The ABCs of Google search bar

The Google Search bar in Firefox has an "auto complete" function. Start typing and Google will guess where your search will go. Given that is probably based on the frequency and prevalence of these terms, it is another cool way to feel out the zeitgeist of the web. This was another draft post from a few years ago, so some of the autocomplete words changed since then. Now I have an ABC timecapsule of 2008.

2008

2010

A is for Amazon B is for bebo C is for craigslist D is for dictionary E is for ebay F is for facebook G is for gmail H is for hotmail I is for imdb J is for jobs K is for Kelly blue book L is for Lowes M is for myspace N is for next O is for orkut P is for photobucket Q is for qvc R is for runescape S is for Sears T is for Target U is for utube V is for verizon wireless W is for weather X is for xbox Y is for youtube Z is for zip codes

A is for Amazon B is for Best Buy C is for craigslist D is for dictionary E is for ebay F is for facebook G is for gmail H is for Hotmail I is for Ikea J is for Jet Blue K is for Kohls L is for Lowes M is for myspace N is for netflix O is for orbitz P is for Pandora Q is for quotes R is for realtor.com S is for Sears T is for Target U is for usps V is for verizon wireless W is for weather X is for xbox Y is for youtube Z is for zillow

Rachel Ray montage

Cleaning out the "draft" folder has yielded another treasure. I'm not sure what sparkling commentary I was planning on writing for this montage of Rachel Ray enjoying food, so I'll present it now with no futher explanation.

Dystopian Future Shirt

I'm not sure why this post was sitting in my draft folder for two years. It contains link to buy a perfectly cromulent t-shirt, one lamenting the current state of affairs.


Dystopian Future Shirt

Diagram of my online presence

To keep straight the details of all my wheeling and dealing on the internet, I have created this little chart. At first glance it's a mind-numbing mess. Subsequent looks confirm this.

The Slashboing Empire

What it all means to me:

I post to each Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, and Livejournal by logging into each, or via email (which I seldom do). To read all the comments made on my posts, I only have to check Hotmail and Flickr.

What it all means to you:

To read everything that I contribute to the internet, you only have to check my LJ account: drhaggis.livejournal.com and my flickr account: flickr.com/photos/drhaggis. Everything I post to Blogger gets posted to Twitter, which gets bundled with its own content to be fed to Livejournal.

However this has recently changed. The "Loudtwitter" service I was using to bundle twitter missives to livejournal is down, and is unlikely to come back. Meaning I need to find a safe and suitable replacement.

I have also updated the format of Slashboing.ca, in an attempt to keep looking up to date. Let me know what you think!

A case of the Mondays, Keyboard Cat style

Ron Livingston (Office Space, Defying Gravity) was born to play keyboards in cat parody videos.

Galactic Empire State of Mind

This song combines two great things.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Cracked dismembers Back to the Future

Cracked.com is far cooler than Cracked magazine ever was.

Why 'Back to the Future' Is Secretly Horrifying -- powered by Cracked.com

Cats: They're like this

Via I have seen the whole of the internet

Current Fixations: New York City

One of my current fixations is the city that never sleeps. Despite growing up in Canada, thousands of kilometres away from New York City, parts of that city have ingrained into my psyche. We receive a lot of US television in Canada, and the amount of NYC imagery and culture that comes with it is surprising, and detailed! Should a Canadian kid know how hard it is to get a table at "Sardi's?" How many restaurants can you name from cities where you've never been? Few cities form such a cultural substrate.

Being in the “raised-by-TV” generation, I practically grew up on Sesame Street, not just the show, but somehow on that street itself. The street was clearly representing New York, with its distinctive brownstone buildings, a stop on the subway line and proximity to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I learned at a young age not to eat the pictures at the museum, long before I realized the Met was an actual place.



I knew muppets were puppets with hands up their backsides, so why would their environment be any more tangible? It's this kind of blurring of the real and the fantastic that makes New York magical.

I know NYC neighbourhood names such as Morningside Heights, Tribeca, SoHo and the Bowery, but I couldn't tell you what the neighbourhood I currently live in is supposed to be called. The streets and villages within NYC each have their own stories and culture, and the post-war tract housing of my youth can't compete for the same passions that “Wall Street” “Madison Ave” and “Broadway” do. Those aren't just addresses, they are Ideas. No movie worth watching was filmed in my hometown, and no one ever wrote a song about any of the streets there.

I know that much of the information that I have soaked up is dated and wrong. Sitcoms and movies set in New York are often written by people living in Hollywood. “The Brooklyn Dodgers,” is a phrase that falls from my mouth too readily for a team that hasn't existed since 1957. Tavern on the Green and the Rainbow Room are closed, Sardi's and The Russian Tea Room are well past their prime. The Cotton Club currently on west 125th street has no historical connection to the great jazz club of the past.

New York is simultaneously the present, the past, and the fictional.

In an effort to track the parts of New York that I could actually visit so I don't sound like Frank Sinatra in “On the Town”, I started keeping track with a simple map on Google. Whenever a travel show talks about the best bagels in the lower east side, or a website talks about an art installation at the Museum of Modern Art, I open up the map and drop a pin. I started including major landmarks and interesting stores, so over time the map became more pins than page.

Font Conference

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy on Daleks

(via xxnapoleonsolo)

A seemingly empty room of ninjas

Twitter is a great venue for quick wit and wordplay. One of the fun projects that utilizes this crowd-source of wit is the All Sorts Collective noun collection. A bot parses Twitter, cataloging creative terms of venery such as "a sneer of critics" or "a sic of editors".

I have posted many such collections to my twitter feed including such gems as "a scum of bounty hunters" and "a quibble of geeks". However my most popular submission is "a seemingly empty room of ninjas", being re-tweeted several times over the past year.

In March, All-sorts.org teamed up with the Owl and Lion gallery in Edinburgh, starting a contest to illustrate collective nouns from the index. Illustrator Parko Polo created a fantastic representation of my ninja collection which will be on display at the Owl & Lion Gallery from 15-27th June, 2010. An artists’ book featuring all 15 illustrations as well as individual prints will be for sale soon.

Cliche film dialog

Some film setups and dialog are so common, we don't notice them - until someone puts them all together in one clip.











Bonus Video: What? on Lost.

The age of kitteh has ended, begin the age of the sloth

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Via @MoTancharoen.

Christopher Lee sings about cocktails

For iRob, laughing-magpie, and all my cocktail enjoying friends.

From "The Return of Captain Invincible"

The Tragedy of Hamlet

I've been watching, of late, the BBC version of Hamlet with David Tennant and Patric Stewart. I don't know if my bias toward Tennant-as-Doctor-Who has coloured my affections,or if this is a genuinely unique and expert performance. I would have liked to see the original stage production with this cast, that delayed and made sparse Tennant's last turn as the Doctor, but it was not to be. I'm joyed that they adapted their performance for film and I managed to catch most of it on PBS.

Several clips can be found on Youtube, and this part of Act 2, Scene 2, is my overwhelming favourite.



I would write that they "make the text come alive" or that they "breathe life into the words" if it wasn't for the army of cliched hacks that would beat me 'round the head and shoulders for crimes both real and apparent.

Star Trek Punk

The California punk band, "No Kill I" rock the house with this track.

Parallel Worlds

Parallel Worlds
Originally uploaded by Drhaggis.

J.J. Abrams likes stories with parallel worlds, alternate dimensions created by all the choices we do, and do not make. I made this mashup of the key men of science from different Abrams shows: Walter Bishop from Fringe and Daniel Faraday from Lost. One is a half mad, half insane man who's tinkering with the walls between worlds has lead to deaths and hardship. Actually that's both of them. Faraday has the beard.

8 Mile mashup with Ni Hao Kai-lan

On a dare, I made this mash up "Tolee's Rhyme Time" episode of the kids show "Ni Hao Kai-lan" and the trailer for the Eminem movie "8 Mile". It works so well because when the Rhyming Koala gets upset he flips up the hood of his Panda bear hoodie, just like any good struggling rapper does.

Hitchock' cameos

It feels like some sort of cosmic penance that Alfred Hitchcock has to walk endlessly through the background of his, and perhaps every, film.



(The previous link in the blog/tweet chain was Larry Blamire)