thanks to BD for the initial pass-on and Phil for finding it again
Blog
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Hands down worst (best?) local commercial of all time
I thought Massachusetts had some quality local cable furniture commercials (see: Bernie & Phyl), but this one might take the crown:
I didn’t even know where to begin with this eyelid-less man, but fortunately Slash did:
Grievances with/things i couldn’t understand about that commercial:
– who takes pride in comparing themselves to a mini mall?
– it’s nothing like a mini mall, the ad was two minutes long and as far as i can tell they only sell three things
– why is that ad two minutes long?
– why wouldn’t you just take the money earmarked for a music video and instead spend it on replacing the “FLEA MARKET” sign outside with a comparable one reading “MINI MALL ???? ” ?
– why is it necessary to, at the one-minute mark, “make it a dance”?
fantastically entertaining though. i may consider visiting that place if i ever enter the confederacy for any reason
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March of the Irish
Is it just me or has St. Patrick’s Day become a month-long affair? I’m not complaining, it just means more Guiness to drink and music to jig to, but it’s kind of like when your 2nd grade teacher decorates the entire classroom and wants to milk it before putting up “spring” a.k.a. Easter decorations.
Except now it seems to be the result of post-college kids with no spring break to go on* with lots of pent-up energy and unspoilt livers.
Last week was the Irish Walk and tomorrow’s Shamrockfest. And it’s still a week ’til the actual day of corned beef and roasted potatoes.
And sticking with the green theme, TWO WEEKS ‘TIL TMNT!
*I know far too many people taking spring break trips anyway to not include this asterisk
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No love for Napoleon
The TV commercial version of the trailer for the new Will Ferrell / Napoleon Dynamite Guy movie humored me, although not in the “two guys figure skating together” sense the producers intended. No, what strikes me is the long awkward silence they left in after Will Ferrell’s top billing.
I just hope this will continue to entertain me the next 350 times I see this trailer.
…and already eating my words, there are a few funny parts in the full version of the trailer (and Jon Heder gets billed):
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OOH snap(.com)!
As official king of the blogosphere, I’d like to welcome back Jason Yovanoff. He broke his 4 months of silence with a post about how annoying those snap.com website previews are. And then he added some water tower pictures.
Oh, and because he didn’t actually provide the answer, to turn those things off go here.
Via Lifehacker
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Columbia Heights
Another blog?
Nope, this one’s a Tumblr. Tumblr’s are good when you don’t feel like expounding on a subject at length, but do want to routinely share mixed media like pictures, text, and videos. It also highlights quotes and, channeling the fun of quoting someone out of context (like in many away messages), conversation snippets.
I thought it’d be a good platform for the occasional publishing of things I witness living in Columbia Heights (in the spirit of Found).
Maybe I’ll find a way to cross-post here. I’m 100% confident it’s possible, but not all that much of an RSS / WordPress pro yet.
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Use your energy
This is an idea I had a while ago, but clearly did nothing about, so it’s great to see someone else working on it.
Why not harness the kinetic motion of workout machines to power the gym? You already have hundreds of human hamsters bounding up stair machines, do you really need a coal plant miles away to power the TVs?
A gym in Hong Kong is on it, and while the technology is still pretty primitive (essentially a car battery) and costly ($15,000 investment to save $183 on the power bill), it’s an exciting thing to keep your eye on.
Those machines already contained small motion-powered generators used to light up their display screens. But the generators were producing significantly more electricity than was needed to power the screen, and the excess energy was being thrown off as heat.
The article also mentions generators embedded in shoes (so soldiers can stop carrying heavy batteries) and in the entrances to busy subway tunnels.
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Explorations: Roosevelt Island
Have you ever looked at a map and found things that looked cool and wanted to go there?
Well, I have, and I’m going to explore these places, time permitting (read: DC only).
Our first installation will be Theodore Roosevelt Island. I had always kind of wondered what was on this magical land-locked island and Saturday was warm enough to explore / run.
Teddy Roosevelt, besides saving the day in Newsies, was also an early conservationist. So his society bought the land from George Mason, whose mansion had been spoiled by stagnant water, and renamed it, washing the original Native American name out of history [wikipedia doesn’t lie].
Fortunately for us, we have boardwalks to run over (most of) the swampy guck. This part reminded me of Plum Island, MA.Being that it was a boardwalk over water.
The only way this island could be cooler is if there were a tram to it, like New York City’s [Franklin D.] Roosevelt Island:
Next in this sure to be long-lived series: a squiggly road I found. If you have any suggestions of things that look fun (at least on a map), let me know in the comments and we’ll explore.
Oh, and you need directions to Roosevelt Island? But wait, you want them to be as tacky as possible? Don’t say I never did anything for you:
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Free Things I Could Have Acquired Off Craigslist
(but refrained for lack of space):
- Doctors Examining Table
- Vending machine
- Used Peanut Oil for Bio Diesel
- foam alphabet puzzle/play mat
- Upper Back Exercise Machine
Make the free section your homepage and we can have broken TV collection contests.
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The Welcome Wagon
Justin laid The Rhinocerus Egg and breaks the tie on brothers blogging vs. having a life, with Jeff now the minority in the latter category.
Chandler joins The Cult of Pure Banality. Despite being unemployed, the only time Chandler can find to write is during his nightly regimen of drunk munchies:
In these frigid times, the plumbing of my mind has burst forth mental sewage onto the internet and straight into your homes. Inspired by capitalist propaganda and radical lunacy, I’m here to present you with some good-old-fashioned, totally useless drivel. The kind you used to get from your drunk friend at 3am in college when he decided it was time to “have a serious talk”, because that’s who I am: your drunk friend.
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Deleted Scenes
UPDATE: WE GOT TO MEET DAN!, Deleted Scenes’ frontman, providing further evidence that every single person from Olney, Maryland not only knows each other, but also still hangs out.
“Local band.” It’s one of those combinations of terms that usually softens up our critical senses. Like “school play” or “free beer.” It’s a qualification that makes us tend to go a little easier, allow a little benefit with our doubt. You may not stop in your tracks if you heard that band on the radio, but for a band from your stomping grounds, well, they deserve some credit.
Checking out “local band” Deleted Scenes tonight. Their Myspace selections are a tad slow but I somehow already have like 4 of their MP3s in my bloated iTunes library and I like the sound.
Doesn’t hurt that the show is at Rock n’ Roll Hotel, a venue I’ve been meaning to check out:
For as long as man has lived in society, hotels have lined his roads, offering weary travelers a safe and comfortable shelter for the night.
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Useful Widgets
Work’s pretty busy this week, so you get the post I wrote for EchoDitto‘s blog. Please pardon the professional tone and altruistic subject matter. Scroll down for obligatory Footloose reference.
Being the early-adopting nerd that I am, I’ve gone through my share of widgets. I’ve tinkered with every site- and PC-based widget engine from Konfabulator to Yahoo Widgets to Google Desktop. At work I use a Mac, so I got to experiment with those guys, including an ill-fated Christmas Countdown widget. But as much as I love fun technology, the overwhelming uselessness of widgets thus far has tainted my expectations for the platforms that enable them. The fact is, I’ve never had any stocks to check. If something’s really important, I’ll place the RSS feed or bookmark somewhere prominent within Firefox. And don’t get me started on how many different ways I can check the weather.
Which is why I owe Katya Andresen thanks for her Net Squared DC presentation last night for changing all of that and making me realize their potential again. The Six Degrees project
has done something genuinely groundbreaking. They want people to do good in the world, but they don’t really care if you go to their website to do so. They’re doing what we’ve grown hoarse repeating: If you let go of your message a little and empower your supporters, big things can happen.Six Degrees allows users to make badges for their cause and take their fundraising elsewhere: their blog, their MySpace, and so on. In doing so they’ve essentially enabled individuals to become their own charities, in the same way that tools like WordPress allowed people to become their own publishers.
And it works. Think about it, when is the last time you gave to charity? Chances are, it was for a friend or family member who was running a race or otherwise soliciting donations for a cause. And you gave. You do support Save the Baby Zebras, but you gave to them because your friend or family member asked you to, and what’s important to them is important to you.
Six Degrees keeps things interesting with a Top Six Badges contest for matching grants that judges based on how many donators you’ve attracted rather than how much money you’ve accrued.
Oh, and I almost forgot the best part of this whole thing: It was started with the help of Kevin Bacon, who bought the Six Degrees domain after realizing that most mentions of him on the Internet were about the six degrees from Kevin Bacon game and not his stellar performance in Footloose. The celebrity tie-ins continue with Celebrity Badges from Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Nicole Kidman and others.
Anyway, thanks again to Katya and to everyone else for coming out and making this another great NetSquared event. Join us next month on March 13th at 7pm!
