Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News

Nexus Envy

Jon Hannibal Stokes twitters today about his Nexus One:

I accidentally pressed the voice input on my Nexus One right before a huge sneeze, and it Googled "sneeze." I am not making this up.

http://twitter.com/hannibalrex/statuses/7923029604

I want one.

Peanuts is cooler than cool: Hey Ya

This peanuts rendition of Hey Ya is great. I like Linus & Charlie Brown covering "ice cold!" at 02:20, and the attention to detail with the clapping/snapping along at all the right moments.

Tetris Humor

Line piece!

If video games were realistic

I especially liked these Pacman and Zelda graphics from If Video Games Were Realistic. Most of the 27 entries are good, though - click through for yourself.

Overqualified

I'm going to order this book "Overqualified" by Joey Comeau. It's just too funny.

Every page is a cover letter to a different company. I'd like to think Joey actually sent these out, but I doubt it. Some of them would be the DHS on his tail. Consider this letter, to Aliant Telecom:

I have tried to kill myself three times in as many days. I spent six hours on the internet this morning, having shallow conversations with a dozen of my friends. They kept asking "how do you feel?" and posting the little hug icon from MSN. ...

We have to stop it. We have to clean your server rooms with fire. We have to tear out its backbone.

I know that the internet lives somewhere in the tunnels underneath the Aliant Telecom offices in Halifax. There have to be tunnels, there's no other explanation.

Please. Hire me. Give me the access codes to our salvation. If I am in the computers as an employee, it won't see me come, gasoline can in hand.

Buy the book link: http://www.amazon.com/Overqualified-Joey-Comeau/dp/1550228587

Read it for free link: http://www.asofterworld.com/oqarchive.php

Obama poster parodies

This stuff is dated, but I liked all these Obama "Hope" poster parodies that I just stumbled across:

Apparently, making these posters is a popular pasttime.

Keep up with tactical pants developments at the tactical pants blog

Am I wrong to think this is hilarious?

Don't get left behind by the fast-moving tactical pants industry. Subscribe to the tactical pants blog.

http://tacticalpants.com/
"The Tactical Pants Blog covers topics related to this emerging technical apparel."

Though the pants pictured look highly tactical to me, I don't know how well they'd perform with the kind of tactics I'm best known to engage in.

College Humor: Web Site Story

This parody in musical form is great. I wonder if they'll do RENT next?

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1913584

Meaningful life

For those of us raised by 8-bit NES, this is wonderful.

UUDDLRLRBABAStart = Extra Life

UDUDAAABA = Meaningful life

StartDDDUDDDD = Life with brief bursts of joy that are quickly smothered by long periods of darkness.

All work and no play makes jack a dull boy.

So my wife Rachel walks up behind me last night as I sit at computer desk, with my boy Drew (4 years old) in my lap.  He's watching me as I furiously type into a text window on blogger:

all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.

Rachel says "so ..."

and I say "Drew asked me what blogging is.  I'm showing him."

Please Stop Quoting John Quincy Adams

Sometimes I need some Lorem Ipsum Dolor text when drafting, but Lorem Ipsum is overused. Recently I decided instead to pay homage to satirewire by quoting JQA instead - but scrambled into a Greek font.

This is what the reader of my project plans will see if they squint hard enough:




And this is the English representation of that same text:



I can't believe it's been 9 years since Andrew Marlatt wrote that joke. Why does it stick with me?

brilliant Married to the Sea

This was a pretty great Married to the Sea comic from earlier this year:

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/mtts-archives/mttsarchive-jan09.php

The layers are a lie

I scratched my head when I saw a cake icon light up in Adobe Acrobat today. The mouseover text explained.

I don't usually expect this level of snarky-ness from Adobe. I usually only see this in open-source applications.

Children are great for reminding us of our mortality

So my son, who is 4, and rather cute, tells me in his bubbly-cheery voice "Dad!  When I'm a daddy, you will be the grandpa!"

I know he's just learning his family roles & relationships, but this particular comment struck me as purely morbid.  He may as well have said "dad, when are you going to pay for your funeral arrangements so we're ready - for you to die?"

Francis: I hate rapping

I'm ripping this to MP3 for my playlist.  Francis of Left 4 Dead lets us know how he feels about Ayn Rand with some good beats.

Here's the MP3, ID3 tags by me: francis-i-dont-hate-vests.mp3

Feeding dollars to dogs

I spent some time tonight trying to feed a dollar to my wife's dogs.  The first dog turned up her nose at it, but Missy was more suggestable.  I totally missed the best shot - the camera was between frames when she really started chewing it up.

Current Music: Flobots, No Handlbars

I guess this is part two in my thousand-part series where post what music I'm listening to now.

Today it's Flobots - No Handlebars. With a great rotoscoped/animated video, good music, and inspired lyrics, this one is an obvious hit. Mix that with my recent TF2/L4D obsessions, and some clever rewriting of the lyrics at ubercharged, and I'm hooked.

Here are the gamers lyrics:

I can play my game with no voice commands

No voice commands, no voice commands

I can play my game with no voice commands

No voice commands, no voice commands

Look at me, look at me

Pushin’ the cart like it’s good to be

On BLU, and I’m a Payload champion

Even when I’m outnumbered 10 to me

I can show you how to pop an uber

I can show you how to eat a Sandvich

I can dominate an entire team

Even when I’m playin’ on my crappy bandwidth

I can stab and run without gettin’ shot

I can outmaneuver any Sniper dot

I know all the routes to the final point

And I can flank any defence you’ve got

Me and my friends, we never lose

Me and my friends got “Cook the Books”

And guess how long it took

I can dominate who I want, ’cause look

I can kill heavies with a bit of lead

A bit of lead, a bit of lead

And I can see you’re playin’ some Left 4 Dead

Some Left 4 Dead, some Left 4 Dead

Look at me, look at me

Just typed to say that it’s good to be

Alive, with hordes of zombies

Tryin’ to stop my victory

I can dodge Hunters without getting leapt on

I can stop a rush, don’t matter how large

I can jump on that wall fan

And I contribute to Boomercharged

I can take out 3 Tanks at once

I can make up for the team dunce

I know how to hold my own on Expert

And I can make a zombie player ragequit

Boomers, Hunters, Tanks and Witches

Me and my crew can wipe out those b*tches

I can outwit the AI Director

I’m one guy you can’t infest, ’cause

I can lead my teammates with a microphone

A microphone, a microphone

And I can win a match with a Molotov

A Molotov, a Molotov

Look at me, look at me

Making zombies go POP!

And it feels so good to be alive and on top

My gun is loaded, my saferoom secure

My win is noted, my victory sure

I can own zombies across the nation

Kill ‘em with bullets or immolation

Turn ‘em into a mass cremation

Whatever guarantees my team’s salvation

I can make boss zombies lose their patience

Send them to exasperation

My team fulfil my machination

To achieve complete pacification, ’cause

I can guide players like a flock of sheep

A flock of sheep, a flock of sheep

And I can leave one dying without a care

Without a care, without a care

And I can board the copter and leave them behind

And leave them behind, and leave them behind

And leave them behind, and leave them behind

And leave them behind!

I can play my game with no voice commands

No voice commands, no voice commands

I can play my game with no voice commands

No voice commands, no voice commands…

Chicken Police

These chicken police are hilarious. Is this typical chicken activity? Will they regulate my dogs or cats when they fight with each other, too?

Drew is so metal

Some of you may think I'm exposing my kids to a bit too much heavy metal for a preschooler to handle, but that's not exactly what was going on here:



I asked my boy how old he was, and he held up three fingers in the easiest way he could manage and yelled "I'm three!" He mentioned nothing of Black Sabbath.

Americans greatest fear: The Truth

I had to laugh today when my daughter & I were flipping through a catalogue of Halloween costumes. On a page full of Halloween props, I caught these labels for sale:



Note the very first label, which I like to think is the most scary thing available: not the red blood, spider venom, embalming juice, or the virus that makes humans become zombies, no - those aren't scary enough to lead with. The most frightening juice there is the truth serum. [scream!]

Yes, the scariest thing we can imagine is our friends, family, and peers hearing us tell the truth. Are our secrets really that bad, America?

My daily wtf: MTP default action

I enjoyed the prompt that Windows XP provided to me the last time I plugged in my mp3 player, especially the "always perform this action" checkbox:

Official Braid Walkthrough

I saw an odd link recently: to the "Official" Braid walkthough, hosted by the game developer. I was confused. Game developers don't ever write and post walkthroughs to their own games.

I clicked through to read some of the walkthrough and find out if it was the real deal. The surprise at the end was, well, I won't spoil it for those of you that click through to see for yourself.

I keep watching the news to see when this game is going to be released for PC since I don't own any consoles (that can't be emulated, at least). Even if I did buy a modern console, the Microsoft product is completely out-of-the-question - and that's currently the only place that anyone can play Braid.

Endless rows of tombstones

My wife is a member of a doggie-rescue group. They are very digital and communicate with forum posts and emails. An email tagline from one of them read something like "better underfoot than underground".

That seemed overly morbid to me.

It makes me want to join and write my own competing morbid taglines, like "better in a home than in a graveyard; a graveyard packed full, with endless rows of dead dogs."

News Bots Fail on browser add-ons

I liked this story I saw at news.google.com this morning, which google couldn't collect properly because of a Flash-based website: