Microsoft has a new ad campaign. Presumably designed to counter those Apple ads with the Mac and PC guys. You can watch them here. Theoretically.

The site has embedded video that is designed to play using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. I was using Firefox 3.0.1 on OSX, an officially supported Silverlight platform.

1. First the page refused to play the video, telling me that I needed to update my Silverlight plugin.
2. I updated it. Still no video.
3. I restarted my browser and went to the page again. Still no video.
4. I clicked the download link for the .mpg version. MPEG video has been around for well over a decade and I figured this would provide the least hassle.
5. When the download finished, Quicktime Player barfed on the video. Invalid format. I find it hard to believe that Quicktime Player has an error that renders it unable to play valid MPEG video considering I use it to play the hundreds of MPEG clips in my porn collection. Regardless of whose fault this is, though, how did Microsoft not test this ad on the computers of the potential customers they're trying to lure back to Windows? Still no video.
6. I was finally able to open the video using VideoLAN Client (VLC).

I was finally able to watch the video. It's painfully unfunny. Seinfeld looked embarrassing. This is a guy most people haven't seen for ten years since his show ended. Now with less hair and big a big fat turkey neck, he comes across as a loser well past his prime that has nothing better to do than slum around his local mall and be a little creepy. You imagine him "jokingly" flirting with the sixteen year-old at TCBY before spotting Gates.

At least the process of attempting to watch the ad gives you a pretty good idea of what running Windows is like.

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We're nerds. A lot of us are interested in writing code because they want to make games or because we enjoy working our brain meat.

Writing code isn't necessarily rocket science -- though sometimes it is -- and sometimes it even looks quite a bit like English. But where does one start? In the old days, we booted up our Apple IIs and there was a BASIC prompt right there. We couldn't avoid it even if we wanted to. Today we can download a armada of excellent and free development tools. However, the task of setting up a development environment can be a significant entry barrier for those simply looking to dip their toes in the water.

Enter AppJet's Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming on the Web. It aims "to be the easiest and most fun way for a beginner to get started programming."

They succeeded.

It's a fun and gentle primer to programming and you get to write simple programs right inside your browser without downloading any software. You'll write a simple program within the first minute and you can walk through the whole thing in probably twenty or thirty minutes. Give it a try.

Update: In the same vein of thought, also consider checking out this quick and interactive introduction to Ruby. Thanks to cbartlett for the suggestion.

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Oh, crap. He's one of those institutions you just assumed would be around forever.

Seducing moviegoers into theaters for more than four decades, Mr. LaFontaine's sonorous baritone could make the dullest dog of a movie sound like a surefire Oscar contender. Until he died of undetermined causes Sept. 1 in Los Angeles at 68, Mr. LaFontaine was one of the busiest performers in Screen Actors Guild history.

In addition to movie trailers -- more than 5,000 in all -- he provided the voiceover for about 350,000 TV commercials, as well as network promotions and video game trailers. His voice was so ubiquitous and so recognizable, he occasionally parodied himself -- most recently in a Geico insurance commercial that first aired in 2006, where a fellow voiceover announcer introduces him as "that announcer guy from the movies."

...

Read the full story at the Washington Post.

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These teenagers became armed-to-the-teeth ninjas to take down the drug-dealin' scum in their town. They wanted to stop drug dealers' "impure" activities. Then they encountered into every vigilante's potential downfall: authorities that felt threatened by their power. This would never happen if Mike Haggar was their town's mayor.

Link to story with video, including don't-miss interviews with the ninjas. If you're not in a video-watching mood, here's a text version of the story.

I love how the lives of these kids are one big circa-1992 side-scrolling beat-em-up fantasy.

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Although Machine Girl only has two attachments in the film, it's a really fun time.

After her brother is killed by the son of the local yakuza/ninja boss and his gang, she goes to get her revenge by killing them although her family is definitely not of the killing type, regardless of whether or not her parents committed suicide after being investigated under suspicion of murder. She goes through hell and thinks things are lost after losing one of her arms, but two people from an auto shop make her a new arm and she resumes her bloodthirsty quest.

Swords, guns, chainsaws, flying guillotines, drill bras, detached arms and more. Anything can be a weapon. For this film, I think pictures speak louder than words.

See the trailer here.

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I enjoyed the Death Note manga and while I have not seen the anime, I did see the first Death Note live action film, which was decent. L is definitely an interesting and popular character, which led to him leading his own film which is kind of a prequel to Death Note. I say "kind of" because the film seems to want to overlap this story with the one in Death Note but it only serves to confuse. I do think there was an interesting film to be made and it would have been focused on how the L persona came to be and demonstrated the current L's intelligence and crime solving ability. One thing that people not familiar with Death Note wanted to know was why was he so weird.

L is contacted by W who informs him of a town wiped completely out by a man-made virus. K has turned sides and has twisted the term "make the world a better place" to mean most humans should be wiped out so nature can make a return.

While L puts a few pieces together, he mostly is there to look cool and act weird and eat sweet things. If you've been anticipating this movie, I think you'd be mostly disappointed.

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Caught this as the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. Very fun movie. Best with a group of friends. A lot of Robocop influence with the privatization of the police and the funny TV ads to get you into what the culture in the film's all about. Like designer wrist-cutting blades for girls.

After Ruka sees her father's head blown off by an assassin as a girl, she vows revenge against criminals and joins the police force which has recently become a privatized organization. Engineers are her specialty, called that because if they lose a body part, some weapon or other grows back in its place. As Ruka searches for the root of the engineer menace much bloodshed ensues.

There is indeed much gore here and it's all fun. There's an extended scene here.

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Who knew that the apocalypse would be so lush, verdant, and hauntingly beautiful? Link contains the original images as well as some tutorials on their creation that will be of interest to artists. If anybody can find links to higher-resolution versions of these files, please post them.

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Remember how Versus was kind of the best movie ever? Tak Sakaguchi, star of Versus, is working on his directorial debut. Cosgrove passed this on to me and it while the trailer is short, it looks like it's going to be a fun movie. I mostly just like the title, of course.

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