loonyblog.

Yes it’s true, geeks are everywhere. I’m traveling this week on a press tour, and while enjoying a break between demos, a journalist tipped me off to this music video for a song called “Boten Anna” by BassHunter. Take a look at it. Seems like your average Swedish techno music, right? Well it is, but there’s a funny twist to it. Here’s a link to the subtitled version, and here are some of the lyrics:

I know a bot.
Her name is Anna. Anna is her name.
She can ban, ban you so hard.
She cleans up our channel.
I want to tell you that I know a bot.

That’s right, it’s about an IRC bot. Dude, even I think that’s nerdy. But the funny thing is that this song is apparently a big hit in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Of course, according to Wikipedia, that may be because the word “bot” was mistaken by many as “boat”, and he’s shown riding a boat throughout the video, but still, I’m not sure I know many boats that can “ban, ban you so hard.” (And I’m not sure I want to, for that matter).

So in case you were wondering, geeks are everywhere these days. The latest proof, which I got a kick out of, is the news that Superman Returns (which no, I haven’t seen yet, thanks to the aforementioned press tour) star Brandon Routh plays World of Warcraft. This puts him alongside other celebrity geeks like Dave Chapelle who have also confessed to being more than slightly addicted to WoW. I may not be a WoW player, but still, it’s fun to hear someone confess to something like that. Of course none of that comes near Vin Diesel’s confession to being a lifelong Dungeons and Dragons player. But then, he’s hardcore.

You have to wonder what they were thinking with this Previews solicitation for a black t-shirt with a white Superman logo. I guess it must have sounded like a good idea at the time.

The next time I find myself at a bar after 2 AM and discover that the group of people sitting next to me are from Ireland, I will not go out of my way to “show them a good time.” Just because they are my “drinking equals” does not mean I need to go out of my way to verify this fact by drinking several shots of sambuca on top of the five hours of drinking already in my system.

Oy. I haven’t been this hung over since my college days. I have no idea what time I got in last night, all I know is that Dan sent me an e-mail consisting entirely of random numbers at 4:48 AM, and since the cab dropped him off first, I’m assuming I got home five minutes after that.

Get a load of this unpublished strip by Howard Cruse…it was originally created in 1976, but deals with gay marriage, a topic that couldn’t make it more relevant today. Being a Howard Cruse comic, it’s naturally more lighthearted than most comics dealing with controversial subject matter. But then, that’s what makes him the best.

It’s taken me almost three solid weeks of work, but my new Pronto design is finally complete. “Complete” meaning it’s in good enough shape for day-to-day use…it’s not finished by any means. With something like this, only weeks and months of daily use will show if my design is as good in practice as it was in Photoshop (not to mention turning up those lingering bugs). But the important thing is that it’s finally ready for prime time (literally).

This momentous occasion was of course heralded by the ceremonial boxing of the remotes. Because I’m upgrading from one Pronto to another, it wasn’t quite as impressive as the last time I did this, but I did add three new remotes to the box (plus my old Pronto). Thanks to my redesign, I can finally box up my DVR, Xbox 360 and AV Switchbox remotes for good (some features were already in there, but now they’re completely taken care of).

If you can’t imagine why I would spend over twenty hours working on a remote control…well, you just don’t know me very well. But that aside, it’s all for a very simple reason. I spend more time with my remote control than I do with any electronic device. It is the center of my digital lifestyle. And dammit, I will not settle for some hideously ugly stick with a thousand buttons and someone else’s misguided idea of what constitutes good interface design (sorry, but I just hate those Harmony remotes so much).

But it’s done, and that’s the important part. I can now (finally) play Heroes of Might and Magic V. And hey, what do you know…there’s already a patch out. Neat.

There’s a great piece up on GameRevolution looking at the 50 worst video game names of all time. I’m not sure I understand their ranking system (”Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother” deserves to be higher than 48, IMHO), but that doesn’t make classic misnomers like “Tongue of the Fatman” and “Nuts & Milk” from being downright hilarious. Also surprising is the fact that they left out some of my favorite misnomers, like Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Medieval: Total War (soon to be joined by its rediculously named sequel, “Medieval 2: Total War”). Although I suppose that’s understandable when the list contains games like Irritating Stick and Panic Restaurant.

…but according to CHUD, Futurama is returning to television, with new episodes and all the original cast in 2008. The braind new episodes will air on…Comedy Central?

I refuse to get excited…as of a couple of days ago, the direct-to-DVD movies were “on track”, so it’s possible these are just the same things only aired on television. But we’ll see.

Either way, new Futurama is new Futurama.

Update: here’s the story from the NY Post, so it’s definitely happening, although it says nothing about how this affects the movies.

Update x2: It’s now been confirmed that these new episodes are in fact just the DVD movies. Still, new content is new content, however it’s delivered.

Just like with Batman Begins, I’ve been given an invite from my office to attend a DC Comics screening of Superman Returns. Alas, I’m being asked by the same office to travel next week.

Ask not for whom the bone bones, it bones for thee.

But I’ll live. I’ve waited 20 years for this movie. I can wait another five days.

I took this Sex I.D. test over at the beeb to see if my brain was Male or Female. Apparently I’m dead even. Or that’s not true…I’m tipped towards female by like a point. Which I’d be perfectly willing to accept, except the analysis of my score is basically useless, containing such things as, “You found this test neither hard nor easy,” and, “You may have a balanced female-male brain.” The best is the 3D Shapes test where I scored well below the average for both men and women. Yeah, I can’t read a map. I’ve managed to survive in life somehow.

I think I want my ten minutes back.

Ah, eBay, how much do I love thee? The other day I mentioned my love of Power Pack…as I was writing that, I thought it might be fun to read some of those old issues again. Since there’s only one collection of the series out there (and that came out a long time ago), I figured my best bet for finding those would be good ol’ eBay.

Sure enough, ten seconds later, I was bidding on the complete run of the series. The. Complete. Run. All 60+ issues. And two days later, I won, for less than the cover price of that one and only collection. Sometimes it’s a very nice thing that my interests have a tendency to be utterly worthless (when I was selling my comics by the pound, this was a problem…now, not so much).

With one eBay victory in hand, I turned my sights towards Nintendo’s oh-so-sexy DS Lite. I already have a DS of course, and I was considering selling my system and a couple of games back to GameStop for the pittance I’d get from them, but eBay would be so much nicer to me. So faster than you can say “eBay away!” I was putting it up for auction, where it now sits, if you’re interested in bidding.

eBay is one of the best examples of what the web can do. There aren’t many other sites I put in the same class…pretty much it comes down to eBay, Google, Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. There are other sites, even sites I visit more frequently, but these are the ones that have had the most impact on my life, and I can’t imagine how I ever survived without them.