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One of my favorite webcomics xkcd had a good one today about the hazards of tailgating a geek!

xkcd - Road Rage

Back in 2000 when Keenen Wayans decided to make Scary Movie, I wonder if he knew the hell he would unleash upon moviegoers worldwide. While Scary Movie wasn’t horrible and some would even argue good, it had a huge breadth of material to pull from, in fact over 100 years worth of horror films. Unfortunately the film grossed 42 million on opening weekend assuring the world of numerous sequels and spinoffs. Seriously who spins off a spoof movie to spoof another segment.

This horse has long since died! Please stop beating it and expecting cash, all that comes out now is utter shite. I don’t know if you have noticed but there is a magical place you can share your crappy spoof compilations of fart jokes, Dr. Phil sing alongs and stereotypes; it’s called Youtube.com. Please stop invading my moviegoing experience with your horrid trailers. You can use the Internet and play to the lowest common denominator just as well and for 1/8th of the budget. You don’t need big names for a spoof movie, hell I saw 8 people last week who could have passed for the main character in the first Scary Movie, and once you get past that you’d be better off having the bums from BumFight star in your spoof film.

Would spoofing a Spoof of you not making a spoof movie, make a spoof movie not happen? I don’t know but please, give it a try.

I’m stoked to share this, though obviously not as stoked as my friend Toby, who was just announced by way of the Bungie.net blog to be writing the next halo novel. The novel is due out this fall and is called Halo; The Cole Protocol. Details on the novel are sparse right now, but you can check out a little bit of information from Bungie.net.

Halo: The Cole Protocol will be the sixth novel set in the Halo Universe. Tobias S. Buckell, author of Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin will pen the novel, which reveals the location of the Spartan Gray Team and “takes readers into an unexplored conflict of the Human-Covenant War where unlikely alliances are formed and shattered…”

If you are new to Tobias Buckell you should check out this post on his website, tobiasbuckell.com, where he introduces his past work, background and shares some of his fiction for free.

Hmm something tells me the next time we hop on Halo we better be ready for a little more trashtalk. I can hear all the gmaers full of piss an vinegar ready to claim they beat the author of the next Halo novel.

I heard about “Now The Hell Will Start” by Brandan Koerner a few weeks ago and decided I had to read it. The only problem is that my current “to read” list is way to long especially with books I have recently purchased so I am waiting for a copy of his book to come available in a local library. The story sounds fascinating, excerpt below.

A true story of murder, love, and headhunters, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a budding playboy from the streets of Washington, D.C., who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle—not because he yearned for adventure, but rather to escape the greatest manhunt conducted by the United States Army during World War II.

An African American G.I. assigned to a segregated labor battalion, Perry was shipped to South Asia in 1943, enduring unspeakable hardships while sailing around the globe. He was one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched to build the Ledo Road, a highway meant to appease China’s conniving dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. Stretching from the thickly forested mountains of northeast India across the tiger-infested vales of Burma, the road was a lethal nightmare, beset by monsoons, malaria, and insects that chewed men’s flesh to pulp.

Perry could not endure the jungle’s brutality, nor the racist treatment meted out by his white officers. He found solace in opium and marijuana, which further warped his fraying psyche. Finally, on March 5, 1944, he broke down—an emotional collapse that ended with him shooting an unarmed white lieutenant.

So began Perry’s flight through the Indo-Burmese wilderness, one of the planet’s most hostile realms. While the military police combed the brothels of Calcutta, Perry trekked through the jungle, eventually stumbling upon a village festooned with polished human skulls. It was here, amid a tribe of elaborately tattooed headhunters, that Herman Perry would find bliss—and would marry the chief ’s fourteen-year-old daughter.

Boing Boing has the transcript of an interview with Brendan and it makes me want to read the book even more!


Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

The Crave blog is reporting that Fennec the mobile version of Firefox is set to be debuted in September with a beta release in late 2008! I am extremely excited by this news since the desktop version of Firefox continues to be the best browser for my needs.

The Surprising news is that due to the licensing and restrictions on both the iPhone and Google’s Android phone, you won’t likely be seeing Firefox running on either! This leaves all of the love to Windows Mobile and Symbian devices which is fine by me!

The only problem I see ahead for the mobile version of Firefox is that it is coming into the game late. Opera should have it’s latest release of Opera Mobile browser out by then and the newcomer Skyfire whose latest update makes for a very robust browser will be even farther along. I’m not saying I won’t be downloading the beta on day 1, I just that I hope Mozilla brings its “A game”. While I was waiting around for Trillian to release Astra, I found Disgby, and unless Astra can somehow print money or bend the space time continuum its release won’t be a big deal.

A week or so a package arrived from AntiPoleez, makers of a product which removes the odor of alcohol, tobacco and garlic from your breath. In my experience mints, freshened my breath but they still left a distinct odor of alcohol. These lozenges did a great job of removing offending odors from my breath. For a little bit more about the product I’ll share the following from their website,

AntiPoleez eliminates bad breath resulting from consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food. Unlike breath fresheners and gum AntiPoleez does not just mask the unwanted odor with heavy mint or fruit scent, it eliminates it and does not leave any other. The unique combination of components work to increase the consumption of breath producing molecules by the epithelium of the mucous coat of the upper respiratory passages resulting in clean, fresh breath.

It’s not the best association but you can think of it like Oust for your mouth.

I have tried the AntiPoleez on several occasions and based on my unscientific tests, aka asking my wife if I still smell of any of the offending odors, it works! The first test I put the breath freshener through was a sub covered in spicy mustard and onions. I was pleased with the ability of the lozenges to quickly remove the lingering taste in my mouth and to dull the bad breath associated with eating lots of onions.

I also tried the lozenges on several occasions to remove the odor of alcohol from my breath. For these challenges I chose to drink beer and see how well it removed the odor from my breath. I found that it did a great job of pulling the alcohol odor off of my breath, and leaving my mouth tasting, well like I hadn’t been drinking. I think I enjoy the mouth cleaning properties of the lozenges almost as much as its ability to remove the alcohol odor from my breath. As far as the taste of taste of AntiPoleez, it doesn’t taste bad but it won’t be winning any awards for flavor. I’d place it somewhere between licorice and cough drop with menthol.

Since I don’t smoke I wasn’t able to try out the tobacco removal portion of the lozenges but based on the performance I had I would imagine it would perform admirably there as well.

On a final note and really the only downside, while the lozenge does a great job of stripping the offending odors from your breath, it didn’t always leave me with “Tic Tac” fresh breath. This isn’t a deal breaker for me as the bad odors were gone which is all I was looking for. If I wanted to get kissably fresh breath I’d be popping some mints anyway.

AntiPoleez is avialable online starting at $2.99 a pack with discounts for larger quantities. It should also be on store shelves soon. I highly recommend you pick a pack up, if only to be amazed at how good it actually works. Remember don’t drink and drive!

Disclaimer: I was provided with a review sample of this product, but don’t worry if it sucked I’d tell you.

Download Squad reports that both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have joined the nifty video site Hulu. Despite the fact that you can already catch these online, the Hulu interface is much more user friendly than any of the current network specific sites.

Now if only there were an easy way to watch these shows on either the Wii or the 360!

My favorite video game skewer-er take on Oblivion and 2/3 the way through will make you spit whatever beverage you happen to be drinking out through your nose! You have been warned, enjoy the video below. As always with Yahtzee, not for the faint of heart or those listening in a cubicle.

Funny, especially when you consider to play Oblivion you need a book almost as thick as War & Peace to get anything done!

Last nite Amber and myself joined some of our fellow Bluffton Alums for a get together at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Columbus and had a great time. We carpooled down from Findlay with a few other alumni and met up with Pete Suter, the host of the evening to add to multitude of door prizes for attendees. The Business department brought items from the bookstore and I was able to snag some goodies from the Alumni office which meant nobody went home empty handed.

It was really cool to catch up with both professors and alumni, especially seeing Sullivan and Schiebly. I also caught up with a few younger alums who live in the Columbus area doing some interesting things. Midway through the evening president Harder and Karen showed up to meet with the alumni. Shortly after this a group of us went on a tour of the brewery portion of the restaurant which was really cool. Our guide even tapped the 1259 gallon vat of Heifweizen for us and poured us drinks straight from the brewing container!

Overall a really good time even if Bill Lyons didn’t make an appearance. Hopefully the event will be on agian next year and we can see even more alumni there!

If you can believe a leaked set of PowerPoint slides from Verizon, they are set to update the operating system on the Samsung SCH-i760 to WM 6.1. I currently own the phone and I am happy with the overall package but I am getting close to the need for a hard reset as well as something shiny to play with. The Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade will bring about both of those for me.

If you want to know what new features WM 6.1 brings to the table check out this handy comparison chart of Windows Mobile features from Microsoft. Unfortunately Verizon may decide to rip out any really cool features but that is the price you pay for going with the big red checkmark of the cell phone industry!