I've never seen a episode of Family Guy: I think I caught part of an episode during a run on Channel 4 years ago, but it didn't strike me as anything special, and certainly not on a par with The Simpsons or Daria or King of the Hill or Futurama. Even so, I've got to admit that this clip featuring a trip into a famous 80s pop video is very, very nicely done.

[Via Apropos of Something]

Waw An Namus is an enormous extinct volcano in Libya. This Google Maps image of that particular corner of the Sahara desert shows not just an enormous ash deposit downwind of the volcano but also, as you zoom in, a rather unusual and striking array of colours in the midst of all that ash. (I'm not sure whether the colours are due to the ash or the stretch of desert the ash happens to be partially covering.)

[Via Google Sightseeing]

I'd heard of Hour 25, a radio talk show about science fiction which has been running on noncommercial radio in Los Angeles for some thirty years now, but I didn't realise that the show was available online.

I spent some time today listening to an interview with Terry Pratchett from late last year; with an hour to talk, the format allows plenty of space for an author to relax and ramble on about much more than their latest book. The web site has audio of shows going back to 2000 (not to mention some readings of classic SF and fantasy stories), so I think I know what I'm going to be listening to over the next few nights.

[Via MetaFilter]

I think I'm going to enjoy working my way through the archive of PartiallyClips if this is anything to go by.

[Via Websnark]

Another week, another trailer for Serenity.

The War on Terror As Viewed from the Bourne Shell:

$ cd /middle_east
$ ls
Afghanistan Iraq        Libya       Saudi_Arabia  UAE
Algeria     Israel      Morrocco    Sudan         Yemen
Bahrain     Jordan      Oman        Syria
Egypt       Kuwait      Palestine   Tunisia
Iran        Lebanon     Qatar       Turkey

$ cd Afghanistan
$ ls
bin  Taliban
$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory "Taliban": Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
.            ..           .insurgents

[...]

Hideously geeky, but very nicely done.

[Via Blog.org]

Slate's Explainer column, prompted by a review of the pilot episode of Over There, Stephen Bochco's new drama about a platoon of American troops on active duty in Iraq, answers one of those questions you didn't really want to know the answer to: Can your legs keep running if your torso gets blown away?

Students at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have created Kobito, a bizarre yet oddly hypnotic augmented reality system: a bunch of invisible dwarves push a tea caddy around a breakfast table, and you can push back. And no, this is not a video game: it's done on a real breakfast table with a little help from magnets, a camera tracking the movement of the tea caddy and a display to reveal the position of the dwarves.

When I look at the pictures of the system in action and watch the videos, I can't help noticing that the kids using the system have a tendency to get bored with pushing things around and start trying to squash the dwarves. Presumably it's just a matter of time until someone turns this concept into the next big thing in gaming.

[Via Collision Detection]

The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang is one seriously odd structure. The angular, windowless building looms over Pyongyang like something that just popped up one dark and stormy night. Probably having crossed over from a nearby hell dimension…

[Via the null device]

Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey explained. It's not really the explanation, of course – more a tenable interpretation of some of the film's high points in the form of a really nice Flash animation.

It's perhaps a tad longer than it needs to be, but that's arguably a tribute to the stately pace of Kubrick's film.

[Via MetaFilter]

Software developer Eric Sink thinks geeks who set up in business struggle because "Geeks understand market competition about as well as men understand women." Happily, he's found a way round this mental block: explain business principles in terms of something geeks can understand, namely games:

Sorry!

The game
Sorry! is a family board game produced by Parker Brothers. Each player has four "pawns". The goal is to move all four of your pawns from a starting point to the finish. Each turn, you draw a card and move one pawn the number of spaces indicated on the card. (Sorry! is a registered trademark of Parker Brothers.)

The principle
In order to move a pawn into the finishing area, you have to draw the exact number you need. If you are 3 spaces away and you draw a 5, then you can't move. The effect of this rule is that every game of Sorry! ends up being close. A player can get way ahead, but they almost always slow down at the end as it takes them several turns to draw the card they need to win.

How software is similar
In software product competition, things are often set up favorably for the other players to catch up to the leader. By nature, the leader usually has more things slowing them down.

• Version 4.0 of a software product often happens more slowly than version 1.0.
• You have to implement special support for backward compatibility with your previous releases.
• You have to implement the features your customers want instead of the ones your prospective customers want.
• You have to be careful not to break things when you are making code changes. You never want version N to be worse than version N-1.

The small ISV working on version 1.0 doesn't have all this baggage to carry around.

In fact, I think I'll just over-generalize and say it like this: The older your product is, the slower your development is.

Good stuff, regardless of whether you're a geek with a good idea or merely an end user with an interest in how the software business works.

It turns out that the Clowns of America International have a Code of Ethics:

The Eight Clown Commandments

1. I will keep my acts, performance and behavior in good taste while I am in costume and makeup. I will remember at all times that I have been accepted as a member of the clown club only to provide others, principally children, with clean clown comedy entertainment. I will remember that a good clown entertains others by making fun of himself or herself and not at the expense or embarrassment of others.
2. I will learn to apply my makeup in a professional manner. I will provide my own costume. I will carry out my appearance and assignment for the entertainment of others and not for personal gain or personal publicity when performing for either the International club or alley events. I will always try to remain anonymous while in makeup and costume as a clown, though there may be circumstances when it is not reasonably possible to do so.

[...]

Who knew?

[Via Exclamation Mark]

Steven Johnson has a suggestion for Senator Hillary Clinton, who wants to spend US$90 million to investigate the effects of videogames on youngsters:

Dear Sen. Clinton:

I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.

I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.

I'm talking, of course, about high school football.

I know a congressional investigation into football won't play so well with those crucial swing voters, but it makes about as much sense as an investigation into the pressing issue that is Xbox and PlayStation 2. [...]

I suspect Johnson isn't holding his breath…

Or, as Gary Farber put it, heh…

[The article goes on to enumerate some of the arguments that I gather Johnson puts forward in his latest book about the benefits of video games, in terms of players learning to assimilate, evaluate large quantities of information, master complex rules and formulate winning strategies. I'm not convinced on the basis of this article alone, but I'm sufficiently intrigued to look out for the paperback release of the book so I can find out whether Johnson can persuade me of his case.]

[Via Amygdala]

If you're in the UK, please consider signing up to this pledge:

"I will create a standing order of 5 pounds per month to support an organisation that will campaign for digital rights in the UK but only if 1000 other people will too."

Danny O'Brien's post explains how such a relatively small sum could be the start of something big:

Half our problem in the UK right now is that the press just don't have anyone in their address books that they can confidently call about on these issues. As Rufus said, most of the time they just run music industry press releases as news. The biggest lesson for me with NTK was that your best way to influence the agenda, and generate support, is to generate stories, and point people to the right experts. Just having someone at the end of a phone, handing out quotes and press releases, and pro-actively calling journalists to make sure they know what's going on, putting them in contact with all the other orgs in this area in the UK, is half the work.

[Via plasticbag.org]

Just a quick post to say that I'll not be posting again properly until Wednesday evening at the earliest.

I bookmarked this article about the history of Suck last month but only got round to reading it today.

It's an interesting look at what a small, rapidly evolving place the web was back in the days when we were browsing it using Cello or Netscape 1.1, though it's also a slightly depressing reminder of how much time has passed since back then. (I feel very old all of a sudden.) After reading the article I had to fight the urge to spend the rest of the day reading Suck and feeling all nostalgic.

If you're wondering where the contributors ended up after Suck went fishin' in 2001, the Wikipedia article has a collection of links to their current online abodes.

[Via MetaFilter]

Will & Harold Thimbleby of Swansea University have developed a whiteboard that can do mathematical calculations as you write. Imagine the fun when they develop a version to do the same for written English: I'm sure lecturers will be delighted to see their spelling corrected on the fly in front of their class.

I wonder if the smart whiteboard can handle chains of linked calculations, so that you can write up a series of formulae then go back to the start and change the initial parameters. Though I can see the argument that if that's the sort of thing you want you should just fire up a spreadsheet with a display slaved to the projector and have at it the old-fashioned way via the keyboard. Or, better yet, prepare your spreadsheet beforehand so that you bypass the embarrassing missteps on the way to the end result. Though I've always felt that presenting a class with a fully-worked out spreadsheet is precisely the wrong way to go about the job, at least if the idea is to get across the general concept that electronic spreadsheets are a seriously useful tool for anyone in business who works with numbers.

(In fairness to those who spend their days in front of a whiteboard, I'm a self-taught spreadsheet geek not a "trained trainer." I'm probably overestimating the ease with which it's possible to construct a decent example spreadsheet on the fly in front of a room full of people who are just waiting for their lunch break, and underestimating the importance of being able to rely on a pre-constructed example.)

[Via The Tao of Mac]

What do you get when you combine Am I Hot or Not? and Google Maps? It's either a stalker's paradise or the Best. Web. Service. Ever.

[Via MetaFilter]

Courtesy of Ms. Triplets at Barbelith Underground, an image of the design for Bill Nighy's character from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

I realise that the final CGI-d version of the character may not look quite as fabulous, but even if he's only 30% as evil as he looks in that picture he'll be worth the price of admission all by himself.

Jay Pinkerton presents The Fantastic Four in A Night at the Movies. Good fun – probably more so than the film itself. (I haven't seen as yet: I'll get round to it at some point, I'm sure.)

While I'm on the subject of the latest Marvel superhero epic, Jim Roeg at Double Articulation has posted a lengthy, thoughtful essay about the barriers superhero comic adaptations face in transferring to the big screen. It's fair to say that you could express the essence of his thesis in about four paragraphs, and that little he says will come as a revelation to any fannish type familiar with the originals, but sometimes it's worth spending the time and space to explore a topic like this at length.

[Jay Pinkerton parody via Amygdala]