Large Hadron Collider

So the LHC went through its first major experiment last night. There has been much outcry about it being powerful enough to destroy the world, so I'm sure that question is certainly on your mind: Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Answer here: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

YNTE Movie Night: Matt's Review

Damn Medusa, you scary!

So, I didn't actually watch the movie, but instead I found a clip of Medusa on youtube and listened to this song about the Krakken. Basically, the stop-motion claymation effects were state-of-the-art back then, and still cheesy. Considering they're in about half of the movie (if not more), it just seems like 3D animation in Today's movies, except it wasn't so glitzy (Which reminds me, someone reviewing the NEW Clash of the Titans movie commented that it was equivalent to Transformers 2... burn).

So yeah, the last minute of the song told me the plot of the entire movie, and based off of what I saw, there was lots of killing and bad blood effects and clay. Yet, Rottentomatoes.com scored this movie in the 80% range... so I guess take the special effects with a grain of salt and watch the movie for the plot.

But seriously, nobody wants to see a Krappen.

THE HORROR

This is the most terrifying thing ever:

Funniest comment I have read in reference to this:
"Suddenly I am very sad that his suicide attempt failed :("

It was a poop joke.

There. I promised I would explain it.

YNTE Movie Night: RELEASE THE "CRAPPEN"

Get it? It's like yelling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN" but with clever wordplay denoting that the movie had a qualitative value rougly equivalent to that of human excrement.

If you still don't get it, I'll explain it later.

Well, I finally saw "Clash of the Titans" (the 1981 version). I had never seen it before, but with the remake on the horizon, I decided to give it a shot.

You see, right now 3d is the hot ticket special effects item. It's so popular that movies are getting made in 3d strictly to showcase this new visual effect without any thought to plot, story, characterization, acting, dialogue, etc. The movies are just one big 3d action orgy with a half baked story and fully baked actors doing the bare minimum to tie together these big budget action scenes. By all accounts, the remake of Clash of the Titans will continue this trend.

However, now that I've seen the original, I feel that in this case at least, it's completely justified; asthe original Clash was nothing but a showcase for the "new" "awesome" special effects with almost no real plot or acting to tie it together. The only problem is the special effects are 30 years old and did not age well at all.

The movie makes the old Japanese Godzilla movies look awesome by comparison. The stop motion effects were groundbreaking so they were used at every possible opportunity, but there were many, many instances where they should not have been. There's a "monster" which is basically just a dude walking on two legs with a tail. A rubber suit would have been MUCH more convincing and probably would have cost less. But, for some reason, they stop motioned it.

Luckily, the bad special effects are incredibly humor prone. It is fun to laugh and imagine a world, not too long ago, when this looked "awesome".

And the "plot"? Hilarious. At one point, Zeus tells another God that she has to give up her animal companion (an owl) to his son Perseus. The God likes her owl so she "tricks" Zeus by building a robot owl (aka: R2-D2 with wings) instead. THIS IS A REAL PLOT POINT.

The movie has a pretty slow start. Most of the "action" sequences are in the second half. But if you keep watching, you are in for some chuckles.

FINAL VERDICT: So Bad It's Good.

Have your own opinion? Send your reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post them all in one big meta-review at the end of the month.

Lorem Ipsum and other things

In my quest to find the perfect non-content post with the most content possible, I found the perfect tool. It is a Lipsum (Lorem Ipsum) Generator that is used for filler in backgrounds where you wouldn't really be reading the text, but need something that looks like normally spaced text. So in an effort to make it look like I put a lot of work into this, here's an example:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut pretium bibendum risus sit amet eleifend. Praesent fringilla ligula ut leo eleifend et luctus lacus dapibus. Donec at enim enim. Vivamus tempus, enim non faucibus auctor, turpis enim faucibus ante, sit amet consequat nulla sem id enim. Suspendisse ultrices interdum neque, vitae consectetur ipsum rutrum sed. Aliquam erat volutpat. Pellentesque metus felis, porttitor ac tempor non, sodales convallis sapien. Etiam vitae velit vitae turpis auctor laoreet. Vivamus facilisis blandit dictum. Morbi neque elit, tempor a malesuada ac, dignissim nec justo. Maecenas feugiat quam ut nunc dictum mattis."

Isn't that great? It almost looks like I wrote a coherent paragraph, although it's likely completely incoherent and mildly Latin-based.

This also reminds me of the Automatic CS paper generator. Wanna sound smart? Then place your name into this thingy and get a paper written for you already! It's so easy:

"We motivate an interactive tool for emulating information retrieval systems, which we call Tit. On a similar note, the shortcoming of this type of solution, however, is that the seminal wireless algorithm for the simulation of I/O automata runs in Q(n!) time. We emphasize that our algorithm creates the emulation of object-oriented languages. In the opinion of hackers worldwide, the basic tenet of this method is the evaluation of the location-identity split that would make simulating multi-processors a real possibility. Though similar systems investigate mobile archetypes, we answer this quagmire without constructing reliable archetypes."

Look at how smart I sound! Great thing is, I haven't even really written anything in this post at all besides commentary. I have found the ultimate form of lazy.

Pie

It's Pi day happy pi day everyone! (It won't be as good as 3/14/15 9:26:53, but we'll still have fun if I have to make it fun somehow). Have some pi pie, although this picture that Google image search brought up looks like an ordinary pumpkin pie with a pi symbol on it. Where's my pi flavored pie, dammit?

...mmm, mathematical.

Also @Evan, not sure if I can make it to the the ECCC. We're in town, but the whole money thing kinda sucks right now. I'll trade you a pizza for a Totapoco t-shirt though.

ECCC is this weekend!

Emerald City ComiCon is finally upon us: this Saturday and Sunday!

Drop by and see me at booth K-09. I'll be handing out prints of the Comic I did last Friday at Jimmy and the Hammer. I'll also autograph things or do sketches if you ask.

And my silly webcomic is not at all the only thing to do here! Want to meet Stan Lee? You can do that. Want to make fun of Rob Liefeld's inability to draw feet? You can do that. Want to watch Lou Ferigno wrestle a bear? You'll have you youtube that, but if you just want him to sign something, that's totally doable.

Some other things I highlighted on my map:
-Booth 314: Atomic Comics. This is the local store where I buy my comics every week. The owner, Shane, is a great guy, and he WILL hook you up with some cool stuff at a reasonable price.
-Booth 102: Halfpixel. Scott Kurtz of PvP, Brad Guigar of Evil Inc., Dave Kellet of Sheldon, and Kris Straub of Chainsawsuit and Starslip. These guys LITERALLY wrote the book on webcomics, and their How to Make Webcomics panel last year is what inspired me to start mine. They're doing another panel on Sunday, which is a must see.
-Booth 202: Topatoco. 13 creators of some of the most successful webcomics including: Jeff Rowland of Overcompensating and Wigu, Jon Rosenberg of Goats, Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja and Kate Beaton of Hark a Vagrant.

There's SO much stuff this year, if I circled every cool thing, the map would just be incomprehensible black circles everywhere. I'm so excited and you should be too.

See you there! Excelsior!

My laptop battery is amazing.

Not only is my laptop's battery able to last as long as the meaning of life while technically at 0%, or that it can last for days, but it also tells me that I need to eat.

Amazingly, only one part of this picture is doctored.

YNTE Movie Night: March Edition

Since the last YNTE Movie Night was such a RESOUNDING SUCCESS, I'm going to go for round two. And in preparation for its early April theatrical remake, this month's movie is the original Clash of the Titans.

I know almost nothing about this film other than what I saw in the google images search to find the picture, and that alone is enough to make me confident in my choice to include it. THe world of special effects has come a long way, and some of the old methods seem laughable.

Particpating in movie night is simple: Watch the movie and then review it(make jokes about it) here. Non-contributors can email their reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I will post them up here. It's that simple.

Happy watching!

February Roundup

I made graphs again!

So, as you can see, this year is going awesome!

This month, most of my posts were frontloaded on the early half the month, which is fine, because Matt forgot to post until the end. Our collective laziness cancelled out!

Here're the official standings:
Matt: 5 posts, 0 penalty, max take: 50 dollars
Tom: 0 posts, 10 dollars penalty, max take: 30 dollars
Evan: 14 posts, I don't earn money, but the resolution is alive!
Steve!: 1 post, bragging rights over Tom

Tom is losing. Not only is he losing money, but he's losing to Steve, who isn't even a participant. If this were a race, what happened is Tom broke his ankle off the blocks and is laying on the track writhing in pain. Then a crazy fan jumped out of the stands and started running down the tracks. Who will win the race? The injured athlete or the non athlete?

I was excited about the YNTE Movie Night, going into this month. Then there were (hold on, let me count them) zero other participants. Maybe it was a slow month, maybe it was a bad idea. We'll see. I still have hopes for this month. Announcement coming soon!

Here's to March!