“Dear Friend, congratulations. You have just purchased the finest air guitar available – a Philson. Each Philson Air Guitar is hand-crafted in a small workshop in Maine from the highest quality oxygen in the United States.” – Learn to play the air guitar with R. “Bud” Philson’s Easy Air Guitar, Volume One! (Somewhat along the lines of yesterday’s refusal to rap in any fashion, I also play sucky air guitar. In fact, my musical experience is pretty much limited to piano lessons in grade five and singing off-key really, really loudly to the cats, which, even though they’re too nice to say anything, I think is starting to irritate them.)

The above link was found at Hair Band Central, where September is Ted Nugent month. Yay?

“Dr. Cunning has been known by many as ‘The Dentist to the Stars,’ but it was not until recently that that he acquired the nickname ‘Rapper Dentist Daddy‘!”. Umm.. word. I think. (I was going to create some kind of rhyming monstrosity for this entry, but then I decided that the last thing you delightful readers need on Wednesday morning is a bad Canadian girl rap… )

I know most of y’all have probably explored lileks.com at your leisure, and well you should, but I stumbled upon this photo during a revisit, and it makes me so darned happy I had to share it with you all. And, yes, my love for Jack Lord is eternal.. thanks for asking.

I’m sure everybody has their own personal list of the silliest representations of computer use in movies, but I have a new favourite after watching Superman III this weekend (it was Sunday afternoon, okay? It was either that, or watching Cocoon, and I live in a proudly Guttenberg-free environment): Richard Pryor, computer programmer “genius”, hacks into the system and syphons profits by sitting down at a terminal and typing something like, “Computer, please steal this money, and put it into my account.”

Wow! Why didn’t I think of that? Computer, please create compelling content for my website so everyone will know of me and I’ll become rich and rose petals will fall from the sky wherever I walk. Hello? Computer?

The Opera Hater’s Guide to Opera — my first thought when I saw this link was, “But, how could anyone hate Opera!? It’s multi-platform, has cool mouse gesture commands, and adequetly renders complicated tables and DHTML!” Then I realized that I need to get away from the computer more.

I happened to catch an episode of BattleBots recently, and I really like that new, spinning blades of death design that seems popular with all the cool kids (as opposed to the wedge-shaped look that was all the rage a couple of years ago). For the intimidation factor alone, though, you just can’t beat OverKill — he’ll kick robot butt, and still be able to make a delightful coleslaw after. (Looking for details on your favourite warrior bot? Try this Robot Database, which lets you search by weapon, amongst other attributes.)

Of course, not one hour after I posted PithCode yesterday I was struck with a new idea for template organization… I guess v0.91 is on it’s way. Ahem.

Tips and tricks for Windows XP for those of us with snazzy new operating systems. I am so one-three-three-seven.

After eventually tiring of constantly sucking at Marble Madness (see previous entry), I went in search of more retro gaming fun and came across this promising Java-based version of Milton Bradley’s Simon (“Can’t.. keep up.. with flashing lights.. brain.. melting..”). Of course, it doesn’t seem to work with the afore-mentioned snazzy new operating system. Damn my over-enthusiastic software-installin’ hide!

A Beginner’s Guide to ‘The Prisoner’ — certain members of the Pith Compound who are not me have discovered that ‘The Prisoner’ is now regularly on television, and this is my attempt to keep up with the trends. The primer didn’t answer the big, nagging question, though: What is up with that weird bicycle symbol, people? Seriously. It’s wack.

I was messing around with the code behind Pith last week, trying to make it more easily transferable to different projects, and on a whim I decided to release the results: It’s PithCode, v.0.9. Includes main page, archives, and simple administration system, ready for PHP and MySQL-enabled hosts. Geeky!

R.I.P. Mr. Dressup. Crap.. can there be only good news for the rest of this week? Please?