Month: December 2004

The Digital Press Sound Archives are a treasure trove of arcade sound effects, theme songs, and anthems, even throwing in some SID tunes from the Commodore 64.

Al Seckel’s book Masters Of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion showcases the “visual trickery” employed by twenty artists well-known for their innovative use of optical illusion and perspective. This in itself sounds very cool, but what’s even cooler is the website he created to accompany the book:

There are a number of incredible artistic works featured in Masters of Deception, which require movement to appreciate their full impact. Additionally, I had in my possession various interviews with some of the book’s featured artists that I wanted to share with my readership. Unfortunately, the publisher was unwilling to produce a CD to accompany the book. I have created this web site, therefore, to augment and enhance the reader’s experience by presenting those works and interviews that I could not present in book form.

The website has dozens of QuickTime videos available for viewing that show that artists at work as well as highlight some important works of art. Definitely check it out…

I found a cool animated .gif file at Growabrain; click on the picture for the animated version…

Check out Santa Santa Santa Badger Style if you’d like a nice ohrwurm. Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa Santa…

Now that the extended version of Return Of The King has been released on DVD, Phil Eskew has updated his site The NitPicker’s Guide to the Lord of the Rings to reflect the additional scenes. His goal was to compile “a lengthy list of deviations to be found when comparing the text of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the translation of those texts to film as undertaken by Peter Jackson, et al.”

I’ve done enough ranting about the Star Wars DVD release, so Iwill try not to sound as geeky in my complaints over the Lord Of The Rings, although I must say that I have more of an attachment to J.R.R. Tolkien’s books than I do to the Star Wars movies. However, overall I think Peter Jackson did an excellent job in adapting the books to the silver screen. My worry all along was that his vision would overwhelm the images and emotions I’ve created in my mind over the years while reading and rereading the series. All in all, though, I was surprised at how closely my imagination meshed with Jackson’s.

I too share some of the grievances enumerated in the Nitpicker’s Guide, but despite some egregious omissions and additions (don’t get me started on Arwen) I think this might be the best adapatation of a novel to a movie that I’ve ever seen. Now I just need to find 12 hours or so to watch all three of the extended version DVDs at once…

Ask MetaFilter attempts to answer the question of how to phonetically transcribe the sound of Homer Simpson’s drool. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), this is not the first time this topic has come up on the Interweb; apparently this has been discussed in alt.tv.simpsons back in 2001. Their consensus: “uhhhHHHhhrghhhuuuuHHHggrruhhhHHhh.”

Fimoculous has expanded on its comprehensive list of year-end lists with some notable additions. One of my favorites is the 2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, which lets you interactively view the year month by month. Discover magazine’s feature The Year in Science: Top 100 Stories is also very interesting reading. Definitely check out the complete list; there is plenty to keep you busy there…

I came across some sites that highlight the customizability of Mozilla Firefox, offering some useful tips, tweaks, and resources:

• Secrets Of Firefox 1.0 (about halfway down the page) goes over some of the areas that you can customize and offers some performance tweaks
  
• How To Speed Up Firefox offers some broadband-specific tweaks to speed up performance
  
• Tweakfactor’s Firefox Tweak Guide has some performance tweaks for broadband and dial-up users as well as some other useful information
  
• Firefox Browser Hacking also has some performance tweaks and lists some helpful extensions
  
• Mozilla Tips has many useful tips and resources
  
• gemal.dk has a handy list of files in your Mozilla profile directory that explains each file’s purpose
  
• My Favourite Firefox Keystrokes is a nice list of useful keyboard shortcuts
  
• Mozilla Keyboard Assignment Map is a complete list of all keyboard shortcuts and what they do
  
• If all else fails, the MozillaZine Knowledge Base is your best bet for information and support issues related to Firefox, Mozilla, and Thunderbird. MozillaZine is also one of the best resources for news on new releases and features.

This is so cool; listen to/download The 8 Bits Of Christmas right now!

This very special holiday release from 8bitpeoples features an allstar cross-platform lineup that is sure to make yours a truly chippy christmas indeed. Brought together from all corners of the globe, these 8 amazing tunes were composed by 8 dedicated chiptune maniacs on 8 different videogame consoles and homecomputers! Featuring the sounds of Yerzmyey on the Spectrum, Nullsleep on the NES, Vim on the VIC20, Paul Slocum on the Atari 2600, Bit Shifter on the GameBoy, Goto80 on the C64, Dma-Sc on the Atari ST, and Hally on the X68000, there is only one way to celebrate the holidays right this year, and this is it.