If you can’t draw — or remain graphically challenged like me (remember CRink = crappy ink) — but always wished you could make a comic starring you and friends look no further than Bitstrips. Using the Flash-based menu allows you to quickly and easily choose different expressions and build your own comic book character. Here’s mine:
I’m sure an artist could do better, my face isn’t as fleshy, but this was my first effort. Creating your character is the start. Next you can piece together a comic by point, click and type, preview, publish and share with friends.
Don’t gag, but there is also a social function which allows you to add your friends. An interesting approach: when you go to add friends you can make a comic book character of what they look like. This could be fun!
Could be a creative way to reply to other blog posts. I’m a fan of comics and have written about other web comics sites like stripcreator in the past and this one could catch fire because it’s easy to use, intuitive and is one of the few services that makes sense in the crowded social network pool.
Sites where you can review/rate just about anything are all the rage these days. I like the tagline for RateMyCop.com: "You have the right to remain informed." Despite the catchy name, I found the data didn’t run very deep in our area. Seattle had listings for over 1,200 officers but smaller towns resulted in a list of no officers being listed.
But what if the officers in your area are overwhelmed with cleaning up the city? Do you believe in vigilante justice? A bar owner who turned a BBQ smoker into ‘Robocop’ seems to, at least in part:
It’s a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, and armed with an infrared camera, spotlight, loudspeaker and aluminum water cannon that shoots a stream of icy water about 20 feet.
The city is saying if his creation actually hits people it’s "assault" but it sounds like he’s using it to just spook away the drug dealers who probably don’t want to be caught on camera. As for using it to spray the homeless to make them move along, I hope Robosmokercop isn’t being used that way.
Maybe he should take it a step further and let people on the internet control the voice of Robosmokercop (not the water cannon). It would be cool to have it be able to play Charles Bronson lines from Death Wish. Or maybe Yul Bryner’s classic line from Westworld: “Drawww.”
What did the bird eat and poop out in this new Twitter is down message?
Clouds, a malfunctioning robot, the Twitter bird looking like it just had a bowel movement involving Pac-Man? Yes, it all adds up to more Twitter downtime as the service continues migration and settling into new servers. The only similarly popular service that has worse reliability and scalability is Second Life.
Maybe reliability will change for the better when the dust settles. Hopefully. If, however, the Twitter crew are taking cues from SL’s Linden Lab nothing will change and eventually Twitter will begin to lose loyal users to other places, strange error message graphics aside.
Twitter 0. Pownce and other competitors? +1.
Update 9:03am PST Twitter is back up. No explanation behind Pac-Man reference. Somebody get Namco on the line.
Crazylaws.com details dumb laws by U.S state. Some of the laws were taken from dumblaws.com which offers more. Below I go through some of the silliest ones in Washington state where we call home and Wisconsin where I graduated from High School.
Washington
“All lollipops are banned.” Even blo-pops?
I’m sure regular Hmm commenter Condom Man will love this one: “You need a license to sell condoms in Washington State.”
“Auburn: Men who deflower virgins, regardless of age or marital status, may face up to five years in jail.”
“It is illegal to deflower a virgin even on their wedding day.”
What’s the deal with virgins and Washington state legislation?
“It is illegal to pretend that one’s parents are rich.”
“Spokane: TV’s may not be bought on Sundays.”
“People may not buy a mattress on Sunday.”
Wisconsin
As you might expect, there are a number of dairy-related laws in Wisconsin history.
“In Wisconsin you need a cheesemaker’s license to make any kind of cheese, except Limburger. To make Limburger, you need a master cheesemaker’s license.”
“Car dealerships cannot sell cars on Sunday.”
“Condoms were considered an obscene article and had to hidden behind the pharmacist’s counter.”
“In Wisconsin you are allowed to marry your house.”
“It is illegal to kiss on a train.”
“Kenosha: No male is allowed to be in a state of arousal in public.”
“State Law made it illegal to serve apple pie in public restaurants without cheese.”
What are your favorite dumb laws in your state?
I didn’t consult Snopes to see which if any of these laws are bogus, but whatever the case, they’re funny. Also I’d imagine if any of these laws are still on the books, no prosecutions are taking place.
Know somebody who might like some paparazzi attention of the likes of Paris Hilton, Britney and Lindsay Lohan for the day?
Ok, maybe not that bad but the next time you want to torture pamper that special someone in the Los Angeles area, just hire them their own Paparazzi from celeb4aday.com.
Packages start at $499 and go up to $2,499+tax USD. Heard about this on KIRO710 radio earlier tonight and smiled. Look, I put this under the humor category. Think extreme gag gift.
While riding the financial roller coaster in the US and foreign stock markets, it’s healthy to remember to laugh. Check out the Lol-O-Meter:
NomoreLOL.com is humorously advocating getting rid of the lie that is LOL. Lie in the fact that it’s become “increasingly obvious” that netizens are using ‘lol’ when they aren’t really laughing out loud.
Instead of using ‘lol’ NoMoreLOL recommends using ‘loi’ which stands for Laughing On the Inside.
Update 8:34am PST: And if NoMoreLOL doesn’t make you LOL, try this dog biting balloons video:
What does the camera eye have against Hillary Clinton?
Far be it to talk about something as superficial as looks with most professions, but the President of the United States needs charisma and polish. An important part of the President’s job — even more so after the mess made by our current Commander in Chief — will be cleaning up America’s reputation diplomatically. As human beings, wrong or right, we’re drawn to looks at least on a subconscious level. Even if you personally aren’t wired that way, a lot of other human beings are and good looks help grease the wheels.
Bill Clinton has plenty of charisma and George Bush has way too little. You’d think that the camera eye would be kinder to Hillary Clinton, but I repeatedly see photos taken of her with these bug-eyed, terrible expressions.
Are photographers trying to catch Hillary and paint her as an ugly duckling on purpose? I think Hillary is a pretty good looking woman. No she’s not hot, definitely not smoking hot, but a lot of the pictures I see on an almost daily basis make her look very dark and sinister. Conversely, Barack Obama seems to get shots that make him look a lot younger and dynamic and less freaked out.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney is leading the pack in the photogenic department. I’m not going to vote for a candidate solely on looks and neither should anybody else but the last thing I want is our President to walk into a room and turn everybody to stone.
Note to the photogs of the world: start taking some better pictures of Hillary. She might not be leading in delegates as of this writing, but for awful photos it’s a landslide. Why?
Something tells me John Travolta, the Bee Gees and the disco era all inspired the following wild invention (Update: even though these all came after the date of the patent: 1971? Must have been channeling!).
In the IRC chat which anybody reading is invited to join at irc.scriptschool.com #scriptschool there is a feature where you can search past posts via the IRC bot I wrote by typing !hmm KEYWORD. I noticed one of the recent queries was for ‘plushie’ of which there were no posts here yet for. Coincidentally this week I came across this YouTube video on, guess what? Plushies!
Our goal is to show that relatively simple algorithms can provide fast, satisfactory results to the user whereas the pursuit of optimal layout and simulation accuracy lies outside this paper’s scope. We successfully demonstrated that non-professional users could design plush toys or balloon easily using Plushie.
I have no plans to be designing plush toys any time soon but this was too irresistible to ignore.
Must admit I’ve never thought of the problems presented by having sex in space, but thankfully the brains at NASA have already done the calculations. We can’t figure out world peace, but we can figure out how let astronauts make love in space.
NASA studied sex in space over 11 years ago according to an article in the guardian.co.uk:
Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. “Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even NASA was only given a censored version.”
Doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing the instructional Astronauts Do It On The Moon hitting store shelves any time soon. Now if only Paris Hilton had been on the moon, we’d know all about this stuff. Forget the mile high club, that’s for amateurs.
Seriously, I wonder if in my lifetime I’ll have the opportunity to travel into space? Sex would be one of the last things on my mind up there but I can understand how astronauts having to be up there for weeks and months would think about these things.
Where am I going with this post? I’m ejecting now, Houston.
