Tag: christmas
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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.
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Yes Virginia, Die Hard is a Christmas movie – This Geek in Review for 14 Dec 2018
The nets are raging this week over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Maybe people raged every year and I didn’t know. Anyway, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Of course, someone had to survey people on this question, and the results overwhelmingly say that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. Those people are wrong, and to prove it, we go to see what Christmas movies people stream and search for this time of year. A big thank you to the people in Washington, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Virginia, you are correct. For giggles, you can read Roger Ebert’s Die Hard review from 1988 and make your own Die Hard Christmas tree ornament.
Finally, the definitive proof that Die Hard is a Christmas movie:
Seeing Tom Cruise in a public service announcement seems uncharacteristic for him, and I’m sure he’s tilting at windmills. People still record vertical video and force quit their apps on the iPhone even though the first makes for a crappy viewing experience and there is overwhelming evidence against the second. I’m sure motion smoothing on TVs will be this century’s blinking 12:00.
Copyrights and the public domain
Back in the late 90s, half of a dynamic singing duo from the 70s was elected to Congress. Sonny Bono, from Sonny and Cher. While Cher became pretty famous, Sonny became a forgotten politician. His time in Congress was short lived after he died in a freak skiing accident. To honor him, a copyright extension bill that was making its way through Congress was renamed the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. The law extended copyrights for another 20 years, depriving us of works entering the public domain. Which means no works in 20 years has entered the public domain. The extension runs out on January 25, 2019, so the Creative Commons is having a party.
Scifi
Better Worlds looks like it’s going to be some awesome science fiction come the new year.
The 80s
Apparently, Chubby Checkers wasn’t afraid of attaching his name to anything, including singing a song for Dig Dug. Luckily, the recording has been found and uploaded to SoundCloud.
Betamaxmas is pure gold and awesomeness.
Now this is what I call a throwback:
And, in case you forgot about one of the first computerized fitness trainers, Puma is rereleasing its classic 1986 RS – Computer running shoe.
The Bumblebee trailer looks amazing, showing the live action Transformer movie we’ve wanted since the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie. The fact that it takes place in 1987 is icing on the cake. I am pumped.
Not the 80s, but still awesome.
