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Also known as Ms. Marvel #41. You're doing it wrong. The joke about Ms. Marvel being a better book without Ms. Marvel only works when Carol Danvers is Ms. Marvel. Morons!
U. R. Do'n. It. WRONG! SRSLY!
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:18:34 GMT
You know, that episode.
First Green Arrow copied everything Batman did. Batplan, Arrowplane. Batmobile, Arrowmobile. Robin, Speedy.
Then Green Arrow started to synchronize with Batman. While Batman and Superman are best friends over in the main DCU timeline, Green Arrow and Superman are best friends in the Smallville timeline.
Now it's starting to happen that when the Arrow Family does something, the Bat Family copies them. Two or so years ago, Dinah adopted (with Green Arrow's help) a child raised by the League of Assassins, Sin; now, Batman's adopted Damien, who was raised by the League of Assassins.
There are anti-Bat-xeno-memes afoot! Grab your tin hats everyone!
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:47:36 GMT
I would read an Amalgam comic book about the Invisible Wonder, her sidekicks the Holliday Four (Etta Masters, Steve Grimm, Reed Richards, and IW's sister, Donna Storm), and her nemesis Paula Von Doom. I mean, the whole concept just builds on itself: Diana Storm proves herself the greatest warrior of Latvescria, and is thus bestowed the Lansinarians greatest weapon, a bioweapon that grants its wearer the ability to turn invisible, project invisible shields, etc.
I'm just saying!
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:20:59 GMT
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:47:55 GMT
My top five comic book super-teams:
5. The Intimates (Yes, more than both Young Justice and Gen13)
4. Extreme Justice
3. The Monarchy
2. Justice League: Elite
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
I make this list, because I believe the common thread in my favorite super-teams is that the characters are mostly loner, outcast types who've come together for to do something. They don't hang out. They don't start as either friends or (really) as disgruntled associates, but rather as professionals who see the benefit of working together.
I make this list, because I'm trying to figure out why the one issue Mighty Avengers I read pissed me off so badly when, from everything I can tell about the book, it should fall into the same category as the books that I like. Can I hate Hank Pym that much? Am I just that not into the "Avengers" brand? Is Dan Slott's style of humor just off-sync from what appeal to me enough that it irritates me?
I need to think on this more.
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:47:30 GMT
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:52:35 GMT
The idea that you can pass the location from your address bar to a script on the web, and then have that script interact with that page fascinates me in all kinds of ways. I just cobbled together a complementary script to my Pikachoors system so I can grab all the images from a page, list them on a new page, and pick the one I wanted. (Right now it's only keyed to images, but it'd be easy enough to sniff out links and backgrounds.) Bookmarklets are awesome!
<?php
// Error messages
function PikachoorError($msg = null) {
if ($msg != null) {
echo('ERROR: ' . $msg);
exit;
}
else {
PikachoorError('No error message passed.');
}
}
function FetchPage($url = null) {
if ($url == null) {
PikachoorError("No url passed to FetchImage...");
}
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
$html = curl_exec($ch);
$status = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($ch);
if ($status == 200) {
return $html;
}
else {
PikachoorError("Page not found...");
}
}
function CheckImage($url = null) {
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1); // get the header
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 1); // and *only* get the header
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_exec($ch);
$type = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_CONTENT_TYPE);
$status = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($status != 200) {
return false;
}
if (!preg_match("/image/", $type)) {
return false;
}
return true;
}
function AbsImage($img = null, $url = null) {
$startPos = strpos($url, "://") + 3;
$uParts = split("/", substr($url, $startPos));
$iParts = split("/", $img);
$tParts = array();
$tcnt = 1;
$turl = "";
foreach ($iParts as $i) {
if ($i == "..") {
$tcnt++;
}
else if ($i != ".") {
$tParts[] = $i;
}
}
for($i=0; $i < (count($uParts) - $tcnt); $i++) {
$turl .= $uParts[$i] . '/';
}
return $turl . implode('/', $tParts);
}
// Main
$url = isset($_GET['url']) ? htmlspecialchars(stripslashes($_GET['url'])) : null;
$x = array();
$y = array();
if ($url == null)
{
PikachoorError("No url...");
}
preg_match_all('/src="(.*)"/', FetchPage($url), $x);
foreach ($x[1] as $z)
{
if (strpos($z, '"') != false) {
$z = substr($z, 0, strpos($z, '"'));
}
if (substr($z, 0, 4) != "http") {
$z = AbsImage($z, $url);
}
if (CheckImage($z)) {
$y[] = $z;
}
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Pikachoors in a page</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php foreach($y as $image) { ?>
<p>
<img src="<?php echo($image); ?>" alt="<?php echo($image); ?>">
<br>
<a href="http://pics.mytrapster.com/wp-pikachoor-post.php?url=<?php echo($image); ?>">Add This Image</a>
</p>
<?php } ?>
</body>
</html>
Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:48:50 GMT
Is the Iron Man: Armored Adventures cartoon an Edisonade?
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:23:53 GMT
Back in the early-to-mid-90's one of my favorite cartoons for a while was the Care Bears. It was actually the 80's cartoon rerun on the Disney Channel. The series where they formally declared Cheer Bear was a girl by giving her a ponytail and made Grumpy Bear the IT/maintenance guy of Care-A-Lot. What I liked about the series as all the Care-themed technology. Communicators and cars shaped like clouds with heart-shaped buttons and rainbows for antenna and supports. It was as if there was an subset of magical technology, and I used to try to imagine what sort of stuff you could build out of clouds, hearts, and rainbows.
Before that, back before I owned a Nintendo and more so when I finally got one, but had watched people play it at Wal-Mart and seen various episodes of the Super Mario Brothers cartoons, I used to dream about...and there wasn't a term for it then...a sandbox game where you could build cars and forts out of the pipes, koopa shells, blocks, etc. from the Mario games. A game where you could design your own Koopa ship, like the Koopa Kids had in SMB3.
Cartoonish technological clades like those have always intrigued me. I love looking at Jack Kirby's art, because it has such a distinct look to it, so much so that I can almost imagine how it's supposed to work. The black spots, jagged paths, and terminating circles almost feel like a distinct kind of technology. My favorite aspect of the Kids Next Door show and the Fusion Fall game was the Two-by-four Technology. The list goes on.
A couple of years ago, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) khamon and I went to Atlanta for a Second Life meetup. While we were there, I cajoled him into letting me go by the LEGO store, where you could fill a bucket with parts. While there, I bought a short bucket of 2x2 bricks of the pink and purple variety. It took me a while to have any use for these bricks, so they stayed in the container until late last year when I brought them to work, where I was building a small collection of LEGO, BTR, K'nex bricks, and LEGO-like toys.
As I said, they're all 2x2 bricks, so I mostly use them for filler pieces when I'm bulding something. This means that my rolling blaster canon and super-cycle have the odd pink or purple piece mixed in them. As such, my imagination began to fill in a sort of back story, fueled by love of thematic, fictional technology.
Somewhere out there in the universe, there's a galactic company known as PrinsTech. Business-wise they fall somewhere between Apple Computers and Gulfstream Jets. PrinsTech builds technology for princesses, and not just any princesses, but the super-royal ones. Princesses whose kingdoms cover entire planets, multiple colonies, and even extend beyond the barriers of one universe. PrinsTech is the company who builds magic mirrors, pumpkin coaches, pink unicorns, etc. Their proprietary technologies, designed and patented by Farley Godmodder, is top of the line, over-technology that spawned the phrase, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is a trademark of PrinsTech Industries."
Every once in a while, though, these kingdoms get overthrown, princesses go into hiding with their families, and their castles get pillaged. This means that in some rare cases, PrinsTech items can be found on the black market. In rarer cases, these black marketed items will fall into the hands of mad scientists. And while Farley Godmodder's technology is so advanced that completely reverse engineering a lot of it is impossible, it's partially possible.
Some of the bigger items, like the Infinite Chest, can be broken down. You can pull out the power source, which is powerful and compact enough to power a small point singularity cannon. You can wire a magic mirror into a traditional computer network and have it act as the majordomo. And what items can't be broken down, are still useful by themselves.
The PrinsTech Royal Planner, for example, is best described as a Rolodex, Facebook, Wikipedia, Page Six, Kindle mashup. There's actually only one Royal Planner, which exists within a star. The Royal Planners that princesses use are terminals tied into that, and are constantly updated with the latest royal gossip, contact information, political affiliates, etc. When one falls into the hands of any analyst, that analyst never lets go. This is why counter-intelligence photos often show men in business suits or combat fatigues staring into bright, pink hearts. The Royal Planner's technology is so proprietary, the comm channels so secure, that any time any one has tried to figure out how it works, the terminal loses its connection.
When a rebel army or mad scientist gets their hands on anything PrinsTech, it's rare for them to try and take it apart. The ones smart and bold enough to successfully do it, in fact, proudly display such baubles as pink hearts or crystalline flowers on the giant robot behemoths as badges of honor to their PrinsTech piratical prowess.
"Let those in the path of my mechanowarbot tremble at its might, for within it lies the power of a thousand Pretty Precious Ponies!"
I say all this, because I've been thinking, I really need to play around with Squeak again.
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:09:53 GMT
nthmike suggested a list of the first 100 Brrdd links, so here it is. At some point, I'll make this dynamic and add a counter. But tonight, I must sleep!
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:12:14 GMT
Pikachoors update. Dynamically rendering the images and thumbnails was a heavy process and it was bugging me, so I fixed my script to dump the images to a file for speedier access. Woohoo!
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:03:02 GMT
If Marvel Divas is a success, I wonder if there's any chance for a guy version of the book, about guys hanging out and such. They could call it: Marvel NERDS!, a comic book about the wacky, after-hours adventures of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Hank Pym. I see Ben Grimm or James Rhodes often getting dragged along to act as the voice of common sense. I'd read it.
EDIT: By scavgraphics, something like this: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmzylyadtz5
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:03:22 GMT
Last minute decision to drink an Amp instead of a Red Bull prevented me from dying of my prophesied Nerdgasm as I read through a few pages of Emp5 while waiting for TF2 to start. Alas. Here's my spoiler free review of both: Woot!
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:11:51 GMT
Sonic Laser Developed, an article I'd like to read a bit more in-depth when I have time.
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:07:35 GMT
How I see Twitter:
Ev'ryone has a jet plane,
They drive on a street.Never in my life have I wanted to throttle a group of people more than those who discuss Twitter character limits. It's like getting into a conversation with someone who owns an F-22 Raptor and listening to them discuss how they hate driving their F-22 Raptor to work at 55mph on the highway. What's worse, when you ask those people why they don't fly their F-22 Raptor to work, they tell you that you obviously haven't been paying attention. That's what discussing Twitter (and Facebook) is like for me. "Oh, man, there's construction work; I hate driving my F-22 Raptor over potholes.""Dammit, why do they have such small speed limits. My F-22 Raptor can go at least seventy.""I don't see why people keep talking about runways, only 4% of F-22 Raptor owners use runways."
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:29:12 GMT
As it is now, I'm ducking out tomorrow with the mom around 4:00pm with plans to:
1. Pick up Empowered from the comic shop (5:30),
2. Go see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (7:00), and
3. Anxiously await Iron Man 2 (May 7, 2010).
I wonder what's going to fuck up these plans this week? My money is on zombie velociraptors.
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:28:27 GMT
Can anyone out there see: http://mytrapster.com/ or http://pics.mytrapster.com? I can see and ping them both from home, but neither work here at work. Both worked yesterday. Strangely enough, http://blog.mytrapster.com works in both places. It's DNS strangeness I've never seen before.
EDIT: It looks like I'm just going to have to wait for the DNS system at work to propagate. It all works at home. The dudes at Slicehost said everything as okay. I dunno. I'll try again tomorrow.
EDIT 2: Okay, now some of it doesn't work from home, but what doesn't work seems to coincide with my fiddling. It looks as if there might be an hour delay as the DNS settings shift down the line. So...I'm going to stop playing with it for a couple of hours and see what happens. It's frustrating to finally get Pikachoor, the tool I've been dreaming of for a while, built and then not be able to use it because the DNS went out. Grrr.
EDIT 3: Everything's back to normal. Yay!
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:45:43 GMT
You know what one of my pet peeves is? People who, either legitimately or ironically, complain about the way LiveJournal uses the word "Friends" as a descriptor for "people whose blogs you read." I wonder if they sit around concerned or smirking when they realize that their computer mouse isn't a rodent. Do they make posts about how their keyboard neither unlocks door nor is made from wood? I haven't seen this complaint recently, thank goodness, but it's something that's always gotten under my skin, which doesn't actually mean it's under my skin.
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:23:01 GMT
Please pardon the crap design of Pikachoors, I intend to clean it up a lot when time permits. Right now, I'm happily pleased with the fact that it works more than how it look.
For the longest time, I've wanted something like Delicious for pictures, instead of links. Today, It finally gelled in my head how to do it with WordPress. You need two PHP scripts and a bookmarklet:
1. wp-pikachoor-post.php, this is the script that does the actual posting.
2. wp-pikachoor-show.php, this is the script that displays the image.
3. This bookmarklet: <a href="javascript:window.location='http://address.com/wp-pikachoor-post.php?url='%20+%20eval(window.location);">Pikachoors</a>
All you do is, drop the two scripts into the top directory of your blog. Then put that bookmarklet somewhere you can easily click it in your browser. And any time you want to grab a copy of an image, just make sure you've got the image (JPEG, GIF, or PNG) pulled up in your browser, and click on the bookmarklet. The image will be saved and displayed in your blog. Voia!
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:53:03 GMT
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