Month: April 2004

Have you seen the really cool new Fox show Wonderfalls? I’ve been watching and really got to like it, which prompted me to declare yesterday that Fox was sure to cancel it soon, just like it did to The Family Guy, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Undeclared, and Futurama, among others. Sure enough, I read the inevitable news this morning: Fox is cancelling Wonderfalls after only a month, proving beyond a doubt that FOX network is incapable of properly identifying and marketing good shows. Wonderfalls’ initial Friday slot was pretty bad to start with, but moving it to Thursday opposite CSI’s time slot without any sort of marketing was the death knell that led me to predict the show’s premature demise.

Sometimes I just don’t know why I bother. At least the creator has some good news:

Once we recover from the not-shock, Todd, Bryan and I will see if there’s some venue in which to air the remaining episodes. As I have said from the start, the thirteen taken as a whole tell a story and go to a place, so a run of this “limited” series would not be unsatisfying elsewhere. It’s a question as to whether the studio will want to invest in a DVD release of a failed series. Maybe the episodes will sit in a warehouse someplace with that sled and the arc of the covenant.

The DVD sales of Family Guy were brisk enough that Fox realized its stupidity and is apparently bringing back the cancelled series. However, as much as I’d like to see that happen again here, somehow I really doubt it. This sucks…

Does anything seem wrong with the picture at right? Although seemingly impossible, the combination of square wheels riding on a roadway comprised of “inverted catenaries” results in a perfectly smooth ride. In fact, for almost any shape, a corresponding surface can be designed to produce a smooth ride:

As the number of a polygon’s sides increases, these catenary segments get shorter and flatter. Ultimately, for an infinite number of sides (in effect, a circle), the curve becomes a straight, horizontal line.

So, what are the benefits of this epiphany? None that I can see, but it is pretty interesting…

If you’re looking for a crappy, low-tech, yet somehow addictive game, check out Escape!

Tron Sector has a story about the efforts of some fans to make their own TRON costumes. They’ve done a pretty good job, but they obviously have some time on their hands…

Check out The History Of, a website dedicated to explaining the history of all kinds of things in a clear and informative, yet refreshingly informal, manner:

The history of credit cards. The history of cell phones. The history of contact lenses. The history of…well, the history of “you name it.” Whatever history you need, it’s here. This website is the premier site for informative articles about the history of all those things you’ve always wondered about. Nowhere else can you find history explained in such simple terms – terms you’ll understand. And when you understand something, you remember it. So the purpose of this site is to provide you with a one-stop learning center pertaining to History.

If you missed some of this year’s April Fools pranks, check out this summary of “sites that pulled April Fools Jokes For 2004.”

Check out the quiz “How grammatically sound are you?” I am a “Grammar God,” apparently. I wish they had actually shown the answers, though, as I’m pretty sure I got at least a couple wrong…

You may remember the earlier post I made about “pizza in a bucket.” Well, imagine my surprise yesterday when I received an e-mail from the creator himself, John Pontrelli of Pit Stop Pasta in Escondido, California:

Hi driko,

I just wanted to drop you a note and let you know that we didn’t invent the pizza in a bucket, our CUSTOMERS did. All we did is gave them what they wanted … one time someone wanted one to go and she said, “Throw it in a bucket” and I said OK a “Pizza in a Bucket.” The name stuck, Associated Press wrote about it, and now the thing is selling like crazy.

So in reality, it wasn’t our little company trying to come up with some “pet rock” idea. Which, being Italian, I would have never even imagined to make a Pizza without dough? But I say if they ask for it here, They get it.

John Pontrelli

I of course replied to this e-mail, asking how he happened upon my site, and I got this response:

We found you while searching the 100’s of sites we have shown up on. It’s been 2 months since the A.P. hit us and were still trying to catch up. yes you can post my response to you, I will forward a newspaper story from the [North County] Times that explains what went on here. It’s almost as wild as William Hung but a lot more legit!

P.S. We got a kick out of all the comments and feedback, because by a fluke, we walked into the limelight by pure chance. The bucket was an underground thing for some of our customers with serious health issues, and the low carbers took it over.

Thanks,

John “The Bucket King”

I’m still amazed that this caught on, but obviously people like it enough to keep ordering it. Personally, though, I’ll still ask for “real” pizza…

Check out The Art Of James Koehnline for some seriously psychedelic animated backgrounds.

Newsmap is a really cool way to graphically display and organize news:

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

The interface takes some getting used to, but I think it has some promise…