Archive for category Geeky stuff

Violent, Tangled and Deeply Weird

Mar 27

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, Internet, Stupidity in action | 2 Comments

Yesterday there was an interesting post on Boing Boing about the bizarrely icky mating practices of giant squids, and as one would expect, the URL was promptly forwarded to a few of my friends. Inspired by the post’s title, Den wrote back, “‘Violent, Tangled and Deeply Weird’ – I think that’s a great t-shirt slogan.”

And so it was.

So what else could I do but whip up a design and throw it on CafePress?

The print-on-demand stuff makes this pretty easy, so I went ahead and tossed together a whole store with a plethora of “Violent and Tangled” products on there. I think the boxers and thongs are especially funny.

I set the markup on everything at a buck, and any dough CafePress sends my way from these things will be donated to Creative Commons, so I hope other people find it as funny as I did.

Tags: boing boing, really icky stuff animals do, squids

Look at my pinwheel and see what I’ve found

Mar 20

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, TV | 3 Comments

My friend Clare caused me great psychological distress today. I think I need therapy to re-repress the frightening childhood memories that she caused me to recall this evening.

Here’s the scene:

I am unwinding on the couch with my laptop after an exceedingly long day of handling mindbogglingly epic crises for a couple clients. I’m drinking an Abita Amber and browsing through the feeds of my friends’ blogs when I run across THIS POST in which she (quite rightfully) rips on this awful French sketch series from the old Nickelodeon classic Pinwheel.

Your next mental image could be one of me wiping beer off the screen of my precious MacBook Pro.

This series always has, and always will, CREEP ME THE FUCK OUT. It’s probably more responsible for scaring me away from psychedelic drugs in college than the D.A.R.E. program in elementary school ever could have been. Seriously, these little buggers freak the bajeezus out of me.

Enfants du maÃ¯s, I tell you.

Clare is right — this abomination interrupted an otherwise delightful morning kids’ show. My little sister and I watched it nearly every summer weekday for several years starting in the early 80s. It was one of those shows that young kids enjoyed, and older kids really didn’t mind. It translated pretty well across age groups — the music was especially addictive. (At least, it was for me.)

I especially loved Bill Cosby’s “Picture Pages,” a segment that he did when he wasn’t busy filming Jell-O Pudding Pop commercials. My other favorite was “Simon in the Land of the Chalk Drawings,” a segment that was heavily drawn upon (right down to the intro song melody) for a series of Mike Myers SNL skits years later. If you yourself don’t remember it, check this out:

I wish I could find a video of the SNL bit, but NBC has erased nearly all evidence of it from the interwebs. This picture will have to suffice to jog your memory:

But seriously … those freaking French goblin children. I hope I can sleep tonight.

Thanks a friggin’ lot, Clare.

Tags: drugs are bad mkay, enfants du maÃ¯s, theme songs that you can't get out of your head

Did you know you can own a number?

May 8

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, Internet, Law | 10 Comments

Yep! It’s true!

So I’m now laying claim to the hexadecimal number “C6 8C 14 E1 9F 29 2A 6B 9E 6C C7 38 D2 80 9E 27″ and if I wanted to, I could sue any of you bastards who decided to use that number for whatever dastardly purposes your evil little minds imagine. I could probably also go after you for using the base 10 equivalent of 17,859,592,074,240 if I felt the desire to do so.

You see, there’s currently a lot of hoopla going on about the movie industry claiming that it can own certain 128-bit numbers like the one above. They used one of these random numbers as a “key” on the encryption system on HD-DVDs to keep you from making copies of your favorite movies or watching them on DVD players they don’t like. Then someone figured out what that number was. So the “owners” of this key got really upset. They say they’ll sue or maybe even bring criminal charges against anyone who tells other people what that key is, because to do so would be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
– SPACEBALLS (1987)

Unfortunately, they’re pretty much right. The DMCA made it illegal to circumvent (or tell others how to circumvent) any copy protection scheme, regardless of whether you own the rights to that protected material or not. It’s kind of like how it’s “breaking and entering” to pick the lock on someone else’s house and open the door, regardless of whether you actually go inside or steal anything. Except in this case, it would also be illegal to break into YOUR OWN house if you accidentally lock your keys inside. The way the DMCA reads, you can’t use your own stuff, stuff you legally bought with your own money, in whichever way you see fit. You can only use your stuff in whichever way the maker of the locks on your doors says you can — even if that means not at all! For them, it’s more important to their business that their locks remain secure than it is that you be able to legally use your own door to enter and exit your own abode as you please.

Okay, before I extend and mix up this crazy analogy any further, I best move on…

I read on Boing Boing (link) a little while ago that a professor at Princeton thought this whole thing was rather messed up, so he created a page to help people stake claim on their own randomly generated 128-bit numbers before all of the good ones are gone. (link) After all, there’s only 2^128 numbers available to go around! So I’ve gone and grabbed a few for myself, and it couldn’t hurt for you to ring up a few of your own, too.

You may say, “what in the world would I need a 128-bit number for?” Well, do you have a wireless network in your house? Do you have a WEP key (one of those funky jumbles of numbers and letters) on there so your neighbors can’t leech off your connection and download dirty pictures using your internet account? If so, you’re likely already using a 128-bit number. (You better hope your number’s not the same as the one that the movie industry doesn’t want you to know, or you could be in big trouble!)

And like I said before, if I wanted to I could decide to be a real jerk and not let anybody else use that number ever again without paying me a bunch of money to get my permission.

But you know me, I’m a nice guy. I’ve decided that I’m going to print my number at the bottom of this post as a pretty line of text. And I’ve decided to share this work with the world by publishing it with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This means that you’re free to share, copy, distribute and transmit the number, as well as to adapt the number to suit your own purposes. The only conditions are that you have to credit me as the original author of this number, and you have to be willing to share your new creation just as I have.

So if you want to use this number as the key to your own encryption system, you’re more than welcome to do so.

Do you want to put the number on a t-shirt? Go ahead!

Want to spell it out in your Alpha-Bits and take a picture of it? Knock yourself out!

Think it might be fun to multiply it by two? Sure, if you’re one of those dorks who likes maths, have at it. Just don’t forget to credit me, Bo Nash, on the bottom of your paper.

Enjoy!

C6 8C 14 E1 9F 29 2A 6B 9E 6C C7 38 D2 80 9E 27

Nostalgia Wednesday: Career Ambitions

Apr 25

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, Internet, Nostalgia Tuesday | 3 Comments

Whoops! I didn’t get this photo up in time to make the usual “Nostalgia Tuesday” schedule. I apologize for that, my internets must have been clogged up.

You can see here that at even at this young age I was well on my way to a fine career as a plumber. As you know, I grew up to be an “internet guy” instead.

Then again, I suppose I accomplished that goal, if like Senator Ted Stevens, you believe that the internet is a “series of tubes.”

Nostalgia Tuesday: Goonies never say die!

Nov 14

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, Movies, Nostalgia Tuesday | 2 Comments

I wish I still had this t-shirt. (Not that it would fit.)

Fuel for Thought: Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

Jul 22

Posted by Bo in Cars, Geeky stuff, Politics | 1 Comment

I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the feasiblity of ethanol as a gasoline replacement. Two things always struck me as major problems with the idea:

We’d still be using petroleum based fertilizers to grow the the plants used to create the ethanol. Would the required dramatic increase of fertilizer use (and the energy used to create that fertilizer) be fully offset by the reduction of petroleum used in our tanks?
It would take a heck of a lot of land do produce these crops. Do we really have the land to spare, and can enough farmland be converted to energy production without negatively impacting our food supply?

Besides that, I’ve doubted whether the economic incentive was there to switch. As energy sources go, it’s always been a pretty safe assumption that oil was the cheapest option. And Detroit’s recent enthusiasm for ethanol seems to be rooted more in damage control and a desire to preserve the status quo for the internal combustion engine than out of real concern for the environment or the political ramifications of importing oil from the Middle East.

I take it back.

This presentation makes a really convincing case for ethanol, and addresses all of my previous criticisms. My only real remaining concern for the viability of a switch to ethanol is the enormous financial and political clout held by the petroleum economy.

The really cool thing about the idea is that it can all be done with existing technology, and only modest changes in infrastructure. And it would require virtually no changes in consumer behavior. In fact, we already have a model for the switch: Brazil has already done it.

Seriously, this presentation is really intriguing. It’s an hour long, but it’s worth it even if you only watch the first 10 minutes. This really could be a win-win for just about everyone except the oil companies (that recently made the biggest profits in the history of profits) and a few despotic nations in the Middle East and Africa.

Click here to see what I’m talking about.

–

PS – Enterprising “do-it-yourselfers” in the Appalachians have been making ethanol for over a century. It’s called moonshine.

Smells Like Holy Spirit

Jun 26

Posted by Bo in From the hip, Geeky stuff, Religion | No Comments

My friends rock!

As many of you know, I collect kitschy Jesus stuff. Today my friend April handed me this package of “Heavenly Incense.” Somehow, I bet Jesus smelled a bit more like sandal funk than sandalwood, but perhaps I’m missing the point of this product…

And then when I got home and checked the mail today, I had a package from Sophie and Chris with these badass toy cars and one of the goshdarn funniest notes ever.

My friends doth rock much, indeed.

Sweet dreams are made of this

May 19

Posted by Bo in Cars, Geeky stuff | 1 Comment

Some people dream in color, while others dream in only black and white.
Some people dream in sound, while others dream in silence.
Some people dream of being naked in the boardroom while giving an important presentation.
Some people dream of sugarplum fairies (whatever the hell those are).

When I dream, it’s pretty much exactly like this video.

Pouring iced tea during a barrel roll

May 13

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff | 1 Comment

This video is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in recent memory. Pilots are some of the coolest people. They’re like the rest of us nerds, but with really kickass toys.

The Rockbottom Remainders

Apr 26

Posted by Bo in Geeky stuff, Music | 3 Comments

The Rockbottom Remainders played The Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas tonight.

According to guitar player and Pulitzer winning columnist Dave Barry, “We play music as well as Metallica writes novels.”

The Remainders are a band comprised mostly of writers. The lineup changes from show to show (because they play only once or twice a year) but for this gig it consisted of Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Scott Turow, Greg Iles, Ridley Pearson, and a few ringers who fancy themselves as “real” musicians. Tonight they were joined by Dave’s brother Sam, Mitch Albom’s wife, drummer Josh Kelly, saxophonist Erasmo Paulo and Monte Montgomery, who honestly may be the best guitar player I’ve ever seen live. I’ve seen him four or five times now, and every time it has blown me away what he’s capable of pulling out of that guitar.

Anyway, it was a helluva lot of fun, and went to benefit a good cause. Here are a few pictures from the show:

Mitch Albom sings Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right”

Scott Turow singing a Wilson Pickett song or something.

Amy Tan doing “Leader of the Pack” may be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!

I take it back. Amy “Joy Luck Club” Tan in a dominatrix outfit whacking Mitch “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” Albom across the ass with a cat o’ nine tails is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.