Sith Happens. Dude, I'll bet it's especially Sithy when Sith happens to Vader and he's gotta take off the entire bottom half of a life support system to relieve himself. I thought I'd experienced the worst of the worst myself when I ate a bad fish taco during a SCUBA trip. 60 feet under, wearing a full-body wetsuit, and the only thing waiting for me at the surface was the head on a 30-foot dive boat. Sith Happens.
And here's a toilet decal to remind you of it, and maybe help you to appreciate all the times you do make it to the toilet without losing your Sith.
The Sith Happens decal measures 8" tall x 8.2" wide, though maker Remarkable Walls notes that custom sizes are available should your toilet seat require one.
I like to think of CSS as a love language. If written well, it can be as lovely as poetry. There are rules, semantics and, like love itself, it can be communicated in many ways. Consider the variety of options we have to write black in CSS:
#000000
#000
rgb(0, 0, 0)
hsla(360, 100%, 0%, 1)
black
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I thought it would be fun to push this concept a little further with the many ways we can make hearts in HTML & CSS.
A Plain ol' Background Image
We can call an image of a heart and set it as the background of an element.
Icon fonts got pummeled in a cage match with inline SVG, but they still do the trick here. We would need our heart icon in various font file formats and apply it using @font-face, but we'll use the We Love Icon Fonts site to generate that for us.
Holy shit, this is the big 500th comic! How did we ever get to this point? I should probably say a few words, but I drew a bunch of pictures already.... aren't they worth like 1000 or something?
Thank you so much to everyone who follows me, reads my comic, and enjoys my work. I can't express how much I appreciate it. While my classmates in school aspired to becoming lawyers, doctors, and presidents, I dreamed of writing dick jokes for a living. And here I am, living it. I couldn't have done it without all the love and support.
Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker Giveaway Winner
Congratulations to Jason S. of Whitefish Bay, WI, winner of the Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker. Thanks to all entrants, and be sure to check the Dude homepage or Dude Giveaways section for your chance to enter our latest prize drawing.
Take a moment and think about 730 square inches of smoked meat. Mmmmm, not a bad thought. Way nicer than 2015 tax returns. And with Masterbuilt's Electric Digital Smoker, cooking the meat up and sliding it onto your plate doesn't require a whole lot more effort than envisioning it there.
The 30" smoker has 4 interior racks and space to smoke enough ham, fish, sausage, chicken, or jerky for extra-large crowds, or you and your friend Cornelius' extra-large appetites. Its digital top controller sets perfect slow-cooking temperatures between 100 and 275 degrees F. Or, if you don't feel like getting out of your patio lounger (or off the couch in the living room) this Masterbuilt masterpiece also has a pushbutton remote control able to turn the smoker on / off and set the temperature from up to 100' away.
During cooking you'll be able to see your meat getting smoked up through the unit's clear front panel, and a loader on the side of the smoker facilitates adding wood chips without opening the door. Masterbuilt has also added a removable water pan for moistening and infusing food with your favorite juice, vinegar, beer, or whiskey. An adjustable air damper enables further tweaking, allowing more or less smoke to escape based on your preferred robustness of smoky flavor.
Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker Giveaway Entry Instructions
To register, click here and fill out the Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker Giveaway entry form. Or, if you're already a member of DudeIWantThat.com, when the magic entry form button appears, just click it to enter.
Giveaway prize includes: 1 x Black 30" Masterbuilt Digital Electric Smoker with top and RF controller, and front window. retail value is $349.95.
The Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker Giveaway entry period is open through 11:59 p.m. ET on February 21, 2016. Our drawn winner will be contacted by email within 48 hours of the entry period's conclusion, and will have 12 hours to respond and claim his/her prize. (Should we not hear back from a drawn winner in the specified time period, a new winner will be drawn and contacted.)
Winner should allow 3 to 4 weeks for prize delivery.
Once winners are drawn and confirmed, they will be announced above.
This giveaway is open to US residents only.
Get a Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker Now
Masterbuilt is smoking up Amazon with a few different models of slow heat meat machines. Choose from smokers with or without front viewing panels, with top or front controls, and sets that include remote thermometers or grill sets. They also have both Black and Stainless Steel options. Check them all out here.
Dude Giveaway Vendor Participation
Are you an online retailer with a Dudeworthy product you'd like to grace upon our readers? Consider a Dude Giveaway partnership! Click here for details on prerequisites, giveaway procedures, and our contact information.
The word “interactive” tends to get taken for granted in gaming, but we seldom think about what it actually means. Or, more importantly, what it could mean. Stories, for example, have always been a large part of games, but usually the story is purely in service of those interactive parts.
Today, Activision is a games publisher mostly interested in gigantic hits: Call of Duty, Destiny, Skylanders, and World of Warcraft are the pillars of its business, and they fit very neatly into what our notions of what a video game can be in 2016. Three decades ago, back when those notions weren't as rigid, Activision published an interactive novel, and it didn't even seem that strange.
Portal: an Interactive Novel was exactly what the title suggests. Published in 1986, it wasn’t a game as we think of one today, but a story the user helped reveal, and a totally unique approach to melding interactivity and storytelling.
In a regular novel, the reader plays a passive role. They simply take in the information presented, but in Portal the story is a mystery that the reader (or player) uncovers by combing through a series of databases. You take the role of an astronaut who has returned home after a hundred year mission to find Earth abandoned.
Whole cities stand silent, nature has overtaken technology, and humans are nowhere to be found. Your only link to the past is a single terminal, barely functioning, that links you to what’s left of this future world’s version of the World Wide Web. Using a rather Windows-like, icon-based interface (impressive in the mid-80s), you moved a cursor around the screen to select from database categories like Geographical, History, Medical, Military, PsiLink, and SciTech.
At first, there’s almost nothing there, but perusing the system soon reveals something else. Or, more specifically, someone else. Lost in the system, an AI named Homer reaches out to you. He’s not a typical artificial construct though. True to his name, Homer is a story telling AI, with only fragments of his memory intact and a desperate desire to unravel the past. Homer becomes your invaluable ally in the search for the truth. He digs through the system, unlocking new data that you must go through, and with each new file uncovered, Homer begins constructing the story of how the world ended.
Image: Activision
Portal was written by Rob Swigart, an aspiring novelist in his early 40s at the time, who was very interested in how technology could evolve and enhance the art of storytelling.
“I'd been thinking about (the idea) since I bought my first computer in 1976,” Swigart told me over chat. “It seemed like an interesting medium for storytelling back then—the screen as a kind of portal into a fictional world. Point and click and text adventure games were very much linear forms of storytelling as well, but Portal was different from anything else really.
“I was thinking about the ways we used computers back then (before graphics, Photoshop, music, etc). Word Processing, spreadsheets, and databases. The first two didn't seem particularly amenable to creating a story, so I thought creating a database that gradually filled in as you went through would work. I think it did.”
Swigart was a new, but not unknown commodity to Activision, which had first hired him to write a manual for a music program. “I gave the producer a copy of my first novel and he asked me if I had ever considered doing a game. In fact, I had,” Swigart said. “We discussed it and he sold it to the company.
“I thought the screen would make a great platform. I just loved the experiment. I was really interested in how it might be possible to do such a story, and tried to create a conceit that made it work (abandoned terminals, deserted world, AI, etc).”
The story is, ultimately, about a young man named Peter Devore—a prodigal, psychic, and, eventual prophet—who acts as the catalyst and means for humanity’s escape from what, on the surface, seems like a utopian society. Like all paradises, however, this new world has a much darker undertone of dissatisfaction and discontent. Terrorist attacks are rampant, a new form of war emerges, and the sleek, uniform exterior shine of a perfect society is rapidly falling apart.
Devore’s mysterious powers and following mark him as an enemy of the State, and he finds himself on the run. The story moves from his hometown in Missouri to the barren landscape of Antarctica, and beyond (way beyond). It’s essentially a chase thriller, deftly written in the prose Homer pieces together and feeds back.
Image: Activision
Where Portal really excels, however, is in the meticulous world building Swigart has done. All those seemingly extraneous databases about geography, history, science, and other more mundane topics are seriously thought out and expansive. Uncovering new articles and tidbits felt like prying into the intimate spaces of a world and people we only knew after the fact. It was a strangely lonely, yet enthralling new experience.
It’s also an experience still unmatched, certainly by any mainstream publisher. And that was a big part of the problem. No one had any idea how to take Portal when it first hit home computers.
“[Activision] had absolutely no idea what they had,” Swigart told me. “[They] kept trying to sell it as a ‘game.’ I don't think they kept it listed long enough to gain the kind of traction it should have. For instance, the Mac SE came out right after they released it and they wouldn't upgrade to make it work, so essentially they cut out the Mac version.”
Critics of the time frequently expressed the idea that it should have just been a traditional printed novel, but really, that was missing the point. Portal, as a novel, wouldn’t have anywhere near the atmosphere and intrigue without the slow build up and interactive detective work to uncover the story. Indeed, Swigart released the text as a traditional novel and, sure enough, it didn’t have nearly the same effect.
A huge part of the magic of Portal as an interactive experience was something a printed book could never manage—Homer.
Swigart knew the story needed its storyteller to be a very literal ghost in the machine, and the blind bard was a natural choice. Homer starts out naive and grows more complex and engaged as the story progresses. He talks to the user, contemplates deep thoughts, and analyzes everything to form conclusions that are more human than machine.
“At first I thought of him as just a storytelling AI, but soon realized the narrative was three-layered—the user, Peter, and Homer,” Swigart explained. “All three have their own stories, yet the narrative jumps tracks at the user’s discretion to weave the three together. (Homer) became the glue that binds the user and Peter. I wanted to bring the user in as an active participant, which is the whole idea of interactive fiction (at least as I saw it in the ‘80s).”
The end result was a singular experiment that still manages to haunt the minds of those who played it years ago. There have been two failed Kickstarter attempts to revitalize Portal in the modern era, though not by Swigart. Instead, they were started by devoted fans who felt the experience could be enhanced by modern technology.
Portal: an Interactive Novel will likely always remain a minor footnote in the history of interactive media, but those who were lucky enough to play it will remember those late nights spent with Homer, completely absorbed with this strange and oddly prescient future world and its very human characters.
This Shiatsu Massage Pillow is hands down the greatest purchase I made in 2015. Maybe ever. You have a lot to live up to, Warming Foot Massager.
I'll admit that Sharper Image's attempt to assuage achy feet does come in a nicer, fleecier package than Zyllion's flat black pillow with mesh front. And the fully enclosed foot pockets on a raised, sturdy base accommodate both feet at once, plus make using the massager on your lowest extremities more ergonomic. But can the Warming Foot Massager's "two levels of soothing vibrations" really compete with revolving, penetrating shiatsu balls, and my poor knotted back, calf, and ass muscles' proximity to them? I guess my Amazon shopping cart and I will see soon enough.
Like Zyllion's Shiatsu Massage Pillow, the Sharper Image Warming Foot Massager has a button for turning the heat portion of the device on and off. But rather than kneading and digging, this massager uses vibration as its therapeutic technique. The device's "slippers" design accommodates men with shoe sizes up to 11, and women up to 12.5.
Mauricio Giraldo, a designer in the New York Public Library Labs, made a video game using some of the library's own collections of public domain materials, and the institution is hoping you’ll follow.
In Giraldo's game, Mansion Maniac, you control Pac-Man-esque, pixelated character, guiding through real, early-century floor plans of New York City homes and apartments. As you move from room to room, the game will automatically load and attach more of these authentic, historical layouts to the luxurious world, and when you're done, you can save and print out the floorplan to show all your friends that New York apartments have always been very small.
“It starts a lot of conversations,” Giraldo told me over Skype. “The growing of a city or the history of wealth disparity. I showed it to architects and they thought they could use it to show students the importance of adjacency to rooms is in designing a house. I hadn’t even thought about it. Each person is looking at it from a different lens. In a way, the projects are very complimentary to each other.”
Earlier in the year, NYPL released a massive collection of documents online. Over 180,000 photos, blueprints, books and maps, a sprawling collection of collections in high-resolution and, more importantly, all belonging to the public domain. NYPL has been digitizing since the late 90s, but Kimball said last year they wanted to “really do right by the public domain.”
“We also thought 180,000 things to give away is a lot,” Shana Kimball, NYPL’s manager of public programs, told me over Skype. “How can you make it both intelligible to people and prompt new uses, because that’s really the point. Images are the start, but to fully realize our mission as a library we wanted to make these collections fully accessible and encourage their reuse.”
Giraldo's Mansion Maniac is just one project created as an illustration for the variety of ways programmers and artists could use NYPL’s digital resources.
Fifth Avenue from Start to Finish takes archival photos of Fifth from 1911 and lines them up with vantages from Google Street View. Navigating the Green Book is a wholly other kind of historical contrast. It’s based on mid-century writer and postman Victor H. Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book, guide books to other African Americans on travelling Jim Crow America. Navigating is a virtual itinerary based on the only towns, hotels, taverns and gas stations that were safe for people of colour. Kimball said making these games was like “eating our own dog food.” If the library making video games seems odd, it’s because they’d love to see it as a trend.
Created in a month with game jam-like restrictions, Giraldo said the limitations were somewhat liberating. He told me knowing you can’t create an expansive 3D universe or calling in Patrick Stuart for a voice acting session helps crystalize what it is you’re doing. Though if he had one regret, it seemed Giraldo wished he could bust through Mansion Maniac’s number of room types, 40, well into the hundreds. “I was, by hand, propping many of those blueprints,” said Giraldo, “it could have been much bigger. More complex.”
Kimball told me they’ve been tracking some of the uses the public have found for their assets. They’ve spotted memes and .gifs. They saw someone in Williamsburg printing the library’s photos on skate decks. One user has spent time comparing their documents to counterparts in the Rijksmuseum. Having these materials spread is not only for creative and educational expenses, but as circulation grows so does the odds that people will spot discrepancies between their collections and others around the world, fishing out errors and possibly forgeries.
The NYPL Labs have held multiple hackathons in the past. It's currently accepting applications for a “Remix Residency” to create new programs similar to their in-house creations. Kimball told me that, on top of a traditional game with the public possibly in the cards, that in June they’ll be teaming up with popular spoken word series The Moth for a workshop based around oral history. NYPL has a constantly updating GitHub. But those hoping to use hundreds of thousands of photos and documents don’t need to wait for a collaboration. The key message is you can do it yourself.
“Digitization we see as a first step,” said Kimball, “but what do you see beyond, what comes after that? How do you engage with it? What do they make out if it? We are really known for projects involving crowdsourcing. Those by design have to be inviting and compelling experiences for the public. We’ve developed a bit of a specialty in the library community about putting our collections online in a compelling, modern way.”
Over the past few years it’s become clear that many users have been watching pirated content using unofficial and unsupported add-ons that frequently break, and they are installing add-on repositories whose trustworthiness is questionable, leaving themselves open to numerous security exploits. Lately there’s even been a move to install “builds,” which intentionally break Kodi and, much like viruses, are almost impossible to uninstall, but have the benefit of adding LOTS of untrustworthy repos full of add-ons that don’t work.
Team Kodi maintains an officially neutral stance on what users do with their own software. Kodi is open source software, and as long as the GPL is followed, you are welcome to do with it as you like. So while we don’t love this use of Kodi, as long as you know what illegal and potentially dangerous things you are getting yourself into and accept the fact that the Team will not be providing you with any support, then you are welcome to do what you like.
The Problem
The problem is this: There have been a wave of sellers who decided to make a quick buck modifying Kodi, installing broken piracy add-ons, advertising that Kodi let’s you watch free movies and TV, and then vanishing when the user buys the box and finds out that the add-on they were sold on was a crummy, constantly breaking mess. These sellers are dragging users into the world of piracy without their knowledge and at the same time convincing new users that Kodi is a buggy mess, because they never differentiate Kodi from 3rd party add-ons. Every day a new user shows up on the Kodi forum, totally unaware that the free movies they’re watching have been pirated and surprised to discover that Kodi itself isn’t providing those movies.
And there are even more people out there seeking to make a quick buck by selling ads on videos about getting free movies and TV while using Kodi in their channel name to make their content seem official, as if those videos are coming from us.
A Typical eBay Listing – They even spell XBMC wrong
Team Kodi is officially tired of this. We are tired of new users coming into the forum, asking why the box that “we” sold them was broken. We are tired of this endless campaign by dishonest salesmen to push a single use of Kodi that nobody on the team actually recommends. We are tired of these salesmen lying to users, claiming that pirate streams and pirate boxes are “legal” when they are absolutely not at some level or other. We are tired of being told by companies that they don’t want to work with us, because we are selling pirate boxes. Being removed from an App Store this summer because of the campaigning of others was like a slap in the face. Most of all, we are tired of a thousand different salesmen and Youtubers making money off ruining our name.
It’s gotten bad enough that core Kodi developers have threatened to quit in protest.
The Solution
Our solution to this problem is pretty straightforward. We now own the trademark to Kodi, and we plan to use it to finally battle the mass confusion created by those seeking to profit on unaware users.
This means we will issue trademark takedown notices anywhere we think the likelihood for confusion is high. If you are selling a box on your website designed to trick users into thinking broken add-ons come from us and work perfectly, so you can make a buck, we’re going to do everything we can to stop you. If you are making a video in which you claim to be a Kodi developer or Kodi team member or you are just using the Kodi name while assuring users that some pirate add-on is totally legal and isn’t going to break next week, we will do everything we can to take you down.
We Need The Community’s Help
Users, you are welcome to keep doing whatever you want with Kodi. Devs of all stripes, feel free to keep developing whatever you want. This is an open, free platform, developed under the GPL, and always will be.
But we are in danger now of losing key core developers and the soul of the application to the greedy individuals who profit on tricking users and remarketing Kodi to suit their needs. And we need the community’s help to stop them.
If you see somebody selling a box that’s “fully loaded” or comes with the phrase “Free movies and TV with Kodi,” please, ask them to stop. And let us know. It’s OK to sell a vanilla Kodi box. It’s OK to sell a fully loaded box that doesn’t have Kodi installed or fully rebrands Kodi to something else entirely. It is not OK to sell a fully loaded Kodi box.
If you see a Youtuber using the Kodi logo as part of his channel, constantly marketing Kodi as a source of free movies, ask him to stop pretending to be us and dragging our name through the muck. And, of course, let us know. Who knows, maybe the Youtuber has no idea that he or she is causing so many problems and a conversation might solve them.
We love making Kodi. We love working on a free, open source software that’s the best media center on the planet, able to do things no other media center can do. And we want to keep making Kodi better, every single day. But every day our name gets dragged through the mud, we are in danger of losing developers and losing the freedom to make Kodi great.
We want to make Kodi for as long as there ever is a need. Help us keep going. #KodiForever
Shomer-Tec's Titanium Escape Ring won't just serve as a symbol of your love for and commitment to your wife, it will also get you out of the handcuffs that chick from the hotel bar leaves you in after she Roofies you and steals your wallet.
The ring is cut from solid titanium bar stock and polished to a gleaming silver finish. Still, it's pretty unremarkable. On the outside. But a channel circling the the piece's interior houses a flexible saw and handcuff shim pick combo tool, able to open single-locked handcuffs, plus gnaw through zip-ties, disposable cuffs, duct tape, rope, and any other non-metallic materials that might sit at the center of your predicament.
Sure, if you're getting tied up during a robbery or kidnapping the aggressors could take your ring, thereby nullifying its usefulness as a means of escape. But...maybe if you ask nicely they won't.
Que Interesante calls these Chemistry Crayon Labels a tool for teaching "children" about the periodic table of elements, and the chemical compounds they create. I think to be polite. Because I think 98% of adults out there, myself included, would have no idea that mercuric iodide is bright red-orange and abbreviated Hgl2 without either studying a textbook (boring!) or regularly interacting with a Crayola whose sticker tells them so (fun!)
Chemistry Crayon Labels come in sets of 24 adhesive-backed stickers. Featured colors / chemicals include Pheomelanin, Lithium Flame, Olivine, and Tetrachloro-Copper Complex. Nope, I have no clue what any of those are either. And nope, using Chemistry Crayon Labels won't teach any of us what they do or what they're for. But they're a start. A crayon that says "Resonite" instead of "Well-hydrated Urine Yellow" imparts at least a little knowledge or, if nothing else, develops familiarity and maybe ignites curiosity. That's more than a Bic can say for itself.
Chemistry Crayon Labels come in sets of 24 adhesive-backed stickers. They also include a sheet with information about which chemical should be stuck to which color crayon.
Dave's Geeky Ideas came up with this genius concept for a Thor's Hammer Tool Kit! Here's what he said about his creation...
"When it comes to tools there isn?t much in the way of geeky-themed hardware or accessories. Hoping to address this oversight, I present a THOR Hammer tool kit, for those times when you need to swing a hammer. This compact tool box features several tools and a socket set, for those minor jobs around the house that call for a superhero.
When not being carried around for Asgardian cosplay, this hammer opens up to reveal all the tools stored inside. The handle is shared with an actual hammer, which is fastened into a removable tray. Beneath the tray is a reservoir for loose tools and nuts/bolts.
I just hope this thing isn?t too heavy to lug around! I mean, not that it would be a problem for us geeks (*grunt*). Looking at this now, I reckon it could also make for a neat lunchbox."
Pizzacraft has made stovetop spinoff to their Pizzeria Pronto Outdoor Pizza Oven. It's called the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven. Don't worry, I'm sure the design and performance are a lot more inspired than the name.
Made for gas ranges, the Stovetop Pizza Oven preheats atop a cracklin' blue flame in around 15 minutes, and then takes just 6 minutes to cook your dough, bubble your sauce, and melt your cheese into a perfect symbiotic fusion of crunchy-chewy-gooey goodness. The oven contains a cordierite pizza stone inserted into a vented steel base, and covered with a steel hood. Its size and configuration enable it to reach temperatures of around 600 degrees F, at least 100 degrees higher than most conventional ovens (it peaks in a fraction of the time too.)
Pizzeria Pronto version Stovetop measures 14.3" x 16.9" x 6.7"; it can make pizzas up to 12" in diameter.
Jim Zub makes really amusing transcripts of his conversations with his mom after she watches movies. Here's a transcript of his Mom's review of WATCHMEN from 2009. It's one for the ages...
Time to turn a once boring electric outlet into the caped crusader and Dark Knight of Gotham!
That kid has the most powerful Nintendo Entertainment System ever created! Just look at all the colors!
