kind enough to share the results. Magnifique! (And best of all, the guy even links to high resolution versions of each poster!)


Very cool to see Paprika (from the director of Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Godfathers, and Perfect Blue) will be getting a cinematic release in the US. So, no longer do I have to make do with the low-res trailer I linked to a while back - there's a shiny HD version now. And a good trailer it is, too. Go see!

Finally, there's a cheap way to enjoy digital terrestrial TV on OS X: the TubeStick. Only DVB-T, so it's no use in North America, but elsewhere, it's a small USB2 stick with some very slick software, for an entirely palatable 40€. (Currently only for Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands; the rest of Europe's "coming soon" - but not Norway or Sweden, curiously, when even Albania's getting into the action)

Here's a nicely odd Flash platformer unearthed by mycroftb: Lars' Adventure.

And if you're in those regions, you might want to observe some of tonight's total lunar eclipse, where the moon falls into the shadow of the Earth, casting it a ruddy hue. "The eclipse begins at 2018 GMT, with the Moon totally immersed in the shadow of the Earth between 2244 and 2358 GMT."

Now worms have a new home.. seems some kind soul's repurposed the Warezov worm to spread over Skype, appearing to be a request from someone on your contacts list to check out a (malicious) link, leading to an unpleasant surprise for anyone running Windows.

A new, very furry music video: Wintersleep - Jaws of Life. Where else will you get to see a bunny driving a car that's transformed into a mechadeer? (Band's site here)

The other clip you should see this week has to be one person's description (FLV) of March of the Emperor, the original French title for March of the Penguins. =:)

Bruce Campbell is inherently cool (FLV), even in a commercial.

Kawaii Not comes up with another gem. =:) On the genuinely cute (and bizarre) front, though, this fruity entry from CuteOverload really needs to be seen. Who knew you could do that with a banana? (And as for rats..) Here's a superb way to waste an afternoon: a Warcraft-inspired Flash game, noticed by patch_bunny. Lay down a choice of towers with their differing capabilities, upgrade or install new ones as you're able, and see how many levels you can annihilate. ^_^; And if someone at the con's reading this: "Are any of you guys that are headed to FC going to be coming through Colorado on your way back? If so, can you accomodate a small animal carrier with 2-4 baby rats in it? Will trade MULTIPLE full color commissions in exchange for transport help."

ysengrin may want to see the trailer for the forthcoming New Zealand film Black Sheep, as shadowolf noticed.

Sounds like a fascinating documentary: American Eunuchs.

Consider, if you please, the lives of dogs and cats. (Thanks to momentrabbit and dagoski!)

As for the iPhone - drop-dead gorgeous, but it's the UI that fascinates me. It pretty much goes without saying that screen will be coming to the other iPods soon enough. If you've not seen it in action, here's a quick demo that'll give you a good idea of just how much work's been put into the device.. so beautifully refined. Or, if you'd prefer to watch the full-blown demo, the keynote and just the introduction can be seen here, or, for best quality, go to the iTunes Store, search on "keynote", and click "Subscribe" on the Macworld Keynote Address. It'll load in the background - 1.2GB in all.

Speaking of which, this Ars thread explores some of the future possibilities of multitouch UIs - it also covers that demo you may have seen, by Jeff Han of MIT. (And if you haven't, watch it now!)

Apparently, its version of OS X - which does indeed appear to be the real deal, simply optimised and relieved of portions irrelevant to the device - weighs in at "considerably less" than 512MB of flash. I wonder if World of Warcraft could run on it.. =:) (Yes, joking, but still.. only trouble is that the critter appears to be Xscale-based, and furtherance of its design seems to've largely stalled in recent years. Perhaps the iPhone might be where the PowerPC makes its return to Apple - there are some quite attractively low power, high performance PPCs around)

Deservedly, comment of the week on The Comics Curmudgeon, speaks of this Curtis strip, "Why the hell aren't glowing telepathic otters the most publicized aspect of Kwanzaa? Its presence in Curtis has single-handedly legitimized this holiday in my mind." "A mother and son accused of stealing a snake from a pet store were arrested when they returned to the store and asked for books on how to care for the animal, police said. Store clerks recognized the suspects from surveillance video taken during the theft and stalled them until police arrived." The question posed in this quiz show is "which of these orbits the Earth?", with the choices being the Moon, the Sun, Mars, and Venus. The pain, the pain..

Parallels Workstation is nifty stuff. Have a look at these screenshots showing OS X and XP applications side-by-side on the same desktop, like any other apps, each running natively within their own OS, no emulation involved.

Could be interesting: a memorial to Carl Sagan in SL, opened by his son.

balor has nobly been researching what may, indeed, be the world's worst book. Don't say you weren't warned. (An excerpt is included. Oh, how you'll wish there weren't.. and no, this is not intentionally bad, and even has a glowing New Yorker review)

I wonder what kind of climate and soil durians can manage in, outside their native areas..

Not that I have a Linux-capable router (or maybe I do? It's a 3Com 3CRWDR100A-72), but if I had one and put one of the router distros on it, is it possible to rig the firewall rules such that traffic coming in unencrypted would only be able to see the internet, not the LAN, and anything using WPA2 would have full access? (Some bandwidth throttling mightn't be a bad idea either, just to be sure no casual visitor on the street wound up slurping all my bandwidth)

Quote for the day from Tycho: "E3 wasn't so much work as it was... It's hard to say what it was, which I suppose is another reason to dismantle it. It was more like our Moose Lodge, a masculine retreat minus the bongos and face paint." (The comic, though, leaves me puzzled, given I was flying intercontinental before I could walk =:)

For OS X geeks, Google's now released an implementation of the Linux FUSE mechanism, permitting the (theoretically =:) easy addition of a range of filesystems. "Examples of file systems that work have been tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on."

Streamburst has a novel approach to DRM - don't use it. Just add a few seconds at the start saying who downloaded that copy, and embed a small off-screen "watermark" confirming that. Buy an episode of, say, Long Way Round for £1.35, and you get a 752x416 H.264 version for DVD-grade playback, 320x176 H.264 for iPods and suchlike, and 208x112 MPEG-4 for phones. An excellent idea, though spoiled a little by remaining only level with the cost of the DVD purchase - in this case, £13 for all ten episodes on 3 DVDs.

Just so neat.. a foil boat floating on a sea of sodium hexafluoride, a colorless gas. A superb quote regarding not actually lapine shoes, but so very nearly. =:) Arashi no Yoru ni isn't just an anime.. ^_^ Interesting take on personal net.radio: Musicovery. Requires Flash, unfortunately, so it's strictly a browser-bound affair, and may or may not be open to non-OS X/Windows folks. Still, it's a novel approach. marko_the_rat might like to peek at some forthcoming Ratatouille books.

Album title for the day: Tim Koch's "Please don't tell me that's your Volvo".

One of the more daffy memes I've seen, so naturally it appealed: on your LJ user info, you'll see your ID number next to your name. Look that up in the US Patent Office's listings, and see what you're registered as. ^_^ I'm just a boring "air inlet device for internal combustion engines", from 1922. Whee, I suck!

Supposedly, Sony will not allow porn on Blu-Ray. As the brief article notes, "It does not matter how you stand to porn. It is here and it is a massive business. It is also an industry that is an early adopter for new media technology. VHS might not have won with out the adult film industry adopting it." That said, does the future of HD porn lie on either format - and there are others in the background as well - or with downloads? An hour of good quality 720p video using H.264 can fit into around 1GB - and whilst that might sound like a lot, with a low-end DSL connection of 2Mbps, that's about 90 mins to download. Scale up to a more usual 8Mbps, or a good cable connection, and that's all possible now, without any additional equipment required.

Torchwood season 1 finale: oh, gods, what bottomless pit of eternal hackery spewed forth such writing? A few good plot points - particularly the ending, and not just because it brought this to a close - but so much sheer wretchedness everywhere else. Was this some fanfic stinker that managed to slip into the script pile? (Ah, I see the writer was also reponsible for the execrable Cyberwoman, and the nearly-as-stinky second episode. Also Countrycide, which wasn't too bad) Still.. there was that rather delightful endcap to the season.

So, another chapter in SGI's history wraps up, with the last of their Mountain View offices closed; they're now all safely tucked away in Sunnyvale. I only managed to visit a couple times, including one occasion where I visited FurToonia's new home, having handed it over (with almost no downtime, yay!) from tbyte to the paws of another wizard who was working at SGI at the time, deep in their network bowels.

I'm impressed by the level of detail exhibited in Wikipedia's entry on "porn".

Rather a cool photo: a man with 800 acupuncture needles applied to his head.

Enjoying a little relaxation in the spa built within the massive ribcage of a long-expired creature.

Perhaps the single cutest Flash game you've ever seen: Winterbells. I think djmermaid should give this a try. ^_^

As you may have read, the world's largest wind farm is to be constructed off the Kentish coast, near Margate and Clacton, with 341 turbines across 145 square miles. 'The DTI also approved another development at Thanet on the Thames Estuary - 100 turbines sited seven miles off north Foreland on the Kent coast. The combined output of the schemes could be up to 1.3GW - "enough to meet the needs of a third of homes in Greater London".' All being well, they're intending to complete construction by 2011.

Muzz loves children. =:)

Distilled genius: The Helsinki Complaints Choir. (Including, inevitably, "Our ancestors could have picked somewhere sunnier to live".. not that that's making me think of anyone in particular =:)

Or, if you're in more of a mad scientist mood, you really should try one of Doctor Steel's videos, such as Back and Forth (FLV) and Fibonacci Sequence (FLV).

If you're a Windows user who enjoyed that tender Sony lurve a little while back, with their delightful rootkit, here's the press release for the California settlement, and its Texan counterpart. If you spent money ridding yourself of it, in California, you can claim up to $175.

Interesting.. seems BBC Worldwide's testing the digital downloads market with a few series, including Doctor Who, amongst others. No word on pricing or what DRM may be bolted on, but the P2P platform in question, Zudeo, is based on the next version of Azureus, one of the leading BitTorrent clients. If it actually works out competitive against DVD pricing, I'll be somewhat surprised. Other series mentioned include Little Britain, Fawlty Towers, and The League of Gentlemen.

If you've been pondering getting a copy of OmniWeb 5, I noticed the license has been cut from its previous $30 to a very palatable $15. Get a copy of the world's nicest browser for the one you love. ^_^

(How can you not enjoy a recommendation from someone like John Siracusa? "Usually this level of functionality can only be found in the geekiest of open source web browsers, if it can be found at all. Finding it in a proper Mac OS X application from a respected developer with a proven track record is like finding a perfect 1/10,000th scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in a box of crackerjacks. Then the tower transforms into a tiny robot and makes you lunch.") Pharyngula passes on some classic "diagrams". His response is priceless. I think it'd make an excellent t-shirt. ^_^

I'm sure plenty of folks have already seen this bun on CuteOverload, but.. I must repost him here. ^_^

(Notice the tiny tongue?)