Ninjas!

When I was a kid, Ninjas were awesome.

Forget Arnold and Rambo, the ninja took the cake. From karate kid to Bruce Lee to Steven Seagal, martial arts made you invincible. Many boys (including myself) took karate or tae kwon do or aikido in order to possess these most excellent skills. Ninjas were totally rad!

Today ninjas are still around, but they have fallen from their previous stature. They could still be described as totally rad, but the calling something totally rad today evokes a different emotion than it did 20 years ago.

The internet is full of totally rad ninjas!

Chuck Norris v. Bruce Lee - Totally Rad back in the day!



Chuck Norris today reading Chuck Norris Facts - Still Totally Rad



Ask a ninja - this is one of the more dangerous ninjas, he spends his time critiquing films.



You may wonder when the ninja fell from grace. This may have had something to do with it.

Wheelchair Ninjas



In honor of ninjas, I have placed a feed from the Chuck Norris facts page to my sidebar. Each day there will be a new Chuck Norris fact displayed.

My Talking Dog

My dog Riley has a blog now. You might be asking, "How's that?" Turns out that dogs are a lot more like people than we ever knew. Cats too, I understand. They are miniature versions of people, with all the same sophisticated thoughts and feelings that people have, only cuter. These pets opine about current events, celebrity lifestyles, fashion, public policy, you name it.

They want to dress up in fancy costumes and act out scenes from famous movies and plays, they just lack the dexterity to do this for themselves. Some pet owners are savvy and sympathetic enough to understand this fact and oblige, to the great satisfaction of both pet and owner.

Come to think of it, Riley and I have spent many an evening on the back porch in intense conversation. I usually struggle to keep up while Riley expounds the principles of economics and economic policy to me. She understands well the application of sophisticated theory to practical political problems. I have considered granting her permission to guest write posts on my blog from time to time. My only fear is that she will be overzealous at the opportunity to reach a wider audience (she is pretty conservative, almost libertarian) and will come across heavy handed. Still, I may grant her wish anyway. She has so much wisdom to offer.

Things Nerds find Funny, Pt 1

Graphs:

Graph Jam







Indexed:



If you're still with me you might like Demitri Martin, law school dropout and professional comedian:

Doogie Howser, MD + Buffy the Vampire Slayer + Musical = genius!

I found this new direct to web show called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog." Starring Neil Partick Harris and written by Joss Whedon, pretty funny.

Let's take a quick ride down memory lane with Neil.

Doogie Howser - Intro



Undercover Brother



Barney

This was on Digg on Monday. The meat is at about 60 seconds from the end. But, the whole thing is impressive.

At first I feel like, "How do you learn to do that." By the end my mind is simply blown. I start throwing up all over myself, I just can't believe it.

Sam the ugliest dog.

Look at this!!!
Meet Sam. He is no longer with us (he went back to the Pit from whence he came). But, during his brief escape from hell, he was voted the ugliest dog several years in a row (I know, hard to believe).

I am teaching a class at Utah Career College. Most of my students are vet tech students. They love animals. They pointed me in this thing's direction. If you want to know more about Sam, you can go to his blog.

Rapture of the nerds started early

Some eager beaver crawled through apple's website yesterday and found the new 2.0 firmware on a server a day before it was to be released. So the nerd army jumped on it, downloaded the new itunes, installed the new firmware, and started installing 3rd party apps last night. I happen to be a proud member of that nerd army.

I wrote in a previous post about the new 3G iphone being released today, what I didn't explain was that 2 things happen today, the new phone comes out and the new software. The 2.0 software will run on both the new 3G phone, and the current Edge based phones. There are two important differences with the 3G phone, it has better GPS and it's faster. While this is all well and good, the real magic is in the new software, that runs on both phones.

The new software makes the iphone an open platform. 3rd parties can write software that runs on the phone. "So what?" . . . Well thousands of new features are going to be made available. So far there are several hundred new applications available, about half of them are free.

I have put about 12 new applications on my phone. There are new games, that use the accelerometer function in the phone, so you play the game by tilting the phone. There are location based search services, you ask about restaurants and the phone looks up your location, then using online databases looks up restaurants that are close by. These online databases include reviews, details, and other information.

There are applications like ebay, facebook, etc. The advantage here over just using the iphone's browser is there is less information that needs to be transfered so these apps will run much faster.

Pandora has an app, so you can listen to internet radio on your iphone. I installed an app that finds my location and then shows me photos that others have taken in nearby locations.

These apps are nice, but the ultimate capabilities are much more profound. For example, I am a real estate agent, I want to be able to be driving through a neighborhood and have the iphone grab the nearest 20 properties for sale and display them on a map. I want it to use sold comps information and cross reference to zillow to estimate the approximate value of the homes.

I want it to tell me about what my friends are doing and whether or not they are nearby (opt-in of course).

There are and have been other phones that do some of these things already, but none have done them really well, and none have been as appealing. The real power from all network based systems is when they are adopted into the mainstream. Each additional user of the system increases its usefulness, so hopefully apple can get major buy in and mobile computing will become common in the US.

Real Ultimate Power

I don't know if you have heard of Real Ultimate Power or not yet, but if not, you better get a life quick!

Speaking of powers, they've apparently unearthed some real mutants who have super human powers. 7 Mutants I had heard of the german kid with super muscles, I guess he's about 9 now. Here's a toddler in the US named Liam with the same condition. I hope he lives a normal life, apparently Wendy did OK.

The eating guy is weird. But, the Godhand guy, that's just Awesome. Real Ultimate Power!

July 11, greatest day of the year!

Why, you may be asking, is July 11 a great day. Well, I'm glad you asked, I'll tell you. To start off, the new HellBoy comes out that day. I wasn't a huge fan of the first Hellboy, but I did like it. It was a little soft around the edges, not dark enough, not serious enough, too cartoony. The new one looks like it's much more intense, so I am way excited to see it. Now that Hancock is out and getting bad reviews, Hell Boy becomes my #2 most anticipated movie this summer (after The Dark Knight).

Second, on July 11 we are having a family dinner. I know that really only affects me, but still I'm excited for it.

Another thing that happens on July 11? I will be watching the new episode of Burn Notice, USA's summer hit from last year. Seriously, this show is awesome. Now, technically, the show comes out on the 10th, but I'm gonna be watching it on the 11th. I just am.

Originally I thought that the new Strongbad game for the wii was going to come out on the 11th, but I can no longer find any proof of that, so I may have imagined it, or dreamed it or something. But, there's no evidence that it's not going to come out on the 11th, so I am going to count that, too.

Finally, the coup de gras, the new iphone comes out on the 11th. Now, most of you are probably thinking, "Great, the new iphone, whoop dee doo." Well, I say to you, you don't know until you have lived it. Buy one, and then you will see, everything is different after the iphone becomes a part of your life. Sunsets are more beautiful, food tastes better, life seems more exciting. In a post iphone world there is unending peace and prosperity.

Let me just give you one example: Let's say that you are at Blockbuster, you are thinking of renting a movie, but you aren't sure what you want. You saw the previews for "Jumper", and it looked pretty good. However, trailers can be deceiving. So you want to know what critics had to say. If you are a normal, everyday Joe, you are plumb out of luck. But, in an iphone enhanced reality, you can look up that information on the internet, while you are browsing the shelves. Results: you find out that jumper was a huge disappointment, disaster averted. Instead you rent Sling Blade, which you had never heard of, but Billy Bob Thornton is in it and it turns out is awesome. This is true power, right at your fingertips. Plus, it also doubles as a phone.