brainsnorkel.com

I can’t review my new iPhone 3GS. Frankly, I haven’t used it enough. I’m still waiting for my old carrier to port my number so I can use it as something more than a very expensive iPod Touch.

One of the first things I did after getting it was to sit down with a couple of our kids and show them the maps, video camera, photos, some Wall-E, Phineas and Ferb and then an iPhone version of Peggle which they had played on PC extensively.

When I had decided that demo time was over my 3 year old daughter insisted that the iPhone was hers. To encourage me to hand it over she started ripping up and throwing things around the house with some impressive, wanton, and very primal, rage.

This experience has brought me to the realisation that slavish iPhone desire is nature, not nurture.

I’m seriously considering buying a decoy.

This (and the clip that follows) has to be the best Colbert segment for some time.

Christmas can be a long day. Hopefully these two YouTube gems will help pass the time.

How to fold a T-shirt in 5 seconds:

Orange teeth:

Regrettably, I don’t have an iPhone. I do, however, have iPhone envy. I can tell, because I have dreams about accelerometers and iPhone apps I’d like. Also, I have nightmares about dropping my imaginary iPhone.

Given I don’t have the necessary equipment to develop an iPhone application, I hereby give you, The Internet, my idea for an iPhone application. My envy-inspired dreams have resulted in an idea for an App whose sole purpose is to add a little levity to those near-miss moments when you think you’ve accidentally destroyed your iPhone.

My imaginary app patiently waits for the accelerometer to report extreme acceleration events, such as when the phone has fallen to the ground. Shortly after the high-G event, the app plays an audio file that says “Well that was close!”

That’s it.

No additional logic is required for the case when the G force is so great the iPhone stops working. Those moments are best kept levity-free.

From the virtual Cecil B. DeMille’s of Bennelong.

Yes, we’re early. But we did let a month go by after Myer put out their decorations.

Apparently Disneyland aims to polarise its guests.

Or perhaps if you weren’t pissed off or ecstatic about the experience they don’t really care if you’d recommend them to others.

After reading about and enjoying the Firefox 3.0 about:robots “feature,” Mr 5’s $8 plastic gift for accompanying me to the markets today might have been a subliminally-suggested choice. We acquired a fashivhably coloured, double-luffing, go-ahead homage to a silly software release mascot.

For fans of robots, this model screams “Fire. Fire. Get down!” deafeningly and something else we can’t make out. Non! Stop! All the while swivelling its randomly illuminated plastic torso and waggling its arms up and down. He falls over due to being newly hatched from a Styrofoam incubator — and he’s obviously not yet accustomed to his roller skates.

“Could sound a beautiful music” (which we assume is a rough translation for “emits loud screaming and gunfire”) led to Dobo Arigato Mr Beat Magnum having a nasty run-in with J.

Mr 5 couldn’t hear his mother screaming at him to make the bad robot stop. He’s is missing an arm now (Mr Beat Magnum, not Mr 5), complete with dangling wires. This makes him look much cooler and we have a war story about the time he sacrificed an arm to save Mr 5 from harm.

Fafblog is stirring.

If I go back to using Bloglines from Reader and pretend Billmon is still around I’ll be blog-partying on teh Internets like it’s 2004.

…but almost that boring.

I Am A: True Neutral Human Sorcerer (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-15
Constitution-12
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-14
Charisma-15

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus

I wonder what D&D life would be like if I had agreed to assassinate the president in the survey? Oh wait. The back button is my friend.

Obviously I would be among the most odious of chaotic, sonofabitches…

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Sorcerer (5th Level)

Lee-Harvey Oswald was true neutral before he shot JFK and neutral good after? Tell that to Jack Ruby.

I guess the survey is aware of who’s currently President of the US. Maybe it’s geo-located me and knows that my country doesn’t have a president. If I would assassinate some dictator who masquerades as president in Australia’s freedom-tolerating system of constitutional monarchy, then there is good in me!

Via Jeff Freeman

What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?

www.omfg.com should have much funnier content.

This game looks like an end-run around WoW’s strengths: storyline depth, spelling, grammar, good localization quality and intentional humour.

From the Elf Online newbie quest database:

Quest name: Meng San’s worries
Quest level: 6~99
Rewarded goods: Fatal Wrath Kerchief 7J?21001?
Procedure: 1.Go to Uncle Lin in Sunset Prairie to buy a bottle of Injure Curer for Iron Arm Meng San in West Carefree Village.
[...]
Quest name: Beat elf
Quest level: 1~99
Procedure: 1.Go to HaiLiGe in North Wulong Village after killed 10 Snot Elf in Tranquil Seacoast 1.

And having agreed to join up, this is displayed after the “congratulations!” message:

Play Elf Online, Earn Cash.
Rare Items for Your Choose.
Cashes Points Rare Pets.

And, err, the download instructions look pretty frightening for Vista users:

1.Client latest version 2.0.2.496, about 890 M;
2.You can use either BT or HTTP to download. BT is recommended;
3.If you use the Vista O/S, please don’t install the game in disk C;
4. If you can’t login the game after downloaded and installed the client, please download manual update patch.

Even now I feel strangely drawn to play.

h/t Broken Toys

Update: Caution… you can’t delete or cancel your account details so be sure to use a pseudonym and a disposable email address during registration. And I can’t figure out how to… err… get an ID for this free game. Impenetrable grammar has its downsides too…

Just reporting that I got to use this as a sentence today and nobody blinked.