A random assortment of geeky graphics I stumbled across this week.

Doom running in Windows Notepad, issues with adult videos streaming in Splatoon and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-10-21

A random assortment of geeky graphics I stumbled across this week.

Plants with machetes, Dvorak keyboard for your iPhone and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-10-14

A random assortment of geeky graphics I stumbled across this week.

Virtual pets in Virtual Studio, interview with AI Linux, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-10-07

A random assortment of geeky graphics I stumbled across this week.

Add hard drive sounds to your flash based retro PC, canceled Star Trek films and more.

A multiwindow PalmOS operating system, a keyboard display box, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-09-23

Goldeneye 007, floppy disks, and the 2600 at 45, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-09-16

Powering a Raspberry Pi with Steam, using AI to create art, and more. This Geek in Review

Hacking over USB, Rickrolling a school district, and more - This Geek in Review for 2022-09-02

A terrible, terrible version of Doom and more - This Geek in Review

The birth of the arcade fighter genre, songs crashing hard drives, and more spying from Meta - This Geek in Review for 2022-08-19

The web has gotten boring, a writer complains about remote work, and more in This Geek in Review for 2022-08-12.

Charter Spectrum owes $7B, Weird Al, and the passing of Nichelle Nichols

No commentary this week, but a ton of links that I found interesting.

ChromeOS is a good solution for the family tech support issues. Also, it is you on why roller coasters aren’t as fun and building skills with video games

The lazy days of summer are upon us!

My phone is always on silent. Apple is decreasing the number of years macOS gets updates on hardware, is that going to be a problem? And more geekery!

Who can replace John Williams When you think of movie scores, at the top of the list is John Williams. From the scoring of the first summer blockbust Jaws to Indiana Jones 5, the man has cemented his legendary status as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, film composers of all time. Come to think of it, could you find someone that doesn’t recognize at least one of his scores?

Atari Lives, IE does not, and the minions are coming.

Browser ad blocking, the Facebook Portal, and more. This Geek in Review for 2022-06-17.

A legend in digital music, Dave Smith passed away this week. Beavis and Butt-Head are coming to Paramount+, and The Wrath of Khan turns 40. All this and more in This Geek in Review for 2022-06-10.

Some thoughts on defining retrogaming, watching Whiz Kids, and Microsoft is offering developing in the cloud.

How complicated can the MCU get? And can movies be slow paced in the 21st century? All this and more in this Geek in Review for 2022-05-27

How do you play with Legos?

The iPod is dead, retro game prices are suspect, searching the internet, and more in This Geek in Review

The scripted show is going extinct Warner Bros. and the Discovery channel are cutting scripted shows. This affects shows at TNT and TBS. I don’t know what was a factor in this decision, but I can’t help to think that Netflix’s losses didn’t help. Is the scripted show dead? Of course not. Even during the worst times of TV there still have been shows. What is missing from the current crop of shows is re-watchability.

Musk buys Twitter, confusing references on Friends, and more - This week in Review for 2022-04-29

Putting the WE into World Wide WEb, the Apple ][ hits 45, and more in this geek in review for April 22nd, 2022

Powerful computers, Reddit, and more in this geek in review.

Does what Meta do surprise anyone anymore? This past year there have been several news reports about TikTok challenges such as the “devious licks” challenge in schools, where students would vandalize classrooms. Unfortunately for common decency, these challenges were made up by a firm paid for by Meta (formerly Facebook) to tarnish the image of TikTok. The stories would originate on Facebook, and were then picked up by the local news.

The creators of gifs and the TRS-80 have passed away. Also, have we reached peak original blockbuster movie? And, Apple has come up with another way to make money. All this and more!

The NBA is trying out a new way to watch basketball. I also talk about small, affordable early 80s computers and look at a job application that Steve Jobs filled out. And more!

Disney+ is rumored to begin having a lower ad support tier. Apple has released new products, and people are wondering when we’ll see a new Fantastic Four movie. All this and more in This Geek in Review for 2022-03-18.

Bender is back, an AlphaGo documentary, and more on This Geek in Review!

What’s wrong with the Marvel Multiverse, discless gaming, and TikTok? All this and more in The Geek in Review.

I’ve got a bad feeling about the next Star Trek movie, John Williams is back, and no disc gaming. All this and more on This Geek in Review.

Modern day Bonnie & Clyde, Madden Football love, Futurama and more - This Geek in Review

Long movies, Oregon Trail, and Buzz Lightyear. All this and more in This Geek in Review for 11 Feb 2022.

BlackBerry sold its mobile patents, Sony buys Bungie, and more in this geek in review.

Multiversus looks like it’s going to be pretty fun platform brawler. The character selection is amazing! And there’s much more!

Wordle is sweeping the world!

The iconic iMac G4 turns 20, Facebook is still creepin’ on you, and more.

We have lost a legend in Betty White and Blackberry.

The James Webb telescope has launched! And more in This Geek in Review

Christmas Eve is here, so I hope you all survived the feats of strength yesterday.

If these are the worst sitcoms, then we’re doing pretty well.

One of the best things of the Hawkeye TV show is Rogers, The Musical, and now we have a full length song from it. Hopefully more will be coming!

First rule of viral marketing - don’t lie. Plus a ton of geek, retro, and more stuff.

Writing poorly is big business with Grammerly, and, just how awesome was 1980? Read more to see the sites I visited this week on the internet.

Happy 20th Xbox! Here’s to another 20!

Neil Patrick Harris stars in an upcoming Christmas movie, 8-bit Christmas, voice chat over IRC, and more.

All your virtual worlds belong to Facebook… I mean, Meta.

That fancy new smartphone is more expensive than you may have realized.

New Macbook Pros, The Batman, and more geek travels

Captain Kirk reaches space, G4 TV is back, retro, geeky things and more!

Facebook went down, putting Whatsapp, Instagram, and more out of commission. And then to twist the knife, a Facebook whistleblower explained to congress how evil Facebook has become. My geek travels went from Mick Jagger to cheating on tests to wedding photos taken with the Gameboy camera.

I’m going to try something different with my This Geek in Review posts. Instead of creating individual posts for various cool things I find on the internet, I’m going to post one list on Fridays.

The Nintendo Gamecube was released in Japan on September 14, 2001. I can’t remember when I actually bought one, but I loved playing through Metroid Prime. One of the few games I’ve actually completed, and, without going to any playthrough on the internet.

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until now!

As part of the 2021 Cars at the Capital exhibit, the DeLorean from Back to the Future will be on display at the National Mall in Washington DC. You better be quick, it’s only there until Thursday.

The cloud now contains everything, including the Atari 2600.

The Amiga was a computer system from the late 80s who’s claim to fame was it’s use in TV and movie production. Babylon 5 used the Amiga extensively for the CGI. The Amiga is the next mini console to be released. There are a ton of great games for the Amiga, and since you can load your own, I’m a little intrigued by this.

You’ve probably heard about people working two remote jobs, which means making two full-time salaries during the work week. It’s not a joke, people are able to work two full-time jobs at the same time. Too bad I’m no where near organized enough to pull this off.

The video is disappointing only in the fact that it is just showing a demo of the 2600 games. I would love to play a version of River Raid like this.

I’m a huge fan of the command line, and I would be thrilled to be able to use one of these terminals!

I don’t know what’s worse. Using Facebook or buying a $299 VR headset so you can get support from Facebook.

Police ticketed a California driver for driving with a Starlink dish attached to the hood. The driver said it was for the business they run out of the car.

Sure, Microsoft ushered in 2002 by declaring MS-DOS 6.22 was obsolete, but that doesn’t stop people from using it. And now you can run the IRC server ngircd under DOS on just about any old PC compatible. For the full affect you’ll want a network card.

I’ve never seen Labyrinth, but now’s my chance!

If you are a fan of Ted Lasso, you can download Richmand Team Logo wallpapers for your computer.

Good news for retro game players, Retroarch is coming to the Amazon App Store. You’ll be able to play all of your retro goodness without having to sideload Retroarch. I’ve got an old 7" tablet that I need to try this out on!

Today I learned that Florida celebrates Whacking Day, except their day lasts 10. No word yet on how Lisa or Barry White feel about it.

Zero_page on Twitter is either crazy or a genius for creating a working Apple II in the Unity game engine.

An NBA head coach punished the entire team because one of the players had an Android phone and it messed up a group chat. I have so many issues with this. For starters, I can’t image dealing with a group chat of 15 in iMessages. Secondly, there are so many better ways to deal with group chat. Thirdly, isn’t it the lack of the coaches knowledge that caused the error and not the player?

Anyone who used a Macintosh in the 90s has seen the flying toasters screen savers, and you can now relive those times in your browser. Be sure to take your browser to full screen for the full affect.

There are days you wake up and think it’s going to just be another boring day when you are pleasantly surprised by something awesome. Transformers: The Movie is coming back to the theaters in September for its 35th anniversary. The movie does have some issues, especially with how they decided to make us all want new toys, but the soundtrack is spot on. Stan Bush rocks it, along with Weird Al.

Is your Taco Bell closing early like mine is? It’s because Taco Bell is having a nationwide shortage of ingredients.

In the 80s, I lived 10 miles out of town and had 4 channels. Even then, I still knew what MTV was and tried to watch it any chance I got. The closest we had to MTV was Friday Night Videos. I was curious what MTV is today, so I pulled up the schedule. Apparently MTV is now the Ridiculousness. What a lost opportunity, where is the retrospective? YouTube killed MTV a long time ago, mostly due to the impulsivity of people today.

Finding the perfect background can take hours, but here is a good selection of free backgrounds that you can choose. Each background is available in light and dark, along with a motion background. In Windows, I use the app Desktop Live Wallpapers to set the video as the background. The free version only supports .wmv files, so I used Cloud Convert to convert the movie background to .wmv.

In the 80s and 90s, almost every sign created was done in The Print Shop. Today, it’s more difficult to get an Apple II set up and printer going. Never fear, because now you can use The Print Shop online! Once your creation is complete, you can download it as a PDF to print out on any print you have.

If you ever wanted to live in a data center, then I have the house for you. There is one bathroom, but you’re on your own for a bedroom.

I was a little excited before, now I’m very excited.

I guess this is common knowledge, but you can boot Karateka for Apple II upside down. I missed it because I played the game on the technically superior Atari 800XL.

Home Depot can supply everything, including exorcisms.

I know nothing about Warhammer 40K, except that it involves the painting of incredibly intricate figurines. This video makes me want to learn more.

The Out of Office Message Generator will create an out of office message that either links to a random article on Wikipedia, posts a quote from Wikipedia, or both. For example: While I’m away you can read about famous shoe throwing incidents on Wikipedia, or ponder this beautiful quote: “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” – Bertrand Russell.

One of the greatest party games for the Gamecube is being remastered, Super Monkey Ball. The game will include my favorite, Super Monkey Ball 2 along with local only multiplayer modes. And you know what, I’m glad it’s local only. That’s the only way to play it multiplayer.

Quake turned 25 this year, and what a ground breaking game it was (and still is). One of my favorite features was that you could put any music CD in your computer and use that music as the background music. Many a days were spent listening to Junior Brown as I played Quake.

Apple’s Airpods are pretty small, but I never thought seeing what happens after I swallowed one.

David Hasselhoff confirms that the Knight Rider reboot is happening. Could Knight Rider work today? When it was released, computers were mysterious boxes used by few, and cars were very important in most people’s lives. Today, computers are ubiquitous and cars are viewed more as a tool and not a source of identity. I’m hoping something cool can come of it though.

If you thought that the Super Mario Bros. Movie could stand to have more added to it, then do I have good news for you. There is an extended version of the movie that has been found!

If you are feeling nostalgic for iOS 4, there is an app for that.

I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be good, especially with the people involved. Too bad I won’t be in England in August.

Here is an example of a site you didn’t know you needed in your life, the Ace Ventura sliding door simulator.

Some of the things I find on the internet are fascinating, and the story behing the use of the Roman numberal IIII instead of IV is pretty cool.

Fascinating look at the first cheatsheets in the history of computing, the Unix Manpages.

A Texas mother went to school pretending to be her 7th grade daughter. She is now being charged with trespassing. No word yet on how her grades were that day.

The US military can deploy pretty quickly to remote locations, but there is still a limit on how fast they can get there with a plan. That’s why the military is looking at using rockets to transport supplies.

If you watched sitcoms in the 90s, you inevitably watched an episode where the characters traveled to Disney World and hilarity ensued. But why? The CEO at the time, Michael Eisner, invited any and all sitcoms to pitch an idea. If it was approved, they could film at Disney World. One notable sitcom at the time, Friends, did not get their story approved. Apparently, Joey hooking up with Cinderella was a little to risque for Eisner.

I sit around thinking about outlandish things that would be cool, but here is someone making their dreams reality. Nickbild built a way to play Laser Blaster with a light gun.

When I lose faith in what the internet can produce, I’m going to come back to this video.

I didn’t know there were so many posers paying for video game cheats. Vice looks at the cheating group that made $70 million off of PUBG. The only winners in this are the people selling the cheats, because the players playing the game lose on both sides.

Someday when your bored, ask me to weigh in on how much I don’t really like Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Unfortunately, I don’t get to rant in court about how bad they are. At least, not yet.

Here are some people answering the important question, What is the shortest possible game of Monopoly. Unfortunately, you’re limited to what the dice rolls, so the chances of this happening in a real life game is pretty slim.

This is awesome, Massively Multiplayer Online Deathmatch Joust.

Here’s something you don’t think of when using flashcard apps, the fact that most card decks are automatically set to public. And if they contain nuclear secrets, that can be a problem.

One way that police track down illegal weed growers is to monitor energy usage. However, there is another profitable venture with free energy, and that is mining Bitcoin.

A Comcast customer wanted to use Ubuntu and decided to download it over Bittorrent. His reward? A DMCA notice. Just to be clear, Ubuntu is freely distributable, and using Bittorrent to download files is also legal.

Jenna Fischer has given us a behind the scene look on Jim and Pam’s proposal at the “gas station”. I’m sure they had a good reason to build a set, but, still.

Before you get too excited, Disney didn’t actually change the content of the film. Besides adding lots of lens flare, JJ Abrams added a lot of blue to The Rise of Skywalker, which Disney has now removed in the version on Disney+. The stills look better than the original. Unfortunately, this doesn’t improve the movie enough to get me to watch it again.

In The Great Wings Rush, The Verge digs into the onslaught of chicken wing delivery and how restaurant chains are trying to get a piece of the action. Even Chuck E. Cheese is in on it. For myself, I like a good wing as much as the next guy. However, I am also lazy when it comes to my food and wings require a little too much effort for my taste (pun intended).

Yes, there is a blog about typerwriters.

On the 20th anniversary of the Star Trek Voyager finale, The Hollywood Report laments on how the finale missed its greatness. The biggest argument was that we didn’t see how the crew re-assimilated (pun intended) back into their old life. My biggest beef with the finale was how they castrated the borg, but we’ll save that discussion for another day. In the case of the finale being underwhelming, let’s look back at a great TV show that had the same premise, Gilligan’s Island.

This is a really cool use of deepfake technology, blending the actor’s and dubber’s facial expersions to make a great looking dubbed film. There are so many foreign language films that may be able to find a broader audience with this technology.

With the pandemic shutting down offices, Google projects that it saved over a billion dollars by not having workers in the office. And they made even more money.

For Memorial Day Ars Technica re-ran an article from 2016 where they fed a neural network a bunch of sci fi scripts and created a movie from the results. It is bizarrely fascinating.

Sometimes you have to build what Apple won’t make.

Finally, some research into whether night shift on your phone helps you sleep better. Night shift is when your phone removes the blues from the image, giving you this dull, brown tinted screen. I use it, especially in dark areas, because even when the phone is turned down to the minimum brightness it can still be blinding.

Killing off Google Reader just wasn’t enough for Google, now they are twisting the knife by experimenting with adding RSS feeds to the Android version of Chrome. My current favorite RSS reader is Inoreader, it’s what I use to follow sites and people that I’m interested in, chronologically. I don’t miss stories because an algorithm thought I wasn’t interested.

There is a bug in iOS that breaks wifi when you connect to an access point named %p%s%s%s%s%n. No word yet on whether the person who found the bug is still entering random printf statements to name their SSID.

“I’d buy that for a dollar!”

I’m really fascinated with cyberdeck builds, and this one built with a mini tv and Colecovision control is pretty awesome.

The Smiley Crew’s Arcadefest has a couple of html5 games with the old arcade feel. All for free!

OWC found out that you can get get up to 67% faster Thunderbolt drive performance with your M1 Mac simply by using an external Thunderbolt display.

A couple of retrospectives on one of the greatest movies of all time, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Enduring Myths of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Karen Allen, Harrison Ford, Spielberg Revisit Raiders of the Lost Ark – The Hollywood Reporter. For some reason I don’t remember seeing it in the theater, although I know I must have. It ran for 10 months, so I figure I saw it at least a couple of times.

Here’s a microwave that runs Linux for voice control. It’s only a matter of time before Doom is ported to it. Also, one step closer to getting Linux on my toaster.

Remember in the past when you could fit a bootable copy of Linux on to one single floppy drive? Well, remember no more because you can now do it again with a modern Linux kernel.

First it was COBOL programmers that were needed and now we find out that Fortran programmers are also needed. Too bad I left my COBOL skills back in the 80s, I could be sitting pretty right now.

First we have the death of Adobe Flash and hot on its heels is the death of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Well, it’s only on life support, the plug will be pulled in June of 2022. Does anyone still run IE?

A University of Cambridge researcher was written very succinctly how social media likes are lazy and useless. “It is a form of pseudo-engagement which absolves us of the guilt of not responding to others’ posts but creates the bare minimum of human connection.” A couple of years ago I read the book The Circle bu Dave Eggers. He saw back in 2014 how useless likes were. If something doesn’t require effort, how much value can you really place on it?

What NES Development Looks Like On The Apple II

The cheer mom case in PA has gotten a little more interesting. The mom in this case was charged with creating “deepfake” videos in an attempt to shame members of her daughter’s cheerleading squad. But, upon further analysis, the video could be authentic.

Not only is working long hours pretty bad for you, but your computer is out to get you too. The cat has no comment.

Gameloft has released a new version of Oregon Trail for Apple Arcade that removed a lot of historical inaccuracies. However, you can still die of dysentery.

I love the strange and the weird as much as the next guy and stories about games with high heels and long nails going viral doesn’t make me wonder, it makes me disappointed. How did I not think of it first?!?

A Colorado man thought that committing election fraud by voting for his missing wife was a good idea.

The Smithsonian Museum is getting a new exhibit, an X-Wing from Star Wars. Normally, this would be a cause for celebration, except they’re taking a prop from Rise of Skywalker. I had a problem with this model of X-Wing since The Force Awakens, and it has to do with the engines. In the original series, the X-Wings had four circular engines, and when the wings opened in to the X formation, each engine went with the wing.

Here’s a great hack, displaying full motion video on an Apple //e. Hopefully a version of Sewer Shark will be released soon.

The first game that had an exploration concept that most people played was the game Adventure for the Atari 2600. Warren Robinett’s concept of 30 rooms in 1980 was so revolutionary that the manual had to explain how to navigate between screens. David Crane outdid Adventure with Pitfall and its 255 screens. It is quite amazing.

In 2004, what were some of the predications for 2014?

This is pretty smart of Harley Davidson. Instead of launching an electric motorcycle under their brand, they are creating a new brand called Livewire. No word yet on facial hair or age requirements.

I love a good hack, and this one is great. Here is a project that allows you to upload data using Apple’s Find My network. Apple’s Find My network is pretty cool. Apple devices can see other Apple devices around them, and upload information to Apple that owner of said devices can use to find their devices. It’s all done securely, and is really cool. This is how Apple’s new AirTags work, since they do not have any sort of wifi or cellular capability.

I thought the pinnacle of technological advancement was when the calculator watch was released, but I was wrong.

Subway operators are complaining that the newest Sandwiches are a safety hazard. I say, the sandwich business has always been dangerous, you knew what you were getting in to when you signed up.

Researchers started studying Lego bricks to answer the question, “How tall can a Lego tower get?”. I knew Lego bricks were known for their strength and consistency, but I never imagined they were as strong as they are.

It is with great sadness that I have to pass along the information that Eric Carle, of The Very Hungry Caterpillar fame has passed away. He was 91. I met him in 2008 during a trip to Connecticut and Massachusetts. We had a spare day and I had the internet on my phone (shout out to the HTC Ozone!) so we started looking for things to do. As we researched, we found that we were very far from The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Here is something truly amazing, a boot floppy that will start up an Atari, Commodore C64, or an Apple II. It’s not a flippy, but just one side that boots whatever machine it is inserted.

Due to the craziness of the Pokemon card market, the retailer Target stopped selling the cards on May 14th. If you’re still jonesing for some cards, Walmart has your back.

Today is Towel Day, the day to remember Douglas Adams and the day to carry that most useful item every interstellar hitchhiker needs, a towel.

I have no idea what the Eternals even are, so I guess I need to wait for a trailer with a little more substance.

I don’t know if this is foolhardy or brilliant, but it’s currently profitable. A private-equity firm bought a power plant to mine bitcoin.

One difference between Macs and other computers with 3.5" disk drives was that the Mac relieved you of the work of pulling the disk out of the drive. The Mac had a powered eject that would gently eject the disk from the machine and basically handing the disk to you. This works great where you have gravity, but it has some issues in space.

The intersection of people playing Doom and needing a pregnancy test is pretty slim, but here we are. First up is a pregnancy test modified to run Doom. This is possible because Digital pregnancy tests are now almost as powerful as the original IBM PC.

TRUE Limits Of Humanity – The Final Border We Will Never Cross

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom isn’t one of my favorites, but I’m warmed up to it in recent years. And now I learned that not only did The Temple of Doom give us the PG-13 rating that also Dan Aykroyd had a cameo!

What do you do when your Macbook has stopped working? How about stuffing a Raspberry Pi 4 inside.

By using FaceApp, Yasuo Nakajima became a Twitter sensation with tens of thousands of followers. He did it because “no one wants to read what a normal middle-aged man posts”. If you are reading this, you are one of the “no one”.

Landing on another planet is an impressive achievement, and China has done it. NASA makes it look easy, but even they are saying that 60% of Mars missions end in failure.

Too bad there aren’t any widescreen CRT monitors available, so I guess you’ll need to play the new official widescreen version of Doom and Doom II on an LCD.

Chicago is releasing 1,000 cats to take care of a rat problem. Most cats I see lie around most of the time doing nothing, so I don’t know how effective they’re going to be.

I gave up on Facebook a while ago, and things like this reinforce my decision.

President Biden mentioned that he had a Venmo account and it took 10 minutes for Buzzfeed to find it. After they found the account, they were able to map out the president’s friends and family.

Last August Russell Kirsch passed away. His pioneering work in computer graphics led to the development of the first scanned image, one of his son. The research from these early years led to the use of digital images in the computer for years to come.

This month is the 20th anniversary of the hidden gem that is A Knight’s Tale, the story of a boy who wants more than the hand he was dealt. It’s a great movie, and if you haven’t seen it, now is as good as time as any. It’s such a fun movie. Yes, the music of Queen is used in the movie

Here’s a look at what it was like to buy a computer in 1994. What impressed me most was how much knowledge the sales people had! The footage was filmed in an Incredible Universe, which was a pretty cool store at the time. Too bad they didn’t make it. And maybe you want a more professional look at buying a computer, this time in 1993?

The Apple II didn’t support lowercase letters and now you know why. Inverse characters are a nice hack though.

A woman in Pennsylvania thought it would be a good idea to make fakes of her daughter’s cheerleading squad in an attempt to embarrass them and force them off of the team. I question the use of the term deepfake since this sounds more along the line of Photoshopping the images.

A McDonald’s robber wanted McNuggets on his way out of the restaurant after threatening the employees with a gun. I’m hoping he was going to use some of that sweet cash for a gun since he was too early for McNuggets.

Signal is an instant messaging client that is praised for its privacy and security model, while Cellebrite is a company that hacks smartphones for police organizations. You would think that Cellebrite would put a priority on its own security operations, but that is not the case. Basically, they pwned the device.

One prominent aspect of my high school career was the idea of a mixtape, and the man who made it possible, Lou Ottens has passed away . The art of the mixtape continued into the 90s, transitioning to CDs. In the transition, I think the mixtape lost something. When you create a tape for someone, the order of the songs is important, but CDs let you jump around, so you lost some of that magic.

Facebook will sell you an Oculus headset for $299, but will require you to have a Facebook account. Now, Facebook will let you buy a headset without requiring a Facebook account, all for the price of $799. And then, after the first year, Facebook twists the knife and charges you an annual fee of $180.

It won’t be long until all of pop culture will be under the Disney umbrella.

If anyone wants to get me an early Christmas present, here’s an idea.

A user posted over at Reddit a picture of his 79 year old dad’s dedication to Wii Fit. Unfortunately, it looks like the moderators removed the post, but I saved the picture:

Michael Collins, who piloted the Apollo 11 command module, has died. He has the honor of taking a picture that includes all of humanity, except for himself.

In another attempt of Ohio attempting to out do Florida, an Ohio state senator attended a government meeting on Zoom… WHILE DRIVING! I could give him the benefit of the doubt that he attends to phone calls while driving, and he could have done the same thing here. Except he was messing with virtual backgrounds and fiddling with the camera. And he picked a home office for his background. At least he had his seat belt on.

If you like to tinker with your browser, or want full control over everything your browser is doing, the you will want to check out the Opera GX

Good news about Loki’s new series on Disney Plus!!

I’m a huge fan of the instant messaging service Telegram, with one of it’s major advantages is how open the service is. @mrcatacroquer was able to use this openness to build a device to let his grandma communicate over Telegram with her grandchildren. It’s an amazing device, and something that you couldn’t pull off with any other instant messaging service.

It’s just not your local McDonald’s that has problems with their ice cream machine. Wired dug into why McDonald’s ice cream machines are always broken, and the answer is quite surprising.

If you can’t get your fill of Star Wars, be sure to check out the Star Wars Vintage Collection on Disney Plus. The opening of Ewoks is so bizarre, I have nothing to compare it to.

This looks really impressive:

I’m most excited at 2:57…

After being used for the largest hack ever Solarwinds came up with a brilliant solution to their PR nightmare. Changing the name to N-able is a stroke of genius. A totally new Google-able name!

To commemorate the release of the Star Wars Droids Commemorative Forever® Stamps, the United States Postal Service is hosting a virtual dedication ceremony on Facebook and Twitter on Star Wars Day, May the Fourth.

Josh Swain got tired of all of the Josh imposters, so he challenged all of the Joshes to a duel. Luckily, the carnage from that days was recorded:

I do a lot of work in the terminal. From now on, if I’m working in front of people I’m going to use the Edex-ui terminal emulater. Look at it, it screams hacker:

Yes, I have owned a minivan. And, there is no comparison to an SUV, a minivan is better in all respects. I’m finally finding some kindred spirits! The minivan is more comfortable, gets better gas mileage, and has more room inside than any SUV. I loved out Town & Country, especially the automatic sliding door. It felt like I was in the future every time I hit the button to open or close it.

Aircraft weighing is a thing, because every pound has a cost to move. This works out ok until a computer error calculates the weight of adults as if they were children. Luckily there wasn’t any issue!

It was too long ago where technology forced us to have more shared experiences, especially with pop culture. Growing up, there were only three networks, and only three choices of shows during prime time. Back in 1999 there was another shared experience, when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Teaser Trailer was released on the internet. The limitations of video on the internet were so much of an issue that my sister and I went and saw Wing Commander specifically because the trailer was being shown.

But I do remember some of the comic book superhero names. If you remember them and what to create names of your own, then I have the site for you.

Just to let you know, today is Alien Day, so be sure to celebrate the planet LV-426 by watching Alien, Aliens, or sucking on someone’s face.

On March 14th, Ludwig Ahgren started streaming, stating he was going to stream until no one else subscribed to his account or 31 days, whichever came first. Well, the 31 days came first. It’s just amazing that by the end there were 225,000 people watching and he had 282,000 subs. Let me do the math, at $2.50 per sub, that’s $705,000, per month (if the subscribers don’t cancel). That’s a whole lotta cheddar.

@tvaziri examines the theory of whether the switch of Twin Pines Mall to Lone Pine Mall in Back to the Future is an Easter egg or thing in the movie. My definition of Easter Egg is a sly wink or nod for the audience to notice and feel a sense of satisfaction, while a thing in the movie is something that should be in the movie because it makes sense or is required for continuity.

The screenwriters of ‘Predator’ are suing Disney to regain control of their creation. The first movie was awesome, and the second one kept the party going. After that, it was all downhill. Speaking of the first movie, Shane Black, who played Hawkins, went on to write several Lethal Weapon movies along with Iron Man 3 and The Last Boy Scout.

Just when you think you may be too old for the internet game along comes eight senior citizens showing you how it’s done. There’s hope for me yet!

You know that feeling where you want to get a game of Shufflepuck in, but you’re sitting at Starbucks working on your novel? Well, now you can do both. There are two emulators that you can compile and run under iOS.

No one can identify a bank robber because of his obnoxious tieGoogle Translate. I also learned from Going in Style to also put on fake tattoos.

Here’s my summary of the Apple event: Apple showed of some cool stuff that are total wants and not needs. They announced: AirTags - Track your Crap. Really cool, too expensive. Although I could see parents using these on their kids. I’m sure someone will come out with the kid AirTag collar. The tracking technology is very cool. Multi-colored M1 iMacs - These look pretty awesome, as long as you’re a Jay Leno fan.

I will admit I was wrong when Netflix switched to streaming. My own myopia to where things were going caused me to not see the genius in planning for the future. Unfortunately, this future also means the loss of the greatest movie library ever assembled.

Pretty amazing that NASA has flown a helicopter on another planet!

Here is Carrie Fisher’s screen test with Harrison Ford for Star Wars. It’s interesting how different the story is, along with her portrayal Princess Leia. I don’t know what accent she’s trying to do…

In Portland Oregon a pesky pandemic was going to stop the 43 year streak of the showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In college somehow I fell into the crowd that would go to the local showing of RHPS, so I went one time. I didn’t have props, and I hadn’t ever seen the movie, so it was all a new experience with me. At the end, I realized I had seen something truly amazing.

Taylor Swift had lost control of the masters of her first 6 albums, so she took things in to her own hands and have started to re-record her songs. Fearless (Taylor’s Version is a re-recording of her second album. Good for her, I’m hoping she posts the story over in /r/MaliciousCompliance.

This goes in the if you have to ask why you’ll never understand department.

It’s amazing the single-frame control one has to have to beat Super Mario Bros in under 4:55!

April 12th, 2021 was the anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. What amazes me is that it will be 50 years next year since President Nixon officially announced the space shuttle program.

Sure, NFTs may be making the headlines with insane prices, but in the real world, so are real products. A Sealed Super Mario Bros. sells for $660,000. I wish I could find things like that in the bottom of my desk.

The Planet Money Podcast went through the process of buying a superhero.

Are you running out of time and got things to do? Then I have the scooter for you!

Most of the fonts we use on computers are proportional, where the letter i takes up less space than a w. A monospace font uses the same amount of space for every charater. This is important when programming. Well, now you can use all the fun of Comic Sans in your editor with Comic Mono.

I grew up with some pretty dangerous toys, such as lawn jarts and apparently teeter-totters, but they don’t hold a candle to a Giant Stride.

I may be the only person who liked the Battleship movie (Rhianna was amazing BTW), so I’m going to keep an open mind about Peacock’s proposed Frogger game show.

Larry Osterman answers the question, why is the DOS path character ?.

The remastered Diablo II will let you load your original saved games.

No, this isn’t an Onion article. A mom in Florida, in a show solidarity with her daughter, beat up another student. The mom came to the school wearing a boxing glove on her left hand. She said she couldn’t remove it because it was super glued.

Everything else has a price tag nowadays, so why not charge people to join channels on your Slack or Discord. I’m not a big fan of this drive toward Discord, but I can see the allure since web forums aren’t very usable. Too bad there is no money in Usenet News.

For all you hipsters out there, vinyl record production has finally entered the 21st century.

I’m not a big fan of all of the crappy attempts at humor that occur on the internet on April 1st, but this one works:

If you’re not first, your last, and Instagram is the most invasive app in regards to your privacy. No wonder the founders of Instagram left Facebook. And, not really a surprise, but Facebook is number 2 on their list.

GPT-3 is an AI that is trained for different tasks, and apparent the results are sometimes hilarious! This is pure gold though: I’m losing my voice from all the screaming your hotness is causing me to do.

Who says there are no more heroes? A windows hacker and developer who goes by the name Albacore discovered a Windows 95 Easter Egg that was hidden for 25 years. I want more information about how they found the Easter Egg. Unless they always use The Adams Family or Trading Places character names in their research.

According to AT&T, 10Mbps upload is enough for anyone. This could be true if you’re the only person in the house, but what if there are two? Or three? Or someone wants to stream to Twitch. I preordered Starlink just so I could escape the paltry uploads that Spectrum offers. It will be interesting to see how well it works. Hopefully I’ll find out by the end of summer.

Radio Shack may come back to haunt us. I wonder if they’ll still need my number to buy batteries… On second thought, who would buy batteries from Radio Shack? I’ve replaced all mine with rechargeables.

Orion Trail is a cool looking update to the venerable favorite The Oregon Trail.

The Vulture has put together a list of the 32 greatest character actors working today. Unfortunately, J. K. Simmons is ineligible for this list because he went and won an Oscar.

The only thing I know about Jackson Pollock is that he might have looked like Ed Harris, but now I know that him and other modern masters also thought like physicists.

Although the first movie wasn’t all that great, I still liked it. The trailers for Suicide Squad are some of my favorite trailers of all time! Not quite as good, but still good:

This is all sorts of awesome.

When AI starts cheating like a teenager do we really need to worry about it enslaving humanity?

This is some excellent research into all of the photos that make up the collage on the Beatles Sgt. Pepper Album.

The Office ended in 2013, so maybe they thought that no one would know John Krasinski.

Federal Judges are tired of lawyers trying to squeeze more pages into briefs with the Garamond font. Which, in my mind is ironic.

I love the writing of Douglas Adams, but I had no idea how hard it was on him.

I can’t believe I’m just now hearing about The Hood Internet, an artist on Soundcloud. He has a ton of remixes, including an entire set based on each year of the 80s. 1984 has all of the feels: