I'm not sure what the HTTotM faithful use to view the Highly Recommended RSS feed - and it's possible we'll start a comment thread where everyone blasts my suggestion for their vastly superior version (which would actually be a lot of fun). Nevertheless, might I point your attention toward Netvibes, a nifty online dashboard that aggregates all your web goodies into a single launch point.
I find myself migrating more and more toward in-browser applications instead of stuff actually installed and launched from my machine. There are several of these out there, but Netvibes seems the most elegantly simple of the bunch. If you're like me, and you're a geek who spends a lot of time in marginally relevant meetings, you can organize the fast amount of stuff you use to distract you from your day-to-day life with several tabs... or you can just load everything up on one page and crawl through it.
It's free, there aren't any direct ads (yet), and it's really intuitive, sign up and try it out. Might I also recommend your first addition?
We've pimped Jonathan Coulton at least twice before, but this one is a perfect example of how live shows are soooooo much better with the right crowd. Here are thousands of gamer geeks at the Penny Arcade Exposition singing as zombies. Bliss.
As a side note, it was great to see after writing this that we already had tags for live music and zombies.
The Superbowl is almost upon us, and the hype machine is in full swing -- including this fun little doodad that lets you take control of a NY Giants styled mallet and try to hit Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on the head as many times as you can.
You might as well try it, it's not like the actual Giants are gonna get to him.
As I don't read German, I'm not 100% sure what the intended market for the Cheeseburger in a Can is supposed to be -- but whatever it is, count me the hell out.
Here's a surprising gem -- a listing of EVERY reason that led David Banner to transform into the Hulk on the old TV show. Seriously, some of these are hilarious. I mean think about all the little things that piss you off that you have to LET GO OF just to get through an average day, like having hot coffee spilled on your hand (#23), getting a speeding ticket (#50), or having to deal with a rude phone operator because you don't have enough change to complete a call (#20) -- and you start to realize that sometimes Hulk has a really short fuse.
On the other hand, (as anyone who grew up watching the show can attest to) as the series started to get a little long in the tooth it seems like the writers started having trouble coming up with plausible excuses for the mild mannered David Banner to get angry enough to go Hulk -- leading them to just put the poor guy in some of the most ridiculous situations imaginable.
Parenting is tough work, especially with babies. Wouldn't it be great if there was a simple visual guide to help you know what kind of things you should and shouldn't be doing?
There's some really funny stuff here. Cruel, to be sure -- but hilarious just the same.
One of my favorite blogs out there is Because I Say So -- which frequently offers readers photos of dogs, restaurant food, storefront window displays, and other such points of interest around NYC that catch the author's interest.
Oh those wacky Brits -- apparently there's a trend growing where people are folding their money in half and then mixing their own faces in with the remaining image to create monetary mash-ups. Of course here in the States nothing really happens until celebrities are involved.. which leads us to something like this:
You've seen them. They've ignored you for their cell phones, taken way too long on a machine at the gym, cut you off in traffic, and helped launch wars against insurgency in the Middle East. But is there a reason that douchebags are such.. douches?
Our man in St. Louis, who covers the Cards, is publishing a book! Matthew has long known how to program the perfect jukebox playlist and hold forth on the finer points of whiskeys great and small. But his day job involves telling true tales, and he describes the nature of competition as well as anyone.
One of my favorite shows to watch when I was a kid gets the "where are they now" treatment -- which should be fun and interesting, but somewhere along the way takes an a strange and dark turn.
Here's a play by play of how I reacted to the article.
"WKRP? oh man - I loved that show!" "Oh man, What was the name of the actress who played Bailey.. I mean, Loni Anderson was supposed to be the eye candy, but I was always more into Bailey -- she was kinda hot." "OK, here she is -- Jan Smithers. Let's see what she's been up to..."
Of course, when it comes to my circle of friends the article should probably be called "33 Things You Already Knew About Led Zeppelin" -- but it's still a pretty interesting read.
From the force for good that is Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games comes this new way of looking at the politico-socioeconomics of food.
The game is free, and for bonus fun you can create your own meals for the game, like the pasta and syrup breakfast seen in Elf.
From the press release:
FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game's goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. Existing approaches to nutrition advocacy fail to communicate the aggregate effect of everyday health practices. It's one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away.
You can choose starting weights and health conditions, including predispositions towards ailments like diabetes, heart disease, or food allergies. You'll have to construct menus and recipes, decide what to eat and what to avoid, exercise (or not), and run a restaurant business to serve the members of your community.
FATWORLD comes with numerous foods, recipes, and meal plans, or players can create their own from the foods in their pantry or their imaginations.
Bar-Toons consists of Tim Harrod's contributions to the Museum of Drunken Art. Tim is one of the many free-floating geniuses who haunt Freddy's, the best bar on the planet. He's written for The Onion and Conan O' Brian.
He also knows way more Star Wars trivia than me, which is really saying something.
My favorite bar-toon is still on display at Freddy's. The cartoon depicts masses of people bowing down to a gigantic statue of Weird Al. The caption: "Earth, 1,000 years from now. You know it. I know it."
I'm quite happy to highly recommend the newly-launched Sooper Delishus. Creator Chris Keating is an awesome comedy writer and all-around swell guy. Have a look-see.
I have no idea what's going on here, and I didn't bother looking these guys up to try to help give more information or any of the responsible things a web aggregation site contributor should do.
The problem with the primaries is that they're horrendously boring. Sure, when you're debating issues and learning about the candidates it can get heated, but because it's all about deciding who's gonna be the one we'll be deciding on later -- even when something exciting and unexpected happens (can you say OBAMA!?) it's still only really a precursor to something else.
So in celebration of the political pre-season, the gang over at Atom Films have come up with this cool little doodad that mixes Political Candidate posturing with what every election in the modern era has really been missing -- Bloodshed.
See, this is why I can never leave this city. Even cool stuff from other places comes here. Cartoon Dump, a live sketch comedy show based in LA, will be performed in NYC next Tuesday the 8th. It's centered on MST3K-level bad cartoons, and is in fact written by and stars Frank Conniff. Hit the linked title above for a code that'll get you in for $5. See ya there.
