The 100 oz.

disclaimer, originally uploaded by dkun.

So. Here's the disclaimer found on the BigAss mug.

It was quite the hit at the office today. I'm pretty sure I hold the record for largest mug... Now if I can just wear it in enough to get rid of the plastic taste.

Woohoo!

Congratulations to Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne on a successful initial flight! Good job Matt! That's great. Here's to another successful flight in the coming 2 weeks.

I'm tired

... <sigh>

Happy birthday to the letter 'r'. You can try out the new year for a couple months for me ok? If it looks lousy, feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to avoid it.

I toyed with commenting a little more on Man on Fire but I think I'll let my brief review stand.

Viewtiful Joe has shown up on the PS2 and the sequel is about to come out. I played it on the 'cube. It's a game that I wanted to like. And there are things about it that are great. It's different. It has great style and the level design is clever. But it starts getting old a little too quickly. It was worth the rental I allotted it. And there are certainly worse games out there.

I'm hoping tomorrow brings Daisy Kutter #2. Really. I am.

<submliminal moment of the day>Donkey Konga - it must be purchased. All bow before the greatness that is Donkey Konga</end subliminal moment of the day - nothing to see here, move along>

Just a quickie

Watched Man on Fire. Good, if brutal, action piece. Denzel did a brilliant job as did Dakota Fanning. Some interesting choices from a cinematography perspective. Thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack (although this may taint future listenings of Clair de Lune, which is a shame as I love that piece). Recommended if you can stomach the violence. Most of it is the best left to your imagination sort, which is always more effecive, but there are a couple visceral moments shown. If you have kids of your own you will want to spend the next 6 hours hugging them and not letting them out of your sight.

Return of the King

Well, the specs are in. Four hours +. That's just crazy. I've enjoyed all the extra footage in the previous editions though. And I suspect there won't be another "ending" added. I'm pretty sure they nailed them all the first time around. ^_^ December 14th can't come soon enough.

Random moment

Was driving home and the mountains were a nice red color due to the sunset and there was a not quite full moon just above them. It's moments like those that make me wish I had a digital camera. It was quite nice. So instead of seeing a partial view of it through a photograph, you'll have to use your imaginations and picture a mountain range not quite ready for winter - trees starting to change colors here and there, but patches of snow near the summit from a recent storm - bathed in reddish light with a soft blue sky and a not quite full moon just above. Good luck.

Internet Wandering Monster Table

Ka-link. This is great. And all too true. (Shamelessly stolen from Making Light)

The Knight

So I finished The Knightby Gene Wolfe. Looking forward to the next book (The Wizard I believe it's called). It was definitely an interesting read. As I mentioned previously, there are several elements of the book that come with the fantasy genre - especially the knightly aspect. There are some interesting choices made with regards to narrative and the way the story is told. It reminds me in some ways of something like Kill Bill, Part 1 where it becomes obvious that the story is being told after the fact and so, in some ways, the tension is lessened allowing you to focus a little more on what's happening and the experiences themselves. Also the character telling the story is typical of all of us and tells us only what he wants to. If you like fantasy I recommend it and if you don't, while this probably won't change your mind, it might. It's very well told, easy to read and best of all interesting.

H2G2

Looks like the BBC has updated the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game. It's now a flash app that incorporates some graphics with the text. Find it here (Found via Boing Boing. I remember playing the original back in the 80s. Might have to spend some time with this one and reminisce a bit.

SpaceShipOne

Fark recently held a photoshop contest for SpaceShipOne. Pretty amusing. One of my best friends from high school is married to the head engineer on the project. She also works for Scaled Composites and while we were out in California on vacation we got to take a tour and see White Knight and SpaceShipOne. I even got to sit in White Knight. It was pretty cool I must admit. Here's to hoping for a successful launch next week and a successful followup. Go Kit and Matt!

In other news, X96 is the radio station that currently occupies most of my commute time. They're getting ready to throw the last really big outdoor concert of the season, the Bigass Show. Lots of bands, lots to do. But the best part is the Bigass mug. 100 oz. I managed to grab one today while one of the DJs was on location. I was completely unprepared for just how big a 100 oz mug really is. It even comes with a warning that small children may drown in the Bigass mug. I shall do my best to get a photo of the warning and get it up here in the near future.

And finally, today is my Friday. Again, long live the three day weekend! Huzzah!

Here kitty, kitty

This t-shirt over at ThinkGeek has to be one of the coolest things I've seen recently. Schrodinger's Cat is one of my favorite quirky thought experiments.

Random thoughts, random links

Joystiq is a game news blog that I stumbled across a while back. Quite nice.

Games are Fun is another game blog that also incorporates reviews and whatnot. They just started an anime section which affords a nice segue to this next link.

Anime on DVD. My favorite site for news and reviews. If it's anime and on DVD you'll find it here. They have a pretty good forum as well.

The Iconfactory is probably the best Mac icon site around. Pixelpalooza is always fun to watch as well. And even more fun to enter.

So, there you go.

Petals Around the Rose

Now that I've sussed this out I can pass it along. That's quite the nice mental exercise.

I Found Some Of Your Life

I Found Some Of Your Life is either scary or brilliant. Probably both. Pro tip: Never leave your digital media card in a taxi...

Edit: Looks like this might be down. If you got to see it consider yourself lucky. Have a cookie.

Complete Calvin & Hobbes?

According to this Andrews McMeel are planning a Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection much like the Far Side Collection.

Wow. I'd like to pick up the Far Side set, but Calvin & Hobbes would probably win out for my hard earned pennies first...

The Yard

I hate yard work. Easily top 5 of my least favorite things. Managed to get some of it done today. We had a guy mow and edge the yard. It was expensive, but he did do a nice job. I spent my time running back and forth to Home Depot buying bags of bark so that we could put some ground cover where my folks helped us rip out a bunch of overgrowth. It looks bettter. Still need a bag or two, but it's a start. Now if I could just get the lawn to come in. We hydroseeded last year and most of the lawn looks nice, but we have some patchy parts. (This is why I hate yard work - not only is it actual work, but sometimes regardless of what you do, it still looks like crap...)

Anyway, let's just hope I haven't managed to tweak my back again hauling the bags of bark...

Well, enough of that.

Started reading The Knight by Gene Wolfe. Good book so far. I suspect it will end up being one of the better ones I've read this year. Nice style, interesting characters, hits all the genre expectations you expect it to and I suspect there are a couple tricks in the wings.

The Incredibles

New trailer up. Still looks great. I'm glad that the guy responsible for The Iron Giant is finally with somebody that will do some advertising and isn't afraid to do animation solely aimed at children. That was a great show as well...

Santa Monica

Santa Monica by Everclear is a great song. It's got a good beat and the lyrics aren't bad as well. Mostly it's just a nice excuse to rock out for a moment and, really, sometimes that's what music is all about.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that I actually managed to get to Santa Monica this summer during our brief vacation out west. Nice beach. Fun pier. Good times.

Rated F

Rated F

Again proof that there are no coincidences, this book was written by one of the DJs at the radio station that's currently my favorite...

I should comment more on this, but I think the shock needs to wear off first.

Hit the beat now

I enjoy music. One of the more interesting random quotes I've heard (and alas, I don't have a source for it) is that people that are musically inclined are Beatles fans, while people that don't know much about music like Elvis. I've found this to be true in that generality sort of way. I enjoy the Beatles far more than Elvis and I know a fair bit about music. I've played several instruments over the course of my life and I sing some as well.

Admittedly, lately most of my musical ability is more in the theoretical realm versus practical, but I still love listening to music and I also really enjoy rhythm games (DDR, Frequency/Amplitude, the new Donkey Konga looks great and I suspect I would've enjoyed Samba de Amigo quite a bit as well...). I tend to like music that focuses on instruments a little more than vocals, but there are some great lyrical bands as well. Dido has a great voice and Bono's voice is only improving with time much like Elvis's (just because I prefer the Beatles doesn't mean I hate Elvis ^_^). They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies are pretty much the best at music with fun lyrics. The Pillows rock. Classical is wonderful (Debussy, Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Copeland, Gershwin... ok I'll stop now). I enjoy lots of different types of music. About the only things I can't handle are Country, most of what passes for Pop music any more (admittedly I'm well outside the target demographic for it) and Rap.

I'd like to pick up the cello if I get back to playing an instrument and I wish I still played the piano. I took lessons for about eight years, but it's been several times that since I've tickled the ivories. I don't suppose there's really a point to this post. I haven't pointed out anybody worth keeping an eye on (Jet? Franz Ferdinand?) and the few names I've singled out are hardly secrets any more. I can claim to have been a TMBG fan since they were first around and a friend of mine used to call their dial-a-song quite frequently (from Kansas mind you) but that's only worth so much these days...