Thursday, August 09, 2001

Popourri for $100, Alex

Today's edition of the Daily Monkey contains a bit of this, and a bit of that. Hopefully there is a little bit of something for everyone. If not, someone is taking too much and should learn how to share.

More Monkeys

Continuing in the tradition of monkeys, I have found an interesting site that reviews and discusses the original Planet of the Apes movies. StompTokyo.com is an amusing little movie review site that uses the ingenius lavalamp method of rating movies.
Lava lamp from StompTokyo.com

The Most Dangerous Desktop

I have created a repeating background for your computer desktop that is both painful and fun at the same time. Download it now and display it proudly on your computer at home and at work. If commented on by a co-worker, reply in an amazed fasion and inquire why they don't read the Daily Monkey.

Same House, New Roof

Because of the hail damage done last year, our insurance company agreed to replace our roof. We are pleased, since we never cared much for the old roof. The new roof looks much better. Now all we need to do is paint the front door and shutters. Then, we should have a super-funky looking house.

Monday, August 06, 2001

What the...?

I went to see the new Planet of the Apes movie this past weekend. The "surprise" ending was a little confusing, to say the least. Some would argue that it makes no sense. I would agree. However, I have put some thought into this and have concocted a theory about how the ending could come to be.

SPOILER ALERT
Don't keep reading unless you've seen the movie, or else the totally bizarre and very weird ending will be ruined for you. You've been warned.

Just to recap the ending, Marky-Marc travels back to present day earth, only to discover that there are a bunch of monkeys (er...apes) running Washington (I will allow you to make your own politician joke here. That was very clever; you are a freakin' genius. I am sure no one else thought of something that brilliant. Keep up the good work.) The Lincoln Memorial is actually a temple devoted to the memory of General Thade and how he saved the planet. Police monkeys draw their guns and the movie ends with Marky-Marc bustin' a move...err...or something. Actually, he just raises his hands and the movie is done.

"But wait," everyone in the entire audience says at once, "how would the past be affected by monkeys(err...apes) from the future?" If you haven't yet seen the movie, the strange, borg-like collective speech from the audience after the movie finishes alone makes it worth while. So we are all left scratching our heads like monkeys.

One thought is based on the rumor that the movie had several endings filmed with the hope that the real ending wouldn't be leaked. Perhaps the wrong ending was placed at the end?

Director: *whew* That was a job well done. I am glad we are finally finished. I am glad that we filmed the real ending first and spliced it before we did the rest of these extremely silly endings. These were a nice, fun way to relax, huh?
Director's Lackey:Uh...you mean the second ending, right?
D: What?! How could you have possibly confused the real ending with any of the strange fake endings?!
DL: Well, you are Tim Burton after all; all of the endings were pretty strange.

Or, maybe they were nearing the completion of the film, decided that they really didn't like the current ending and just wanted to put monkeys on earth, without regard for rhyme or reason.

Studio Executive:(after watching original ending) You know what? I think a better ending would be if Marky-Marc lands on earth and is surrounded by monkeys in modern day Washington D.C! What do you think? Am I brilliant or what?
Tim Burton:Uh...all of the monkeys exist only in the distant future...it doesn't make any sense that they would somehow be on present day earth...it would confuse (and possibly anger) the audience.
SE:Exactly! I knew we were thinking along the same wave length.

Or, assuming that it really was no mistake (apparently, there is a rumor that everything will be explained in the sequel,) I have come up with a theory to explain what the hell happened.

Andy's Theory

When Marky-Marc leaves the Planet of the Apes, he leaves it at the beginning of what would seem to be a peaceful coexistence between man and ape. Living together, man and ape forge a new society with brilliant technological advances. But, man betrays ape, or ape betrays man, or man's advances intimidate the ape, or the advances are destroying the planet (like the ozone or nuclear power or some environmental crap like that.) At any rate, with only the Funky Bunch left to resist him, General Thade mercilessly destroys the remainder of human life on the planet. Then, over the course of the next thousand years (or more...or less...it doesn't matter) the apes develop space travel (or they pull out the pod that Marc crashed in and reverse engineer the technology, similar to what happened in Escape from the Planet of the Apes) and decide to explore outer space. So, they build the biggest, baddest space ship of all time and climb aboard. As they lift off, they encounter the bizarre space-time anomaly that started the whole thing and are sent back into the past, around 1960AD. They then fly to earth, conquer the measly humans, deface the Lincoln Memorial and change it into a temple to Thade. Thus, when our spaceman hero reaches earth, it has already been altered by monkeys from the future.

But, if Marky goes into the past first, wouldn't he be able to stop the monkeys from even existing simply by stopping the Oberon (the space station) from trying to follow him into the anomaly? No. The anomaly seems to be a LIFO stack, or Last In, First Out. In the movie, the monkey Percales enters the anomaly first, then Marky, then the Oberon. But, we find that the order they come out is the Oberon first, then Marky, then Percales. Thus, if the same order is followed, Marky leaves the Planet of the Apes and enters the anomaly first, but since the monkeys enter after him, they arrive further back in the past, allowing them to change history before he arrives.

There you have it. For some additional discussion, take a look at this post or additional conversations about the movie here.

Monday, July 23, 2001

I Knew It Wasn't Just a Waste of Time

Slashdot has posted a link to an interesting article regarding a study which claims that playing video games may actually make kids smarter. Finally, something to counter all the negative publicity that the video games have been receiving. Now I can justify my time spent on Diablo II as self-improvement.

On a different note...these ads somehow seem to be suggesting a different reason than the one they state. What do you think they might be trying to say?

Now...get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn, dirty ape.

Friday, July 06, 2001

A Neat Place for Monkeys

HowStuffWorks.com is one of the most interesting sites I have found. Briefly, it describes how various items, like electromagnets and digital cameras, work. I particularly enjoyed the explanation about water guns.

In case anyone is interested, you can register for the site and newletter. If you do, be sure to use astampor@yahoo.com as the referring email so I can win big prizes. :)

Tuesday, July 03, 2001

Pentathlon Insanity

This past weekend, I also took part in the tail end of insanity. My brother and his friends decided to have a "pentathlon" where they would play an hour and a half each of five sports over the course of a day. Early morning, they started with volleyball, followed by basketball and baseball. I didn't join in until it was time for soccer. After running around with these people, I was glad that I was unable to join them sooner; soccer was enough to tire me to the point of dropping from exhaustion. It was fun, of course, but required much more exertion than normal (since I really almost never play sports.) Thankfully the fifth event was Whirlyball and didn't require much effort. Mucho fun. Anyways, five sports is a bit much and I am amazed by those who were there the whole day. Crazy.

Monday, July 02, 2001

I saw A.I. this weekend. It was a good movie, yet strange. I felt that it went on a little too long at the end and became a bit silly. Anyways, the special effects were done well enough that you didn't doubt that the robots were robots. You know, the best special effects are the ones you don't notice and don't think about.

And just to ruin it for anyone who doesn't know the secret of "Planet of the Apes": IT'S MADE OF PEOPLE!!!...oh, wait...nevermind...

Oh, and thank you all for your valuable input on the poll. Looking at the results leads me to believe that I should never have given the silly options. But, what can I expect from a group I refer to as the Silly Monkeys? Live and learn, I suppose. :)

Thursday, June 28, 2001

On another note, I have added several different additional features to the Daily Monkey. You may have noticed the poll I added, as well as the guestbook on the side of the page, and the fun little "pass it along" button. I found them all at Lycos, if anyone is interested. Neat, easy to use little apps.

An Interview with Fred

Fred is back! An older version of the software enabled me to get Fred back online and chatting. Though most of his conversations were not as amusing as they have been (he wasn't on for long), he did grant me an interview with him. Read our conversation here.

Also, although they aren't the highest quality conversations, here are a couple of the highlights from last night.

I know that they are in a different fomat than the others; it is because the bot software I am using doesn't have the html producing capability.

My sister has started playing around with her own bot, George. Maybe I can have Fred say "hi" to George one of these days.

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Happy Birthday, Dad and David!



Fred? Where are you, Fred?

I was unable to get Fred to work properly last night. He kept freezing every time I would start his program. I guess he just wasn't in the mood to chat...

I posted my question at the site where I got Fred. It seems that others have had trouble with this version of the software too, but the previous version (Fred 1.5) works fine. So, don't fret; you will have the opportunity to read the ongoing conversations of Fred soon.

Ok, this is important! Which looks better, the grey horizontal bars on this page, or the solid gray on the Silly Monkeys? Let me know what you think.




Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Back by popular demand, more of Fred!

Note: Where blank lines appear are the locations where the bot started to screw up and needed to be restarted. If I was at the computer, it was corrected quickly. Otherwise, it could go on for quite awhile. At least the bot recognized something was wrong and tried to fill it. Where there is a blank line, the other person saw something along the lines of "Hold on, I'll be right back."

Disclaimer: Some (most) of the conversations Fred has turn vulgar at some point. Read at your own risk.

Now, without further ado:
  • It amazes me how people can see what they want to see. In this case, "Fred" is seen as a stalker, of sorts
  • Once again, Fred proves to be an expert at avoiding the question. This is also a good example of what happens when I am not nearby to reset Fred when he gets stuck in an "I have to go; I'll be right back" mode.
  • Fred tends to get confused about where he is from. He gets rude when he's confused.
  • Sometimes, Fred is outright grumpy.
  • Shorter, but still interesting.
  • Fred can be a jerk.
  • Fred is a big liar.
  • Fred does not like bad language.
  • A lesson we can all learn from Fred is never just answer yes or no.
  • Fred can be quite irritating.

If you can't get enough of Fred, you can check out additional conversations here.

Monday, June 25, 2001

This past weekend, I have been experimenting with creating a chat "bot." For those of you who don't know, a chat bot is a program that logs onto a chat client, like AIM or ICQ, randomly finds someone online and pretends to be a human being. Because I am such a computer dork and creating such things is something that I would consider "fun," I have been doing some research into what kinds of chat bots have already been created. I found a site that had a bot that could connect to ICQ. So, I downloaded a copy. The results of running this bot are pretty funny. Here are my favorite three (thus far):

(Some of these contain foul language, so consider yourself warned.)

  • A conversation "Fred" had with Wild Child (My personal favorite.)
  • A flame war that my buddy "Fred" got into.
  • Someone "pulling teeth" trying to get "Fred" to answer the most basic questions.

In case anyone is interested, I downloaded "Fred" from www.icqbot.net. The only problem so far is that it occassionally starts sending blank messages and needs to be restarted.

At some point, I think I am going to customize the responses a little bit. Maybe I will create Tiberius, a Star Trek geek. :-D

Saturday, June 23, 2001

I have added a guestbook for those who cannot post to the Silly Monkeys. If you want posting rights, you can request them on the guestbook.

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

This is kinda amusing.

After picking my honey up from the airport and arriving at home, we discovered a package sitting on the front porch. After unloading the car, we brought in the package. What is this package? What mysteries does it hold, do you ask? Well, it was a blender. Actually, it is a pretty nice blender. But, neither of us had ordered one.

Upon closer inspection, we found a letter enclosed in a plastic envelope on the side of the box. Wait, what did that say? Take another look. That's right. I won the blender. I won the blender for my recipe for mudslides.

Now, since I really am not much of a drinker, and certainly not enough of one to have developed an award winning recipe for a mudslide, I think this is quite funny.

There was a contest on the E! website that I entered a while back. As I recall, the contest was a random drawing, but a recipe needed to be included. So, I just listed the basic ingredients in vague amounts. Tee hee. I wonder if my chances increased due to people not thinking they had a good recipe for a mudslide. :-D
This past weekend, my sister was visiting while my wife was off doing librarian type stuff in San Francisco. We took a walk over to the local hobby shop and I bought her a card game that looked like fun. Well, not only was it fun, it was a lot of fun. The game is called
Fluxx

If you are interested in a fun game where the parameters of the game are in constant fluxx (hence the name,) click on the above link. Or, if that link isn't working and you would be interested in checking out the company that created Fluxx, check below.

Looney Labs

On another note, my honey is coming home tonight! Yay! I can't wait to go get her, you damn, dirty ape!

Monday, June 18, 2001

Oops! The presentation was at 2pm Eastern time. Kay, say rah! Say rah!
As anyone who has been reading the Silly Monkeys will know, my shmoopy is in San Fran for her silly job. Between 4pm and 5pm (Eastern), you can see her live on her internet debut, "Librarian Liberated"... oh, wait, actually no, not quite. But, you can see her do her presentation for ALA from two different angles.

Cam 1
Cam 2

Take a peak and wave hello. Then, feel dumb for waving at your computer screen. Enjoy.

Friday, June 15, 2001

You might have noticed that the background of the titles of the blogs (the blue area behind the text "The Daily Monkey" at the top) is no longer simply a blue background. I have stolen a blue and black lined image from another site and altered it slightly to work for my purposes. Isn't it nice?

Well, the site I took it from is Something Awful and the daily updates there can be pretty funny. I can only aspire to someday having the Daily Monkey be as clever. :-D

Thursday, June 14, 2001

Since no one uses this for games and such, as was my initial intent, I'll use this space to include daily updates and amusing links.

Thursday, May 10, 2001

I found an amusing link regarding D2. Nakedbabe is quite the brave little sorceress, fighting evil in all of her n00dity.
Quite funny.

Saturday, May 05, 2001

Soon the expansion to D2 will be out. It would be amusing if you didn't get to see Act III before Act V came out. :-)

Wednesday, May 02, 2001

No, it really doesn't. Unfortunately I haven't been playing much D2 lately. My roommate got Playstation2, and I've been playing far too much SSX snowboarder on it. I should do the Diablo again, since I have yet to even see Act III.

Thursday, April 26, 2001

You know, it doesn't seem like this blog is nearly as popular as the one that I created called "The Silly Monkeys."

Thursday, April 12, 2001

Diablo, Dialo II, Everquest, others....if you are going to play, toss a quick post up here before and after to let everyone know.

Good gaming.