Enormous Whale Swimming Through Internet

BlueWhaleThere’s a huge blue whale swimming the internet.  It’s monstrous.  Life-size.  This is no laughing matter.  You should see this thing.  It’s gigantic and blue.  The mouth alone could swallow you whole.  You could probably live inside this creature for a few weeks at least.

Want to see it?  The ginormous blue whale is right here.

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society had something to do with perpetrating this gargantuan act of underwater mammal-watching.

Problem With Nook eBook Reader?

nookfrontI’m looking at this new e-reader from Barnes & Noble called the nook and I’m a little worried.  It’s that split screen.  The top is an e-Ink display for reading your books.  But the bottom is a color LCD.  Look at that picture.  I don’t know about most readers, but I certainly don’t want that row of book covers staring me in the face as I read.  Can one totally black that screen out while reading?  What else shows up in there?  Ads?  Does anything move around to distract the reader?

I don’t know about this nook thing.  I’ve got doubts.

Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Famed Charles Manson prosecutor and three time #1 New York Times bestselling author Vincent Bugliosi wants former President George W. Bush indicted for murder.  Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney misled the nation into a brutal and needless invasion of Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers.  They should both be indicted by a Grand Jury and tried for murder.  Absolutely no question about it.  The string of lies that they told in order to accomplish an invasion and put a sovereign nation under the control of a private corporation is the equivalent of what Nazi Germany was doing in the buildup to World War II.  It was a criminal act against both Iraq and the United States.  It amounts to treason and is punishable in the severest sense.

We need more people like Mr. Bugliosi around.  Everybody’s afraid.  Afraid to offend.  Afraid to be angry.  Afraid to make nasty comments on a web site.  What’s up with this country?  Bugliosi’s aggressive and sustained argument for prosecution is exactly what is needed.
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Cellphones are Destroying People

WareNewYorkerLook at that cover.  Look at exactly what’s going on there.  Makes you almost cry, doesn’t it?  It better.  Because if it doesn’t, then baby you’ve got it coming.  Chris Ware, one of our finest cartoonists did this cover for the New Yorker and made a comic strip for the issue.

I see people crossing streets while typing on their ‘devices.’  I see them driving and sitting in fine restaurants with their dates and they’re answering email and texting.  Makes you want to walk over and plant a big kiss on some guy’s date right in front of him while he texts his mother.  Would serve him right.  People are not even remotely aware of other people anymore.  They drive right through stop signs while texting or chatting on a cell phone.  They wipe out entire families on freeways because they were trying to type, ‘OMG Heeee’s sooooo hot!!!!’

These people are simple dark abominations.  They are fools who understand only how to be dead, dried husks that resemble human beings.  They think they are part of the information overload and that they are multitasking through life.  They’re just obliterating themselves.

Let me put it this way: if somebody sees you using your device, you’re not using it properly.

Sometimes I see a woman in the grocery store answer her cell phone and say something like, ‘Yes, honey,  I’m in the grocery store.  I’m looking for those little pepper things now.’

Do you know why the guy calls her there?  I do.  It’s because he thinks she’s cheating on him because he knows she wants to because he’s a total flaccid drip.  That is why 99.9% of all cell phone calls on the planet are placed.  That is why the cell phone economy works.  It’s nervous people checking up on their significant others to make sure they’re still around.

You know I’m right.  You’ve done it too.  Haven’t you?

But look at this cover illustration and think about trying not to do such an awful thing to your kid this Halloween.  Try hard, because that kid will never forget that little screen in your face.

Animation: A Bicycle Trip

Here’s a short animated film from Italy by Lorenzo Veracini, Nandini Nambiar and Marco Avoletta. Every trip on a bike should be such a good trip as this. I love the glass trees near the end.

There is also a web site for the film.

Marvel Makes a Create Your Own Comic Tool

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Marvel Comics has a Create Your Own Comic tool that lets you put together either a simple 3-panel strip or an entire 22-page comic book.  You don’t actually draw anything, but you choose layouts, backgrounds, characters and objects.  You can re-size everything and layer objects on top of each other.  It’s great for trying one’s hand at designing a layout that tells a story effectively.  So write your comic book and start designing!

NASA Makes a Free iPhone App

390825main_missions_160NASA has released a free app for the iPhone that offers dynamically updated information, images, and video from many of its ongoing missions.  NASA seems to be suffering through a confused decade in which it wonders what vehicle should replace its aging shuttle fleet, whether to dump the International Space Station into the ocean to save money, whether to go back to the moon, or whether Mars might be a suitable destination for a manned visit.

I think it’s probably safe to say that NASA is learning an enormous amount through its telescopes, satellites and rovers.  I suspect that very little is really learned from sending three or four humans to the moon other than how to keep three or four humans alive on the moon for a few weeks.  Perhaps NASA should just relax a little and stop worrying about making people interested in what it’s doing.  Perhaps they should just worry about collecting information.

Barnes & Noble eReader Device Might Blow the Kindle Out

B&NereaderAmazon’s Kindle could be headed for the woodpile.  The new Barnes & Nobel ereader device is coming at the end of November.

The new device is called the nook. Like book nook, I guess.  But this thing has a color touch screen virtual keypad like an iPhone and it displays book pages on an eye-friendly E ink display.  It appears to be sleek and well-designed.  It will also allow ebook owners to lend their ebooks to other people who own Nook devices for up to 14 days.  That’s a big deal.

Another thing it has going for it is support for formats like ePub, eReader, PDF, MP3, JPG, PNG and BMP files.  One article compared this device to Amazon’s by saying it was like the internet compared to Amazon’s AOL.  It has free 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.

After the ongoing grotesque behavior by Amazon and its apparent lack of concern for owners’ rights it won’t take much for Barnes & Noble to turn Amazon’s ugly duckling of a closed-system ereader into a bad joke.

I never took the plunge to buy a Kindle from Amazon because I don’t trust their intentions.  I have no hesitation to run out and buy the Barnes & Noble device as soon as it comes out in November.

National Film Board of Canada Releases Huge Film Library for iPhone App

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The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) has just released a new free iPhone app that lets you watch hundreds of their films.  You can use the app even while you’re away from hotspots by downloading films for viewing during a 24-hour period.  The NFB is one of my favorite places on the web for film.  They just do it the right way.  They make it easy.

This is an excellent way to distribute their huge collection of ground-breaking films.

You can get the app at the iTunes store.

Book: The Vampire Archives

VampireArchivesOn Friday evening I went into Hollywood looking for monsters.  I found some really bad ones.  They’re inside The Vampire Archives, an enormous volume of vampire stories edited by Otto Penzler and published by Vintage Crime.

The book is organized into sections like Pre-Dracula, which holds gems like Good Lady Ducayne by English writer M.E. Braddon, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, and Ligeia, by Edgar Allen Poe.

Another section is That’s Poetic, with works by John Keats, Lord Byron and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.

The final section is Modern Masters, with stories by Ray Bradbury, Peter Tremayne and Brian Lumley.

The book finishes with what is advertised as the most comprehensive bibliography of vampire fiction ever assembled.  And it certainly goes on for many pages.

The book is a big fat heavy pulpy treasure and I dug right into it as soon as I got home.  This thing will put you in right good shape for the approaching Halloween day of terror and magic.

And let me stick my thumb into the eyes of literary bloggers everywhere who can’t write about a book and link to its purchase page without sadly trying to make 14 cents off the deal, I am going to pull an unexpected sleight of hand trick and link to this fantastic book without making a single pathetic penny.

Next time I see some jackass literary blogger link to a book as an ‘Amazon Associate’ I’m a gonna send that hungry fool 14 cents so they can go buy a Big Mac.

Machinarium Game Designer Sketchbooks and Trailer

03_machinarium_concept_art-thumb-960x704-26671Boing Boing has posted a set of fascinating sketches by Jakub Dvorský and Adolf Lachman, the designers of the upcoming point and click adventure game, Machinarium.

This game looks marvelous. It’s made by an independent game producer who also made a popular game called SamarostMachinarium is about a little robot who’s been thrown out to the scrap yard behind the city must return and confront the Black Cap Brotherhood and save his robot-girl friend.  I think I’ll give it a try.  Although I usually find it much easier to build a puzzle game than to actually play one.  They always leave me feeling stumped and dumb and I just end up quitting.  But this one looks so beautiful that I’d try really hard just to see the next picture.

Animation: A Candy Affair

Here’s a little treat from OddBot, Inc. animation studio in Los Angeles. Directed by Crystal Stromer, this is the touching and tasty little story of a kernel of corn with a twinkle in his eye for a very lovely little piece of candy corn.