mgroves

Thanks to a suggestion from a loyal reader, I've decided to list some of my favorite comments from 2006, award show style. After all, if it wasn't for comments, it wouldn't be a blog!

Best use of Shawshank Quotes as a parody:

Jonny, in Get busy garglin', or get busy dyin'.

"Oh god! I don't belong here! I wanna go home! I miss my Scope...And it's Fat-Ass by a nose! Fresh Breath. Fresh Breath. Fresh Breath."

Best mispronunciation of "diabeetus"

Wilford Brimley, in Fred Astaire: Puttin' on the Ritz.

"Best performance of Puttin' On The Ritz? Peter Boyle in Son of Frankenstein."

Best Uncomfortable Silence Represented in Two Words

Jonny, in Embarrassing Usenet Posts from My Past.

Oh my.

Best Use of the Phrase "Suck it" in a Religious Conversation

James, in Bias.

"That's the true value of religion: telling the naysayers 'I told you so. Suck it.' Or coming to the conclusion that they were wrong and 'sucking it' ;)"

Most Pathetic Excuse for a Raid

7chan, in Watermarks. You guys fail so hard, you should all become an hero.

"What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? I'm the Batman!"

Most Ridiculous Post

Barry Dennen (a.k.a. Steve, yes I know it was you), in Akismet.

"I like mice and I can not lie/You other brothers can't deny"

Comment Most Edited for Content

Jonny, in Some random MySpace stupidity.

"If I saw you now I'd **** a *****. I would build a tent in my ********* just for you.

Most Diabolical Spammer

i'am a bot, in The rules of cricket.

"i enter correct number below you hav ben spamed"

Finally, the Nelson Haw Haw Award goes to...

Sithlet! in Trans fat banned.

"'Overhead metal cabinets. I saw a guy get sliced pretty good by one of these. They should totally be banned. They make soft plastic ones now you know!' What an idiot!"

That about wraps it up for this year in blog posts for mgroves.com. Thanks to all my loyal readers and commenters, thanks to Jonny for the current sweet design, and thanks to anyone who was interested enough in the Google Ads to click on them. You can now look forward to another year of mediocre blog posts and failed attempts at humor from the master of such things, Matthew D. Groves. 2006, out!

Maybe this is a bit self-indulgent, or maybe it's just a cop-out excuse for not having any new content, but I thought I would list out some of my favorite blog posts from my first year of blogging.

• Dirka dirka jihad - The most worthless boycott in history may (or may not) be in jeopardy (stay tuned)
• 24 Season 5 finale - I love neck stabbin', what can I say?
• Monty Hall paradox - I had a lot of fun studying and trying to illustrate this problem
• Three AJAX articles: A simple AJAX example, AJAX username availability checking, and AJAX without XMLHttpRequest object. I learned a lot writing these articles, and I think they've helped a lot of people.
• Hidden stuff in logos - it got me Dugg
• Digg proof caching and URLs - this article basically explains all the rewriting I did after I was Dugg. I learned a lot doing this too.
• A pair of Milton Friedman articles - It's truly a shame that I didn't really know much about Friedman until just this year, and then he goes and passes away.
• You are a pirate - This is just a video, really, but it cracks me up every time.
• Cedric and the Revolution Walkthrough - This was probably my favorite PC game of 2006, and I was honored that many other people found my walkthrough useful.
• My Favorite Posts of 2006 - Maybe this is a bit self-indulgent, or maybe it's just a cop-out excuse for not having any new content, but I thought I would list out some of my favorite blog posts from my first full year of blogging.

Everything else I posted this last year was utter nonsense, so you can just ignore it all. But if you want to check out the nonsense, feel free to use the tag search feature, or check out some of the archives.

Line Rider is coming to the Wii.

Sounds like fun. I wonder if it will be an actual disc or distributed online somehow?

In the meantime, check out this video of a Line Rider run which must have taken hours and hours to construct.

Out of all the cool features of the Wii, the one I find myself enjoying the most is the Virtual Console. I'm not exactly sure why, since I've had access to these games via emulators for years and years. Maybe it's the same reason why some music pirates switch to iTunes, maybe because it's much easier to play on a television, or maybe it's just the novelty.

Whatever it is, I've racked up quite a few hours playing Wario's Woods recently, and I'm looking forward to more VC goodness from Nintendo.

I found a rumored release schedule a week or so ago, and it appears to be accurate so far. There are some duds, but here are some games I look forward to:

• Punch-Out!! Nintendo February 19, 2007 (NES)
• Pilotwings Nintendo January 22, 2007 (SNES)
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Squaresoft February 5, 2007 (SNES)
• Super Mario World Nintendo February 12, 2007 (SNES)
• Super Metroid Nintendo February 19, 2007 (SNES)
• Uniracers (one of my favorite games) Nintendo March 5, 2007 (SNES)

Looks like I'll be spending a lot of money on VC games in the next year if this sort of trend keeps up.

I'd like to see them expand the VC concept a little more. Additional systems would be great (GBx/GBA, Game Gear, SMS, Atari, Sierra/Lucas). I'd also like to see some sort of online play component, even it was just a tacked-on zSNES netplay type of feature. Sure, split screens might be a nuisance, but it would be better than nothing. There's been rampant speculation about this, of course, but Nintendo hasn't said a word about online play for VC (and not much about online play at all, really).

I hope everyone got and was able to give what they wanted for Christmas. It was a fine Christmas in the Groves family. The first Christmas of my newest niece (and first grandchild of my parents), the first Christmas since my brother was back from Iraq (although he was stuck on base in New York), and a general good time all around.

My wife received everything she asked for (and more), except for a Lexus, which was her pipe dream, "ask for it because you never know" gift. Among her baubles was:

• Ridiculous popcorn machine and cart
• Ridiculously large air hockey/ping pong table
• Electric smoker for ridiculously good cooking of meats
• Price is Right DVD board games, ridiculously chock full of product placement to the point where the game should have been free
• Other things that may or may not be ridiculous

The items I received were decidedly less ridiculous in nature:

• Star Wars Episodes 4,5,6 DVDs including the original theatrical release. I'm curious to hear Aunt Beru's voice to see if it really is the original theatrical release, or if it's just the original VHS/Laserdisc release. My guess is the latter. (See: this clip from Deleted Magic, near the end).
• I received Venture Brothers Season 1 DVD Box Set. If you are a fan of Venture Brothers, or just a fan of hilarity in general, I highly recommend this set. It displayed in 480i for some reason (maybe my fault), but all of the fantastic season 1 episodes are on it, as well as the pilot, Christmas special, commentary, deleted scenes, and some other new bits as well. It's such a well-written show with plenty of humor and obscure references for everyone to enjoy.
• I received an unexpected bottle of Crown Royal Reserve, a premium blend of fine Canadian Whiskies that is soooo good that I almost hate to even add ice to it. It may have even put me off of all alcohols on lower shelves, which is no small variety either.
• I also received a new trick Yomega Yo-Yo (with convenient holster for street yo-ing with ruffians) which lights up when you spin it, and is quite good for walking and other tricks. I think I got it to walk about 4 or 5 entire steps with me.
• A Nintendo Wii Nunchuk. These things were almost impossible to find up until a few days before Christmas and are still no easy task to locate. Ali managed to snag one just in time, so now we can play Wii Boxing with 2 players.

I hope you all received excellent gifts in accordance with your fine behaviors this year. What was your favorite (to give or receive)?

I was reading some stuff about potential DNC presidential candidates. I had never heard of this "Vilsack" guy before.

So, I looked him up. Not really a political commentary here, but he looks just like the Geico commercial guy, Jerry Lambert. See if you can guess which is which (without looking at the filenames):

I just figured I'd get this down in a blog before someone else points it out so I can send this link out and say "I SAID IT FIRST!" You know, in case he gets the nomination or yells "Yeargh!" at a rally or something.

Merry Christmas to all my loyal readers! Enjoy some Javascript snowflakes.

this blog was painstakingly typed out on Opera on a Wii.

without a keyboard, it's pretty ridiculous. Needs bluetooth keyboard.

There have been recent attempts to get me to waiver on my boycott of Comedy Central. I always believe that the primary point of debate is not necessarily to change another's mind, but to strengthen one's own beliefs. So I took another look at the South Park "Cartoon Wars" episodes, specifically an interview that Matt and Trey gave in Reason magazine.

One point that was brought up is that my boycott is inconsistent. That I should be boycotting all of Viacom, and not just Comedy Central. This seemed like a valid point to investigate. I asked myself: should I also be boycotting Viacom, and if so, am I really willing to do that? Here's a quote from the Reason interview:

"It was life imitating art, because the whole week after the first one aired there was a teaser, 'Will television executives take a stand for free speech? Or will Comedy Central puss out?' That whole week we were trying to get Comedy Central to show Muhammad. And they pussed out."

The censored Muhammad was not a forgone conclusion. They were trying to get the image aired. This leads me to believe that the uncensored sequence in part 2 (hereafter referred to as the "salmon helmet sequence") is animated, but sitting dormant on some animator's PC.

Also notice they specifically mentioned Comedy Central and not Viacom.

Which leads me to this next quote. This is in reference to the Tom Cruise Scientology episode:

"They blew it off. To be fair, it wasn