Insert “Thaddeus D Mallardmarrow Meets the Mole Men of Mantle Sector 9″ story here.

Perusing through my feeds this morning, as I am wont to do, I discovered a blurb in Wired’s The Underwire about the whole MST3K crew putting in an appearance at this year’s Comic Con! Not only that, but they plan to do a live Rifftrax session of Plan 9 From Outer Space as well.

Then the part that really grabbed me (because I can’t attend Comic Con this year), the announcement of an MST3K boxed set! SQEEEE! It’s currently up for pre-order on Amazon, with a listed release date of October 28th of this year. According to the Underwire article, legal issues have prevented Shout Factory from releasing the list of episodes that will be available in this set. With 4 discs in the set, my hope is they get as many as possible or at least all the ones not covered by the currently available DVD collections.

I’m hoping for Sidehackers, some of the Godzilla movies, Castle of Fu-Manchu (which I own a copy of in non-MST3K format), and Time Chasers. (”Wheee we’re getting poison sumac wheeee!”)

Burning Questions:
What episodes are your favorites?
Joel or Mike Nelson?
Tom or Crow?
The Doctor or Pearl?
TV’s Frank?

• @jbancroft must be a big dang plane to need that many pilots #
• curly wheat pasta drenched in simple tomato basil sauce. om nom nom nom #
• @steveswrong I signed up for some basic media embedding worked ok couple times used #
• sms tweeters, what kinda tech you packin? #
• I just registered worstbarever.com .org & .net who wants to touch me? #
• hahaha. thanks @iScatterling #
• @iscatterling oooh… that’s good too! too bad I’m outta money. XD #
• I <3 @brianshaler #
• @brianshaler Oh god oh god I hope the quotes weren’t necessary! #

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• I ID’d a colonist from Aliens as the Captain from Red Dwarf. I am PIMP #
• Did I mention I only saw Red Dwarf for the first time ever yesterday? #
• watching Aliens again. wish I had a copy of Event Horizon to watch afterwards. it’s like peas n carrots! #
• @brianshaler I’ve had at least 1 new follower who seems more about pushing a biz via twitter than anything. I feel yer pain re: 30boxes #
• @gapingvoid DAMMIT! I was in TX a few months ago, right next to a sonic, and i SO missed out. *jealous* #
• not use a social media for experiments or games? I respect @annaleen but it seems paranoid & grumpy #
• This snow is offensive to me. #
• @joanmarie i’ve been sick all week and I walked .25mi with trees pooing snow on me X_X #
• http://tweetstats.com/graphs/Giania infoporn on my tweeting habits! #
• I’ve decided I’m going to follow everyone who follows me, ‘cept other teams. @teamoctarine is where it’s at #
• @drhypercube innit? found it via http://tinyurl.com/2twblw #
• @drhypercube I’m adding a twitter plugin (&updating my other WP plugins) right now #
• @jabancroft thank you for your mention of TwitterTools, I couldn’t find that info anywhere else! #
• just got some REAL sudafed from a coworker. there may be breathing in my future! #
• @iscatterling DUDE. you are Xtreeeeme! :P headcolds are beyond sucky, ya know? #
• @patrickcurl of course it’s okay to ask! Part of having a network is leveraging their help :) #
• man, I really gotta get around to canceling my stupid, useless cable #
• sudafed can’t quite keep up, tea getting cold. oh lawd what will I do?? #
• @gapingvoid I like the idea of PRT. short, recognizable, etc. #
• @gapingvoid you already got my yes vote on PRT! :D #

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• so can people see what I choose to track? #
• I need to learn what adding # to subjects does #
• sweet mother of mercy, another seo-type! :) hi @andrewbaron #

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Perusing my feeds I saw a link to an article that Opera does in fact pass the Acid 3 test. I was pretty stoked to hear that, since I was pretty sure when I ran my copy of 9.26 and 9.5 through the test, neither one passed or even approached passing. (9.5 was closer at around 60-64%.)

I went to try out the Acid 3 test again to see if I’d missed something, or not checked on the latest version of the browser, and Opera out-and-out crashed on me. Which is a very rare thing, Opera’s always been pretty stable for me, but it’s never fun to have to kill all your tabs and start over.

Upon re-reading the article I realized that the version of Opera which currently passes the newest standards testing is their internal development version. Translation: I was decieved by my excitement, and for my laziness was punished by crashing Opera upon the merciless rocks of the Web 2.0 usability test. From now on I’m just going to get my Opera-related news straight from Opera Labs and bypass the PR maneuvers from the My Opera side of things, and the various fans.

I’m still patiently awaiting Kestral’s release from beta to full, because I think at that point Opera might stand a fighting chance of gaining a “real” marketshare. (i.e. Above 1%)

What more is there to say? Ok, well, for anyone who isn’t in the know: SMITH Magazine, Larry Smith, and Rachel Fershleiser set about collecting six word memoirs from all types of people. Some were famous, some were just everyday people who entered a contest to have their miniaturized life story printed.

The outcome of many hands and many voices came together in a volume called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. (I happen to be in it! It still amazes me that I was chosen, honestly.)

At some point, Rachel Fershleiser wound up on my Gtalk list, and I periodically mouse over people’s names to see what their tag lines say. Well! Imagine my surprise when I mouse over her name and see that the book has hit the New York Times’ Bestseller List (Category: Advice/How-to/Misc)!

It’s currently at #9, and it’s the book’s first week on the list. With all the rave reviews, great press, and (I imagine) a lot of contributor-based enthusiastic sharing, I’m really not surprised. With any luck, we’ll find our way to #1! I can’t emphasize enough how much fun this book is, and how addictive it is to start applying the six-word limitation to come up with summations of life, love, and all kinds of ephemera. Get in on the hubbub by going to the site or go pick up the book.

http://www.shelfari.com/giania
I was tipped off by someone on my LJ friends list yesterday that there was indeed a social site based around books! Thank goodness. I’d been saying for ages I wish I had some place to collect a list of everything I’d read. At one point I tried to keep a .txt file of all my comics and that proved to be an extremely daunting task indeed.
This, however, is like Last.FM, or wishlist specifically for books, for lack of a better comparison. For those who prefer audiobooks, neverfear, you are welcome here, as searches do turn up audiobook versions of pretty much every author or title I searched for thus far.
I have to say that other than the quirky behavior of the searches after I add books in Opera I really find going through and adding everything I own and have read (not necessarily one and the same!) to be a really addictive process. It’s so fun, just seeing everything I’ve read laid out like that, and knowing I’ve still got a lot more to look up. You can really tell a lot about a person by what they read, it seems.
It is rather nice to be able to see what your friends have read and ask them about it, rather than having to pry them for information on what they’ve read or hope they remember a book they read several years ago just to tell you.
Even though I already have a stack of items to read that is quite probably taller than I am, I’m always looking for suggestions on more things to read. So do go ahead and friend me if you decide to sign up for Shelfari, and be sure to tell them I sent you!
Happy reading!

Do you have a few minutes?
Do you have a microphone or some audio clips of your voice?
Do have a picture on your computer that you feel represents you?

If so, you can go to Lifehouse Method and they will process all of those things into a musical portrait of you! Word of caution to anyone who runs around with all the bells and whistles turned off on their browsers: you will need Java and Flash for this. Don’t worry though, before you go through the process, they do a short browser test to make sure you have everything you need. I found the signup process short and sweet, with just a touch of warm fuzzies. Even at the signup point, they want to know what you think of the site and their tools. That indicates to me a group of people who actually care what their visitors think and it’s rather refreshing.

If you’re interested though, don’t dawdle! You can “sit” for up to 3 free “musical portraits” until July 31st, and then they are going to go to a subscription service.

Check out the project’s pedigree:

The Method Music Software has been developed under the patronage of Pete Townshend by mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon. A team of composers, personally approved by and occasionally including Pete Townshend, will regularly listen to Method Music portraits and select a few for further development/elaboration.

I still have two more portraits left to go. I’ll probably fire up my microphone for the next one, since I used pre-recorded snippets, and didn’t really provide a “rhythm” track for the software to analyze. Download my first muiscal portrait