Angry Robot

Comments?

Is it me or have I been getting the weirdest comments around here? And no-one who usually comments is doing so. Are people talking to me in secret code or what? “I NEED THE DIAGRAMS OF TV SANKEY MR 9163” – What diagrams, Alejandro? And what’s going on here? Plus, those crazy rip-loving teens have been sneaking into the GTA thread’s preceding post and leaving their little cries for help, giving me opportunity to use my new favourite phrase, “suck it”. Come back, regular readers, speak your mind! New commenters, let’s keep it intelligible! Or hey, let me in on the secret code we’re using, and let’s go nuts! Let’s get all freaky now! DIAGRAM TV STOP SALE PENDING BIRD IN THE OVEN STOP!

iPod for Sale

Hey, anybody want to buy a 5 gig iPod? Preferably someone in Toronto. It’s chock full of … of love!

Mention

Hey, cool: according to an email from an attendee, someone at this conference at MIT mentioned Bloggus Caesari in their presentation. They be teachin’ bout me at MIT!

New Apple Music Download Thing

So it’s finally here, and it looks pretty sweet: Apple Music Store, built into iTunes 4, and to top it off, new iPods. At first I thought, hey, a buck a song ain’t great. But looks like they’re charging $10 for full albums. That’s $15 CDN, and you typically can’t find anything except John Tesh for that price. (So goodbye HMV – I still hate you for charging me $25 for that KOS album.) As expected the interface looks great, and while there are copy restrictions they are far from draconian: play the music on up to three Macs, unlimited iPods, and burn up to 10 CDs (which basically means unlimited duplication if you don’t mind a little transcoding). Available in a year for windows, but I’m thinking it will remain iPod only at this time, turning it into a means of pimping iPods rather than Macs themselves. Interesting play. Sad part for us Canucks is that it’s US only for now – augh! Must be some loophole…

Filters A-poppin'!

Wow: am I the only one who didn’t know about FilmFilter, MusicFilter, WarFilter, and BookFilter, running on FreeFilter and/or MetaPhilter software? And so the mothership has sent forth her spawn?

Fearsome Blimp

The Horror of Blimps – excellent. (via Defective Yeti)

Hockey Died

Hockey died last night, my friends. I watched the hideous carnage as a reflection in a broken piece of glass that had come from the pint of whiskey I had broken over my head at the end of the first period, all the while vomiting sadly, slowly onto my now-worthless Wade Belak jersey, as tears coursed down my face, wrecking the blue face makeup, as I wrote Pat Quinn out of my will for the last time, as I revised my “Ode to Hockey” never-finished chart-topper to include the phrase “it’s rapin’ season”, I simultaneously punched a small, adorable angel in the face to symbolize something, anything, anything other than what I felt, which is how I imagine Ed Belfour must have felt – hung out to dry by the overpaid athletes he depends on to be gangbanged by goon primadonnas. Hockey’s dead, and good riddance: finally an excuse not to hang out in bars! (if this phrase is meaningless, it’s because my lawyer revised it to death.) Hockey’s dead, but it frees up the schedule of a million fanatics, let’s look on the bright side: think of the good we can do with our collective powers of yelling, honking, and face-painting. Juicy Iraq reconstruction contract, anyone? These poor Iraqis have no water, food, or ice sports, no shelter or bobbleheads. I don’t think they have nearly enough sports bars. So join me, friends. We won’t stop until there’s a Leaf jersey for every Iraqi! We sure as hell won’t need them anymore, not for a year or so.

Go Leaves!

It’s game 7 tonight. It was a nailbiter last night. My roommate said that while watching the game he felt “like a soon-to-be father in the waiting room.” Let’s hope the baby doesn’t look anything like Jeremy Roenick.

Update – Colby Cosh with more Leaf genetics on his excellent hockey page: “Darcy Tucker is the hockey love child of a ninja and the Energizer Bunny.”

Not Statisfied With the Goog

My hosts (who are excellent, BTW) have switched to a new website stats program, and it has thrown up a few surprises about this site’s traffic. First thing is that I am dangerously close to exceeding the traffic allowance. Second interesting thing is search engine referrals. The biggest one is not “Julius Caesar” (which is no. 2), but puma blowjob with a staggering 2059 referrals over a week-long period. Third on the list is “reality porn” (with 1188 referrals) which leads to the same entry about the puma ads. Of course, interest in puma-related blowjobs will surely fade, yet then again this entry will soon show up in Google… Read on, but it gets kinda boring.

At first I was shocked to see that “GTA3 radio” was low on the list with only 361 referrals, placing it barely ahead of “skull fucking” (323 referrals). Then I realized the list I was using was only search strings, i.e. more than one word; a separate list of top search words has “GTA3” firmly in first place with 3583 referrals over this same week period. The game-cracking teens have still got the magic.

Other referrals of note: Sigur ros video, in which my entry comes in at #1 ahead of some MTV pages. And “blogs save lives” (248) – who searches for that?. <http://www.sankey.ca/y”>Y gets a few for visionary philosopher – he comes in at #6. Of the top six results for that search string, only one is not a weblog. Hockey Night in Canada ring tones seem to be popular, but my pages are sure to disappoint. My attempt to become a google magnet for Russ Meyer searches is a total failure; people are searching for “tap that ass”, and they are getting me in 3rd place; I also fell victim to the http://homeland.fbi.gov/Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=235270 referrer prank; other good search strings: “sankey trailer”, “my IQ is 126” (yeah, right, dumbass), “am I shaved or not”, “shame on me shame on you”, “my sister’s ass”, “gorilla sex woman”, “smoking weed causes breasts?”, “i hate this stupid town”, “its a fucking sick world we live in.”

All in all I am starting to resent Google. Bandwidth from the googlebot alone is 240 MB over the week, and I shudder to think how much all the stupid referrals add up to. Let alone bandwidth theft due to people (usually livejournal users) finding my photos and using them as background images. Google favours blogs, that much is clear. But does this actually help either blog owners or google users? Typical example: I search for “puma blowjob”, eight of the top ten results are weblogs linking to the blowjob ads. Wouldn’t it be better if Google could figure out the link and put it at the top, cutting out the blog middlemen? Furthermore, don’t middlemen usually get paid? Why are we doing Google’s work for it, and paying with our bandwidth charges? I’m all for the free flow of information of course, but the problem is that the best information isn’t rising to the top. I figured my page on Russ Meyer was actually a good resource that Google searchers would be happy with. Yet it’s the 83rd result, behind all manner of uselessness and irrelevancy. Sure, I’m biased; sure, it’s harder to get to the top of a common search; sure, Google buying Blogger may mean it’s eager to improve the way it uses blogs. Let’s hope so.

At the vanguard of Google criticism is Andrew Orlowski, writing for The Register, about Google News treating press releases as news, the ‘googlewashing’ of the phrase ‘second superpower’, and then Google googlewashing the story about googlewashing. Remember also the Google trademark lawyer attack, Google’s privacy problems, Google’s mixup with China and Scientologists. Hell, I love Google, and use it constantly, but we’s gots to keep an eye on the New Web God, who keeps its heavy spidery eyes on us alway.

Clutter

example album cover

is friggin’ neato. It automatically fetches and displays the album cover of the track that iTunes is currently playing. You can then drag covers to the desktop (well, they’re little windows actually), and generate the eponymous mess, and then double click any album in the pile to start playing it. For me, this fills a big gap in iTunes’ interface – it’s great and all, but after enough time scrolling through massive spreadsheets of song listings one starts to feel like a fucking accountant and not the hard-rockin’ dude one is rumoured to be. Also, you tend to miss the tactile pleasure of sorting through a disc collection. I’ve been hoping iTunes would incorporate something like this… who knows, when the music service-integrated version comes out, we’ll see.

In Which Minimalism Is Renounced

Yes, that’s right – it’s clash of the patterns! Two of the four horsemen will optically battle every time you visit this site, from now until I grow some taste. This may have rendered parts of the site awkward-looking, but with any luck (read: determination) the wonky parts will be righted within, aaah, a month. Meanwhile, should anything be looking inscrutable, incomprehensible or blasphemous, let me know herein – please note which breed of browser you’re ridin’. Updates may be patchy until the DSL gets hooked up, which if the gods favour it and the roomates are on the level – which is less likely than one might hope (yeah that’s right, I’m slagging you dirtbags, suckit) – will be wednesday.

Piles

Cool Flash preview of the rumoured upcoming OS X 10.3 feature, piles.

Empire etc.

The birth of an empire from the ashes of a republic – that’s the idea that drew me to Caesar. What happened, exactly? I can’t say I know yet, but as I’m sure you’ve heard it’s now safe to use the term ‘empire’ in an appreciative way – with precious little thought given to the boring ol’ consequences of such a grand strategic shift. So why not read this – it’s a thing done by an Indian economic journal, on the topic of America’s Grand Scheme. I can’t vouch for it’s accuracy (especially since I wonder whether the US has a Grand Scheme at all), but it’s nonetheless noteworthy if only as a glimpse of how other world powers’ view of the US has changed drastically. It’s a long read, but worth it, in This Reporter’s Opinion.

Of special note: this page mentions a newly-established “Preemptive Operations Group” (P2OG) whose purpose is to provoke terrorist attack. This page details just how horrible things have gotten in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Pakistan.

Apple To Buy Universal?

Holy smut. Apparently APPL stock is tanking because no one except Steve Jobs wants to invest in the music industry. (Here’s more in-depth stuff from the Reg.)

Pedestrian Horn

Wouldn’t it be a good idea? Man-portable and deafeningly loud, the pedestrian horn can be used against clueless motorists and pedestrians alike. The slow-walker couple who were barricading the sidewalk? The dude that nearly ran me over in mid-crosswalk? They’d still be cleaning the blood out of their now-useless ears, right now.

Coming soon: the pedestrian siren.

Blogs Save Lives

Wow. AccordionGuy lives through real-life blog-related intrigue. Sorry to hear, pal.

Best Death

Dream Review #4

I’m planning a long hike to the airport. The expedition starts on a large hill, where a sports broadcaster lives (like a troll and his bridge), and he walks up to me and questions my preparedness. He hands me a pair of snowpants and $5 for a cab, guiding me towards a tangle of superhighways at the foot of the mountain. When I walk down there, they are no longer highways but small canals. I have to cross a cartoonish bridge, and the path leads me into the sewers. Suddenly it seems I have a companion – or has she been there all along? Then we are beset by sewer insects. The most savage of them looks like a tiny cheeseburger with stick-man arms that hold cleavers. It charges toward me, spinning like a top, and will surely cut me. I manage to step on it and I crack it like an egg, it oozes white goo. This turns my stomach.

Review: the continuity problems are legion. Who’s the mystery companion? What happened to the highways? The overall heroic-quest motif is nice, but given reasons seem mundane. However, the monster-in-the-cave-who-must-be-overcome, while awash in bathos, is at least original. Overall moral: Sankey is conflicted about cutting down on the cheeseburgers.

Dinnerland

Afore I fo’get: DinnerLand Restaurants International, now live on skitfaced. (QuickTime 6 required)

Who's Next?

Iran, North Korea, or Syria? (via the scandalicious agonist)

Grrrreat

How many big-budge Hollywood biopics of Alexander the Great can you personally take? Is it two? I hope it’s two, because both Baz Lurhmann and Ollie Stone have one in the oven. Stars are Leo DiCaprio and Colin Farrell, respectively – and Marty Scorsleaze is rumoured to be exec-producing the Baz picture. Seems both productions are jockeying for the earliest shoot, which of course endangers the quality of both projects. So who wants to bet on which one gets into theatres first? (hat tip to Les)

Game Reviews

Please note that under a quite excellent review of fark’s war-declaration thread lies my first stab at game reviewing for shift.com, into which I managed to insert a phrase I have been hoarding, Coalition of the Thrilling.

Go New Yorker!

The Sy Hersh thing on Rummy vs. Pentagon is out.

Precision Singing, Pre-emptive Dancing

The script and the songs are all good to go, so now we’re casting Gulf War II: The Musical, and we need your help. Our top choices are

Dick Cheney – Mickey Rooney or Sir Anthony Hopkins
Saddam Hussein – Tom Waits or Bob Hoskins
George W. Bush – would like Matthew McConaughey, but he’s too young
Donald Rumsfeld- Nick Nolte
Osama bin Laden – Adrien Brody

We still need to fill parts for Chirac, Blair, Crown Prince Abdullah, Tom Ridge, and others. There are lots of exciting storylines, especially some taut scenes between some Marines and a team of dancing Al-Qaeda ninjas. There are boatloads of great songs… Cheney has a few tap dance segments in his undisclosed lair… Surprise “Drop the Bomb on Me” rap number by Kim Jong Il, produced by Dre… should be a chart-topper. Let’s get this thing cast, people, and get it into the theatres while it’s hot n’ fresh!