September 2008Monthly Archives

Most children's TV producers know that to get kids to watch, you have to terrify the little bastards. Looking back at the weird-ass shows they've cranked out over the decades, it's a wonder that we all grew up to be such, stable, well-adjusted adults.

Nothing from the 80s belongs in today's world. The themes we cared about then are sad reminders of how naive we once were, and the fashion trends that interested us are even sadder reminders of how idiotic we were.

Which makes it all the more ridiculous to see which 80s movies Hollywood wants to awkwardly jam into today's world. Movies like…

As one's mortality swings into view, be thankful for life — and whiskey.
PJ is one of my favourite authors bar none, which is odd given his religious style and Republican party beliefs. Nonetheless, he is the obvious heir of H L Mencken and even Mark Twain, in style and ability to observe the absurdity of it all.
Get well, PJ, because your diety knows, we need sharp wit and satire to peer through the murky depths of politics more than ever.

On Real Time with Bill Maher’s New Rules segment, host Bill Maher exhorts viewers not to assume the worst about John McCain just because of the color of his skin.

Ladies and Gentleman who love and adore the world most lovable and adorable Operating System, Ubuntu, we plan on releasing Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex on October 30th. Now, this release is a pretty special release because not only do we kick out another kick-ass Ubuntu, but October 20th is Ubuntu’s 4th birthday!

SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket has made it into space.

After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.

Ever played a game where simply thinking about winning was enough to ensure you lost?

The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction.

Robert Heinlein's form letter response to fans – genius:)

Penn Jillette and his thoughtful essay on belief, atheism, and what he does believe in (also in audio form). It astonishes me that no god means that we atheists must have NO beliefs, no spirituality, no faith in anything, to many of religious persuasion. Mind you, those types are atheists too, just only of every other god but their brand:)

As announced by Robert Llewellyn for Grant Naylor Productions this week at the UKTV seasonal press launch, the project is a short series of brand new specials to celebrate the 21st birthday of Red Dwarf.

Doug Naylor will be masterminding the four half-hour instalments, and the regular cast will all be reprising their iconic roles.

Neil Gaiman's imaginary worlds are indisputably dark, often chillingly macabre, and always fun to visit. His characters are spooky but charming, like Death, the beguiling goth girl of the groundbreaking comic series The Sandman; the Other Mother, the soul-snatching matriarch of the young adult bestseller Coraline; and Aziraphale and Crowley, the angel and demon frenemies of the popular satire Good Omens. Gaiman chatted with Goodreads about his latest spine-tingling book, The Graveyard Book, his sources of inspiration, the Hollywood rumor mill, and what he has on his Goodreads currently-reading shelf.

Though there are dozens of top lists of WordPress themes available online, we never seem to get enough. So after scrolling through hundreds of themes across the Web, we decided to come up with another of our lists of top themes that are a class apart in terms of uniqueness in design and visual appeal.

This is a collection of our top 12 in no particular order. Check them out. While most are free, there are few that are not, though they are too good to miss.

it’s a convenient app for people who work on multiple computers and still want to make sure that their files are intact and it also has that capability of sharing so that’s another good thing.
tip o'the hat to claire at new linux user for this one. multi platform goodness!

Here's a scenario: You start a rock band, which you just happen to name after spending several hours huffing paint and drinking bleach. You spend a few years playing small clubs until you're discovered by a major label and start selling a lot of records. And suddenly you realize that the stupid name you thought up when you were huffing all that paint is going to follow you around for the rest of your life.

Here are the 25 bands who, regardless of their own musical quality, have the stupidest names on record.

Today we take a look at ten horrible flicks and the scenes that tried to save them.

The actor Jude Law opens up the diary he kept in Kabul while on a mission to promote ceasefires around the world. Don't know about his acting – but this is intensely striking, intelligent, and moving.

The internet is atwitter with Google Chrome's innovative new features, but there was no clear winner in our speed test comparing Firefox and Chrome—which means your choice of browser may depend solely on features. Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome's best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility.

Now that you've been enjoying Google Chrome's headliner features and speed for almost a week now, it's time to dig into the less obvious functionality and options you don't already know about. Become a keyboard shortcut master, take a peek under the hood, and customize its behavior and skin with some of the best shortcuts, bookmarklets, themes, add-ons, and subtle functionality in Google Chrome.

have fun playing with your own 'LHC'

Some films were disasters of such magnitude, they changed cinema for ever.

Experienced early music performers Specialising in mediaeval, early Renaissance & Contemporary repertoire Exploring themes & ideas in choral music throughout the ages Commissioning & performing brand new works

BlueOrganizer adds a button to your toolbar with a menu that has been automatically personalized based on your browsing history. This menu contains contextual shortcuts to make all relevant information for books, music, movies, wines, recipes, stocks, and more just 1-click away.

While Google Maps is an awesome application, it has its limits and can sometimes be a pain in the behind to transfer addresses to from other websites. Luckily, there are a slew of Firefox extensions that can help you turn Google Maps into an even more powerful tool.

Greasemetal is a userscript run time for Google Chrome (what Greasemonkey is for Mozilla Firefox).
Since the release, the biggest drawback of Google Chrome has been its luck of customizability. Many developers and users are asking for creating / using plugins to improve their usability. A userscript runtime was one of the most often heard requests.

Three cool new features for Google Docs

Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog, but adding it to WordPress isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Many people don’t know where to put the code or how to keep track of it. Luckily there are lots of plugins that can simplify the process as well as provide more flexibility. Here are eight Google AdSense plugins for WordPress 2.5 and above.

Time lapse video of the ATLAS cavern during construction.
This shows the cavern in which the ATLAS experiment is being assembled since 2003. The LHC and ATLAS are due to turn on in September 2008. Thank you to the ATLAS Eye.

The success of Google's (GOOG) Chrome browser will be measured in years, not days. But a week after Google unveiled its new browser, it's losing market share — not gaining it.

Jane Austen's "BATMAN."

I’ve never heard about jackalopes until I read about the planning for the Jaunty Jackalope release of Ubuntu.

Jaunty jackalope…

Many people, looking from the view of one operating system or the other, don't quite get the differences between these two powerhouses. (So I )decided it might be useful to list 10 of the primary differences between Linux and Windows.

Please – read. Help out if you can.

NEED to see : Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode in which Garbage lead-singer Shirley Manson morphs from a men's urinal into an old-school, T-1000 liquid Terminator. With clip. Squeeeee!!