Parade of Awesomeness

If you are even vaguely familar with the Mega Man series of...

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:18:06 -0400

If you are even vaguely familar with the Mega Man series of video games, you’ll love this clip. Make sure you stick around for the screenshots at the very end.

Digital Blasphemy is a collection of excellent...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:44:32 -0400

Digital Blasphemy is a collection of excellent computer-generated images created by Ryan Bliss that you can use as the background for your computer or phone.

While you have to pay for the majority of these amazing images, there is a free gallery that showcases some of the artist’s best work.

At first, Digital Blasphemy was a hobby for Bliss, but later on the site became popular enough for him to support both himself and his family. This means that producing this amazing artwork is his day job, so subscribers get new backgrounds just about every other week.

The images are beautiful, and there’s enough variety to keep me busy changing my background all the time. I love it.

The Onion News Network podcast is a hilarious parody of TV news...

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:36:08 -0400

The Onion News Network podcast is a hilarious parody of TV news outlets. For example, in the above clip the ONN interviews an Entertainment Scientist from the Institute for Sustainable Cyrus Use. (Watch this one through to the end. The “Next Up…” is the best part.)

The clips usually run less than two minutes and are published irregularly, but usually once or twice a week. Other recent favorites include “Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare” and “Horrific 120-Car Pileup A Sad Reminder Of Princess Diana’s Death.”

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 15 - Nugget Man

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:53:44 -0400

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 15 - Nugget Man:

Today we hear from the hilarious Paul and Storm with their song Nugget Man, their tribute to the inventor of the chicken nugget, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

This is an absolutely awesome video of a guy named Matthew...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:49:37 -0400

This is an absolutely awesome video of a guy named Matthew Harding going around and dancing all around the world. It took 14 months to make.

Make sure you watch the HD version. (Click the HD button on the video and then click the “Watch This Video in HD link.”) It’s worth seeing the little details on this video.

1000 AD

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:52:12 -0400

1000 AD:

Normally I would feature this song on my Tuesday podcast, but it needs some explanation. A few weeks ago, there was a thread on Marginal Revolution where someone asked for survival tips in case he was ever transported to a random location in Europe in 1000 AD.

This thread caused a lot of debate, both on the site and on this excellent Metafilter thread. Basically, the responses fell into two camps: 1) I’m from the FUTURE! I can dazzle them with SCIENCE! and 2) No one will understand anything that I am saying and I’m going to die of extinct diseases and malnutrition.

That inspired this awesome song. Enjoy.

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, gave an...

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:16:19 -0400

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, gave an excellent talk at the 2008 TED conference about classical music. He’s funny and passionate and he’ll convince you that everyone loves classical music; they just don’t know it yet.

Wired has an interesting article today about a man who...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:28:10 -0400

Wired has an interesting article today about a man who photographs secret spy satellites. Above is a photograph of a satellite that the U.S. government claims doesn’t exist.

It’s one of several of Trevor Paglen’s projects documenting things that the government tries to cover up, from hidden bases to secret CIA prisons to lists of secret projects with names like “Divine Invader” and “Shattered Castles.”

Paglen compares this secrecy to the antiscience doctrines of the Catholic Church during Galileo’s time: “More significant than the discovery itself was the idea that anyone with a telescope could verify it and see the same exact thing that Galileo saw.”

It’s a fascinating project that exposes the flaws in a “security through obscurity” policy. People spread information; secrecy cannot last forever.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 14 - Down At Mcdonnelzz

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:53:19 -0400

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 14 - Down At Mcdonnelzz:

Today we hear from Electric Six with their song Down at McDonnelzz, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network. This is a fun, high-energy song about people who need a place to go (GO!).

I did have some sound quality issues with my recording this week. Sorry about that. The song was not affected, so listen to that.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

Ever since Foxtrot left, Pearls Before Swine has been the...

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:07:46 -0400

Ever since Foxtrot left, Pearls Before Swine has been the funniest comic strip in the daily newspapers.

I enjoy Rat’s cynicism, Pig’s naivete, and the Crocodile’s repeated failed attempts on Zebra’s life. The strip is full of dark humor that I absolutely love.

The two big books o’ comics that I own, Sgt. Piggy’s Lonely Hearts Club Comic and Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! both contain lots of hilarious comics and annotations by the author Stephan Pastis. And, as I was writing this entry, I saw that there’s a new treasury out, the Crass Menagerie, which is guaranteed a spot on my birthday list.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy good product...

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:31:13 -0400

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy good product design. These headphones that my Dad purchased recently, the Sony MDR-Q68LW model, are excellently designed.

What makes them interesting is the retractable cord. Each of the headphones has a button. One will retract the cord that connects the headphones to the audio device, and the other will retract the cord that connects one headphone to the other. After pushing both, you get a very tight package of two headphones, with no wires to get tangled and knotted.

If you want to see how this works, you ought to see this video done by a customer on Amazon.

Despite having extra mechanical parts, the headphones are lightweight, comfortable, and produce good sound, at least as good as my similar non-retractable headphones.

Dad seems pleased with them. When my old headphones break, I’m definitely going to grab a pair of these.

Valve is Awesome

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:43:30 -0400

I like Valve, the game company behind two of my favorite computer games, Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Unlike most game developers, who generally make a game and patch it only to fix bugs, Valve has been adding lots of new features to Team Fortress 2. They’ve been developing new maps and new weapons for the different classes, and slowly releasing them over time. It’s the kind of stuff most developers relegate to expansion packs rather than releasing for free.

And this is for a game that is relatively cheap anyways: It’s a $20 game in a world of $50 games. But I’m having much more fun with Team Fortress 2 than I ever had with the more expensive, bug-ridden Battlefield 2142. And when BF2142 released new content via the Northern Strike pack, I had to pony up an extra $10.

They’ve also been releasing hilarious new videos to promote the game, like the recently released Meet the Sniper video.

Today they’re releasing new weapons for the Pyro, the flamethrower class. I can’t wait to try them out!

The Great Office War. As an eight-year-old, I would have killed...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:28:10 -0400

The Great Office War. As an eight-year-old, I would have killed for a room full of nerf guns like the one in this video.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 13 - Inertia

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:55:00 -0400

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 13 - Inertia: It’s good to be back behind the microphone after a couple weeks away on my trip to Brazil. While I was on the plane, I became reaquainted with one of my favorite podsafe artists, Cat Jahnke. Today we’ll hear her song Inertia from her album None of Those Things, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

Spore is a new game coming out in September. In it, you’ll...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:19:00 -0400

Spore is a new game coming out in September. In it, you’ll get to play through the entire evolutionary history of a species, starting from a microbe to multicellular organism to a crawling up on land to tool use to planetary societies to a space-faring civilization.

I predict that this will be awesome, but before it comes out, there’s a demo coming out called the Spore Creature Creator, officially released on Wednesday. I’ve played with a pre-release version of this demo, and it is awesome.

The video above is an example of what you can create. The full game, of course, will have a lot more parts, and will allow your creatures to interact with the rest of the world, but this is a fun toy to play with in the meantime.

You start off with a spinal column that you can stretch and bend, and then you add parts like mouths, legs, eyes, and weapons. Then you paint the creature whatever colors you prefer, and then you can take it for a “test drive” where you can see how it will walk, roar, laugh, and cower in fear.

Apparently, someone has leaked this toy onto the internet a few days early, if you want to try it out. Alternately, just wait until Wednesday for the official release. Either way, you should give it a whirl. It’s fun!

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Firefox lately....

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:28:20 -0400

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with Firefox lately. Some combination of Javascript, Windows Vista, and the latest Firefox 3 release candidate were conspiring to crash my browser literally every time that I closed the Gmail tab. Every time. Even after starting a new profile with no extensions. It became most vexing

To my delight, I discovered that Opera 9.5 had just been released. Opera is a free web browser, more commonly used in nonstandard devices like mobile phones and Wiis, but they’ve just released a new version of their browser for the desktop.

One of the neatest features to me is the integration of email into the browser. I can hook into my GMail’s IMAP server and then read and respond to my email from a sidebar, without ever having to open up the Gmail site. It’s wonderfully fast.

The interface is clean and slick in this new version. The new keyboard shortcuts are different from Firefox—for example, Ctrl-K, which in Firefox moves the cursor to the search box, instead downloads emails in Opera—but Opera allows a lot of customization in the keyboard shortcut panel, and I’ve been able to change the shortcuts that matter to me.

One of the few frustrations I have with Opera is that it has one bizarre behavior: When copying a selection from the internet, it strips out all of the formatting (pictures, links, bold, italics, etc.), and there’s no option to copy with formatting.

Other than that one issue, I love it. It’s a fast, beautiful browser that’s secure and rock-solid. And it has a nifty and fast built-in email client. You should really check it out.

A well-done video about procrastination and all the insidious...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:21:33 -0400

A well-done video about procrastination and all the insidious forms it takes in our lives. Put off whatever you’re supposed to be doing for the next five minutes and enjoy it.

São Paulo is an awesome city. I recently had the opportunity to...

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:32:30 -0400

São Paulo is an awesome city. I recently had the opportunity to spend nearly a week in the city while my dad participated in a conference, and I had a great time.

It isn’t a tourist-oriented town like Rio, so almost no one speaks English, but the people I met were still gracious and friendly as I stumbled through my broken Portuguese. (You should definitely spend more than a week learning the language if you plan to visit.)

There’s plenty to do: Relax and wander Ibirapeura Park, shop in the city’s Japanese district of Liberdade, visit the art museums and the Catedral de Se. If you know Portuguese, there’s even more to do in the evenings at the city’s theaters and cinemas.

I absolutely loved my stay in the city of São Paulo, and I think you’d probably have a good time there too.

I’m taking a trip to Brazil soon, and I know almost no...

Fri, 30 May 2008 09:56:02 -0400

I’m taking a trip to Brazil soon, and I know almost no Portuguese. To help me get around the country, I picked up the first ten lessons of Pimsleur’s Brazilian Portuguese Level I from Audible (the equivalent of the Conversational Brazilian Portuguese CD set).

So far, two lessons in, I’ve found it to be very useful. The Pimsleur system (which I discovered via a search on Ask Metafilter) strongly emphasizes pronunciation over reading and grammar. First a native speaker says a word or phrase, then you are expected to repeat it, several times. Then the word is used in context, and you follow along.

Over the course of the half-hour session, you learn a handful of words and phrases very, very well, and you learn to pronounce them like a native speaker would. (This is important, because sounding the words out from a phrasebook will sound completely wrong.)

My goal is to learn the most basic, necessary phrases before my trip, things like “Good morning!” and “Do you speak English?” and “Where is the nearest restroom?” This Pimsleur guide has been an excellent resource so far; I only wish I had gotten started earlier!

On that note, this blog will be going on hiatus for a few days. Please enjoy the Archives of Awesomeness while I am away, and I’ll be back a little later, no doubt with something awesome from Brazil.

A real dog is freaked out by a toy dog. That is all.

Thu, 29 May 2008 11:40:52 -0400

A real dog is freaked out by a toy dog. That is all.