davextreme: July 2006

31 July 2006

“Ultimately, NEW X-MEN is a deconstruction story of the X-Men because it’s telling the readers that it’s time to grow up.”

Why Grant Morrison's Magneto Sucks

Why Grant Morrison’s Magneto Sucks

Good piece, though the opinions expressed therein do not necessarily reflect those of this author.

Friends list [Scribbling.net]

“No one updates their LJ anymore. Vox is for, you know, grown-ups.”

28 July 2006

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In November, Warner Bros. will fnally release the cut of Superman II featuring Richard Donner’s original footage.

New Joe Fridays - Week 7

Interivew with Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, about his appearance on The Colbert Report.

The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time

Lake Peigneur

Wow. “In 1980, an oil company drilled through the bottom of Lake Peigneur and into a salt mine, draining a large portion of the lake into the mine.”

Cite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia adds a page about citations, with information on how to cite entries in different style guides. Click “cite this article” on the left of any page.

Flip4Mac - Digital Media Tools for the Mac

Free plugin to let Quicktime play Windows Media files on the Mac now has official universal version for Intel Macs.

26 July 2006

Office Space in 30 Seconds, with Bunnies

I guess these should be getting old by about now?

25 July 2006

What If Civil War Happened In the Real World?

Funny, and sad.

The biggest hole in the world

Just what it says. A giant hole in the ground where they mine non-rare, overpriced gems.

24 July 2006

IGN: Battle of the Comic-Book Babes '06

IGN: Battle of the Comic-Book Babes ‘06

Down to the Exotic Eight. I’m guessing it’ll be Emma Frost, Psylocke, Lara Croft, and Supergirl in the Fiesty Four.

Erase permanent marker from your dry erase board

Draw over the marker with a dry erase marker, then erase.

The Titles of The Ultimates

If only there weren’t between two and infinity more months until the last issue.

WWDC keynote bingo

I love the idea of someone playing this in the audience and yelling out if they win.

22 July 2006

Slashdot | Peter Cullen Chosen to Voice Optimus Prime (Again)

This, I’m ashamed to say, is a giant relief.

Miyamoto Is Left-Handed

From an interview with IGN about the Wii:

The dialogue turned at one point to, of all things, left-handed and right-handed gaming. Miyamoto is left-handed, and he said that he’s recently been trying to get used to using the remote/nunchuck pair in the “reverse” way — that is, the remote in the left and the nunchuck in the right hand. While he’s been getting used to playing like this, he feels lefties who’ve grown accustomed to playing games the current way will have an easier time of playing Wii games like everyone else.
In practice, regardless of game, you’ll be able to play with either device in either hand. Miyamoto actually expects kids who’ve never played a game before to hold the remote in their left hand and the nunchuck in their right hand.

So I guess that’s good news, which allays some of my fears about lefty gaming in the next generation.

21 July 2006

Gavyn Davies does the maths

How a study of serial numbers helped stop the Germans in World War II.

IMDb Now Shows Thumbnails of Actors in the Credit Lists

This is a nice little touch.

In defense of M. Night Shyamalan

After the disappointment of The Village and with a general dislike of the director despite liking most of his films, I’m not sure I’ll go see A Lady in the Water right away, but I am a little curious about it.

TMNT

Trailer for new animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick.

20 July 2006

A Porch and Flowering Meadow, 6 Floors Up - New York Times

Cool story about a green roof in New York City.

Civil War Room #3

Discussion of Civil War 3 with editor Tom Brevort. Spoilers.

Powers & Kabuki to be Reprinted Free/Faily at Newsarama.com

Powers is honestly one of the best things out there right now. Starting Monday, you can go back and read it from the beginning, one page a day.

Sensational

I usually get comics every 3 weeks or so. Always when there’s a new issue of whatever the current hot series is. At the moment that means Civil War. Supposedly it’s selling more issues than anything has in a decade, which I believe if the number of people in my store yesterday is any indication.

I haven’t had time to read through my whole stack from yesterday but, aside from Civil War 3 being predictably excellent, The Sensational Spider-Man 28 is my early pick for best of the week (well, it came out last week). Ignore that the cover would be great if it didn’t make Peter look a tad creepy. The story inside is about a kid who just found out his favorite teacher is Spider-Man. It’s a one-shot issue that requires no set-up to get into, the art is great, and the story is grounded and just a little touching.

Back to Civil War talk (no spoilers, don’t worry)… If you go back and read Grant Morrison’s issues of JLA, there’s suddenly a part where Superman is Superman Blue, in the brief time when DC was messing with the character and gave him new powers. All that stuff happened in the pages of Superman’s many books, but JLA had to reflect the change to the character, even though it ended up being a temporary thing. There’s a moment in Civil War 3 where a character kind of points out that Spider-Man is wearing a new costume. It’s a bit of a throw-away line that’s mostly there for the benefit of readers who don’t know that the guy in the ugly yellow and red suit is Spider-Man. Basically everyone hates the new costume which he’s been wearing for the past few months, and Marvel’s come out and said that he’ll be back in his classic duds before too long. Now, I do agree that giving him his “Iron Spidey” suit does help to show his tie to Iron Man, that Peter’s grateful for everything that Tony has done for him and all that. My guess (I’d bet money on it) is that in issue 5 or 6 of Civil War Spider-Man will break away from the pro-registration side, join up with Captain America, and put back on his classic costume. That would be a good, story-driven way to get him back into his traditional attire. If they don’t do that, I feel like five years down the road, whenever new people pick up and read the story, they’re going to say, “now why was Spider-Man wearing that awful costume?”, just like you do with the Superman Blue period.

19 July 2006

Silicon Valley & The iTunes Ripple Effect

18 July 2006

Warner Bros. Animation's Guide to "Cute"

Warner Bros. Animation’s Guide to “Cute”

Cuteness is based on the basic proportions of a baby PLUS expressions of shyness or coyness.

17 July 2006

Screen on the Green

I wish they didn’t do this in the part of the summer when the weather’s the lest pleasant of the entire year.

Stop-Motion Human Space Invaders

Good stuff.

14 July 2006

The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

The Pig and the Box

Peculiar little parable about copy protection.

Netflix Guilt

“City of God, the award-winning 2002 Miramax film about the slums of Rio de Janeiro, is the most expensive film I’ve never watched. By my calculation, it cost me $66. I hear it’s great.”

Flavored U.K. KitKats leave Nestle with bad taste

When Nestle introduced flavored KitKats in the UK, sales dropped 18%. Sometimes people just want the classics.

12 July 2006

McDonald's new sundial billboard

McDonald’s new sundial billboard

Very clever billboard. Amazing how 5000 year old technology can still be super cool.

The Superman Code

Recent readings paint Superman as Jesus, though he should probably be looked at as a Moses figure instead.

Sinistrals

Brain Age, for the Nintendo DS, has two remarkable features that don’t get a lot of press:

Before any puzzle that requies voice recognition, the game first asks if you’re in an environment where it’s appropriate to be talking to your handheld video game system, lest you look like a crazy person on the bus.
When you set up your profile, it asks if you’re left- or right-handed. If you’re left-handed, whenever you log in it flips the screens for you so that you can write with the touchscreen on the left and not have to cross your hand over the other screen, which is awkward.

On the first, point, I’ll just say that it amazes me how fast Bluetooth headsets have caught on in DC. Do none of those people walking around and talking on them not see other people doing the same thing and notice how crazy they look? It’s not uncommon for me to actually pass by a person talking on a headset who’s standing right next to a real crazy person talking to himself. Oh, wait, the people with those headsets are the same staffers with their Blackberries who walk around looking as uncool as one can look, thumb-typing away emails that certainly could have waited until they were back at their keyboards.

Fact (well, a Wikipedia fact): 8-15% of the world’s population is left-handed. The Brain Age people were smart enough (heh) to realize that if 1/10 of their customers were going to be inconvenienced when trying to play their game, it was worth the time to engineer something to make it more pleasant for them.

At least a few DS games require you to control your character with the directional pad, which is on the left of the console, and use the stylus to interact with the game’s environment. This is very difficult for a lefty to do. You can either try to figure out a way to use the D-pad with your right hand (and not drop the DS while you’re doing that), or learn how to hold a pencil in your right hand, like a 19th century child being forced to act against his nature.

I like that the DS has a cool user interface, and I like that game designers are having fun and experimenting with new ways to interact with their games. The Wii will take this even further, and I’m very excited by the idea. Still, I don’t like the idea that these new ideas, which are, as stated by Nintendo itself, intended to make games more accessible to more people, are creating an accessibility problem for able-bodied left-handed gamers.

(I’m using a bit more hyperbole here than maybe is necessary, but seriously, if I got a game that I couldn’t play well because it made me hold the stylus in my right hand, I’d have to return it. The level of precision required is relevant here of course.)

11 July 2006

Solve Sudoku (Without even thinking!)

This method not recommended when trying to improve one’s Brain Age.

best-of-craigslist

How did I not know Best of Craig’s List had an RSS feed?

The Awful Forums - Zidane's headbutt photoshop-thread.

The Awful Forums - Zidane’s headbutt photoshop-thread.

I love the Mario one on page 8 and the kitty one on page 9.

IGN: Battle of the Comic-Book Babes '06

IGN: Battle of the Comic-Book Babes ‘06

I apologize, dear reader, for not linking to this when I first saw it in round one, so you’ll have to pick up with round two, though you can go back and view the winners for r1 if you want.

25 Great Calvin & Hobbes Strips

10 July 2006

Shadowcat, Wolverine, Batman, Buffy

07 July 2006

10 Worst Jobs to Have in the Action Film Universe

10 Worst Jobs to have in the Action film Universe

How much would Pepsi pay to get Coke's secret formula?

How much would Pepsi pay to get Coke’s secret formula?

Steven Levitt argues that, if such a thing as the secret formula still exists/is relevant, Pepsi shouldn’t care.

Making Castoff

How a book is designed.

04 July 2006

Oversize Marvel Hardcover Library

Lots of details on every oversized hardcover Marvel has out. I just picked up the Alias Omnibus.

03 July 2006

Google-ability and Google ability

Ken Jennings on how search engines have changed trivia contests due to cheaters.