Linkdump

Adam Savage talks about cosplaying. I love this little story.

Check out this comment on Reddit that explains how people find it easier to eat out and why it's often a surprise to folks to find they can eat at home cheaper.

You heard about that woman that got $2 million for spilling McDonalds coffee on herself? Well, here's the real story, which is far more nuanced and reasonable than people who constantly repeat the lie about her getting $2 million. Don't have time to read it? She didn't get $2 million, only enough to cover her very real medical bills caused by third degree burns from coffee that McDonalds knew was too hot, due to hundreds of complaints. And she didn't spill because she was driving, the car was parked and she was a passenger. Read the first comment on the post, as well. I do wonder how often the lie will be repeated before more people say, "um, she didn't get that much money" than say "that's outrageous!"

My feelings on this project are so very mixed I have no idea how to respond to it. I am linking to it for your edification.

Listen to Wikipedia. Nice background sounds, actually, driven by something happening out there in cyberspace.

There's something very, very frightening to me about having calls for boycotts treated as hate speech. Incitement to not buy? How is that "political terror"?

Easy to read parking signs are easy to read. I like 'em.

Linkdump

Want some original artwork but can't make it to a convention? Periscope Studio has an Etsy page (warning: some artistically adult content). Some really good artists and their art here. Check it out.

Lovely Two-Page Usagi Yojimbo story.

Comic Book Legends Revealed #262: Iron Man's Nose, Alan Moore as Sith Lord, and Elliot S! Maggin.

Space Jam is a Mayan Tale.

Rachel Maddow gets a lightsaber. Just watch the video clip, you can ignore the rest.

Chemical bombs are real.

Ken Jennings on Wikipedia's lack of authority. I ran into this recently when a vandal changed Aquaman's Wikipedia entry, and an unrelated podcasts read the vandalized entry as if it was true, without any question. If it's on Wikipedia, verify it before you believe it. Wikipedia is a good place to start researching, but it's not to be trusted.

J.L. Bell on piracy. I like it when companies subvert the act of online piracy to their own ends.

Darryl Cunningham is starting a new strip about Homeopathy. His strip about Wakefield recently made the rounds. Darryl is one of the good guys.

How Avenue Q is dealing with Gary Coleman's death.

And to finish this post: a pug for the in-laws.

Bonus Linkdump for A Hot Spring Day

Want.

A comparison of Stargirl's name on three different covers of JSA. Good catch, Greg.

I want The Sandman's Library. I wouldn't mind a print of it, either.

Another book my library doesn't have. Again, I added it to my wishlist.

The Russian space program is into recycling.

Gluten-free recipes and discussion from The Guardian. That Lemon Banana Cake sounds good.

Germany has found cocaine in Red Bull?

Victor DeNoble, the guy who brought down the tobacco industry, visited hubby-Eric's school.

Boing Boing notes the change in Airborne's packaging since they lost that lawsuit.

The Church of Scientology has been banned from editing Wikipedia.

Astronauts spot mysterious ice circles in world's deepest lake. Cool.

Here's a link for my mother, sister, and maybe even my aunt: A webcomic on quilting barbarians... or something like that. Knittar the Barbarian?

Linkdump

Calling all comic book fans! If you shop at Ralphs, you can support the Hero Initiative very easily. It makes me wish there was a Ralphs up here.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #170: Atlantis Chronicles, Secret Wars, Offensive Jokes.

Elayne brings us Rippy the Gator in LEGO.

Disney may have already lost rights to young Mickey Mouse.

Some drugs are actually Placebo Amplifiers, which suggests that the placebo effect is more complicated than previously thought.

10 Geeky Movies to Raise Your Kids On. I've seen all but one, but have plans to watch that one in an upcoming movie night.

List of Problems Solved By MacGyver. Cool.

Teddy Bear USB Drive. The picture alone is worth visiting the link for. Go on.

Best Firefox Add-on Ever. It actually makes it possible to read YouTube comments!

Scott Adams is very odd, but his restaurant ideas aren't bad.

A lovely rant addressed to Oprah and her horde of zombies.

My farming will be more suburban than urban, but I'd still like to grow some food at my new house. I'm thinking one zucchini plant, tomato plant(s), and maybe a pepper plant of some sort. I also want to grow sweet potatoes, but I don't know if they do well in the Yakima Valley. Also, I'm really bad at growing things. I tend to overwater.

Hrm, does the appearance of spaghetti cat have anything to do with the impending High Holy Pasta Week? Nah.

Sep 15-19 is "Holy Pasta Week"
Plan your menus now.

Wikify Me

Wow. I've started to work on creating a website using MediaWiki software. If all goes well, substantial portions of my Aquaman website will be replaced with this new wikified version (you can probably even guess the address of the wiki). I'm pretty excited about it because it means I'll be able to invite people in to help keep the content up-to-date and to maintain the website. While I love Aquaman, I'm just not too good at keeping websites up-to-date. And other fans have been asking me for years if they can help. Now I can say, "YES!"

Anyway, I've been dipping my feet in the wiki pool, and have discovered a LOT in the last few days. The biggest discovery so far, though, has to be templates. I knew that Wikipedia uses templates to make life easier for their editors. I didn't realize that it wasn't simply a natural function of the software! I got all excited when I went to Dreamhost's Wiki and saw this stylesheet for infoboxes on websites. I assumed, very wrongly, that I'd just need a little markup and I'd be good. Ha.

Because I want to use the infoboxes on my wiki, I grabbed what I thought was the code from Wikipedia for the Superhero infobox, planning on adjusting it to my needs. It didn't look like it would work... and it didn't. I then discovered what Templates are (I originally wrote a bit about namespaces and the structure of wikis, but decided that's too techie even for me). I found the template for my infobox, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I then found this helpful page that explains the details. Progress is being made!

So I created the template on my aquawiki, and... it didn't quite work. It was all messed up with extra characters. I couldn't figure out why, because everything I was reading seemed to indicate it should work fine.

Eventually I found a mailing list that had the answer. I needed to install an extension onto MediaWiki to PARSE the code correctly. The templates, the way I was using them, don't automagically work with the main code... they need a ParserFunction Extension. Funny how none of the pages on templates seem to mention that clearly. I found the installation instructions and followed them, and then checked my test page... perfection!

The reason I'm posting this is because someday I may help Eric to set up his Wizard of Oz wiki, and I want to remember how to create templates properly. And also, there's a tiny chance that someone else out there has a wiki that they want to put infoboxes on, but can't figure out the details. Now I've hopefully given enough clues for them to put it all together (Custom CSS => Template code from Wikipedia (both infobox and the ! templates) => ParserFunctions Extension).

Monday Links

I'd say his name ought to be changed to "Unlucky".

Andy of Owly fame has a return visitor.

Which Power Ring would come to You? I'm an Indigo Lantern, because my compassion knows no bounds, apparently.

Ooooooooh, me want.

Cheshire Crossing Issue 4 is out.

I just like this headline: Missing snowmobilers call 911, all OK. I hope they didn't have to pay roaming charges.

Happy Birthday, Schoolhouse Rock. I love these, even now.

Reading this editorial about cell phone spam reminded me that I got an unwanted spam-ish text message near midnight the other night. I promptly called my cell provider and had them completely disable text messaging for my phone, since I never use it anyway.

Cybil Awards Graphic Novel Finalists for 2007.

Tech review of OLPC XO-1. I still gotta visit my brother and see his.

How about a flu vaccine that works to prevent EVERY TYPE of flu? I'd risk another adverse reaction for the benefit of this one.

[citation needed]

Houseplants that even I could grow? I scoff.

A Barbie fishing rod, with a red plastic worm as bait, and the four-year-old catches a 50-pound fish.

Salman Rushdie Film. I almost want to see it to view the sheer badness of it, as conveyed via this snippet.

Oingo Boingo on the Gong Show. Wow.

The final post of mil blogger Andrew Olmsted.

Friday Links

Self-link: Aquaman's one-hour limit and Silver Age beginnings.

Publicity for Minx.

Dorothy of Oz gets mentioned at Bookslut.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #117.

Speech Bubble Logos.

Stan Lee Movie Cameos (YouTube).

Heroes Season 2 Promo (YouTube).

Everyone is talking about Todd McFarlane's take on Oz.

Don't like Spam? How about bacn?

Here's what I don't get about Wikipedia. If it's supposed to be all-inclusive, why do people attempt to delete articles that are clearly informative? I can see deleting joke articles, or articles that are incorrect. But why delete a singer or cartoonist's entry just because "no one" has heard of him? Isn't that the whole POINT of wikipedia, that people can find out more? UPDATE: Tom Smith Filked his Wiki experience.

Blogging certainly can be reporting. Some of us are echo chambers, but some blogs DO report. Generalizing about blogs is the same as saying all magazines are identical, or all TV shows are exactly the same. It only proves you have no idea what you are talking about. Michael Skube should have known better.

Stephen Colbert's Cast on eBay. It was only $735 when I checked this morning.

There's a hole in the universe.

The Most Kissed Girl in the World.

Community Drug Tests.

Greetings from Seattle, 1942.

First posted on April 1st, this story is pretty funny on it's own (bigfoot spotted at site of new ski resort, environmentalists attempt to claim endangered animal protection of the site). But this quote just put it over the top for me:

A spokesman for the Wolf Creek Development Company, Farmhead Bunmunch, told the Post in an exclusive interview Sunday that the supposedly controversial footage was a joke played by Wild Colorado, or possibly by some of their supporters. "All I see is some idiot jumping around in a monkey suit, acting like he's a Saskachewan [sic.] There's no controversy here... It's just those Colorado Wildness people joking with you."

I can't stop laughing. Bigfoot is a Saskachewan! By the way, don't bother watching the vids. Really bad acting.

Opus is censored. This article links to one of the strips.

Dogs and Vick.

For the in-laws: Pug Skydiving.

Sep 15-19 is "Holy Pasta Week"
Plan your menus now.

Randoms

Bigfoot found footless.

The Barenaked Ladies on DRM, again. BNL has the most sensible position on the problem I've seen, and as a result I'm staying a fan.

The ALA (American Library Association) released the winners of their various awards. Go check 'em out. I've read at least one of them.

Google Video Link: Turkish Star Wars (1982). I don't think I'm likely to watch the whole thing, but the bits I did check out were amazingly awful. With Google video you can start loading where you put the slider, so go check out random bits.

If you think bunnies are cute and fluffy and innocent... go check this out. Oh. My. I love the narration. Reminds me of my Dad.

I may have linked to this before, but Reason Magazine's write-up on the broadcasting hijack of a Doctor Who story is just too well done to pass up.

DI is trying to go to print. I need to look under the seat of the car, in the couch, and anywhere else there might be loose change to pre-order me a copy of the book.

Rumor mill: Muppet Show Season Two on DVD and more Muppet TV. Rumor alert: Take both links with a grain of salt!

Banning Wikipedia as a citation source. Well, duh. You don't cite any type of encyclopedia in a research paper. Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia. It's good for basic overview and as a starting point for looking for more information. But it's a tertiary source at best, and should never be cited in a paper. Unless the paper is about Wikipedia.

Google uses algorithm to defuse Googlebombs. In short, no more Googlebombing. Discussion on Slashdot.

Oh my goodness, it's for real. I thought it was a Daily Show joke. Stephen Colbert is "Z".

I have discovered another reason to love our TiVo. I like watching Olbermann, but can't stand any coverage of American Idol. So now I can wait until Olbermann is half over before I start watching it and fast forward through the ads and the Idol garbage. Very nice.