Author: ryan
-
The 911 Christmas Present edition – This Geek in Review for 28 Dec 2018
Sometimes, even seven year olds can teach adults a thing or two, especially when it comes to getting clothes at Christmas. In Ontario, a seven year old called 911 after getting snow pants for Christmas.
Every year, the city of Gavle, Sweden erects the world’s largest straw goat for Christmas, and then spends the rest of the season protecting it from vandals and drunks. For the last 51 years it has only survived 15 times, so here’s hoping for the best this year. There is a live webcam available, so far, so good!
Every booby trap in Home Alone, in Flipbook form:
Some confused parents with their gift of a portrait of Obi Wan Kenobi. And to continue odd Christmas items that exist, how about a twerking, Alexa enabled bear, Christmas bear, and Santa.
If you were wondering why I’ve been getting turned off about social media such as Facebook, articles that suggest 60% of internet traffic is fake is one of the factors. If you share something on Facebook, there is a good chance that what you are sharing is fake and not real. If you are reading this, how do you know it’s real? You’ll just have to take my word for it. A Facebook bug giving access to private photos doesn’t help, but if you are uploading photos you want to keep private to Facebook, you’ve got other problems. Facebook also gave Microsoft’s Bing search engine access to everyone’s Friends list, and gave Netflix and Spotify access to everyone’s private messenger conversations.
Check out Wired’s video profile of the creator of the Hoberman Sphere:
The shoes we’ve been waiting for since may finally become reality in 2019.
-
Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative. — Rework (pg 67)
Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.
— Rework (pg 67)
-
Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions. — Rework (pg 25)
Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.
— Rework (pg 25)
-
I’m watching Christmas Vacation for the 9th time in 2018.
I’m watching Christmas Vacation for the 9th time in 2018.
-
I’m watching Christmas Vacation for the 8th time in 2018.
I’m watching Christmas Vacation for the 8th time in 2018.
-
Interactive fiction and more – This Geek in Review for 21 December 2018
A huge genre of videogames in the 80s and early 90s was the text adventure. Because there were memory and graphic limits on the machines available at the time, the interactive text adventures took a page out of books, and used words to describe the world in the game. These were more than just books, you would have to interact with the objects and characters in the game. It’s kind of like the Choose your own adventure books, but with a lot more interaction. Although text adventures are not commericially viable anymore, they are still being created. A new one called Cragne Manor’ has been released, the culmination of TK of people who worked on the game.
Infocom was huge in the interactive text adventure world, but that didn’t stop other companies from also being successful. Leisure Suit Larry started out as a more adult text adventure, one where your goal was to be… shall I say, “successful” with three of the women in the game. One of the programmers found his backup copy of the source code to some of the Leisure Suit Larry games and attempted to auction it off. Companies don’t really like that, and unfortunately, the auction has been pulled.
Final proof that Die Hard is a Christmas movie
What do you need to go with that ugly Christmas sweater? What about some ugly Christmas shoes
Fortnite, from Epic Games, is a cultural phenomenom, and that in and of itself invites lawsuits. In the game, players can buy emotes, which are dancing that the player’s character can perform during the game. Epic Games is now being sued by Rapper 2 Milly for stealing his dance. Donald Faison, Turk from the TV show Scrubs is also ticked. The default emote in Fortnite is one that he created. Even the Carlton isn’t safe. No one know where this will end up since short dance steps and moves are not copyrightable.
Did you feel an earthquake last week because Microsoft confirmed that its Edge browser is going to be based on Chromium. Every browser has an engine underneath that powers it. This engine interprets the code for a website, and then displays the website. Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one way to display a website. In the beginning we had Netscape Navigator, and currently we have Chromium, Gecko, EdgeHTML, and Webkit. Chromium is the most popular, used by Google’s Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, and a host of other browsers. Gecko is used by Mozilla’s Firefox. Microsoft currently used EdgeHTML with their edge browser, and Apple uses Webkit in the Safari browser on macOS and iOS. Techies are concerned that we are entering an online world of Chromium.
Buffy Summers’ birthday is coming up on January 19th, which prompted the question, How much time do I need to watch the entire Buffy series? Well, like all things on the internet there is a site for that. BingeClock will let you know how long it will take you to watch that TV series that you just haven’t had time to get around to watching.
KFC has some of the most ingenius marketing ads. Whether it is using their Twitter account or sending chicken in to space, KFC is always looking for something that makes them stand out. The newest? A Fire Log that smells like KFC.
Finally, in the I didn’t know this was a problem category we come to K-Swiss selling shoes for E-Sports gamers. Is foot temperature really an issue?
