Because I watch football...

... I've been seeing ads for 'Fancast' which is being presented as doing basically what Hulu does. I finally got around to checking it out, and while I haven't done a comparison to see, I think it's basically Comcast's free on-demand content for everyone, over the internet for free, instead of over the cable box. Plus a bunch of extra shit that's just free. I also haven't compared its content to Hulu, but I'm guessing there's some overlap. Anyways, thought you might want to check it out.

http://www.fancast.com/

For the record: I find it really ugly. You know how domain-campers put up a page that's just to earn them clicks, when you go to a page that used to be something and then was purchased by domain-campers? That's what it reminds me. When I first loaded it, I thought I'd typed the name wrong and gotten some asshole trying to make money off of typos. But no, it just looks like that.

Well, this was just interesting.

I was talking to the DJ who comes on after me at WRIR about learning programming, and one of the things that came up is how frustrating I find the beginnings of programming books because I really want to begin with a grammar, basically. I want to know the structure of the language; they never want to tell me that. They just give me some shit that prints 'Hello, World' on the screen and they explain that they will later let me know why what I just compiled had that effect. It's possible that part of this is just the books I happen to have encountered, but in my experience with BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, and Visual Basic books, they never explain why the code takes the FORM it does.

I'm an English major. I am into knowing about the structure, not just the particulars. Just like I have no interest in those language-learning tapes that just have you repeat a bunch of phrases that will be useful, I don't have any interest in the rote memorization of random code. I want to know - the thing that kicked it all off - why some lines in C++ code have to end in semicolons and some don't.

This has been an incredibly long tangent introducing an article (it's short) describing someone's attempt to write a program that translates C code into standard English, because they feel code is speech and should be protected under the constitution. I just found it interesting to think about, probably because of the conversation about learning programming I had last night.

http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_3/tpj0503-0012.html

Musics! (no video (much text))

I didn't actually listen to any of these but I had a lot of fun reading the text. I didn't read all of it. I figured you might find it interesting. It's a list of 50 "records that matter" for the years 1900-1919. With tons of expository prose about each one. I have to assume the sound quality blows, but the amount of random trivia/information was large and the guy writes reasonably well for a blog.

http://aceterrier.com/?page_id=1502

"If you don't get caught, then steal it all..."

World of Goo is currently available for as much as you want to pay for it. I love it when people experiment with the honor-system. I think you mentioned wanting to play it once, and by all accounts it is worth playing.

http://2dboy.com/games.php

A TV-show!

Cold-war espionage drama television starring Bill Cosby? FTW!

I watched the pilot and it wasn't bad, despite featuring an annoying 'Short Round' kid. I assume it gets better, since Cosby got three Emmys for it, according to the writeup on Hulu. Played less for laughs, but occasionally funny. Cosby pretending be drunk in 1960-something sounds kinda like Cosby sober now.

http://www.hulu.com/i-spy

A Game We'll Never Play!

At least, I'm unlikely to buy a PS3 and I'm sure you won't. But 'Demon's Souls' is just super-interesting. It was actually linked on metafilter so you may already know the dizzle, but I assume you wouldn't have bothered to read up on it and even if you did, all the mefi people seemed to care about is how hard it is. I don't really find that interesting - the reasons why it is hard are interesting enough, I guess, but just being difficult is more of a con than a pro, as a general rule.

What's really neat is the game's online features. It's a single-player game that's online all of the time and is occasionally multiplayer, both at your request if you're lucky and against your will if you're not. It's the least-offensive multiplayer-only scheme I've ever encountered, because it's basically single-player. Which sounds like a contradiction but isn't.

http://playmagazine.com/?fuseaction=SiteMain.Content&contentid=1855 is a review. There are others, but this one had a great line in it, and I didn't feel like reading them all to find the 'best one.' The great line? "Demon's Souls... is as long as you are stupid." It's worth noting that this is apparently considered a 'spiritual successor(tm)' to the King's Field series of RPGs. I have a King's Field PS2 game and it is the single worst videogame I have ever played on a console.

A Video With Music!

Not a music video.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/100612/the-colbert-report-tue-oct-6-2009

Colbert had the Mountain Goats on. You like them. I post it here solely because I know you won't look here before you look elsewhere, and a week from now you'll feel like a dumbass when you realize you could have heard it here first.

Art-fag Gaming!

http://tale-of-tales.com/Fatale/index.html

New game from the creators of The Path. Fatale "is an interactive vignette in realtime 3D inspired by the story of Salome." The Oscar Wilde version, not the NKJ version, apparently. I need to play The Path so I can decide if these guys are just the evil kind of wankery I feel debases culture in an attempt to do something "artistic" and does not result in anything which is "art," or if they're doing interesting work. At least they're doing aesthetically appealing art-games in glorious 3D; everyone else seems to think "art" means "pixellated" which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Mind you, I'm not saying lo-fi graphics prohibit art, I'm just saying they're not inherently more artistic than other styles of graphic presentation.

Anyway, fun new art-faggery that's possibly awesome, released a few days ago, I think.

Brutally awesome!

Oh, shit, it's another fucking music video. Seriously?

Dammit, click it anyways. It's uhmm... funny. And stuff. And awesome. Reading Jim Rossignol's descriptions of EVE Online made it sound like something I would like if I wanted to give it the kind of effort I feel it's irresponsible to give video games. Watching this video made playing EVE seem like something I have a moral obligation to do, because a company that would create this... this... this "this"... is something that simply should be supported, period.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/07/htfu-ccps-hip-hop-video/

Linked to on RPS because that makes it technically linking to an article, NOT a video. So it's our first non-video link. To a video.

Seriously, just fucking watch it.

Update: For the record, as per the comments on that post, the title of the song ("Harden the Fuck Up") is a reference to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EY7lYRneHc which was also amusing. And not musical.

Another Music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDxmc3PlHQ
Alice Cooper - 'Welcome To My Nightmare' - Sorry, I promise this will not degenerate into a list of YouTube videos. But this one was from the National show that you decided not to go to. Not the most visually interesting song, but the sound quality's good. The people wandering around with bags on their heads towards the end remind me of Japanese-horror-video-game-meets-Gwar-slave. Now I have to resist the temptation to go through more videos from the show and try to find myself.

A Music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIkCpSyg5oY
"Ben Kweller - Wasted and Ready" - This song makes me laugh a lot, in the acoustic-without-a-full-band version I have that purports to be from a tour Ben Kweller did with Ben Folds and some other Ben in Australia. Somehow it seems more serious and adolescent-coming-of-age-ish with a full band. Also more Weezery. But it is great fun nonetheless.