Category: The Dork Report

Finally found the source of the whizz-bang Lightbox 2 image viewer and Coloir.org slideshow scripts I’ve been seeing all over the place these days.

All Doctor Who fans with a sense of humor ought to bookmark Behind the Sofa (no longer online: tachyontv.typepad.com), a great blog providing uncensored appraisals of nearly every episode and alternate DVD commentary tracks via podcast.

The Independent has an update on Paul McGann (no longer online: enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article1902894.ece), the self-professed “George Lazenby of Doctor Who.”

Some time recently Michael Brook’s official website has expanded with a full discography, newsletter, and store.

Joseph Arthur’s official site has video of him performing “Slide Away” on The Late Show With David Letterman on October 10th.

Steve Jobs must be in a romantic mood; every metaphor he musters to dismiss Doo-Doo Brown Zune in Newsweek (no longer online: msnbc.msn.com/id/15262121/site/newsweek) involves a girl (spotted on Apple Insider):

“I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever … By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear.”

Steve Jobs

And on the possibility of the iPod losing its appeal amongst competing products:

“That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Steve Jobs

What’s cooler than cool? Ice cold LEGOs! (no longer online: crunchgear.com/2006/10/13/lego-ice-tray-make-frozen-h2o-legos)

Eric Idle finds more Python to plunder for the new oratorio “Not the Messiah,” (news story no longer online) based on the Monty Python movie Life of Brian. (guest submission from Andrea)

Digital zombies shuffle one more step into reality. (guest submission from Andrea)

Practically every site featured on csstux (no longer online: csstux.com) is so gorgeously slick it’s a wonder I have a job as a web designer.

Terry Gilliam busks on the streets of New York for his controversial new film Tideland. (spotted on Neil Gaiman’s Journal)

The Independent has a long interview with Alan Moore (no longer online: enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article1770034.ece) on the occasion of the hit publication of Lost Girls (spotted on Neil Gaiman’s Journal). Interesting news include The Mindscape of Alan Moore, a DVD on sale November 18 from Shadowsnake Films. Here’s the poster.

The Village Voice‘s rave review of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s (porno)graphic novel Lost Girls. (spotted on EnoWeb)

The next step in the evolution of Spoetry: The Brothers McLeod’s Spamland, a new series of short spanimations. (guest submission from Dave)

The Internet Archive is collecting a massive cache of free and legal live recordings. Spotted on Uninnovate (no longer online: uninnovate.com)

Putting things into perspective, a new species of mouse (no longer online: cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10/12/new.mouse.ap) has turned up that predates humans on Cyprus. (guest submission from Andrea)

New York magazine says Stephen Colbert has America by the Ballots. (guest submission by Andrea)

R. Lee Ermey apparently isn’t concerned with publicly dissing one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. According to him, friend Stanley Kubrick privately confided in him that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ruined Eyes Wide Shut. (spotted on Daring Fireball)

IconFactory’s haunted Halloween redesign.

After 10 years of selfless service, the premiere Doctor Who news site Outpost Gallifrey packs it up.

Screw the iPhone; EnoWeb has the scoop on the EnoPhone (no longer online: europe.nokia.com/A4176224), AKA the Nokia 8800 Sirocco. (click on “Experience the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition”)

Awwww… throw a pity party for the victims (no longer online: msnbc.msn.com/id/15175836/site/newsweek/) of “guerrilla comedian named Sacha Baron Cohen”, aka Borat (no longer online: borat.tv). Funny how every complaint comes down to someone wanting to get paid. (guest submission from Andrea)

Battle of the Album Covers. Moments of pure brilliance, moments of pure juvenilia. (guest submission from Andrea)

Gorillaz’ new book Rise of the Ogre (no longer online: gorillaz.com/bookintro.html) comes out October 23 in the UK, and November 2 in US.

The official movie site for Fast Food Nation features Web 2.0-ish newsfeeds from YouTube, del.icio.us, and other fun stuff. (spotted on Popwatch [no longer online: popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2006/10/fast_food_natio.html] by Happy Meal Andrea)

Help make Optimus Prime say “I guess I’ll transformer into a truck now.” See also Top Ten Lines Optimus Prime Should Use in the New Transformers Movie. (guest submission by Andrea)

Brian Eno has composed a “soundtrack” for the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition phone. Here’s the Nokia press release, but I haven’t found any sound samples yet.

Peter Gabriel announces the winners of the Real World Remixed “Shock the Monkey” competition. They sound great, so good in fact that they ought to be released on CD, or at least possible to download and save to your computer. My personal favorite, by far, is Doghouse Riley’s “Monkeying Around”. Sheer brilliance! [update: links no longer online]

Peter Gabriel also throws his weight behind The Filter [update: URL no longer available], a software add-on to iTunes that will automagically generate playlists. If I understand it correctly, you start by picking a few songs you like to (for example) work out to, and The Filter uses its own database of all its users preferences to flesh out the rest of your playlist with work-out like songs. Currently available for Windows only, but coming soon for the Mac. Sounds like the sort of thing that Last.fm really ought to be doing.

Google Gadgets. What it has over Apple’s Dashboard, Yahoo Widgets, or Windows things, is that you can add them to your Google homepage, your desktop (Windows, or on a Mac with the help of Amnesty Generator), or to your own site. Making them only slightly less useless.

The New York Times on how deep ABC is getting into metafictional metafictional Lost marketing. (guest submission from Andrea)

U2 will release a definitive single-disc Best Of album in November, in addition to the two already-released Best of 1980-1990 and Best of 1990-2000.

In preparation for the Lost season three premiere on Wednesday, I thought I would check out the end result of The Lost Experience, a summer-long alternate reality game I didn’t have time to follow. It seems the verdict is… meh.

Love any typeface enough to permanently fuse it to your skin? Body Type: Typographic Tattoos Etched in Flesh (no longer online: cooper.edu/art/lubalin), a new exibition opening in New York. This fellow [no longer online: timeout.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TONYWebArticles2/574/out_there/best_font_forward.xml] is fond of Univers Gothic.

Stylus Magazine’s Top 100 Music Videos of All Time (no longer online: stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/stylus-magazines-top-100-music-videos-of-all-time.htm). (spotted on Kottke.org) See also Pitchfork’s 100 Awesome Music Videos.

Know your terms: ‘font’ vs. ‘typeface’. (spotted on Kottke.org)

‘Boards highlights the latest in music videos, including Thom Yorke’s “Harrowdown Hill”, Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”, and Chris Cunningham’s horrorshow for The Horror’s “Sheena is a Parasite”.

Bringing new meaning to the phrase “death by chocolate (milk)”, Energy Field helps you find out exactly how much of your favorite poison it would take to kill you.

Hel-Fucking-Vetica! Wear it with pride!

Wow, the MyDreamApp contestant Hijack has really let rip with a stunning mock-up of the BBS-reading app’s full-screen mode. It certainly looks amazing, now if I could only see the point in the first place.