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dragon myth ... exist[s] independently in different cultures (asian, european, even native american)

You forgot about the Strongbadia culture!

I saw an apparent Treo product placement in an unlikely place, Strong Bad Email #144. (not labeled, but Pom Pom is using a high-tech phone that looks like a Treo, even with the oval by the speaker area) This was pretty cool to me, as I have a Treo 650.

To you I have only one thing to say. Well, two things. Alright, three including this declaration, but that's not important. First, well, you pretty much nailed it. Less gratuitous blood (reasonable blood is fine), more action and, dare I say it, thought. Although that's close to saying that music today should have a melody, damn these kids today... You were especially correct about the fact that you used to be able to sit and hang out with friends, casually playing Zelda/Mario/whatever, with moments of interesting (often to all around you) action. Not so any more, for the most part.

Second, for a stroll down memory lane: http://www.homestarrunner.com/disk4of12.html

The only reason for Flash is Strong Bad

Ali? Ali? Ali's sister?


DELETED!!!!


Come back Ali! Come back Ali's sister! You mean everything to me!

No. Like Flashblock.

I used to use that, until it started freezing Firefox. Then it wouldn't uninstall! I had to manually go in and edit and delete files.

Hopefully they've fixed that bug by now... but it was enough for me to not want to try installing it again.

Besides, Flashblock (unless it's changed) blocks EVERYTHING, and you have to click through to see the flash. This gets annoying on sites like http://www.homestarrunner.com/ -- I much prefer Adblock's method of blacklisting flash ads via filters. Flash I want to run does, flash I don't want to run doesn't.

Unless it comes with a custom Strongbad palette, I don't see it superseding Flash.

Did Strong Mad write that headline?

Seriously. That's bupkis!

And that's the end of my show (donk).

-Peter

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail119.html

but not for The Burninator? The injustice!

you don't have to pass your one junk email down to your children

You mean those children he should be having with Ali and Ali's sister? http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail35.html

I was trying to come up with some other names for their MacBook. I like Lapintosh.

Which would compete with the market leader Lappy 486?

Or how about using the geddup noise?

Unisys is one of the most unethical companies I have done business with. What can you expect though, our major contract is with Dell. So Dell is awarded a contract and then Unisys fullfills the service end of that agreement. So not only do I work for an awful company I get to deal with crappy Dell hardware, and a Dell Helpless desk (as the customers on my site have come to call them).

It is no surprise that Unisys overbilled the TSA. We are constantly told to put time on both our tickets and another accounting method. In effect this often double bills our customer or increases the time that we put on calls. In an eight hour day I have often done 15-20 hours worth of work. I often work reimaging one or two systems an complete other calls, but on a busy day a may really only perform 10-12 hours worth of work in 8 hours.

I am currently looking for a new job. I try to be as honest as I can and still follow this screwed up system. Although when a company chooses the lowest bidder they do get what they pay for. And the Dells and Unisyses of the industry are going to make the profit margin by cheating their customers. It's a good thing I like the company that I support.

If anyone has a desktop position open in Phoenix, AZ check out my resume

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

One thing we run into is a problem of definitions. Heck, Jakob Nielsen's thing isn't a blog at all - in the movable-type, bloger, etc sense - but the poster called it a blog.

So, then, what's a video blog?

Do Robert Cringely's NerdTV count? It's updated weekly, high-quality.
Do StrongBad emails count? They're updated "whenever", and quality ... well, it's art. I like 'em.

A: Sad, Bad, Mad
Q: Who are the Strong Brothers?

Not to make light of this discussion or anything... my girlfriend is taking medication for depression. It works mostly, but she's 1000 miles away from her friends and with family she doesn't get along with, so she's having a rough time. She's coming back tomorrow :)

Shh! Don't tell anyone!

Actually Homestarrunner.com looks pretty decent on my Pocket PC - and it's 100% Flash website. Some of the print is a little tiny in places though. Now I can check my Strong Bad emails from my Pocket PC.

come on big money, big money, no whammy!

Jeez, I guess no one watches Strong Bad emails anymore.

Ohhhhh, if you want it to be possessive, it's just "ITS." But if it's supposed to be a contraction, then it's "I-T-apostrophe-S," Scalawag.

Everybody!

Strongbad's bottom 10 is one of my favourites. After you've watched that one, hit this one for my all-time favourite. I laughed so hard watching that one I had tears running down my cheeks, and it's still funny twenty times later.

Strongbad's bottom 10 is one of my favourites. After you've watched that one, hit this one for my all-time favourite. I laughed so hard watching that one I had tears running down my cheeks, and it's still funny twenty times later.

I can see how text games can be effective (the imagination based on text descriptions potentially rivalling any artwork) - but for those such as myself who started into computer games after the era of text adventure games - it seems far too difficult to handle compared to click and point.

Come on, new Monkey Island, Zork, etc. please!

This might not precisely fit the bill, but have you seen Peasant's Quest ?

> dennis

[ http://www.homestarrunner.com/dungeonman.html ]

Has no one considered that an excellent way to keep this genre viable would be to popularize it on the web?

For that matter, MUDs - basically the MMO analogy of text games - could also be moved to the web.

AJAX technology makes both of these possibilities much more feasible. Is no one taking advantage of these possibilities yet?

A popular link going around a few years ago was "the Hamlet text game", which was playable through a web page. The author apparently had a generic framework for making web-based text games, called "Nondescript." I'd always expected to see it catch on more - but apparently it hasn't, and the author's site is gone now.

With the web being so ubiquitous, and non-intimidating to so many, there's a huge potential to take these games back into the mainstream. Add the ability to create games that have light text interfaces (like maps, so that players don't have to press N a hundred times), and the potential for the genre to be revitalized is considerable.

In fact, it's already being done to some extent. Kingdom of Loathing is essentially a single-player text RPG, save that it has stick-figure graphics, integrated chat features, and some (optional) PvP features. Urban Dead is a web-based MMO which uses only text and a simple map. (Peasant's Quest also deserves mention.)

These games have a considerable following; but they're reinventing the wheel. If the previous generation of text-adventure and MUD authors could pull their heads out of 1984 and think about merging their experience with the modern, accessible technologies of today, we could find text games once again catching on like wildfire, this time through the magical power of the interweb.

Ye can't get ye no flask!

It reminds me of Pom Pom from Homestar Runner

I would suggest some of Strong Bad's Rhythm 'n' Grammar. Highly educational.

Strongbad

Install the flashblock extension, and you can keep from seeing any flash unless you actually want to.

That's why.

Great demo, but the guy sounds like Strongbad. I don't know if I can trust an AppServer presented by Strongbad ...

Black with green letters, like this: http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail1.html?

SB on the subject.

And it'll happen again.

Blue.

"And for some reason, I got blue hair. You gotta have blue hair. Then there's my mouth. Real tiny when it's closed; ridiculously huge when it's open. And then you basically just put me in space and let me fly around in cool poses!"

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail57.html

Most people remember Leonardo Da Vinci for his paintings and inventions, but did you know Da Vinci's Notebook also has history's first recorded biography of The Sneak?

External graphics cards would go a long way towards fixing this. Everything about my lappy is farmed out to or assisted by an external thingy (sorry about the latin) except for memory, and I can't see why that should be the exception.

Lenovo is going to milk the Thinkpad name with an inferior product geared towards the average consumer. If I wanted a laptop for the average jo I would by a dell, sadly with this transition there are no real laptop vendors available.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Looks like Allchin will be the one without a seat, unless Coach Z learns to say it right.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/cantsayjob.html

Your most excellent rhetoric reminds me of one of my favorite Strong Bad e-mails!

Man, that means you are missing out on The Homestar Runner, how sad.

Those would go great on one of these.

I don't have a tv, nor do I want one, but every now and then I want to flake out to some non-interactive entertainment. Here are the sites I've found for free tv and video on the web (that I can remember at 1:48 a.m.)

http://edition.cnn.com/ -News fix

http://www.homestarrunner.com/toons.html -Not tv or video per se, but strongbad email flash animations are a hoot and close enough

http://tv.yahoo.com/feature/supernatural.html -The show Supernatural online, although I haven't watched it yet. Featured on /.

http://www.atomfilms.com/ -Everybody knows this one; marginally good

http://video.freevideoblog.com/ -Alot of crap, the odd good video

http://video.google.com/ -Random

http://www.ifilm.com/ -See also atomfilms

http://www.newgrounds.com/ -Way cool, homepage worthy!

http://tv.reuters.com/ - more news video than cnn

http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog - ???, Profit! Actually, I don't know what to say

http://portal.omroep.nl/uitzendinggemist/ -Dutch TV up the wazoo

http://mediahopper.com/portal.htm -1041 tv stations from all over the world listed and ready to watch (as far as I can tell)

http://video.search.yahoo.com/ -Stuff n' things

http://www.youtube.com/ -People upload and share their videos online... you've been warned!

I should add everything here is "family friendly", as far as I'm aware: no porn, uberviolence or gratuitous advertising (if I've somehow overlooked something, I apologise).

That's precisely what's happening with me. The first link works properly, but any website that has embedded flash, such as Homestar Runner, as a popular one, do not load the flash objects.

Weebl DOES have some quality stuff, the Badger Badger Badger animation is just his most popular work.
Or how about Homestar Runner?

heh, i guess nobody's heard of strong bad or the cheat. Everyone, your missin out. Check out the cheat here http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html

I'd say that Strong Bad Emails of Homestar Runner fame is about as close as I've seen any comic come to user participation. I mean, answering fan letters in a comical manner is nothing new. It's just that the execution is... well... maybe the only good use of flash i've ever seen?

Although I've never really thought of Homestar Runner as comics before... I basically considered them to be cartoon shorts. But I guess I can see where you are coming from... not so much in the presentation as in the framing devices and interactions between the characters. It somehow feels like it has the sensibilities of a comic book or variety show of the 1950's or something, not that I'd really know what they were like then, but still...

But yeah, it takes good use of the new technologies, and presents it in a way that can be captivating for more than a month like most web based comics (Penny Arcade excepted.)

Ohhhhhhh... If you want it to be possessive, it's just "ITS." But, if it's supposed to be a contraction then it's "I-T-apostrophe-S,"

scalawag

Ah cheer up, I was just trying to see how long it would take your head to asplode. Honestly, at the end of the day, I can't say I'm convinced by your arguments, and its a safe bet to say that I can't convince you likewise. So lets agree to disagree, and leave it at that.

Here, have some strongbad, always puts me in a good mood.

:D

The Internet is even less strict than that. There are so many different podcasts out there that you don't have to listen to "14 year old boys." Its the whole principle of "if you don't like it, change the channel."

That being said, I agree with you that "program quality comes before audio quality," but just because a local broadcast radio station is what it is doesn't make it better [programming-wise] than a podcast (or group of podcasts). Don't forget what Strongbad thinks about college radio (I know, it's not the same as a "local station")

College radio can pretty much be summed up in 5 words:
Dead air. umm, dead air.