Assorted Blog Flavours

Some random stuff to entertain on a beautiful Sunday morning:

I was watching Goodfellas for about the tenth time last night, and wanted to grab a few songs off the soundtrack. A couple of months ago I realized you could convert songs and audio clips from You Tube into mp3 format.

Needless to say, there's going to be a lot more Motown and early 70s rock on my iPod at the gym this week.



For the kid who has everything, how about an entire mobile city made of lego?















*batteries not included


If you're like me, you often experience intense cosmononplusation. (the vague awe experienced while gazing into the cosmos and feeling utterly insignificant) Now you can have that feeling whenever you want, thanks to this fantastic site.

Then, if for some reason you require a visual representation of your blog, then here comes WORDLE to the rescue. Create a customizable wordcloud of your thoughts and feelings!

Yes, your prayers have been answered.




















Another great blog post, kid. Now go get your shinebox.

Cheers,

-The Shah of Iran

Materialism

Something I really miss about having a full time job is money, because money can be used to buy goods and services.

Back when I used to work for a living, I often bought goods and services without plotting out a detailed cost v. immediate need analysis. Glorious days, those were. Many religions, both new and old, condemn the evils of money, and its frivolous expenditure on non-critical items, and extol the virtues of a penny saved. Not me. Sometimes a man just needs a t-shirt of a space cat riding a tyrannosaurus.

There was supposed to be a picture of my once proud office here, but I can't find it.
Try and contain your disappointment.

As a collector of comic books and plastic bric-a-brac, I've found that money is extremely handy in acquiring these items (I've tried making my own action-figures out of soap, but somehow I always mess up the licensing).

I don't really have a "wish-list" per se, but here are some things, if I had some cash to spend in an irresponsible manner right now, I would pick up.

1. Justin Van Genderen Star Wars Travel Posters.





















"But Jay, they're only $17.50!" Yeah, but I'm poor, and if I get this, what's next?


2. Next I visit Kidrobot. Probably pick up some Futurama mini-figs.




















Morbo!

If that don't float'cher'boat, head over to myplasticheart. A lot of similar stuff, but still good.

3. Comics. I am lucky enough to have a future mother-in-law who, after a great deal of explanation on my fiancee's part, sort of understands that I like Hellboy. And as such, I am the proud owner of the Hellboy Library Edition Volume One.

But, Volume Two and Three are out now. What can a poor boy do? Sing for a rock n' roll band?

4. I also used to collect the annual Spectrum: Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art books. I stopped getting them around volume nine. Someday I'll get caught up.

I could go on. The Internet is an endless shopping mall for the geekanomically-inclinated.

For now, I sit, like a Dickensian urchin, salivating at all the new stuff that could be gathering dust on my shelves.

I suppose I'm loved though, and I have my health. I'll settle for that for the time being.

*sigh*

-Jay

Blog... Blog Exciting and New

Come Aboard, We're Expecting You!

It's come to my attention that blogging is on the outs with the yutes.

According to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project:

Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends' blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.

Lordy. I would comment on this further, but I'm already getting the urge to check Facebook to see if anyone is up for wings next week. I'm looking forward to three years from now when 140 characters is considered "in depth."


The Love Blog! Soon to be Making Another Run

Valentine's is almost upon us. I was reading something insane today on Kotaku about a game available only in Japan for the Nintendo DS, Konami's Love Plus.

From the article:

Love Plus was released in September 2009 and was unlike anything Konami had done before. Konami had developed dating games, but those titles focus on the beginning of the relationship. Love Plus gives players the pursuit, but then asks this question: You've got the girl, so now what are you going to do?

The game allows a player to talk, send emails and even "caress" her via the Nintendo DS's mic and touch screen. It's the combination of senses (audio, tactile, oral) that separates Love Plus from Konami's other dating sims. The fact that the game takes place in real time and uses tens of thousands voice expressions and over a hundred cutscenes makes Love Plus seem far more organic than anything to hit the Nintendo DS before it. The game's characters even change the way they speak to the player over the course of the game.












Always in love... 365days

My first instinct is to say, "creepy." My second instinct is also to say, "creepy." However, a sober reflection: is this really all that bad? Earlier this week I read a Daily Mail article suggesting that boredom actually lessens a person's lifespan.

More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years - and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to have died by the end of study than those who did not.

I'm imagining a future filled with decrepit elderly people cozying up to their digital companions who've never aged a day; audio receptors tuned to a hoarse voice describing the minutia of the day. To go through life knowing love only as an illusion.

I think what makes real love profound, inexplicable, and powerful, is a shared, subconscious feeling of impermanence.

Yoshida Kenko defined the feeling brilliantly:

If we lived forever, if the dews of Adashino never vanished,
if the crematory smoke on Toribeyama never faded,
men would hardly feel the pity of things.
The beauty of life is in its impermanence.
Man lives the longest of all living things...
and even one year lived peacefully seems very long.
Yet for such as love the world,
a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night.

From, Essays in Idleness

Heavy.

Anyways, Happy Emotional Holiday!




























(Props to io9.com for the image)

-Jay