RKNet Blog... Thing

It all started when the #ormgas IRC bot piped up with the following:

wormgas: Garlic icecream is a huge pupa in a special ops team to assasinate bin laden and his wife. It’s his thirtieth birthday!

Next thing I know, over in #ectomo I’m being introduced to a bitchin’ Cibo Matto track from Jet Set Radio Future!

Another version, illustrated by hand for someone’s English project. Will help you figure out the lyrics.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

Did I happen to mention that I love making mix tapes?? I am already hopelessly in love with Mixwit.

On this mix:

Blonde Redhead
Sonic Youth
Of Montreal
Royksopp
David Bowie
SUPER SECRET SPECIAL THING! FOR YOU!
The Knife
Shael Riley (AKA Disk Masta Smokabitch) x 2!
Jose the Bronx Rican

Last night the most remarkable series of things happened, resulting in a delightful print out just for you!
In #ormgas (the IRC channel for the OCR internet radio broadcast), Leissi pasted the following -

Notice: This Department requires no physical fitness program: everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle, running down the boss, knifing friends in the back, dodging responsibility, and pushing their luck.

Struck with inspiration, I decided to make a poster from this material. I also decided that the various cautionary signs from the game Portal, with their wet-floor-sign-guy-in-major-peril quality, were the absolute best to give some graphical window dressing to this wry jab at working life. (I realize the quote is rather old, but I’d forgotten all about it until Leissi was kind enough to remind me of it.)

After several fruitless searches (shocking with the amount of slavering Portal fanatics out there) in the ever-convenient Google Image Search, I finally dug up a panel of Portal’s caution signs. It wasn’t very large so I tried to resize it cleverly, but the end result was still fuzzy. Seeing as this was meant to be a five minute haha on my part, I wasn’t terribly concerned.

I did however take the time to change the saying slightly to make it more apropos to my own current working life. Pleased with myself, I saved a copy as a jpg and slapped it up in #ormgas, and in #ectomo.

I left shortly thereafter, and thought nothing of it, until I came in this morning and checked my gmail. What appeared before my eyes, but a white knight from the depths of #ectomo, Maicro, come to clean up the fuzzy Portal images and raise this snarky little geek joke to the next level of professional subversiveness.

Without further ado, a giant jpg for you to print and share with all the people who fill you with levels of contempt that are at best unhealthy and at worst result in much head explodey.

One million thousand thanks to Leissi and Maicro for their invaluable contributions in the field of snarky, passive-aggressive sign leaving technology. If you have opportunity, comment with links to photos of this particular sheet in action.

Efilon pointed this out earlier in the ormgas IRC. Thanks!

This looks absolutely awesome! In the underwater environment I see shades of Ecco the Dolphin (boy did that game used to creep me out), and character designs that seem to remind me of Odin Sphere.

It’s been put together by a group called Bit Blot. Improvements to the way the character looks and behaves have been made since the time this video was made, according to a response to feedback left on the YouTube page for this video.

…
But yeah, there’s a lot of detail in her animation now and it has been updated a lot since this trailer was made (February) due to feedback. We haven’t had any complaints from people who have played the game.
…

There are more videos, as well as screenshots and written details about this game at the Bit Blot site. Such as the fact that it is due to be released tomorrow! Yup, Aquaria drops on December 7th. Aquaria was also the winner of the 2007 Independent Games Festival competition, which only adds more cred to this already tantalizing 2d adventure game.

Perhaps so much that you wish you were one?
Deck out your hellspawn in Mudkips this year for halloween, via BuyCostumes.com. Note the maniacal expression on the model’s face. Clearly, he loves him some Mudkips.

Tip off courtesy of loyal reader from the ormgas IRC: efiloN! :D

Editor’s note: you may have come here because you noticed a small notice at the bottom of the “wizard has turned you into a mudkips” picture. I want to go on record as saying I did NOT create that image. However, a lot of people were hotlinking to the copy of it posted above. Rather than shut down hotlinking altogether, I have opted to let people know where the image they are hotlinking to is being hosted. I’m glad you stopped by. :) Please feel free to peruse the rest of the site and comment.

This Words To Know is being brought to you today by “why the hell not?” and also by “not formatted anything like the other ones”. Now with 99% less Wikipedia and 100% more link mouseover info. This makes it sort of revolutionary among its brethren, and also somewhat of a jerk.

First thing's first. With the recent pet food scare, and me owning a kitty of which I have yet to take pictures, I decided it was time to find out what kitty ought to be eating. There were a lot of resources out there, but the best has to be this recipe for a “raw food” catfood. More on how that works out later.

One of the suggested ingredients in there is a whole rabbit (minus skin and fur of course). That's not a euphamism for kibble, either. That's the real deal, 1 whole Peter Cottontail, 1 whole Benjamin Bunny, 1 whole hexen hase[2]. I myself am going to settle for the chicken option, it's a lot more accessible and ultimately much more afforadable.

That's just one of several things I've managed to suss up lately. I've gotten into a lot of bizzare philosophical debates on IRC lately, and one of the most recent involved average IQ. (Intelligence has been on my mind a lot lately, particularly the calling into question of my own. Which is a patently ridiculous scenario, I realize.) Of course, show me a person with a truly average IQ and I'll probably be so stricken by the unlikelihood of it all that I'll spontaneously develop bizzare psychic powers to not be outdone in the oddity department.

Speaking of the oddity department, and discoveries, I've decided that I'm intensely enamored of the whole “Gothic Lolita” fashion style. The lovely Annalee over at ToM pointed out the store site for Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. I spent a while browsing there and then struck out on my own, looking for more super-fun visual styles in that vein. It is of course by no means practical, but it's so enjoyably artful that I can't help but be fascinated by it.

This leads to my last little bit, which like most of the rest of this post will be less of an proper WTK and more of a personal aside. At some point while gushing over how adorable a bunch of cosplayers were I quipped something to the effect of “quick, everybody gimme me money so I can buy a Suiseiseki costume!” However, my attempt to be funny went slightly off-center with someone and I wound up being donated $15 through PayPal. …so now I intend to hold that money aside and put it towards buying real hosting for my site as I mentioned wanting to months ago. I guess I am willing to take other donations but I'm not really all that keen on the idea since it feels sort of absurd to take handouts for something as simple as hosting. What I will accept with open arms are suggestions on a low-cost, stable hosting solution that will support wordpress.

I am a frequenter of the photoblog and in a recent post the subject of a “bloody bathroom” was addressed.After some discussion on the matter amongst commenters, it was decided that the image, and a related image (go here), are Finnish in origin. However, no one puzzling this out in that comment-palooza can speak a lick of Finnish.

The file name of the original image is “asuntonaytto”. Searching for that locates the image at two spots. Breaking the file name up in (admittedly arbitrary) spots produces interesting results, but doesn’t de-mystify the situation much. Translating “asunto” reveals that “home, domecile, apartment, etc” are viable translations in Finnish for that. Seeing as the two photos do appear to be in a home, that does make sense. The “naytto” part of the file name has eluded translation so far, and my Finnish speaking contact over at ormgas has been MIA for the last couple days. (Probably looking for a new IRC server, any ideas there?)

The second image has the word “miksi” in it, and either a shorter word or part of a word.

So without further ado, does anybody out there speak Finnish? I’d love to bring some closure to the origin mystery of these images. They look like production photos from a horror movie.

http://folk.ntnu.no/wiborg/tableofgods/index.php

There are a lot of issues with this site, but the concept is neat. I went to update the ereshkigal info, but it looks like all the comments go under the god “A” for right now.

http://www.aracnet.com/~kbuxton/discordia/discordianquotes.html

Courtesy of meccaneer in #ormgas. Neat list of “dischordian” type quotes. Lot of lyrics and unattributed movie quotes. Lot of interesting gems, and it’s a lot of fun trying to place the quotes you’re familiar with to their film or song.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/specklet/sets/72157594204828139/

Last but not least… Tiny Animals on Fingers! What more can I say?

1. What was the last new song you discovered?
Salty from ormgas sent me a few Moxy Fruvous songs. They’re really enjoyable. Sort of folky.

2. What was the last new dish you tasted?
A cabbage, potato and kielbasa soup the BF’s mom made. Really tasty. But I’d sub out the turkey keilbasa for other stuff, personally.

3. Where was the last place you visited for the first time?
Probably Vegas. I’m sure I’ve gone other places since then, but that’s the last one that stands out.

4. Who was the last new person you met?
Actually met? I forget, there’s been a flurry of new faces. Probably Mehrl and Leslie, who are now in management at the company I work for.

5. What was the last new toy you played with?
hrmmm….. hard to peg. I consider so many things toys!

:P
I’m bad at this.

After visting the TokiDoki site I have found something to lust after. A crazy-hot slipcover for my iPod Shuffle. Mmm….. it’s Shuffle-icious. I discovered after a little poking about that they’re available from iSkin. There’s covers for iPod Mini also. I spend a good deal of time attached to my iPod, escaping the mindless chatter and din of the office, so to be able to feign a little style while I’m at it would be dead sexy. That, and it’d go well with my TokiDoki clutch purse that I picked up while in Vegas this past Feb/March. It was quite the find, in a little shop operated by some sweet, shy asian ladies. I can’t remember off the top of my head the details of the shop, but I’ll likely edit that in when I get home.

I was also shown a really neat little app earlier (courtesy of Doctor Launch from the Ormgas IRC channel). You can locate this app at Virtual Constructs under Downloads. Remember Mega Man 2? Remember the intro screen for the Robot Master stages? Well, how would you like your apps to launch like Robot Masters? Word. I like it a lot. If that makes no sense to you, visit the guy’s site and check out the details yourself! Nyah! It’s a novelty I’ll use myself for a bit, and probably expose others to at every given opportunity.