Embarrassing Usenet Posts from My Past
When the Internet first came to the Groves house, lo these many years ago, I couldn’t get enough of it (I guess I still can’t). Usenet was a pretty big thing back then: for discussion, not for pirating large files. I was recently trolling through Google groups for some reason and I thought I would look myself up to see if any of my old posts were floating around in Google’s archive. I was horrified and embarrassed by what I found. I thought I would share them with you here, in the style of Something Awful’s Weekend Web.
If you have any respect for me at all right now, please look away, lest you lose it completely.
First up. I’ve been a MST3K fan ever since my family got cable. I was such a big fan that I wrote fanfics. Yes, fanfics. I think I wrote maybe 2 or 3, and one is available for reading in alt.tv.mst3k. Here’s a brief snippet:
“MariO” is my little tag that’s kinda a holdover from my BBS days. The fanfic itself isn’t that bad, as far as fanfics go. It’s short (thankfully) and has some decent jokes. MST3K fanfics were pretty much the “anti-fanfic”, as they usually made fun of those awful Star Trek fanfics of yore and (like mine) spam messages/emails.
Next up, here’s an odd one:
I can’t really remember why I wanted Brady Bunch fanfics, but I guess probably because I wanted to write an MST3K fanfic making fun of a Brady Bunch fanfic. What’s even more interesting is that I wasn’t the only one who wanted them.
Here’s me weighing in on the most important debate of all: Is Star Wars a metaphor for Christianity?
Notice how enthusiastic I was near the end. Yes, I used to post in rec.music.christian about how awesome that new DC Talk album was. Notice the stylized -=MariO=- tag.
Not all these posts are completely embarrassing. Here’s one from my college years in which I turn to alt.comedy for advice on how to start a career in stand-up comedy:
The embarrassing parts: “is there somebody out there i could hook up with to just sorta tell me stuff”. Also: “its…a fantasy of mine to be a comedian”. Talk about creepy. No wonder no one responded to me. I wasn’t discouraged though: 4 or 5 years later and I wind up in this debacle.
Most of these posts made some sort of sense at the time, I suppose, but it’s also crazy to look back on my less mature self. It seems so long ago, but it really wasn’t. It’s almost like watching that movie Butterfly Effect, except no nose bleeds. Also no Robin Hood either.
IE7
IE7 was just released and will be a part of Windows Automatic Update starting on November 1st. I chose to install it tonight on my work laptop, but I have been using it in a limited capacity on a test machine at work as well. So far, my impression of it isn’t very exciting.
That being said, it’s certainly a step up from IE6. mgroves.com certainly looks better in IE7 than in IE6. It has tabs, it has RSS feeds (kinda), it has add-ons, and it has done away with the menu bar (kinda).
It looks better. It’s more compliant (though still not nearly as compliant as Firefox, and neither are within spitting distance of Opera 9). See the Acid2 screenshots below. The interface is slightly updated. It’s finally a multi-tab browser. The quick-tabs is kinda cool, but annoying in some ways as well. There’s some sort of Mac-style anti-aliasing effect on the text which makes pages look a little nicer.
It works better. IE7 now supports “add-ons”, which really don’t seem much different than toolbars and add-ons from IE6 (Google toolbar, etc). There’s a nice WebDev add-on that is very close to the FireFox WebDev toolbar, so that’s nice. RSS feeds are supported in just about the same way as FireFox. That is to say, I’m not a big fan of how it handles it. Also, the menu bar is turned off by default. This is the new Microsoft Way of usability. No more menu bars with gobs of rarely used features, just ribbons of the most useful options. Whether or not this works out is still a matter of some controversy, but I think improved usability starts with reduced complexity. And hey, the menu bar can be turned back on if you really want it to be.
It brings a new web to the masses. This is the key to IE7. It brings multi-tabbed browsing and RSS feeds to the masses. If RSS is ever going to catch on in a big way, it starts on November 1st.
Verdict. For me, neither FireFox 2.0 or IE7 are good enough to take the place of my beloved Opera as most used browser. That being said, I’m glad IE7 is finally being released. I do most of my web development primarily using IE7, so I look forward to a little more ease in development. I’m a big proponent of RSS, and even though I won’t use IE7 to read them, I’m hopeful that IE7 will open up RSS to the masses. Finally, I think IE7 is a much needed upgrade from IE6. There’s phising protection, improved rendering, and increased usability. I like it.
New Coleco
After years of waiting, Coleco is finally releasing a new video game system. I didn’t even think Coleco was still in business.
Target is now taking preorders for the “Coleco Sonic Handheld”, which will cost $49.99. There are no new games for it (yet?), but there appears to be a boatload of classic Sega game available for it.
This one could end up being one of those rarities in collections. Coleco has nothing to say yet.
Also a reminder, the Name Those Pixels contest is still underway. Get your entry in!
Medical mythbusting
I hear these myths over and over from just about everyone. Even my wife, who has medical training swears by some of them.
Check out 10 Useless or Even Dangerous First Aid Myths. Two that I hear all the time:
7. People May Swallow Their Tongues During a Seizure. I was diagnosed with epilepsy in my teens, and my doctor completely dispelled this myth. In fact, the article says exactly what he said: “When a person is having a seizure, don
Give ‘em Hell, blank
I’ve recently “upgraded” my cable service to a digital HD-DVR box. This service comes with a “digital variety pack” of additional channels as well. One of them is GSN, the Game Show Network, which runs the best game show of all time: Match Game.
Match Game is a really simple game, but the real show is the zany rapport between all the celebrities and the host. The idea is that the host, Gene Rayburn reads a short sentence or two with one of the words omitted. The celebrities then write down a word that will fit in the blank, and the contestant must guess the word that they think will match the celebrities most often.
For instance, Rayburn might read, “Dumb Donald was soooo dumb, that when someone told him it was chilly outside, he grabbed his…BLANK.” The questions are usually written in such a way that the “blank” is some sort of double-entendre. In my example, most celebrities would probably write “spoon” on their cards, but some celebrities might write “bowl” or something.
Match game was featured in the VH1 show, “The 100 Most Unexpected Moments in TV History” (or something like that) for the following clip in which the celebrities and audience revolt against the judges.
Now that you have some idea what the Match Game is, I want to share one of my favorite MST3K sketches of all time. It’s a parody of Match Game: a “one-man show” in which Crow plays the host, Gene Rayburn, as well as an entire panel of the most well-known celebrities associated with the show. It’s called “Give ‘em Hell, blank”, and features a particularly striking maudlin monologue in the voice of an aging Gene Rayburn. The sketch is hilarious because all the celebrities answers are butt-related, but the whole thing works because it’s so well written. Here’s the sketch:
A DVD of Match Game best-of is coming out on November 21st.
Dethklok on Guitar Hero 2
Guitar Hero 2 is set to feature a song by Dethklok, the metal band from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse. That is so metal.
I will now sing the lyrics for Dethklok’s themesome into Microsoft Word’s speech recognition software.
Death clock! Death clock!
Swiss car ski elf
Tall her than a treeTake my war tooth
Not a bumble beeWilliam murder face
Murder face murder facePickles the drummer
dude lee dude
(Ding dong dude lee dude lee dude)Nathan explosion
Scott Kurtz on Penny Arcade
Check out the latest Penny Arcade podcast, Downloadable Content.
The PA podcast is the only podcast I listen to. It’s basically about the 30 minutes that lead up to the script/plan for the comic they are working on. It’s really interesting to hear them go through the process that ultimately ends up in 3 panels on a strip–what ideas didn’t make it, what ideas almost made it, and why.
Plus, the two PA guys have an incredible rapport built up, and complimentary personalities. Jerry is a book-smart intellect and Mike is an everyman-artist. Because they aren’t the same person (rather the opposite) is part of what makes Penny Arcade so appealing and entertaining.
Anyway, the controversial Scott Kurtz from PvP is apparently featured on this podcast. Good stuff.
Bias
One of my core beliefs: everyone and just about everything has a bias. I truly believe this is an undeniable fact of existance.
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to be unbiased, you will be biased. I don’t believe it’s anything to be ashamed of, and I’m not saying news organizations that try to be unbiased are liars, I’m just saying bias is a natural thing and it occurs everywhere.
Take The BBC for example. Some lefties might say that the BBC is as close to unbiased real news as you can get, certainly beating out those crazed righties at Fox!
I say: Balderdash!
And The BBC agrees with me. A leak about a recent meeting at the BBC shows that even the BBC knows they have a leftist (labour), gay, anti-Christian (or pro-Muslim, whatever) bias. In fact, alleged reptilian shapeshifter, Andrew Marr stated:
“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.”
I say: refreshing! Good for the culturally liberal biased BBC. I think I will certainly file this as evidence for my core belief about bias. Everyone has a bias. I do, you do, the BBC does, Fox does, CNN does. Even this blog post is biased. Even this sentence.
Even these sources: Ynet, Daily Mail
Even more optical illusions
More optical illusions! A 3d picture, no glasses required, an animated jpeg, Margret Thatcher, an inverted house, and hallucination with no drugs.
First up, here’s a 3d dinosaur. Click on it to see the “wiggle” stereogram. This is basically the ‘left’ and ‘right’ images that would be combined with normal blue/red 3d glasses shown in quick succession to achieve a similar effect.
Next, this jpeg appears to move, but remember that jpeg’s are not animated.
Here’s some pictures of Margaret Thatcher that really creep me out. Look at all four shots. Which picture is the creepiest? Now realize that the top two pictures are simply vertical flips of the bottom two.
This house is kinda weird. Apparently the lowest corner of the house is actually the farthest back. I couldn’t see it. Good illusion.
Finally, are you ready to hallucinate? Watch this video. It’s best to view it in fullscreen.
10,000 pounds of dominoes
Have you got roughly $18,824 just sitting around the house with nothing to do because the toy store is sold out of dominoes? Me neither.
But this guy/group/company does. Watch 10,000 British pound coins topple as dominoes. Even if the video is just pieced together with good editing, it still had to take an ungodly amount of time to do. Dominoes are hard enough to set up, and they’re made for this sort of thing.
After watching the video, I think the money could be well spent refinishing those terrible looking hardwood floors.
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