Shotgun Content 8: Shameless self-promotion edition

Me, me, me, me! It's all about me.
On this blog, at least....

• I'm writing now on another site, Top Cultured. I've even got me a new-fangled feature, entitled "Who Ya Got?", where I pit fictional characters and whatnot against one another in a theoretical fight. My writing there won't replace anything I do here, it's just another side project I'm working on.
  
  As always, I strive for a good read. Go check it out and let me know what you think!
  
  
• Another episode of the Fair Use Law (ep 202) has been released and is available for your listening pleasure.
  
  What's relevant about it is that starting with last week's episode, we had moved to a new hosting server. If you were listening to the podcast using the embedded players on the FUL website, you've likely already made the switch. If you were subscribed via iTunes, there's a new feed. You'll need to re-subscribe to us using this link:
  
  
  Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. I promise you we're being as inane as ever on the new hosting server (podbean).
  
  
• Though hardly breaking news, particularly given the speed of the internet, the TF2 Spy and Sniper packs were released last Thursday. To much of the community's disappointment, earning the new unlockables were no longer tied to the new achievements, but rather released randomly over time. Though I'm unsure if this has been fixed, anecdotal reports indicate that these unlock events would even give you stuff you've already unlocked previously.
  
  I don't like this new direction. Obviously, the lion's share of the fun of these packs are the unlockables. They radically change the way we play a given class. The precedent had been set that if you actively farm for 2 or so hours, you'd likely do enough to earn all of a class' unlockables. Not too huge of a time commitment, given the reward. In this new system, it wasn't uncommon for people to sink in 5+ hours and come away empty handed.
  
  I get why they changed the unlock system. It helps newer players get access to unlockable stuff without having to grind out achievements. This lets them just *play* the game (a novel idea). But Valve's implementation of it was less than Valve-perfect and they frustrated a lot of veterans in the process.
  
  
• Lastly: http://www.laserportraits.net/ LOL

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Shotgun Content 7

Click, click, pull:

• Lately, the Konami Code has been sweeping the internet. Several sites now have Easter eggs and/or additional functionality built into them simply by entering the Konami code into them. There's a whole list of them over at http://www.konamicodesites.com/
  
  I would love to be able to Konami Code-enable something here on The Unwind, but I don't know what, and don't immediately have the programming expertise to do it. I can work on the coding, any suggestions on what that Easter egg should be, readers?
  
  
• Random thought: How can successful emo bands still be all Angsty McLiveJournal after they've hit it big? If I were them, I'd go all Scrooge McDuck swimming in my large sums of money and when I'm bored with that have sex until I pass out with any number of beautiful women throwing themselves at me. Simply because I could. How are they not all sunshine and puppies at this point?
  
  
• TF2 64. It needs to be done.
  
  
• I did a few photoshops for Cracked.com, but never strung enough together to make any coherent theme of it here. Soooo, here:

Theme: Famous Pictures Without Pants



Theme: If Microsoft Ruled the World

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Shotgun content 6

Holy crap, I've been working on that rejected iPhone commercial this evening and before I know it, 2.5 hours have gone by and I don't have a lot to show for it. Drawing iPhone apps on an iPhone are more tedious than I could have imagined. I am, however, very pleased with the quality thusfar, so I'll call it a wash.

As a result, I'm just going to blast you with some crap I saw on someone else's website content and call it a night.

• Been coming across a lot of 8-bit goodness lately. This latest installment is a medley of a bunch of rap songs as performed using NES sounds. For a full tracklist and more info, check out the site here. If you'd rather just hip-hop right to it, download the track. It's like someone went back in time and created an 8-bit Grand Theft Auto and then made a medley of its sound track.
  
• The Daft Punk console is pretty freaking awesome. Not only do you get to play around with the lyrics to Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger... I've been overlaying Daft Punk to a bunch of songs I've been listening to. This further reinforces my belief that all the world needs is a little more Daft Punk.
  
• Keeping in the music vein, ThruYou has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Someone took a bunch of Youtube clips, spliced them together and created new music from them. The amount of time to make something this good boggles my mind.
  
• Vince from Shamwow is now also hawking the Slap Chop. The reason I link it is because in his promotional video he actually says "You'll love my nuts."
  
• I don't know if you've been following this whole John Stewart, Jim Cramer feud, but Jim Cramer has agree to come on the Daily Show tomorrow. I want them both to have a soundclip board ready to play during the interview.

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Shotgun Content 5

Every so often, I have some things I'd like to post here at The Unwind, but can't really justify making a whole post out of any of them.

• An old friend of mine, "Danger" Dan Robinson, and I are starting a podcast call Fair Use Law. We're still working out when we're going to actually start it (with Thanksgiving coming up and all), but it should be a weekly podcast of everything and nothing all at once. It's essentially doing what we always do, only we'll have a microphone in front of us recording it.
  
  More details to follow, but to give you some insight into my future colleague, here's the intro theme to it that he wrote and created. It's delightfully whacked-out, and I wholly approve:
  
  http://www.carlandsons.com/fairuselawtheme.mp3



• Steam has been a huge pain in my butt today. After I updated my client, I've had issues logging in all day that are still unresolved. I need to kill me some zombies, Valve.



• From the "why the hell can I not look away" files, I wanted to share MiniKiss, which I originally found out seeing them in a random sports bar some time back with friends. MiniKiss is a coverband of Kiss... played by dwarves.
  
  Yes, it's all the Kiss hits you've come to know and love - like "Rock and Roll all Nite", "Strutter", and "Detroit Rock City" - played by people half the size of the original. We're talking pure, concentrated 80's here.



• Lastly, this week's Cracked.com photoshop content is "creative ways to break bad news". Only really had one idea for it:
  
  

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Shotgun Content 4

• I will be the first to tell you, I am not a gear head. I don't know the first thing about cars. But if I were going to "pimp my ride" or whatever kids these days call it, this is how I'd roll. 20" wagon wheels. Big enough for some serious street cred, yet bizarrely excessive enough for me to actually want to do that to my car.



• Some guy in Pennsylvania ate a 15 pound hamburger in less than 5 hours. I was literally brimming with American pride when I read that. Other countries may be starving, but this guy wins money for eating more than a human should in a sitting. Good luck with your, quote, "burger hangover", you American hero!
  
  Actually, I have to give him some credit... that burger looks incredibly threatening. Unless there's some kind of camera trick involved, it looks to be as wide as the dude's torso!



• This has to be one of the funniest things from The Onion I've seen in a while.



• Yesterday's post was inspired by my lone submission to cracked's reader contest. This time, they asked that we MS Paint what the current election would look like to a 5 year old. I only made one submission because I realized that I don't like to draw with a mouse, and I don't like MS Paint.
  
  
  
  And if I were to actually market the (fake) Terror Wrists product, I'd likely need to go on a Terror Wrist campaign. I'd set-up local Terror Wrist organizations, fan clubs if you will, which would carry out Terror Wrist activities.

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Shotgun blast of content 3: This time, it's personal

Every so often I have a bunch of little odd ends and thoughts I can't otherwise flesh out into a post. So, to fit several square pegs into a round hole...

• Looking over the site's statistics when I had my 100th post, I took note of what keywords were directing people to my site. A certain fair-haired forensics boss from the Miami police department is far away the biggest draw to this site, followed by queries of The Unwind.
  
  For those of you who got here by some odd query (like "philosophical questions like 'if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?'"), let me welcome you to The Unwind... We're always here to disappoint!



• I think I want to see what other odd keywords I can get to attract hapless individuals valued readers. When I can get people to come to The Unwind for extreme underwater basket weaving, I know I've got it made!



• That last bullet point contained a reference to one of my favorite web comics out there, Wasted Talent. Penned by Angela Melick, it's a very random outlook on events as seen through the eyes of a Canadian female engineer. Yes, Canadian female engineers are real, and they're pretty darn funny too.
  
  You may need to have been swimming in the deep end of these here internets to fully appreciate it, but I highly recommend you check it out.



• There's going to be a new animated Space Balls series on G4 later this month. I'm... surprisingly speechless.



• SOMEONE KILLED COOKIE MONSTER!

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A shotgun blast of content 2: Electric Boogaloo

Once again, I find myself splicing together a few ideas that wouldn't be postworthy separately.

1. I think I want to make a movie. I've had this idea for a movie mulling around my head for a while... I'd like to do a mock-documentary of a team of writers trying to write the next great comedy. Something in the style of The Office, one of my favorite shows on TV.
   
   This is a partial solicitation. While I have a bunch of ideas for this, I need people to actually play the parts. If you're interested, and in the Connecticut area, let me know. At this stage of the game, I'm flexible with the cast (having not written line 1 yet). Knowing who will be playing the parts will help me tailor each character to the personalities and strengths of the people playing them. I hope to start on the script sometime in the not-too-distant future.
   
   I remembered how much fun I had making the Bomber's commercial way back when, and am equally excited to give this a go. It may bomb, it may rock, but I'm going to have some fun with it.
   
   
2. On pain of online harassment (the worst kind of harassment!) I've been coerced to mention a co-worker's side project, The Musicfan Gallery. He takes great pride in it, gathering all photos he feels capture the essence of whatever artist is the subject of the photo. For legal reasons, he also asked me to explicitly mention that collecting these photos in no way violates any restraining orders said artists may or may not have against him.



3. Mr. Rogers popping and locking. Enough said.

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A shotgun blast of content

Fitness update:
Since posting my intentions about a month ago, things haven't gone as well as planned. I've been keeping up with the WiiFit, but getting to the gym has not been as regular as I would have liked. Also, I scrapped the WeightWatchers thing because I didn't have anyone to go with (originally planning on going with Girlfriend). In all, I'm weighing in at 299.4 pounds, roughly .5 pounds higher than I was about a month ago, according to WiiFit, which could be much worse.

The problem isn't that I'm not staying active, it's just I'm eating too much. As it turns out, I'm addicted to food. I need it as many as 3 times a day, and when I don't get my fix I experience withdrawals and eventually relapse. Every day is a struggle.

Odd Squad update:
One of my old buddies recently revived a project of theirs, The Ice Anvil, to review pretty much whatever tickles their (it's a team of 2) fancy. It's a biting and bizarre take on the best and worst that culture - and sub-culture - have to offer. I've found it to be a great read so far and hope that these guys can keep up their level of output, both in volume and quality.

Unwind update:
You can now subscribe to The Unwind via an RSS feed that is now up and running. Maybe. I think. You see, I've used RSS feeds in the past, but I've never created one before. Blogger appears to have made it happen with only a few clicks of the mouse.

If you are having difficulty subscribing, blame it on the "Jonathan only spent 5 minutes on it so he can get to sleep at a reasonable hour" excuse. Oh, and let me know so I can fix it.

Video update:
It may contain stronger language, it may require a basic understanding of Pokemon, but it made me laugh time and again today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9o5_W6hn9k

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