Brian Alvey

You're Thor?

1980 days ago
Marvel Comics is holding auditions to find the voice actors who will play the Avengers in an upcoming animated series. This is great. You pick one of the seven main characters, read from a script they provide, submit your work on VHS or DVD (what no podcasting?) and fill out an application.
I really liked their application and I'm going to borrow it and turn it into our new blogger agreement. I only have to change a couple of things. I'll change which "Marvel Super Hero" do you want to play to "Preferred Blog Topic" and I'll probably throw out some of the questions since I know a bunch of bloggers who wouldn't be blogging today if they had to answer "yes" to these:
- Do you have any medical, physical or psychological condition that might interfere with your participation in the ~~Audition~~ Blogging Process?
- Do you live in the United States?
- Are you presently a candidate for any type of political office?
- Have you ever been convicted of or pled guilty to a felony or misdemeanor, other than a minor traffic violation, or had a restraining order entered against you?
- Have you applied for, are you in the current production of or have you appeared in any television show (including reality television show) or motion picture?
- Permalink
- 1 Comments
Team spirit

1985 days ago

Jack was running some errands with Niki on Tuesday afternoon and decided to pay a visit to the final resting places of Billy Martin and Babe Ruth. He was surprised to find that several people had been there before him and was intrigued by the offerings that had been deposited.
Billy Martin's tombstone had a beer, a bottle of scotch, a shot glass and a hot dog.

Babe Ruth's grave had a baseball (that Jack wanted to take home), a bat, several caps, dozens of pennies, flowers, a Yankees pin, a cigar and a pair of baby socks — red socks to be specific. One of them had a "19" written on it and the other one had an "18".

Seems to be working so far. (Sorry, Leigh.)
- Permalink
- 1 Comments
You'll believe a man can fly

1988 days ago

One of my favorite childhood movie memories was seeing the first Superman movie. We had been living in Brooklyn, NY for almost a year after moving from Virginia. It was New Year's Eve and it was snowing lightly. We went for a long walk in Bay Ridge and arrived at a movie theater that would later become a fur store and finally a racquetball club.
There were giant posters for the Superman movie everywhere and I immediately wanted to see it. I was eight. My parents said no. I'm sure I complained and probably even cried before my dad bent over and "found" four tickets for the next showing. He had them all along.

Years later, my dad would tell me what he remembered most about the movie. He looked over at my sister during the romantic scene where Superman takes Lois Lane flying and my five-year-old sister's mouth was hanging open. "Can you read my mind?" was playing. She was completely mesmerized. It was magic.

I watched Margot Kidder on the premiere of Smallville a few days ago. She played an assistant and ex-girlfriend of Dr. Swann, the billionaire astrophysicist who knows more about Clark's Kryptonian origin than Clark does. (The name "Swann" is a tribute to the late Curt Swan, the definitive Superman comic book artist from the late 50's to the early 80's.) I hoped he would make more appearances on the show.

Christopher Reeve died yesterday of complications from a systemic infection that is common to people who suffer from paralysis. His mother told the media, "He put up with a lot. I'm glad that he is free of all those tubes."
- Permalink
- 0 Comments
You can pick your friends and you can pick your apples...

1993 days ago

Last weekend we needed a break from work and medical misfortunes, so Niki, Jack and I headed to Connecticut for some apple picking. I could have sworn she said we were going to the "Apple Store", but it turned out to be an amazing afternoon anyway.
Jack ate apples off of trees and had a blast at their petting zoo. While other kids were running away from goats, pigs, buffalo and emus, Jack had no fear and gladly offered handful after handful of feed to the animals. It helps that he lives with two cats and two dogs.
- Permalink
- 1 Comments
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics

1996 days ago

It's like "Ebert and Schrödinger". Instead of reviewing plots and performances, this site reviews the accuracy of the physics in movies. They also have a list of commonplace movie physics errors.
It's by the Intuitor:

Intuitor (noun) a person with a passion for learning and innovating that is so strong it is often more powerful than the desire to eat, sleep, or seek personal wealth.
- Permalink
- 0 Comments
First Peter Gabriel, then Jeffrey Zeldman

2020 days ago

Amnesty USA picks some pretty cool people to work with. Even Jason used to work with them.
Happy Cog Studios started Amnesty's redesign project nearly a year ago. Even though I have been a "lead developer" on Happy Cog projects, Amnesty already had their own sprawling international content management system and my lone contribution to the project was information architecture: "Learn. Join. Act."

Fortunately, they had Jeffrey on board for design. Left up to me, their site would have looked a lot like Human Rights for Dummies.
- Permalink
- 1 Comments
It tastes great on potatos

2023 days ago

Saw a link yesterday to a site that proclaims:
You don't support Democrats.
Why should your ketchup?

Interesting. They're probably just taking squeezable Heinz bottles, soaking the labels off, sticking on their own labels and jacking up the prices. Gotta love those clever Americans.

I've also heard that every time a Unix admin uses "wget" to snag a Web page, Bush's campaign fund receives a dollar.

Are you a democrat? Use Perl and LWP instead! You don't support Republicans. Why should your system administration utilities?

This is going to get ugly.
- Permalink
- 3 Comments
RSS would be perfect if...

2028 days ago

RSS is pretty simple. In fact, RSS wears a big t-shirt that says, "Simple is my middle name." Publishers are adopting RSS all over the place and advertisers are trying to figure out how to reach this elusive and finicky audience of early adopters, but RSS is a pretty unfriendly medium for advertising compared to the regular Web or even spam (formerly known as "email").
Me? I love RSS. I couldn't keep up with the embarrassingly small percentage of WIN sites I read if I didn't have FeedDemon, but there are a few things I wish RSS and feed readers could do. Many solutions to RSS problems involve server-side scripting — like the HTTP Conditional GET, which spares Web servers some of the load of repeated requests for feeds that have not changed — but scripting can only do so much.

Clarification: one reader pointed out that Conditional GETs don't require scripting. That is correct, but basic Conditional GETs will still serve your entire 120K XML file even if only one item has been added. Combining Conditional GETs with a server-side script that returns only the new posts is the only way I'd ever want to do Conditional GETs so I consider this a "scripting" solution.
- Permalink
- 10 Comments
That's why they call it LeBron's medal

2032 days ago

If the Olympics counted the total points across all of the basketball games played — like they do in gymnastics and swimming — our Dream Team would have brought home the gold.
Better luck next year, guys.

Update: Our caption contest winner was Charles B. of Leeds, Alabama.

He suggested "Always a bridesmaid..."
- Permalink
- 0 Comments
Munch and run

2038 days ago

This morning in Norway, two masked armed robbers stole Edvard Munch's famous movie poster painting of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.
There wasn't much security in the museum — the thieves just plucked the paintings off of the walls and walked out the front door to their escape car.

Our local Applebee's bolts three-dollar posters to the wall so they don't get stolen. But a $75 million painting is just hanging on a wire in a museum in Norway and "it took a long time for the police to come."

Isn't it enough to make you want to, oh, I don't know, shout?
- Permalink
- 6 Comments