Archive for the “internet” Category

During a recent “geek-meet,” the subject of Homestar Runner arose. One thing led to another, and we found ourselves discussing the “Jibblies.” Since some people were unfamiliar with the Jibblies on that occasion, I thought I would share the full nature of the Jibblies with the wider geek community. Strong Bad first revealed the Jibblies during his “Bottom Ten” email, and they’ve continued to pop up ever since, even being featured in a special Halloween toon.

The Jibblies are a kind of psychic shock caused by a painting of an evil Demon known as the “Rocoulm,” whose catchphrase is “Come on in here.” Before I show you the full horror of the Jibblies, I should tell you that when you see the Poopsmith character during the following video, make sure to click on his head to unlock an easter egg scene which you would otherwise miss. It’s worth it.

Tags: Homestar Runner, Jibblies, Rocoulm

As most of you probably know this week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3 for short. This time of year brings a huge amount of gaming news for all the latest and greatest games to come. Rather than link all of the awesome videos, and I assure you there are many (just keep reading if you doubt), I recommend you regularly check http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/index.html for all the latest news. In no particular order I’m going to talk a bit about some of the amazing things that have been announced so far. I’ll try to add new posts after each days news hits. Since it’s midday Teusday this will include all of the stuff from day 1, and some of day 2.

• There is a new model of the PSP coming with a slide up screen. Yeah I know, I don’t care either but it’s as good a place as any to start

And you know it probably describes you and/or everyone else you know too.

The interweb is a funny place.  There are a lot of people who use it everyday and have no clue as to how it works.  There are people (myself included) who know exactly how it works, but also know that someone else knows more.  Then there are the scary people who REALLY know how it works, how to get around it without being seen, and how to get whatever they want from it (they are usually tagged by the FBI . . . not kidding).

The problem with so many people being on the web and not knowing what is going on behind the scenes is that they leave rather large wakes in their path; all the crappy poems they wrote when they were mad at their ex, all the embarrassing photos you didn’t think would get out, that one video (yeah, that one).  It’s all on there forever!  And it’s traceable.

Tags: bashing, blogs, emo poetry, hidden internet browsing, internet, moronic live journal users, Penny Arcade

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I feel that I can talk about Christmas (retailers and radio stations start way too early. This bugs me as a big fan of Thanksgiving).

I love having a Geek Wife.  Not only am I married to someone who understand me, she also introduces me to more geek items that I wasn’t aware of.  She introduced me to the website that NORAD set up to track Santa Clause on Christmas Eve.    http://www.noradsanta.org/

It has now become a tradition on December 24th (Just as the International Date line crosses over to December 25th) to visit the website and keep an eye on where Santa has visited.  The website will update every five minutes with different reports and videos on where Santa has been.  At the time that Santa is scheduled to pass over our place, my wife would run past the kids bedrooms (they would be tucked in by that time) playing the Christmas bells (luckily we would already have the presents under the tree).

Tags: Christmas, NORAD

 

I have been feverishly playing with Google Chrome for about six weeks now.  One of those weeks I dedicated exclusively to Chrome, where I didn’t use any other browser.  In that one week, I not only found out more about Chrome, but now, Chrome and I are BFFs!  The only time I use the other browsers is to test web pages Iam developing.  Well, and to play on Facebook, since Facebook and Chrome don’t play nice yet (more on that later).  So here is a simple, watered down, not-so-short, preview of Chrome and Chromium (it’s open source counterpart).  Some of this content may be a bit biased because I’ve been pro-Google since GMail was introduced, and I’m voting for Google 2008.

Okay, on with the review.  After each feature review, I will also rate that feature on a scale of 1 to 10…

Tags: Chrome, Google, Review

As a fan of a lot of Sci-Fi shows, I end up joining various fan clubs. Of course I run the USS Ticonderoga fan club for Star Trek. I’ve been involved in various clubs for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Firefly and others. One of these is the Visitors Fifth Column, a fan club of the various V mini-series and television series. Today the leader of the local chapter directed me towards a Variety report announcing that ABC would be producing a re-image of the V story. Warner Brothers TV will be producing the show.

Scott Peters, the co-creator and executive producer of the USA series The 4400, will be writing the new adaptation. Peters has also written for The Outer Limits and Highlander. He has also directed for The 4400 and Jericho.

Tags: ABC, fan clubs, highlander, Jericho, mini series, outer limits, Scott Peters, Television, V

In “honor” of their 10th birthday, Google has brought their oldest available index back online.  You can search with it, and see what Google would have pulled up in 2001.  You can even see what the page would have looked like 7 years ago!

 

 

 

 

If you have nothing better to do, go ahead and search the “old web”; you’ll quickly notice how far it’s come in those years.  Be fast, though . . . it’s only available for a month!

Tags: Google

I am an absolute technophile.  I love seeing all the new gadgets that come out and what they can do for me.  I love to think about how I can then modify those gadgets to do even more for me without me having to pay anything more.  I’m a cheapskate, and an enthusiast.

The term “enthusiast” is not one I’ve used all that often to describe myself.  If there were a scale to describe how much of an enthusiast a person could be, I’d imagine I’d be rather low on the scale.  But the fact is, I’m still ON the scale.  There is a very sad down side to being an enthusiast (well, there are probably a few); those same devices that you find you can’t live without aren’t usually everywhere you might need them.

Tags: 256k isdn, broadband, cell phones, cheapskate, Chrome, commercials, DVR, enthusiast, HTPC, internet, ISDN, listening to the radio, new gadgets, Oracle, technophile, TiVo, tv, Vista

Our good friends at Google have been working on a browser elegantly named Chrome.  This open-sourced browser boasts features that are fairly new to the browser scene.  Google’s blog post introducing Chrome emphasizes the importance to starting over new with a web browser because the web has evolved from simple text html pages to rich, interactive applications.  In order to better illustrate how the idea came about, and what has gone into creating this application, Google’s Scott McCloud has created a comic book available for reading here.

One of the first features they illustrate is that Chrome separates each browsing tab into its own process.  Each process has its own memory and its own copy of the global data structures, thereby making it easier to maintain browsing integrity within each separate tabs, making memory management smoother and quicker, and allowing web applications to run independently from others so one bad javascript won’t crash other tabs.  A tab task manager is also available so you can see which sites are using more memory than others.  These are only a few benefits to having multiple processes within the browser.

Tags: Chrome, Google, web browser