mgroves

I've added this Akismet thing to my blog. It purports to be able to tell the difference between a spam comment and a non-spam comment. It's a web-based API made for Wordpress, but it has been adapted for other environments as well. (Noticibly absent is ASP classic, which I may try to develop myself sometime down the road).

Right now I'm simply letting is flag every incoming comment with "Y" for spam and "N" for not-spam. Once I see how well it works over a week or so, comments marked as spam will no longer be displayed at all.

On a side note, when I think of Akismet, I think of Kismet, the Magic: The Gathering card famous from Stasis decks: Enchantment, 3W, Target opponent's artifacts, creatures, and lands come into play tapped.

If this is the kind of stuff that's normally on Lazytown, I may need to start DVRing it...

On the same token, the pink-haired girl (Stephanie?) creeps me out for some reason. Maybe it's because she gets the weird techno version and has a terrible choreographer.

Rarely do I think that the slippery slope argument is used in a valid way. Usually it takes the form of the "if they do X now, what will they do next!?" type of panicy alarmism.

Not so in the case of smoking bans.

New York City banned 'public' smoking around 3 years ago. It's for the children! It's for innocent second-hand smokers! It's for the non-smoking working man! Sure we're taking away your ability to use a legal product while still taxing the hell out of it, so what?

Now they are going after trans fat. Why? It's unhealthy, and we, the government, know what's best for you. Behold:

"It is a dangerous and unnecessary ingredient," Frieden said. "No one will miss it when it's gone."

Unbelieveable. In the case of trans fat, there isn't even a second-hand trans fat to use as an excuse. This is government meddling plain and simple, and the slope is becoming more and more slippery. Why not ban deep fried foods, or enforce calorie restrictions? Why not make the nutritional guidelines mandatory? I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Join me in a Boston Food Party!

Here's a site that hosts some emulators and the acompanying ROMs. I guess it all works through Java applets. There's about 1400 games for various systems. Here is list of the systems, the emulator, and an example game for each system available:

• Sega Master System - Potato Emulation - Space Harrier
• Turbo Grafx 16 - Potato Emulation - Bonk's Adventure
• Game Gear - Potato Emulation - Virua Fighter Mini
• NES - NESCafe - Bases Loaded [Note: NES was working when I first visited, but isn't working now]
• Arcade - CottAGE - Galaxian
• Gameboy Advance - Boycott Advance - Pong Fighter

Don't get too excited about GBA, there's only a small amount of games available, and those look to be low-complexity homebrew games. Otherwise, there seems to be a decent collection of games available. Not sure why the NES isn't working anymore...

I know I'm dipping into Seinfeld territory here, but here's an excerpt from the Economics textbook that I'm reading in the MBA program this quarter:

Why do the keypad buttons on drive-up automatic teller machines have Braille dots?

Braille dots on elevator buttons and on the keypads of walk-up automatic teller machines enable blind people to participate more fully in the normal flow of daily activity. But even though blind people can do many remarkable things, they cannot drive automobiles on public roads. Why, then, do the manufacturers of automatic teller machines install Braille dots on the machines at drive-up locations?

The answer to this riddle is that once the keypad molds have been manufactured, the cost of producing buttons with Braille dots is no higher than the cost of producing smooth buttons. Making both would require separate sets of molds and two different types of inventory. If the patrons of drive-up machines found buttons with Braille dots harder to use, there might be a reason to incur these extra costs. But since the dots pose no difficulty for sighted users, the best and cheapest solution is to produce only keypads with dots.

Neat! Take that, Jerry Seinfeld!

The Columbus Clippers have changed their Major League affiliation. No longer is Columbus associated with the New York Yankees. Good riddance, I say!

They are now associated with the Washington Nationals (National League, woohoo!), at least for two years. Coincidentally, the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinnati Reds contracts with their minor league affiliates (the Buffalo Bisons and the Louisville Bats, respectively) are up at the end of the 2008 year.

Also coincidentally, the Clippers are getting a new ballpark downtown. A very very nice one to boot!

All of this adds up to this: at the end of 2008 the Clippers are likely to sign with the Reds or Indians as a new AAA affiliate. With a new ballpark and an in-state affiliation, this is likely to spark a renaissance of baseball in Columbus.

Hopefully, it will be the Reds who snatch up Columbus. They have the most to gain and the most to lose. Columbus fans are pretty much divided between Cincy and Cleveland, maybe favoring the Reds a little bit historically speaking. If the Indians AAA team was in Columbus, you can pretty much kiss that goodbye, as Indians fans would likely start to dominate. Also, the fans in the city of the current Reds affiliate, Louisville, would likely not abandon the Reds if the AAA team were to leave. Who would they be a fan of instead, St. Louis? Atlanta?

I would hope that the Clippers would finally change their name. They've been the Clippers since they were affiliated with the Pirates. 'Clippers' almost made sense with the Yankees (Joe DiMaggio was "The Yankee Clipper"), but it makes zero sense now since Clippers have nothing to do with the land-locked city of Columbus and nothing to do with Nationals.

I'm wondering what a Reds affiliation would mean for Dave Miley, who was fired by the Reds last year and then hired by the Clippers for this year's season.

Anyway, it's likely to be a pretty heavy battle for Columbus fans come late 2008. If the Reds pull it off, they are looking at least two people (me and my wife) who will be first in line for Clippers season tickets.

I've never seen this before. It's the rough 7-minute Family Guy pilot. It's basically the same story as the eventual first episode (Peter drinks at a stag party), but there are a lot of changes from the version I've seen dozens of times.

In particular:

• Meg's outfit, Lois's hair, etc
• Quagmire and Cleveland are different
• Mr. Weed has no accent of any kind
• Tom the newscaster is known as Mike

Other than that, the animation/artwork is noticeably different, but I guess that's expected, and it's not that much different. Here's the video:

The comments should be up and running now. They aren't as elegant as I'd like them to be, but they do work.

I strip out all HTML tags from all the data you enter, so don't bother with formatting. If you enter some carriage returns, they won't appear, but don't worry, I will fix that soon enough. Enjoy!

The "Archives" section on the right-hand side of the new design is now up and running. The last 9 months will always be listed there. The archive pages are not very pretty yet, but I wanted to get something up and functional.

As always, you can return to the main page from the archives by clicking on the 'mgroves.com' at the top of every page.

Puzzle Pirates recently had a contest for the best homemade 30 second commercial:

Yer mission, should ye choose to accept it, is te create a 30-second commercial that illustrates yer favorite aspects of the Puzzle Pirates game. Imagine that it's going to be broadcast during halftime of a Footbrawl event! What makes ye love the sweet trade? What would ye highlight te the world about yer puzzlin' life on the high seas?

We're lookin' fer a great Puzzle Pirates themed clip that'll fit in 30 seconds. Ye may create yer own content or you may spoof an existing commercial, coz they be also endlessly amusing. Get inspiration from yer favorite beer or soap or potato chip commercial if ye're short of ideas (a piratey equivalent for wassssssup, the Mastercard "priceless" ads, etc.) Ye've got just 30 seconds, so don't try te tell the epic story of yer pirate's life or describe the whole Puzzle Pirates world.

Apollo really annoys me in more ways that one, especially when he puts the YouTube URLs into a hyperlink and labels them as "linky". Anyway, you can check out all the winners. linky. Here's a couple of my favorites:

Do you want to make more booty? SURE we all do!

Axe: The body spray for guys...that attracts pirates.