Did you know…

March 17, 2007 - 4pm
  • Orel Hershiser was the only professional baseball player to win a grammy for best new artist.
  • It is legal to kill a hobo in Fayetteville, Kentucky, provided he has offended your horse.
  • The 68th United States Congress was composed entirely of laid off carnival workers, spawning the infamous Corn Dog Rebellion of 1925.
  • All modern computers are powered by tiny gremlins. Contrary to popular belief, computer processor speeds have not been getting faster. Intel has simply been breeding smaller gremlins in order to pack more of them onto a chip.
  • There has never been a country called France.
  • Dogs are born with an instinctual fear of Dan Rather.
  • Tiger Bop is the oldest continually published periodical in the world. Back issues dating back to July 227 A.D. are available for order on their website.
  • In a series of increasingly hilarious events, Scott Baio mistakenly invented time travel on the set of Charles in Charge.
  • Canadian and British pennies will instantly annihilate each other if they are permitted to come into contact.
  • 17% of new Catholics develop superpowers within a year of their conversion.
  • Prior to entering politics, Richard Nixon was a world-champion bodybuilder, winning Mr. Universe an unprecedented seven years in a row (1947-1954).
  • Alabama was originally called “New Sodom” by settlers. The name was changed in 1987 for tourism reasons.

Bonus! Get out your calculator for this one. Pick any seven digit number except 1573355. Add 17. Add the number of days until the end of the year, then divide by the year you were born. Look carefully at the result. If done correctly, you will see a representation of the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel on your calculator screen. Keep trying until you get it.

Hello, NSA Monitoring Devices

March 15, 2007 - 10pm

I want to kill the President of the United States.

No, seriously.

Pixel Mural

March 13, 2007 - 8pm

I just had an awesome idea. I have a box of empty CD jewel cases sitting in my closet. I lost the CDs that went in them quite a few years ago (they were in a CD wallet that disappeared). I’m also a big fan of pixellated art. By their powers combined…

If I tear out the liner notes and backing from the jewel cases and spray paint them, I can create individual pixels to form a large wall mural. The question then becomes what do I make?! There are so many awesome choices!

I could go with Mario, but which one? 8-bit? 16-bit? If I go 8-bit, which one? Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, or 3? And what size and pose? Small Mario? Super Mario? Tanuki Mario? Walking, running, jumping, flying?!

But then there’s also Link, Samus, Megaman, various mushrooms, and the characters from the original Final Fantasy.

Right now, I’m leaning towards an 8-bit Super Mario Bros. 3 small Mario. It’s 16×16 pixels. CD cases are 4.9″ x 5.6″, which would make the mural 6′6″ x 7′5″–which is fucking huge. The only problem is that CD cases aren’t square, so the image will be flattened. And that I may not have enough wall space anywhere in the apartment for that much Mario.

:: off to Photoshop to do a mockup ::

If you want to copy anything here, please email me first.
© Marc Teale 2009.