mgroves

Archive for 2007

Today is the official release date of Bender’s Big Score, in case you haven’t been paying attention for the last 10 weeks.

Go get the DVD! Support the arts! Specifically, support the arts that I like!

• Can’t Get Enough Futurama has a bunch of news links about the release, including some Wired articles and video interviews.
• Here’s an unboxing video of Bender’s Big Score with a fun-KAY soundtrack.

• Now would be a great time to review the complete Best of Futurama series here at mgroves.com, since it’s now complete.
• Check out the official Bender’s Big Score site (ilovebender.com) and get yourself a nice Futurama desktop wallpaper.

I’m still counting down The Best of Futurama.

This mini-series of posts is counting down to the release of the all-new Futurama DVD, Bender’s Big Score, set to be released today, November 27, 2007. Go buy it already!

“The Luck of the Fryish” is my favorite episode of Futurama, I’ve already established that. The “horse Pepsi” sequence alone seals the deal for me. However, the episode has a bittersweet ending that’s timeless: the bond between brothers is stronger than their antagonistic rivalry.

1. Don’t forget about me

I think this episode, and especially this sequence typifies the greatness of Futurama. On one hand, you have the hilarious and the absurd (Bender’s weird celebrity grave robbing), the pop culture reference (Breakfast Club soundtrack), and the touching moment of Fry discovering that his brother loved him and never forgot about him, despite all their fighting and rivalry.

Here lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit.

If you watch only one episode of Futurama in your life, make it this one.

This week, Tuesday Tube is early! Tomorrow is the release date for Bender’s Big Score, so I’m switching things up a bit.

Missed the last Tuesday Tube? Head over to the tag search for ‘tuesday tube’ and browse through the archives.

This weeks’ Tuesday Tube is about the taser.

Ah, the taser. The non-lethal weapon of choice for police officers around the world. It’s not as deadly as a gun, but it has been estimated to be around 1.71 times as hilarious.

First, let’s get this one out of the way. “Don’t tase me, bro! What did I do? Ow!”

And now, the inevitable remixes.

Can’t tase this.

We are the Knights who say….”tase!”

Here’s a guy who I think we can all agree needed a good tasering.

This next taser is udderly ridiculous, and that’s no bull.

But notice how quickly the bull recovers and charges! If I were a farmer, I don’t know if that taser would be good enough.

Anyway, Tuesday Tube over. Go buy Bender’s Big Score.

This is the Weekend Update for the weekend of November 22nd – 25th.

Missed the last Weekend Update? Check out the Weekend Update archives.

This was Thanksgiving weekend. I want to say that I’m very thankful for everything God has given me, and I still believe that if one really takes the time to count all one’s blessings, the problems and trials that we face every day really aren’t that big of a deal.

I also want to say that I’m very thankful for all of my faithful blog readers who put up with my nonsense and leave clever, thoughtful, and humorous comments all the time. Reading this blog wouldn’t be half as entertaining without you.

Next, I’ve been building up a backlog of interesting links I wanted to write about but haven’t really got around to it yet. I wanted to at least share the links before deleting them after they get too old.

• Recently, I was doing some work with generating Excel spreadsheets dynamically with PHP. Hint: don’t try it with SSL. Here’s a link to help you out a little bit.
• Geeks.com has a portable Intellivision system available on their site now. I think it’s pretty cool looking.
• Complex tax law has been estimated to cost $265 billion or more, but it is sometimes advantageous if you happen to be a big company that can afford to spend a little on lawyers and tax shelters. Note to next president, whoever you are: let’s put a simple tax system in place, okay? Sales tax, flat tax, fair tax, whatever. Just do it already.
• Something fishy might be going on with the unions and the Franklin county commissioners in regards to Huntington Park.
• I think this is a pretty good article about Bush hatred.
• Kudos to Mike Coleman for cutting spending instead of raising taxes. I didn’t vote for him (or any mayoral candidate), but I gotta give him props. Note to next president, whoever you are: can we get a balanced budget amendment going already, okay? Just do it already.
• And finally, Digg’s political bias is now a matter of record. The official bias: out-of-the-mainstream candidates. Besides that, it leans heavily to the left (and Hillary isn’t even there yet). By Digg, of course, I mean its users, not the staff of Digg.

And here’s what my neighbor did, really:

Not quite as ridiculous as this guy, but still pretty cool. Note that this isn’t my rotten neighbor.

I get asked alot “hey where do I get roms?”

More precisedly, “HEY D00D WHAR IZ de ROMz?”

Well, I can’t really host most of the commercial ROMs here on my site for fear of legal repercussions, but I can give you a few hints about where else to find them.

To be clear, the legality of ROMs is somewhat gray, but I’m almost 100% certain that it’s illegal to have a ROM for a game that you do not already own in some other form. Even if you do own it, I’m not 100% sure it’s legal to have it on a ROM. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

That being said, here’s some general guidelines on how to find ROMs. First, what the heck is a ROM? Well, to be more precise, when I say ROM, what I really mean is a ROM image, which is just a copy of data from a chip. It could be from an NES game, a Genesis game, or the firmware in a cell phone. A ROM isn’t much use unless you are able to “flash” it to some sort of hardware or you have an emulator that can interpret the ROM on some non-native device (like your PC, or a Game King.

Okay, so there’s lots of more information about ROMs and emulation out there, I’m not going to go over it all here, but you can check out some of my other blog posts about emulation.

Now, suppose you have an emulator/device/whatever and you want to get some ROMs to play games on it. Where do you get ROMs?

• The “usual” sources. This includes P2P networks like Limewire, Shareaza, etc, and my current favorite, BitTorrent (which is much different than a traditional P2P network). You will need a BitTorrent program like BitComet and a website to download torrent files. Some good ones are The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. Torrents are a good way to get ROMs in quantity, but not so great if you are looking for specific ROMs.
• IRC. Internet Relay Chat has been around for at least 100 years. It’s the original chat protocol for the internet, before all you kids and your instant messanger and MySpaces and what not. Yeah it’s good for chat, but it’s also good for finding specific things. In this case, ROMs.

IRC is a big place. Where to start?

I’d recommend starting at roms-isos.com, the website for a chat room that I have been know to frequent, #roms-isos (IRC chat rooms start with #). You will eventually need an IRC program, of which the most widely used by far is mIRC (and for good reason). Once you have mIRC and have figured out how to connect to the #roms-isos chat room, you can follow this handy guide to using an FServe, which is a “file server” in an IRC chat room.

It’s a little tricky and complex, but like I always say, nothing worth doing is ever easy. So, good luck, and stop asking me for ROMs. I won’t give you any.

I’m still counting down The Best Moments of Futurama.

This mini-series of posts is counting down to the release of the all-new Futurama DVD, Bender’s Big Score, set to be released on November 27, 2007.

Before I get to #2, here’s some brief trailers for Bender’s Big Score from Yahoo and Amazon. It’s basically just some footage from the DVD with a different script related to Yahoo and Amazon. Here’s the Amazon trailer, and the Yahoo trailer. Nothing really new, and no spoilers. If you pay close attention, you can get Bender’s email address.

On to #2…

“Jurassic Bark” was originally aired on November 17, 2002. It is apparently based on one or more actual dogs, most notably Hachiko, a Japanese dog that waited for his master at the train station every day, even after his master’s death.

2. If it takes forever…

If you don’t tear up even a little bit when watching this clip, you have a heart made of dolomite.

The song is Connie Francis, “If it takes forever, I will wait for you”.

As a prize for being the closest on my prediction of the score of the 2007 Ohio State – Michigan game (17-3, actual score 14-3) at my place of employment, I received a fine Brutus Buckeye coffee mug.

As I don’t drink much coffee or tea, I thought I might give it away to a Buckeye fan who does.

Here’s the mug.

And here’s a video of the spinning.

I can tell you’re excited!

To win this mug, all you have to do is leave a comment below. Only your first comment will count in this giveaway. You must be at least 18 years old to enter and live in the United States of America. Upon winning, I will email you to get your mailing address, so make sure to provide a valid email address.

To be eligible, you must enter before November 30th, 2007, at which point I will choose one winner at random.

Missed the last Tuesday Tube? Head over to the tag search for ‘tuesday tube’ and browse through the archives.

In this week’s Tuesday Tube, there are 3 videos which are much, much longer than a typical Tuesday Tube video. They are also not “viral” or comedic in nature, but I think all three are very interesting and entertaining.

This first one is a brief documentary called “Scientology: Inside the Cult”, which seems like a bit of a loaded title, but interesting nonetheless. They obviously went through a lot of trouble to get an “inside” look.

This next video is a brief piece on a professor’s “last lecture”. In this case, it’s literally his last lecture, as he is dying of pancreatic cancer. I hope I can remain this upbeat, positive, and optimistic in my final days.

And finally, this is a video of a lecture on poverty, the third world, and myths about third-world economies. If nothing else, there’s some awesome software used for this presentation.

Despite the many attempts to stop it, Meme Attack continues relentless. Two memes this time: FGSFDS and It’s a lion!

Check out the archive of Meme Attack by clicking on the “meme attack” tag above, or use the Meme Attack tag search.

FGSFDS

fgsfds

Hold your index finger in the air, pointing upwards, and say “FGSFDS”. This doesn’t mean anything, really, as it’s based on someone’s random reply and a fine picture of Harald Schmidt. Basically, this is “I’m making a point by putting my finger in the air, and my point is this: FGSFDS.”

Jesus Christ, it’s a lion! Get in the car!

Er, well, I guess this one started with some sort of MSPaint picture featuring electronic schematics. But like many memes, it soon expanded, and became this photoshopped manga:

Basically, there are two important elements to this meme. First, the smiley symbol for a lion is >:3. Second, to escape vicious lion attacks, you should get in to the car.

Like any meme, these two can easily be adapted to work with other memes like lolcats, raptor Jesus, angry sandwich guy, etc. If you don’t know what those are, stay tuned for future Meme Attacks!

Joe Nuxhall, the youngest baseball player ever in the modern era, and perhaps the best radio personality the Cincinnati Reds have ever had, died on November 15, 2007 at the age of 79.

Joe is most famous for his hall-of-fame quality radio announcing and being the youngest baseball player, but he also put together an impressive career as a pitcher:

• 2-time NL all-star (1955 and 1956)
• Led the NL in shutouts in 1955 (5)
• Career stats: 135 wins, 117 losses, 3.90 ERA, and 1372
• Many other leaderboard appearances and awards

Joe meant a lot to the Reds and Cincinnati in general. His charity, the Joe Nuxhall Character Education Fund, has helped thousands of children and even built a gymnasium for the One Way Farm home for abused children.

In honor of Joe being a remarkable baseball player, skillful and entertaining radio broadcaster, and soft-spoken community activist, who left an enviable legacy that every sports organization and city should strive for, I submit that Joe would make an excellent Patron Saint of Cincinnati, or that at least GABP be renamed Nuxhall Field at GABP.