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  • Nintendo DS in Action

    A friend of mine sent me link to a demo of something for the Nintendo DS. It’s streaming and using windows media, so you’ll need that to watch. It starts out kinda slow, but around halfway through my jaw just dropped. Bonus points go out to anyone who recognizes what is played (I could name it in 4-5 notes). Even more points go to someone who can translate the japanese, since I can’t read it (or understand what they are saying).

  • How to Kill a Mockingbird

    In case you ever wondered what To Kill a Mockingbird was about.

    How to Kill a Mockingbird

    It’s the true story of To Kill a Mockingbird. Complete with pirates, robots, slaves, lasers, flaming sharks, ninjas, the moon, and a pickle, done in Flash. [via jenett.radio] [via waxy]

  • Podcasting, Again

    When the whole podcasting thing started to take off I found I was quite into it, but then RL got in the way a bit and it kind of fell off my radar. Interestingly enough, this happened when I stopped being good about using the treadmill three times a week. Today as I was getting ready to walk I realized I needed something to listen to and decided I needed to upgrade iPodderX and start listening again.

    iPodderX looks like it is really progressing nicely, even if I’m going to end up having to shell out some $$ for it soon. It’s got some really slick features, and I’ve already found one feature that I want in it. It lets you set the genre of what you download, which is cool, but I want to be able to access other tags also. iTunes has one called ‘grouping’ which I use for any extra data/keywords to describe the track. For instance, anime soundtracks are in genre soundtracks with anime in the grouping tag. So I’d love to be able to put ‘podcast’ into the grouping (as well as any other info).

    Now I need to get off my ass and figure out where to set up my turntables so I can start doing a mix of the week podcast.

  • Project D.U.

    Seen via Compendium, SBC’s new RSS reader: Project D.U.. I guess D.U. stands for Digital Universe.

    proj·ect · d. u.
    (noun) 1. a reader populated with headlines pulled from across the web.
    2. relater of news and rumors
    3. hiding place for next month’s topic of conversation.
    4. the center of your Digital Universe. Synonyms: middleman, informant, eavesdropper.

    First off, the site. It feels like it is trying way too hard to be ‘Hip’. Almost all the buttons you can click are animated in some way. Luckily none of them burst into flames. Next, the Project D.U. Reader. I personally found it to be pretty lame in a bunch of ways.

    • The interface leaves much to be desired. It just feels clunky.
    • When you look at the lists of posts for a blog it only shows you excerpts, even if the blog provides full posts. Clicking on their ‘read more’ link opens up the actual post .

    • No way to export your subscriptions.
    • No support for enclosures.
    • Kinda slow and clunky.
    • When it couldn’t resolve a hostname right away it told me that the feed was bad.

    • Project D.U. is a stupid name.

    And as I was about to close my browser window on the site, I noticed this on their about page:

    One of the best features of this site, not unlike the advent of color television, is the Project D.U. Reader. It’s filled with headlines from some of the best blogs you’ve never heard of. In fact, we’ve spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours scouring the web, trying to find the most intriguing sites the world has to offer. To be fair, we pay the favored blogs a bit each month for the right to use their stuff. But we don’t edit what they say, that would be a very un-fun read.

    Wait, they are paying the blogs they list money?? How can I get in on that racket.

  • Honey Flash!

    Cutey Honey
    (Cutey Honey after blocking LOTS of bullets with her sword)

    So I finally got a chance to see the Cutey Honey live action movie. It was one of the more fun movies I’ve seen recently. Cutey Honey first came out years and years ago as a TV series by Go Nagi (the individual responsible for many classic shows) and has had numerous other animated versions throughout the years. Finally, someone did enough drugs to decide that the next incarnation really needed to be a live action movie.

    What makes this movie great is that instead of going and tweaking the story too much it sticks with the same over the top feel that the anime has. It almost feels like you are watching an animated movie with live actors subbed in. It’s cheesy as all hell, but then again Cutey Honey is cheesy to begin with. My only complaint would be that the ending battle where she goes up against Sister Jill left me wanting more, but in the end it works out alright. Now I just think they should do a live action TV series. I mean, if they can do a Sailor Moon one this should be no problem! Oh yeah, and the theme song for the movie, performed by Koda Kumi, rocks.

  • Just What *IS* flickr Anyways?

    About 2 weeks ago I received a Nikon D70 Digital SLR camera in trade for some computer work I’ve been doing for a neighbor. I’ve long wanted an SLR of any type and this has helped energize the creative side of me a bit. It also means I’ve been putting pictures online more and making much more use of Flickr. Which has also led to many of my friends asking “so what’s so great about this Flickr thing anyways?”

    Flickr is a photo hosting/sharing service from ludicorp that’s been in beta for a while now. I think I first started using it around 8 months ago, but didn’t really get into it until the new camera. I’d fiddled around with running my own photo gallery software a few times, tried a few other services, but nothing really jumped out at me until Flickr. Flickr is all about finding ways to organize and ways to share your photos. Like most other photo hosting services you can upload pictures, create photosets (albums), etc. It also has a bit of social networking type stuff built in so that you can choose to only share photos with your friends or family.

    But where Flickr has really hooked me is with some of the other features. The biggest of which are tags. Tags are keywords you can add to a photo to provide more data about it. For instance, in this photo that I uploaded there are a bunch of tags. I can then choose to look at only pictures of mine with the tag ‘squirrel’, or I could see all the public photos on Flickr that have the tag ‘squirrel’. You can also put notes onto a picture that show up when you mouse over a certain area. Oh yes, and they also have it set up so that you can post your pictures to your blog or LiveJournal from within Flickr and they accept photocam posts too.

    One thing the tagging system has done is that some tags have a following. People will take pictures that can be tagged with a certain keyword. One of my favorites is squaredcircle, where people post pictures of circular things in a squared image. This one has enough of a following that someone has created a group for pictures like this (groups are things you can join which have their own photo collections).

    The other thing that made Flickr my choice for a photo hosting service was that someone wrote a plugin for iPhoto so that you can export your pictures straight from iPhoto (instead of saving them and uploading with the web site or one of their uploading tools). When it’s this easy I can’t help but want to post stuff all the time.

    Flickr is currently free, also also has a Pro option. With a free account you can upload 10MB of pictures a month, have 3 photosets, and people can view the 100 most recent images you have uploaded. The Pro account offers quite a bit more, you can upload 1GB per month, there’s unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth use, unlimited photosets, and permanent archiving of high-res images. In the future Ad-free browsing will be added to that. You can check out their FAQ for more info.

    The last thing I have to say about Flickr is that it has really inspired me to really learn more about taking pictures and to actually get out there and take them. The other day someone invited me to a group called ‘sky‘. For the next few days I was on the road and everywhere I went I kept looking for good shots of the sky (and I finally got one I really liked). It really ends up being quite addicting after a bit.

    Oh, and no, Flickr isn’t paying me to rave on and on about how I like them. I just think it’s one of the cooler sites out there and want more of my friends to use it.

  • It’s Not Easy Being Green

    Since I saw the Shrek Twinkies at the store today, I just had to get some and take pictures of them. I was only able to stomach a few bites though. I’m just not a huge Twinkie fan.

  • Hello Kitty Online

    There’s a part of me that really wants to at least try this. Even if it would be scary.

    Hello, Kitty!
    Hello Kitty Online World! [via #!/usr/bin/girl]

  • Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell: SAC

    Excuse the ad, but I’m just doing my part to help promote Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Crisis start on Cartoon Network tonight. In general Cartoon Network has done a pretty crappy job with promoting anime, so I thought I’d help out a little. Yes, I’m a geek.

    To folks that are just sitting around tonight doing nothing, I highly recommend checking these out, even though they come on a bit late. They are two of the better shows that Cartoon Network has picked up as far as anime goes. Also, don’t be mislead by the beginning of Full Metal Alchemist, it gets pretty intense at times.

    Here’s some info on both Full Metal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

  • Hello Kitty Rocks

    In the rockin’ future of Hello Kitty.

    300X300-Fender
    November 6, 2004