Anyone Remember Robot Carnival?

This feels like the spiritual successor.

Annette Nahinu, La Mariana founder, dies at 93

From The Honolulu Advertiser:

"Annette tried to keep some traditions of old Hawai'i going. This is the
Hawai'i of the 1940s and '50s," said Eleanor Bonner, who has visited the place
at least once a week since it opened.

And the mystery of the non-sale, explained:

Nahinu, knowing the end of her life was near, tried to sell the restaurant for $3 million in 2006. She never closed a deal.

Help Build a Better America, Brick by Brick, and Other Witty and Charming Turns of Phrase

Now available in the Mister Pony Store, the LEGOBAMA T-shirt! Show your support for these two awesome but completely unrelated Forces for Constructive Change! Start your day wearing this compelling and slightly confusing message! This swell shirt is available in all sorts of styles and colors (like LEGO), and is poised to help America rejoin the world as a shining symbol of hope and freedom (like Obama)! 100% of commissions will be donated to the Obama for America '08 Campaign. For serious! Get yours today!

MORE HAIR = WIN!

Little do they know that he reanimates roadkill in his spare time, "just for fun!"

Oh, and he can put multiple kittens in his mouth at once!

Bricksmith Lego Modelling

Because you asked for it: Allen Smith's Bricksmith Lego Modelling App, including minifig maker!

It appears to be a fairly old app (note the clamshell laptop in the pic) and a little hard to work with if you don't read the tutorial (guilty), but it works well enough, and the minifig creator is brilliant.

Also, Panic, thinking back to the bloodshed last night, we really just need to tag-team Pone next time if we're going to have any chance of destroying him.

speaking of epidemics, figuratively anyway...

found in thursday's Star bulletin.

!!!

These were found here.

Here, kitty kitty....

This painting by a young Japanese artist comes to us via Tokyo Damage Report. Maybe you've seen this Web site before? If not, it's basically this American guy's blog about Tokyo subcultures and whatever else. Check out some of his entries - you could get lost for hours.

Here's another piece I enjoyed called "The Chinese Landscape on Kaiju." (Another translation might be "Monsters in Chinese Landscape.")

The Tokyo Damage Report blogger took photos of both paintings at a huge Tokyo exhibition for up-and-coming artists in May. The links above have photos of many, many more pieces.

(I've been wanting to post this for a while but had to wait until Oceanic fixed my Internets. Go Oceanic! They came through. It's a miracle.)

Cosmo sexy bachelor!! 2007!

Its THE BEST too see the Hawai'i Islands represented in Cosmopolitan Magazine's Hot Sexy Bachelor contest!! GO HAWAI'I ENTRANT!!

Ladies, he is dentist doctor who play FPS in the water. I'm notice that only 22 other states send an applicant, which makes me believe that Hawai'i have superior odds. Heres hoping our representative will FRAG the competitions!! Pow! Mens, you will notice his hygentists, which are beautiful also. Aloha!!

VOTE NOW!! Put Hawai'i on the maps!!

Inside the LEGO Factory

And here's the magic -- from the continuing saga of Giz Goes to LEGO -- three more videos!

(The full list of posts so far is found right here)

Here's another one. I particularly love that they call the storage warehouses cathedrals. And, of course, that they're manned by robots.

OWNT

Yesterday I was talking to Fugu about how upon going to the midnite premiere of The Dark KNight, Mr. Pony and I were feeling like we were nowhere near the level of hardcore Caped Crusader fan we may have thought we were, and that was ok. It's like thinking you are a hardcore star wars fan, then meeting someone with a Boba Fett insignia tattooed on his shoulder. Well here's big respects to this pair and their CONvergence:Minneapolis/Twin Cities costume choice. I just wonder if she can pull off the voice.

It's a character unto itself.

I'm not a cynical fellow, and I welcome creative descriptions of things. I am tired, though, of filmmakers and reviewers referring to things that are not actors as "characters". Locations get called this a lot. "The city is like a character unto itself," they say. Props can get this treatment, too; from furniture to cigarettes. It's the same kind of sideways hyperbole that leads otherwise good men and women to use the word "literally" when they mean "figuratively".

Also, there are a lot of Law and Order spin-offs. Too many, maybe.

Japanese Banana

Don’t want the cherries and rice.

Watchmen Trailer's up

Here

LOOK SPIDERMAN . . .

Scanned from one of my oldest comics...

Please note that while Spidey may be "friendly" and "neighborhood" he is in fact breaking several child protection laws in this drawing.

New blog discovery!

New blong discovery!

MTV ruins a generation

This is going to make me die a lot inside. MTV might be turning Invincible into a multimedia extravaganza:

The process starts with digital scans of the actual comic book pages. They are turned into an audio-visual experience through a process called Bomb-xx developed by Gain. In the end, the formerly two-dimensional comic book suddenly pulses with music, while word balloons pop up and fill in as actors recite the dialogue and panels zoom in and out and pivot in all directions.

For Fuge...

One of my heroes of the intarweb posted new work on his site. I thought this one would affect you distinctly.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I know at least one of you out there gets weak in the knees talking about Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris, so I thought I'd mention this, even though you probably already know about it and I'm stupid, stupid, worthless, stupid. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a direct-to-web episodic thing, by one, starring the other. I totally just watched the first episode. It's funny. That one of you I was talking about with the Whedon/Harris thing also hates musicals, so this may be a little bittersweet. Because it's a musical.

Parts two and three come out Thursday and Saturday, and then disappear on Sunday, apparently. Watch episode one here. At this writing, the server is totally jammed, because it's Joss Whedon and this is the Internet. Joss Whedon is the new Star Trek. You can also buy a season pass on iTunes, if any of you feel like helping me get my Apple stock back where it's supposed to be. It downloads right away.

There also seems to be a comic tie-in from Dark Horse. It does seem a little like the sort of comic that comes free with something. I don't mean that in a necessarily pejorative sense--that's just the style it's done in. Comics should come free with everything.

Secret City

I may have learned to draw by tracing comics, but Commander Mark made me the master-drawer I am today.



The guy was actually pretty great. He dealt out a lot of fairly advanced drawing concepts, but he did it a little at a time, so you never got lost. He'd show the occasional art history slide (accompanied here by the music right after the opening cutscene from a Super-Nintendo shooter), along with the occasional weird-ass plot point (4:55).

More here.

Flickr Group

Due to popular demand, I have created a Pieces of Things Flickr Group! What's a Flickr Group?

Link

Um...If you can't handle the truth

Don't press play.

Have I taken this blog terrible new lows?

Fartbuttface; Destroyer of Worldz

If I haven't made it abundantly clear before, the interwebs is both awesome and terrible.
by the way, Fartbuttface is the name this person uses on his videos. Not a name I assigned him.

#2: Is delicious!

Update on the battle for Free Space...

Using ingenious technique/technic, Brendan Mauro made this threat to the free peoples of the universe.
Do want. Do want! Fugu, you'd better arm your poor lil' spacemanz!

Dark days in London

Link

Stephen Hawking in Lego

’nuff said.

I'm back!

Let’s party

love, love, love....

rats. for some reason the image is not coming up.
weird. won't let me download it either.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogerharkavy/2525247965/in/pool-ma-k


just go there.
:(

New Joss Whedon series

Dollhouse - trailer

Um so....

Anyone else think the Roswell Crash was Amelia Earhart trying to get a hijacked UFO back to Earth after spending ten years in a Grey Slave Camp?
I mean...come on...all the clues are there.
Just in case you don't like this particular branch of thinking...here's a nice picture.

Solar powered satellite laser beams!

Leave it to the nihonjin.

I read about this in the latest Scientific American, but I couldn't link the article here. Here is an article from a different source relating some of the details - and another.

Apparently this was discussed by Americans in the 1980s, but currently NASA has no plans.

The Japanese in the trial stages of testing the basic machinery of the power transfer, but they plan to launch a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (over the ocean) that will collect energy from the sun. Being above the atmosphere, it will be much more efficient than earth-bound solar panels. Then to transmit the energy, they will beam (!!!) it down (via LASER or microwave) to a station on the ocean. According to the Sci Am article, the beam would be about 5 times the power from the sun @ noon and that a human should be able to walk through it unharmed. But, the party pooping Japanese are of course going to cordon off the area. It should produce the equivalent power of a nuclear plant.

Go Mobile Suit Gundam!