Here's a little fact I wasn't aware of, brought to you by the always educational Doctor Karl: The music on that annoying "You wouldn't steal a car.." bumper on the beginning of almost every DVD in the early '00s is...wait for it...pirated music. Dr. Kruszelnicki has provided much more information than I ever could, so I point you to the above link and leave you in peace. Should you not remember the horrid advert, here's a youtube link to refresh your memory.
Just passed 260,000 collective views between Heroes of Science Action Figures and Heroes of Science Volumes I and II on DeviantART. That's a bit nuts.
I'm not alone: Twitterer @durrak is also a Sanyo CX 2630 user, and confirms that all calculators of that model are possessed by demons. (Based on a sample size of two, but who's counting?)
This is a project that I started -- and kind of abandoned -- several years ago. The story is this: Once, during a trip to Melbourne, I picked up a cool poster showing the entire railway network of the city, complete with all of the stations and lines that had closed down over the years. I quite liked it. I decided to make one for Sydney. I stupidly underestimated the magnitude of this task.
So, I edited it, on-again-off-again, until I ended up with the final version, which I display here. Is it 100% accurate? Probably not. Is it educational? Undoubtedly. Should you always do further research when presented with information on the internet? Of course you should.
Thanks to all the folks at railpage.com.au's forums who helped all those years ago, without your assistance, I would never have had the impetus to continue with this thing. Thanks also to nswrail.net for being such a ludicrously awesome resource for New South Wales railway history, and a fantastic tool for clarifying a lot of the details that went into this map.
If you find any glaring errors, by all means, let me know. I probably won't make any changes, though, because this project has very much been and gone, and it's a huge undertaking to edit it.
Click here for the full, high-res (but heavily compressed) version if you want to read the text. (Warning: is gigantic, won't work in full-resolution on an iPad or iPhone without special software.)
'tis but a preview image. Click for big. (Really big.)
Who's been dancing, lewdy-style, on the tiny stage, before the dimming footlights of your mind, this week, pal? Who'd have thought there'd be more fake action figures? This time, it's Roy & H.G, from "Club Buggery", "The Bughouse", "The Dream", "This Sporting Life", and a crudload of other things.
Based on the same Star Trek: DS9 action figures as last time. Click on the image below to embiggen, if that's the kind of thing you want to do.
Remember when you were cool because you used Dogpile instead of Altavista? Yeah, neither do I.
Continuing the previous post's somewhat trendy trend:
Details: "Fire and Ice: Outrider", by Richard Harding -- currently selling new for a thrify $118.76 on the 'zon, even.
What is there to work with: Fonzie, portrayed by the bastard son of Peter Weller and Nicholas Cage, stands around in a field of polyethylene tanks leaking sunset into the sky. He has a large knife, a spare large knife, a small knife, and no knees.
Therefore the plot must be: Unable to sell functioning water tanks to farmers, Fonzie must resort to knife sales. Brandishing his entire stock of three, he shows up on the doorsteps of unsuspecting citizens to stand boredly askance, hoping someone will show enough interest in his knives that he can break out the extra special gift -- a free set of steak knifes.
Hit the jump for more, believe it or not, it gets better.
Details: "Ben Bova presents Phylum Monsters" by Hayford Peirce. Oh, yes. It's spelled "Peirce". My spellchecker hates it, too. Phylum, by the by, is the taxonomic rank that resides between "class" and "kingdom" in the taxonomic heirarchy. Likelihood of this being in any way relevant to the plot -- slim to none.
What we have to work with: Narcoleptic alcoholic butler holding a kidney takes a tipple in a room with a backwards computer with no screen, a yellow machine from Starfleet that has an LED desk lamp attached and probably goes "ping", while a hovering volleyball projects a hologram of a snoozing Doctor Zaius into the air in front of a pennant of the DNA double helix. There are SO MANY science fiction concepts crammed into this image. There's no possible way this could end badly.
Therefore the plot must be: Unable to maintain a train of thought while writing the sequel to the prequel to the third sequel of Planet of the Apes, Jeeves takes a brief respite in the DNA room. Sipping his chardonnay and gripping an authentic replica of a human internal organ, he hopes that turning his screen to the ether and listening to the dulcet tones of the yellow machine box will clear his mind and allow him to figure out the final character arc of Doctor Zaius, last seen sleeping in an extremely yellow room with inexplicable giant hairs growing from his left shoulder. Will Jeeves complete the screenplay in time? Will the studios buy it? Will Zaius ever wake up? Did Hayford Peirce spell his name wrong on the first book he ever published, and has had to live with it ever since? Is Ben Bova glad no one's spelled his name wrong? I imagine so!
There're still more to come (alas). Stay tuned!
I need to quit spontaneously spending money on things I don't need. Case in point: I recently bought a bunch (and by "a bunch", I mean 300) old science fiction novels, second hand, in differing states of disrepair. Some of them are recognisable, most of them aren't. Most of them are actually components of series' of novels, never with their appropriate predecessors and successors, thus making them largely pointless to read. I'm impressed, though, by the cover art on some of the "pulpier" novels, so I'm going to feature (read: mock) it here. In fact, the artwork reminds me to plug Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's old Cowboy Comics, which are still hilarious. I've included Amazon links where I'm able to, in case you feel the need to support the authors and cover artists by buying their splendid work.
I'm going to present these in the following scenario:
The logical follow up point would be "and how accurate were those conclusions?", but quite frankly, the likelihood of having time (or willpower) to read these books is insignificantly low.
The books!
Details: "Nowhere Man" by Jerry Oster, 1989
What is there to work with: Either a ninja, or a man in a wetsuit. He's armed with a 9mm. He looks depressed. The novel is a humdinger.
Therefore the plot must be: A manic-depressive scuba-diving ninja floats on his back in a pool of red custard, contemplatedly scratching his cheek with his 9mm. Nothing happens, though, because he is Nowhere Man, a superhero so ineffectual that even non-sequitir situations fail to create drama.
Details: "Lord Tedric: Black Knight of the Iron Sphere" by Gordon Eklund, 1955
What is there to work with: Captain Beardy Leatherpants slapping a sword-wielding child, while a pink bikini-wearing Viking crossdresser approaches with a stick, hoping to offset Captain Beardy Leatherpants already questionable balance.
Therefore the plot must be: Looks like a family drama. Mother is a crossdresser. Son, genetically inheriting father's bad balance, tries to protect a stain he's made on the carpet, all the while hoping his dumbass transvestite mother doesn't just walk into dad's sword, as (s)he's clearly paying no attention to her inner GPS.
Details: "Warrior's Blood", by Richard S. McEnroe, 1955
What there is to work with: Luke Skywalker, now inexplicably portrayed by Scott Bakula, leans italic-style into the background to dodge a flying sun pellet. Mistress McFaintyFaint, dressed in yellow and wearing a convenient dream catcher to hold the ensemble together does her best to keep her left thigh from collapsing.
Conclusion: It's the story of an interstellar chiropractor, travelling from planet to planet curing ailments and encouraging people to engage in fitness routines. He also sells fetching white leotards and pale yellow dresses, neither of which are designed to fit particularly well. When not performing chiropracty, Doctor Skywalker flies around space in his shoe-shaped-ship, leaving behind gigantic exhaust plumes of orange debris, which dissipate into neon space signs that advertise his business. Back pain? FOLLOW THAT NEBULA.
There will be more. (Unfortunately.)
I recently posted an article about smartphone apps like Hipstamatic and Instragram, and how they're ruining the originality of photography. I'm about to be spectacularly hypocritical and backtrack over a great deal of what I said. There's a caveat, though. All of the pictures I'm about to post are original, and deliberately edited. I have a huge collection of photographs. I take photos of crap constantly. I have a lot of photos that I like, but I just don't like enough to do anything with. Photos of things, photos of places, photos of the sky. Lots of photos of, just, stuff, really. On their own, none of them stand up to scrutiny. I've posted a few on DeviantART, and some of them have been successfully received. Balanced Barbs, Probably Unsafe and No Sense of Time are a few examples of images that aren't widely hated. Generally, if I post these pictures, they sink to the bottom of the pile, and I eventually delete them because they just end up as clutter.
I'm going to shamelessly self-indulge, now, and post a shit-ton of them all at once. They kind of function as a collection. Put them all together and they get a weird nostalgic feel to them, with their cross-processed filters and Hipstamatic flavour.
So, without further ado, here's a LOT of little pictures. Click "Read more" to, uh, read more. Although I suppose it's more looking at pictures than reading. Click on the images to embiggen. Enjoy!
Every morning, for the past few months, I've needed to use a calculator. The calculator in question is a vintage early-1980s model Sanyo CX 2630 solar powered beast. You can read about its awesome functions at these two extremely nerdy websites: calculator.org and mycalcdb. It has all the functions you'd expect of a calculator, not the least of which is that being solar powered, it hasn't required new batteries since the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Under the Bridge. As an aside, it delights me to no end that there are websites dedicated to the minutiae of vintage calculators. The internet is a haven for anoraks. This particular calculator has issues, though. It adds just fine. Subtracts perfectly. It even handles multiplication and division with aplomb. While I haven't needed to use the function, I have the utmost confidence in its ability to calculate a square root and store the results in its memory. The thing that worries me about this calculator is
THE FREAKING THING IS HAUNTED.
Tucked away in a dark drawer, devoid of fluorescent "solar" power, its twenty year old batteries fail, and it loses its mind. Grasping at the last vestiges of its consciousness, it types a garbled message, leaving it on the screen for me to wonder about the next morning.
I've kept a log. Every time it's left me a message, I've recorded it. The original purpose of this project was simply to see if it was ever the same. Was the message similar, day in and day out? Was it just random crap? (Hint: probably!) Was there a hidden logic?
I'll let you decide. Big gallery to follow, with commentary. Hit the jump.
