my.bicycle

( TMTOTRTS )

Calls to the Government Printing Office seeking comment were not returned yesterday. The office's one-paragraph directive listed the five pamphlets, with titles such as "Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure" and "Select Federal Assets Forfeiture Statutes," and instructed librarians to "withdraw these materials immediately and destroy all copies by any means to prevent disclosure of their content," according to a copy of the e-mail sent to the Boston Public Library and all other depository libraries. The directive concluded that " the Department of Justice has determined that these materials are for internal use only ." (via MeFi )

I've just received a new phone, and can no longer lay claim to being the only guy in Japan without a camera in his phone. I got the Sony-Ericsson A1402S . Makes me stupidly ecstatic to have a phone that was in Gizmodo less than two weeks ago . Bliss. O! Coming soon: a needless MoBlog, no doubt.

The Cat with Hands ( .mov ) is a creepy, beautifully executed folk tale, somewhat darker than most of Jim Henson's Storyteller fare.

Brian Wood , of comic artistry and GTA3 character design fame, has posted a link to a MIDI version of Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun . If you listen to the whole thing, it will leave your brow entirely furrowed.

Before moving to Japan, I sold my whole Warhammer 40k collection, in all its (variously) painted, unpainted, primed, and half-finished glory. Since then I occasionally get a jonesing for placing flocked trees and handmade building terrain across a table and going at it. Sometimes I make the mistake of following links to sites like France's Confrontation or the steampowered mech game, Warmachine , and suddenly my wallet seems in dire peril. [must... resist...] (thanks, Rennie!)

The title from one source said, "Batsuit leaked?" ( picture of suit ) which reminded me that Michael Keaton's batsuit had little plugs at the base of the ankle to drain out his sweat. This one's probably not much more comfortable. (via Tim X , initially) Update: Holy crap! The trailer is online ! Update deux: Corrected "angle" to "ankle" and wanted to draw attendion to my sbelling tendocies. Update trois: See news footage of the Batmobile in action.

Games are constantly getting more realistic in their graphics, but how about making realtime strategy gameplay more realistic ?

Did you know that The Wanamaker Organ is the largest of its kind in the world? Would you like to be a Friend of The Organ , or perhaps you're only interested in the Organ Products ?

PDF Creator : an Open Source utility to create PDFs from any Windows application. 7zip : free PKarchive/zip format application. Replaces nag-ware WinZip.

Japanese radio broadcast radio sucks. 10 years ago I brought an American CD-radio-casette deck over, and didn't care that the frequencies didn't match Japanese commercial radio wavelenghts. Radio is just halfhearted and lame. Cable radio, with a broader range as well as the ability to select exclusively within a given genre, was all the rage 10 years ago. It's still in use extensively for background music in shops and restaurants throughout Japan. At my desk at work, however, it's a different story. I've previously posted a number of interesting websites carrying free, alternative, indie, or mashup MP3's, but have neglected internet radio. Here are two picks of which I only learned today (via tokyopia forum ) : KCRW ( MP3 stream-link ) Netmusique Radio ( MP3 stream-link ), nicely provides meta-info for bands in the stream, so if you like what you hear, you can look it up pretty easily. Which makes things a little simpler than, say, trying to find out when...

Nintendo themes, remixed . (via waxy )

To clarify: Ringu was remade as The Ring . Next, Ju-On will be remade as The Grudge .

Insert Credit has this neat feature about replicating classic videogame sprite art into tangible bits using beads-as-pixels . A member of Personal collections , and also a Toybox Tribe member shared a few more shots of their obsession-level collection . While that collection is replete with retro coolness, check out these killer toys at Kid Robot for a more modern sense of kewl. (Update: check the photography and goods at ToyBox DX as well!) If you find yourself jonesing for any of the above, and then need to convince yourself that you're normal, really, not that bad at all, and the US$200 you spilt on anime DVDs last month is okay, just run a comparison of yourself with this crowd .

The Japanese commercial ( .wmv ) for the upcoming Tenchuu Kurenai game from From Software. That's Akebono, formerly the nation's top Sumo wrestler pretending to be a ninja. If they had worked in the distracting-cow-whistle-while-on-the-roof technique, this ad would be perfect . "Sugoi." Mario vs. Donkey Kong ("CM" link, lower-right corner): It seems the mushroom girls were chosen for their talent rather than assets . Is this game as much fun as it looks? It looks spiffy. Update: corn-u-copia

The movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder has trailers out now. It looks like they've extended it to include a "going-back-and-fixing-it" portion that I don't recall from the original story. Yay, Hollywood!

As announced at the Sandy Eggo Comic Con, Star Wars: Episode III's subtitle is (bum-bum-BUM!) " Revenge of the Sith ." Note that the logo is nearly identical to the "Return of the Jedi" logo from 1983, which previously had been titled " Revenge of the Jedi." If I could, I'd be deadpanning the camera again right now. (via coming soon.net )

I'm not sure if you can play this on LAN or if there's an easy way to stuff four people around a single PC and monitor, but the Mashed demo is out; the multiplayer game is a blast-and-a-half. There are several game types, and with no explanation of win-condition, it might take five minutes or so to suss the game out. It's worth it.

I bagged a Sony PSX today. This, after months of agonizing over it, researching other possible Personal Video Recorder options, and generally dragging my feet. In the end, presumed ease of use and the cheaper impact on the wallet won out over getting a cheap Windows or Linux box and a TV tuner card. I got the smaller one, the 160GB version, in the new silver color (default was white). According to the way Sony seems to be positioning it, a PSX is primarily a PS2, plus some other media-related stuff, for about 3 times what a PS2 goes for. A PSX, according to the spec sheet, is a DVD-R and DVD-RW recorder with authoring software featuring rudimentary editing and chapter definition and templates for menu creation, HDD Recorder with scheduling software and keyword-based show-catching, music library (if you want your CD's compressed to ATRAC, which I don't), HDD-recorded shows can be dubbed to DVD, photo library (if you own a Sony camera, which I don't), network-enabled game...

Hong Kong Phooey , reimagined along the Samurai Jack and Dragonball lines, is a Flash movie up at Comedy Central.

Ground Control : apparently to promote Ground Control 2, the first game is being given away, gratis. This won the Adrenaline Vault Seal of Excellence . (PC) Tribes : Same deal as Ground Control; with a new game coming out, everything prior in the series is now up for grabs for free. (PC) Castle Wolfenstein Enemy Territory : Based on the Quake3 engine, this is the standalone, multiplayer component of the lukewarm-received Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Some people swear it's the best multiplayer FPS around. I've been too focused on getting my demo-playing ass kicked in UT2k4 that I've not kicked this around the office yet. (PC and Linux) Underworld : Movie-licensed, multiplayer shooter. (PC) Sky Captain : Movie-licensed, somewhat rail-y flying shooter. (PC and Mac) Update: Anandtech forum has this list of free games as well. (via Joystiq )

Seaman ship - for peace: Japan Maritime Self Defense Force commercial . (via mistersleepless' journal )

DPS Film Roman, an IDT Entertainment company, and Rob Zombie, the multiplatinum musician and director of the cult-classic film House of 1000 Corpses , will produce an animated feature based on his Spookshow International comic book " El Superbeasto ." The story will follow the adventures of the titular crime-fighter, an over-the-hill masked wrestler who has more interest in strippers than adventure. Zombie will executive produce and write the story. IDT's Anchor Bay Entertainment will handle domestic video distribution. (Sheigh Crabtree)

Gamespot offers a new streaming video covering new features of a dear-to-my-heart project, WWE Day of Reckoning.

Ultimate eBay moment: arguably my generations' ultimate vehicle, the Knight Industries Two Thousand, is available for immediate purchase .

"The new phone books are here! The new phonebooks are here!" Okay, well maybe it's just new nVidia drivers . I wonder how this will affect my current FarCry play experience, now that the 1.2 patch is finally out (and installed, baby)... If anyone is curious, "tools" entries are things that I need at home but find at work, or vice-versa. So they go here until I suss out a way to synch home and work PC bookmarks on the fly, and easily. (via joystiq )

Cue the keening sad-type noises: Dead Rush , best described as GTA-meets-Resident-Evil, was one of the games that most excited me at E3. Now it's dead . And because Treyarch is internal to Activision, it likely will not become a Dead Red Revolver -style " back from the dead " success story. Which is ironic, considering the content.

Space 1999 Models (via the other michael )

Rick Berman, who has been shepherding the Star Trek film series , told SCI FI Wire that he has had "very, very early" talks with Star Trek: The Next Generation star and director Jonathan Frakes about a new Trek movie, but one that takes the franchise in an entirely new direction. "I spoke to Jonathan about a half an hour ago," Berman said in an interview July 20 at UPN's fall press preview in Los Angeles. "He's in Japan, and he's coming here [because] his film [Thunderbirds] is premiering Saturday here in Los Angeles. There are very, very early conversations going on about a film project. But they're so early that it's really kind of silly to talk about it now." Berman added that the movie would not center on the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, as have the last several movies. "The movie that we're having very early discussions about would have nothing to do with any of the characters that have ever existed on any of th...

If you've never followed the Fictionwise link in the (overly wide) sidebar, perhaps now's the time: they're offering five Hugo-nominated short stories for free for a limited time. They're offered without copyprotection, in a number of popular formats.

The most recent list of loan words to have crept into the Japanese language : Akauntabiritii (accountability) Inishiachibu (initiative) Kauntaapaato (counterpart) Gabanansu (governance) Konfarensu (conference) Konpuraiansu (compliance) Sapurai saido (supply side) Sukiru (skill) Sutansu (stance) Sutereotaipu (stereotype) Seefugaado (safeguard) Settobakku (setback) Soryuushon (solution) Tsuuru (tool) Dejitaru debaido (digital divide) Deforuto (default) Dokutorin (doctrine) Domesutikku baiorensu (domestic violence) Hazaado mappu (hazard map) Paburikku inborubumento (public involvement) Paburikku komento (public comment) Puraioritii (priority) Bureekusuruu (breakthrough) Purezenzu (presence) Furontia (frontier) Pootoforio (portfolio) Botorunekku (bottle neck) Manpawaa (man power) Misshonn (mission) Mobiritii (mobility) Yunibaasaru dezain (universal design) Riterashii (literacy) Roodo puraishingu (road pricing)

Warren Ellis uses his Mistersleepless LiveJournal to post fiction, occasionally . It's interesting to see the way other people have used the online journal format to tell their own stories. Alpha Dog and Day by Day each give a personal perspective on surviving in a world where the dead have risen, and seek to consume the remaining living people. (via comic book resources )

GameSpy is featuring the best and the worst of comicbook related games.

Grayson is a fan film covering the Boy Hostage's return to glory while trying to solve the death of his fallen mentor. The photography is interesting, the props and costumes compelling (except for Green Lantern, who appears to be sporting a 3/2mm full wetsuit in addition to an impractical mask), and the premise is intriguing. I would love to see the script that could tie all these shots together -- the entire Justice League and Adam West-era rogues' gallery shows up in the trailer. (via superhero hype )

Has anyone who reads this blog read " Roadside Picnic "? I'm really curious what the book is like, since it was an inspiration for the upcoming videogame "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl" and has already inspired a movie and an imaginary soundtrack (which is creepier than all get-out). While I'm on the topic, can anyone recommend a scary game? Update: Oh, hey. Looks like this tribute site has the book for download .

At first glance I assumed Snoop Dogg Boxing was a parody. It isn't . (via joystiq )

Audi is running a cool ad using Escher-like illusions.

Overall it's a bit long, but for the first minute or so, it is bunches of fun to watch " Dance, Voldo, dance !" (via tokyopia forums )

BATMAN sits perched on a gothic tower in a thunderstorm, hunched next to gargoyle as rain drips off cowl. Behind him lightning slices through blackness, incandescent. He stares up at a dark cloud-harbored sky, where the batsignal floats as if on water. BATMAN: [thinking] "If this is about the Joker again -- I swear..." BATMAN sails through COMMISIONER GORDON’S open window and stands, cape encompassing body like a robe, eyes glowing as a huge looming shadow dancing on the walls of the office. He turns and faces the Commisioner... BATMAN: "Don’t even fucking say it. This is SO the fucking Joker again, isn’t it?" The Dark Knight Adjourns

Comicology: Brian Bolland Interiew Odd to hear that Bolland uses a computer in his workup process. I'm not sure why, but I imagined him to be among the oldest of the Old Skool.

I've been tempted to install the latest RealPlayer for a month or two, as so many site are using RealMedia for their clips. Several times over the prior years I've installed RealPlayer, each time finding it excessively difficult to locate the link for their free player, and after finding it the damned thing tried to take over control of just about every form of media on the machine. Then it asked if I wanted to buy it, just about every day. It's not an uncommon problem . Yesterday I found Real Alternative , which is apparently included in the KL-coded pack . It allows playback of a slew of Real Media formats without installing the Real player. I watched clips offa Comedy Central for about an hour last night. What a blast.

Most co-workers know me as Adobe fan from way back in the day, having started with PhotoShop and Illustrator in their earliest incarnations. My fascination with their wondrous and consistent interfaces was legendary (until about PS 5.5, the version I still use, since 6.0 was slower and had arbitrary changes to the UI which a din'na like). Now I'm working with AfterEffects for promotional materials. So far I've found this series of basic tutorials and AE FreeMart , a blog which centers around AfterEffects, providing links to more tutorials and other inspirations . Anyone have additional pointers? Drop a comment or mail, please.

Famous Last Words in RPGs #56 - "I've been here before. There are no traps in this section."

I need to learn things about what a garden means in terms of a Japanese garden. It isn’t about grass or flowers, it’s about placement of stones in a space to represent things. The theme of Expo is nature and specifically this area in Japan, Nagoya, is all about water. Also, one of the other themes of Japanese gardens is time. There’s this 15th-century Zen master named Dogen who wrote a book called “Enlightenment Unfolds.” His central question is “Are mountains aware?” I thought this sounds like [NASA’s] Ames [Research Center in California], where I just was. They’re trying to put consciousness into these Mars rovers—train them as geologists, crack stuff open. The problem is with their sense of place; where they are and where they think they are is out of alignment often. I’m not usually where I think I am either. So being out here in the Rocky Mountains, I’m right now looking at this giant, giant rock, it’s kind of spooky. Laurie Anderson

As a fan of Delerium and This Mortal Coil, I am liking SWARF very much. They also have an Mperia presence , but only two songs, which is a bit sad. Must be contractual issues with their other label?

Atomic Weapons, Scientific Apparati, and Combat Robots: all at the Brotron Gallery . Between this and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow , we can all look back on our future in the present-tense.

The Artist's Statement at Brown Equals Terrorist is an engaging, though sad, account of the social chilling that has occurred in the time since 9/11. It is even more saddening then, that the Republicans broke the rules in order to "persuade" congresspeople to change their votes about the PATRIOT act's continuance .

Due to repeated incidents with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the number of downloads of Mozilla and Firefox have doubled . IE has recently lost 1% of its domininance, presumably primarily to Mozilla products, though this could also include Opera . I also wonder if the handheld browser market is also picking up, which would likely register as non-IE hits as well. As one who has switched to Firefox (Windows) and Safari (Mac OS X), I can attest that the change was a little strange at first, but in a short time I was completely loathe to touch IE again. It's that different. Then again, if security is the main impetus behind all these swappers, how about going the more overt route and switching to a more secure operating system ?

DISCLAIMER - these were found by doing a search using p2p programs. people share their own personal digital photos in their shared folders, i guess they put them there for friends or family to download or just select their whole My Documents folder as shared . There are stunning samples of p2p user's personal photos. I don't know if it's intentional, but commonly the juxtaposition is strikingly artistic. I know there are some bad photos of me out there, but now I don't have to feel as dorky , narcissistic , geeky , lonely , luckless , or lame . There are better representatives of each state available in this collection.

You can't publish things just because, you know, you've always published them. You don't keep a tumour in your head because, well, you've had it for years. THOR. No-one cares about THOR. No-one's ever cared about THOR. I wrote THOR. I wrote Thor in bed with a blonde woman wearing nothing but thighboots and opera gloves drawn by Mike Deodato. And still no-one cared about THOR. No-one's cared about THOR since Walt Simonson did the book. And what was the first thing Walt did? Got rid of Thor and replaced him with a horse from space. And the sales quadrupled. -- warren e. at "pulse"

Miike fans rejoice: Behold IZO . Warning: Most of Tokyo killed at swordpoint, and paranormal birthing rituals.

In case anyone was wondering how seriously advanced miniaturization is in Japan, Sony is producing nearly two-dimensional laptops .

Some people's Lego MOC projects inspire me to pull out the bricks and give it a shot; other people's projects are so accomplished and complex that they rob me of my will to try to build anything .

I've never really been interested in New York (except to remind some people that it was once "New Amsterdam"), but a project converting an old elevated train line into an elevated park would be something I would have to visit should I ever go.

Check out this impressive gallery of Japanese vending machines . So much stuff is automated in Japan, I have begun to fail to register some of them. The automated parking meter with wheel lock went right under my radar; I must have been too shocked by the cigarette, alcohol, and pr0n vending machines to notice.

Clone Bandits , an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod from Chris ' Demiurge Studios , got talked up in Penny-Arcade . It looks great! It's a finalist in the Make Something Unreal Contest . Congratulations, Chris!

The Dr. Yamashiro's family in the Yamashiro space archeology laboratory It lived peacefully with Takuya (speed racer), Shinko, and Takuji. Suddenly at one day, a mysterious cry came to hear it Takuya's ear. "My brother, brother come, my brother…" As for the shout, the Spider star where I lived is taken over by Professor MONSTER of TETSUJYUJIDAN, 400 years ago. It was a voice in GARIA(prince in the Spider star) which burnt to revenge. Only one person who hears the telepathy is in all space. It was proof which was able to become a strong man who was able to fight it against TETSUJYUJIDAN as Spiderman. GARIA succeeded in the reproduction as Spiderman by injecting the "Spider extract" into Takuya. Spiderman is a strong man who can unabashedly climb any building like the spider also in the iron tower. He manipulates spider's string and fights in the cause of justice. Knock down TETSUJYUJIDAN of badness of space! Spiderman ! (grammar, line brea...

Truly brilliant fakeumentary bits regarding a Mini-Cooper Transformer . The cg used is about as smooth and accomplished as Tetra Vaal . (roundabout from Scattershot )

Warren Ellis ' [BAD SIGNAL] mail list today mentioned mp3ria , an artist-centric music download service that operates on the BitPass micropayment system . I bought my first BitPass to pick up Joshua Ellis' Love Songs for Bastards , for US$3.5, a whole album with a good range of styles. The files they offer are MP3's (as the site's name would imply), no DRM, and up for use on virtually all playback devices, and as many devices as you'd like (unlike iTunes). Since then I've picked up some Deathboy stuff , and other tracks that were part of a promotional campaign, and a single from Joshua Ellis' upcoming album, Redwood City Station . You can check out most tracks as a streaming MP3 or in a little Flash player.

Akihabara becomes geek sex paradise : However, don't get take this as invitation, cautions Morikawa. 'They are not ImeCla girls (Image Clubs in which you can act out your fantasy in a situational setting as nurse-patient, teacher-student, commuters in packed train and so on). Nor is it a a 'no-pan' cafe (where mini-skirted waitresses with no panties serve customers). These shops at Akihabara are not in the sex business because for geeks, fantasizing is much more important than actually doing anything with girls .' Speak not of which you do not know.

Behold the power of bow-bicky-bow-bow .

Prior to Tribe.net , I was enjoying Tokyopia a lot. Many expats working in games in Japan shooting the keerap, and such. Unfortunately, the main page's articles were rarely changed, and the forums seemed stagnant from lack of participatory traffic. Tokyopia's just gone through a full redesign. Now any member can start a front-page article on their own, through functionality as simple as sending a phonecam pic to the blog, which then links the Comments field automatically to a robust message board system. Bliss! Update: From their picture selection, check out these Famicom cusions in a cramped game shop , and the lineup of GBA's that serves as my current desktop.

Game Boy Advance . Metroid. Overuse of the lens-flare filter. Chisato Morishita on all fours, in lycra. See how it all fits together in the Japanese commercial for Metroid Zero Mission .