Find me @ digiphile.wordpress.com

If you happen to find your way here, you'll notice I haven't updated this blog much.

That's because I was either;

A) Blogging, writing definitions, podcasting or otherwise editing content for WhatIs.com

B) I was twittering @digiphile.

I did that a lot in 2008.

I've moved over to digiphile at Wordpress.com in 2009 and don't plan on updating this blog again.

Please update your feeds, bookmarks and links accordingly.

Cheers!

-Alex

Packaging FAIL

My very first personally constructed FAIL, thrown askew into the wilds of teh interwebs.

New embeddable widget from Hulu.com makes sharing shows & movies a snap.

Hulu.com continues to kick ass. Hulu allowed me watch all of Firefly over the holiday break from the comfort of my parents' guestroom, saving me from the horror of their cable-less househould (Disclaimer: I don't have cable at home either, actually).

Now they're offering embeds. Here's the Daily Show:



I'm not sure, exactly, why you'd want to watch here instead of on the main site. I'm not going to worry about it; this is one more step towards a more accessible form of ad-supported online TV. Hurrah.

Enjoy some Family Guy:

Dancing on YouTube is another "feelgood" online moment

Story about WhereTheHellIsMatt via A Private Dance? Four Million Web Fans Say No from Charles McGrath of the New York Times.

All in all, I vastly prefer the warm and fuzzy Internet memes much more than the excremental instances.

Sunset on Mars

Thanks to NASA for posting this pic of sunset on Mars as part of their image of the day series.

(Hat tip to Laughing Squid via Boing Boing)

Fisher-ape? This vocation knows no evolutionary boundaries.

My uncle sent me this shot of an orangutan spear fishing. He found it over at Ace of Spades HQ.

Video from the BBC: Flying penguins reported in the Antarctic

This one premiered on April 1st, so the natural assumptions about its veracity apply.

It upholds the longstanding (and inspiring) tradition of grand hoaxes from the BBC.

Have I mentioned how much I love the i09 blog recently?

Apparently I've been blogslacking. Shocking. A friend pointed out that I share posts from a io9 on my linkblog quite frequently..

Guilty as charged.

I love this blog.

Posts like their Complete Guide to Science Fiction Season just make my life easier and more deeply enriched with the scifi goodness I've known and loved for the past two decades.

Tron, Sweded

My friend Snarles IM'ed me this link to Wired's Underwire blog with a video of a Sweded version of Tron embedded.

I'd watched it earlier this week but watching it again reminded me that I really should have posted it.

Geektastic. I enjoyed Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind much more than I expected to, given the New Yorker's tepid review. The website for the film, BeKindMovie.com has a similar quirky aesthetic. You can see Google sweded there, along with this helpful guide to sweding.

ZAGAT - Outtakes of the Week

My sister forwarded me the following list of one liners pulled from restaurant customers quoted on Zagat. Individually, many of these are pretty funny. Collectively, they're hilarious. You can find fresh ones over on the outtakes page on zagat.com.

Thanks, sis.

[Image credit: The Times Blogumists]

***

I don't tip if I get groped.

I thought I was looking at an oil painting when suddenly it moved – it was my waitress.

Foam is not the solution.

The flagship of a fleet that needs an overhaul.

I’m pretty sure I ate cow’s udders and liked them.

The special occasion place for people with bad taste.

If only the spectacular view could fill one's stomach.

Form over flavor.

The only way the tables could be closer together would be to stack them.

The viewing beats the chewing.

Quail with figs had exactly one fig. When asked for more, the waiter replied there's one fig per customer!

If you have no personality, this is the hangout for you.

Service with a grudge.

The maitre d' made us wait to be seated, apparently for no other reason than because he could.

Primary attraction was the small wildlife wandering across the table.

The chef keeps renaming and relocating the restaurant like it’s a member of the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Service so attentive you may have to ask for some privacy.

Take a look at the staff on the way in – that’s the last you’ll see of them.

Other than having gone to hell in a hand basket, everything is just like it was before the sale.

The valet stole my cell phone and called Brazil 11 times.

What is an 'ultra lounge' anyway?

Even their 'regulars' have stopped going there.

Foie gras does not need to be put into a mascarpone cookie.

It has a great reputation among people who don't get out much.

I would rather eat sushi from a vending machine.

Great food amid a sea of shorts and black socks.

Can I vote 'ugh'?

The waiter took my order, went outside to smoke and then waved through the window.

Could someone do something about the uniforms? 1982 just called and it wants its suspenders back.

We could have lived without knowing that our waiter was 'Steven from Long Beach.'

If I wanted to be treated with distaste, I would just stay home.

Our waiter was very unattractive, and this being LA, I have to downgrade the Decor rating.

They make you walk around with a horse stick and blow a whistle. That'll teach you to tell someone it's your birthday.

Overpriced and undergood.

The food may be bad, but at least the service is slow.

It seems that the owner, the chef and I have lost interest.

My waiter was so soft-spoken I thought he was a mime.

Hard to tell if it is a restaurant or drug front.

My office comes here for special lunches, but I wish they'd stop.

The food may have been excellent, but I was choking on the prices.

Staff wanders around as if they were just beamed to this strange location.

Even the ice water had garlic in it.

The only thing healthy about the place is the exit door.

Who said it was ok to expose your chest hair while serving people their sandwiches and frozen yogurt?

The staff is charmingly incompetent.

A good place to go with co-workers you don't like.

I do wish they'd stop sticking a pine tree in every entree.

The No. 1 spot in town for crooked pharma reps to stuff fat doctors full of $50 steaks.

Once you drive through ax-murderer country to get here you are pleasantly surprised by all the people and the buzz.

It’s hard to tell where the food stops and the Styrofoam containers begin.

Suffers from delusions of adequacy.

Took a doggy bag home; the dog refused it.

If this place doesn't get you laid, nothing will.

Saves fuel bills – the heartburn will keep you warm all winter.

The immature eating the indelible.

Like a skunk, it's small, it's cute and it stinks.

Abandon taste buds all ye who enter here.

A Petri dish gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The roaches always get the best seats.

Chef's responsibility is to turn on the microwave.

They put the salmon in salmonella.

If I want a fatty sandwich served by a walking attitude, I'll go to mom's.

Grandma cooked like this, grandpa died young.

Good seafood, but the waiter should be used as fish bait.

Not what it used to be and it did not used to be much.

Duck must have had a long flight – tired, tough and took 90 minutes to arrive.

Portions so small I started laughing – prices so high I started crying.

Have yet to learn that heat is an integral part of the cooking process.

For the price, the lobster should have come via overnight express, not pony express.

'Breaking bread' should not mean you have to use the side of the table.

The quiche of death.

Should shut down the restaurant and just serve the view.

The Great Angel Oak in South Carolina

[Photo Credit: Mark Regs]

Easily one of the most incredible trees I have ever seen.

The future Eiffel Tower -- another reason to visit Paris again

The temporary observation deck will be made of carbon Kevlar webbing and be bolted to the existing tower, doubling the area at the available to sightseers.

Neat.

[Hat tip: iO9]

ping.fm, Tumblr, FriendFeed and getting microbloggy with it

I've been twittering much more recently, in no small part due to downloading Snitter.

The latter is a brilliant interface for Twitter.

As a result of that network, I've been turned exposed to any number of new (and exciting) social media services. Each service has made its mark by allowing the user to aggregate and mix multiple feeds from blogs, podcasts, photo services and video networks.

ping.fm, which allows the user to update multiple presence applications at once, just makes my life easier. Many thanks to Chris Brogan for the invite.

I'm trying out Tumblr, after getting tumblr envy one too many times.

Joining FriendFeed has allowed me to aggregate them all together and to subscribe to and comment upon other blogger's shared feeds.

I'm uncertain whether adding more services will save me time in the end or add needed precision to winnowing the important bits and bytes from each day's information glut.

I was impressed with the ease of sign in. Online interface design has come a long way in the past ten years. I was also amused at the uniformity of the logos, adhering to the Web 2.0 design ethic.

Cyberdonkey: "Big Dog" Robot from Boston Dynamics

Big Dog has been all over the Internet today. How can it not be?

The unearthly gait, buzzing operation and weirdly mammalian bounding of Big Dog are even more impressive in this outing with a payload and snowy hills to navigate.


Boston Dynamics and DARPA are well on their way to giving Skynet a hardy pet someday.

Playmobil Security Checkpoint. No, really.

My friend Dana forwarded me a link to the comment page on Amazon.com listing for the Playmobil Security Checkpoint today.

That comment section is about as entertaining as anything I've read this month. Hilarious.

There are one or two serious comments about using the product to teach kids about security procedures before heading to the airport. {chuckle}

The laughs kept coming, though... guess what "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought?"

Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science by L. Ron Hubbard
Scientology: A New Slant On Life by L. Ron Hubbard
Clear Body, Clear Mind: The Effective Purification by L. Ron Hubbard
Self Analysis by L. Ron Hubbard
Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought by L. Ron Hubbard

From this, we can gather that Scientologists love to play with plasticine security checkpoints.

I love Fridays.

Hexapus!

Hi, Henry.

[Image courtesy of AFP/HO/Blackpool Sealife Centre]

History's Greatest Replies, according to Dr. Mardy

This compilation is just priceless.

Some classics:

"Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee."
-Lady Astor

"Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
-Winston Churchill

****

"What are you doing reading a Bible?" asked an astonished Thomas Mitchell, confronted by an irreligious man paging through the Good Book on his deathbed.

"I'm looking for loopholes."
-W. C. Fields

****

At a press conference, a reporter pointed out that $80,000 was $5,000 more than President Hoover's annual salary.

"Maybe so, but I had a better year than he did."
-Babe Ruth

BoingBoingTV: "Food Fight" -- an abridged history of war through food

Filmmaker Stefan Nadelman's stop-animation piece provides an abridged history of war (WWII-Gulf War II) told through the foods of the countries in conflict.

Funny, sad and in no way appetite inspiring, at least on this day. Brilliant in its own way.

[Hat tip to Jon Battelle]

This spot belongs to Jebus

One of the time-honored practices here in Boston is to "save" a parking space in your neighborhood once you've dug it out. A recent commercial for Boston.com poked fun at the practice, as removing a marker and parking in the spot can subject the offending vehicle to considerable danger.



Over the years, more than a few fights have broken out over moved markers, especially when multiple snowstorms make the excavated spots and surrounding mountains of salt and exhaust-laden packed snow a permanent feature of the landscape until thaw.

In recent years, Mayor Menino has created considerable foment around Boston, particularly Southie, by enforcing a 48 hour limit on markers after heavy storms.

Boston.com put up a gallery of the various markers used to save spots. Here's the one that I only with I could have seen:



Thanks, Jess Nunez, for capturing the shot.

John Cleese's Letter to America

Cleese is still one of the funniest men on the planet.

His letter to America is wonderfully droll, witty and more than a little damning.

Need a laugh?

Go read it.