Link roundup

1. You can read Neil Gaiman's excellent short story, The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains.

2. Halekulani Coconut Cake recipe. (My second favorite hotel on Oahu.)

3. Laker Andrew Bynum was photographed parking across two disabled parking spots in a largely empty lot.

Link roundup

1. 9% of those special flashlights for the Warren Ellis/Berg SVK comic were broken on arrival.

2. FYI, if you plan on visiting Los Angles, do not stay in a hotel downtown.

3. Book giveaway.

Link roundup

1. Why doesn't this woman get more press? "Hooters Waitress-Turned-Lawmaker Admits to Carving Initials Into Assembly Desk."

2. An estimate of how much it costs to attend Hogwarts.

3. Gizmodo's list of essential Spotify tools. (I've only played with it briefly, but so far I don't see why it's so much better than Last.fm.)

Link roundup

1. Bear beats tiger. Via.

2. Bees beat elephants.

3. Yiddish beats moron.

Link roundup

1. "The highest-paid state employee in California last year, a prison surgeon who took home $777,423, has a history of mental illness, was fired once for alleged incompetence and has not been allowed to treat an inmate for six years because medical supervisors don't trust his clinical skills." Via.

2. At Laughing Squid: Pranksters Dump Paint on Berlin Intersection, Cars Create Street Art; The Soft City, A Bouncy Street Installation.

3. Tilt shift traffic jam wallpaper. Via.

Link roundup

1. News Corp does enough terrible things that you shouldn't have to make up claims.

2. Google's first social network Orkut was briefly very popular in Finland:

Orkut [the Google engineer who built orkut] is Turkish, so we had no idea when we launched it that in Finland evidently that same word means “multiple sexual climaxes.” When people saw a product called orkut, they thought it was a dating service or sex site, and it took off quickly. As soon as they saw what it actually was, interest cooled somewhat.

3. To take a screenshot on an iPhone, hold down the lock button and the home button at the same time for about one second until the screen flashes white. Via.

Link roundup

1. Gizmodo's list of best laptops. You can find the cheap choice at eBay.

2. Free and pretty fun Cowboys and Aliens shooter. Via.

3. A look at the entries in Red Bull’s annual Red Bull Creation event.

4. The WSJ calls the home of the Cincinnati Bengals "one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government" Via.

5. It's $6 off t-shirts at Zazzle with the code ZBDAYTSHIRTS. I recommend Miskatonic University, Vonster, and my own store.

Link roundup

1. Some useful commentary about the current federal budget negotiations. (I tend to discount any commentary that presumes that Obama and his aides are stupid.)

2. It's going to be so hot in Qatar during the World Cup that they might play three 30 minute periods instead of two 45 minute halves. That's right, the games were awarded to a country where playing the game by the established rules will likely be impossible.

3. There's no self service gas stations in New Jersey? All gas has to be pumped by an attendant? In Los Angeles you almost never see full service advertised.

Link roundup

1. World of Warcraft is apparently now free to play (but you can't pass level 20). I think I'll give it a try to prepare for The Old Republic. Can anyone recommend a class? (Something cool and straightforward.)

2. "Chinese government photoshop disaster goes viral."

3. Jackasses (NSFW).

Link roundup

1. A claim that Adobe is paying for text links. Via.

2. "A third Los Angeles building inspector has been fired in a corruption probe."

3. The Bad Deal is devoted to pointing out dumb deals at Groupon and other daily deal sites. Via.

Link roundup

1. io9 interviewed Neil Gaiman about American Gods (only interesting if you've read the book, or are currently rereading it, like me). He's going to be interviewed in about one hour and it's going to be livestreamed.

2. New, cheaper than normal Navy ships have serious design flaw.

3. More negative comments on the new resin "Finecast" miniatures from Games Workshop. Via.

*Learn how to paint miniatures with these tutorials at Toycutter.

Link roundup

1. Julie Taymor blaming others for the failure of the Spider-Man musical:

“It’s very scary if people are going more towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show,” said Ms. Taymor, a Tony Award-winning director of “The Lion King” and other stage works and films. “Shakespeare would have been appalled. Forget about it. It would be impossible to have these works come out because there’s always something that people don’t like.”

Because everyone knows of how respectful audiences were in Shakespeare's time.

2. Idoru used to promote a Japanese ice cream. Here's the commercial itself. Via.

3. Transformers: Turn Off the Moon kid's meal toys at Burger King.

4. I like the muted colors on this blog layout. Even the icons look like they were doodled in ink.

5. For Californians, one pundit's analysis of the current budget battle.

*Buy Happy Meal toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. I first mentioned this years ago, but The Edge lost a big vote in his efforts to build a big compound in Malibu.

2. Ann Althouse: "A middle-aged politician sitting at home masturbating because young women thought he was cool when he yelled at that guy that one time is not macho."

3. Member of Canada's national water polo team (and possible Olympian) identified as Vancouver rioter.

Grantland already down

The articles at Grantland have been solid so far, but something's gone wrong at the site:



It's certainly being noticed at Twitter:



But the people running the site don't seem to have noticed yet.

Link roundup

1. Jimmy Kimmel has a great article at Grantland about his dad. Here's a taste:

Sun Devil Stadium was about half full. My Dad and I were in Dave's seats. Between the first and second quarters, the PA announcer called out a section, a row number, and a seat. Whoever was in the seat they picked would get a chance to kick a field goal for a sum of money I can't recall. We were nowhere near the winning section, so we paid little attention to the contest. The game resumed. At halftime, we were not among those in line for overpriced beer or a five-dollar hot dog. "That's what they want you to eat!" We remained in our seats. The announcer said something to the effect of "Hey, Cardinals fans — it's time for the Fan Field Goal challenge. Today's fan is from Section 43, Row H, Seat 5 — and let's welcome her now!"

There was some cheering, not much — mostly, I'd guess, from Section 43. The first thing that caught my eye was the dog walking across the field. A German shepherd. The next thing I noticed was a man who looked like a Cardinals team representative slowly leading an older woman by the hand. And then I knew the woman was blind. And the stadium fell silent.

My father looked at me with the same threatening eyes I'd later turn on my 5-year-old son when he spotted a very fat man in the supermarket and started to point. "Don't say a word," they told me. I didn't. Back to the action. At about the 15-yard line, a boy placed a football on a tee. Slowly, very slowly, the team representative led the woman to the ball, allowing her to "feel" it with her foot. I couldn't even begin to process what was happening. A BLIND WOMAN was going to try to KICK A FIELD GOAL in an NFL STADIUM! "Good for her!" you might be thinking, "Now, there's a woman who refuses to let her disability get the best of her!" And, in retrospect, I agree, but at the time my brain felt like it was loaded with Pop Rocks.

The crowd remained frozen. Still holding her hand, the team rep cautiously backed the sightless woman five steps away from the ball. It was happening. No one made a sound. The only relaxed person in the stadium was a dog, which was now lounging on the turf. "And here we go!" the PA announcer boomed.

2. Pretty cute - - when you transfer DSiWare games to the 3DS, Pikmin do the heavy lifting.

3. "A Chinese firm has been 'secretly' copying an entire UNESCO-listed village in Austria, called Hallstatt."

*Buy Pikmin toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. NY Times' review of the first Chrome notebook:

How well does Google’s newfangled concept hold up in the real world?

Unfortunately, not very well.

It's ludicrously expensive considering its shortcomings.

2. Did you see earlier this week that a PR company promised to punish sites running negative video game reviews? I couldn't help but think of it in reading the uselessly contradictory conclusion to Destructoid's review of Alice: Madness Returns:

In spite of tedium and technical faults, I quite enjoyed Alice: Madness Returns, which says quite a bit for the extraordinary world McGee has created from the blueprint of Caroll's original tales. Fans of the original Alice find plenty of here to love, and will certainly want to return to Wonderland to work towards a satisfying narrative conclusion. For others, putting up with the game's monotonous design may prove to be a personal spiral into madness they may want to avoid.

UPDATE: To be fair, as the commenter points out, Destructoid gave Duke Nukem a terrible review.

3. There's a theme park in Las Vegas where you can operate excavators and other machinery. But packages start at $400 and no kids under 14, so I can't imagine it lasting.

Desperate advertising by McDonald's

McDonald's employees advertising outside of a Sonic in Connecticut.