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Superman: The First "Getting Things Done" Follower

Maybe it’s been part of the “Superman” meme that’s been going around the ‘net lately (for starters, see the excellent online retrospective, Superman is a Dick), but lately I’ve been fascinated by Superman

comics, especially the old “Silver Age” ones (which date from 1959 to

1970). They were oddly, if unintentionally prescient, what with what is

probably the first use of the word “blog” in mainstream media, or their daring-for-the-time repeated use of cross-dressing.

Here’s another instance in which Superman comics unwittingly ride the cutting edge: he’s a follower of the Getting Things Done

(often called GTD for short) methodology! Like any good GTD’er, he’s

taken his undone tasks “out of his head” and put them into a master

list, or what followers of the GTD methodology would call the “Inbox”:

Comic: A panel from 'Superman 162' in which Superman and Supergirl review a list of his undone super-tasks.

Apparently, Supes isn’t an “under-promise and over-deliver” kind of guy. Click the picture to read the comic!

Note that a real GTD Inbox is isn’t ordered — you simply just add

undone tasks to it as they come in. Mind you, Superman’s list must be

unordered, seeing as his primary mission, “Wipe out crime and evil”

come third, after the self-serving “Find antidote to green kryptonite”.

Unless, of course, he’s a dick (which apparently, he is).

For those of you interested in reading the rest of the comic, you can read it in its entirety online! Marvel at the completely ludicrous story in which Superman accomplishes his super-tasks by duplicating himself and giving each duplicate 100 times his original already-super-brainpower! Gasp as how both Supermen’s sattelites of anti-evil rays make Kruschev and Castro give up their evil ways! Chortle at the

super-dumbass solution these two super-geniuses devise to figure out

which one gets to marry Lana Lang and which one gets to marry Lois Lane!

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

See You at Penguicon!

Starting tomorrow evening, I’ll be at Penguicon, a convention for both Linux and science fiction enthusiasts…

Graphic: Pengucon 3.0 logo.

AT Penguicon, I will be a “Nifty Guest” as well as a speaker, where I will be presenting the following talk:

Interactive Fiction: Down and Out in the Grue Kingdom

Sun 2:00 to 3:00 pm

Kensington

Interactive Fiction, also known as “IF” and formerly known as “text

adventure games”, has a history spanning over 30 years and thrives even

in this day of console games. If you are (or hope to be) a game

developer, an author, or both, join us as we show you how to develop IF

using the Inform programming language. We’ll implement a game/interactive story based on a scene from Cory Doctorow’s “Down and

Out in the Magic Kingdom”.

Yeah,

I’m shamelessly borrowing some of Cory’s mojo to get people to come to

my talk. You gotta understand — I’m scheduled at the same time as the Tron Guy.

In addition to making the presentation and quite probably playing the

accordion, I have secured a small number of Tucows T-shirts and the

coveted SquishyCows™ (a herd of which you can see here). I’ll give ’em away at the presentation.

P.S. I’m driving from Toronto to Novi, which is just outside Detroit. Anyone who wants a lift, let me know…

Categories
In the News

A Nation Gathers Around the Tube

Outside of a high school prom, one doesn’t often see a guy in a suit begging like this…

Photo: Still from Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's address to the nation.

Paul Martin, for your performance, I hereby crown you the Prom King. If you’ll kindly stand with the sheltered telekinetic Prom Queen under the bucket of blood, we can get rolling…

If you missed last night’s address, you’re lucky that we live in the age of the Internet. Someone’s posted it at BlogMatrix, who provide both podcasting software and hosted space for your podcasts. Click the photo above to see the video.

(BlogMatrix is developed by my friend David Janes, and the BlogMatrix dudes were the raucous table at Tuesday night’s Podcaster Gathering.)

I was impressed by the skullduggery of the leader of the Loyal

Opposition and the Reeeeeeefoooooooorrrrrrrrmmmmmmm-party-in-disguise,

Stephen Harper. He rightly pointed out that Paul Martin called for an

election last year at a time conveniently before any of the facts about

the scandal would come out — but he did so in the service of calling

for an election before the results of the inquiry come out. Mind you,

were I in his shoes, I’d have done the same thing, possibly topping it

off with my favourite line from Superman: “Son of Jor-El, kneel before Zod.”

Mr. Harper, you get the Machiavellian of the Week award.

As for NDP leader Jack Layton, you get the “God, he reminds me of

Reverend Lovejoy’s wife!” award. Of all the speakers last night, you

made the best points in your speech, sir, but I kept expecting you to

start screeching “Won’t somebody please think about the children?”

(In some bizarre coincidence, one “sean incognito” at BlogsCanada’s e-Group says almost the same thing.)

Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois are not contenders for my vote in

the least. Politically, I view them in the same light as this one girl

I had a dalliance with: sexy accent, fond of chain-smoking and kink, best ignored.

Categories
Uncategorized

Meanwhile, on the Flip Tip…

…while doing some research on the elements of Filipino weddings

(candles / cord / coins / veil), I stumbled across these hilarious —

at least to me — t-shirt designs at PinoyMall.com (“Pinoy” is a

Tagalog term for “Filipino”).

Mmm…adobo

Click the photo to see the order page for this shirt.

Mmm…lechon

Click the photo to see the order page for this shirt.

…and finally, the Filipino answer to Friendster (as you’ve probably guessed, “kaibigan” (kah-ee-bee-gahn) means “friend”)…

Click the photo to see the order page for this shirt.

Other goodies:

I’m not associated with PinoyMall in any way, except for the fact that I might place an order.

Categories
Music

Seda’ Club (or: "Hey Shabot, It’s Your Pesach…")

Hip-hop and Passover meet in the latest edition of the webcomic Shabot 6000 when 50 Cent (or at least his doppelganger) drops by for seder in a hilarious Flash animation!

Screen capture: 'Seda Club', starring 50 Cent and Shabot 6000.

Be sure to check out:

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Uncategorized

Passover Plague Masks

My co-worker Adam brought

these masks depicting the plagues that hit Egypt as a reprisal for the

Pharoah’s refusal to free the Jewish slaves. Never before has God’s

wrath looked so cute!

Photo: Masks depicting the plagues visited upon Egypt.

Click the photo to see the slideshow.

My favourites are the “lice” mask with the googly-eyed bugs, the

“firstborn” mask with X’s for eyes, and the flaming “hail” mask, which

for some reason reminds me of the “Hot Hail” that Ming the Merciless

rained on the Earth in the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.

(Yes, I know that there were ten plagues and that there are only nine

masks in the shot. Those are all the masks Adam brought. Adam, what

happened to “darkness”?)

If you want to see larger photos of the masks, I posted them in a photo album, which you can click through manually or see as a slideshow.

Happy Pesach to all my Jewish readers and future relatives!

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Uncategorized

"Oh, He’s a Journalist and He’s Okay…"

I’ve got to hand it to those old Superman comics — not only were they the first to use the word “blog”, nobody else tackeled the issue cross-dressing quite as often as they did. This page at the Transgender Graphics and Fiction Archive pays tribute to Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen, and his predilection for getting into women’s clothing.

Comic: Scene from 'Miss Jimmy Olsen!'.

Ah, 1950’s dialogue. Don’t laugh — the “whoo whoo” line worked on Wendy.