Category: general

Game companies want animation. They want a fucking guy to parachute down from the top of your screen and land on the article you’re trying to read. They want you to have to interact with their advertisement just so you can see the content you came for. Everyone who uses the internet knows that this kind of shit is just frustrating. Look at sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Gamespy. You can’t read an article there without an animated bug crawling across your screen or some flash ad blaring shitty music. When we decided to do advertising we decided that we wouldn’t ever run any kind of animated add. Some companies won’t advertise with us because of it. Others, it’s like pulling teeth to get a non animated ad out of them. They have this idea in their head that the only way their ads will be effective is if they are annoying as fuck.

Some of them are actually shocked when ads at PA out perform animated versions at other sites like IGN. Here we are just a little comic site and we kick their fucking ass. We tell them that if you don’t insult people with shitty flash ads, they are much more likely to actually check out your game. I have never once clicked on a flash ad except to mute it or close it and I have a feeling you guys are pretty much the same. They just can’t get it through their heads that people don’t like to be annoyed by advertising.

So, like, whatever happened to that resolve?

They don’t have sound on their ads, which is a good thing, but they definitely have animation. At least it isn’t horrible flashing that distracts you from what you’re reading, but it’s still movement in your peripheral vision, and that’s distracting enough. I wonder what changed their minds.

No new comic/rant yet, but hey, I’m just glad to see the site restored.

[Edit 1:25p: I can’t get to it from home. Not sure if it’s a DNS issue between here and work, or if it went down again after I checked it. Alas!]

Have a lovely Fat Tuesday :>

Happy Chinese New Year!

(Well, starting sometime later today, when it’s the 9th in Asia.)

There’s a piece up on BoingBoing about a cultural Internet phenomenon in east Asia called “orz”. If you look at those letters next to each other, you can imagine what the writer describes:

It illustrates a guy facing left and kneeling on the ground, the “o” means the head, the “r” means the hands and the body while the “z” means the legs. People use this pictograph to show they failed and they are despair or in a sad mood (“??” in Chinese or japanese Kanji) in the Internet.

(Unfortunately, that Chinese character didn’t come out.)

You can see the sheer defeat in that pictograph. The speaker has been beaten to his hands and knees. And yet I feel that there is a dark sort of humor to it, a grim commiseration that allows men going through orz to identify with each other, and maybe even laugh about it.

I found it interesting that they pronounce Internet pictographs, e.g. “greater underline less” and “XD”. (I also thought it was cute that he explained what the emoticons meant.)

Thanks for hosting the translation, BoingBoing!

Mathias Dopfner, CEO of German publishing firm Axel Springer, has written an editorial about Europe’s role in the war on terror. Snopes has a translation up. Here’s a snippet:

Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.

His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against democracy.

I was pleased to see that Snopes managed to present this piece without comment.

For what it’s worth, I share Mr. Dopfner’s concern. More to the point, I’m worried whether America’s efforts will be enough. The terrorist threat is insidious, subtle. And there’s no clear front–except, now, Iraq.

We cannot lose Iraq. But if more nations don’t realize the danger and come to our aid, I fear that we will.

I mean it, she is a beautiful person. This interview made me so happy she was nominated.

I probably ought to see the film!

Three buildings in downtown Nicholasville burned down last Thursday. (Topix.net is great, but its RSS news isn’t exactly timely, is it?)

The fire began in a thrift shop at about 1:30 p.m. on South Main Street between West Chestnut Street and East Maple Street. The fire spread to a pool hall next door and quickly escalated from a two-alarm to a four alarm fire. In all, at least three buildings are damaged, two that are a total loss. The fire continued to burn into the evening.

My family could get to that area in like, three minutes. (Nicholasville’s kind of small, and they all essentially live “downtown” anyway.) I’m glad the fire didn’t spread (it would take a lot to spread to my family’s homes, but you know), and I hope no one was hurt.

[Edit 13:44: AJ sez,

Eh. Don’t know what’s up with that fire you mentioned. Downtown got the shit burned out of it a few months ago, though. Didn’t hear about it happening again.

Perhaps this article is not simply a week old…but months and months old!!]

“Please forget about that whole terrorist thing, that wasn’t us! Here, try this Singin’ in the Rain remix ad instead.”

I like it, actually :D It’s cute! (And I love that movie.)

I loved that movie. From the BBC (via BoingBoing):

Delhi suffers from a serious monkey menace, with scores of animals seen across the city, particularly near top government offices.

The monkeys who have moved into residential areas and official enclaves due to Delhi’s shrinking forests,[*] are said to have become a ‘security threat’.

Last year, the ministry of defence found some of its top secret documents scattered all over the place one morning.

It was blamed on the many rhesus monkeys which flock around the colonial-era building.

The prime minister’s office, which is situated in the same block, is also within reach.

A cabinet minister couldn’t enter his official bungalow for months because the monkeys wouldn’t let any body enter the house.

The presidential palace too has been targeted and staff their have been forced to employ a dark-faced langur monkey to scare away the rhesus monkeys.

Now all they need is Brad Pitt jumping around and giving crazy speeches :)

(You know what other movie this reminds me of? Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. Ugh.)

* Is it okay, in British English, to place a comma after the subject of a sentence? ;P

Yahoo!’s RSS feed will often send me the same story several different times, as the title is changed or the article is altered. The funny thing is, often there are two versions of the same story on their server at the same time.

For example, there was a study in Norway that found that worms on fishhooks share something in common with lobsters and crabs that are boiled alive: none of them have complex enough nervous systems to register the pain of those experiences. (Eat your hearts out, animal rights activists…) Here are two versions of the story. One of them has a picture, and the other doesn’t.

Worms hooked on fishing feel no pain

Worms on a Hook Don’t Suffer?

I guess these are Reuters articles. I don’t know why Reuters tries to be so “clever” with their titles. That first one is just stupid. The worms are not “hooked on” fishing. They are captured, impaled, and flung into the water, where they are then eaten alive! Invoke that, and then tell me they feel no pain, and you will have made your point. The second title, while rather boring, does a much better job.

My friend Troy emailed me a bunch of hilarious headlines yesterday:

THE YEAR’S BEST [ ACTUAL ] HEADLINES OF 2004

Crack Found on Governor’s Daughter

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?

Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over

Miners Refuse to Work after Death

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

War Dims Hope for Peace

If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

And the winner is….

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Now, most of these are funny because they have unintentional double meanings. (“Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant”! Yeah, that’ll show ‘im! :D) Reuters, on the other hand, tries too hard and invokes too many cliches. I’ll take unintended humor over their failed attempts any day.

Okay, this is nuts. From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

A boy drove his mother’s car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said — and he’s all of 4 years old.

Even though he was unable to reach the accelerator, the boy managed to put the car in gear and the idling engine provided enough power to take him slowly to the store, a quarter-mile from his home, about 1:30 a.m. Friday, Police Chief Doug Heugel said. Finding the store closed, the youngster began a slow trip home.

I remember when I was a kid, Dad used to like to have us shift the gears for him in his pickup. I was always terrified by this. I was afraid I would do something wrong and break the car. He let us pretend to steer, too, but as his trucks didn’t have power steering, we really only did that on stretches of straight road. That didn’t bother me as much, because I’d be in his lap, and I knew he could grab the wheel immediately.

It has occurred to me, of course, that my experience is not extrapolatable to humanity as a whole, but the fact that a kid thought nothing of driving his mother’s car down to the store still shocks me.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

In a survey of the everyday habits of nearly 14,000 people whose average age was in their mid-40s, Dr. Takashi Wada of Jikei University in Tokyo found that those who managed to stay slim tended to brush their teeth after every meal.

Actually, I’ve theorized about this for some time. After all, who wants to eat after they’ve just brushed their teeth? Not only does eating negate all the work you just did (:>), but food mixed with toothpaste tastes terrible.

However, just because I feel that this is a valid exercise doesn’t mean I’ve ever practiced it. These days, I eat breakfast at work (meaning I have to brush before breakfast, something I used to abhor), I eat lunch right when I get home and do not brush afterwards, and then at night I only brush right before going to bed.

I may want to change these habits…at least the lunch and dinner ones. We’ll see!

All I’m getting is this cryptic message:

We will be back soon……

Obviously Tycho didn’t write that, because he would never use two ellipses in a row. I’m guessing, now that the initial shock has worn off, that the guy who hosts their site put that up, but I must admit that my first reaction was “OMG H4x!!!!11”

…but it’s interesting nonetheless. Take a gander (or, you know, a goose; whichever).