A flickr set of the first photos from the Jonze/Eggers project Where The Wild Things Are.
Enjoy the trailer.
The Best Commericials as explained on Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner!
Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner! on the brilliance of direct marketing commercials: Best Commercials.
What kills me about this is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is: hardsell. The announcer looks like the kind of sleazy fast-talker who sells vegetable cutters at carnivals. You wouldn’t think anybody would trust a guy like that, but they do. Why? I think it’s because people react to the skill in the writing and execution of carnival pitches. You think you’re above it, but you’re not. It’s fun to watch a man who, using only words, can invest a product with magic.
You may not be a fan of the slick Billy Mays yelling information about his product, but you have to admire the calculated tweaking these commercials went through to inspire the largest number of consumers to order now!
The Bros Mario
You’ve listened to backwards music, now check out Jump on Mushroom, a mind-bending video game that’s played in reverse. Trust me when I say, it’ll force you to rethink the way you learned to play Mario Bros.
I never read the instructions very carefully and didn’t figure this out until the level 1 (the last level): you can skip the rewind (or forward) sequences by hitting Esc. Good luck.
Through the Legs
Chris Paul throws it through Jason Terry’s legs and dishes to Rasual Butler for the dunk.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
The first time I’d ever heard of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was when my dad made a wood carving based on one of the characters holding up a plate to the sky. (Apparently my parents are better acquainted with popular children’s books than I am.)
Sony pictures is now making a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movie. (Check the embedded video below for the trailer.)
I’m not convinced doing it in 3D is a good idea, but I haven’t actually seen any of the new 3D movies lately and so, I’ll save my judgement for now.
hoyolajo.dll
In addition to running very slowly, lately I’ve been getting some unexplained popups on my computer. They’re very strange, sometimes appearing with the Internet Explorer logo (which I don’t use except for updating windows).
Some of the popups have the Firefox logo but then have an Internet Explorer error message. Some other of the pop-ups are coming up as error 404 but that is likely because of my hosts file. (If you don’t have a modified hosts file, I highly recommend you get this one. (instructions)
I ran a scan using Hijackthis and found, what I think are, suspicious .dll files in the windows/system32 folder:
- hoyolajo.dll
- pamukuhu.dll
- subiluje.dll
I don’t know what these files do and the limited search results aren’t helping. I’m posting this here with the hope that someone else may shed some light on the situation.
The Bad Review Revue
The Watchmen:”The good news is that you don’t have to stay past the opening credit sequence—easily the highlight of the film.” – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li:”If you thought they couldn’t possibly make a Street Fighter movie that was worse than the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme camp-fest, you’ll be unpleasantly surprised.” – Ethan Alter, Film Journal International
Paul Blart: Mall Cop:”The last name Blart may be the funniest thing in the movie, so that’s a hint as to just how bad this shopping-center saga can be.” – Claudia Puig, USA Today
Miss March:”Forget waterboarding ” just show Guantanamo detainees Miss March and they’ll say anything.” – James Berardinelli, ReelViews
Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)
Listen to Dan Ariely’s talk, presented in February 2009 at the TED conference, about his experiments in predictable irrationality. He explains how bugs in our moral code make us think it’s okay to cheat or steal sometimes but not others.
Did You Know?
The suggestion to watch this informative video came via email from an unlikely source—my mom!
Hit play or watch Did You Know at YouTube.
Walking Art
Theo Jansen invents incredible mechanical creatures, or new kinds of life, as he likes to say. He presented them at TED.
This CGI reconstruction demonstrates the principle behind these walking creatures:
Some intrepid designers at the University of Louisiana have taken the idea and created a kind of walking Segway, they’ve named it the Cajun Crawler:
The scooter was inspired by Theo Jansen’s leg mechanism. Throughout our research, we found no application where Jansen’s leg mechanism was used as a weight-bearing application or vehicle. The legs are made of standard 5052 Aluminum. The joints all contain deep-groove ball bearings.