• I’m willing to grant everyone involved with the production of the kinda stinky Ocean’s 12 an Official Do-Over and pretend like Ocean’s 13 is the direct sequel to Ocean’s 11.  The trailer for O13 sure makes it look like it’s going to have all of the same qualities which made the first one so much fun — qualities which Soderbergh, et al. apparently left in their other pants when making O12.  This one’s now gone toward the top of my Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2007.  (Hmm, what’s that smell?  *snf snf*  Oh, yeah, I think that’s the smell of another blog post coming up!)
• Hey, fans of Firefly:  Yahoo! TV has a four-minute video preview of Drive, the new show from Nathan Fillion and Tim Minear.  (The video’s on the right-hand side of the page.)  I was planning on watching this anyway just because of the presence of Fillion and Minear, but after watching the preview I’m actually interested in seeing Drive on its own merits.  OK, yeah, what little bit we saw of the battered wife was pretty cliche, but the scene with Fillion was intriguing.  Time to TiVo up!
• Lee Iacocca has had enough from the current administration.   Yes, legendary industrialist Lee Iacocca expresses his outrage at the Republican White House — kinda says something, doesn’t it?  Iacocca rightly points out that the guys in office right now might be in charge, but they’re not showing a damn bit of leadership.  Big difference there.
• At long, long last, the final issue of The Ultimates 2 has gone to the printer, and Marvel was kind enough to celebrate by offering a preview of Bryan Hitch’s stunning eight-page foldout spread from that issue.  I’m not sure that any comic has ever needed an interior eight-page foldout spread in it before, but I’d imagine this one does, and that Hitch artwork is simply jaw-dropping.  Personally, I’m just glad this comic’s finally coming out since that gets us that much closer to a hardcover collection, which means I can get that to go with my hardcover of the first Ultimates series.
• The Inbox of Nardo Pace, The Empire’s Worst Engineer.

• Congratulations to my buddy Jeff Newberry on the birth of his new son, Ben. Ben entered this world on April 9 and immediately rolled off an impassioned version of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s cover of “Little Wing” on the miniature Stratocaster Jeff paid dearly to have the doctors insert into his wife’s womb. I hear tell she was not happy about that procedure, and less happy to have to birth the guitar as well as her son, but obviously all worked out well in the end. Congrats, Jeff and Heather, and welcome to the world, Ben!
• Superhappy 38th to Tim “Timmy B.” Bishop, who carries in his head the entirety of the info what can be found at allmusic.com and then some. Only 731 more days until we get into whatever debauchery you decide is appropriate for your 40th, homes. You’d best get to plannin’.
• Want some help reading your way through the interwebs more quickly? Check out Spreeder, a handy little tool which scrolls chunks of text by your eyes at whatever size and speed feels comfortable to you. They’ve also got a handy bookmarklet so you can select a hunk of text, click the link and go straight to reading said hunk at speeds heretofore undreamed of by man. Or at, like, 500 words per minute, anyway.
• Next time I need a lawyer, I know exactly who I’m hiring to represent me: Lawyerbear.  Let’s just see the judge try to haul me off for contempt of court next time!  Ha!  Not with Lawyerbear on my side!
• I’m not sure I have much to add to the Kathy Sierra conversation that hasn’t been said to death already, but there’s one big question that’s been bugging me: why her? What about Kathy’s site — one which existed only to help its readers, to inspire them and help them create products that would work better for their users — could inspire the hatred and death threats that ended up directed toward her? She doesn’t seem to be a particularly controversial figure and didn’t put forth the kinds of vitriolic political screeds which engender flame wars, even modest ones — especially not when compared with so many other prominent bloggers toward whom these hateful people could have targeted their bile. I haven’t read enough on the topic yet, and I’ll admit that I don’t know all sides of the story (though the pro-death-threat side would have to work awfully hard to convince me of their rightness), so please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here. But from what I know of the situation, the answer seems to be: these people essentially destroyed a meaningful chunk of Kathy Sierra’s life because she’s a woman, and because they could. That sickens me. (I’m feeling a larger First Amendment post brewing. Stay tuned.)
• On a directly related note: The Blogger’s Code of Conduct? Yeah, good luck with that.  Getting more than a couple of bloggers to agree on anything is like counting grains of sand in the Sahara — practically impossible and ultimately futile.
• Also, this seems like a great time to link to one of the most insightful and profound Penny Arcade strips ever.

I’m a 35-year-old man. I have a family, a good career, a nice house in the suburbs. Regardless of how I may feel inside sometimes, I haven’t really been the fat, greasy, nerdy geek I was as a teenager for a long, long time. So I feel like I shouldn’t really still like anything by Weird Al Yankovic, should I? I mean, c’mon… shouldn’t I have outgrown him by now?

Apparently not. Every now and then he does something like “White and Nerdy,” a video that just friggin’ nails me on so many levels: it’s not just speaking to me but speaking about me as well. (But before you ask, no — though I might speak fluent Javascript, I can’t speak a lick of Klingon. (And how’s that for an image for you? “Lick” and “Klingon” so close together in that sentence? You see how I did that? That was cool, huh?))

You certainly can’t say that Weird Al doesn’t know who his target audience is and just how to play to them — while I have absolutely no data to back this theory up, I’d imagine that geeks in their thirties who’ve grown up with Al make up an even bigger part of his audience than the geeks in their teens who would seem to be the most natural fit for Al’s shtick. Weird Al happened to luck into a unique situation and has ridden it to a career far longer and more successful than I think anyone (including Al himself) ever could have imagined: a large segment of the nerdy crowd who latched on to him originally grew up to use the skills and interests which got them mocked as kids to become reasonably affluent adults. And many of those adults are still Weird Al fans, so he has a dedicated, well-off following who’ve been with him (even if, like me, it’s just occasionally and somewhat passively) for twenty years.

There’s something about the video I wanted to point out, because if I’m gonna be a big geek about it I might as well go all the way: I paused the clip to check out Al’s “top eight friends” on his MySpace page. Completely unsurprisingly, his top friends include Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Pee-Wee Herman, Screech from Saved By The Bell, Frodo Baggins, Napoleon Dynamite and one I can’t read. But then there’s also “Tom” — the creator of MySpace, the guy who every single user gets by default when they create their account… and even moreso than the nerd shoutouts listed above, a very, very nice visual way of indicating that this guy has no real friends. It’s that kind of subtle attention to detail (and this particular detail will only be visible on your screen for less than two seconds, if that) that I appreciate, and something Al’s always really done well — when someone puts the effort into crafting details you’re either going to have to work hard to catch or possibly never catch at all, that’s usually a damn good sign that the crafter really and truly loves what they’re doing.

This cartoon makes me inexplicably sad.

I might not have the love for Spider-Man that I do for Superman, but I’d be seriously remiss in my geeky duties if I didn’t let you people know that the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man 3 was released today. And while I’ve never been a fan of Venom, what they show of the alien symbiote does actually look pretty sweet… as does the black costume. And the Sandman.

It’s certainly not enough to distract much of my attention from the fact that I’ll be watching Superman Returns in <checks watch> 28 hours and seven minutes, but it’s nice to know that I’ve got what looks to be a kickin’ superhero epic to look forward to next summer.

Unlike, say, 2008’s Iron Man, which I have a feeling is going to suck hard enough to pull my stomach lining out through my mouth.

Against my better judgment, I now have my MySpace profile relatively complete. (Yes, thank you, I’ve noticed that I’m not a 15-year-old girl.)

My reasons for setting up the profile are couplefold:

1. Most of my friends from Florida are on MySpace, and that seems to be one of the main ways they keep in touch. For example, my insanely talented (and now Cali-ized rather than Florided) friend Steve (he of the Deadly Fists of Kung Fu video I posted here a few weeks back) has an acccount there, and I might actually keep in contact with him a little bit better if I know where I can consistently find him.
2. There seems to be some small opportunity to network effectively using the stupid site — there are several comic book writers I like who have accounts there and allow anyone to friend them. I seriously doubt anything will actually come from having, say, Warren Ellis on my MySpace friends list, but hey — it can’t be any less than the absolutely nothing that will likely happen otherwise.

MySpace is, of course, an Internet entreprenuer’s wet dream: the guys who built it launched the site in the summer of ‘03 and sold it two years later to News Corp for $580 frickin’ million. The people who programmed the site originally couldn’t possibly have known that their little community application was going to become one of the biggest phenomena on the web and one of the centerpieces of modern teenager culture, but that’s exactly what it is. At the time I’m writing this, MySpace is the fourth-most-visited English-language site in the world according to Alexa.

As a professional web applications developer, however, using MySpace feels like digging tiny barb-covered Mountain Dew-dipped daggers underneath the fingernails of my soul. It really and truly is a wretchedly put-together site. The usability and navigation are abysmal, and we can’t even get started on the entire “ugly design” ethos that MySpace empitomizes lest my frontal lobe catch fire. I can’t look at the site without thinking of all the things I’d have done differently if I’d built it. [1] But as part of my plan to Get My Name Out There And Network, I decided that I needed to swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat and start using MySpace, at least a little.

So any of you reading this who are willing to admit you have a MySpace page, let me know or just add me as a friend on your profile. I’ll tell Warren Ellis you said hi.

[1] Of course, who knows — the things I’d've done differently might’ve made for a better application but a less-popular site. It seems that MySpace’s rough-around-the-edges-ness is one of the reasons it’s so popular. My designer mind can’t quite wrap itself around that one, though.

As much as I love my USB thumb drive — truly one of those gadgets I didn’t realize how much I needed until I got one — I’d love it that much more if it looked like this custom job some sicko put together. I could carry all of my important files and horrify my children at the same time! Score!

And yes, I’m aware it’s this sort of thing which will lead to A] no end of emotional/psychological trauma and/or B] no end of paternal embarrassment in my children by the time they’re teenagers.

(Thanks to -b for the link.)

We’re going to need a whole lot more of these in the future if we’re ever going to break our dependence on oil, whether foreign or domestic: CNN has a report on a gas station in California which sells alternative fuels in addition to regular gasoline. The best part? They sell BioWillie, the soybean-based biodiesel that Willie Nelson sponsors. (I have no idea if BioWillie is better or worse than any other form of biodiesel — I just like the name.)

Side note: according to the picture that accompanies the article, the price per gallon of regular unleaded in San Diego is around $3.49. Friggin’ OW.

My lovely and amazing wife Terry has consolidated her formerly fractured — nay, schizophrenic — online presence into one awesomely shiny new site: Mother Mirth. (And I’m not just saying it’s “awesomely shiny” ’cause I built it. Well, OK… yeah I am.) This new site combines her witty dispatches on parenting with her more generalized rants into one big package of T-licious goodness. Go visit her now, update your bookmarks, add her RSS feed, and tell her I sent you!

And speaking of feeds, please direct your attention over there to the left and you’ll see nice, new, easy-to-use links which will let you add the Do or Do Not feed (also now being run through Feedburner) to your portal page or blog aggregating site of choice. So you should, y’know, do that.

Achieve-IT! lists ten methods for making sure that you never, ever reach your goals. I think that these “tips” were supposed to be funny, but I couldn’t find my way to the laughing for all of the crying I was doing. I’ve consistently done every single one of the items on this list for years.

8. List why it’s impossible – Now we are getting into the mental game of failing. This is quite possibly your greatest weapon against achievement because it destroys hope and optimism. So as soon as possible, set aside some time to create a long list of how impossible your goal really is. No matter what your target is, I am sure you can come up with plenty of reasons why it’s impossible.

I’ve been reading and thinking quite a bit about my goals (or lack thereof) lately, but sometimes it takes this kind of slap in the face — to have someone hold up a mirror showing exactly how well you’re not doing — to make any real impact.

So excuse me, but I have to go write up some more goals now.