[still one-handing it, but i’m getting slightly more accurate and a litttle faster… maybe soon i’ll tackle the shift key]

ive got lots of friends in the blogging business, and it seems not a day goes by that someone doesn;t come up with a new crazy scheme tto raise the profile of their blog so thatr their ads are worth more.

one of the most popular of these schemes is a recent one involving technorati ‘favorites’ exchanging. people post an entry begging people to favorite them on technorati, prmosing that they’ll then reciprocate the favor.

in theory this is an interesting idea, except for the fact that it is manipulating technorati’s ranking system. technorati is going to catch on to it pretty quickly, but in the meantime your blog’s profile can skyrocket. except for one little thing: the ranking is done as a percentile. as you start helping to increase the rankings of all the people helping you incerease your rankings, your standing us going to actually suffer for it. you’ve moved up — but so has everyone else.

so in the end you may get some new friends out of it, but really you’ve just wasted a bunch of time and effort — and corrupted technorati’s valuable ranking algorithm in the process. if everyone is manipulating the system, the system becomes worthlkess.

don’t break good things just because you might get something out of it. internet curmudgeon out.

[still typing with only one hand, please forgive the mess]

last week, a trailer appeared on the internet, giving us the first look at some of Optimus Prime’s facial animation from Michael Bay’s upcoming fanboy opus.

as predicted, all the fanboys have gone nuts over it. ““he has /lips/?? gay,” was the collective scream of the blogosphere.

also as predicted, Paramount made everyone take down the video.

also as predicted, Michael Bay has released a statement saying that wasn’t real movie footage, that the footage in qestion was an early animation test that some “foreign trailer editor” spliced in. shades of Hulk all over again.

if you havent seen the footage, i’ve presented it here in reduced-framerate animated gif format:

already Bay and Paramount have taken action reworking animation footage in response to the outrage on the internet.

i have managed to dig up a still of the new changes the’ve made, and the results are pretty drastic. in order to avoid the wrath of Michael Bay, i’m only going to link to it, but here you go:

as i’m sure you’ll agree, this new change has a much less “cartoony/videogame” feel to it, and will surely be loved among the fans.

[still can’t type properly. sorry]

i’ve been a fairly regular listener of radioparadise for several years. i really like hearing all sorts of songs ive eithr never heard before, or just not in a long time. the thing i like best is that they play songs from new albums that arent singles. while commercial radio beats each single to a pulp, radioparadise keeps things fresh.

anyway, in the last few weeks ive heard this song several times:

Ok Go – Maybe, This Time

it reminded me of another song so much that i actually thouht it /was/ that other song each time it came on. i just couldnt for the life of me figure out what song i thougt it was. i went around humming it for days, eventually deciding it was an old song by the tea party. i imediately set about systematically goiing through all my cds trying to find it. i coul;ndt find it. i began to think i was crazy.

then i downloaded the tea party discography and tried again, finally finding it after lots of listening:

The Tea Party – Angels

i wish i had the skills to mash these up because aside from a slight tempo difference, these seem really similar to me. the guitar riff, the drum beat, even going into the chorus seems as if you could just interchange the vocals.

is it just me?

i spent the last 3 days in bed unable to type, play with my wii, play with my wee, hold a book, play with my clay, play with my rubik cube or aything else remotely interesting. what i could do is weatch bad movies i recoreded off cable and sped up so i didnt have to suffer as llong. thank goodness i had the foresight to think thsat one day i’d need copious amounts of stuff to watch.

war of the worlds – terrible. tom cruise was really good though; i really believed he was a scumball. what a testament to acting abiliyt.

daisy dukes of hazzard – fantastic. i’ts almost as if those boots were /made/ for walkin’. the rest of the movie really sucked, though.

16 blocks – this was actually a really good movie. i didnt laugh, but i did cry. and not just cuz my arm hurts. mos def is ‘mos def’inately good in it. winky face.

dead men walking – zombies in prisn seems really good on paper. on the scifi channel, howeverm, not so good. please stop naming characters in zombie movies ‘raimi.’

the chumscrubber – fantastic. fidfteen stars. kind of like donnie darko and jawbreaker and thumbsucker all mixed into one. bonus; the kid from thumbsucker is in this, making his imdb page just that much more interesting in the strangelt titled moive department. kinda depressing and uplifting ast the same time, plus mind-bendy.

earthstorm – space mission to the moon to keep it from splitting in half. midway though the voyage, stewphen baldwin unhooks his seatbelt and runs to the cargo bay, completely oblivious to the fact that therer shoulnd’t be any gravity. also he gets over thje loss of his 3years dead wife.

i know i watched a few more, i just cant remember what they wree.

i have refrained from saying ‘one thumb up’ or ‘one thumb down’ for your benefit, as you know that’s all i can do. thyumb number 2 is off-limits.

my left arm is messed up.

mmy doctor hasw forbade me moving it for a fortnight.

typing with one handf is hard.

so if you’re wondering what;s becime of me, thisd ought to splain it.

no accidents, just genetics.., and what a nice nurse referred to as “magician hands.”

The truly sad thing is thast extracuriicular hand activities such as juggling, card manipulation, sculpting, typing, opening shampoo bottles, fingernail clipping, etc are now right out. hopefully these things will one day be part of my life again, but i’m not holdfing my breath. frowny face.