Oh, and I blog.

When I started this blog I knew (obviously) my reasons, but never could quite describe it coherently enough. Time passed, I started to write in it (less often than not) and this matter slowly vanished from the front of my mind.

Flash forward to last night, as I was reading through the books I bought this weekend. I read the minuscule preface of Jerome K. Jerome’s (I’m not linking any of his internet biographies, he deserves a little google-love) The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. It writes:

One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in manuscript having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere ‘idle thoughts’ of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn’t elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading “the best hundred books”, you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change.

Jerome K. Jerome

Brilliant. Not just the preface, which is, undoubtedly, one of the best I’ve ever read, but the way it fits with my philosophy about this blog. Here’s my adaptation for the blog:

Now that I explained my philosophy for this here web log, all I have to do is get back to writing it.

interwebs, the beginings Jerome K. Jerome, Preface, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

interwebs internet, web site story, west side story

My Romanian readers know what this title is a pun on. During the 1996 presidential election debates, one of the candidates, Emil Constantinescu, turned to the other one, Ion Iliescu, and asked:

Mr. Iliescu, do you believe in God?

Legend has it that it was that this question alone, and its flip-flopping answer, made Iliescu, the incumbent, lose the elections.
Many years have passed since that event, and jokes on the issue have been made thousands of times. But this one is hilarious.
After Microsoft launched its own search engine decision engine, Google sped up the process for the R&D of its own twist on internet search, Google Squared, a Labs-endorsed process which takes information from all over the internet and puts it in a nice spreadsheet for you.
Well, as soon as it launched, I googlesquare’d (because saying that I googled would be wrong) a good deal of sets of information, like “cities in Romania”, “Penn State campuses”, “burgers”, but none of them were very interesting. So i decided to search for, you guessed it, “Romanian presidents”. While it did have some hickups, like in showing wrong people, it had the possibility of adding collumns with different information, so I went for religion. And this is what it had:

P.S.: Former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu got caught with a whole different religion altogether:

UPDATE: between then and now, the program gave a lot of different results, so don’t blame me if it’s not te same.

interwebs Ceausescu, Constantinescu, FAIL, Google Square, Iliescu, Romania

I’m not talking about childhood mistakes, college mistakes, or even “unfaithful” moments ( even though these will also eventually catch up with you ), i’m talking about major mistakes, like “Ice, Ice, Baby”, and “Mmmmmbop”.

The apology video from ‘Nilla Ice has gotten a lot of views on YouTube, but the message behind it is to visit rightmusicwrongs.org, a Virgin Music Australia site that lets the users decide the tops of music wrongs. right now Milli Vanilli is topping the chart with “all” its discography, David Hasselhoff’s ” Hooked on A Feeling ” (?), the former No. 1, dropping to the second place.

I, alongisde every white high school teen that ever tried to show his “skilz” by shouting “wurd to yo’ mutha” and narrowly-escaped getting beaten but still have to face the humiliation of actually saying that phrase, accept this sincere and not-for-viral-purposes-or-other-internet-ad-campaign-or-otherwise-money-making-scheme video apology from this former pop-icon. Not.

You’re going to have to work harder, Ice. You have to actually mean it, Mr. Van Winkle.  Maybe create a foundation in order to help of your former fans to stop shouting the name of your song when “Under Pressure” by Queen starts playing, or even have a recall of all your IceIceBaby cell ringtones, or, better yet, take another long break from the spotlight. You’re worried people will forget about you? That’s what we’re aiming for.

P.S.: I sincerely apologize for the tone of this blog post, this is what happens when you do work all day, you snap at innocent old-timers. I mean it, V-Ice, just as much as you meant your own apology.

fictionally true, interwebs David Hasselhoff, Milli Vanilli, Queen, Vanilla Ice, Virgin Music Australia

Love Hurts | stop-motion from David Morar on Vimeo.

My first attempt at stop-motion.

Rather abstract, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

Oddly enough, the pictures were taken on Valentine’s Day.

fictionally true, interwebs animation, hurts, love, stop motion, Vimeo

coming soon

fictionally true, interwebs teaser

While there’s been little comment activity on my blog ( due to a variety of issues, like me being too busy or too lazy; not having a constant link stream; not wanting to get into a tried-and-true blogroll yet because I have too many drafts that need to be written, etc.) i’ve been getting spammed a lot! Which normally is not something good, but I think that this early in my blog’s development, it’s ok.

interwebs spam

While Microsoft’s guru is trying to save the world, the people that still work at the computer giant are not slacking off. Eduard posted yesterday about a new thing coming out of Redmond, Microsoft Tag. It’s simple: you plug in the information, the way you want that information transferred to the people and you chose the way the tag is created, with more or less detailed instructions, and the program creates the tag.  You can put it on whatever you want, business card, movie trailer, bus schedule, or even on a regular poster, or an information panel. The way it’s being read is through a smartphone. You take a photo and the Tag app reads it and gives you the info. The tag in itself looks really interesting and I think the fact that it’s free to do one, for now, is really cool.

I did one just for fun, about the School of International Affairs at PSU:

the setup is straightforward:

the tag you get can be easily attached anywhere:

and then the reader will use the app from their mobile device to read it:

I hope it’s gonna catch on, it seems really awesome!

interwebs bill gates, microsoft, microsoft tag, tag

Whenever I’m trying to unwind, usually before I go to sleep, I enjoy a couple of minutes of LOLcats.  Maybe because those cats are cute, maybe because the text is dead-on, I don’t know, it’s just funny!

Funny, funny stuff.

interwebs LOLcats

i came up with this little interwebz word-play waking up from a dream. while still in bed i googled it on my iphone to make sure it’s not actually a highly-used joke that lost its edge. it wasn’t. a couple of people had it up. but that’s about it. so i can claim partial-paternity of this one. hoo-ray! my first interwebs (partial)-victory.

interwebs