Internet Fun

A new favorite is the geeky, surreal, math-and-linguistics-infused webcomic xkcd [via Boing Boing]. The two that made me laugh raucously were Stacy’s Dad and Computational Linguistics (caution, bad language). However, I highly recommend paging through from the beginning. If you don’t have the patience, some of my other favorites are Copyright, Fourier, Self-Reference, Hyphen, Geico, Hobby, Graduation, Pillow Talk, Wright Brothers, and Centrifugal Force.

The editing is a little bit shakey, but Star Trek vs. Star Wars is still good Friday fun [via Vidiotbox]. Of course, about half the geek community would prefer a version with Kirk – it certainly would end differently. We probably ought to start placing bets about which franchise will sic their lawyers on this first….

In the latest installment of people doing crazy things for web traffic, we have The Monkey Chow Diaries in which a guy is in the process of trying to subsist on nothing but monkey chow, water, coffee and vodka for a week [via VidiotBox]. His videoclips sum up the story, but you should definitely check out his weblog as well, in which he answers more questions about his monkey chow experiment than in the videos. Obviously, there’s no way to tell if he’s actually doing this or not, but it’s pretty funny either way. Today is day 5, so get … Continue reading Monkey Diet

While I’ve never really been as big a fan of Something Awful as some of my friends, their recent forum thread on what if movies ran in reverse is very funny. Maybe my favorite, just for its consiceness and plausibility is for Peter Pan: “Disturbing portrayal of a paradise island’s descent into chaos as a crocodile regurgitates a pirate who then proceeds to wage increasingly ineffective war on a group of regressive children.”

It’s amazing how the last day of classes feels like a Friday, regardless of what day of the week it falls on, and how many appointments I have scheduled for the following day. I think it’s the general campus vibe that does it. In that vein, I thought I’d do a random link collection – fodder for some late night study breaks. First up, a student showed us this face locator tool from the Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition company during a class presentation today, and it is very cool. It works wonderfully with group photos even, though we found that it … Continue reading

I do not like personal April Fools Day pranks, but I do enjoy the inevitable internet hoaxes and website redesigns. I ran into a couple yesterday just surfing around, but it turns out that Wikipedia has an entry listing 2006 April Fool’s hoaxes, including a link to a screenshot of my favorite (even though I feel a little guilty for finding it so funny). If you scroll to the bottom, you can find entries on the notable April Fool’s hoaxes from the past six years as well.

Here’s an internet game that you can really only play online: What Did I Search For?. You’re shown the Google results page for a one-word search, with all occurences of the search term omitted, and have to guess the search term. Yeah, you could cheat, type in the URL of a returned page, and find the elided term from the blurb, but that really misses the point. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but now I’m well hooked. And, as a bonus, as you keep playing you are “rewarded” with links to pretty pictures or, … Continue reading Think like Google

I’m feeling uninspired about posting, so I’ll jump on a meme seen over at AAYOR: asking Google what I need. Google’s top ten suggestions: Amanda needs gnutar? Amanda needs to be rebuilt. Amanda needs to be loved. Amanda needs a mom in her corner with lots of time and attention to give her. Amanda needs a small config change. Amanda needs X11? Amanda needs her local food bank to put food on the table for herself and her daughter. Amanda needs to know: Why? Amanda needs new ones, STAT! Amanda needs to be recompiled on landon. I think Google is … Continue reading What I Need

I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes from laughing at the Hearsay Exception video, spoofing the Schoolhouse Rock video about interjections, and filmed using Lego characters. It’s seriously the funniest thing I’ve seen on the internet in a long time.

A friend pointed me to the cartoon Narbonic, whose archives are open for free this week, and suggested that I check it out starting from the beginning. I’m going to lose the rest of the afternoon to the archives. I knew I was hooked when I hit the week (probably a couple of months in) where the evil scientist Helen Narbon is being pursued by ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST for abuse of language in her manifesto. How can you resist a strip with lines like “11:33 AM, Eastern Standard. Once again I find myself scaling the face of a building, … Continue reading Narbonic