Super Mario Bros on an 8×8 LED matrix from Chloe Fan on Vimeo.

I dubb this gallery “Alien: The New Meme“. I will only feature a few of the pictures here, check the entire gallery for the full set.

Your addiction is known to me.

Standing amongst greatness.

Jesus doesn't want me for birdseed.

The limitless potential.

I saw that linked from a site today and they seemed to think the kids reaction was over the top. I don’t know, maybe. People on YouTube mentioned this is the next Nintendo 64 kid.

Some people thought that was over the top too. A kid getting excited about getting something and reacting that way.

Hmmm. I thought both videos were funny. Its cool to see people get excited about cool stuff like video games.

I can understand reacting this way to getting a present for Christmas. When my parents got me a Super Nintendo I reacted nearly like these kids. I hugged it and everything. I screamed. I screamed because it was the Super Nintendo a very very cool game machine.

Good for these kids in being excited about something. Why? Because they dared to be themselves. Society will attempt to beat any excitement and verve like this out of you so enjoy your emotions while you can. When you get to the 30′s which I am fastly approaching you can’t be like this. You need to be reasoned, intelligent and mature. Excitement on this level is for out of balanced children. Right?

*sigh*

The Wizarding World Map

“The Blu-ray and two-disc edition DVD of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was released today. A special Wizarding World of Harry Potter sneak peek feature on the extras disc reveals a few more details for the new land at Universal’s Islands of Adventure.”

More details about the theme park are here.

The wife and I are resonable Harry Potter freaks. When we heard about this we were pretty excited. Give it a few years and we will prob go. On our nutty Harry Potter scale, id say we are a good 6 of 10. Reading the books thrice over isn’t too bad. 8′s are cosplayers and 9-10′s go to JK Rowling book signings dressed as characters and host “Hogwarts parties.” Then again one year for Halloween we went as Ron and Hermione.

You have become all powerful as the Pope has forseen!

“In the 1980s, while the west towers were under construction, Washington National Cathedral held a decorative sculpture competition for children. Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader.”

Wow. Not only is the Washington area made much cooler because of my play of Fallout 3, but now its even more so. I need to put this on my list of places to go if ever I return to DC as a tourist.

This is one of the things I found searching for images and "new format"

As you may have noticed, this website has undergone a site content change. I quickly decided a few days ago to do a few things differently.

1. I am going to put some kind of media in each post. I used to be big into lots of text and almost no pictures or video. That is going to change. I already love the new focus as the blog seems more alive with interesting stuff. If you don’t care about what I write, hopefully ive picked a good picture or video to go with the concept.

2. I am going to break each post into a bite sized nugget. First with some kind of quotation or a source. This is to give a seminal understanding of what is being presented to be followed up by a brief response. It may be a long one, if it is I plan on breaking it up with more media.

The reason for this change is because I grew tired of reading my blog. The material was good but it was not that much fun to slag through post after post of only text. In a internet world of rich media, this blog looked like a newspaper. That is to say, extremely borish.

I will still post some long winded diatribes if thats what keeps you interested, but look forward to my new posts on movies, music, politics and video games. I know I enjoy going back and looking over them.

One thing I find is that it seems and perhaps this is only a Portland thing, but more often than id like when I am totally engrossed in some piece of art in shared setting(movie, symphony) people feel like it is a good setting for a chat.  Or put another way, people seem to think its completely fine to talk during a movie or symphony.

*sigh*

I don’t go to the symphony or a movie because I want to like going, I go because I love it.  I held my breath a few times during tonights symphony so I could catch all the notes that were played.  I am not the kind of person that goes to movies or the symphony because I want to like it, I go because I love it.  I don’t really understand why people think the Schnitz or a Regal Cinema is their chat zone though.

And yes, I am that guy that will ask you to stop.  One time I turned to people talking and laughing during District 9 and I said “are you going to talk the whole time.”  The guy turned to me and simply said “yes.”  They talked less, but continued.

Just like tonights amazing symphonic performance District 9 sucked me in too.  As with amazing pieces of art…. Well they are engrossing and I am taken in by that.  Peoples chat sessions bring me out of that zone that I love being in…. I guess its the fascinating art zone or all encompassing creative pull or whatever.  Whatever the words, its awesome and it sucks when rude people bring you out of it.

I think those kinds of people should like plop in a DVD and chat it up in their own living rooms.  Put on OPB and watch the symphony and say stuff like “I WONDER WHAT THE STORY OF THIS SONG IS!”  or things like “IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS SONG IS A CONVERSATION!”  or the always amazing people that, like tonight, love pointing out what everyone is already noticing, like “HEY THAT GUY TURNED THE PAGE FOR THE PIANIST!”

Ummmm, yeah and everyone saw it too, thanks for the commentary Ebert you really make this symphony worth listening too….  OK so yeah, no.

So I turned my head and said “Can you please not talk, thank you.”  They looked at me like I was the Anti Christ…. And I guess I am the prince of darkness, the prince of darkness that enjoys the art in question minus the inane commentary.

Then again, I do love Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  But there is a time and a place for that.  And that time and place is in my living room.

After intermission Rob and I moved to the front because there were vacant seats.  It was awesome as the respectful silence of the people around us was complimentary to the music.

The first premise brought to you by slashfilm: “Would You Be Sad If Rental Stores Vanished?”

I am going to answer this in two parts, literally and figuratively.

LITERALLY:  If rental stores around the US vanished it would be a very cool thing.  Stores just don’t melt into nothingness.  In my mind I would think alien store abduction or a massive USA wide prank.  Then again.. a really good prank.  Maybe rental stores did it to advertise their online business.  The kind of buzz it would generate would be amazing.  Then again, if it was the alien thing, well I don’t know what would happen about that.  Maybe we would take the space shuttle to Mars and nuke it or something.  No I didn’t mean nuke the space shuttle at Mars, I meant nuke Mars by taking the space shuttle and dropping a bomb on it.

FIGURATIVELY: I think its somewhat sad to lose things I grew up with that I like.  Like drive in movies.  Then again, there is 99w in Oregon and the wife and I go there a few times a year to check out the double feature.  I guess my answer, in a way, is that if there is something people like, it will exist in some form.  Perhaps video rental stores will be a smaller thing, perhaps only in boutique store form but I don’t think they will vanish.  As the Blockbuster and Hollywood discontinue more brick stores we can all buy cheap movies on clearance.  I like that more than I like renting a DVD for $7 or whatever the insane price is now.  Do technological shifts make me sad?  Some.  Like the shift to digital downloads instead of physical copies.  They usually come with DRM and I really am not a fan.  Oh well, maybe its in our consumer nature to only have things for four seconds and never expect to own anything.  LEASE LEASE LEASE, CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT… right?  right?

Bueller… Bueller..

“Linus thinks the Linux Kernel is Bloated” – Yeah it is and he says its unavoidable.  Seriously though, everything seems bloated these days.  Budgets & spending, Operating System Kernels and Jessica Simpson.  The Mac OS I use for work is a cow or I guess a better analogy is that its a walrus.  Its also a very pretty walrus.  This pretty walrus needs 4 gigs of RAM to be adequately skippy when I develop software on it.  I guess Vista requires quite a bit of horsepower too.  You could surf the web on Windows 3.1 so if people want to use something less bloated you can always do that.  Netscape 2 has your back on that one though(I am not sure maybe it was Netscape 1).  Which means you couldn’t really do anything other than Craigslist on the machine.  Then again, it is not bloated by today’s standards.  Enjoy.

Clearly bloat isn’t the worst of problems, but it is one.  Then again RAM is pretty cheap these days.

See the slashdot comments for somewhat interesting take on this.  If you dare.

“Michael Jacksons last concert video is coming!“  I put it here as proof that I can write about things I won’t see or really care too much about.  Then again I cared enough to say I was disinterested in it.

“Mario Kart The Movie“  This is pretty creative and funny.  I like the part where Bowser eats mushrooms.  Well done fellow geeks, well done.

“The Tooth Fairy” File this under “holy fucking shit” but The Rock is going to be playing The Tooth Fairy in a movie about the Tooth Fairy.  Ill just let that one speak for itself.

“Guy Replaces Halflife 2 Sounds With His Own Voice” This is a clear example of how awesome it is to be alive in the greatest age of mankind. This is incredible, this guy totally captured how I spent my young life in the car with my parents. I would daydream of chasing the Terminator or whatever and make sound effects with my voice to myself in the car. Ahh the good old days.  I wish this guy could get a award for this.

“NiN’s The Fragile is 10 Years Old!”  Trent event said there is going to be a mega reissue in 2010. Nice.  The Fragile is a great NiN double album.  One of my fav NiN albums actually.  Listening to it now to celebrate.  I own it but you can stream it all online at last.fm.  I recommend the following tacks: “Were in this together”(Possibly NiN’s most optimistic song to date), “Even Deeper,” “The Great Below,” “Where is Everybody?” “The Big Comedown,” “The Day The Whole World Went Away” and the rest of the album.