Don’t Call It A Condiment

…Cause I’m only playing catch-up.
See, because it’s a homonym with… Bah, never mind. On with the Friday Link Dump!
Hollywood is definitely out to retroactively destroy my childhood. How else can one explain their insistence on changing G.I. Joe from hard-charging defenders of America into a namby-pamby “international” strike force under the auspices of the U.N.? Gah! At least TNR has a funny take on the liberal NERFing of Jack Bauer Fox has planned for this next season.
The Top 10 Stadium Anthems That Must Be Retired. I could not agree more with the selections, although the suggested alternatives simply have to be jokes.
Sad news: Madeline L’Engle died yesterday. Funny resultant referential/reverential Fark headline: Tessa-wrecked: Madeline L’engle dies at 88.
Continue reading “Don’t Call It A Condiment”

Did Anyone Else Get 33% More Likely To Buy An iPhone Yesterday?

Okay, so y’all did see the coverage of Apple’s little shindig yesterday where they announced

  • New iPod Nanos with screen rezzes equivalent to the iPod Video
  • iPod “Classics” featuring 80GB and 160(!)GB capacities
  • The friggin’ iPod “Touch”, otherwise known as “iPhone Without The Phone Part”
  • And a $200 drop on the iPhone’s previously astronomical pricetag

…Cause, dang, son, those are some sexy new audioplayer options. I do think they should have offered a third Touch model with a regular HDD instead of flash so that there was at least a 30GB option for that super-sweet piece of technology, but oh well.
Oh, and there was some folderol about being able to make ringtones out of your iTunes purchases, but I (among others) don’t quite see what all the fuss is about that.
And there was something about overpriced coffee to go with your overwrought pop music, but I kinda quit paying attention at that point.
PS: Congrats to the WordPress.com/Automattic team, as they hosted Gizmodo’s live coverage of the Stevenote with aplomb, skipping nary a beat.

The Heights Of Human Weirdness Know No Upper Bounds

Have you ever wanted to embed a server in the corpse of a frog, wire up the frog’s legs so that said server can activate said frog’s leg muscles via a galvanic reaction, suspend the whole affair in a tank of mineral oil, hook the server up to the Internet, allow users to activate the frog’s legs remotely while watching the contraption on a webcam, install the whole affair in a gallery and call it art?
No?
Well, thank goodness, humanity has you covered, should the thought ever arise.
(“Und next on ‘Germanys Most Disturbing Home Videos’, ve haf a grown man in a diaper running through a sprinkler…”)

The Next Generation Of Social Networking Sites

FaceSpace and MyBook are out, these badboys are in. I’ve stumbled across a few “social networking” sites over the past few days that are definitely worth a look or two from you, my loyal reader[s]:

  • Open Source Food: exchange recipes, have your own rated by your fellow man and drool over the quick pictures of the mouth-watering dishes your fellow geeks have whipped up.
  • Media Mythbusters: conservatives dedicated to collaboratively putting the lie to the Mainstream Media’s various spins and outright fabrications. Follow along on the MMM blog, too.
  • InviteShare: Down at the moment, but if you’re sick of scrounging for invites to invite-only betas like Skitch, GrandCentral, Pownce, etc., fear no more. Head over to InviteShare and request some beta lovin’ from those on the inside who will, in turn, earn a reputation for their invite generosity. Nifty idea.

One Phish, Two Phish, Red Phish, Etc.

For those of you with an interest in educating your extended family on the dangers of phishing websites, McAfee is obviously selling its SiteAdvisor software via this nifty little quiz but it offers a great learning opportunity and more than a few helpful tips on avoiding giving up your personal and financial information.
See if you can match my score:
Booyeah!
Perfect score, first time through baby! *grin*

I Wish I Had $600 “Revolutionary” Dollars To Spend On The “Revolutionary” iPhone

I know that Apple always does things a bit differently than their competitors, but the 20 minute iPhone tour they posted today should simultaneously put every single other cell phone company 1) on notice and 2) to shame.
Can you imagine how different people’s experiences with Treos, Qs and Pearls would be if Palm, Motorola and RIM took the time to produce such simple-yet-effective rundowns of their respective devices’ ins and outs? What if the big M actually had a website showing me how to turn off my Q’s radio so that I could play solitaire at 30,000 feet and thus reduce the chances of fouling my transport’s comm systems?
$600 is an awful lot of money, but everything in that video makes me want an iPhone all the more. It looks as though they have addressed nearly every single long-standing nit and annoyance that anyone that has had the misfortunepleasure of dealing with cell phones in the past. It will certainly be interesting to see how Motorola, Nokia, et. al. respond in the months to come.
This thing is going to be big.

Joost Invites Out The Wazoo

Now that the unlimited invite version of Joost, the new Web 2.0-ish streaming “TV” application, has arrived, I have unlimited invites to drop. Anyone looking to get in on the beta, please just leave a comment in the comments section of this post.
It’s pretty cool, I must say.

Nice Inbox You’ve Got There — Shame If Something Were To Happen To It…

An enterprising Slashdotter, spurred by a pair of articles, asks Are Sysadmins Really that Bad? The short answer is: yes, yes we are.
The long answer is: be nice to us, include us on the planning stages of your projects, tell us when we’ve done either good or bad things, always remember Sysadmin Appreciation Day — basically, treat us like regular human beings.
And never, never ask “What do you even do all day?” with that tone. You know the one. Just don’t, mmmkay?