Categories
Geek It Happened to Me

Tell your kids this was Daft Punk

Happy halloween! Also, tell your kids that this was Daft Punk.

Curious about the glasses? They’re “louvered”-style glasses lined with electroluminscent (EL) wire, a phosphor-coated wire that glows blue-green when you apply an AC current to it. The trick to making EL wire glow in different colors is a simple one: you cover it in colored plastic.

We won an Amazon gift card at a recent local tech event and bought these EL wire rave glasses for a mere US$13. They’re powered by two AA batteries that connect to the glasses via a cable. The batteries are in a  pack that acts as a DC-to-AC transformer, as EL wire requires alternating current.

The glasses have three “on” modes:

  1. Continuously on
  2. Flashing on and off slowly
  3. Flashing on and off quickly, a.k.a. “Pokemon cartoon seizure mode”
Categories
Geek Money Satire

“White-collar Spirit Costume” is now a meme theme

First, there was the Spirit Venture Capitalist costume, and now there’s this one: “Freelance Recruiter Who Ghosted You.” I see more of these coming.

Categories
Geek Money Satire

Halloween costume of the moment

Tap to view at full size.

Thanks to Ken Nickerson for the find!

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Geek Music

Linus Akesson’s “Commodordion” — an electronic accordion made with two Commodore 64 computers and floppy disks for bellows!

Leave it to Linus Akesson, 8-bit music maker extraordinaire and creator of other retrofitted instruments such as the  Sixtyforgan and Qwertuoso to create an electronic accordion with two Commodore 64 computers, floppy disks, and duct tape: The Commodordion!

Writing about the Commodordion is like dancing about architecture — the best way to understand it is to watch Linus’ video below:

Categories
Geek The Current Situation The More You Know...

It’s “FURTIVELY fired,” not “Quiet fired”

Screenshot of headline that reads “5 Signs You Are Being ‘Quiet Fired’ From Your Job”
Tap to read the original article.

The person who came up with the phrase “quiet quitting” took the effort to incorporate alliteration, which made the phrase catchy. You’d think the author of the article 5 Signs You Are Being “Quiet Fired” From Your Job (shown above) would have put in a few seconds to do the same for its employer counterpart, but instead, they took the lazy route and simply replaced “quitting” with “firing.”

In my opinion, “furtively fired” — and its noun form, “furtive firing” — sound much better, are grammatically correct, and employ an underused word.

Categories
funny Geek

My new favorite scientific insult

“You’re a 10, but it’s on the pH scale.”

Categories
Geek

When Spider-Man saved Easter

There’s no such thing as “too silly” when it comes to comic book villains, and that was the case in 1975 when Spider-Man faced off against the Funny Bunny in issue 9 of Spidey Super Stories.

The Electric Company was an educational children’s show that produced 780 shows from 1971 through 1977. It’s the show that you’d watch after graduating from Sesame Street, and its original cast featured names you might recognize: Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, and Morgan Freeman:

The Electric Company had an arrangement with Marvel Comics to use the Spider-Man character in skits named Spidey Super Stories that would teach reading. The version of Spider-Man they used lived in his costume 24/7, had no life as Peter Parker or Miles Morales, and spoke only in comic book word bubbles, requiring the viewer to read:

Spider-Man asks “What about me?”
Click to watch the skit.

The skits had a companion comic book series, and issue 9 featured an Easter-themed villain:

Excerpt from comic featuring Spider-Man vs. the Funny Bunny

Trust me, Funny Bunny’s isn’t the dumbest supervillain origin story:

But let’s get back to the Funny Bunny, who’s out ruining Easter for the Electric Company’s cast, who are rather weirdly dressed, even by 1970s standards…

Excerpt from comic featuring Spider-Man vs. the Funny Bunny

Spider-Man deduces where the Funny Bunny will strike next, and literally hops on a train for D.C. (the district, not the rival comic book publisher…):

Excerpt from comic featuring Spider-Man vs. the Funny Bunny

…and quickly dispatches the Funny Bunny, even though she’s not even a mall cop-level threat:

Excerpt from comic featuring Spider-Man vs. the Funny Bunny

Happy Easter, everybody!

(Also worth checking out: Spider-Man’s greatest Bible stories!)