mgroves

Archive for September, 2006

Puzzle Pirates recently had a contest for the best homemade 30 second commercial:

Yer mission, should ye choose to accept it, is te create a 30-second commercial that illustrates yer favorite aspects of the Puzzle Pirates game. Imagine that it’s going to be broadcast during halftime of a Footbrawl event! What makes ye love the sweet trade? What would ye highlight te the world about yer puzzlin’ life on the high seas?

We’re lookin’ fer a great Puzzle Pirates themed clip that’ll fit in 30 seconds. Ye may create yer own content or you may spoof an existing commercial, coz they be also endlessly amusing. Get inspiration from yer favorite beer or soap or potato chip commercial if ye’re short of ideas (a piratey equivalent for wassssssup, the Mastercard “priceless” ads, etc.) Ye’ve got just 30 seconds, so don’t try te tell the epic story of yer pirate’s life or describe the whole Puzzle Pirates world.

Apollo really annoys me in more ways that one, especially when he puts the YouTube URLs into a hyperlink and labels them as “linky”. Anyway, you can check out all the winners. linky. Here’s a couple of my favorites:

Do you want to make more booty? SURE we all do!

Axe: The body spray for guys…that attracts pirates.

What can be said about Milton Friedman that hasn’t already been said? He’s incredibly sharp when it comes to economics, and he certainly seems to be one of the foremost proponents of a free market economy.

I found a whole blog full of Milton Friedman videos, and you can always watch the one I posted a while back. Remember, He’s a Liberal!

Apparently you can leave feedback for anyone on eBay, whether you’ve made a transaction with them or not. andy46477 has done just that, 213 times. Here are some of my favorites:

• I am a car. I go vroom. Please put gas in me.
• If I HYPOTHETICALLY killed a bunch of people, what should I do with the bodies?
• I have cancer so I bid low. I cry when I’m outbid. My dog died yesterday.
• I am new in America! Thank you eBay for wonderful wife! I will beat her often! Reply by member546461: You’re Very Welcome.
• You items carry HARMFUL DISEASES and VIRUSES. I think. I’m pretty sure. RARE! A+
• Pornography is bad because God will kill you and eat your bones. TERIFFIC SALE!

I hope andy leaves me unsolicited feedback someday.

Tada! It’s not quite 100% yet, but it’s up and running.

New features:

• Awesome design (Thanks Jon!)
• Friendly URLs – no more “?blogID=123″, though there is backwards compatibility.
• Caching. Every page you see is now actually a static cache of a dynamically generated page. What this means is that the PHP/MySQL only runs once and the rest of the time it’s just static HTML. This should reduce server load by a whole bunch (hopefully).

Things that don’t quite work yet:

• Comments. You can see old comments, but you can’t submit new ones.
• Tags. You’ll see what tags I’ve used, but you won’t be able to search by tags.
• Google ads. You should see them, but sometimes they might not work right.
• Other things.

Bear with me, I’ve been working round the clock to get this beast up and running. However, I leave for Houston tomorrow morning, so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get any more work done on it in the meantime. It’ll be a titanic struggle to find time to post regular blogs in the next week.

In the meantime, if you find something wrong or have a suggestion, PLEASE email me at webmaster@mgroves.com.

Skybus is coming to Columbus. This is good news for me because the annoying ruffians and screaming babies will either move to Skybus to go visit their dopey relatives, thus freeing up Southwest, or they won’t, and I’ll just take the Skybus. It’s a win-win!

Skybus Airlines … hopes to fly to up to 25 cities in the United States starting next March…

They say they’ve started looking at “prospective airports”. There’s only two: Port Columbus and Rickenbacker. It would be nice if they set up shop at Rickenbacker. It’s closer to me, less crowded, and slightly easier to get to.

A quick site update: digg was going full bore on Sunday, so now I’ve got to futz around with caching so I don’t crash if it happens again. In the meantime, you should be able to see this on my RSS feed at least. Also, the new design for the site is coming along nicely. By nicely, I mean “PIIIIMP”. Hopefully I can get the caching deal-o handled before I unleash the new design upon the world.

Meanwhile, back at the blog: Usually I get this information from CyberWyre, but this time I got it someplace else. Google’s most expensive adwords. “School loan consolidation” tops the list, and mesothelioma is nowhere to be found! Maybe there was a glut of asbestos earlier this year that’s over now? Plus, it’s back-to-school (or starting school), so someone’s gotta pay for it. Maybe by purchasing an annuity!

I was in a discussion recently about hidden symbols inside of logos. Most of the time, these are not obvious to me (though maybe I’m a little thick). I think it’s cool that some companies do this: it shows that they put a lot of thought into their logo design, what they want it to mean, what they want it to convey, etc. Here are some examples of logos with hidden symbols. See if you can figure them out, and then mouse over them to reveal the hidden symbol.

First up, FedEx. Maybe they want to convey speed, direction, reliability. Can you spot the hidden symbol?

Now that you’ve seen it, you’ll it every time. Next up, the Big Ten collegiate conference. The Big Ten has eleven schools, but they didn’t want to change their name. They did, however, change their logo…

The Atlanta Falcons logo. This might be really obvious, but I didn’t even think about it until recently…

The Iowa Hawkeyes (a Big Ten school), have a letter hidden in their logo:

The Montreal Expos. Their logo was always an enigma to me. What is “elb”? Well, this is a matter of some contention, but everyone seems to agree that it’s a large M smack dab in the middle. Stylized so much that it’s really hard to picture. Think of it like an M that starts and ends in a flourish.

Finally, Goodwill. A charitible company that wants to make people smile. Behind that smile is a sinister secret symbol!

Again, maybe obvious to everyone else but I didn’t really think about it being a letter. I think these are really cool; if I keep finding these, I’ll post more of ‘em.

Digg this article!

My sister gave birth last night to Jocelyn, who becomes my first niece/nephew (on my side of the family, anyway). Giving birth sucks, I’m glad I’m not a woman. Here’s a quote from my sister after labor:

“That was rough.”

I told her I would quote her on that. Anyway, I got home at some ungodly hour and I am freaking tired.

This might be a good Christmas gift for my dad (and/or) myself. As regular readers of Something Awful know, there’s a periodic column done by Zach Parsons about overly ambitious/wacky/odd inventions of World War 2. Giant tanks, giant cannons, ice aircraft carriers, etc.

Note that while Something Awful usually is squarely in the “fiction” or “satire” department, these are real inventions/ideas from World War 2, mixed in with humorous descriptions, hypotheticals, and technical specs. Here’s some examples:

• My Tank is Fight
• My Tank Fires Bullets That Weigh a Ton
• My Tank Has Armor Plate to Save Me From Hate

Anywhoo, Zack Parsons has put 20 of these inventions into a paperback book, suitable for coffee table or bathroom reading. My Tank is Fight can be pre-ordered on Amazon for about 9 bucks. For that price, I might pick up a couple. If the previous SA articles are any indication, this book will be well worth it, especially for someone who is into WW2 history.

Two things I enjoy: Conan O’Brien and baseball. If only I could enjoy them combined into one…