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CATSTRAVAGANZA
The Desktop Cat Cursor (not free but really cheap) , from Samperson, turns your computer's pointer into a big cat's paw extending onto the screen. Currently only for Windows 10 and 11 but a Mac version is in the works.
"Sounds like Kermit the Frog during a rectal exam."
Waluigi sings "Rainbow Connection." It'll consume two minutes and 44 seconds of your day, but no more than that. That's all. That's enough.
The six directions: North, South, East, West, Anth and Kenth
On Steam right now is a game that lets you play Mini Golf in four dimensions, called, naturally, 4D Golf (Steam, $20). I don't mean in the sense that time is a fourth dimension, it's set in a fully 4D world: you decide which slice of it is revealed in the visible 3D world at any time. Here's a trailer. (1 1/2 minutes) Here's Youtuber Icely Puzzles playing the beginning of it. (43 minutes) Here's the video devlog. It's from CodeParade, who also made the hyperbolic plane exploration game Hyperbolica. At the end of the release announcement video, its creator mentioned that there is a secret feature in 4D Golf that makes it even more bizarre, but telling its existence is a pretty major spoiler....
10 Years of Jeremy Parish's Works Projects
Jeremy Parish, dedicated game journalist and Retronaut, and creator of design deep dives, has been covering Gameboy (1989, gaiden), Game Boy Color (1998), Game Boy Advance (2001), NES (1985, 1986, 1987, 1998, 1999, gaiden), SNES (1991, extra, gaiden), N64 (1996), Sega, Virtual Boy and Metroidvania games now for ten years! His terrific and scholarly videos don't get nearly the views that much less worthy series get, so please give them a try if you have any interest in this area.
"so many tech demos end up hiding an ugly truth deep down"
Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
COOOOKIIIEEEES! (a-rum-rum! a-rum-rum-rum-rum!)
Muptown Funk (previously) keeps rolling along, recently with two longer videos concerning Sesame Street: ranking every Waiter Grover sketch (50 minutes), and a deep dive into the stomach history of the Cookie Monster (20 minutes)!
More D&D Info Cartoons
Six years ago (really? wow) I posted about Zee Bashew's terrific D&D explainer videos. Well he's still making them, and is trying to do one a week for the next few months! Here are some he's made since I last told you all about them: What is a grognard? - Ceremony - Encumbrance in 5E - The Awful Way I Ran 5E Survival - Magic Mouth - Oops! All Wizards - 5E Players Try 1E (AD&D) - Healer Feat - The Problem With The Awaken Spell (sad/funny) - Dangers of Metagaming - Option: Quantum Inventory - Grappling in 1E. If you enjoy D&D, or just learning or watching videos about it, Zee Bashew's Channel is great.
"Magical Cat!"
✨There he is, ✨he's a magical cat, ✨everybody loves him ✨he's a ＭＡＧＩＣＡＬ ＣＡＴ!✨✨✨🧚🦄🧜♀️🧝🐈
(5 1/2 minute video, claymation animation compilation, silly, meow)
(5 1/2 minute video, claymation animation compilation, silly, meow)
ZachsMind: "It's awesomely awesome!"
Culled from a cancelled FMV 3DO game from 1996, you may never have seen anything so incrediculous as the 7 1/2 minute trailer Duelin' Firemen. While the trailer has been bouncing around the internet for 16 years (previously from 2007 by hypocritical ross), a higher resolution version has turned up that's almost watchable. It contains Rudy Ray Moore, the Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Dr. Timothy Leary and Tony Hawk. The Youtube channel of a documentary about the game's making has some other obscure clips from it.
“I actually think that AI fundamentally makes us more human.” (BOOOO)
Ted Gioia: "Tech leaders gathered in Austin for the South-by-Southwest conference a few days ago. There they showed a video boasting about the wonders of new AI technology. And the audience started booing." [Xitter link]
Gioia argues that users are becoming much more wary, not only about "AI," but about tech in general.
Make TrueType fonts for free on the web
Long ago, back in 2008, Dave Faris posted a link to FontStruct, a simple, yet deceptively versatile, free system for constructing fonts on the web, which you can then download as TrueType fonts for yourself, or even allow others to use. This is to inform you that FontStruct is still operational after 16 years at a different address! And it hasn't stood still during that time, it has steadily been updated with new features!
A matter concerning a square and a circle
Snif & Snüf (five minutes), a cartoon about two friends who find a couple of mysterious shapes, by Michael Ruocco, an animator who's worked on New Looney Tunes, the Cuphead Show and Bojack Horseman.
peepy is about crime and peanuts, peanuts and crime
What the hell is Peepy? "A peepy thrives in the shadows, using its wit to stun enemies. Its ability to steal may surprise you. It loves peanuts and will commit any heinous act to get them." In our sad real world, Peppy is a little plush animal that's vaguely peanut-shaped itself, with a beak and big eyes both round. In the lore, a Peepy has two loves in life: eating peanuts and committing crimes. The adventures of Peepy and "friends" on video are part of an elaborate ad campaign by itemLabel with a jolly but vaguely unsettling vibe. Most of it has strange and infectious music by Japanese musician Emamouse. Here's Peepy's Theme Song; a Nintendo DS-like console explains how to care for Peepy; and then there's the amazingly trippy animation Peepy's Secret (warning: bright lights and flashing).
"I have a Bubsy 3D poster on my wall, it brings me daily inspiration!"
Garfield (2004) was a game for the Playstation 2 and PC. It was a pretty lackluster 3D production where the idea was to help the cartoon cat clean Jon's house within eight hours (real time!) or else be put on a diet. The few places that reviewed it gave it extremely low scores (0/10!). Youtuber planet clue recently had a look at the game (20 minutes) and, while agreeing it's no great work of art, saw that there was still a bit of fun to be had, if it could be made to run on Windows 11, and if one could get over its issues. So, they went about hacking it to correct its more egregious flaws, and when they were done put their improved version online, as Garfield+ (Windows only).
Recreating a game using a VHS recording of it
The exclusive Satellaview-only broadcast tracks of Nintendo's classic SNES/Super Famicom racing game F-Zero have been recovered by fans, and are available in a romhack on the original F-Zero. The story of their recovery, and in some cases recreation, is told in an interview with the hack's main programmer on classic gaming blog Press The Buttons, which reveals that special tools were used to recreate some of the tracks from out of a VHS recording of the tracks being played when they were originally broadcast. DidYouKnowGaming (12 minutes) also has a video about the process of the tracks' recreation.
tl;dw: RUN FOR THE HILLS
A helpful Adversary explains to a Sunday School class the many ways that Evangelical Christian teaching doesn't match up to what pastors learn in seminary, in the animated documentary Satan's Guide to the Bible. (1 hour 26 minutes) Watch out for that Jen!
Sports make ya grunt and smell. See, be a thinker, not a stinker.
Carl Weathers has passed away (1948-2024). Here he was on stage 10 months ago at Star Wars Celebration. From MGM on Youtube, the best of Apollo Creed. Col. Dillon's death scene from Predator. Carl Weathers on the Rich Eisen Show about his football career. "Carl Weathers" meeting Tobias Fünke at Burger King. And Din Djarin meeting with Greef Karga in the first episode of The Mandalorian.
This monkey means business!
After another successful Kickstarter, today sees the premiere of Hanging With Doctor Z Season 3, with guest Kevin Pollack! Nox Aeternum posted the first three episodes here back in 2021, and all the episodes can be seen on the show's Youtube channel. Here's the show's website!
The giant space hamster is a beast; the space hamster is a monstrosity
The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a blog that examines all of the D&D 5th Edition monsters, according to their rulebook stats and descriptions, and offers strategy ideas for the interested DM.
Exploring the BABA IS YOUNIVERSE
Hempuli, the brilliant designer behind the rule-modification puzzle game Baba Is You ($15 for Windows, Mac and Linux, previously, again), hasn't rested since that came out. (Everything mentioned is free and for Windows unless otherwise noted.) Baba Is You was so successful that now we have to help Baba File Taxes! Covemount (Web) is a simple Sokoban clone with an interesting numeric gimmick. Baba Is You XTREME adds an extra feature to Baba for reasons of "fun." And there's a collection of 16 Solitaire games! And a little Neko-like Baba friend/desktop toy! And... Mobile Suit Baba, a mashup of Baba Is You and Into The Breach?! ($4, Windows) There's lots more i left out only for brevity's sake: the rest is on Hempuli's itch.io page.
I'm okay with my tax dollars paying for this
The website fatherhood.gov maintains a database of Dad Jokes.
Zelda Day 2023
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild, has a secret experience system that doesn't make your character stronger, it makes the enemies harder. Here's 102 ways to kill a bokoblin in that game. If you got it for the holidays and want some tips, here's 10. How to send Link waaaaay up into the sky with just a fan and a plank, using Oriented Carryable Objects (OCOs). And here's TerminalMontage's speedrun cartoon, featuring Cucuí Ganon.
That poor reindeer
Putting 31 volts through various holiday toys. (Youtube, 10 minutes)
He thought a good meal was one he could shape into a smiley face
Here is Uncle (6 minutes), a stop-motion short from 1996 by Adam Elliot. Elliot makes "clayographies," bittersweet and quietly funny stories about lives. Uncle had two direct successors, Cousin (1998, 4m) and Brother (1999, 8m). Here is an interview with Elliot about Uncle. Later on he made Harvie Krumpet (2003, 22m), Mary and Max (2009, clips + trailer: 11m; full movie [buy or rent] 1h32m), and Ernie Biscuit (2015, 20m). These are mostly all viewable, in much sharper detail, on Elliot's website, but they're harder to directly link to.
Let's get ready to goo it again
Hello! It's been awhile
15 years in fact!
I hope you've been well
Me? I don't like talking about myself
Not directly anyway
The goo balls are doing fine
Better than that, they have a new game
Coming in 2024
WORLD OF GOO 2
I hope you'll enjoy it, I'll see you soon
Signed, the Sign Painter
15 years in fact!
I hope you've been well
Me? I don't like talking about myself
Not directly anyway
The goo balls are doing fine
Better than that, they have a new game
Coming in 2024
WORLD OF GOO 2
I hope you'll enjoy it, I'll see you soon
Signed, the Sign Painter
Enjoy some humorous existential dread
The Amazing Digital Circus (Youtube, 26 minutes) is a computer-animated Youtube cartoon about a group of whimsical characters stuck in a whimsical VR world. They're all hugely dismayed by this fact and want to leave it please. In that way it feels a bit like social media. In a month it has gotten 147 million views. Meet the characters (1 minute). It was made by the talented Gooseworx, who also made Little Runmo (16 minutes, previously), a cartoon about a video game character who learns a little too much about the world they live in. CW: general disquietingness.
Turkey Leftovers
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is going a bit overboard for Turkey Day 2023, with 48 straight hours of episodes from both the classic era and recently-concluded Season 13! Starting November 23 at 9 AM Eastern time, and watchable for free on the show's official Youtube channel, on their official Pluto TV channel, on their Twitch channel, and on their bespoke streaming solution the Gizmoplex. Two full days of cheesy movies and humorous commentary from a human test subject and their automated mocking contraptions.
The popcorn preparation primer on every package of popcorn
If the customer wants wheat toast, we simply flip the jelly pack over
Welcome, new grill trainee, to the Waffle House family! Today in this training video, recorded by Area Vice President Greg Hall, you will be introduced to the "Magic Marker System," the only approved method of "marking" orders at Waffle House, and is absolutely used in all of its restaurants really honest. It isn't at all what those heathens at Huddle House and IHOP would call "batshit insane." Ready? Let's begin!
How was it possible for a group of trained people to put on such a flop
The evening of JFK's inauguration also marked the first (and last) episode of a new CBS panel game show, "You're In The Picture," hosted by the inimitable Jackie Gleason, with panelists Jan Sterling, Arthur Treacher, Patricia Carroll and Pat Harrington, Jr. The following week Jackie appeared in that time slot again, but without sets or a panel. He spent the entire time before a studio audience giving a improvised monologue about how resoundingly the show had flopped, as well as a story from his early career, while drinking booze-laden coffee. Both episodes are up at the Internet Archive. Thanks to StarkRoads for finding these! CW: guest misgendering for humor, cultural insensitivity typical of 1961 pop culture, and commercials.
Those skeletons should unionize
Underlevel (itch.io, free but Windows only for now) is a game made in 48 hours. It's got silly and charming graphics, and it's a lot of Halloween-themed fun! You're the skeleton lord in charge of a five-level dungeon, but a knight has invaded your domain and means to destroy you! Rally your lollygagging skeleton minions, to both lead them to the safety of the downstairs and destroy as many of the gem-laden pots on each level as you can, before the knight gets to them first and smashes them to raise its experience level! If you can't play it (that Windows thing, argh), here's a playthrough on Youtube. (9 minutes)
Giving to food banks effectively
Rick Beetham on Mastodon asked a local food bank for the best items to donate to them, and came up with a list of 20 tips. The comments also has useful info, including that it's better to donate directly to the food bank instead of through the grocery store (and that way you might even get a receipt for writing it off on your taxes), and that giving money is usually best, because food banks often can get discounts that are unavailable to donators.
Let's get down to pigness!
Fact: if you open a pen of pigs with expected food at the end of a run, the pigs will dash down it to the food at high speed. Some pigkeepers in England decided to take advantage of this essential trait of pigness, and so they bring us LEAGUE OF PIGS, a series of charmingly over-produced pig racing videos, now beginning its epic tenth season! A few selections: the oval track, the most recent video, and a trickier idea to accomplish than you might at first think; racing through water; the most recently completed season and the first season, from two years back. hippybear made a post about the 9th season finals last month, but it turns out there's more fun to be had there!
NES Strider was not programmed well
When people mention Strider, they tend to think of Capcom's flashy classic arcade platformer, with Strider Hiryu slashing apart fur cap-wearing robots with his plasma sword. Hardcore Gaming 101 has its history. The arcade game was a classic; the NES game, somewhat less so. It was extremely badly implemented, and not even released in Japan. Displaced Gamers' Behind The Code series currently has two videos about it, about why it displays garbage sprites (15m) and its awful physics (19m), which let you wall jump, but only with frame-perfect timing, and not even the right frame. It's rather technical, but I trust that you can fast-forward through the bits you're not interested in.
The working name for Croönchy Stars cereal was "Stoopid Flakes"
The wonderfully-named Muptown Funk makes a couple of fairly new video series: The Muppets Deep Dive and Muppet History Lesson. They offer comforting and entertaining information on Rowlf, Lew Zealand, the Muppets' Lipton Tea Ads, Thog, Walter, Croönchy Stars cereal, Danny Trejo(?), and Fully Operational Automated Tony Bennett. (Avg length 10 minutes)
Red is beautiful. But red is difficult. PURE RED
Neil Cicierega edited a bunch of George Lucas and Panasonic-related Japanese things together into THE GEORGE LUCAS EGGSPERIENCE. (4 minutes)
No waka waka to be heard
Atari Archive, an excellent game-by-game video retrospective of the library of the Atari VCS (aka the Atari 2600) covers its infamous port of Pac-Man. (38 minutes)
"[T]he transformation of the internet into this shitty mall."
Ryan Broderick on The Verge writes on the possible end of the Googleverse. Mentioned: Usenet, Altavista, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Myspace, AI, the sameness of recipe sites, Blogger, Google Reader, Perez Hilton and Anil Dash. Not mentioned: Google Plus.
Helm of Brilliance, 40 Watt
A complete index to the paper issues of Dragon Magazine. That's it. This is just an index; finding the issues themselves is left up to the reader.
Grickle!
Grickle is Eisner award-winning artist and animator Graham Annable, featured on Metafilter twice before, that second time by missing, and missed, Mefite oneswellfoop. He worked for Lucasarts and created the award-winning two-game Telltale series Nelson Tethers Puzzle Agent. He's made two books of his frightfully funny artwork, The Book of Grickle and now Eerie Tales From The School of Screams. He has a terrific Mastodon account and a channel of funny/creepy Youtube animations. Favorites: Space Wolf (1:42), The Last Duet on Earth (3:54), The Hidden People (3:27), We Sing the Forest Electric (1:51), The Smartest Dog in the World (4:34), Soup Leprechaun (2:51), Blower (6:13), Pickle Sandwich (3:20), and... Maybellene (2:28, Maybellene was everything, and everything was Maybellene)
That giant owl is dynamite
Goblin Bet, akin to Salty Bet (previously), lets you wager pretend gold pieces on the outcome of monster fights. Fighters use their 5th edition D&D attributes. Stats are displayed on the sides of the screen, and you can click on the little question mark by a fighter's stat block to go to a page with information about them. Look out for random special abilities some fighters have, listed at the bottom of their stat block.
📦boy of Scottish Fold 📦
On July 10, 2008, Youtube user mugumogu uploaded a video of their young cat Maru, but it was a collection of clips posted on January 11, 2009, with "まるです," "I am Maru," that made him a superstar, with over 26 million views. One of the first internet cats with a sizable following, last month, Maru celebrated his 16th birthday with fellow housecats Hana and Miri. Here's to a long and happy life of playing with boxes and sometimes embarrassing moments.
Decrapifying Youtube
If you hate how Youtube's home page is lately full of clickbait thumbnails and titles desperate for you to load them, you might want to take a look at DeArrow, written by Ajay Ramachandran (Chrome, Firefox), an extension that can replace them with crowdsourced alternatives, or in their absence provide de-emphasized titles and random thumbnails. Ramachandran also produces SponsorBlock (Chrome, Firefox), a crowdsourced system for skipping past the sponsorship ads in videos, as well as the non-music portions of music videos.
Clup into the Blobtrix
A sludge clapper never chubs a bubble, or at least that's what I'd murm if these keeblies scruffed a skimple a sun in their ivies. Zee Bashew is back, with a cartoon depicting every crunchy dystopian RPG.
Another stroll through the Google Graveyard
killedbygoogle.com lists 285 projects, services and pieces of software that Google has terminated during its history. Let's look back at some of them.
"I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell is THAT?"
Kid Leaves Stoop breaks down what we know about The Simpsons style guide, a long internal document that defines the surprisingly rigid way the characters are depicted in the modern show, and have been for decades, but weren't in the Tracy Ullman shorts or first season: The Simpsons No-No Sheets. (Youtube, 23 minutes)
Rest in Violence
Blaseball is shutting down after The Game Band concluded that it wasn't sustainable. They had been tooling up for its third age, titled the "Coronation Era," and had planned mobile apps as part of the experience. They even came out of siesta for a brief time, only to go right back into hiatus after deeming their effort not up to the quality they were aiming for. Laid off staff are being given severance pay, extended health care and help in finding work. The news on: Destructoid, Rock Paper Shotgun, Gamespot, The Verge.
40 Years of Natty Novelties
Archie McPhee, Seattle novelty store, wholesaler, manufacturer, and mail order purveyor of weird gifts, the "Outfitters of Popular Culture" with catalogs cool enough to be collected by the Smithsonian, sellers of rubber chickens and devil duckies, is 40 years old. The Seattle Times did a short piece on them and their history. Some of their catalogs are collected on their website. They got a blog, and a podcast called "Less Talk More Monkey" (iTunes, Google Play), which explains why, for awhile, PayPal wouldn't let them sell tardigrade-themed merchandise through their payment service.
"That was really the day the Lisa died"
From the Verge -- Lisa's Final Act: how Apple invented its future by burying its past.
Text introduction - the video, Lisa: Steve Jobs’ sabotage and Apple’s secret burial (30 minutes). The beginning fills in the history of the Lisa and Steve Jobs' involvement with it. The part some of you might be interested in begins with Chapter 5: The Lisa Professional.
Use Your Claws Luke
A new Engineer's Guide to Cats, on the subject of Cat Future Technology, with bonus reenactment of Star Wars with cats. A lot of other feline-focused film frivolity can be found on klusmanp's Youtube Page. (Engineer's Guide to Cats previously, again, also.)