Ha!

If you've ever bought a new camera, this video from Norway really puts things in perspective...

The video is for a classified ads site, Finn.no, and is one of a series of hysterical spots for people who buy new stuff with grand ambitions only to end up... err... falling a bit short...

The cat mascot for the site is ten buckets of awesome, and appears in videos of his own...

And, yes, SexyPus.no is a real site, but not so interactive as we were led to believe.

Back in the good ol' days where blogging actually mattered, I refused many an offer to host ads on Blogography (I still do... on those rare occasions somebody actually bothers to ask now-a-days). Not that I was turning down any massive dollar amounts or anything... I would have earned well under $100 a month... but the money wasn't the point. I simply did not want to have my entire blogging life revolve around driving clicks to my website.

Which is what you have to do in order to make ads worth it. Just ask the fine folks at TVBlend...

In order to find out the answer to their burning question, you have to click through to their website.

A.K.A. "clickbait."

Whereas Super Hero Hype has a different, arguably less douchey approach...

Super Hero Hype doesn't make you click through to get the answer, they try to create a post that will have you wanting to click through to get more than just "the answer." Kind of a big difference, though the end result is the same... if you're a fan of Constantine, you'll be clicking through to the site in order to get the deets about the fate of the show.

And while I prefer the Super Hero Hype approach which doesn't hold a gun to my head for a click-through, TV Blend's tactics don't bother me enough to stop following their newsfeed... I just don't click through as much as I would if they were a bit more creative in how they go about initiating it.

But lest you think Super Hero Hype isn't above allowing others to put douchey clickbait ads on their site. Well...

ZOMFG! WHAT DID SANDRA BULLOCK LIE ABOUT?!??

Who the hell cares?

A lot of people, apparently. Because this kind of clickbait is rampant on the internet. You can't escape it. Everywhere you look there's something UNBELIEVABLE and AMAZING that will LEAVE YOU SPEECHLESS... but it requires a click-through to reveal what it is.

In some cases it's more than figurative... you literally can't escape it. Because an increasing number of websites... "ZergNet" for example... spawn infinite new windows with every click so you never leave their site. You're trapped in a maze of clickbait from which few break free.

Until you fall asleep at the computer.

Or close your browser window.

Or die.

Which is the only true escape from clickbait once you're on the internet.

Which reminds me... DID YOU KNOW THAT THESE COMMON HOUSEHOLD ITEMS COULD KILL YOU?!?

Huh.

I had a great idea for a post today, but had forgotten what it was by the time I sat down to actually write it.

If that's not an excuse for a meme, I don't know what is...

1. What's your favorite candle scent? Vanilla.
2. What female celebrity do you wish was your sister? Sigourney Weaver.
3. What male celebrity do you wish was your brother? Samuel L. Jackson.
4. How old do you think you'll be when you get married? One billion.
5. Do you know a hoarder? Nope.
6. Can you do a split? Oh hell no.
7. How old were you when you learned how to ride a bike? I have no idea, but it was fairly young.
8. How many oceans have you swam in? Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans... so, three I guess.
9. How many countries have you been to? Fifty-One... including this one.
10. Is anyone in your family in the army? No.
11. What would you name your daughter if you had one? Olive.
12. What would you name your son if you had one? Jake.
13. What's the worst grade you got on a test? F.
14. What was your favorite TV show when you were a child? Oooh... that's a toughie. Knight Rider? Or perhaps The Six Million Dollar Man? Oh... I know... MANIMAL! Heh.
15. What did you dress up as on Halloween when you were eight? No clue. Probably a robot or something.
16. Have you read any of the Harry Potter, Hunger Games or Twilight series? I tried but couldn't really get into Harry Potter or Hunger Games. And no, I haven't touched the Twilight crap.
17. Would you rather have an American accent or a British accent? British!
18. Did your mother go to college? No. She went to the Navy.
19. Are your grandparents still married? I only have one grandmother left, so... no.
20. Have you ever taken karate lessons? No.
21. Do you know who Kermit the frog is? WTF? Of course I do.
22. What's the first amusement park you've been to? Disneyland.
23. What language, besides your native language, would you like to be fluent in? Japanese (again) or Italian.
24. Do you spell the color as grey or gray? I prefer "grey" but switch it up from time to time.
25. Is your father bald? Completely? No.
26. Do you know triplets? No.
27. Do you prefer Titanic or The Notebook? Oh gawd... Titanic, I guess.
28. Have you ever had Indian food? Many, many times. I love the stuff.
29. What's the name of your favorite restaurant? Alfredo alla Scrofa in Rome.
30. Have you ever been to Olive Garden? Yes.
31. Do you belong to any warehouse stores (Costco, BJ's, etc.)? Just Costco.
32. What would your parents have named you if you were the opposite gender? I have no idea.
33. If you have a nickname, what is it? Don't have one.
34. Who's your favorite person in the world? I couldn't choose between my family and friends, so I'll say Betty White.
35. Would you rather live in a rural area or in the suburbs? Neither... give me the city.
36. Can you whistle? No.
37. Do you sleep with a nightlight? No.
38. Do you eat breakfast every morning? No. Practically never.
39. Do you take any pills or medication daily? No.
40. What medical conditions do you have? That's a bit complicated... though it could best be described as a side-effect to the cure for a side-effect that I got from taking a prescribed drug when I was younger.
41. How many times have you been to the hospital? For myself? Once that I know of (outside of being born in one). As a vistor? Dozens.
42. Have you ever seen Finding Nemo? Of course.
43. Where do you buy your jeans? Online.
44. What's the last compliment you got? I honestly don't know.
45. Do you usually remember your dreams in the morning? I don't dream. At least not how I understand other people dream.
46. What flavor tea do you enjoy? Sleepy-Time Tea.
47. How many pairs of shoes do you currently own? Eight.
48. What religion will you raise your children to practice? If I were to ever have kids? None. They can grow up and decide for themselves what religion works for them... if any.
49. How old were you when you found out that Santa wasn't real? HOLY SHIT! SANTA ISN'T REAL?!?
50. Why do you have a tumblr? I have no idea. It's not like I ever use it.

Most years I do a round-up of my favorite April Fools jokes running online.

This year everybody was eclipsed by the greatest prank of them all... Pac Man Mode on Google Maps! Now you can play Pac Man next to your house or on famous streets around the world!

Like Times Square...

Heaven only knows how long this will last, so get it while you can.

   
UPDATE: Though, I have to say, this was pretty darn amazing too...

LOVE YOU, BOB BARKER!

I'm going to leave this bit of awesomeness right here...

Not enough for you? Whitney Avalon has you covered...

Hello... FRIDAY!

Oh the things you stumble upon on these here internets...

DO MY BIDDING, HUMAN!

A couple years ago, I pledged $58 to a Kickstarter project by Peter Molyneux's "22 Cans" so they could complete a new game called Godus. It was to be inspired by the game Populous, which is one of my favorite computer games of all time. In it, you are playing a "god" who uses their ever-escalating abilities to control the lives of your in-game "followers."

At first, things were good. 22 Cans provided regular updates, often videos with Peter Molyneux himself. As the weeks turned into months, I was quite pleased to follow along with their progress, and thought everything was coming along beautifully. When the beta was released, I played around with it for a while... but didn't have time to devote to something that was still pretty rough. Eventually I deleted the game and thought I'd wait until it was finished.

But it hasn;t been finished. They're still working on it.

Nevertheless, I wanted to see what was happening with the $58 I paid, so I downloaded the Mac and iPhone versions to see what was happening.

As expected, the game looks beautiful. I love the design aesthetic, and am very impressed with how things are working...

The game is also kind of touching, as using your god powers can have terrible consequences for your followers... like when you destroy somebody's home so you can clear the land for bigger and better things...

Good stuff.

Untill...

Things eventually turn to shit.

Because Peter Molyneux and 22 Cans aren't creating a complete game. They're building a half-baked piece of shit that contains "in-game purchases." Yes, the game is free to download (thanks to the money I and a lot of other people donated) but, in order to get the most out of it, you have to pay real money to get ahead. Dubbed "freemium" games, these horrendous blights on gamers are fucking awful because you don't own the whole game. In order to play the way it was meant to be played, you have to keep paying for it. And paying and paying and paying...

In Godus you're buying gems. The gems can then be exchanged for things like "follower flags" that increase the happiness of your followers. Because if your followers aren't happy, they'll leave. You can also buy things you need to keep the game moving... like wheat. Because if you don't buy it, you'll be waiting days to make progress and keep playing.

I'm sure Molyneux will argue that you don't have to keep paying extra money... but he'd be full of shit. Because any time you try to do anything where you don't have enough power, Godus will literally keep wagging an invitation for you to buy more gems in the corner of the screen...

And it's annoying as shit, as you might imagine.

So how do I feel after paying $58 for a complete game and getting this bullshit?

Betrayed. Lied to. And very, very angry.

I don't buy "freemium" games. They're moronic crap and I have no interest in being jerked around like this. If 22 Cans had been honest from the beginning with their intent to nickel-and-dime their supporters, I would have never donated the money.

So lesson learned. Guess I won't be Kickstarting games any more.

Jesus, what assholes.

UPDATE: And it just keeps getting better. Godus requires you to be online while playing. If you don't have internet access, you don't play. If you do have internet access, but Godus servers are down, you don't play either...

It's almost comical just how shitty this app is. I've reset my iPhone more times since installing Godus than I have in all the years since I bought my first iPhone. So much for Apple's Editor Choice awards meaning a damn thing.

Back in the olden days there was an activity called blogging. This was where people wanting to share their experiences, knowledge, and observations would create a website and, using a content management system, would post such experiences, knowledge, and observations for all the world to see.

Blogging was not always easy. Especially if you were a blogger that blogged every day. Because, unless you're an astronaut or Hugh Hefner, eventually you run out of blog-worthy things to blog about.

Enter memes.

In order to generate ideas for blog content, bloggers started developing quizzes, challenges, questionnaires, and all kinds of other idea-generating material to blog about. Not everybody appreciated memes... many people downright abhorred them... but when it's 11:55pm and you're desperate for something to blog about, memes could be your best friend.

One of the most popular meme generators on the internet back in the day was The Friday 5. Every Friday they would post five questions for you to answer in a blog post, which was an easy way to get it over with and move on to your weekend. Unfortunately The Friday Five was eventually discontinued, and there were many sad pandas across the blogosphere.

And so I decided to do something about it.

I created a new Friday meme generator and called it FridayQ.

It ran a little over a year from June 4th, 2004 until I got tired of doing it and shut it down on July 22, 2005.

For years after it died, the FridayQ lived on as hand-coded pages here at Blogography. I never deleted them because I had a lot of blog posts that referenced FridayQ and I didn't want to go back and have to change 52+ entries. Alas, when I converted my blog to WordPress back in February all the FridayQ pages were lost and, for reasons unknown, were never backed up. After 8 years, 6 months, and 22 days, the FridayQ was finally dead for good.

Until...

Yesterday I was updating the web code for my blog stats and noticed that somebody was trying to reach FridayQ. This got me curious as to how many other searches it was getting, so I checked. Turns out there were dozens of them throughout the year. Mostly from my own blog, but there were other surviving blogs out there still linking to the site as well.

Maybe I should look into restoring FridayQ then?

And so this morning I did just that.

I visited the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see what I could recover. None of the graphics were there, but all of the pages had been saved. Sure, the archives were out of date by a few months, but that was an easy fix. All I had to do was go through my Blogography archives and copy the original questions. Easy.

But what about the missing graphics?

Time to pull all my old hard drives out of storage.

Surprisingly, every drive I tried actually worked. And I found a backup of the FridayQ images on my fifth drive...

Good thing I'm a packrat who doesn't throw old tech away, huh?

I uploaded the pages to Blogography, updated all the links, and voilà... FridayQ is served!

You can visit them for yourself by clicking here.

If you want to read all my crazy answers, you can check out my "meme" archive for 2004 and 2005. They're solid gold, people. Solid gold.

And now I just need to decide what to do with this box of old hard drives. They're probably not going to stay working forever. Hell, half of them require a FireWire port which doesn't even exist anymore (thankfully I have a FireWire to Thunderbolt converter!). Two of them are SCSI drives that would require pulling one of my old Macs with a SCSI interface out of storage to read. Hmmm... perhaps I should back them up to the cloud or transfer them to modern hard drives or something? They're all ridiculously small by today's storage standards... I could probably fit all of them on a single terabyte external drive no problem.

Blergh. One more thing added to my list that I don't have time for.

Like blogging every day. =sigh=

For years now, all my email has been forwarded to a webmail account at SpamCop, a spam filtering service. While not a perfect solution, this drastically reduced the amount of spam I had to deal with, so I accepted it as a necessary evil.

But then SpamCop announced that they were discontinuing all their webmail accounts come September.

Since I had paid $30 for a year of service back in May, I was understandably upset. I had only received 1/3 of what I paid for. Under the terms I signed up with, I was entitled to a refund...

So I wrote to SpamCop Support and requested I get $20 of my payment returned.

Their reply? "I'm sorry but there are no refunds."

I've written back twice explaining that they shouldn't have promised refunds if there were no refunds, and I want my money back, but they've been ignoring me. None of my emails have been replied to.

Really?

Look, this is not about the $20.

This is entirely about living up to your promises... something that is increasingly rare now-a-days, and I'm just sick of it. Nobody seems to give a shit about living up to their word anymore. Integrity? Honesty? Ethics? Responsibility? Meh. Who cares? Yeah, I took your money with the promise of providing a service, but I don't feel like providing that service any more, so too bad! And no, I won't be giving you an explanation, And yes, I'm keeping your money.

Sorry!

My life would be so much easier if I could just abandon any sense of integrity, honesty, ethics, and responsibility. Sadly, I was raised better than that, so now I'm stuck in a world where possessing such qualities... and expecting such qualities in others... is a detriment.

To the tune of $20.

And my trust.

Well, today didn't go as planned.

Not that this is in any way surprising.

In other news?

Crap.