Archive for November, 2006

by Mike Fennelly

Okay – this has nothing to do with technology at all, it’s just me gloating since I have a soapbox to do it from :

According to Buster Olney, Peter Gammons, and now Jon Heyman at Sports illustrated, the Boston Red Sox have placed the highest bid for negotiating rights with Daisuke Matsuzaka.

That is all.

[ed. note : that's not all, in fact. Since Brion wants a blog, Brion gets a blog. Written by a MFY Choker Yankees Fan, nonetheless.]

by Brion Lau

This past week, I literally stumbled upon Faqqly.com (FACK-LEE or FACK-UH-LEE)–a new social networking/community site. The premise behind this site is to create an “authentic community” where the quality time spent on this site will also lead to time spent with FAQQLY friends off-line.

FAQQLY was founded by David Liu, still a senior at UCLA! While the site is still in beta, Dave is off to a good start as an entrepreneur. Since launching the site earlier this year, FAQQLY has over 5,000 registered users participating including Cali Lewis from GeekBrief TV, Keiko Agena of Gilmore Girls, and Amy McKay, Canadian author of “A Birth House”.

Since FAQQLY is still in its infancy, it will need a critical mass of users joining. In addition, it will need to differentiate itself from other services available such as Yahoo! Answers, Google Anwers, Wondir, and Microsoft’s QnA to name a few. That said, we at PopDigerati are not about to write Dave off. In fact, we’re looking at seeing how we might be able to leverage his service to enable you to interact directly with the various digerati we’re writing about. Stay tuned on this one.

Meanwhile, Dave maintains his own FAQ page, finding time to personally answer his FAQs despite his busy schedule. We encourage you to check out his page and ask him your burning question directly!

by Mike Fennelly

“If ignorant of the almighty

Time Cube Creation Truth

you deserve to be killed. “

[ed. note : THE TIME CUBE SITE DESTROYS HTML FORMATTING! YOUR IGNORANCE JACKASS EDUCATION OF TWO CORNER HTML CAN NOT WITHSTAND AWESOME POWER OF TIME CUBE ITALIC HOLDOVER!"]

[note to ed. note : Fixed.]

Wow. I guess I, and at least ONE MILLION (before beseen counter died) other people deserve to be killed, because there is absolutely no way in (four corner one day) hell that I can make head nor tail of this steaming pile of internet knowledge.

Apparently Gene Ray, the self proclaimed “Doctor of Cubism” and “Wisest Person On Earth” can, since he’s the one who foisted this eternal knowledge on to the universe at large, and to Georgia Tech and MIT, of all places.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some of this :

Here we have Socrates, The Clintons, Einstein, and Jesus playing bridge, I believe. Socrates is Dummy, and Jesus and the Clintons are trying to block a 3NT bid by Einstein and Socrates. This is a good move, since Jesus is holding Clubs : KJ and AJ10987 in diamonds. Jesus had originally wanted a Diamonds bid, but Einstein was extremely overconfident and pushed for NT. I’m not entirely sure where Omar Sharif fits in here, or if he’d approve of the contract, but that would push this into the realm of a five sided cube, rather than Gene Ray’s four sided cube, and thus Omar doesn’t get to kibbitz.

.

.

Here, as you can see, Mr. Ray has clearly predicted today’s Sudoku craze in 1997. Admittedly, he has made it impossible to solve, since he’s using 16 boxes and only four numbers, but you can clearly see that his concept was stolen by the Japanese newspaper syndicates as an attempt to discredit his theory that “God Worship Equals Baby Eating”. Now – I was raised Catholic, and I honestly don’t recall ever having eaten a single baby as part of an organized service, or on my own during bedtime prayers. Perhaps there is a member of some other denomination or religion that would like to come forward, or possibly a hypnotherapist who can regress me to the age of footy pajamas, nighttime prayers, and baby-eating? And what of the polytheists? Does Mr. Ray expect them to eat babies in a 1:1 ratio with the number of worshipped Gods? Obviously I am too jackass ignorant to understand the mighty power of the time cube. In Mr. Ray’s own words (and formatting) :

“You are an educated singularity idiot who can stupidily deny Nature’s Harmonic 4 simultaneous 24 hour days within a single
rotation of Earth, or even make parody of the Cubic Creation Principle – but your mental ability to comprehend thegreatest
social and scientific discovery of all human existence has been lobotomized by the evil academic singularity bastards hired to
destroy your ability to think opposite”

You read it. You can’t unread it.

Seen anything more harebrained? Let us know!

by Brion Lau

Have you heard of Cali Lewis? No? She’s the popular host of GeekBrief TV – Video Segments and Podcasts on “Shiny, Happy Tech News”.

Cali’s real name is Luria Petrucci. Why the dual identity? Well, according to her Q&A section on Faqqly.com:

Cali Lewis was a character name in a book Neal (her husband) and I were writing. When we came up with the name Geek Brief, we had a flood of ancillary ideas. Geek Brief was a daily briefing for members of the Geek Intelligence Agency (G.I.A.). I would be its National Director, and of course, every spy has an alias! I love my real name, and that’s why I don’t hide it. But it’s difficult for people to pronounce, and difficult for people to spell, so it just made sense to use the name Cali Lewis as a screen name.

As a geeky girl who likes to read fantasy books, it’s easy for me to step into the role of Cali Lewis, your fearless leader on camera, and then be the shy, bookish, Luria Petrucci who giggles all the time in my real life. I hope people who watch this show have as much fun with the fantasy as I do.

How did she come up with the idea for GeekBrief TV?

In November 2005, Neal and I were addicted to listening to podcasts, and we were even doing an audio podcast. We saw Tiki Bar, and decided we would come up with an idea for a video podcast. We were both really into gadget blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo, so the idea was to create a news show about the latest and greatest gadgets. The first domain we registered was gogoshow.net, and I would be the Go Go Gadget Girl, like Inspector Gadget. Then on November 30th, we were both on GoDaddy.com searching for domain names. One of us typed in GeekBrief. It was available and we loved the name, so we registered GeekBrief.just about everything. Throughout December, we bought some equipment, software, and solidified the idea with the goal of releasing the first episode by Christmas, just in time for all those people who got new video iPods. We released Brief #1 on December 23rd, 2005.

When she’s not hosting GeekBrief, Cali enjoys long walks on the beach and relaxing games of Sudoku. If you have a question you’d like to ask Cali or would like to read other the rest of her Q&As, click Cali’s Faqqly.com banner below.

by Mike Fennelly

All right – so I’m getting to all of them, new and old, one by one. I know a good chunk of you readers have seen this stuff before, but for those who have been volunteering with the Amish for the past few years, I present to you :

Brian Peppers. Yes, the photo is real, but most of what you’ll find while cruising around the net ain’t. Mr. Peppers is a 38 year old registered sex offender in Ohio, and there’s those pushing to get his side of the tale out. Although, what that truth is, we don’t really seem to know as of yet.

So, now that I’ve made myself feel all guilty for perpetuating this internet fame for a guy who may have just seriously been crapped all over by life, I’ll move on to something that I have no reservations about posting at all.
.
.
.
Ladies and Gentlemen : Moshzilla.

Hoo-boy, did it suck to be this girl for a while.

The photo you see over on the right there was taken by one Alex Stram at a hardcore show in San Diego. The photos you see below most certainly were not. At a certain point, the parents of the young lady seen getting her mosh on got involved, and got the law involved, and – as you can see since I’m gleefully posting here – managed to get bupkus done. Check out the gallery of photoshopped images here, even though I’m going to post a bunch below this very text you’re reading, and I’ll even save you the effort of having to type in your google search box to find more.

Next time : TIME CUBE!

by Brion Lau

This article was too entertaining to pass up.  Even the glitterati are now getting into the Pop Digerati action.  I’m not going to spoil this entertaining read for you.  All I can say is Denise Richard, laptop, paparazzi, and two elderly women.

Click here to get the full scoop.

by Mike Fennelly

Good news, everyone! John Hodgeman, who you may know as the PC from those retarded insipid lamebrained entertaining “I’m a Mac” ads, is going to have to go up against a new foil, as Justin Long, who you may remember from his scene stealing breakthrough role oscar caliber performance small supporting part in Dodgeball has been canned told to hit the road given his walking papers moved on to greener pastures for his budding career as a leading man (in those types of film that tend to feature boobs-n-blood, I should think) We at PopDigerati wish him well, and expect to tell him in person that yes, we do want fries with that in the very near future.

Nehring the Edge movie reviews seems to think we’re good at making fun of foreigners. Yeah, isn’t it just like a filthy, filthy Swede to say that. And link to us. Yeah, we hate it when people link to us, and mention us on their sites. Especially foreigners. Especially rich foreigners who want to buy ad space. Can’t trust ‘em for a second. Now get the hell off my lawn. *
That’s it for now, kids, but I have some secret plans to make PopDigerati even cooler than it is right now over the next few weeks. So secret that I haven’t even told Brion yet, because I just thought of them late, late last night. Stay tuned!

*Note to Potentially offended Swedes. We love you, as we love all people on this earth. We love people who buy advertisements more though.

by Mike Fennelly

How many times have you been forced to sit through yet another pointless two hour conference call with Ed from Accounting and Gustav from Marketing? How many times, during your Ed and Gustav quality time have you thought “You know what would really make this meeting more productive? A clown in bondage gear!” If you’re like me, every single frickin’ time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present Ouchy the Clown.

Not only available to whip your meetings into shape, so to speak, he’ll also DJ your corporate functions, or just whale the living crap out of you for money!

(note to readers : please paypal mike@rubylashes.com large amounts of money so I can hire Ouchy to DJ my unsuspecting employer’s holiday party. I Am Not Kidding.)

Just look at that hulking mountain of…uh…er…semi-nude clown. Think about aformentioned hulking mountain of semi-nude clown standing in your conference room pointing out lurid details of the first quarter’s naughty, naughty losses.

Someone’s been a bad accountant, haven’t they? Haven’t they? And we know what Ouchy does do naughty accountants? Don’t we?

Well, actually, I guess we don’t. Nor do we really want to. Maybe.
Remember, folks – http://www.ouchytheclown.com – where the elite meet to get beat!

by Brion Lau

Ndm007 on Digg.com found an interesting article by Jessica Brown on the Times Online (UK) called, “Apple founder is still gadget mad”. After reading this article, you’ll find out:

1. Why Woz carries US$20,000 in cash
2. Whether or not he uses credit cards
3. His views on money
4. His most outrageous purchase

While these are good questions, I would have thrown in a few more into the mix. Why not ask the following:

• What is your must have gadget that you absolutely cannot live without?
• How did you get into Segway polo matches of all things?

If you met Woz, what would you want to know?!

by Mike Fennelly

No posers, or pleas for rapidly falling teenybopper stars to marry aging Turkish freelance journalists in this post, folks – just a list of where I’ve been spending my time online, and a question to the readers about what they read when they should be working.

First up : The Gawker Media Conglomerate :

The Consumerist, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker – Lifehacker to learn how to be more productive in less time, so there’s more time to slack off, Gizmodo to buy toys to take up all of my newly discovered free time, and The Consumerist to let me know who to complain to, and how to do it effectively when my new tech toys burst into flame when you so much as look at them.

Next : The Damn Liberals Ruined Everything :

DailyKos, crooksandliars, and thinkprogress : Because I’m a bleeding heart liberal who will tax and spend you to death while forcing you to homosexually marry pot smoking abortion addicts. Also, I can watch Colbert and The Daily Show on crooksandliars sometimes.

Next : “Please stop pooping in the house! Please?”

Westie Club of America, Dumb Friends League/Humane Society of Denver, and the SFSPCA – because we just got this guy.

So -  What keeps you pretending to be busy at work? Let us know – that’s why we have a comments section, y’know.