Edison Versus Cats. (And an Elephant.)

That is all.

Hokusai in Rice

Here, now:

Giant images drawn in two tones of rice.




[link]

All the Texts Fit to... uh...

Textfiles.com has a veritable treasure-trove of different text files- some of which have been floating around since the 60's or 70's. You can find some weird stuff in there.

With Everybody!

There is a Japanese kid's show named Pythagoras Switch. A certain episode of it contains a demonstration of the "Algorithm March," performed first by a couple of dudes, and then by a line of ninjas.

Intrigued? You can also see it performed by a soccer team, airport personnel, and my personal favorite: a yard full of prisoners. (Unfortunately, embedding is disabled for that video.)

...But not for the same prison's rendition of "Thriller!"

Metal Burrito

Here is a video of a woman (Aneta Florczyk) fucking up a frying pan:

There are more of 'em on YouTube.

Not the Bees!

Nicolas Cage starred in a remake of a classic horror movie: The Wicker Man.

Here are the "best scenes" from the movie, in a YouTube mashup:

Taken out of context, they are rather silly!

But that's not all- Oh, no...

Here is a trailer for the secret "comedy cut" the filmmakers made- just in case the whole "Nicolas Cage in a horror movie" thing didn't pan out.

The Amazing Flying Man Fights One Thousand Ninjas!

(Click for bigger view.)

Art Gets Cute

Friends With You.

Just click there. You will be happy you did. Who would not?

Guns. Lots of Guns.

Also from an old Wired article: "Alliance: The Silent War."
Here's a game that basically takes the whole "realism movement" in First-Person Shooters to its logical end: Full environmental lighting (meaning that a whole city is lit realistically, by the "Sun," while you are playing) that changes with the weather (i.e. when clouds shift, so does the light) and a searchable database of hundreds of weapons to pick from.

The game takes you through the last century's battles, and the multiplayer lets you recreate historic battles as accurately (or inaccurately) as you like.

Sounds like fun- Unfortunately, the game has no publisher at the moment, and the last time their website's news page was updated was in 2006. Hm.

Here are some movies of the engine and gameplay, for those interested:
Engine.
Gameplay.

"Dance Dance Revolution. With Flamethrowers. Pointed at you."

I was reading an old copy of Wired on the can and came across a writeup of Dance Dance Immolation, an art-game made by a group of ingenious young entrepreneurs that combines the fun of Dance Dance Revolution with the fun of Getting Set on Fire.

Kind of reminds me of Painstation- another art-game that combined Pong with Getting Electrocuted. I'm sure there's a keen observation about human nature to be made here; I just think it's fun.

More Mouse Graffiti

Tony Millionaire Makes Maakies

...And he does it well. Besides having a mountain of comics, he's also into animation (which I think I've mentioned here before).

David Shrigley

David Shrigley is an actual gallery artist that works in comic art. He has a bunch of samples of his work up at his site... Some are just drawings, some are just words. They are mostly all interesting.

Creased Comics: Brad Neely

Brad Neely has a slew of one-panel comics on his site- funny, surprising, and a little surreal.

Different Backgrounds

(For the game.)

Adventurers Can Be Diligent

Have you heard of Chore Wars? It's a site that lets you set up household chores as "adventures" and reward experience points you your little cherubs when they take out the trash.
I signed up in the spirit of making our dev team do some work (meaning myself and Chandon; Tom's already been doing shit).

Here is my character sheet (in case you'd like to see an example). I am a level one sorcerer.

I've Been Playin'

...with the Facebook's (erg) Graffiti app. Here's what I've made so far:









It's basically a little in-browser Paint program. While looking through what other people made, I came across this photorealism tutorial, as well as this tutorial on drawing straight lines in the app (which led me to this).

That last "this" is a little Flash game called Line Rider that lets you draw lines and then watch a little man try to ride them. Hooray!

Silent Comic

Here is "Plague," a webcomic about the zombie apocalypse told from the point of view of some house-cats. It's pretty neat.

Here begins "eekeemoo," a comic (also silent) about... an Eskimo... and his yeti friend... that go on a quest... to... fight some tentacles? It is also rather neat. Bit harder to read, though.

This one, entitled "The Pretentious History of Everything," basically has some bomb-ass art. So I like it as well.

DARPA: Hey Let's Spend Our Money on Some Sci-Fi Bullshit

High-tech decision-making gear in development by DARPA, the Pentagon's egghead-crew.
They have come up with a lot of unlikely stuff. I bet they can do this as well.

...Instead of, say, coming up with a way to end fuel shortages. NICE JOB GUYS

Ride the Inter-Train

Here is a sweet-ass "map" of the Web 2.0 you've all been hearing so much about.
It is designed to look like a train line map, and has all the important sites categorized by type (video sites, community sites, news sites, stealin' sites, et cetera).
You can hover your mouse over a "stop" to see a snapshot of the site. Spiffy!

Secret Origin of the Amazing Flying Man!

(Click for bigger view.)

A Note About Those Animations Below

They come from a site that lets you draw little characters (with an embedded version of Paint) and adjust their animation "skeletons," and then animates them for you (all in XML!).
Some of them do not show up entirely correctly. The robots are missing their beady little eyes; the genital-people are missing their balls. The yeti, too, have lost their feet, but that was my error- I forgot about the skeletons.
I figured out how to change the backgrounds for the animations, but haven't been able to change the music. Anyone have any ideas?

True Tales of the Amazing Flying Man!

(Click for bigger view.)

Professor Dirigible: Able-Bodied Spaceman

(Click for bigger view.)

Videar-Games

1. The F.E.A.R. development team is having a contest to name the upcoming sequel; it seems the old publisher still holds rights to the original title.

2. Here is a Tesla coil that has been made to play video game themes:

The "Zeusophone"

3. Little Big Planet has a kick-ass level editor (a multiplayer one!):

4. You can't die in Fable 2- you are just scarred for life instead. Sick?

Wish I Had a Wii

Co-op hybrid Mario is about one of the coolest things I can think of at the moment.

Robot Death March

Get Down, Get Funky With the Yeti

Who Can Resist?

The Dance of the Dead

I made this here. You can too! Hooray

Lame Excuses

Haven't been publishing here recently. I'm working on putting together something more fun.
I will let you know when it's ready.

Little Brown Druid

The same group that released animations of Billy Collins' poetry before emailed to let me know that they'd done it once more, this time with his poem The Country. I like the mousy prophet, surrounded by his savage brethren.