The Past and Future of LOLcats

For some reason, LOLcats have been in the news lately. Well, at least they've been in the news that I read. Maybe that can tell you something about how informed I am.

First of all, the world's first LOLcat was recently discovered.

I found out about it from Language Log (although I don't know what it was doing there). This picture is from 1905 and predates our current versions of LOLcats by about 100 years.

Also, an off broadway musical is being made about LOLcats. What that could possibly involve I don't know. All I can say is

Wiki of the Week: Encyclopedia Dramatica

There's a lot to be said about Encyclopedia Dramatica (besides, "in lulz we trust"), and it's place in the internet. It's hard to describe for one. Maybe think of it as "4chan lite" or a "best of 4chan" kind of place. While a lot of it is simple documentation of troll internet culture and humor, a lot of actual discussion is done there. Popular topic pages are often updated extremely frequently, making a weird sort of conversation within edits (since most is done with the wiki format). The New York Times described the site fairly well (if a little pretentiously), "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore."

Anonymous is here, they have power, and there's a reason they exist in this new thing we call the internet. It may not be apparent until we are able to really step back and take a look at how these constant connections are affecting us.

But maybe I'm taking this too seriously, and should probably just have fun reading some lulz instead.

Encyclopedia Dramatica.

and "Encyclopedia Dramatica" on Wikipedia.

Left 4 Community love: A Review of New Add-On Campaigns

So, there's a new Add-Ons manager for Left 4 Dead, and it's pretty sweet. It allows for basically one-click installation of third-party campaigns and mods. This has led to a huge surge in the use of community campaigns. A HUGE one. I don't have numbers, but every time I've looked for games, at least a third of campaigns in the browser that show up are third party. Community maps never get that kind of attention. This is awesome, and it's exactly where PC developers need to be going, because this is the shit that makes the PC awesome (It's also the shit that makes us PC gamers pretentious, but hey, we're only pretentious because we're better). So, with this surge in community awesomeness, there's interestingly enough, a few campaigns that have stood out as being more popular than others. I've played them, I've played the shit out of them, they were delicious, and have definitely kept my interest in a game that supposedly lacks DLC. Let's take a look at them, shall we? First off, Death Aboard:

From what I've seen, Death Aboard is the most popular Add-On campaign by far, and for good reason. It's freakin' great. It was the first full custom campaign to come out, so by the time the manager was available, many of the bugs in the campaign had already been ironed out.

But anyway, in Death Aboard, you start off in a dark and eerie prison complex, and have to find your way from the maze of dark corridors of the prison complex through some sewers to a prison yard, all the while fighting undead inmates. From there, you enter the prison yard, and break out into some urban area, and then to the docks. Use one of these as a safehouse, and then enter the huge cargo ship.

This is one of the coolest parts, the ship is beached, and on it's side, so you have to adjust to the screen being tilted at about a 30 degree angle or more sometimes. There's a lot of water damage and rust, and you must climb up railings and such with caution. You exit through the ships propeller, in one of the most difficult panic events I've come across, and dash into a beach house.

From there you climb up a cliff to a lighthouse for the finale, where you are rescued by a freakin' hot air balloon.

So already, we see there's a ton of creativity here. The only part that I would say really lacks anything is the early prison levels, since they tend to get repetitive. I mean, it is a prison, so the repetition doesn't seem unrealistic, but there's definitely some copypasta going on in some of the corridors. A minor gripe really. The panic events there are also pretty easy even without much planning (and I play everything on at least advanced).

But man, does the ship make up for it, by leaps and bounds. It's been months since I was genuinely scared by L4D until I played that. Even after replaying it several times it is extremely difficult to tell where the hoard will come from. That's something the official Valve maps don't have. There's also an extremely difficult panic event where you try to open the large metal door to get out through the huge propeller. Here pretty much no matter what you do, you will be surrounded by zombies. God help you if a boomer comes.

I'm making it sound a little unbalanced. It's not like it's impossible to do, but on expert I haven't been able to do it in one try. It's tough, but it's set up for some of the greatest gaming moments I've had in months.

The lighthouse finale is actually a tad easier than the boat, though not by much. It reminds me of Zombie D-day, as you're sitting on top of a large beach/hill/cliff/lighthouse, and you can see the hoards come from miles away. This is the opposite of the ship, but works just as well in creating fear, because after unloading a few sniper rifle magazines into the mass of zombies running toward you, you'll realize there's still a ton more. Oh shi-

This would make the tank easier to defeat, but (spoiler) he doesn't always come from the beach, and I've found myself struggling to keep up with the group as we rush from the lighthouse back down to the beach, being pursued by a towering inferno. You also get rescued down by the beach, so there's a ton of different ways to do the finale, all of which are challenging, and really fun.

Wow, that was bit longer than I wanted, anyway, let's check out Night Terror:

Night Terror is significantly more buggy than Death Aboard, but it's totally forgivable, because Night Terror is just filled with awesome. Night terror isn't really a coherent campaign or story, but instead, each level is just something awesome. It was created (mostly) by Nipper, who did a bunch of weird (but awesome) CS 1.6 maps like crazytank. The first level is the mansion from 28 Days Later. You have to progress through it, and there is (of course) a panic event where you hold out in front as the zombies come across the lawn. You really feel like you're in the movie for this one. The second level is an almost exact replica of the Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World. There is a ton of attention paid to detail here, and a lot of work was done to replicate the tacky effects and holograms, all of which become actually scary when zombies come swarming out of every grave. There's even a panic event where you trigger a cart and ride through the graveyard, all the while defending against MASSIVE (and somewhat unbalanced) hoards of zombies. If you make it through, the cart quietly pulls into the exit area, as if nothing happened. It's a great moment. The next level brings you to the freakin' Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings. There's a lot of attention to detail in this one as well, though the actual mines get pretty repetitive (the giant hall with pillars is pretty much just that, a lot of pillars). The Tank actually always comes at the same time in this one. Right when you cross the bridge of Khazad-dum, a tank comes where the Balrog does in the movie. And here's the kicker: the fastest way to kill the tank there, is to have one of your members sacrifice himself and jump off of the bridge, the tank will follow, killing you both. FLY, YOU FOOLS! It's fucking epic, and fucking amazing. The next level I'm actually kind of embarrassed about, as I assume it must be from some movie, or book or something, but I can't put my finger on the reference in this one. It's still enjoyable, though, and reminds me of a classic jungle level from Serious Sam. It's jungle ruins, with long corridors lit by moonlight. It is the weakest level. There's not a lot of memorable events and some copypasta is pretty apparent. Though, all is made well when you discover that the next level, the final level, is the cabin from The Evil Dead. You enter through the cabin, and go through a passageway to the wierd, vortexy version of the house from The Evil Dead 2. There you hold out, and get rescued through a vortex, headed toward The Army of Darkness. It's thoroughly enjoyable, though not as difficult as it should be. Still, you will be satisfied. Well, these are going on a tad longer than I'd want, so I think I'll leave Dam it! and Back to School for part 2. Night Terror and Death Aboard are really must-plays, so get out and kill some zombies!

Hippie Yoga Farmers vs. Internet Video Archivists

Every once in a while, something happens on the internet so bizarre, so random, and so borderline terrifying that it really makes you think about all the strange people who live out there, and what a truly horrifying yet fascinating place the world is. This is a story about one of them.

Maybe about a week ago the blog Coilhouse did a post about the website Everything Is Terrible. I hadn't heard of Everything Is Terrible before I read this post, but I've been reading Coilhouse for a while, and if you don't read it then you should, it's a really great blog about art and pop culture. Anyway, as Coilhouse describes, Everything is Terrible is a website where people link to bizarre tape-recorded videos of random strange things they found on TV. The Coilhouse post didn't really do anything more than praise the website and link to a few of the videos on it, but it was one of these videos that got them into trouble. This video was one entitled "Weird Hippie Yoga Farmers."

I wish I could show you this video. I really, really wish I could. Suffice to say that involved a guy with bleached blond hair singing cheesy kids country songs about yoga with the help of "Rasta the Rooster," a stereotypically Jamaican rooster character, both of whom taught yoga to a bunch of kids in a slightly creepy, new-agey, touchy feely way. And just for your information, I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in this description. The reason why I can't show you this video is because the person who owned the copyright to this video was a colossal douchebag. I mean, someone trying to protect her copyright. 

Apparently, this was an edited video of clips from a late 90s show called "Ei Ei Yoga." This show starred some dude named Max Thomas, a yoga teacher working in LA, apparently a very good one. The show went nowhere and was forgotten for a while, but some nerd taped it a while back and uploaded an edited clip of it to Everything is Terrible, where everyone proceeded to make fun of it. The clip lingered on that website for a while making almost no impact, until a writer for Coilhouse found out about the website and generated traffic for it, and especially for the yoga video, which she directly embedded in the blog post. When Robin Maxwell, the wife of the Ei Ei Yoga guru, found out as a result of this increased traffic about this video making fun of her husband, she immediately pulled it from youtube and Everything is Terrible, and shortly afterwards EIT had all of their videos pulled from youtube. 

Meanwhile, a yoga website, upon seeing this video, did a post where they encouraged everyone to "make fun of the hippy dippy Ei Ei Yoga farmer." Robin Maxwell was not too pleased, and wrote a comment on this post, which led to the website doing an update. In her comment, she essentially describes Max as a saint who has great wisdom and teaches yoga to sick children. She also paints the viewers of EIT as stupid idiots who did nothing but demonize a good person, and quotes youtube comments that use insults and racial slurs as evidence of this, which is kind of unfair, since there are comments for every video on youtube that have insults and racial slurs. There are lots of other problems with her comment as well.

For one thing, she says, "[Max] was one of the first yoga teachers to acknowledge that if children were taught yoga we would be living in a much saner world," as if this is something that has been scientifically proven, and as if this even has any grain of truth to it. First of all, I've worked with children before. It's hard to get them to sit still, let alone to master yoga positions. Plus, kids could seriously get hurt doing yoga. Maybe some kids would take well to learning yoga, but definitely not all of them. Second of all, yoga is not the key to living in a saner world. That idea displays so many levels of ignorance I don't know where to begin. Yoga can't change the way a person thinks. Yoga can't change the way society functions. And if yoga involves stereotypically Jamaican roosters, I don't see how it could lead to people living in a saner world. 

That's another major issue I have: Rasta the Rooster. While Max may be a hero who feeds the bodies of criminals to starving children, I still can't forgive him for allowing Rasta the Rooster to exist. That character is nothing more than a gigantic insult. First of all, Rastafari is a religion. It's one that I don't believe in, it's one that I have a lot of issues with, but it's still a religion, and it should be shown a certain level of respect. Naming a character "Rasta" is basically the equivalent of naming a character "Jew," especially if that character talked in a stereotypically Jewish voice and had curly hair and a beard (Rasta the rooster had a fake Jamaican accent and massive dreadlocks). The inclusion of Rasta the Rooster is representative of a problem many wannabe progressives have. They are fascinated by "exotic" cultures, such as India, China, and in this case Jamaica, and appropriate the aesthetics of these cultures without knowing anything about what they really mean. I recall one time when I went to a reggae concert on a college campus. I ran into someone I knew after the show. I said something casual to him along the lines of "Hey man, did you enjoy the show?" and he replied by saying "Yeah, Jah, Rastafari!" I immediately left, thinking to myself, "Wow, you have absolutely know idea what that actually means." Rastafari is a religion. A postcolonial, nationalistic, deeply spiritual, homophobic religion. Not an image.

I also take issue with Robin's decision to shut down EIT. Her decision to pull the hippy weirdo yoga video from youtube is kind of an ethical grey area for me. Basically, I think that videos generally shouldn't be put up for free if the creator of it hasn't made much money off of it already, but that if someone uses footage in a video, any footage, they should be able to put it up as long as they cite their sources. On one hand, this video was technically not an original, since it was chopped up, so according to my ethical code it was technically ok for whoever edited it to put it up. But on the other hand, it wasn't edited that much. It was just chopped up, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a remix. It was more of a montage. Also, on one hand the crazy yoga people probably hadn't made much money off the original video already. But on the other hand, there isn't any way they would have made any more money off of it than they already did. And on one hand, whoever edited it did so in a way to make fun of someone who was probably a decent guy. But on the other hand, the show seems really creepy to begin with.

Still, getting all of EIT shut down is just not ok. Robin did not hold a copyright on every video on the website, and there were probably some videos on there that did not violate copyright. And in addition, most of these videos were remixes, and the original copyright holders would not make any money off of them anyway. As with most instances of this happening, this whole ordeal was free publicity for Max Thomas. He could have turned it into good publicity, but instead he turned it into bad publicity. This is also an instance of what Sarinee Achavanuntaku talked about in the interview Bobbicus linked to; the whole idea copyright holders have that "I'm not going to use this product I own anymore, so that means no one can ever see it."

On the other hand, I do feel that I have to criticize EIT just a tiny bit, in a little bit of a hypocritical way. As I've said before, I love making fun of stuff, but sometimes I do feel bad about the people I make fun of. Despite all of Max's cultural insensitivity, creepiness, and douchebaggery, he seems like at least somewhat of a good person. I guess I have to criticize some of the viewers in this case. It was out of line for them to call him things like a pedophile. That said, criticizing youtube comments is one of the stupidest things anyone can ever do, and EIT is definitely far more in the right here.

The only completely innocent party in this story, however, is Coilhouse, and their role is without a doubt the most fascinating one to me, largely because I'm a blogger. It's amazing in this story to see the powerful role that a relatively small blog can have. Coilhouse linked to a website that they thought was funny, and as a result the website got shut down just two days later. It amazes me that a blog post can generate that much traffic and essentially slightly change the course of the internet in such a short amount of time. This makes me feel an incredible sense of power, and makes me want to be careful about what sites I link to, and who I make fun of. Coilhouse definitely gets more traffic than us, but they're still not an insanely popular blog by any means. And if one blog post by them can get an entire website shut down, think about what better power that can be used for. 

Anyway, feel free to chime in with who you think is in the right in this story. Also, EIT will probably be back up soon, so all is not lost.

Web Clips for 7/20/09

A hilariously bad video game from the terrorists over at PETA.

Hide a torrent in a PNG image.

Facebook is fucking huge.

Case studies on what makes us happy.

Shadows of Lylat looks pretty damn sweet, though It's been in production for 6 years, so don't hold your breath.

Web Clips for 7/1/09

Sorry about my recent infrequent posting, work is sucking up a bit more time than normal, Bobbicus seems to be picking up the slack, though. And I'll be getting off my ass as soon as I can. Anyway. Love Letters From Dick. The RPS review of Arma 2, I'm intrigued. You know FMyLife (if not then here), now check out MyLifeIsAverage.

Web Clips for 6/28/09

Some Call of Duty 4 fan ramblings.

Keyboards need a revamp, but nobody wants change.

Facebook is way too important.

Coping with Michael Jacksons death? NSFW.

Lulz of the Time

You've probably seen it, but it never ceases to amuse: Don't ask for help on the internet.

Wiki of the Week: A million Penguins

This weeks wiki is an interesting perspective on the anyone-can-edit philosophy. "A Million Penguins" was a collaborative attempt by Penguin books to write a novel using a wiki.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a really difficult task. There were major simultaneous issues with people making too many edits, and not enough people editing. Eventually the project stopped, with what was, at best, a novella. You can read it in a half hour or so, and it doesn't make much sense. Some view it as a sucess, most as a failure.

Either way, it certaintly changed the way a lot of people thought about collaboration and the internet.

A Million Penguins

and "A Million Penguins" from Wikipedia

Silly Impromptu Internet Uprisings. Also, Save Chuck!

It seems the fans of geeky, action-comedy series Chuck have taken to bombarding the "News From You" section of NBC (basically the editorial) with Chuck testimonials. NBC has been unclear as to whether or not there will be a third season of Chuck for some time now. The show has gathered a rather large cult following fairly quickly over its first two seasons, and, with the season finale recently released, well, just check out the recent posts:

There are hundreds of pages of this on the site, and I don't think it's going to end soon. If you haven't had a chance to see chuck, I highly reccomend you check it out. The show is really, really good. Very good dialog, funny, addictive (if not a little ridiculous) plot, good action, and quirky characters. If I had to compare it to something I'd say it's like a mix of Burn Notice (which I absolutely love) and The IT Crowd/ Big Bang Theory. If you're already a fan of chuck, why not post a testimonial? It certaintly couldn't hurt. You'll need a myNBC account to do it, but it's fairly straight forward. Anyways, good luck, Chuck!

Wiki of the Week: Wikirank

So this time it's not actually a wiki. But this is seriously cool. Like google trends for Wikipedia, Wikirank lets you see up to 90 days worth of page view history of wikipedia articles. Searching for something will give you its history, as well as an excerpt from the article, total views, and the ability to add other pages to your graph. There's also some nice, easy URL stuff you can do. For example, doing something like: http://wikirank.com/en/Superman,Batman will give you a graph of Superman and Batman hits. This is helpfull if you want to compare a bunch of different article's but don't want to have to manually put them in using the interface. In general the site is a really great jumping off point for browsing wikipedia, as thier front page contains information on what's being read now and what's getting popular. FWIW I'm also a fan of the site design.

Wiki of the Week: Wikileaks

Wikileaks is one of the best ideas for a wiki I've seen in a while. It allows users to anonymously publish leaks of sensitive information. This is awesome, browsing through the site you feel like a spy, there's a ton of stuff about crazy religious proceedings, under-the-table backhanded dealings. Email logs, manuals, membership lists, it's got it all.

There is one huge downside, though. Due to the shady nature of the content and people generally wishing it would go away, the site is not always up (like the last time I checked). During those times you can still browse most of it through google cache though, but it's a pain.

The site is responsible for a number of notable leaks including guantanamo bay operating procedures, a hack of sarah palins email account, and a bunch of scientology scandals.

Wikileaks main page (down)

Wikileaks main page, text-only google cache

Wikileaks on Wikipedia

Wiki of the Week: Galaxiki

Well, I''m going to ignore the fact that there hasn't been a "Wiki of the Week" in a few months now and go ahead and highlight a really creative use of a wiki, Galaxiki. Galaxiki is a fictional galaxy that anyone can add to or edit. You can get and create your own solar system, add planets and alien races. Network and have relations with other planets, and explore the galaxy with Google maps-like tools. There are so many things you can do. There's also some pretty robust social and community features to enhance collaboration between writers so that the galaxy can really have a thriving system and virtual economy. It's all pretty damn cool. Membership is free and you can get your own solar system and star to create your own races and history as you wish. It's like the most open rpg you'll ever play. Galaxiki on Wikipedia. Galaxiki Homepage.

Shameless Self-Promotion and Updates

On our sidebar you might notice a few new things.

One is the welcome/about message, in which I try to describe this blog in a sentence, which will probably change when I figure out a better way to describe this blog.

Another is a new "streamlined" rss link that now has been burned with feedburner, which should make it easier to manage our 1 rss subscriber (that subscriber being me).

The last is our minimalist blogroll, now only consisting of my other blog, Brain Grains. It's a GTD-esque micro-blog thingy. If you want to know more about it, read the about page. There lies the shameless self-promotion, though I still suggest you read it. I think I might add a few other things to read, but I want to keep the blogroll fairly small, only consisting of blogs where I actually know the author.

Never Really Cought On Did It? Convinceme.net

Anyone know Convinceme.net? It opened about a year ago as a place for people to argue on the internet, as if there wasn't enough of that already. It does bring some fun and interesting things to the table though. The format is brilliant and allows you to clearly see both sides of the issue. There's different modes that include open debates, 1-on-1, and king of the hill style where you may only add one argument, so it'd better be good. There's even a news section where debaters post articles and subsequent debates can be made about them. So with a cohesive and organized place for all the internetz pplz to go and spew opinion to thier heartz content, you'd think the site would be filled. but with only around 5,850 registered members, counting inactive accounts that's not nearly as much as expected. That's not even that much at all. You still get a bigger debate on any given front page digg story or gawker post. When I originally saw it I thought it could be used as a way to, "take the flamewar outside," leaving the other sites and forums with some peace and quiet. But that never happened. The upside is, with the small commuty and even smaller active community it has, most debates are fairly cohesive and non-flamey. You actually get some interesting stuff reading it. Of course the most popular debate after over a year is still Ninjas versus Pirates. I like following this guy, he's always interesting. So why did it never catch on? Are people afraid of change? Is the Post format more easy to debate with than this two-column approach? I have no idea, but why sounds like a good debate topic to me. Anyway here's ConvinceMe. Have fun.