Daily Links - 5/16/08

LEGO Indy - Yes, you too can demo the LEGO Indiana Jones game.

GTA vs. NYC - Sightseeing in Liberty City compared to the real thing.

Hidden Design - Can you see the hidden messages?

Video Game Politics - Write the presidential candidates and let them know that video games are protected free speech.

No Longer Hardcore - Signs you're not longer a hardcore gamer. Many of these apply to me.

War on Knitting - The War on Knitting continues!

Packing Light - As fuel costs rise, airlines cut back on the amount of luggage you can carry. Learn to pack everything you need in one bag.

Daily Links - 5/15/08

SMS Cost - Sending text messages is more expensive than receiving data from the Hubble telescope. My overcharging, let me show it to you.

Gun Song - A song made entirely of gun sounds from COD 4.

In Bed with Kirk - I'd prefer Picard.

WTF? - Seriously, what's up with that?

Darko 2 - s. Darko, the sequel to the creepy Donnie Darko announced. Say it isn't so.

The PRO-IP Act - The war on bits continues.

Free Beer - I have it from a good source that they know something about beer in Denmark.

What is a Geek?

Invariably the first question out of people's mouth when I tell them the title of my BBook is: So what is a geek?

Sure, there's a dictionary definition, but it's not very helpful. I try to answer their question as best I can, but my answer seems to change everytime I give it. Not what you'd expect from someone who wrote The BBook of Geek.

This is where I call on the great massess of the Internet to help me. I'd love to hear your definition of a geek, so I can try to formulate a better answer for that question. You never know, I may end up on Oprah or something, so I better come up with something. You can use this discussion thread on the BBoard or email me your definition.

If you're wondering what the next question usually is, it's: So do you think I'm a geek? I usually answer yes, because most people are geeky in their own way (also, I don't want to eliminate any potential BBuyers of BBook). This is followed by the person asking me to determine their level of geekiness by using a series of questions about topics in the BBook. I really should carry around a clipboard with a question sheet on it, then hand people "I'm ____ % Geeky" stickers after they take the quiz.

That's all I've got today. Stay geeky!

Daily Links - 5/14/08

Breaking the Law - 13 movies that broke with the traditions of Hollywood.

Speed Racer Review - Since I didn't do a followup, you can read that Speed Racer sucked somewhere else.

Forever Bulb - Contributing to global warming for 107 years straight.

Container Data Center - For all your mobile computing needs.

GTA IV Guide - An alarmist's guide to GTA IV.

Instant Rimshot - For all those workplace comedians.

Military Botnet - How about we name it Skynet? That sounds like a good name.

Projects and More Projects

I finally installed Joomla on the Star Trek Movie Marathon site. Let's see how long it takes for Paramount to send me a cease and desists letter for it.

I decided to use Joomla since I have some experience with it. I'm planning on using it for The BBook of Geek site too (which I hear is available for preorder at Amazon). As if I didn't have enough trouble filling BBspot with great content, now I have two other sites added to the mix. Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop snorting meth.

Today's Top 11 list got posted on the Fark "Geek" subsection. Surprisingly, it's not full of BBspot hate. You better take a look at this rare occurrence in the wild while you can.

I'm slowly building up Twitter followers, up to 130 now. Nowhere near the top followed people, but'm happy with it. I'm trying to keep my following-followed ratio as near as 1-1 as I can get. If you're not some spammer trying to get followers by following everyone, then I'll most likely follow you back.

The redesign of the home page has been going in fits and starts (mostly fits). I'm thinking it might be a better strategy to implement some smaller changes gradually, than a wholesale redesign. At least that way I feel like I'm making progress rather than just spinning my wheels, so if you see changes happening on the front page, don't be frightened, let me know what you think instead.

I had this story idea the other night about an alternate universe, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could turn it into a short story or maybe even a novel. I think I'll write the humor piece first as it's only tangentially related to the book idea then start tinkering with the book idea. I've never written a long narrative before, but I've been hankering to try. This might be the idea I've been looking for. I'll keep you informed of how it goes.

That's all I've got today. Stay geeky!

Daily Links - 5/13/08

Reality Cartoons - Plenty of cartoon creations turned into reality.

Programming Jokes - A compilation of programming jokes. Some better than others.

That's No Moon - In fact, there's no moon at all. It's a hoax.

Castle or Home? - Location makes all the difference.

OO.o Integrator - Integrate OpenOffice.org with Zoho and Google Docs.

EA Relents - Cumbersome DRM cut back on new games. Hurray for the power of the Internets!

SP3 AMD Problems - You may want to avoid XP SP3 for now if you've got an HP AMD system.

Pwned by a Third Grader

Happy Monday. No story today. Sorry about that. I spent Saturday doing my data entry work. Sunday was spent celebrating motherhood, and being a father. I did play this cool space game with my son called Solarquest. It's monopoly, but with the planets and moons being the properties. You also have to watch out for your fuel levels in your rocket which was my demise. Well, that and getting stuck on the Moon for several turns and having to pay rent to my sun. We'll definitely be playing that one again. With more people playing, it should be even more fun.

A local deli made it onto the Oprah show. As if Zingerman's wasn't busy enough. The kids enjoyed seeing a place they've eaten before on TV. I can vouch for the BBQ that they selected, though I usually get the BBQ chicken sandwich.

Thanks to some help from Google and fellow Twitterers, I was able to install Twhirl on Ubuntu. Adobe Air is only an alpha release for Linux, but I haven't had any issues with Twhirl so far. It's much better than any other Twitter client for Linux. If you need any help installing it let me know, or tweet me on Twitter.

And what BBlog post wouldn't be complete without a plug for The BBook of Geek. So, what do you think would be a suitable abbreviation for The BBook of Geek? BoG? BBoG? BBoogeek?

It appears I've forgiven Team Fortress 2 for the Medic achievement fiasco. Now that everyone (except me) has earned the new weapons, it's gone back to being a fun game to play. As with most games I play, I've progressed past the level of being a "newb" to being a novice. I don't possess the time or reflexes to climb any further up the skill ladder. It's easy to tell when I find a server with some skilled players on it. I die very quickly ten times in a row without any kills. I'll stick to the newb servers for great enjoyment.

That's all I've got today. Stay geeky!

Daily Links - 5/12/08

Park Here - If you can figure out the signs.

TV Theme Songs - Try to guess the TV theme songs.

LEGO Tower - The world's tallest LEGO tower built.

RAID Explained - RAID arrays explained graphically with water bottles.

The Counterglow - The sun gets you from both sides.

My New Job - Sorry folks, I'm going to go work for NASA.

Don't Sit Up - Sitting up straight might not be the best thing for you. Suck it moms!

TGIBarf!

I was planning on hitting both Speed Racer and Iron Man today, to catch up on my Trailer Review follow ups, but my daughter came home sick from school. Poor kid is not feeling good at all, but thankfully she's stopped exploding.

Since I mentioned my daughter, as an equal opportunity mentioner, I should mention my son as well. He's started a line of comics at school, which according to him are popular. Now, "popular" to a third grader could mean that one kid looked at it, but still it's encouraging. With his knowledge of science and skill at stickman drawing, he could corner the XKCD Jr. market.

I finished going through the copyedited manuscript of The BBook of Geek. I'd say 90% of my errors fell into two categories: commas and "that" or "which" errors. I'd say I did well for an engineering major writing his first book. I only have one joke left to rewrite, because some geek broke up with his comedian girlfriend and ruined my joke. That's an image though, so I can email it to my publisher over the weekend. Anyway, I'll get that done and it's off to the typesetters.

I'm still posting on Twitter, and I still don't get the addictiveness factor. I think I need to build up more followers before it reaches the crack-like level that the "stars" talk about. Follow me if you're on it, and I'll let you know the "safe" level of followers after I cross into the danger zone.

That's all I've got for today. Stay geeky!

Daily Links - 5/9/08

What do I do? - See if you can figure out what you're supposed to do.

LED Bulbs - The future of light.

The Honor System - A bakery experiments with just a tip jar, and succeeds.

Site Identification - The death of the padlock.

Data Recovery - An amazing job recovering data from a space shuttle hard drive that fell to Earth.

OO.o 3.0 - OpenOffice.org releases a version 3.0 beta. Check it out.

TRS-80 Emulator - Go old school with this TRS-80 BASIC simulator.