This Japanese website appears to define the geometry of breasts (in eight parts), miniskirts, bathing suits, and women in glasses. I can’t make heads or tails of any of it, and the Babelfish translation doesn’t help at all.
Can someone translate a little and tell us what they’re talking about?
Probably the most obscure and underrated genre of gaming is text-based interactive fiction, made popular with the Zork series in the 1980s. Commercial text adventure games are long gone, but hobbyists like Andrew Plotkin and Adam Cadre continue to push the boundaries of the genre.
I finished Plotkin’s Shade in only 15 minutes, but it continues to resonate like only the best short fiction can. Take a few minutes to play it online right now, and let me know what you think of his strange and beautiful world.
A couple hints are below, for those unfamiliar with Interactive Fiction.
Another stupid Internet Explorer trick… This webpage actually opens your CD-ROM drive without prompting, using VBScript to access the Windows Media Player API. If you hate Internet Explorer, feel free to include the below sample code on every page of your own site.
July 29, 2003: The Windows Media Player API won’t let you close the CD-ROM drive once it’s open. Sorry.
Recently, I noticed that several webloggers that discussed the suspected chemical weapons plant found in southern Iraq on March 24 weren’t mentioning those claims turned out to be false, even after the story was retracted revised on USA Today, New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo’s front page yesterday.
I thought this particular example would be an interesting case study to study how bias affects story selection on weblogs. So I searched Technorati for weblogs that linked to the four most popular URLs (1, 2, 3, 4) about the chemical plant. Starting with a list of 148 weblogs spanning the socio-political spectrum, I located the relevant entry on each site and searched for followups or updates.
In brief, here are my findings. 112 weblogs linked to the original story, but didn’t follow up with another entry or correct their existing entry in any way. 28 weblogs linked to the original story, and later posted a correction or other addendum. 8 weblogs only linked to the story after it proved to be false, but didn’t link to it when the news originally broke. The complete list of categorized links is below. (If you have any corrections, please e-mail or leave a comment.)
If you look at the sites, it appears that conservative weblogs tended to only link the original report, liberal weblogs tended to only link to the correction, and mixed and group weblogs linked to both.
I’m not going to jump to conclusions with these results; they don’t necessarily imply bias from their authors. The followup article could be considered less newsworthy as the breaking news, for example, or it might be more a reflection of a reluctance to rehash a story that a weblogger has already covered. I would love to hear from any of the webloggers, explaining why they did or didn’t follow up with an update to the story. Any theories or interpretations of the data are also welcome.
And if you can think of a polarizing breaking news story that many left-wing, anti-war webloggers jumped on but later neglected to retract, e-mail me.
If you’re using Internet Explorer for Windows, try loading this image and typing Ctrl-A to highlight it. Is it magic? Or EEE-VIL?! (An explanation of the trick follows.)
I just received an e-mail with the subject line “Shock and Awe.” Turns out, it’s unsolicited spam advertising a gross-out porn site called freakview.com. Spammers seem to be adjusting to wartime nicely.
The current CNN.com homepage was begging to be remixed… Decapitation Attack!
You know blogging has hit the big time when your mom starts a weblog. Unlike most new webloggers though, she’s already found a confident and compelling voice. Highly recommended, even though I’m a little biased.
eBay offers the option of e-mailing new results of saved searches, but they’re very sporadic and incomplete. Instead, I whipped up a PHP script that queries eBay for a set of keywords and converts it to an RSS feed for syndication, allowing you to subscribe to recent eBay search results ordered by date or high bids. The code is here. (Just rename it to ebayrss.php and drop it somewhere on your own webserver.)
You can test it out for a short time on my server, but this is a very temporary demonstration. Please don’t abuse it.
By the way, I don’t see why developers should have to pay the ridiculous fees for the eBay API, especially when augmenting eBay’s own broken functionality and developing free software that makes them money.
July 8, 2003: eBay removed the Javascript array that I was parsing to gather the auction data… I don’t have the time to modify the script, but please feel free to e-mail me a patch, and I’ll post it here.
December 28, 2003: The script is fixed, but eBay may eventually break it again. It’s broken again.
April 12, 2004: This script is no longer maintained. I recommend FreeBiddingTools.com, which hosts RSS feeds for eBay searches.
August 19, 2004: RSS Auction is a new site that does the same thing, in a much more flexible way. Go use it.
“Beat it, Waxy!” — Homer Simpson, Episode EABF09, aired March 9, 2003
Here’s a strange quote by Wanda Barzee’s son Derrick Thompson, buried in an article profiling the couple who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart.
Mark’s brother, Derrick Thompson, suggested that the couple had started taking LSD about 10 years ago. “They said they weren’t on drugs, but we think that was a lie,” he told a television reporter. “We think that’s how he could communicate with God. That and listen to the Steve Miller Band.”
So, is Derrick saying that listening to Steve Miller lets you communicate with God, or that dropping acid is the only way to tolerate listening to Steve Miller?
While performing in London earlier this week, the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines said, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” The comments and the followup explanation stirred up some controversy back home, leading to boycotts from country radio stations and the largely-conservative country music audience.
The comments from the online forums show how polarizing politics can be to a community of fans. The unofficial Dixie Chicks news forum thread has 63 posts so far, almost entirely by estranged (and often insulting) former fans. That’s relatively civil compared to Usenet or the always incendiary Yahoo Message Boards. It looks like their official website is offline, and the rest of the fan sites are getting slammed this morning from too much activity.
Crispin “Hellion” Glover will be on Late Show with David Letterman tonight for the first third time since his disastrous appearance in July 1987, when he took the stage in a wig and big platform shoes, offered up a brief and bizarre interview, and delivered a high kick inches from Letterman’s face. The producers cut to commercial and he hasn’t been seen on the show since. Here’s a collage of eight screen captures from that episode. (If you have a video clip, send it to me!)
So it should be an interesting show tonight. Unfortunately, Dave’s out sick; maybe Crispin will try to jump-kick guest host Will Ferrell instead. (Or maybe he’ll sing “Ben.”)
I’ve included a full transcript below of the 1987 appearance below.
July 16, 2003: Consumption Junction has the video clip of the original Letterman appearance (careful at work).
The Google Dance has begun, and it looks like I finally overtook the Scott Baio fan club in a search for “baio.” Take that, Chachi! (If you still see the old results, try the Google Dance Tool to search all their servers.)
For all you Scott Baio fans ending up here, here’s a little something special for you. In the late 1980s, Chachi hosted a series of sex-ed videos targeted to pre-teen and teenagers. You can buy them online, and preview the video clips for each. That’s Edutainment!
