Should You Comment On That Facebook Status Update?

Not sure if you should leave a comment on someone’s Facebook Status?
Here’s a chart that may help you out:

Should You Comment On This Facebook Status Update? (via AlanaTaylor.com)

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

The widget wasn’t working out for me, so here’s a direct link to the site:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Starring: Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, Felicia Day as Penny
Screenplay By: Joss Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Zack Whedon
Directed By: Joss Whedon
Produced By: David Burns, Michael Boretz, and Joss Whedon
Plot Outline: The story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.

Music by: Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon
Lyrics by: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen
Score and Orchestration by: Jed Whedon

recipe for Doomsday (with posters!)

Neil Marshall’s simple recipe for

Doomsday:

Should we add some High Tension to the recipe? (click for trailer)

4 cups of 28 Days Later…
2 pounds of Mad Max
5 pints of Thunderdome
2 1/2 cups of District 13
fresh squeezed official* Rhona Mitra
2 tablespoons of Running Man
3 1/2 teaspoons of Resident Evil
4 ounces of Aliens
1/2 tablespoon of Equilibrium
1 teaspoon of V for Vendetta
1 small can of No Escape
some dried Abyss
1/2 ounce of Silent Hill
a dash of 300
3 teaspoons of Gladiator
1/4 teaspoon of Ultraviolet
a dollop of Judge Dredd
a dash of Tank Girl (optional)
a sprinkle of Underworld

Mix all of the futuristic elements in one bowl and all of the apocalyptic elements in another. Slowly fold the dystopic items into the futuristic mixture and carefully combine them all into one script, being careful not to add too much wirework. Drizzle the official Rhona Mitra (see below) throughout and be sure to throw in a gratuitous ass shot. Make sure plenty of the people involved have cool accents and then give it to Neil Marshall (the guy that wrote and directed Dog Soldiers and the Descent) and hopefully it will turn out to be half as good as either of those movies.
I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad one, but I’ve never seen a trailer that reminded me of so many other things. I have faith in the writer/director based on his previous projects though, so this film’s definitely going on my to-see list. Besides…Rhona Mitra looks like a girl that I could freshly squeeze watch for way, way longer than movies ever last.

Garnish with The Transporter and add some bikers from Weird Science to taste.

Serves millions.

*the official website of Rhona Mitra

edit:

OiNK is dead, R.I.P. OiNK

I have no words to describe how the death of OiNK makes me feel, so I will share what some others have said:

Paraphrased Wikipedia: Copyright agencies described Oink as an online pirate pre-release music club; former users described it as one of the world’s largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. There were around 180,000 members at the time of closure and all of their avatars had to be cute.

“If you’re not familiar with Oink, here’s a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site – to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away.”

[Read the rest on: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.]

…and it wasn’t just me:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent Reznor: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

[the rest of the interview is on: Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK]

Disney cartoons, pretty girls, fair use and free culture?

How one Walt Disney Cartoon was made:

(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs behind-the-scenes)

Here are a couple quotes from the documentary:
“…the thousands of pencil drawings go to the inking department. Here, hundreds of pretty girls…”
“The inked celluloids next go to the painting department where more pretty girls apply the final colors.”

Damn…Walt Disney was a bigger genius than I ever realized. Unfortunately, to some degree, we also have the Disney Company to thank for possibly being detrimental to cultural diversity. One can argue that a rich, continually replenished, public domain is necessary for continued artistic creation. Disney as we know it wouldn’t exist if the current copyright laws were in place years ago because many of Disney’s animated films are based on Nineteenth Century public domain works, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book.

There has never been a time in history when more of our ‘culture’ was as ‘owned’ as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now. (pg. 28 of Free Culture)

Free Culture is a book about the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies.

get a digital copy of the book for free

 

And here’s a humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms:

A Fair(y) Use Tale

the work that must have gone into this…woah.

Jiminy, Criticker…let’s rate movies!

Criticker.com

I found another online diversion and started ranking some films. Some of my previously published scores were tweaked to order things a bit better and it could still use some work, but there’s enough content to share now. Please make your own lists and link to mine…I’d like to see how our TCIs* compare.

*The TCI (Taste Compatibility Index) is a measure of the similarity between two people’s taste in films. The lower the TCI, the greater the tendency to agree on which movies ruled and which sucked. It’s scientific (kind of)!

click for my profile on criticker

(It gets better when you rank more movies.)

 

The Encyclopedia of Life

“Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.”

And it all starts now. With you.

 

 

Another Giant Leap: Back to the Moon

One of the things that I’ve not yet mentioned on this blog is the fact that I’m currently working on several fiction writing projects. One of those projects is set in the near future after we’ve established some kind of base on the moon.

NASA has released a trailer of sorts that outlines their plans to return to the moon again. They’re really trying to make it as exciting as possible…it’s kinda neat:

The newest NASA animation about the constellation program.
The NASA Lunar Exploration Trailer in higher resolution.

iPhone Nano? iPhone Shuffle? are you non-Cingular?

 

btw: if you’re worried about having a contract with a company other than Cingular you might want to check out cellswapper:

or Celltradeusa:

 

my last iPhone entry:
get an iPhone now AND see how long it will take before you can get one

 

get an iPhone now AND see how long it will take before you can get one

It’s the only option that any of us have at the moment…click to get there.

update: new models and what to do if you don’t have Cingular.