So, this is what I'm thinking...» Brian Hoover

We are hopeless at charades

Brian — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:52:51 +0000

We had an impromptu session 0f charades during dinner the other night, in response to the question of what we could do for family home evening the next time it rolled around. I’m surprised that we haven’t actually done charades in our family, but also surprised that the kids didn’t know what it was at all. I can’t believe that they hadn’t done it at school before. So, to prepare them for our family night we explained some of the rules of charades. They got the idea that you have to act out something without using words. We tried to make it as easy as possible by choosing some examples of movies we own or they had recently seen, such as Edward Scissorhands and The Karate Kid. Jett said he wanted a go and decided that his movie was 4 words. He made many gyrations and actions and it turns out that his movie was “Helicopter Running Robot Dog”. It must be the new Pixar movie or something. Ashton tried “Labyrinth” by walking around in random directions and searching which was a good try but a very difficult one.

I decided to test Suzanne, and there was also the off chance that the kids would get it too. I wanted to do Michael Jackson.

I figured the easiest way to convey “Michael Jackson” was to invoke his best and most well loved dance routine from Thriller.

Look, I’m not Michael Jackson. I realise this. I a fat, balding, middle aged white guy with little to no coordination or artistic credibility. But I did a pretty damned good Zombie Dance from the Thriller music video, including most if not all of the most easily identifiable dance steps. But could Suzanne get it? She just pointed and laughed and started thinking up random words and names which had absolutely nothing to do with thriller or Michael Jackson. The kids could be forgiven because they weren’t around in the 80s or 90s, but surely Suzanne knew what she was looking at.

Eventually, with a bit of humming and whistling, it was Ashton who finally got it. I really don’t know what was going on in Suzanne’s head. Heaven help us in our next FHE.

10 Geeky laws that should exist, but don’t

Brian — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:15:29 +0000

There are many, many laws having nothing to do with government that are useful to know because they tell you something about how the universe works. There are Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle’s Law, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, among many. Most of these laws have been known for a long time, but it wasn’t until a mere 19 years ago that Godwin’s Law was written.

If you’ve ever been involved in a discussion on Usenet, or have been following politics in the past decade or so, you’ve probably encountered Godwin’s Law. While Godwin’s Law is, alas, as true today as it was then, it seems unfortunate that there aren’t more widely accepted axioms to help us geeks define the characteristics of our world.

To that end, then, here are 10 geeky laws (axioms) that should exist, but don’t … at least, they didn’t until now:

Munroe’s Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his position automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins.
Lucas’s Law: There is no movie so beloved that a “special edition,” prequel or sequel cannot trample and forever stain its memory.
Tolkien and Rowling’s Law: No reasonably faithful movie adaptation of a book will ever be quite as good as the book it adapts. Thus great movie adaptations can only be made out of truly amazing books.
Somers and McCarthy’s Law: There is no dangerous unscientific theory so preposterous that no celebrity will espouse and advocate it.
Jobs’s Law: No matter how well last year’s cool tech gadget still works, it will seem utterly inadequate the moment the new version comes out.
Savage and Hyneman’s Law: Blowing stuff up is fun. Blowing stuff up in the name of science is AWESOME.
Starbucks’ and Peet’s Law: C8H10N4O2, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.
Wilbur’s Law: Bacon makes everything better.
Comic Book Guy’s Law: There is no detail of a movie too brief or inconsequential to become the subject of an hours-long diatribe.
The Unified Geek Theory: At present, the President of the United States, the wealthiest person in the United States, and the most trusted newscaster in the United States are all geeks. At the same time, movies based on comic book characters are routinely taking in hundreds of millions of dollars. The only reasonable conclusion is: We’ve won!

Via Geek Dad

Another thing the movies got wrong about the future

Brian — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:19:31 +0000

So there’s an article on news.com.au about today being celebrated as “Back to the Future” day, but it turns out that it’s all wrong or a hoax or somesuch. Doc Brown programs the world’s most stylish time machine to visit the future by setting a specific date. But whoever started this bandwagon got the date wrong. Instead of 5-July-2010 it should be 21-Oct-2015. I’ve already got this queued as a future blog entry so check back in five years. Hehe.

Anyhow, Back to the Future got a number of things wrong. Not in the least hoverboards. I want my hoverboard! But it also failed to predict western society’s unquenchable thirst for the elixir from the fountain of youth. Pure, unadulterated Botox. Compare a 47 year old Marty McFly to a 49 year old Michael J. Fox

How could Robert Zemeckis have known that in the future we’d all look like RealDolls. At least those who we look up to most, those who would be our role models: Celebrities.

What’s the difference between Iron Man, Iron Boy and Iron Woman?

Brian — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:01:21 +0000

One is a Marvel Superhero, one is a kid with a mask and the other is a command.

Yeah, slow news day. Been sick all weekend.

30th Anniversaries this week

Brian — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:19:45 +0000

Wow, I haven’t been paying attention and these kinda snuck up on me. Pacman turns 30 today! Pacman was developed by Namco and released in Japan on 22-May-1980. Wow, has it been that long? I don’t want to consider how may 20s I dropped into coin-ops in the early 80s playing it, avoiding Pinky, Inky, Blinky and Clyde. Pacman came at a time when the most popular arcade games were shooters like Space Invaders and Asteroids, so it came as a welcome non-violent alternative and grew in popularity. Everything about the game was cool: the high-contrast colours, the wocka-wocka sounds, the intro music… it really was the perfect game for it’s time. To celebrate, Google even changed their header logo into a playable version of Pacman for the day. You’ve got to be in Classic Google mode, not iGoogle. I remember saving all my pocket money to buy this on the Atari, but was so disappointed to find that it really sucked.

Another 30th anniversary this week was the release of The Empire Strikes Back. After being blown away by Star Wars three years earlier, it came as a surprise to me that there was another movie released. Remember, these are the days before the Internet and discussions forums, preview web sites and such. I didn’t know about it until it actually came out in Australia, which was a few months after the US release and even then I don’t think I saw it until a few weeks after than. Empire is still the best of the movies. I might see if I can fit it in sometime this weekend, perhaps on VHS for the low-fi experience, the way George Lucas intended.

Meanwhile, here’s a Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back.

Click for larger version

Happy Star Wars Day

Brian — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:08:21 +0000

Been away for the weekend. I need to get myself organised before I post anything substantial. So in the meantime, Happy Star Wars Day! I hope to fit in watching the Original Trilogy before bed time

Iron Man 2 Black Widow wallpapers

Brian — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:46:38 +0000

For a friend who asked me if I could find some decent sized walls, I thought y’all might enjoy these too.

My Avatar

Brian — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:31:29 +0000

This is my Na’vi Avatar, as determined by the Avatar website.

Have you seen this man... err Na'vi?

I need someone with mad Photoshop skillz to give me his “Na’vi eye for the Human guy”.

Brian loves lightning storms

Brian — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:05:07 +0000

So, we had an early family home evening tonight. The kids got off school early, and we needed to go to a meeting tonight for their new school they’ll be going to next year. So in between I planned a popcorn and movie night. We watched “Up” by Pixar, which was actually really entertaining. After the movie ended we hurriedly got ready for the meeting and jumped into the car. We noticed that it started raining a little bit, and the radio was talking about severe weather warnings. By the time we got to Mandurah from the rain heavy enough to restrict vision to about 20m and force us to slow down to about 20 km/h.

So we got to the school for the meeting. It was an information night, so we expected a few cars in the car park and a few people to be milling around but there was nobody. Suzanne checked her email again from her phone and worked out she can’t count; the meeting is tomorrow night.

We came home braving flooded roads and broken down cars on the side of the road and for the last hour I’ve been entertained by the most awesome thunder and lightning show I’ve seen in ages, so the night hasn’t been a total bust. I love the sound of thunder, too. It’s so powerful. I love sitting out the front and watching and hearing the show.

Periodic Table of Science Fiction TV and Film

Brian — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:46:25 +0000

I get most of these. My favourites are Fth (Element), B5 (Londo) and the 91st element. The whole table is really well done, and I like how they are all grouped. Only ones I don’t understand are 3001 (Tom Hanks) and HlW (Man). Also, Lo (Lights Out) is another I’m unfamiliar with.

Periodic Table of Sci Fi