Every once in a while, I am surprised by the creativity and skill of people creating YouTube videos. The current interest is “literal videos”: people taking video clips of songs and replacing the singing with their own singing. They're not singing the actual lines though, but their own version. The “literal” aspect of it all, is that they're singing about what is happening in the video, at the same tempo as the original song. Below is a version of Total Eclipse of the Heart, which I like best.



Many more videos can be found as a YouTube playlist. Be warned though, some singers are more skilled than others.

It must have been over five years ago when I first compiled a simple html page that would display a bunch of my favorite online comics. I still use that page and manually update it, so it always shows the comics of today. Yes, no doubt there are programs that do this, but my simple method works for me. Even though lately I have been able to subscribe to an increasing number of comics by rss.

I love reading comics. Sometimes one of the comics or cartoons is so funny or appropriate, I want to share it with people. This is usually limited to taping a printed comic on one of my walls at work. Sometimes it would be cool to show people on one of my sites what made me laugh that day. Most comic sites online have a very strict reuse policy. I.e., don't do it! In fact, years ago when I found some funny cartoons I contacted publishers to ask if it would be ok to display a single cartoon on my non-profit (very low volume, we're talking 10 visitors a month) web page. The only way I could do that, was to pay a hefty sum of money. Hah. No thanks.

Comics.com is one of the comics sites that has been around for a long time. I checked it out and didn't like it. It would only email comics and I didn't like html mails. Still don't. Recently, comics.com got a major overhaul. And lo and behold, now there are lots of social options. A lot of comics now have great options like view full size, votes, share to social networking and bookmarking sites, printing, and embedding of comics. Which is what I intend to give a try at the end of this post. Best of all when it comes to easy reading of comics: if you register, you can create your own comics page that contains your selected comics, get your comics by mail, or as rss feed ... That is awesome.

Available options probably depend on artist or publisher policies. I notice some comics don't offer the share and embed options, while others (such as Dilbert) can't be selected for your comics page/rss. A good thing Dilbert has its own page, complete with rss, share, and embed options.

It looks like the embed option simply gives you the proper html including the correct image link. Since it is basic html, it should work on any site. So, let's see if I am right by pasting a recent Pearls Before Swine episode.



Oh, this is going to be fun!

After watching The Website Is Down, I consider myself lucky my experiences with users are not quite like this. Nothing much I can say about this short movie, except that I actually laughed out loud several times while watching it. A good thing I didn't watch this at work.

Did you ever wonder what '24' would have looked like without modern day technology? Check out “24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot”, a spoof by CollegeHumor.

The Generator Blog contains a list of dozens of online generators. If you get bored during the upcoming holidays, you can waste a lot of time following those links.

Two examples: you can create your own virtual concert ticket at the Concert Ticket Generator site. You can download the resulting image or host it at ImageShack. You'd rather try to get some meds to help you through the jolly season? Try the Medical Drug Prescription Generator and prescribe yourself a healthy dose of whatever floats your boat.

After a couple of days with an immense headache (today has not been an exception), all I can think of is sleep, snacks, and some zoning out in front of a movie or tv show. Earlier this week though, I tried to figure out which 50 “dark movies” were hidden in this medieval painting. I am currently stuck at 25 out of 50. I guess I don't watch enough dark movies. Once I find out what the other 25 are, maybe I'll have compiled quite a list of movies that I want to watch some day.

Bloggers are a strange bunch. A lot of them seem to be pretty vain, waiting for lots of positive comments on their blog posts. After all, they are probably not just talking to themselves, but trying to reach an audience and show said audience what briljant throughts they have. So when it turns out there is hardly anyone interested enough in their dribbel to post comments, it can be quite a devastating blow. (well, sort of).

This comic kind of describes the sentiments well.

A funny (flash) cartoon about the N.S.A. wire tapping practices. Hey, it's Friday, time for some entertainment.
[Source]

Do you know what was the biggest hit on the day you were born? I had no idea there were so many songs from that time that I never heard of. I guess my mom wasn't into any of that “play music for your unborn child” kind of stuff. Going by the music that was hot back in the days, I should probably be glad of that. Of the songs that made up the Dutch Top 40 back when I was born, the first one I know is the number 10 hit Another 45 Miles. Not too much else I know either, and whatever songs I do know, I know because they're basically classics that get airplay even today.
[Source] (warning: image might be NSFW; through Xiffy's RSS feed)

As you may know, I like(d) watching MacGyver. It won't come as a surprise then, that I like this commercial. Free advertising? Hey, I don't mind this time. Maybe it will even help in getting my new credit card delivered sooner. [Source]