Runpee.com serves mankind well by offering up a service that tells you when you can take that much needed bathroom break. Check out the logo which runs, pun intended, from white to yellow. Creative, I like.
To use the site, just click the movie you’re going to see and then the radio button. It will show scrambled spoiler text that can be unscrambled with what happens while you are gone runpeeing.
Hat tip to Lestat for sharing this one and helping to save bladders everywhere. Lestat, you must be off on a long bathroom break, as your blog was last updated in November 2008
Thanks Abraham for sharing how the HR department view differs from a programmer’s.
Got a good morning chuckle out of this one, particularly the negative programmer points for “topless in Facebook picture” and “Lists Visual Basic experience first.” What is that about perception being everything?
Mike Tyson singing Phil Collins (video) In The Air Tonight is funny stuff. I don’t want to spoil the best part other than show you a peek of this video frame.
Maybe Mike Tyson can make back some of his won and lost wealth on the comedy movie circuit. This video is taken from the trailer for the movie The Hangover in theaters everywhere on June 5. Looks like a funny movie, even if Tyson is only a bit part player.
Two days before his wedding, Doug (JUSTIN BARTHA) drives to Las Vegas with his best buddies Phil and Stu (BRADLEY COOPER and ED HELMS) and his future brother-in-law Alan (ZACH GALIFIANAKIS), for a blow-out bachelor party they vow they’ll never forget.
But when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning with pounding headaches, they can’t remember a thing. Their luxury hotel suite is beyond trashed and the groom is nowhere to be found.
Even if you aren’t into this movie, the trailer is worth watching for sheer comedic value a few times. Mike should cut an album with the likes of William Hung.
The Amazon Kindle (affiliate) e-book reader has been on my gadget radar for a little while. I thought the price was too much when it came out and didn’t pull the trigger when I was in heavy gadget buying mode, but they’ve since upgraded and made a bigger screen and added a few more goodies. The new Kindle DX is still black and white and still a bit too pricey I think at $489 but being I love to read and am on the move, this device remains on the radar as a possibility.
One of the neat things about the Kindle is it has forever free wireless access to the Kindle store so anywhere you went that there was coverage, you could buy and read a book. Or even a blog. I submitted this blog eons ago but it never got added. You can probably guess the blogs you would find on the Kindle when Amazon chose them.
Well this changed this week when Amazon shared their new Kindle Publishing for Blogs area – open to all bloggers - which means the blog population in the Kindle Store could increase dramatically in the coming days, weeks and months.
Or maybe not, as it’s not like there are a zillion blog hungry Kindle store shoppers.
And unfortunately there is no option to choose what price to charge for the blog as Amazon sets that which is kind of a bummer because I would have chosen the absolute least price (likely free if it was available – which it isn’t - in fact). I marked down the Hmm updates to ‘1-2 updates a week’ for now since that’s pretty accurate as of late, but I suspect this frequency will be increased in the coming months as my stored up writing energy is starting to overflow.
Most blogs cost $1.99/month to subscribe to and the blog owner only gets 30%, so I won’t be retiring off Kindle blog subscription income any time soon.
If only blog publishers could add bonus content
Really wish there was a way I could push additional bonus content a la DVD extras out to these Kindle subscribers as I still have a significant backlog of unpublished posts. It would provide something extra to these paid subscribers to make it more worth paying for.
But so as not to punish loyal readers who didn’t own the Kindle and couldn’t subscribe, there could be a time decay on these posts that eventually kicks them out to everybody. Put that on my Kindle feature wish list for blog publishers. Actually, this might be possible by offering a separate feed for Kindle readers … only since you can’t password protect it or anything, once that feed address was released in the wild, anybody could simply subscribe to it instead of the main feed.
If anybody is reading any blogs through the Kindle, please let me know what you think of the experience. I’m curious.
Update 5/15/2009 6:05am PST: The Make You Go Hmm Kindle edition is live!
J.J Abrams having created the Firefly TV series and Serenity movie is no stranger to space fantasy (Correction: Abrams is behind Lost, Joss Whedon is behind Firefly & Serenity. My bad.). At the same time many of the Star Trek motion pictures have been terrible. Then add in that retelling a space fantasy as fabled as Star Trek and the bar is pretty high.
I’m happy to report after seeing this afternoon’s showing of Star Trek along with our whole family ($75 later after tickets, popcorn, candy and drinks) that Abrams and company did very well. This is the Star Trek motion picture that long time and new fans should go see. Is it perfect? No. The whole time travel cliched plot device was used to help pave the road for a different Star Trek than we remember going forward. How that will equate in the guaranteed-to-be-coming-down-the-road sequel mill will be left. If they do continue making Star Trek using the new Original Series crew, then please, please, please do something with the Gorn next.
The movie takes place by thrusting us into an alternate time where baby James Kirk is being born in the midst of his father captaining a ship fighting a vengeance-driven enemy from the future. Fast forward to a rebellious Kirk with fast cars, run-ins with the law and bar fights with Starfleet officers. Don’t worry, not too much time is spent in history mode which is what the writers of Wolverine should have figured out.
Throughout the movie we are treated, and don’t take that word lightly, to the introduction of the other famous members of the original series crew like Scotty, Bones, Chekov, Sulu and Uhura. There is some weird romantic thing going on with Uhura and one of the other members that I won’t ruin here, but this is one distraction that didn’t work for me. Always seems to be some hollywood urge to thrust romance into every plotline where it’s not needed.
Then again there could be some tension to this side story in a future sequel. There is more than a cameo part by the original Spock. I’m going to stop here before I ruin any of the movie for those who haven’t seen it. I think even the most hardened Star Trek fans will be hardpressed to find much wrong here. Go see it in the theater, it’s well worth it.
A couple years ago I ranked the comic book superhero movies. With several more superhero movies being released since like the most recent Wolverine, redo of Hulk and Iron Man it’s time for an update. Oh, and I added what I consider to be the worst superhero movie of all time: Lightspeed as well as ranked in the Superman flicks.
If you want to laugh out loud at how stupid a movie can be, Lightspeed is the ticket. What was the guy’s special power? That he could run fast! Words don’t even describe how hilarious that is. Let’s dazzle the enemy with speed. Howard the Duck is light years better than Lightspeed.
1. Spider-man 2
*2. Iron Man
3. X-men
4. Spider-man
*5. Superman (1978)
6. X-men 2
*7. Superman II
8. Spider-man 3
9. Fantastic 4 Rise of the Silver Surfer
10. Superman Returns (2006)
11. Ghost Rider
12. X-men 3
*13. Hulk (remake)
14. Fantastic Four
*15. Hulk (Ang Lee 2003)
16. The Punisher
17. Daredevil
*18. X-Men Originals: Wolverine (2009)
*19. Superman III (the one with Richard Pryor)
**20. Superman IV The Quest for Peace (1987)
21. Howard the Duck
22. Elektra
23. Blade
*24. Lightspeed
*additions and changes are denoted by the asterisks. While the first list was meant to be comprised from my favorite comic book publisher list (Marvel), I’ve added all the Superman (DC Comics) flicks. Superman is my favorite DC Comics superhero. More on the obvious franchise omission from this list in a minute.
** consider this a ranking that could change. I vaguely remember watching Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and would like to rent and watch again. It could go up in rankings (or down) depending on the re-watching. I miss Christopher Reeves as Superman, it is sad what happened to both he and his wife, Dana.
I put the remake of the Hulk movie ahead of Fantastic Four. The new Hulk movie wasn’t that much better than the Ang Lee directed one, but I liked it better than the original Fantastic Four (FF). Not the FF sequel though with the Silver Surfer.
Iron Man came very close to besting Spider-man 2 as my favorite superhero movie of all time to date while X-Men Originals: Wolverine barely edges out Howard the Duck. No change for Elketra (yech!) or Blade. Still haven’t seen Blade II or the III.
Holy missing Batman, Batman!
I realize with leaving out the numerous Batman flicks this list has a huge gaping hole in it. The reason they aren’t here is twofold: one, I haven’t watched all of the Batman flicks (nope, not the newest one) and two, the TV show withstanding I’m not a huge Batman fan. I need to pick a weekend and rent or buy all the Batman flicks to date and do a Batman marathon. This way I can best rank them with the list above. I do remember enjoying parts of some of the Batman movies. I think the part about Batman that I didn’t like most was that he was way too dark and the city backdrop (Gotham City) was a bit corny.
In the meantime, feel free to suggest where the various Batman flicks should rank above in the comments below. You could also tell me the optimal order to watch the various Batman movies in. Or should I watch them from oldest to newest?
In case you were living under a heavy metal rock, the closest thing to hearing brand new Black Sabbath music came out last Tuesday, April 28 courtesy of Dio, Iommi, Butler and Appice under the name Heaven and Hell.
This same line-up was responsible for arguably the last respectable Black Sabbath album Dehumanizer. A few of those tracks are my favorites from the Dio-era Sabbath.
Many have argued that Black Sabbath without Ozzy and Bill Ward on drums isn’t the Black Sabbath. I’d love to see Ozzy and Ward get together with Iommi and Butler and make at least one more Sabbath album but I’m not sure Ozzy has the vocal chops left. Also, this kind of sniping from former bandmates won’t help.
There’s no doubt musically it could happen. Also from the first and last time I’d seen them together at Ozzfest Ozzy seemed to be going through the motions rather than pulling some surprise songs from their legendary catalog. We’ve all heard War Pigs and Paranoid, but what about something less predictable?
At any rate, the Heaven & Hell lineup, quite wisely, are ensuring they won’t meet Sharon Osbourne’s wraith by using the name of their greatest Black Sabbath hit for the new music.
Whatever they want to call themselves officially it’s still Black Sabbath to me. When they toured as Heaven and Hell a couple years back and released a live album, they played almost all old Sabbath stuff and you can bet the tour with the new album satanically titled The Devil You Know there will be Dio-era Sabbath songs.
That all aside, the new album sports a modest 10 songs:
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW Track Listing 1. “Atom And Evil” 2. “Fear” 3. “Bible Black” 4. “Double The Pain” 5. “Rock And Roll Angel” 6. “The Turn Of The Screw” 7. “Eating The Cannibals” 8. “Follow The Tears” 9. “Neverwhere” 10. “Breaking Into Heaven”
Wal-mart has two exclusive covers of the CD, according to the Heaven & Hell official website:
offers an alternate cover featuring the traditional Black Sabbath devil logo. While choosing the album artwork, the band narrowed it down to two covers, both of which will be available exclusively at WalMart.
Meanwhile, Best Buy, where I went to buy my copy of the CD is including an exclusive DVD showing unreleased video of the making of the CD. The suggested retail price for the CD is $18.99 while the digital version is already available on AmazonMP3 for $9.99. I almost pulled the AmazonMP3 trigger, but decided I’d rather have the CD version. I eagerly waited for Best Buy to open at 10am so I could be there making the purchase.
To my surprise, Best Buy was running a sale for the CD for the same price as the digital version, $9.99.
As I drove around throughout the day, I’ve listened to the album and here are the various tracks, organized by heavy to mellow, not by the track line-up listed above.
Heavy
“Atom and Evil” – catchy verse riff that reminds us why Tony Iommi is known as a riff master in rhythm circles and by Ozzy. “Fear” “Double The Pain” “The Turn Of The Screw” “Follow The Tears” “Neverwhere” “Eating The Cannibals” “Breaking Into Heaven”
Mixed heavy and mellow
“Bible Black” – I wish we’d hear more Iommi acoustic guitar music. How about an unplugged Sabbath album someday?
“Rock And Roll Angel” – more nice acoustic work in what might be the most mellow song on the album and yet it’s not a ballad.
Overall this album is just OK. It’s no Dehumanizer and a long way from the Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules albumes. It’s not bad, but it’s not that great either and have already replaced the CD in the player with something else. I’m glad they put out an album but with the exception of Bible Black and Rock and Roll Angel, I’m not super excited about any of these songs.
Ever since seeing the first X-Men I’ve been curious of Wolverine’s history. I never followed the comic book so don’t know the story line. How did he get all that weird metal inside him? Why? Sure, I could Google all this or be lame (and lawless) and seek out the pirated version, but what’s the fun in that? Even less fun and more stupid would be losing your job by reviewing the pirated version like Roger Friedman did.
In a couple days, those of us who don’t know the history (and please, no spoilers in the comments), will find out. Wolverine is the first movie to come along in the theaters in awhile that I’m interested in seeing. I’m also looking forward to Star Trek. We might not be going opening weekend, but I want to see Wolverine in the theater.
By online vote, Tempe, Arizona got the first screening last night. Fans in Mexico no thanks to the swine flu pandemic will have to hold off on their premiere:
A spokesperson for Twentieth Century Fox said: "We were not only concerned about Hugh’s welfare - and we would never send anyone into harm’s way - but we also have an enormous office filled with people we care about.
You going to see it in the theater or wait for the DVD / Blu-ray?
Update Monday 5/4/2009 7:41am PST: Caught the 2:50 showing on Saturday and man this movie dragged … and dragged. And dragged. The history is there, but I’d rather have seen the History channel do something on this fictional character. If you are as anxious as me, prepare to be disappointed. This one has ‘rental when nothing else good is there’ written all over it. Saved from a failure in that the history about Wolverine is told. Too bad there isn’t much else worth watching.
Maybe you’ve heard by now that Yahoo is shutting down Geocities. Yes, the same Geocities it paid $3 billion dollars for a mere 10 years ago. The first thing I thought about when I heard this news was MySpace.
Before you laugh out loud, I’m not talking MySpace the darling among teens and music artists today, I’m talking about MySpace 10 years from now. Take a ride in your time machine to the year 2019 because it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if by then MySpace has met the same fate. A lot of MySpace pages are nothing more than Geocities type over-busy pages with sound onjoin. The major difference is MySpace is more ‘social’ whatever that means these days.
I should probably not be in the prediction business because my record is shaky on this front, but I’m feeling good about this one. There will be something cooler than MySpace within the next 10 years and the inevitable shut down will follow. That’s not to say MySpace is a complete waste of time today so don’t think I’m trolling here but I think the sobering news about Geocities being here today gone tomorrow within 10 years – a lifetime on the internet, BTW – should be a wake-up call for MySpace users.
I’d keep a personal blog on self-hosted web space with the stuff that you really want to last any amount of time on the internet. Yeah, it’s more expensive than free, but your kids might be able to see what it is about when they grow up. Hey, maybe even your grandkids.
What do you think, am I wrong? Will MySpace have more longevity than Geocities? If you need another example of a waning giant, look at eBay vs. Craigslist. It’s tough staying relevant, popular and cool online. That’s my takeaway here. Yours?
My wife has shamed me out of buying any of the Wii fishing games to date, but she’s going to have a harder time doing that with a bass fishing game called The Strike coming this fall on the Xbox 360.
The video above shows a more realistic fishing pole controller complete with a motor in the crank. I’m digging how detailed the process is of buying your equipment and then riding the boat out to the hot spots. Hat tip to dvice.com.
On the Wii front I keep looking over Rapala fishing. It seems to me that the Wiimote with its motion sensitivity and rumble would provide a decent virtual fishing game without the need for any additional controllers.
Some reading this might be thinking: why not just go out and do some real fishing? I have no good excuse for that. Would like to get back into fishing someday offline again. I did a good amount of fishing when I was a young boy and I like eating fish.
I wonder how much The Strike with fishing pole is going to cost? I’m guessing around $100. This fall I’m also looking forward to The Beatles game.
