This May Be the Most Technologically Accurate Novel Ever Written
Here’s what I’m reading now: Daemon, by Daniel Suarez, a techno-thriller about an evil genius zillionaire games developer who dies and leaves behind a piece of intelligent viral software — the titular daemon — that infests the Internet and starts killing people in clever ways. It’s up to our heroes, a good-natured cop and a clever IT …
Meet the Doozies
If you’ve enjoyed the feeling of laughing while watching TV over the last 20 years, it’s probably thanks in part to comedy writer Tom Gammill.
Tom and his writing partner, Mitchell “Max” Pross, started out on Saturday Night Live in 1979, and went on to be hilarious for It’s Gary Shandling’s Show, a memorable run on
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I Can’t Believe Twitter Is Winning
I just had to put that on the record. I assumed Twitter was one of those stunt-start-ups — like, oh no they di’n't, I can’t believe they went there, let’s see how long it takes people to figure out that this Twitter thing is a stone cold joke. How long can it last? The answer is, almost 3 years, and counting. Now John Hodgman uses it. …
Growing Up Star Wars
(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST IS RATED “M” FOR MAWKISH)
Looking for a hardcore dose of un-ironic Star Wars nostalgia? Want to remember what young-you felt for Star Wars, before Jar Jar, Jango and Jedi Younglings? Before the 800 million billion Star Wars parodies where the only joke was that something not Star Wars said something …
Palm’s Would-Be iPhone Killer
People are sounding pretty blown away by this Palm Pre thing that’s on display at CES. You know, the iPhone-like smartphone from Palm:
Now that I’m over my initial surprise that Palm actually still exists and is in business, the Pre certainly appears to be the most credible response to the iPhone we’ve seen so far. Hardware …
Iron Man 2; Judge Dredd; Twilight; Gay Gandalf; NASA; Me
Another omnibus post, brought to you by my short attention span:
– Mickey Rourke will apparently appear as a villain in Iron Man 2. Nice to see that the success of The Wrestler is getting him work. I guess he’s well and truly out of career hypersleep. Favreau must be fond of resuscitated actors, given that Downey had a similar career …
Windows 7? I’m Not Through Hating Vista Yet!
There appears to be some kind of pan-industry collusion going on in the tech world, whereby nothing interesting can happen, ever. MacWorld was pretty ho-hum, and Ballmer’s keynote at CES last night was mighty drab as well. (A true technology journalist would have written that it “failed to excite.”) The only thing that stuck with me is …
Nerd World Top 10: Portals to Other Worlds
Some days reality is just intolerably repugnant, and there isn’t anything very interesting coming out of MacWorld, so you start looking around for an alternative. A top 10 list of places to look:
1. The Wardrobe, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The original, all-time champeen.
2. The Gate of Hell, from Dante’s Inferno. …
Top MacWorld 2009 Expo Rumors
New iPod Shuffle to weigh 6 pounds and only hold one song – but it is a really, really great song.
Pixar’s new movie: “Bill Gates, The Boy Who Showers With His Bathing Suit On”
Apple has purchased Infocom, and is getting back into text-based, interactive fiction. New “even-textier” versions of Zork to be released in 2011.
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I’m Back from Australia
In 1982, when my friend Joel got cable, and we sat in his dad’s office watching MTV and waiting for them to play “Land Down Under” once an hour, I had no idea that a) that song was about Australia, and b) I would one day in fact go to Australia, a place where winter is summer, night is day, beer is measured in units called “schooners,” …
A Letter from Richie Rich
To: The Employees of Rich Enterprises, Inc.
From: Richie Rich, President and CEO
My loyal employees,
There is no other way to say it, so I’ll just say it. We are broke. I unwisely invested all our company’s funds with Bernard Madoff, and now the money is now gone, never to return. As of January 1, 2009, Rich Enterprises is no
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