If you haven't seen Golden Shower's music video for Video Computer System, you should. Unless you're too young to remember the Atari 2600, in which case, maybe you shouldn't.
1/28/2001 07:49:52 PM | +
TheRedEye's Stupid ROMs Page is currently best source for the latest obscure NES ROMs. Although nobody can ever truly replace Sardius, he never updates, and you know, we hardcore NES R0MZ D00DZ need our fix.
Also, the little features on each game are a riot. Middle School English II (Sachen) -
"Have you ever thought, 'Boy, learning a foreign language sure would be more fun if an insane dancing penguin helped me type and rewarded my accomplishments by letting me play the most frustrating piece of shit game ever made.'? Well, thanks to Sachen, your grammar dreams can finally come TRUE!"
1/28/2001 05:39:13 PM | +
Online Advertising
Death of Banner Ads Exaggerated -
"'Online advertising's death is greatly exaggerated,' says a Forrester Research study based on interviews with 59 industry bigwigs including AOL, MSN and IDG. Advertisers plan to double online spending by 2003, signaling a 508 percent increase in between 2000 and 2005, the report says."
Wallpaper or banner ads? Spot the difference
"So why don't banners work? 'Banner' is just a fancy word for a long, thin poster. The kind that are splashed on poster sites or bus sides all over the country, which seem to do their job without any fuss. And they can't even be animated very well. But most national bus, poster, radio or TV ads aren't measured by 'clickthroughs' - the act of taking your mouse to the banner and clicking on it to be taken to another website in the hope that you might buy something.
...
While still emphasising the 'click' analysis, this is a step in a new direction in measuring the behaviour of readers after they've been exposed to an ad. Could the banner escape its direct response below-the-line trappings and become an above-the-line medium? Could it work at a brand level, creating desire and excitement for emotional reasons rather than an instant rational response to a sales promotion or special offer?"
I think banner ads have and will continue to "fail" if evalauted by clickthroughs, even though the ad agenices are becoming smarter about providing ads that are relevant and supposedly targeted. As for working at a brand level, I just don't know, I see it more as an attempt to avoid admitting a loss by changing the rules of the game. "Sure, less than one half percent bothered to click on your ad, and there have been no noticable sales increases, but I think we definitely increased brand awareness!"
Anyway, you have to worry about any industry that can be basically be made impotent with a single file.
1/27/2001 10:44:28 PM | +
Making fun of Slashdot is a bad idea because
Not that that will stop me.
No, actually, Linus is not doing nearly as good a job as Rob Malda is. Linus can say things like say Red Hat is "basically unusable as a development platform" because he has no conflicts of interest because of his employer. If Linus had chosen to work for Red Hat or Suse or any of the other companies trying to make money off of linux software, there would always be questions about his motives. (I don't think that chip-maker Transmeta's use of Linux has damaged Linus's credibility at all.)"Actually this story amused me, since its essentially the same story that some genius journalist writes every few months. Linus is killing Linux just as horribly as I'm killing Slashdot."
I don't think I'm really going anywhere with this, I'm just pissed off and bored on this Saturday afternoon. (I know, big surprise there.)
1/27/2001 04:44:16 PM | +
Ziff Davis, CNet Go Separate Ways -
"In an announcement that surprised no one, CNet Networks and Ziff Davis Media have revised their content licensing and print publishing contracts. Effective March 1, the five-year agreement between the two media-tech giants will be reduced to one year."
With the increasing consolidation of media companies into mega-corporations, I was happy to see this. And besides, it was just wrong. CNet and ZDNet should be arch-enemies.
1/27/2001 03:36:55 PM | +
Bleh.
1/26/2001 08:24:29 PM | +
"The bitches love me because they know that I can rock"
1/23/2001 04:39:50 PM | +
"7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them - cool, huh?"
1/21/2001 05:05:26 PM | +
From OMM's 2000 Awards -
"I'm against book burning as much as anyone - unless we're talking about burning books of plays - but I think we should have let the Indianapolis Nazis have this one without any argument. Fighting these restrictions can only lead to more heated rhetoric, which might then inspire someone really smart to prove - using science - that video games don't train kids to become snipers. And I don't want to know that. Like you, I roll my eyes when Lt. Grossman describes his hysterical theory of video games as killing simulators. But in my insides, I'm secretly thrilled. A part of me honestly believes that the one hundred thousand hours I've spent motionless in front of a monitor would, in a pinch, turn out to have trained me to pilot a helicopter, be a jetboat superchamp, raise hamsters, and do karate. The day someone proves that Silent Scope prepares you for murder about as well as Clue prepares you to lead the resulting homicide investigation is the day I have to face the fact that I've wasted my entire fucking life."
1/20/2001 10:04:18 PM | +
Filler Friday: Please Leave Me Alone
1/19/2001 11:11:11 AM | +
14 YEAR OLD GiRLS are the finest Nintendo Punk band ever.
They have a song about Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu! Maybe you weren't listening... let me repeat that. They have a song about Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu!!!
No, I'm not going to try and explain any of that.
1/17/2001 07:03:54 PM | +
Bang and Olufsen's BeoPlayer mp3 player is so, so, so sexy. Peter always finds the best toys.
1/15/2001 03:19:13 PM | +
About Plastic:
"Plastic is a new model for news."
Say what you will of those lovable sellouts at suck, they still have a sense of humor.
Anyway, it's slashdot for people who watch too much television and read too many stupid magazines and scan too many pointless websites. Fun fun.
1/15/2001 12:32:29 PM | +
In the future, the coolest ass-kicking girls will always have purple hair.
1/14/2001 08:33:54 PM | +
Hard to believe, but I actually wrote for Über today - Course Selection Guide
1/12/2001 01:20:21 AM | +
I probably should have said this earlier, but I have no plans to release the Organizine source code. Don't bother asking, the answer is no. Let me clarify, let me be absolutely crystal clear so there is no confusion: I am not releasing the code to Organizine.
There's an interesting thread on the FoRK list concerning the shutdown of Organizine and a host of issues it raises.
Almost everyone who has contaced me has been really supportive, which has been a very pleasant surprise.
1/11/2001 04:21:28 PM | +
1/9/2001 05:07:19 PM | +
Explanation forthcoming, though it probably won't be satisfactory to anyone except me.
1/9/2001 02:39:54 PM | +
Mistakes were made.
1/9/2001 12:45:07 AM | +
It's back to California tomorrow for yet another fun-filled, exciting, adventure packed quarter at school. Yay!
(Note: this is just a small part of the new "less angry" adammathes re-branding, which was launched with the "less ominous, cutesy, but everyone says I should get it cut shorter or grow it out more because this looks way too girly, pageboy" haircut.)
Even when I do everything on my to do list I still feel like I haven't accomplished anything.
(Note how brand coherence is not being strongly maintained as "bitter, despairing for no reason" adammathes-brand traits continue to come through.)
Ok, well, I didn't actually do everything on the list, I still need to figure out if I'm going to be able to go to sxsw. Something about "final exams," one of those silly "school" things.
(Note that sarcasm and needless quotes are brand staples and not being phased out.)
Also, I need to try and deal with getting a job for the summer. Which really disturbed me, but then I was comforted by the realization that this is the last time I will ever have to look for a summer job.
Then I remembered that was because I was going to gradaute eventually and so my next job search wouldn't be for a summer job, like, a "real job" and that was just terrifying.
1/7/2001 05:32:47 PM | +
Organizine is already litsed in Yahoo. Yay.
1/6/2001 10:49:22 AM | +
Take23.org: news and resources for the mod_perl world. [self explanatory, i think] 1/5/2001 06:30:38 PM | +
Oh crap. I forgot to do Über. Again. 1/5/2001 06:28:11 PM | +
I'm very reluctant to comment on Blogger's "Server Fund", especially after so many stupid comments have already been made, but I'm going to make a few points.
Blogger's immense growth in the last two months, at least from my perspective, seems mostly due to favorable press. Specifically, favorable articles in mainstream Condé Nast publications. Condé Nast is one of Pyra's investors. Regardless of any issues of journalistic ethics this brings up, it just seems, well, funny, for an investor to build hype in an effort to increase the userbase, and then refuse to provide necessary funding to support the new users that, really, they drove to the service, and then have another one of their publications report on Pyra's, for lack of a better description, seemingly desperate attempts for a cash influx.
Of course, I don't know the financial details, and the picture is probably much more complex than I'm making it out to be.
Also, with the recent launch of Organizine, this has also got me thinking about what, if anything, I would do if Organizine was in such a situation. I don't think it's appropriate for anyone (other than an investor) to tell someone how to run their business,
but, personally I'm not sure I would ever feel comfortable asking for donations, even though Organizine isn't a business, it's just a little thing I put together in my spare time, and it probably would seem more appropriate. It's not an issue right now and I don't think it will ever be popular enough for it to be, but if it did I would rather sell t-shirts or something. I don't know. The whole insta-paypal-donation stuff has always made me feel queasy.
1/5/2001 01:10:25 AM | +
Launch seemed to go ok. Only one real "i'm an idiot" bug on my part caused real problems. Those damn scoped variables in nested subroutines... always get you when you aren't looking.
1/3/2001 05:32:07 PM | +
Yes, so, I launched like three months after I thought I would. But who's counting? I wrote some really sad Year In Review thing yesterday but decided it was too depressing to bring in the new year with. Instead, there's a pseudo-texty text-ish thing about Organizine. 1/1/2001 11:10:56 PM | +
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