Chuck Norris Facts’ Factotum

(Nerd Alert) The ROFLCon took place a couple of weeks ago in Cambridge, MA. At said conference, Ian Spector was part of a panel discussion. Who is Ian Spector? Why, he’s only the genius behind the Chuck Norris Fact Generator. Here’s an interview with Ian, where he talks about the generator’s genesis (Vin Diesel was before Chuck), Chuck’s appreciation of it (lawyers were involved), and more. Also on the panel: Joe Mathlete, creator and operator of another Internet gem (though not Dallas-relevant), Marmaduke Explained. Enjoy.

Own a Piece of Presidential History!

Here is a must-have item for JFK conspiracy theorists and single-shooter strict constructionists alike. Probably too late for Mother’s Day, but Father’s Day is just a month away. [Via]

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun is a simple, lo-fi affair. (I know. An Internet game can’t be “low fidelity.” Don’t worry about that. It’s not important right now.) The game is called Dino Run. You’re a dino. You run. You pick up eggs along the way and try to increase your DNA for higher functioning and to escape extinction. You jam to the music. You have fun.

FireAvery.com Creator Fires Himself

Greg Holland, the guy who beat everyone else to the domain name that would sum up the second half of the Mavs’ season, is giving up blogging.

Which works out just fine, because a Knicks fan is going to need that in about three/four seasons.

[slow clap]

Kermit the Frog Covers Elliott Smith (And The Royal Tennenbaums)

Since Elliott Smith grew up around here, and Luke Wilson starred in the scene being referenced, that’s enough of an excuse for this amazing piece of video.

Rene Syler’s New Gig

Former Dallas anchor Rene Syler no longer works at CBS’ morning show. (For a refresher of her experiences there, check out D’s 2003 profile of Syler.) Syler has now joined Meredith Corporation and will host a show on Parents.tv. Good luck with that. [via]

What’s Up With FrontBurner: A Pseudo-Techie Explanation

Dear, kind, patient FrontBurnervians,

You may have noticed some strange things afoot on FrontBurner yesterday — things like posts disappearing, reappearing, and then disappearing again. You may have wondered a) Why would they do such a thing?, and b) Do they know magic? The answer to the second one is no (apart from a couple of card-tricks). The answer to the first is: It’s not our fault.

Okay, it’s *kind of* our fault. After weeks of planning and days of testing, we switched hosting servers over the weekend. I won’t go into the reasons why. But with the switch, we changed our DNS — you know, the thing that makes words like www.frontburner.dmagazine.com into numbers like 192.43.735830573053 (where the content actually is). We kept the old hosting server active as a precaution against losing data, but your ISP should know that it’s the old version and that there’s a newer one out there. If all had gone to plan, when you (and you and you and you) went to FrontBurner, the new DNS entry that we updated would have directed you to the data on the new hosting server. Worse case scenario, if your ISP had cached (remembered) the old hosting server’s numbers, that server should have told your browser “Nope, nothing to see here,” and your ISP would have looked around for two seconds and found the new hosting server’s numbers in the DNS listing, home of FrontBurner’s freshest content. But not all ISPs are cooperating (ie. they are not all looking for the new numbers), which is why you might see fresh FrontBurner at work but not at home. Or vice versa.

So that’s what happened and we know what’s going on, but we’re at the mercy of everyone’s individual ISPs to catch up. We’re removing the old version (all content will still be on FrontBurner, don’t worry), which should help speed up that process. And, as you probably could guess, the same situation has affected SideDish, DallasDirt, Overheard, and D Home’s blog.

Sorry, folks. (And a shout-out to Josh for working on — and helping me explain — the problem.)

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun is nothing new. In fact, I think it’s been around for centuries. It’s Mah Jong solitaire, and for some reason, I can’t stop playing. I take that back. The reason I haven’t been able to stop playing is because I’ve yet to win a game. (In case you haven’t played before: The objective is to click on matching tiles to remove them, trying to remove them all. You can only click on tiles that are on the border of their level.) There are a lot of versions out there — like this one and that one — but I especially like the full-screen version found here. Have fun.

Friday Fun

Happy, Friday, you non-Byron Nelson-watching FrontBurnervians. Today’s Friday Fun is mindless entertainment. It’s called Doeo. The object is to mouse over the Doeos as they pop up on the landscape. The trick is to concentrate and refrain from dancing to the lounge-y, psychedelic-y tunes. Enjoy.

Friday Fun

A little late this Friday. Sorry about that. I hope The Last Canopy makes up for it. The game is apparently an example of a Manic Shooter game. I learned that from Jay Is Games, the site that awarded The Last Canopy a 1st place something or other. All’s I knows is it’s some Friday Fun. Enjoy.

Bloggin’ and Drawin’

Tampa Bay illustrator Greg Williams has a pretty good thing going: Take short, confessional, and/or personal blog entries and turn them into Harvey Pekar-like comic strips. He calls it Blogjam. What’s the local tie? Former D.O. music editor and all-time friend of FrontBurnerers Sarah Hepola got her “cousin at Wet ‘n Wild with knocked-out teeth” story hand-drawn recently. Nice work, Sarah.

“Is That The Rangers Season Guide In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?”

Rangers fan Joe Siegler has quite the collection of Rangers Pocket Schedules, but the collection is not complete. He needs your help. So go help him already.

Friday Fun

Today Friday Fun could be nothing other than this, the Putting at Amen Corner Game. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Master’s weekend. Now you too can be a part of the action, or some other cliché-sounding promo copy. Have fun. Go, Tiger. (Hat tip to Josh for the passalong.)

Go, Stars

Tomorrow night is the first night of the Stars-Ducks playoffs. If you didn’t know that already, you probably don’t care. And if you did, you probably know how the Stars match up with the defending Stanley Cup champs or know where to find stuff like that. Instead, I’ll focus on the celebrity bloggers associated with each team. The Stars have (again) Mrs. Modano Willa Ford (left). The Ducks have celebreality “star” Lauren “L.C.” Conrad, who admits to being more of a Kings fan (right). I’m still trying to figure out if L.C. is more boring than she is fake or more fake than she is boring. Either way: Advantage Stars.

Technical Issues on DMag.com and FrontBurner

Hello, patient, kind, and understanding FrontBurnervians. Some of you may have noticed some pop-ups and odd behavior on our site. We apologize for that. Here’s an explanation of what’s going on from our extremely capable and hard-working Online Developer & Programmer Josh Pearson:

Since Friday we’ve been experiencing some virus issues with our main Web server that hosts the D Magazine and People Newspapers Web sites. It started off just serving pop-up ads that were not related to our sites in any way, but has since progressed into serving executables and trying to prompt downloads of malicious software. We have a temporary fix in place that cleans our server every few minutes, but you may still experience this issue for brief periods of time until we are able to eradicate the virus altogether.

We have had reports of people accessing FrontBurner and getting download prompts and malware warnings. We believe this is tied to accessing FrontBurner from the D Magazine site, since all of the blogs are hosted separately and are not vulnerable to this particular virus. If you access FrontBurner directly via bookmark or by referencing the http://frontburner.dmagazine.com URL, you should experience no issues. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue once and for all.

If you continue to have trouble or have other questions, Josh’s email address is joshp AT dmagazine.com. Please be kind to him, and apologies again for the trouble.

Who Wrote the Facebook of Love

An ever-helpful FrontBurnervian sends along this link to a story by UNT senior Michael Hernandez on CNNU about kids these days and their relationship status being defined by Facebook. The link-sender adds:

I had the same thing happen to me once, but it was on Myspace. I’m old school, I guess.

Friday Fun

A little simple, mindless Friday Fun for you. It’s called Jump ‘N’ Bump. Control the bouncey ball, collect the stars, and advance to the next level. A little game-within-the-game is to see how long you can play without hitting “mute” on your computer. The music and sound effects make it harder than you’d think. Still, have fun.

Re: Strange Prank

Speaking of this, here’s a rundown of a number of other April Fool’s Day pranks circulating around the interwebs. And to make this local, and sort of related to this, pictured is my own long-running April Fool’s gag, which turned four today.

Bloggers’ Locker Room Access the Latest on the List of the Million Things On Which Mark Cuban and the NBA Don’t Agree

The NBA rejected Cubes’ locker-room blogger ban. The NBA then wagged a finger in his face and firmly instructed him “not to bring that weak stuff in here no more. This is my house!”

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun is whimsical, colorful, addictive, pleasant to listen to, and fun to say. It’s called Cobacoli. Like billiards, you shoot a white circle into other colored circles, aiming for walls of that same color. Like bumper pool, there are obstacles in the advanced stages. Like better Friday Funs, it’s a great distraction. Enjoy.

Update: High score for me (so far) is 48, but stuck on Level 5.

Friday Fun

Happy Good Friday Friday, everybody. Today’s a half day for us, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have a full day of fun. I present Cursor 10. The graphics are as lo-fi as you can get. The point of it is as simple as can be, too. Just click on the tiny pyramids for points and click on the staircases to get to the next level. Get as many points in the time allowed. Then repeat. (It’s cool how the next round shows you a shadow of the previous one.) Have fun.

When Bloggers Get Into a Fight With Other Bloggers

Here is a good recap of yesterday’s visit to the AAC by the great Henry Abbott, who runs ESPN’s True Hoop blog. Abbott was in town, of course, to see what was up with Mark Cuban’s recent (and much-derided) blogger ban — also known (by me) as the Tim McMahon rule. I happened to be seated near the press area where Abbott was stationed. I’m surprised he wasn’t able to outsmart Cubes, since he looks exactly like Lex Luthor.

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun is called Nanotube. It makes more sense to play than describe: You control this outer orb with a colored, rotating wall, see. And you need to block these colored balls that are trying to escape. It’s kind of like the old-school arcade game Tempest. The game starts out as very simple and you’ll wonder, What kind of fun is this? And then the colored wall splits and the colored balls trying to escape multiply and your head will start to hurt and you’ll wonder, What kind of fun is this? What kind of fun? Friday fun.

Don’t Make A Craigslist Purchase In Person

If they’ve figured out how to rob you in Seattle, they’ll soon figure it out in Dallas.

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun isn’t very fun, but there’s a reason for that. It’s called Snowman Skiing and the object is to ski the snowman down the mountain to pick up snowman parts. Why is it intentionally not fun? Because technically I should be in Las Vegas right now having a different kind of fun, but my American Airlines flight yesterday afternoon was canceled. Then the American Airlines flight yesterday evening was canceled. Then we found out that there were zero American Airlines flights available for today. (Seems Southwest Airlines isn’t having any trouble … nor every other airline, so it seems.) So enjoy. If I ever get to Vegas, I might not come back.

In the Meantime, Let’s Talk Lost

While you’re waiting for more Sandra Crenshaw commentary, peruse this interview with Dallas’ own Elizabeth Mitchell about tonight’s episode of Lost — which centers on her not-evil (for now) character, Juliet — and this season of the show (the best so far, in my estimation). If you’ve missed a few episodes, go here for recaps. (But not if you don’t like to laugh or read a little blue language.)

How the Caucus Coverage Affected FrontBurner Traffic

For Those Who Care: according to Google Analytics, our efforts yesterday produced — drum roll — almost no change in our traffic. We got 6,429 visits from 3,370 unique visitors. Both numbers are about average for us on a weekday. We did, however, generate 17,807 pageviews yesterday, where our average might be only 11,000 or so. Basically that means the same number of people came to see us, but they refreshed the site a bit more frequently than they otherwise might have.

Anyway, we don’t do it for the numbers. We do it for the love of the game. And the troops.

Friday Fun

A friendly FrontBurnervian passed along this week’s Friday Fun. It’s called Sheep Dash. The object of the game is to tranquilize sheep as they dart across the screen. You’ve got to nab all five in the shortest amount of time. If you tranquilize a non-darting sheep, you get penalized three seconds. Don’t worry about aiming. It’s all about reaction times. And it’s one of those games that you place once, get frustrated, then play approximately 27 more times trying to better your score. Post your best in comments; honor code system applies. Have fun.

GM Honcho’s “Crock of S—” Comment Keeps Making Headlines

Glenn is far too humble. He could be scoreboarding all of us with the international play his Bob Lutz blog entry has received. Nearly a month ago, Glenn posted Lutz’s thoughts on global warming that the GM exec made at a private luncheon. In the days and weeks that followed, those comments proved fertile fodder for bloggers all over. Now Lutz is reiterating his views on the “[crockery]” of global warming. Well done, sir.

Friday Fun

Hello, Friday Fun-seeking FrontBurnervians. Today’s game is called String Avoider Deluxe. Pretty catchy title, eh? Also a little deceiving. The point isn’t to avoid strings. Instead you control the string and try to avoid walls, making wide turns when necessary and using scissors to your advantage. Much like old-school Operation, it takes a very steady hand. Have fun.

Friday Fun

Today’s Friday Fun is called The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2, and you almost don’t even need to play it to have fun. I mean, isn’t it fun just knowing there’s a game called The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2? In it, you run around (in your fancy pants) knocking a big squiggle all over the place. Have fun.

Plugging the PLUG Awards (Again)

Remember when I posted about the PLUG Awards? Of course you do; it was awesome. Anyway, you still have a couple of days to vote. Also, the awards will be given out on March 6 at Terminal 5 in New York City at a shindig hosted by Patton Oswalt (funny guy), and featuring performances by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Jose Gonzalez, and lovely and talented local girl St. Vincent. If you can’t make it to NYC, you can see the whole shebang here.

Ticketstock ‘08 on YouTube

If you missed The Ticket’s annual shindig out at the Plano Centre, you can catch the highlights(?) from the Ticket Timewasters’ performance on YouTube here, thanks to the intrepid Brian Darley. Or you can skip that and clog the comments with your thoughts on the departure of The Hammer and how the station has jumped the shark or whatever the kids are saying these days.

Emmitt Smith Is World-Record Holder

Somehow, I missed this news last week. Emmitt took time out from washing the gray out of his beard to wash a big dish. How big? Big enough to get him a Guinness World Record. Shockingly, it was a promotional stunt (for Dawn Direct Foam dishwashing foam). What did Emmitt think of the task? I quote: “This right here is a piece of cake in comparable to the things I had to do on the football field.” Seriously. That’s a quote. You can see the video for yourself over at Awful Announcing.

Friday Fun

Friday Fun is here. Today’s game is Filler. It’s kind of like Qix (no, not Tall Paul), in that the goal is to cover a certain percentage of the playing field — in this case two-thirds. How do you “cover” an area? But making filler balls and avoiding bouncey balls. Simple. Fun. Friday.

A YouTube Video of Interest to Approximately Three FrontBurnervians

I’ve got a high-school alumni happy hour this afternoon, which has me in a St. Mark’s frame of mind, which means I finally remembered to seek out this YouTube vid a classmate told me about recently. Fellow Marksmen no doubt know of history teacher/baseball coach/basketball coach/legend Tom Adams’ fast talking. He is rumored to have held the world record for it. Here, in a documentary produced by none other than Shannon Wynne and Stephen Butt more than 20 years ago, is Adams doing his thang, speaking 346 words in less than a minute. Those words include: the 50 states, the 50 capitals of those states, the alphabet backwards, the (then) 38 presidents in order, the 66 books of the Bible, the 32 points of a compass, and the 28 train stops between New York and Chicago. See and hear for yourself.

Random Tidbit About Groundhog Day

The movie stars Bill Murray, but Dallas’ Stephen Tobolowsy (”Bing!”) pretty much steals it (unless you count Chris Elliot stealing it). That’s not the random tidbit. No, the tidbit in question is that a resourceful blogger watched it over the weekend, took some notes, did some calculations, and figures Murray lived the same February 2 for about four years. So now you know.

Belo Aims New Blog Directly At Me

Belo has something like 50 blogs up and running, some better than others, none of which I check on an extremely regular basis. That should change with the debut of The Boogie Spot. Its main two areas of interest are basketball (specifically the Mavericks) and music (specifically hip-hop), and its main two persons of interest are Jeff “Skin” Wade and Ben “Ben” Rogers. I don’t know if my productivity could get any slower, but I’m willing to try.

Friday Fun

Hello, Friday. Nice to meet you, Fun. Yes, it’s Friday Fun time. Today’s game is Chain Factor. It’s a bit like Connect Four meets Tetris. The little tokens you drop have numbers on them. If the number on it matches the number of tokens there are in a row or a column, those tokens disappear. It’s more simple than it sounds, especially if you read this. Check it out and have some fun.

To Reiterate: Mark Cuban Will Appear in Anything Involving a Camera

Yahoo! has posted a new featurette promoting the forthcoming Will Ferrell vehicle, Semi-Pro. As I alluded to, Cubes is in it. And he’s actually pretty funny. Creepy, yes, but funny.

IM Just Saying: Wes Cox

Remember IM Just Saying? The intermittent FrontBurner feature? “Intermittent” might be a stretch, as there’s only been one other instance of it. Today marks the second. Zac had suggested that I chat up (or iChat or AIM or Adium or whatever form IM Just Saying happens to take) Wes Cox, proprietor of Mavs Moneyball, “an unofficial Dallas Mavericks blog.” The timing was right, as the Mavs are now halfway through the season. Yesterday afternoon, Wes and I virtual chatted about that, soccer, and, um, taxes. Check it out.

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Friday Fun

I admit, today’s Friday Fun might not be so fun for everyone. After all, I’m a huge, huge fan of Tetris (space shuttle every time, yo) and even I am uncertain as to the promise of Tetrical. It’s Tetris … in 3-D. Check it out. If you dare.

Plugging the PLUG Awards

Each year, the PLUG Independent Music Awards acts as sort of counterpart to the Independent Spirit Awards for film. The 2008 installment happens March 6 in New York, and voting is still underway here. Local angle? Jump!  (more…)

Lisa Loeb Plays At IKEA

Has the songstress fallen that far? Yes and no. See, writer Mark Dworkin has some shtick going called “Mark Lives at Ikea,” which includes some video vignettes of him “living at IKEA.” The most recent one has Mark in trouble with his wife, and to make amends he tricks Lisa into playing a concert for them at an IKEA in Jersey. Want the link to that video? Okay. (Props to Lisa for being the least-annoying person in the video by far.)

Friday Fun

I’m going to be honest with you, I haven’t ventured too far into today’s Friday Fun. It seems like it might be a bit more involved than other Friday Funs (Fridays Fun?). But more than a few of you have sent it along to me as a suggested Friday Fun, so I’m going to trust the people. Fitting, I guess, since the game is called Campaign Game. You select which presidential candidate to be, what staff to hire, and then what moves to make. Near as I can tell, it’s like Risk meets Dungeons & Dragons. Only there’s no dice. Good luck, candidates.

News’ Site Up 22%

Scary headlines must work. Personally, I find the News’ site almost impossible to navigate, but that’s just me.  A new report on web traffic at metro newspapers from Editor & Publisher says it is doing quite well, thank you. The stats after the jump:

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Speaking of We Shot JR

Which I was yesterday. Besides for being the only place to download a free copy of Red Monroe’s new remix album, the site has also just debuted Projection 002, its second compilation of music from the Dallas-Denton-Fort Worth area. The first was great, and this one looks to be even better. So, you know, get on that.

D Beauties Have Something to “Yawp” About

If MySpace and Facebook aren’t touchy-feely enough for you, maybe Yawp Box is your ideal virtual pulpit. The Dallas-based website aims to connect people through shared life experiences using video, photos, and journal entries. (Topics up for discussion right now include “Have you ever pimped your ride?”, “Share what it’s like to be stranded,” and “Tell us about the day your life went wrong.” Um, ouch.) If you’d prefer to restrict your experience sharing to attractive people, Yawp Box is hosting a launch reception tomorrow at LIFT Lounge featuring admissions—Worst Breakup, Most Embarrassing Moment, Worst Habit—from D Beauty’s 10 Most Beautiful Women in Dallas. (See just-edited, behind-the-scenes video from the 10 Most Beautiful shoot here.) Proceeds benefit Genesis Women’s Shelter. Jump for the full rundown.

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Adventures in Blogrolling: We Shot JR

The anonymity-craving fellas who run We Shot JR recently revamped their site, giving me an excuse to point you in the direction of what I would consider to be the best music site in town. (I could have also used their latest post about the new Red Monroe remix album. That’s newsy, right?) Is WSJR comprehensive? No. Is it, at times, ill-tempered? Yes. Will you agree with all their picks and recommendations? Probably not. But that’s what I like about it; they have a point of view. And also, the battles in the comments section are entertaining, though rarely on topic and more often than not ridiculously profane. It’s not on our blog roll by accident.

Sevin Rosen Not So Rosy

For some reason, I’m fascinated by TheFunded.com. “Fascinated” may be too strong a word. But definitely intrigued. The site is a collection of rankings and reviews of venture capitalists, made anonymously by entrepreneurs. Home team Sevin Rosen did not fair as well as, say, Hunt Ventures or Capital Southwest. Check it out if so inclined.