Author: Joey deVilla

Titled as found. (If you don’t get the reference, here’s a little help.)

Ah, Washington Square Park and New York City’s outdoor pianos,
which are returning this summer.

Having a lovely time. Hope your Sunday’s going as nicely.

In some software and engineering projects, the question is sometimes raised: “What if [some key person] is hit by a bus?”. It’s a morbid way of putting it, but the concern raised is a valid one: does the success of this project hang on one or a few key people?

The question has been asked often enough for there to be a Wikipedia entry on the topic. It’s the “bus factor”, and it’s described as “total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated (as by getting hit by a bus/truck) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed”.

Another place in which “hit by a bus” is used as a trope is in television and the movies. It’s a way to suddenly, horribly, often comedically, and quite literally take a character out of the picture. Harry Hanrahan, a YouTube-famous maker of “supercut” videos, has assembled 93 “hit by a bus” scenes from various TV shows and movies into a very painful but still funny montage that runs for almost twelve and a half collision-laden minutes. Listed below are the shows and movies from which each “hit by a bus” snippet was taken, and when they appear in the supercut:

1. 0:00 – 0:17 Ghost Town
2. 0:17 – 0:23 The Brothers Solomon
3. 0:23 – 0:38 Final Destination
4. 0:38 – 0:46 Mean Girls
5. 0:46 – 0:54 Nip/Tuck (4×06)
6. 0:54 – 1:03 The Black Donnellys (1×02.5)
7. 1:03 – 1:10 Lost (3×07)
8. 1:10 – 1:14 Dead Like Me (2×05)
9. 1:14 – 1:23 Supernatural (6×17)
10. 1:23 – 1:29 Ghost Town
11. 1:29 – 1:37 Skins (1×09)
12. 1:37 – 1:47 Felicity (1×13)
13. 1:47 – 1:59 The Hard Times of RJ Berger (1×11)
14. 1:59 – 2:09 Eastbound & Down (3×08)
15. 2:09 – 2:19 Hot Rod
16. 2:19 – 2:29 Scary Movie 4
17. 2:29 – 2:40 Dan For Mayor (1×01)
18. 2:40 – 2:46 30 Rock (7×07)
19. 2:46 – 2:55 Dead Like Me (1×02)
20. 2:55 – 2:59 Lost (5×16)
21. 2:59 – 3:09 Lost (1×14)
22. 3:09 – 3:17 How I Met Your Mother (3×20)
23. 3:17 – 3:25 Girls (1×10)
24. 3:25 – 3:33 The Final Destination (FD4)
25. 3:33 – 3:42 The Orphanage (El orfanato)
26. 3:42 – 3:50 End of Days
27. 3:50 – 3:57 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (5×12)
28. 3:57 – 4:03 Stargate SG-1 (10×15)
29. 4:03 – 4:11 The Tournament
30. 4:11 – 4:18 Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (1×01)
31. 4:18 – 4:27 Fringe (1×03)
32. 4:27 – 4:32 Dawn of the Dead (2004)
33. 4:32 – 4:38 Fringe (4×08)
34. 4:38 – 4:43 The Viral Factor (Jik zin)
35. 4:43 – 4:50 Taken
36. 4:50 – 5:00 Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (1×02)
37. 5:00 – 5:07 Death Race (2008)
38. 5:07 – 5:15 Stranger Than Fiction
39. 5:15 – 5:25 Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever
40. 5:25 – 5:32 Tattoo (2002)
41. 5:32 – 5:38 The Devil’s Rejects
42. 5:38 – 5:45 Meet Joe Black
43. 5:45 – 5:53 Constantine
44. 5:53 – 6:08 One Day
45. 6:08 – 6:14 Identity
46. 6:14 – 6:22 The Air I Breathe
47. 6:22 – 6:27 The X-Files (4×19)
48. 6:27 – 6:32 Lost (4×11)
49. 6:32 – 6:40 Accident (Yi ngoi)
50. 6:40 – 6:50 Fringe (3×03)
51. 6:50 – 6’59 Ghosthouse (La Casa 3)
52. 6:59 – 7’07 Crossing Jordan (4×17)
53. 7:07 – 7:17 Chances Are
54. 7:17 – 7:25 Star Trek (‘City on the Edge of Forever’)
55. 7:25 – 7:32 Identity
56. 7:32 – 7:39 The Devil’s Advocate
57. 7:39 – 7:52 Stuck
58. 7:52 – 8:00 The Exorcism of Emily Rose
59. 8:00 – 8:10 Kick-Ass
60. 8:10 – 8:18 Margaret
61. 8:18 – 8:24 Lovers of the Arctic Circle
62. 8:24 – 8:30 Futurama (6×17)
63. 8:30 – 8:37 Scary Movie 3
64. 8:37 – 8:45 Crossing Jordan (6×06)
65. 8:45 – 8:51 Monk (8×04)
66. 8:51 – 8:56 Bag of Bones (TV)
67. 8:56 – 9:02 Supernatural (2×05)
68. 9:02 – 9:09 Scary Movie 2
69. 9:09 – 9:14 Journeyman (1×01)
70. 9:14 – 9:18 Little Nicky
71. 9:18 – 9:23 Little Nicky
72. 9:23 – 9:29 RoboCop
73. 9:29 – 9:37 Bride of Chucky
74. 9:37 – 9:42 Welcome to Collinwood
75. 9:42 – 9:50 Run Lola Run
76. 9:50 – 9:55 Bubble Boy
77. 9:55 – 10:03 Not Another Teen Movie
78. 10:03 – 10:13 The Salton Sea
79. 10:13 – 10:18 Kicked In The Head
80. 10:18 – 10:24 Snatch
81. 10:24 – 10:33 Day Watch (Dnevnoy dozor)
82. 10:33 – 10:42 Chronicle
83. 10:42 – 10:52 Scary Movie
84. 10:52 – 11:04 My Name Is Earl (1×01)
85. 11:04 – 11:09 30 Rock (7×07)
86. 11:09 – 11:17 The Comebacks
87. 11:17 – 11:24 South Park (9×04)
88. 11:24 – 11:29 Family Guy (10×20)
89. 11:29 – 11:36 The Simpsons (2×10)
90. 11:36 – 11:45 Life on Mars (US) (1×01)
91. 11:45 – 11:51 Life on Mars (UK) (1×01)
92. 11:51 – 12:02 Superbad
93. 12:02 – 12:23 The Comebacks

I’ll bet that you look both ways — twice — before crossing the street after watching this video.

Continuing the theme from yesterday’s article…

My friend Wil McLean (“Half Korean, half scot, all fun”) pointed me to this ad in Craigslist Toronto:

The text reads:

Looking for nice quiet and mature roommate

This is bachelor apt close to yonge subway in the high rise building

it has KITCHEN , WASHROOM , BALCONY

The rent is $0 / month included internet + utilities

*****Rent will be FREE for open minded lady

About me:–working professional 33 old asian GUY

Perfect for ASIAN working lady or student to save some money

The rent — $100/month for an apartment right by the subway on Accordion City’s main north/south street — is incredibly cheap, and it becomes even cheaper if you’re an “open minded lady”. “Open-legged” may be more like it, seeing as the lucky tenant will be sharing this bed:

A rather cozy arrangement, don’t you think?

Oddly enough, there’s no anime girl body pillow on the bed. Mind you, that’ll be the tenant’s role!

By charging practically no rent for a “shared bed” tenancy in his condo, this guy clearly isn’t looking to make some money or reduce his cost of living. Without knowing more about this guy other than his being a 33 year-old Asian professional, the only things we really can ratiocinate are:

• He’s looking for something which I’ll simply call “companionship”, and
• He’s playing the dating game at one of the higher difficulty settings: Asian guy in North America.

I sympathize with the guy’s case, but I think his approach isn’t all that novel (open a “private browsing” or “incognito” browser window and search for “Mike’s Apartment”) and comes off as rather creepy.

John Scalzi, who’s one of the leaders of geekdom as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, wrote a great introductory guide for geeks and fedora-wearers on how not to be a creep. Even if you’re the most charming, socially-savvy, scintillatingly conversant accordion player out there, it’s a worthwhile read.

Scalzi admits that his guide is incomplete. Let me add one more pointer to his guide: If you must have a full-size anime girl body pillow, please, please please leave it at home. Don’t be like the guys in the photos below (I’ve blocked out their faces, because I want to be kind).

The older gentleman on the left may not be creeped out, but he’s certainly unimpressed.
Click to see at full size.

“Yes…these pillows will show those girls how sensitive and attentive to their needs we can be.”
Click to see at full size.

What better way to soften a parachute landing than an anime girl pillow bound to your crotch?
Click to see at full size.

A Los Angeles TV news report on the finding of Elisa Lam’s body.

The story of Elisa Lam, the 21-year-old UBC student from Vancouver who’s been missing in Los Angeles since the end of January took a sad, tragic turn yesterday. A maintenance worker at the Cecil Hotel, where Lam was staying, was investigating the run-down hotel’s rooftop tanks in response to complaints about low water pressure when he found her body in one of them. According to The Globe and Mail, each of the tanks has a small, sealed opening, making the extraction of Lam’s body difficult.

“With its low-cost accommodation,” the Globe and Mail article says, “the aging, downtown hotel, close to the city’s Skid Row area, attracts numerous backpackers.” It also attracted the travel agent working on behalf of my employer back in late 2008, who booked me there on a last-minute trip to attend Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference. I wrote about my experience at the Cecil Hotel in a post tellingly titled A Dump with a Future. The article has been getting a lot of hints lately as readers — many of whom are visiting this Chinese new site — try to find out more about the Cecil Hotel and what sort of place it is.

One of the clues as to what happened to her is surveillance video footage from the elevators, in which the elevator seems to be malfunctioning and Lam is acting strangely, as if being followed. Los Angeles police put this video online in the hope of finding someone who might be able to provide more leads for her whereabouts:

At this point in the investigation, while foul play seems most likely, the police are not ruling out the possibility that Lam’s death may be the result of “a very, very strange accident”. That’s a bit of a longshot, and it’s more likely that given the sketchiness of the Cecil’s neighbourhood, the former is the cause.

I’d like to express my deepest condolences to Ms. Lam’s family.