Category Archive: Web

Links to other interesting web sites.

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December 29, 2008

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

I have made abundantly clear in this blog that I have a great deal of respect for the creative genius of Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy’, Angel, Firefly, etc.). I am willing watch anything he writes because he has proven that even if the concept sounds strange, he will deliver a show that is both entertaining and thought provoking; and he is one of only 3 writers I am willing to say that about - the others being Brian Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies), and Tim Minear (Firefly – with Joss, Wonderfalls – with Brian, The Inside, and Drive).

Well, during the WGA writer’s strike last winter, when everyone was supposed to be “pencils down”, Joss and some of his friends and family found an interesting way to keep busy. As it turns out, writing for shows distributed over the internet wasn’t covered by the contract (this was in fact one of the issue behind the strike), so WGA writers were allowed by the union to work on internet content. Joss had this strange idea for a short film bouncing around in his head for a couple years, and convinced his brothers, his soon to be sister-in-law, and some actor friends to get together and make a 3 15-minute long shows to be distributed for free on the internet (and for a small fee via iTunes).

The result was “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” a musical about a guy who 1) wants to be a super-villain, and 2) is afraid to talk to the cute girl he met at the laundromat. Yes, a very strange concept. Actually a very, very strange concept; but this being Joss, he pulled it off. The shows were both funny and tragic; and the songs were wonderful (Joss was after all the guy behind the musical episode of Buffy, although his bother and soon to be sister-in-law did a lot of the song-work).

What’s more, it was an amazing success. Even though it was available for free on its own site, Dr. Horrible’ was the number one download on iTunes (where people had to pay for it) for 5 straight days. Time Magazine even declared it one of the “Best Inventions of the Year” (although I’m not sure what the “invention” was – I guess doing professional quality content for the web).

So why am I talking about Dr. Horrible now when it was released to the web in June? Because the DVD (available only through Amazon) just came out; and while I enjoyed the show on the web, the DVD put it over the top for me – thank in large part to one of the extras on the disc. The DVD comes with a standard commentary track with the writers and actors talking about making the show; but it also comes with “Commentary!: The Musical.” Yes, there is a second “commentary” track on the DVD that is a musical in its own right. Actually it isn’t so much a commentary on the show; but on the industry with songs like “Strike!”, “$10 Solo”, “The Guild--I mean—ART", “Nobody's Asian” and “Pick-A-Part.” The songs are cutting satire worth buying the DVD for on their own.

I’m starting to wish that Joss would figure out some way create a TV series that was a musical. I know Steven Bochco tried that with “Cop Rock” and it didn’t work; but I think Joss might actually be able to pull it off.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2008

An Interactive Bible Study Blog

I had an idea the other day which I was sure someone must have already done by now; but after some time looking with Google, I sure couldn’t find it.

The idea is to essentially duplicate on the web the experience of the Bible Study I have been moderating on Tuesday nights. My thought is – each day post a short passage of the Bible (2-3 verses), and then allow people to comment on what they think it means and how they think it can and should be applied to everyday life. The post itself would only be the verses (perhaps reproduced from several translations), and all commentary (including the author’s) would be in the comments.

I was able to find several blogs where people posted their own studies of the Bible – essentially composing their own online commentary; but none of them seems to be built around comments by the community (and in fact many allowed no comments at all).

Now having seen how poorly some “Christians” have behaved posting comments to other Christian blogs (there are times I am grateful that my site is not more popular), I can understand why this may not have been done. Moderating such a group to allow for alternative views while not getting into flame wars would be very tricky and it would be impossible to please everyone; but it seems that there would be value in doing this.

I’m even thinking of taking the plunge myself, although not in the near future.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

January 21, 2008

Clive Thompson on Sci-Fi

An excellent essay on Wired's web site "Clive Thompson on Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing". A couple excerpts

Which brings me to my point. If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.

. . .

Here's my overly reductive, incredibly nerdy way of thinking about the novel: Consider it a simulation, kind of like The Sims. If you run a realistic simulation enough times — writing tens of thousands of novels about contemporary life — eventually you're going to explore almost every outcome. So what do you do then?
You change the physics in the sim. Alter reality — and see what new results you get. Which is precisely what sci-fi does. Its authors rewrite one or two basic rules about society and then examine how humanity responds — so we can learn more about ourselves. How would love change if we lived to be 500? If you could travel back in time and revise decisions, would you? What if you could confront, talk to, or kill God?

Posted by Steven at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

Clinton as Tracy Flick from "Election"

Those of you who have seen the 1999 file "Election" with Reese Witherspoon as a somewhat, uh, driven candidate for student body president will enjoy this.

Posted by Steven at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 04, 2007

Here Comes Another Bubble

I've lived here in Silicon Valley for 17 years. If you want to know what it's been like, watch this video (with apologies to Billy Joel). Yeah, that about sums it up.

Posted by Steven at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 12, 2005

What He Said

In the current climate of name calling, finger pointing, ridicule, and intellectual pride that pervades the "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design" debate; I have finally found someone making some intelligent observations on the subject – Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame). Those who are regular readers of this blog know that I rarely post links to other people's works here (I figure all of you are well able to find interesting things on the web yourself, and you don't need my help), so when I say "this is worth reading", please understand I really mean that. I only wish I had managed to say it as well as he did.

Take a look here

Oh, and if anyone wants to discount this because it was written by a "comics guy", may I suggest reading his no-fiction book "God's Debris" – Adams is someone with a fair amount of horsepower under his hood (if, perhaps, directed in fairly odd directions).

I'm looking forward to "part 2".

Posted by Steven at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 28, 2005

And now for something...

I realize my blog has been a bit weighty of late, so I thought I would offer up a few light confections to cleanse the palate today.

1. JibJab is the home of excellent satirical movies. While many of their movies require payment, some of the best remain available for free: Their latest "Big Box Mart" is among those.

2. Those of you who are fans of Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, I strongly recommend subscribing to the "Dogbert's New Ruling Class" monthly newsletter. While some portion of each issues is dedicated to shameless promotion of Scott Adams' latest venture, and I have never found the "Ask Dogbert" column to be particularly amusing, the " InDUHvidual Quotes" and "True Tales of InDUHviduals" is always good for some humor therapy. These are quotes and stories people send in to Adams related to people who clearly don't have a clue. A sample:

My husband is a police officer and was training some of his guys at the shooting range. They were hanging the paper targets when one guy said, "Hey, why don't we hang 3 at a time and just tear the top one off each time, that way we don't have to keep hanging them.

In addition, the latest issue contains the announcement that Scott Adams has started a blog, which contains, among other things, the stories behind some of his comics. Adams' description within the newsletter of why people blog is also well worth reading.

3. And while we are on the subject of quotes that make people sound clueless (I'll leave it to other to comment if that perception is correct). Here's a bit of satire that attempts to explain some of our current president's verbal gaffs.

4. Finally, for that half-dozen people in the world who are fans of both the Peanuts cartoon and the horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft, this story is a must-read.

Posted by Steven at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 25, 2005

Fresh Links

OK, 2 links I have run across recently:

Here's a site with some really cool furniture – the kind Theodore Geisel would have designed:

Straight Line Designs

I particularly like "bad table" under "furniture" and "melting 2" under "cabinets".

Also if you have a half hour to burn, check out this flash movie. It’s a dead-pan presentation by (fictional) drug company on their latest research. Lots of subtle humor at the expense of drug companies and the state of Texas.

The Next Big Thing

Posted by Steven at 09:29 AM | Permalink

May 09, 2005

Self-Referential Aptitude Test

I do not want this blog to become yet another list of interesting links to other things on the web (there are plenty of people already doing that very well – see Blues News or Boing Boing for two good examples). However, occasionally there is something which I find so compelling that I have to pass it on. This is one of those – a fascinating logic puzzle I ran across:

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~propp/srat-Q

I haven't solved it yet (I am at work and really shouldn't spend the time here); but have already spotted a few constraints just reading down the list.

Posted by Steven at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 06, 2005

In Praise of Wikipedia

I am a moderate believer in the Open Source movement. I believe strongly that having many minds generating ideas and many eyes checking for errors has very real benefit. On the other hand, I also believe that there is also value for consistency of vision and style in many endeavors which moderates (but may not eliminate) the net benefit of many minds/eyes. The result is that, in my opinion, the value of Open Source depends a lot on the project in question.

As it turns out, writing an encyclopedia is one of those projects for which Open Source is so ideally suited that the results are astounding. What you want for an encyclopedia is the largest possible collection of experts you can get on a diverse variety of subjects, with as many people as you can get fact-checking the results. What you get when you apply the Open Source philosophy to this problem is the Wikipedia.

I have found the Wikipedia so useful that I doubt I will ever use another encyclopedia again. After all, why would I use the Encyclopedia Britannica with 120,000 entries written by 4000 contributors when I could look at the which has 550,000 entries written by over 13,000 regular contributors (and many times that number of single-article editors). I have yet to look something up and not find what I was looking for (and some of my queries are fairly obscure).

If you have never looked at the Wikipedia, I would strongly suggest giving it a try.

Posted by Steven at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 29, 2005

“The Drugs I need” :-)

A bit of humor at pharmaceutical companies’ expense (brought to you by Consumer’s Union no less!)

"The Drugs I Need!"

Thanks Anne.

Posted by Steven at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)