Archive for September, 2009
You’ve Wet Your Bed, Now Sleep In It
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
We all know for a fact that every single solitary thing that goes wrong in a person’s life, every flaw in one’s being, every bit of sadness they experience, every shortcoming, every unattractive feature, every skill one lacks, every inch...
Fire Trucks And Marauding Pirate Ships: New Cambridge Playground The Awesomest EVER
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Thank you, Cambridge! Finally, the days of boring, namby-pamby playgrounds designed by product liability lawyers is OVER!
They build them like they used to in Cambridge, Mass., and by that I mean like they used to before they used to. Concerned parents and community leaders mobilized to replace a pressure-treated wood playground because of all the toxins or whatever the lumber industry's been sticking in there all these years.
The new Kemp Playground is full of OG awesome toys that let kids climb and move stuff--and get stuck in. Over the weekend, fire fighters were called to free a 3-year-old boy whose leg got wedged in between two boards of the pirate ship. The boy was not injured. Whether he got to climb on the fire truck afterward was not known.
Sept. 24: Cambridge Common now home to revamped play area [wickedlocal.com via dt sr freakout correspondent sara]
Sept. 29: Boy gets leg caught in toy pirate ship at new Cambridge playground [wickedlocal]
Coming Oct. 7: Join us for a celebration of the new playground! 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Light refreshments will be served. [cambridgema.gov]
Auto-Tune the Sciences
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009I’d like to think I’m not alone in despising the pop music’s reliance on Auto-Tune, but record sales don’t seem to support that wish. Fortunately a few good things have come of Auto-Tune, including a couple of my favorites, Auto-Tune the News, Slap Chop Auto-Tune and my newest favorite, Carl Sagan singing ‘A Glorious Dawn‘ with special guest, Stephen Hawking.
September Comic Book Roundup
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Image: Dark Horse
I admit it, I’ve become a comics addict. I’m a regular at the local comic shops, and have been hoovering up some good stories lately. This is what I’ve been grooving on:
Conan the Cimmerian (Dark Horse)
Dark Horse does Robert E. Howard better than anyone. Their latest Conan offering is up to its fourteenth issue, and contains all the pulpy staples you expect: daring action, wicked villains, and scantily clad princesses. Contains some tasteful nudity and plenty of action.
Poe (Boom)
What if Edgar Allan Poe’s classic writings — Murders in the Rue Morgue, the Raven, etc. were all true, and combined into a single convoluted plot? Awesome premise combined with excellent execution makes for great reading. Good for kids too, my 13-year-old loves it and even better, has made her want to read the original Poe stories.
Rawbone (Avatar)
Rawbone just finished its four-issue run. A buccaneer tale featuring a plausibly authentic pirate experience: nudity, sexual violence, severed heads, evisceration and worse. The excellent heroine is La Sirena, a former nun turned pirate. Kid-friendly quotient: Like, negative kazillion.
Thulsa Doom (Dynamite)
You know him, evil magician and arch-enemy of Robert E. Howard’s Kull and Conan. I just read #1, where he’s introduced as a sympathetic character. I’m still not sure about turning a snake-cultist villain into a hero, but I’m willing to be convinced. So far so good.
Punisher Noir (Marvel)
The Punisher, aka Frank Castle, battles famous mobsters like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano in the ’20s and ’30s. Great idea for reimagining the blood-soaked vigilante.
Immortal Weapons (Marvel)
Marvel just finished out an excellent 27-issue run of the Immortal Iron Fist, and I had just one complaint: the panty-waisted title character, Danny Rand. So what does Marvel come up with? A five-issue interlude starring the five other immortal warriors allied with Iron Fist. In other words, the Iron Fist mythology without Danny! Can’t go wrong.
So, what have you been reading?
The Skulduggery Pleasant Series and You, the Winner
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
If I were to tell you about the Skulduggery Pleasant books you might ask, who is SkuIduggery Plesant? And then I would quote the website because they provide a very quotable answer: Skulduggery Pleasant? He's a wise-cracking detective, powerful magician,...
Got Milk? Got Rock Opera? You Will in The Battle for Milkquarious!
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Got Milk? White Gold's got your milk right there. (image: CMPB)
I never thought I’d see the day that there would be a rock opera - about milk. Yet, here is that day. Coming soon to a computer screen near you, brought to you by the folks at “Got Milk” and starring a dude named White Gold (wielding a milk filled electric guitar no less) I present the new rock opera Battle for Milkquarious!
“The most amazing rock opera ever made - about milk.”
I’m completely serious.
Check out the trailer here. If you want to have your mind exploded by White Gold, check out his awesome website. It’s very milk-centric.
If you’ve never heard of White Gold, he’s the marketing creation of California Milk Processor Board and ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners San Francisco - who together brought us the infamous “Got Milk” campaign. He’s a bit over the top, sports white spandex and simply loves milk.
This isn’t all for naught, the Got Milk people have a goal in producing a milk themed rock opera. This is part of $50,000 scholarship for the arts for the California Public Highschool art programs. Nothing is being given away for free however. There is going to be a contest in which entrants (students) will enter by creating their own video spoof of the White Gold Rock Opera and uploading it. More details on the exact rules and where to upload are coming next week, so stay tuned to GeekDad for that.
The prizes will be a $20K scholarship for first place, two $10K winners for second place and the rest split up among the runners up.
What? That’s not enough to whet your appetite? You can’t wait until the official internet release date of October 5th for more details on the rock opera and contest? Well, then check out the video below starring White Gold and Strawberry Summers making some sweet music together to hold you over.
Stay tuned to GeekDad next week for the official release of Battle for Milkquarious and full contest rules!
Have Some Darwin-Inspired Fun with Charlie’s Playhouse
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
(Image: Charlie's Playhouse)
Amy Cottrell of Geek Parenting posted this excellent post about Charlie’s Playhouse, a unique website selling toys and games inspired by Charles (”Charlie”) Darwin. You can even see her kids really getting into the Giant Timeline playmat. Charlie’s Playhouse looks to be a website full of high quality, truly educational toys that help your kids learn about evolution. I know what is going on my Christmas list!
The website also contains reviews of 89 different books on evolution for kids, and they have other resources for teachers and parents. It sounds like they only have a few products now, but will have many more in the future. Current products are geared toward kids 4 to 10. Future products will be for older and younger children, too.
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Free DS Chiptune Software Available from Pixelh8
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
screen capture images by Pixelh8
Though chip music made via handheld gaming devices is nigh synonymous with Nintendo’s Gameboy line, renowned artist/composer/programmer/honorary GeekDad Matthew Applegate – more widely known as Pixelh8 – has just released a brand new module that looks to change this. The Music Tech Master Stroke software is instead designed for Nintendo’s popular follow-up, the DS. Yet, unlike other homebrew and officially released DS music applications, which are typically sequencers, it is instead a live performance tool.
Using the system’s unique touch screen interface, Master Stroke allows musicians to tweak things like pan and volume options on the fly, while still using the d-pad, face and shoulder buttons to make sweet, chippy music. Other new features, like the whammy function, similarly employ the touch interface to supplement Pixelh8’s traditional Music Tech program design in a number of exciting ways. Thankfully, this module also comes in at the same price point at its forebears: free.
Master Stroke even includes a xylophone mode, the inclusion of which Matthew attributes to his daughter:
Originally it wasn’t going to have Xylophone Mode (just the old directional button play mode) but my daughter who is brilliant as Glockenspiel wanted something to practice on while in the car so I added that in for her, she’s one of my BETA testers and I am a very Geeky Dad so I had to do it .
The beta version of Master Stroke, recently released in conjunction with Sound Network’s Interface Amnesty, is currently freely available from Pixelh8’s site. Though only “95% complete,” Matthew plans to resume work on it following the release of his forthcoming album And the Revolution. Until that time, the next generation of electronic musicians is actively encouraged to create, experiment and share using this next generation instrument.
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Gyrobike Reinvents The Training Wheel
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Image: Gyrobike Inc., used under fair use
Last week, Las Vegas played host to the 2009 Interbike exhibition and one of the most interesting things to come out of it has to be the Gyrowheel from Gyrobike.
It aims to replace traditional training wheels or stabilizers and to eradicate the bad habits that they teach kids when learning to ride a bike - leaning away from a turn and constantly putting a foot down at the first sign of a wobble when they’re eventually taken off. The Gyrowheel uses the “gyroscopic precession” of the independently spinning disk inside it to stabilize the bike. The force created when the disk is turned - via a rechargeable battery - is powerful enough to hold a wheel upright at very low speeds (i.e. virtually stopped), and can actually make a bike look like it has a “Ghost Rider” as the videos below show (and there are plenty more on the Gyrobike site).
Personally, I’m not sure wether it’s a good thing or not - a balance bike seems a much better (and undoubtably cheaper, option. Will it just teach kids yet another way to be reliant on technology? Whatever you think about this one, it will certainly be around sooner than Honda’s high tech Unicycle - they’re hoping to get the first ones in the shops before Christmas.
McDonald’s. Yes, They Really Are Everywhere
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Image by Stephen Von Worley
You’re looking at a map of the contiguous United States visualized by distance to the nearest McDonald’s.
I guess it’s some consolation that being on the East Coast, I don’t need to ever worry about finding one. Maybe I should worry that I can name three within ten minutes of my house.
The map was created by Steven Von Worley, who was inspired by the appearance of a McDonald’s literally in the middle of nowhere, in the Los Angelos basin. Both the map, a larger wallpaper size version, and the explanation for how it was created are here.
Won Worley warned me when I emailed him that the map isn’t perfect, however.
“In the interest of full disclosure, please note that the McFarthest Spot is
measured as the crow flies, at 107 miles. Also ~145 miles by car, but it’s
entirely possible that there’s another location that’s closer as the crow flies,
but farther travelling on the roads. Indeed, regarding the latter, there’s
places in the lower 48 that you can’t even drive to/from with a car - that is,
by auto, infinitely distant from MickyDee’s.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden craving for French fries.