A Cajun-Asian View

Looks like Josh Whedon wasn't just sitting on his thumbs during the writers' strike:

1) Why, Joss? Why? Why now, why free, why us?

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

Ron Domingue links to an article on Behance Magazine stating what should be the obvious in creative fields, but isn't to many people1:

We often assume that the number of hours spent at work are an indication of one’s effort, interest, and accomplishment. However, in reality, the greatest ideas and the execution of these ideas happen in spurts. The best ideas often do not require a lengthy conception, and the most productive days are seldom the longest. But still, managers instinctually measure employees with an eye on the clock. Working hours remain rigid, and morale suffers when the rules fail to support the ultimate goal: a productive creative workplace. What working conditions are ideal for maximum creativity and productivity?

1. 1. Especially bosses and clients...

When I saw the writeup on Slashdot, I had thought this $500 1.5 meter long network cable from Denon was some kind of April fools day joke. Apparently, I (and quite a few other people) are wrong in that, yes, this cable is actually for sale on Amazon, and it actually is $500.

But the real story are the reviews on Amazon. They are comedy gold, like this one:

But I doubt they'd go quite like this:

Okay, y'know the Adam West Batman TV show? Well, I dreamed that my roomies and I somehow found out that they'd tried to make a 'Justice League' spinoff, but only ever filmed the pilot, which never even aired. So we were scouring this enormous warehouse of unaired pilots for 60's TV shows, and finally found it! And all the actors were middle-aged and dumpy, and all the costumes were brightly-coloured and kinda stupid, and everybody was deadpanning, and it was great.

Well the New York Mets baseball team organization had a fan vote for a "sing-a-long" song to play in the 8th inning of every home game for the team's last season in Shea Stadium. Well, it looked like a few people on Digg had an idea as the vote included a "write-in" slot in addition to several already picked songs.

The result?

Seems like it was successful.

I wonder if the Mets organization is aware of the rickroll phenomenom?

UPDATE: Huh, looks like the original video was taken down by request of MLB. Got a different one up, but that might be taken down eventually too. In anycase, here's a video by someone recording at the game:

I'm not sure if the crowd is booing the song or not...

You know, these charts and graphs are made of win.

For example:

This is the best use of office applications and tools, ever!

Taken from here.

By Taylor Mali

Checkout the Youtube video page for the transcript.

Something seems odd today. I wonder what it could be?

UPDATE: For those going "What the hell are you getting at, Nick?", I had the Pirate module installed and running on here on September 19th.

Arrr.

The Blue Screen Screensaver from Microsoft.

It looks quite convincing, too!