link-o-rama

scans of Action comics #1

Eugene Jarkei's excellent documentary Why We Fight is up in full on Google (for now, at least)
you might want to download it in the event of a copywrite disappearance. Here's a handy plugin for Firefox users


gadgets, then and now
Hooray for miniaturization!

windows error message generator
Hours of fun for the whole family!

how tennis balls are made.
neat-o video.

Behold, the Computer Bed!

Looks like something you'd find in Le Corbusier's college dorm room.
Just one problem: the computer would take care of the pr0n, but where would you hide the booze?

Last FM, the penultimate internet radio solution.
Probably deserves it's own post. You input a bunch of stuff you like and it tailors a playlist for you. Totally bitchin'.

Boxing: follow up

What a night of unrelenting carnage!

The HBO card was solid but unspectacular, unless you count De La Hoya's surprising seek-and-destroy elimination of Mayorga. For the record I thought DLH would dominate the fight, but I was surprised at the ferocity and agression he put on display in dispatching the tough, limited Mayorga in six.

The real fireworks came after we flipped to Showtime for their "free" card featuring a flyweight (115lb) title fight between champion Luis Perez and Dimitri Kirilov and a super welter (154lb) title scrap featuring Alejandro Garcia vs. Jose Antonio Rivera.

Kirilov's nickname is "baby", which fits if the baby in question somehow developed a thousand-yard stare. In the middle rounds Pelf commented "if I ever need to hire a Russian hit man, I know who to talk to".
THe action was fast and furious, and fought at a high level of skill. I had Kirilov dominating 7/10ths of the fight, befuddling Perez with spectacular defense and landing hard shots in combination. Late in the fight it looked like he was going to cruise to a dominating decision win....but of course this is boxing, and he suffered one of those sudden, totally unexpected momentum shifts that make it the only sport worth watching.
Out of the blue, Perez caught him flush with a right hook and sent him down HARD.
He beat the count, but was wobbly for the rest of the round, and the rest of the fight was back-and-forth action. I thought Kirilov still won a fairly wide decision, but he got jobbed by some blind refs. He won over the large crowd, and also the handful of boxing fans I was watching with...I'll definitely tune in for his next bout.

The main event was what they call a "pier six brawl" between two big, strong dudes who could punch and didn't much bother with dandified refinements like 'defense'. I think it totalled six knockdowns between the two guys, and even though it ended up being a one-sided win for Rivera it never seemed like Garcia was totally out of the fight.

It was such a relentless flood of boxing that I was a little worn out afterwards and had to lie down.

Oh, and next time we get together for a card the refreshments are on the Pelf.
After DLH's surprise knockdown of Mayo in the 1st round he said "I could not have been more wrong about this fight".

heh.

books: celebrity "autobiographies"

speaking of Art Pepper....

Piper’s memoirs are only the latest evidence of a phenomenon sweeping the publishing industry: books written by people who don’t normally write books, bought by people who don’t normally read books, being sold in places, such as supermarkets, that did not, until quite recently, sell books.

(rolleyes)

boxing: the DANGER ZONE

yeah...you heard me!


My sucker, er, pal the Pelf subscribes to the Myth of Mayorga and nearly demanded we make a friendly wager on the outcome. Since pizza always tastes sweeter when someone else is buying, I accepted, more in the spirit of a charitable donation than a bet.

I didn't feel the need to remind him that he was making the very same arguments in favor of Mayorga before the Trinidad fight (Mayorga is crazy, Mayorga has power, Mayorga has a granite chin, Tito has been inactive...all it meant to me was more free pizza.)

There's some kerfuffle among the business elite of the sport due to a conflict with Game 7 between the Lakers and Suns. I see boxing as the ur-sport with all others being pale shadows of the real thing, so there's no conflict for me.

It should be an entertaining, if one sided, bout.
A full report will follow.

games: jihad a mod

sorta thematically keeping with the post about the guy who logs in to America's Army so he can recite the names of casualties from Iraq, today we find Middle Eastern mod-makers remixing BF2 so that the good guys wear turbans and the bad guys ride in low over the surf in Wagner-blaring Hueys.

SAIC executive Eric Michael said researchers suspect Islamic militants are using video games to train recruits and condition youth to attack U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.

I wonder what those researchers would "suspect" about America's Army?

improv everywhere vs. Best Buy

cool idea, fun result.

I've run across these guys before, I think I've even linked them before...but this is their coolest stunt so far.

Minimum wage corporate drones freak out when you short circut their expectations.

gaming: ah, nostalgia!

While looking around the net for ALC I came across this paen to my old CS strategy guide...in French, no less!

Ah, e-notriety....

Birthday Incoming

The big Four Oh approaches on stealthy rat-paws.

By request from folk who don't know what to get me (as if my well-documented obsessions with cooking, boxing and gaming didn't provide enough ammunition to supply a battalion) I threw together an Amazon wish list.

And while I'm philosophically opposed to overtly monetizing gifts, I make exceptions for Amazon gift certificates because I love burrowing through the strata of their products with house money. =D

gaming : calling all Tards

Bobo's setting up some forums pending the release of the new Ghost Recon.

If anyone knows how to get hold of ALC, JD & Doc Death, tip them off about the impending co-op akSHOWN.

here's the linky.

customers : remus

a drunk skinhead in a wheelchair just asked if we had any Uncle Remus books.

because he reads them to kids.

books : unfortunate cover

Looks more like he's slipping in the shower than striking a virile martial arts pose.

video game activism

This one's pretty interesting even if you're not a gamer.

This cat logs into AA and types the names of casualties until someone caps him.
This sorta ties in with a queasy feeling I've always had about AA, and pretty much all contemporary war FPS's...it seems perverse for a game to ape something that's actually happening.

The beginning of the end of CS for me was 9/11...capering about as a terrorist trying to blow shit up lost much of it's savor. I've grown to appreciate more escapist escapism, be it faux superheroics of CoH or the faux Orwellian dystopia of HL2.

Of course, my bone-deep hatred of UbiSoft would be much more likely to stop me from picking up the latest Tom Clancy spec ops game for some co-op akshown with my pals than any faint rumblings of morality.

All the same, given the option I'll take fantasy or alternate reality over some rough approximation of the real thing. Probably the reason I prefer genre fiction over straight literature (much to my wife's dismay).

Hotlinks!

What's better than still photos of stuff getting shot?
super slow mo video of stuff getting shot!

mammoth archive of early 20th century news photos.
(the interface sux, but it's huuuuuge!)

hey kids...first taste is free!

This is partly why I hate corporations.
How the fuck does Napster still exist?
If a business owned by an individual had lost a huge lawsuit and subsequently 95% of it's userbase, it would have folded.

But years on, here's Napster still shambling around like a zombie, trying on different outfits like a change of clothes can mask the stench of dead, rotting flesh.

game developers sound off on Nintendo's console name change.
I don't much care about consoles, but I'm enjoying all the hubub over this.

help a guy win a bet with his girlfriend

simply by clicking here.

strike a blow against the (wo)Man!

games: speaking of CS....

I linked this webcomic previously, but the recent chatter in comments about old-timey CS action reminded me of this excellent run of strips:
un
deux
trois
quatre
cinq

Guaranteed laffs for anyone who ever played the game on a pub server.

/edit
HAW!!
more and funnier, later in the sequence:

a-one
and-a-two
and hit "next" a few times.

geek humor, gotta love it.

grilling season!

Weather has been gorgeous the last couple of days...it's making me want to grill!

Unfortunately, I loaned James my grill for his birthday a few years back and it vanished off the face of the earth.

Does anyone have suggestions for a good light use two-person summer grill?
I don't need a bombproof 40" Weber, just something I could grill a few burgers or a cut-up chicken on that isn't too flimsy and annoying.

politics: propaganda

A lengthy, fascinating, in-depth piece on the administration's propaganda efforts in support of the Iraq war.

An involving, worrying read.