Month: December 2003

December 5, 2003 /

Do you, like any right-minded American, often find yourself daydreaming of the near-erotic qualities of homemade confectionery? Do you loathe the undead? In an attack simulation, would you be one of the fork-wielding souls who turned to spit your fury full in the gibbering face of the forces of Baron Samedi?

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December 4, 2003 /

I lived through my exams, and I did get an A in the other class, so BAM: school is done for Brendan. This is still weird! I don’t have classes for like a month!

In case you’re still in classes and are wondering if that was intended to make you hate me: yes. Also, “[redacted].” (Hey, [redacted]! Get a blog!)

December 3, 2003 /

(I almost forgot this, pokéblogged yesterday morning at 1106 hrs:)

We have a guest lecturer in AI today–one of the students in the class, who may be the most Mediterranean person I’ve ever met. His opening:

“Hello everybody. My name is Andreas. I am here today to talk about the topic of: rowboats.“

“Robots,” actually. Still the coolest lecture intro ever.

December 1, 2003 /

What’s cool is Penny Arcade. I don’t know, maybe you’re a webcomic vet and they’re so four years ago, but you can’t deny that they are Penny Arcade, and they’ve never dropped the ball on that.

What’s even cooler, though, is their new and brilliant use of their (mind-boggling) power for good: Child’s Play, an open question to 150,000 people as to whether they can step up and buy toys for sick kids. The answer is, apparently, a resounding yes.

I read an interview with Marc Andreessen, a few years ago, in which he was asked what he (as a dotcom millionaire) was planning on giving back, charitywise. His slightly annoyed response was that philanthropy was generally the province of older, more powerful investors–that the young millionaire was a new breed, and that it’d be better to wait until he had retired and “could really do some good.”

I kind of agreed with that, when I read it, and when everybody crashed a year or so later, his caution made sense (it’d have been kind of harsh to give a charity instant-worthless stock). Child’s Play is kind of a boot to the head, though: these two guys aren’t even thirty, and they’re not millionaires, but they’re turning interweb popularity into a distinct and tangible force for social good.