We were feeling a bit nostalgic today for the old days. Back before blogs, before web 2.0, yay, nigh on back before time itself. But even back then, there was the Broken Plank, the first Dalek Bell enterprise. I’ve always been particularly proud of the guarantee we added at the height of Y2K hysteria:

Year 1900 statement: Our computers have been carefully validated to ensure they will not confuse the year 1900 with 1900, and this site has been officially declared year 1900 compliant.

We’ve tried to rescue some of the spirit of the plank at makesweet.com, but sometimes I long for another episode in the Mr. Nibbles trilogy…

If you want a challenge, try writing a romantic message in hobo sign. Or even just a non-homicidal one. I recently tried making a little romantic note for Mrs. Bell. If I’d wanted to say: “be ready to defend yourself, there’s no point going this way, owner will give to get rid of you” I’d have been all set. But that isn’t exactly what I was going for. In the end, I settled on this:

In other words, “you can camp here, a kind lady lives here, the sky’s the limit.”

Although I was sorely tempted by “free telephone.” Next on the list to try: semaphore and/or DNA.

Here’s a round-up of jobs a Klingon can fall back on if the starship tactical officer gig doesn’t work out.

Klingon chef

Klingons are natural cooks. All that chopping up and boiling appeals to their instincts. Here’s a sample recipe:

Home-Style Gagh

SERVES 1-2

Find someone who has already prepared some home-style gagh. Kill him/her in honorable combat and take his/her gagh. Serve cold and enjoy.

(via McSweeney’s, lots more recipes there)

Klingon monk

Klingons are natural philosophers, very clear on their place and the place of god within the universe, as evidenced by the following conversation:

KIRA: Do Klingons have gods?
WORF: Not any more. They were all slain by Klingon warriors a millenium ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.

(via starbase118)

Klingon fashion designer

Sheldon Comics advances this interesting possibility. The characters there have the following discussion:

“But in every episode, all the Klingons are wearing different outfits.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So? So it means that somewhere on the Klingon homeworld, there’s a Klingon fashion designer. It means there’s one dude who’s going - this season: more buckles! less leather! … next season: more over-the-shoulder metal sashes! Man, I wanna see the episode about that Klingon!”

“He rides into battle gloriously! shouting: careful, that vest was hand stitched!”

Klingon software engineer

There seems to be a strange fellow-feeling amongst programmers and Klingons showing on the internets right now. Example quotes making the rounds:

• What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases.’ Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
• Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
• And lots more…

Klingon love-doctor

Worf on Star Trek gave the young Wesley excellent advice on love, which we could all do with following:

Worf: “AAAAAAAUUUUURRRGGGGHHHH! That is how a Klingon lures a mate.”
Wesley: “Are you telling me to yell at Salia?”
Worf: “No, no, no. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects. And claw at you.”
Wesley: “What does the man do?”
Worf: “He reads love poetry. He ducks a lot.”
Wesley: “Worf, it sounds like it works great for the Klingons, but… I need to try something a little less… dangerous?”
Worf: “Go to her door, beg like a human.”

(from “The Dauphin” episode)

On makesweet.com, we have a blood-thirsty murderous Klingon offering similar advice on life and love.

Klingon Opera singer

Klingons are apparently quite into opera. Who can forget the haunting strains of Aktuh and Melota:

BOOOOW-cha-daaay…
KEEEY-cha-daaay…
Me-YO-cha-BEEN-evaaa-kaa-MOOOOR…
LIIING-tomaaa…
Oh-ma-do-VEE-kos……ZOOOOOOO!
Oh-ma-do-VEE-kos……ZOOOOOOO!

(source: SajQa). I think we’ve all felt like saying that to a loved one at one time or another.

Update: DragonConTV has a video of what depths Klingons have to sink to between Star Trek shows. Tip: don’t ask your Klingon waiter to cut your sandwich in half. He may get a bit… over-enthusiastic shall we say.

Update: Oregon is not hiring Klingon interpreters. I repeat, if you are a Klingon interpreter do not seek employment in Oregon. It is strange to be having to say this.

Looks like a How-To Do-it-yourself guide to destroying the Earth is in the works. So many people out there who want to figure out how to build the button. But never press it. Heavens no.

Sam Hughes gives a careful, methodical analysis of how to destroy the Earth for real. Here’s the preamble:

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You’ve seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You’ve heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you’ve had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

(read more)

Got a webcam, some spare time, and a friend you want to annoy? Lay a trap for them with our webcam ambush. This is an image change detector implemented in Flash which triggers whenever there’s motion in the field of view of your camera. When it triggers, it plays a sound of your choice.

So the scenario is: you leave your computer, webcam, and the ambush page running in a room. Later, your friend walks in and boom, the star trek “intruder alert” alarm goes off, or a mysterious voice laughs darkly, or there is a fanfare greeting, or … well, you get the idea.

It is like those 20 dollar gadgets you can buy that do basically the same thing, except now with extra internets!!

This gizmo was inspired by Guy Watson’s tutorial on Flash motion detection. It is in the same series as our webcam hat put-er on-er.

We remember being impressed by the (now apparently defunct) Fez Pigeon site, which added a cute little hat to a webcam view of a pet pigeon. We are pretty confident that most people, if they reflected for just a moment, would find that this is exactly the service needed to fill that gaping hole in their lives they don’t even know they have. To evaluate interest in the automatic putting of hats on things, we’ve developed a webcam puppet that does exactly that. Plug in a webcam, load the puppet, and click on something in the scene that would look better with a party hat on it. And behold! The hat appears, following the object as it moves. You’ll have better luck if the object is nice and simple, with good color contrast with the background.

Brownie and Bozo came up with a new animation for the MakeSweet Blender, featuring a table falling from space with a cake on it. Now that I write that down, it seems a little … odd. I’m not sure if this was the one missing piece that the world was lacking in order to achieve a completely harmonious whole. You can control the image on the cake, and some words that sort of hover nearby it, so I suppose if you made some breathtaking choice of image and words, you might achieve … something. “This is not a pipe“, perhaps? They’ve used it in the past as an elaborate birthday card, apparently.

The movie generation procedure has been improved a bit; you can finally request email notifications (which is important, given that movies can take hours to produce), and it is a bit more obvious how to actually download the result (as opposed to viewing it online).

Enjoy!

Brownie and Bozo just posted a set of tips for long-distance lovers on MakeSweet. They pick out some of the best things to do online if you want to sweep your beloved off their feet. I’m not sure I’m convinced by them all, but I like the idea of personalized lolcats. I’ll have to try that out on Mrs. Bell. Apparently you can also make comics online, although I hope you can come up with better dialog than Brownie and Bozo did.

Also, I could have done without seeing you guys photoshopped into a “Tarzan and his Mate” photo…

The MakeSweet Blender, a tool for making customized 3D movies online, just got a whole lot better. We’re trying to do our bit to bring the possibilities of blender (an open source 3D design and animation program) to the masses. We now have the beginnings of a web interface for customizing designs. Now we just need to recruit some artists to come up with some cool movies. Our in-house talent on this isn’t up to much unfortunately (no offense, Brownie and Bozo). Watch this space, it is going to be fun!

For those not familar with blender, you should check it out. The learning curve is steep, but with just a little patience you can learn to make crazy animations of exploding business models and impress all the other CEOs (or whoever you hang out with).

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart likes to make fun of Cheney’s gruff, no-nonsense manner. But what exactly is he saying?

Hrr grr! Grr ARRR wrhr wrhr. Rrr ARRR? Grr hrr ARRR? ARRR rrr. Grr grr grr grr wrhr. Rrr ARRR! Rrr ARRR hrr ARRR ARRR ARRR rrr? Grr grr hrr. ARRR ARRR. Rrr wrhr grr grr rrr wrhr! Grr grr ARRR grr grr ARRR grr wrhr wrhr ARRR grr rrr. Wrhr ARRR. Grr rrr wrhr! ARRR.

Use the Code Quacker to interpret it.