Driving up to Great Basin National Park for the weekend. First I've been away from town in some time, and it'll be nice to not stare into a monitor for a few days.

I'll try and get some good shots up there, although my girlfriend insists that I take pictures of the people on the trip and the trip itself, rather than just leaves or interesting rocks. We'll see.

Have a great weekend!

Skimming Slashdot comments, I found: errorwear.

Living In a Kleptocrat Nation

Just a reminder.

Highly trusted brands run more risk of offending customers

Rebranding is currently big in Las Vegas, where the town is working on sloughing its family-friendly skin (that itself the result of a 1990s attempt to brand the city as a family vacation destination) in exchange for a more adult and carefree image. With the popularity and success of The Palms, several lagging resorts are now scrambling to garner the coveted younger crowd that flocked to the casino after its successful collaboration with MTV last year. While MGM "Kick Boredom in the Teeth" Grand and the Flamingo undergo more subtle personality makeovers, the most radical of these changes will be seen at Treasure Island(who now prefer to be called TI, thankyouverymuch), where the kid-friendly pirates are being buried to be replaced with a style and theme a bit more uh, edgy and hip, or something. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced their own energy drink.

I'll be playing a role in the site redesign of a rebranded gaming company this Fall. As Park Place, being a parent company and global at that, is aimed more at the business customer rather than the typical resort consumer, and therefore less inclined to move away from a "trustworthy" and "reliable" image (paramount to a gaming company), it'll be interesting to see if any of this fever catches on, and what kind of identity or company personality we'll be given to work with.

Whaddaya know. Lonnie Hammargren's house has a website.

Enter Captain Euro, "the star of September's EURO referendum campaign in Sweden, promoting the Euro as a cornerstone of a United Europe," here to show us that the European Union is a force to be reckoned with!

From Twelve Stars, the company responsible for this mess:

As in, lulling us into a sense of security, safe with the knowledge that an entity capable of creating something such as Captain Euro is in no way a threat to anyone?

On a side note, I could never get enough of gay twin villains in my superhero stories. Thank goodness for Castor and Pollux!

Several accounts of that parade yesterday in New York.

If, like me, you enjoy listening to music on your mac as you fall asleep but have an irrational fear of the continuing sound preventing you from hearing your alarm in the morning, then give iWannaSleep a try.

Wind the circular slider to the desired amount of time, start up iTunes and go to bed. Once the timer runs out, iWannaSleep can turn off iTunes, sound an audible alarm, shutdown the computer, or run an applescript of your choosing. Simple, yet effective.

Other possible uses:

• egg timer
  
• pizza timer
  
• timer to be sure the sprinklers are actually on for the eight minutes you'd set them to be the day before with the panel in the frontyard after receiving a drought restriction notice in the mail from the local water authority
  
• other things
  

iWannaSleep is freeware.

Well, Josh has moved to San Francisco, but Ryan redesigned and is actually posting again, so the [702] bloglist continues to sit firmly at two. Doesn't anyone in this town have a website?

Heh. Thanks, Lenny.

Cockbite.

Heh, just like last year, I completely spaced out on Defcon. However, just like last year, this sudden realization caused me to remember that CGExpo also takes place around this time, and whaddayaknow, it's this weekend.

Anyone going?

Since we're talking cons, might as well mention that the Las Vegas Comic-Con(What the hell is an Extrosion? I hate you, marketing people) is coming up in a couple months. While I read the occasional title now and then, I haven't really followed comics in years. However, the crew from Penny Arcade will be hosting a Soul Calibur II tourny, and from what I've heard their last one was a blast. Might be worth checking out.

A few of you pointed out this series of posts by Nikke Lindqvist detailing Dave Hill's experience and ongoing communication with the Time Traveller.

Nikke has now published a page of letters from his readers, filling in more gaps in the mystery and giving us further material to chew on, including a purported photo of the fellow at the pickup location that was supplied in one of the more recent missives sent out to all of us from the Time Traveller himself.

Has the plot thickened?

Kidding aside, I'd love to interview the Time Traveller for K5 if I can get ahold of him. Not to mock him as several have done in their email exchanges, but to find out the backstory from the man himself... who this guy is, how all of this started, how he funds his massive email campaign, how many correspondences he receives, how long he's been doing this, and so on. Does he realise how much of an internet phenomenon he is becoming?