When I was a kid, my mom used to drive myself and my sister to Safeway every weekend to buy food. It was something I looked forward to because as a kid, I loved buying food that wasn't good for me. Actually, that's something I still love to this day. Anyways, when we passed by the magazine rack, I'd often pick up a copy of the latest Mad magazine.

It was entertaining stuff for kid like me, who enjoyed regular features like the movie spoofs, Spy vs. Spy, the awesome artwork of Sergio Aragonés, and of course the iconic fold-in jokes. Along side Mad magazine on the rack, however, was a publication named Cracked. Cracked had no shame in positioning itself as a Mad magazine imitator. If it was possible for me to have distinguishing tastes for corny magazine content, I found Cracked to be not to my liking. I believe I might have bought an issue once just because I was bored but regretted it when I got it home.

Though both magazines have had their readership numbers waver over the years, Cracked has actually ceased publication. Both properties have been remade in different formats. Most of you know that Mad was spun off into a sketch comedy show that competes with my beloved SNL. Cracked itself now lives on through an excellent web site.

As a web site Cracked.com, is one hell of a good read. In my opinion, the best thing about their site is the huge compilations of lists they have. Consider for example, 8 (Pointless) Laws All Comic Book Movies Follow or 8 Celebrities You Didn't Know Were Geeks.

Another thing I like about the site is that, given its content, the level of grammar and writing is at a very high level. Similar sites on the web are just rife with mind-numbing spelling and grammatical errors. To see Cracked.com deliver good content in a nicely packaged form just makes me like it more.

Sadly, the site is blocked at EA for "adult content" even though there's no nudity, so I gotta get my fix at home. Maybe it's because of lists like The 15 Most Sexually Unappealing Porn Titles .

3 Comments

Valleywag recently put out a list of the 10 worst entry-level jobs in tech. While it seems like an interesting list, I think it's got some dubious entries with jobs that don't seem so bad. Getting paid $80K USD right out of undergrad and working for Amazon.com doesn't seem like a horrible proposition to me. Hell, I made $38K straight out of grad school three years ago and I don't see my old job on that list.

The author should also look at some QA jobs in the gaming industry. Getting paid $10/hr and working long shifts for months on end is far worse than some of the jobs in that list.

1 Comments

0 Comments

As a kid, a lot of things captured my imagination: comic book heroes, robots, sci-fi, and eating french fries whenever I wanted. One of the few things that were grounded in reality but also captured my imagination was interplanetary travel. Back then and unfortunately, to this day, the reality of that is still in the realm of unmanned robotic spacecraft.

Next Sunday, the latest in a fleet of spacecraft will attempt to land on the planet of Mars. The mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander is to examine the surface of Mars for soil and hopefully ice samples. Unlike the previous descents of the now-famous rovers, Phoenix will not utilize large airbags to cushion its impact with the surface. Phoenix will use good old-fashioned thrusters to slow itself down and bring it to a gentle landing.

Because those NASA guys and gals are so damn good what they do, they can predict that touchdown will occur on May 25, 2008 at 4:53:52 p.m PST, +/- ~46 seconds. If you're at all interested in space exploration, I encourage you to watch NASA TV online next Sunday, where they will broadcast live coverage of the landing. I watched the coverage when both the landers made their descent and honestly, it's exciting stuff.

I'll post a reminder closer to Sunday. Good luck to the Phoenix team!

0 Comments

Do I know someone who works for Google? This doesn't seem to be a visit from a crawler or indexer. I wonder who this is?

2 Comments