Link Thread

[Nate the Great]

Mathology covers the Toroflux Paradox, which is related to Fibonacci Numbers.


I was already familiar with the basic optical illusion of rearranging puzzle pieces to create a rectangle one unit larger than the previous arrangement, but didn't know about the evolution or the relation to Fibonacci Numbers.


(Plus I love his shirt. "This Fibonacci joke is as bad as the last two you heard combined.")

[Nate the Great]

In honor of Valentine's Day, a fan's cover of "Be Mine Today" from "Here Comes Peter Cottontail", plus the original if you'd rather hear Casey Kasem sing it.


And now for some random romantic pop songs that I like:


Pokemon AMV for "Can't Help Falling in Love"
Teen Titans AMV for "I'm A Believer"
Ranma AMV for "Everytime We Touch"
Disney/Anastasia AMV for "She's So High"
Disney AMV for "Kiss Me"
Cardcaptor Sakura AMV for "Accidentally in Love"
Cardcaptor Sakura AMV for "Everywhere"
Disney AMV for "She's So High Above Me"
AlbinoBlackSheep/Lemon Demon's "Geeks in Love"
Pokemon AMV for "Sometimes"
Ranma AMV for "I Won't Say I'm In Love"
Ranma AMV for "Seven Things"
Disney/Anastasia AMV for "Kiss the Girl" (Ashley Tisdale cover)
Anne of Green Gables LAMV for "Crazy For This Girl" (PS, the existence of LAMV for live action music video is my Amazing Thing that I learned today)
"We Can Fly Away", a song from The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns, one of my St. Patrick's traditions, up there with Darby O'Gill. Like many others I intend to play this one at my wedding, if I ever have one.
I Fight Dragons presents "The Power of Love", a cover from Back to the Future

Anne of Green Gables LAMV for "Just the Girl I'm Looking For"


And of course you can't forget Tom Lehrer's warped versions of love songs:
The Masochism Tango
She's My Girl
I Hold Your Hand In Mine
When You Are Old and Grey
I shall omit I Got It From Agnes in the name of good taste, shocking as that may seem. You can find it for yourself easily enough.


And now some romantic movie endings:
Anne of Avonlea
Little Women
Serendipity
You've Got Mail
Sleepless in Seattle


How about some "I'm in Love and that's Great" songs?
Maria
Something There
'S Wonderful
Almost Like Being In Love
Lovely Lonely Man
I Could Have Danced All Night
I'm in Love With A Wonderful Guy
I am Going to Like It Here (have any of you ever seen Flower Drum Song, possibly the most obscure of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals?)

[Nate the Great]

So an artist named Jeff Carlisle creates drawings of lots of sci-fi/fantasy pop culture characters



Another Night At the Warp Core Cafe


Let's see how many I can name:


Ships past the windows: Defiant, Millennium Falcon, Star Destroyer, Enterprise D and No Bloody A, B, C, or D, 23rd Century Romulan Bird of Prey, D'Deridex Romulan Bird of Prey, Klingon Battle Cruiser, Voyager, I assume that's the Serenity, a Borg Cube, the Iron Giant, a Y-Wing, I think that's a ship from Starchaser,



Ships and robots in the air inside: Max from Flight of the Navigator, EVE and WALL-E, Weebo from Flubber, Nomad


Upper Level and flying characters: A TOS woman, an Orion Slave Girl, some big-brained aliens from the Tatooine cantina, one of Jabba the Hutt's tentacle-headed slave girls, Data (playing a Lirpa instead of a violin for some reason), a Porg, Marvin, Superman, a Ceti Eel carrier, Impossible Man, a Gremlin, I think that's the robot from It Conquered the Word, the Robot from Lost in Space, Lion-O, Jabba the Hutt,



Lower Level: Quark, Guinan, Bea Arthur's character from the Holiday Special, Babylon 5 characters (Londo, G'Kar, a Minbari, the first officer, it's been awhile okay?), K-9, a character from Planet of the Apes, that blue-skinned girl from Farscape (my mom watched it, I didn't), Dathan, Barf, the main characters from Dark Crystal (amazingly I watched Nash's review of that movie only yesterday!), Yoda, E.T., the alien from Mars Attacks, Howard the Duck, Spock, McCoy, Picard, Riker, Kai Opaka, the Men in Black, a Jem'Hadar, Crow T. Robot and another MST3K robot whose name escapes me at the moment, Judge Q, a Mugato, a Gorn, some Viidians, that guy from Dune, Kirk and Han Solo arm-wrestling, an Ewok, C3-PO, R2D2, Qui-gon Jinn, Finn and that girl from Force Awakens, Uhura, Alf, the Great Gazoo

[Nate the Great]

I got a piece of spam today that really made me laugh. It's similar to another spam message from the same guy ("Greg Wilford", if that's his real name) here. Different dead imaginary millionaire and different date, but you get the idea.

[Nate the Great]

Peter Tork of the Monkees died today.


While I like a few Monkees songs, I remember him most from the pseudo-Monkees reunion on Boy Meets World.

[Nate the Great]

EC Henry discusses the varying colors of Federation phasers.


I never noticed how much the colors changed! You'd think this could be standardized easily. My first guess is that this variation comes from a similar place as greenscreens and bluescreens. That is, depending on the background that the phaser beam has to be superimposed upon, certain colors work better for the superimposing process or to provide contrast with the background.



P.S. I never noticed that in The Best of Both Worlds the modulating phasers made such different colors.

[Nate the Great]

In honor of today's "The Savage Curtain" post, I'd like to repost Melodysheep's Spock tribute, since it includes a powerful line from the episode.

[Nate the Great]

Someone built a Starship Enterprise model that can fly around underwater as though it's space.

[Nate the Great]

I'm not sure if I ever schilled James Lileks before. Long story short, he's a journalist from my homeland of Minnesota who covers lots of ephemera from Minnesota and beyond, including a lot of midcentury pop culture.



But the point of this post is his entry for today, a page from a 1986 Sears catalog. Lots of solid-color shirts and sweatshirts. "Not just for Yangs, but for Coms, too! If you get that reference, congrats." I got the reference, that's for sure. Of course, "The Omega Glory" features Yangs and Kohms and they didn't wear pastel clothing, that was more of a TNG-era colonist thing. I know it's not an exact match, but the first thing that came to mind was Kevin Uxbridge.

[Nate the Great]

Matthias Wandel strikes again! His space heater isn't powerful enough to heat the whole room, so he sets up a camera to detect when he moves and a computer to rotate the heater to point at wherever he is.


The commenters had fun with the gag where he's about to buy a Lazy Susan, but decides to just build one instead. Matthias isn't the kind of guy that would ever buy something that he could make, especially if you can do it with just wood and skateboard bearings.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

I'm not sure if I ever schilled James Lileks before. Long story short, he's a journalist from my homeland of Minnesota who covers lots of ephemera from Minnesota and beyond, including a lot of midcentury pop culture.

Greetings, fellow Minnesotan!

Lileks is great. And he's not one of those journalists who saw all of TOS 15 times in 1973 and then stopped. He watched and very correctly adored Enterprise, despite his incorrect, Zeke-like opinions about the finale. And he's watching Discovery. Dude's the real deal.

[Nate the Great]

Mathologer shows us how to use parabolic dishes to project holograms.



Not really, but it's still a cool optical trick.

[Nate the Great]

Ceave Gaming shows us a rather complicated Mario Maker trick.


Yikes. Spoony's remark about Final Fantasy Symposia comes to mind immediately. All of the work chainsawing Ocarina of Time apart seems like small potatoes compared to this.

[Nate the Great]

Ceave Gaming replicates mechanics "introduced" in Mario Maker 2 using Mario 1.


I'm reminded of those Minecraft players who replicate mechanical computers within the Minecraft world. Or reproduce Wintergatan's Marble Machine....

[Nate the Great]

It's "Online Reviewers Show How Bad Old Kid's Movies That Nate Used to Like Really Are" Day!


Happily Ever After
Pinocchio in Outer Space
The Adventures of the American Rabbit

[Nate the Great]

Shadiversity tackles the question of the real effectiveness of a double lightsaber.


Of course, the troubles with carrying around a double sword and a double lightsaber are different. Of course you have to wonder why lightsabers don't have crossguards. Do all Jedi wear lightsaber-proof gloves?

[Nate the Great]

Doris Day died today


Another example of a celebrity that I thought died decades ago still being alive in recent times. Yikes.



Sadly I haven't seen many of her films, but she was good in Calamity Jane.



Now some songs:


Happy Talk from South Pacific.

Winter Wonderland (I didn't know there was an introductory verse like White Christmas!)

Over the Rainbow
Toyland (as in Babes And...)
Cheek to Cheek (sorry Doris, you did great, but Fred did it better)
Nice Work if You Can Get It

All I Do Is Dream of You
People Will Say We're In Love (up the speed to 1.25 for a better experience)
Silver Bells (I'm starting to wonder if I've ever heard a bad version of this one...)
I've Grown Accustomed to His Face (check the comments for a great Trek reference...)
The Sound of Music (the actual performance is perfectly adequate, but I have a problem with the meter and tempo, I'd up this one to 1.25 as well)
Here Comes Santa Claus (is she slipping into a regional accent with this one? It's nice, but odd...)

[Nate the Great]

Tim Conway died today. I repeat yesterday's "I didn't know the celebrity was still alive" comment.


I might know less about him than yesterday's deceased. My knowledge of the Carol Burnett Show is limited, Star Trek parody aside, but my parents were big fans of his work, especially the Apple Dumpling Gang films.


The Amazing Thing I Learned Today is how recent some of his work is, particularly Dreamworks' Dragons. Well, that and his work on Spongebob Squarepants, including video games.

[Nate the Great]

A robot built into a Rubik's Cube that will solve the cube in the most efficient way after you randomize it.


Yet another pointless yet very cool device.

[Nate the Great]

It's still a couple days until Towel Day, but Lofty Pursuits made their Babel Fish candy early this year. Even if you don't like antique candy machines (and what kind of weirdo doesn't?), listen for a version of the origin of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that I've never encountered before.