If you guessed "a musical act incorporating robot pantomime," you're right. If you guessed "singing robots," you're also right. More or less. (And if you guessed "procrastinating on a paper that is due tomorrow", you are still 100% right.)
Here.... have a taste of what I've basically been listening to on repeat for the past three months.
I swear I'm not totally insane. Only a little bit. And now this song is going to be stuck in my head the rest of the night, isn't it? (Is it Friday yet?)
Dang it, I fail at embedding things today. Here's the link -- if anyone can edit the post to fix it, that'd be great. (head meet desk.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LlUPnaHWA
Marc said about 1 hour later
You didn't fail at embedding, this blog needs an upgrade. :)
Awesome video and congrats on making it through the first year! Pretty much anything steampunk is cool.
Geoff said about 22 hours later
Great stuff! Thank you for sharing and congrats on making it through your first year of college!
SnapChat is a service that encourages you to take ugly selfies, those on-the-spot-where-you-don't-look-the-best photos, and send them to your friends where you specify how long they stay on their phone (avg 10 sec). When you delete them from your phone, they're gone forever! See! Managed risk. You CAN take that risque photo now!
Or can you?
Turns out, friends who get those pics could make a copy of said pic. That would be outside what SnapChat can delete, so the picture could be stored indefefinitely or shared with others. Not good. How about the ones that you delete on your own phone? Bad news. They don't really delete them there, either, just hide them from you.
If you want the techie details look here. But if you're using this service, and depend on the alleged security it provides, you may want to re-evaluate your use of the service.
But as the CEO of SnapChat said..the photos are very easy to store in a million different ways. The idea of SnapChat is kinda cute, but don't go sending something and expect it to truly disappear. That's like asking to remove something from the internet once it's been on there... we all know that's impossible. :)
Abby said about 4 hours later
According to some of the people I've talked to who use it, though, it has the potential to be pretty entertaining.... Especially if you befriend someone who has a penchant for sending deliberately weird pictures. But I don't have a smartphone, so I don't really have any intention of actually trying it out personally. I'll just entertain myself by listening to other people's stories.
GJ said about 4 hours later
Ah, yes, much enjoyment can be had living vicariously through others. :)
GJ said about 4 hours later
I call total BS on the "you need a rooted Android phone" statement in the takedown. My phone is not rooted. I am quite able to access, copy, delete and otherwise play with files on my phone's system with apps available in the Google Play store. I've had to hack into other app's data files, why would I not be able to get into SnapChat's?
I may install it just for kicks and see if I can replicate Decipher's findings.
This Is Water posted by Marc on May 8, 2013 @ 10:46AM
I think I need to watch that before and after work everyday....
GJ said about 11 hours later
For me, it's good to watch before shopping at Wal-Mart.
GJ said 1 day later
Something he said hit me a bit when I originally listened, so I went back and found the text of the speech. Here it is:
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
GJ said 1 day later
I do wish to provide a rebuttal. I've been an atheist for more than a decade now. That's long enough to pretty much rule out a phase, flavor of the week, etc. My point in saying this is that I can talk from the point of view of a real, honest to goodness atheist in response to what David Foster Wallace said above.
In many ways, this entire speech is moralistic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, the piece I isolated in the previous comment is where he falls back on a tired argument often used by religious folks to explain why atheism is a dead-end street. The canard is the idea that you have to worship something, so if you are an atheist, that's going to have to be something material, be it money, sex, possessions, or just about anything else that can be pictured. Inevitably, this worship of non-God things consumes you, and destroys you. Which is pretty much all David is saying above.
The truth is, you are not hard-wired to worship. Those of us who decided we didn't care for the evasiveness and lack of logic in deism don't automatically replace God with our vice of choice. Instead, for most of us, this part of our life simply withers and dies (if we didn't start as atheists from the get-go). We end up being not very interesting people, actually. Check out the prisons--you'll find we're very under-represented there. See? We're boring.
But his point about slipping into default human tendencies--that's reverting to the nomad mean. Humans have achieved what they have due to social organization, and that has required suppression of this nomad mean. I won't kid you--religion has had a very significant role in this over the years, and I do see that as one of religion's greatest benefits. I think he just mis-identified it because of his religious tendencies, but that process of slipping is very real, and very damaging.
And here you thought I was going to go all negative here, didn't you? :)
Geoff said 5 days later
he lost me at platitude. I just kicked into my default setting and drooled a bit.
Camera man tumble off cliff...dog and the battery chuck were also quite hilarious.
Steve said 2 days later
I wouldn't beleive they were real, except it would take a mastermind to come up with all that good stuff! Dog missle was awesome, followed closely by the runaway mini boat engine.
Welp, another month, another hack. Looks like my account (along with many others at Yahoo) have had their accounts compromised yet again. So you might be proactive and check on your account. Here's some things to do:
Go to your Yahoo Account Info and check out your login activity. Make sure the login locations make sense for you. Considering I haven't ever been to the Philippines or India, it was obvious I was hacked.
Check your Sent folder, make sure no e-mails have been sent without your knowledge.
Change your password
Change your security questions
In the Account Info, turn on the secondary authentication with your mobile phone number.
Now, I know it's odd to be getting security advice from the guy who just got hacked, but I'm nearly 100% certain Yahoo has flaws on their end considering this has been happening for months to TONS of people.
If you're sick of Yahoo, like I am, I just deleted my account. It'll take 90 days for it to be permanately deleted, however, so if you plan on doing the same, it couldn't hurt to try to secure your account before doing so.
There's many reasons why I don't tolerate magical thinking, and belief in things not provable by scientific experiment. Here's one: when you do believe in things that are not grounded in reality, you can get taken in by charlatans like this, this, this and this. Regardless of your view of the world, be smart out there!
I wasn't kidding folks. My first example, of the asshole selling fake bomb detectors, has people in Africa defending their use and claiming they work. These do not detect ANYTHING. They are completely bogus, and yet thanks to confirmation bias of the observers (and the urge to defend purchases they authorized), they have deluded themselves into continuing to use and believe in these things. The fact that these make believe products sold as a security device that will definitely cost people their very lives makes my blood boil. If only more people were equipped with their very own Baloney Detection Kit, this kind of thing wouldn't be nearly as common.
So, a buddy of mine was telling me about this neat game, The Resistance. Oddly enough, that's the current game on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop web-series. Check it out, and see if you think this might get traction at a family event.
This game is very similar to a game I've played at a lot of parties called Mafia. It actually has a few more roles than this one, but it requires someone to be a narrator, whereas this one lets everyone participate, which is good. Although a lot of people like being the narrator cause it's fun. I'd totally be game for this type of game, it's remarkably fun.
Marc said about 23 hours later
And in a side note, Wil Wheaton is awesome.
GJ said about 23 hours later
Mafia kills off people during the game, however. Sucks when you get whacked in turn 1. This game keeps everyone in till the end, which is nice.
Marc said about 24 hours later
Yup, another benefit to this game, although it is sometimes fun to watch people's strategies after you're dead. Does The Resistance have a limit on the number of players?
GJ said 1 day later
yes, I think 10 is the upper limit. And from what I hear, 5 is really too few. Shines in the 7-10 range.
Just watched Troll Hunter, a Norwegian film about...trolls. It's in the vein of Blair Witch Project, although it's more a monster movie like Cloverfield, only about a hundred times better than either film. Very minimal shaky cam, and a decent movie overall. Here be the trailer:
Last time I told Laura we should watch Cloverfield since you suggested it, left me with the inability to pick the movie we watch for like two months. Maybe I'll watch this one while she's gone this week. :)
If you want to watch a ridiculous "horror" movie, watch "Rubber." Tough to beat this description: "A car tire named Robert rolls through the desert Southwest using its strange psychic powers to blow up birds, bunnies, human beings and more."
GJ said about 12 hours later
Troll Hunter is way better than Cloverfield, which I'll completely agree is a bad movie. I wanted it to be good, but dammit, by the end I was rooting for the monster to eviscerate the whiny main characters. Rubber has all the makings of an absolutely horrible movie that might just be so bad it's good, but I haven't see that yet. The trailer was bad enough. :)
Geoff said about 15 hours later
you people need a better theater system. Cloverfield was killer. One of the best sounding & immersive movies I've seen. If you're looking for better acting in a monster flick, you clearly don't get monster flicks.
Mind you I watched this movie alone at night with the volume CRANKED. Makes for an intense viewing. A win in my book
Darcy said about 15 hours later
It was a good movie. Slow to start, I wasn't too sure about it at first, but ended up really enjoying it. And I am not really a monster movie sort of person, right GJ? Then again I have weird taste in movies. So YMMV.
GJ said about 17 hours later
Geoff, you think Transformers was awesome. Case closed.
I also didn't say the actors were bad in Cloverfield. The characters were totally, completely unlikable. Pretentious, wussy, hipsters. That is why they had to die. :) But the actors played them very well.
You won't like Troll Hunter. I don't think any buildings get destroyed, since it takes place in the wilds of Norway. The CGI is definitely not Class A Hollywood, in fact it's pretty comical but the movie does an excellent job of selling it. But that's Plot, and Story, rather than Visuals and Sound. Plot and story are almost never found in a monster flick--this is easily in the same class as another one of my favorites, The Host, which I'll note is also not an American film.
And no, Darcy, you aren't a monster movie person if you don't like Tremors, which has to be the best movie of all time EVAR!
Marc said about 24 hours later
Welp...just watched it. #1 complaint is the subtitles, but mostly because I'm lazy. I'd put The Host higher than this one for sure... I just can't find trolls even remotely close to scary or realistic. It was almost like watching the "Finding Bigfoot" TV show, which I highly recommend BTW, it's hilarious.
The trolls did look ridiculous, but I knew that going in from the trailer, so I definitely paid more attention to the story line... but I just don't get too jazzed over trolls. I've also seen enough of these Blair Witch type movies that the novelty has warn off a bit. Still, as ridiculous as it all was, it wasn't a bad flick. Laura would've hated it though, so glad I spared her. :)
I can't tell whether I should recommend Rubber or not. If I recall correctly, it's not a very kid friendly movie, so just be warned there. It is also ridiculous in so many ways that you'll either enjoy the quirkiness or think it's just outright insane.
I feel like we're starting up a blog series of Watch At Your Own Risk movies here. :)
Geoff said 1 day later
GJ, transformers was an epic CGI masterpiece. IMO, the first movie to official dethrone the Matrix. Of course a few other flics have since come out (like Avatar which is the current record holder IMO).
Plot and story are all good, but being a 3D motion graphics artist, I can appreciate the enormous amount of work put into movies like Transformers. The transform animation, while not as copied as Matrix 'bullet time', was very influential in a lot of future marketing pieces.
Cloverfield IMO pulled off the "put you in the character shoes" wonderfully. On a 60" screen (at the time of my viewing) in pitch black darkness with a supreme sound system...the onslaught on the city streets was incredible. It felt very real. Rockets launched from the back, cars tossed back in return fire...builds crashing, people screaming and no monster in visible sight but ever present. That particular scene alone stood out to me and still does...yet I've only seen the movie once and that was many, many years ago.
I also enjoyed the ending. I can't recall how much of the monster they showed, but it felt like very little which added to the intensity. Nearly every horror/monster flick suffers from revealing the monster who 99% always underwhelms and essentially eliminates any fear you might have had.
One particular recent horror flick that screams to me is Insidious. It was fan-freakingtastic up until the end when the creature is finally revealed (SPOILER - It's Darth Maul). If you haven't seen that flick yet, go watch it. It's still a good horror movie, but falls flat at the end unfortunately. The title sequence still puts a tingle up the spine.
Turn the lights off, crank the volume and enjoy the first hour intently. It's REALLY good. Kind of like War of the Worlds up until the cellar scene - suspense wise.
GJ said 1 day later
Oh, I'm sure a lot of work goes into them, but having the best images or the best sound does not a good movie make all by itself. Conversely, you can have an excellent movie with minimal effects (they really have little place in character dramas, for example) if you have great story, characterization, and acting.
Cloverfield was executed well. The effects were great, sound was awesome. The story had promise, but really wasn't great. The characters were not at all people you would want to identify with. So in the end, it's not a horrible movie, but it's not what I'd call good, either.
Re: Trollhunter. Yeah, the trolls looked silly, and yeah, trolls are not ingrained into American culture like they are in Norwegian culture. To that point, I tweeted a suggestion to @jeb, the current lead programmer on Minecraft (who lives in Norway) that the next mob in MC should definitely be a troll. Still, compared to BW, this was a far superior movie. I agree about The Host--that's better than this, but not by a super wide margin.
Re: Watch At Your Own Risk would be an awesome feature for the blog, which is starved for features anyhow. If anyone saw a movie and wants to share, by all means, please do so! And that goes for anything else. Tried a new restaurant? Cooked something new? Game review? Music suggestion? Well, other than Rush. Go for it!
Re: Insidious. Was going to pan it. I mean, Geoff suggested it. :) But it does appear to have lots of good reviews, and people who are genuinely scared. Trouble is, I don't find movies scary anymore. I may watch it for kicks, but considering that I yawned my way through Paranormal Activity, I'm not expecting much.
Geoff said 3 days later
paranormal activity doesnt hold a candle to Insidious. It's good up until the end. The first appearance of the creature, super cool.. get a chill just thinking about it. Darth Maul...not quite as scary :)
Video: A New Zealand MP absolutely gives it to the anti-gay opponents of the gay marriage bill before their legislative body. The bill was passed, making NZ the first government in Asia to recognize gay marriage.
