FoxTrot and iPad

Saw this and had to share. I can relate to the humor of Bill Amend’s FoxTrot.

Wiiwaa Video Game Will Have You Saying, Wii!

Seems I grew up too late for all the cool toys. I just missed the Big Wheel, too late for the PS2, and don’t get me started on the Nintendo DS. We had bikes, cards, and make-believe games (not saying that’s all bad) but I sure wish I could be a kid again. Now, along comes Wiiwaa for the Wii. Oh well, missed another one, but you still gotta check it out. Fun! Watch the video and then let me know what were/are some of your favorite games growing up?

Turkey Bowling Is Back For The Holidays!

Fun online Turkey Bowling game is back for the holidays. Give it a shot.

I actually did better this year than last. I got a 70! Try it and let me know what score(s) you get here on WeirdGuy blog.

Have fun!

Kevin Kelly of WIRED Talks At TED About The Web’s Next 5000 Days

Kevin Kelly is one of those guys I could listen to for a time and then have to walk away and ponder on all the implications of the information I have just received. He is one of a handful of people I greatly admire. At the “5000 Day” mark, Kevin talks about the next 5000 days of the Worldwide Web and makes some interesting predictions. The clip is about 20 minutes long, but well worth the time. Sit back and listen to what Kevin has to say.

Jaggedsmile Now On WeirdGuy Blog

Had your Jagged Smile today? If not, close friend and illustrator, Jeff Gregory, will be showing up in the side bar on a weekly basis. You’re bound to be captivated and tickled by his mental offspring.

If your day is sour, you need a jagged smile. If your boss has got you down, you need a jagged smile. If you have to get a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, you need a jagged smile. If the doctor just gave you bad news, you need a jagged smile.

Jagged Smile — humorous doodles and ramblings from a mind that no one should dare to get inside of. Venture at your own risk… and have fun! (See side bar for more)

WeirdGuy Blog Needs You!

Message From Eric - a.k.a. the WeirdGuy

As a reader of WeirdGuy blog I’d like to humbly ask you to help me. I have a short 10 question survey running from August 28 – September 7, 2008 on Zoomerang.  The survey should take 2-3 minutes to run through. Your thoughtful responses will aid me in future developments for this blog.

I realize I am asking you to volunteer your time, but I value your opinion. Please follow the link provided today — the survey is only available for 10 days.

And, if the survey takes longer than 2-3 minutes then you can feel free to spam me with your hate mail.

Thank you for your patronage…can I say “patronage”?…whatever, you know what I mean.

By the way, I’ll reveal the findings here on WeirdGuy when the survey is up, so if you want your response to count, now is the time to act…now! If you do not care, then what are you doing here at WeirdGuy blog to begin with?

Visual Literacy – Cool Learning Tools

By E. Brown

If the visual display of content is something that you ponder over on a regular basis (and what good e-Learning developer or Instructional Designer doesn’t?), be sure to visit Visual Literacy today. There are all kinds of fun things to discover. One of my favorites was the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Check it out!

100 Years Of Animation

Celebrate with me one of the most creative and influential mediums of our time – animation!

One hundred years ago today, the first animated film of all time was released to the public. Fantasmagorie was created over the course of four months by French caricature artist Émile Cohl, who became known as “The Father of the Animated Cartoon”.
(From /film) Read more…

Here’s the original film as seen on YouTube.

Here’s the 2008 Remake of Fantasmagorie with additional animated characters. Fun!

Time Off WeirdGuy Blog – Just One Week

By E. Brown

I’ll be taking a week off to focus on closing out a project (July 28-August 1). More to come from the lessons learned during this engagement. It’s a really cool online course with custom hooks into a client app. The back-end was designed as “plug and play” so content can quickly and easily be swapped out while still being applicable to the course testing and grading scenarios.

See you in a week.

Summer Movie Line Up

Where has the Summer gone in 2008? So many movies and so little budget or time. While visiting my friend’s blog I was reminded of all there is yet to see. Here are some of my thoughts as well as my friend, Melvin.

Speed Racer: Visually stimulating, has an odd cast. I have not seen it yet, but Melvin says, “Go with low expectations and you’ll have a blast.”

I have heard nothing but good fun about IronMan. I still wanna see it while it’s in the theaters.

I have also seen:

• Batman The Dark Knight – definitely a “dark” movie with a nihilistic Joker.
• Kung Fu Panda - Good fun CG movie. My kids love the figures.
• Prince Caspian, Narnia – Good adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book (not closely followed). See my previous post.
• Wall*E - I heard mixed reviews about Pixar’s latest release. “Not much dialogue” was a common complaint. However, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the movements and “body language” created all kinds of dialog.
• Hellboy 2 – Another in a list of good movies directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Still to see: Clone Wars, Indiana Jones, Get Smart, Journey to The Center of The Earth…Hmmm…what else am I missing?

Weird Week In Review – June 13

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

Creativity, Cars, And Ninja Cows

Big Buck Bunny – Buy Or Download

Steampunk Sewer Cleaner

Telecommuting: How To Promote It

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (June 6)
- Weird Week In Review (May 30)
- Weird Week In Review (May 23)

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Steampunk Sewer Cleaner

I really like this genre of art — maybe it’s because of my early love of Anime and Myst. Enjoy!

This piece was built by Alex Holden. Alex says of the project…

The pictured device is a prototype of Joseph Bazalgette’s patent sewer maintenance machine, as demonstrated at the Great Crystal Cyberdrome Exhibition. Its boiler is fired by miasma and it is fitted with a variety of cleaning and pest-control ancillaries. Unfortunately the high manufacturing cost and the temperamental nature of their modified rat brains meant that after the initial batch of fifty had escaped Bazalgette was forced to employ men to maintain London’s sewers. Even today, you can put your ear to a manhole cover in our capital city and hear the distant clanking of brass wheels on brick walkways and the squeal of exterminated rodents.

Related Articles
- Weta® Gets Punk’d
- Steampunk: Old is New Again

Big Buck Bunny – Buy Or Download

Given the look on Big Buck Bunny’s face, you’ll want to buy this DVD and add it to your animation collection.

Related Articles
- Peach Open Movie
- Peach Of A Movie Now Has A Name: Big Buck Bunny

Ironman Case Mod – Awesome! [PICS]

How’s this for creative computing? To see all the steps in detail, visit Random Access. Now, go build your own and send me your images to post here. Have fun!

clipped from www.microcenter.com Body armor for the case? I wanted this case to incorporate aspects of several types of Iron Man armor, starting with his original dull gray steel. Although rivets were not always in evidence, these would add to the effect of heavy plate on the panels. Starting with the case itself, I anchored short lengths of aluminum angle (L brackets) to the top and front edges of the chassis. These were used as anchor points to attach two curved steel panels at the bottom front and top rear of the case. To strengthen the sheet metal, I riveted ribs of aluminum bar stock to the outer edges using two rows of heavy nickel wire for the pins. To create a layered articulated armor on the top, sections of PVC plastic were cut and then anchored to the aluminum angle with sheet metal screws. A final PVC panel was attached to the front and a piece of foam rubber trimmed to fill the gap between the sections. The foam was trimmed to a smooth shape with a razor blade, and then covered with a layer of epoxy Several layers of shredded fiberglass-reinforced epoxy were built up over the surface of the PVC with only a light sanding in between. I wanted a slight ripple effect to simulate hammered metal. I prefer to add pigment to the epoxy so that if the surface gets scratched, there is a solid color exposed. The color layers also make it easier to visualize the final effect and in some cases, can be used as the final finish instead of paint. Ribs made from strips of half-round wood trim were cut to fit the drive bay opening. Two at the top were glued in place; one was attached to the front of the DVD drawer; the fourth rib was attached to the front of the DVD drive using foam mounting tape (this allowed the rib to flex; pressing on the right edge opens the drive tray). For the mask, I went to a recent version of Iron Man – the 2005 and 2006 release of “Extremis” (also available as a graphic novel of the same name). I used the circuit-style lettering in the title for the IMD plaque. To make the case more than just an armored shell, I wanted to give it a purpose – even a fictional one. Readers rarely see Tony Stark testing his armor. He always seems to rush off, slap something together that works perfectly and is well finished, miniaturized, and usually violating several laws of physics – but hey, it’s fiction, right? But what if he had to troubleshoot something? That’s what we do in real life… so I came up with the concept of an Iron Man Diagnostic Unit. Since Tony no longer keeps his identity secret, it means we needed to identify that the unit came from Stark Laboratories. Letters were cut from sheet brass, then dots drilled, edges filed, and lines chiseled. The background was printed on a laser printer, then glued between two sheets of 1/8″ high impact plastic. The brass letters received a soft satin finish, then were glued to the plastic. Four small magnets (Tony has always been big on magnets, although his are usually transistor-powered) were glued to the back to allow placement of the plaque on any flat ferrous surface. I was going to stick this on the top of the CPU heat sink, but there wasn’t enough clearance between it and the side panel. So that became the title – Stark Industries IMD. But what to run diagnostics on? The Iron Man mask is probably one of the most characteristic parts that while frequently changed still has similar features, such as no nose, slitted glowing white eyes, and a slash of a mouth. The mask was attached to the mesh panel, then the clamps positioned and anchored from the rear with short screws. Two holes were drilled in the mesh behind the eyes. A pair of white LEDs were hot glued onto the mesh to cause the eyes to flicker when the hard drive is accessed. A heavy duty stainless steel switch was located in the side panel, presumably to open and close the clamps (or turn on the power in reality). The bottom of the case was anchored to the base plate treads. The rest of the system components were installed, and cables organized a bit, but spiffed up with some chrome convoluted (AKA split loom) tubing. Then it was time to tear it all down and switch out the stock Intel heatsink with a big blocky Peltier cooled one. Then I stuffed it all back together, and took these final pics.

Is The Market Ready For Modbook?

By E. Brown

Former Apple employee, Andreas Haas, thinks he has a niche market. He’s taken the MacBook and modified it into a tablet PC. Is the market ready?

Haas founded Axiotron in January 2005. The official ship date for the Modbook was Decemnber 2007. How many units have the they sold? I could not find the answer to that. How does Axiotron intend to stay in business? From their own Web site comes this insight:

Axiotron determines a potential project or market to be a viable case of Solution Hardware if all of the following characteristics are met

• Off-the-shelf hardware is insufficient.
• Market size warrants full product cycle.
• Profitability can be achieved early in product life cycle.

Could I also use the Modbook as a digital notebook? Yes! Take a look at how to use Inkbook as a way to write notes and then transcribe or export them as you’d like.

But, the question stills remains, “is the market ready?” Just because you build it does not guarantee they will come. The buzz may be out but unless the dollars are coming in, Modbook may go the way of the Apple Newton.

Related Links
To see what others are saying you can visit links to CNet, Mahalo Daily, and more.

Weird Week In Review – Mar. 28

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

4 Things That Will Change Your Life

Hilarious “Cat Man Do” Video

Networking, Character, and Competency Still Matter

Rethinking Life and Relationships With Web 2.0

Quotable Quote – Cicero

Blogging, The Long Tail, And Leading vs. Following

Quotable Quote – Plato

How To Make Bananas Foster

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (Mar. 21)
- Weird Week In Review (Mar. 14)
- Weird Week In Review (Mar. 7)

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Quotable Quote – Plato

Those who tell the stories change society.

- Plato

Hilarious “Cat Man Do” Video

I just saw this on my friends blog and had to share. Maybe this explains why I like dogs more than cats. Enjoy!

Weird Week In Review – Mar. 21

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

Could New Movie Be Too Much Star Wars?

5 Tips For Marketing Your Company In A Tech-Savvy World

6 Signs To Tell If Your Customers Need Attention

10 Tips For Dealing With Upset Customers

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (Mar. 14)
- Weird Week In Review (Mar. 7)
- Weird Week In Review (Feb. 29)

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Could New Movie Be Too Much Star Wars?

Not according to George Lucas, but what will the fans think?What do you think? Comment below.

clipped from www.cnn.com Set in the years between episodes II and III — “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” — of the big-screen “Star Wars” chronicle, the movie and series present fresh adventures of Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker, his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and other colleagues. The movie introduces a female Jedi, Ahsoki, who is Anakin’s young apprentice. “It’s like ‘Band of Brothers’ in space, with Jedi,” Lucas, 63, said. “You can tell lots of stories. They come up all the time.” He also is moving forward with a live-action “Star Wars” TV show focusing largely on new characters removed from the Skywalker family. That show will be set in the decades between “Revenge of the Sith” and the period when the original film, 1977′s “Star Wars,” takes place. So can fans ever get enough of “Star Wars”? “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “I’m thankful every year that it keeps going.”