Fun-Friday Lunchbreak Cartoon

 Bad Lunchbreak Cartoons  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

Here’s my first installment (of probably thousands to come) of my Fun Friday Lunchbreak Cartoon. Here’s the deal. My christmas present this year was an awesome Bamboo drawing tablet from Wacom. The thing is amazing and there’s plenty of free software to use with it on my Linux box at home.

But… at work, I’m stuck with an archaic Windows XP system that’s locked down with so many hardware and software restrictions that I can’t do anything fun like I can on Ubuntu at home. But I’m determined to try. I’m drawing all the pictures in this series using the Windows default Paint program. You know the one. It’s akin to a 1981 graphics program on the Commodore 64. It’s got about three brush options and 16 colors. Amazing.

And since I’m goofing around with this on my lunch break, all these cartoons will take less than 10 minutes to create. Give or take a minute or two, but that’s my goal.

I think I’ll call today’s cartoon “The People of Wal-mart on Wheel of Fortune.” If you haven’t seen the People of Wal-mart site, it’s pretty funny. And my wife sometimes sends me pictures of these folks. All I can say is, “Holy cow, there are some strange people in this country.”

That’s all. Happy Friday everybody!

 Posted by admin at 12:53 pm

The Potato – a second-class vegetable

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Jan 262012
 

Has anyone else noticed how the potato has recently become the second-class citizen of the vegetable world? I read an article in the NY Times this morning about the new rules for school lunches. The new rules were announced yesterday by Michelle Obama and Tom Vilsack at an elementary school in Alexandria, VA. Vilsack is the current agriculture secretary, but you may remember him as the former governor of Iowa and 2008 presidential hopeful.

The gist of the new rules: schools are going to be required to add more fruits and green vegetables and reduce the amount of salt and fat in the lunches and breakfasts they serve. They’re also going to be required to serve low fat milk and will be setting a minimum and Continue reading »

 Posted by admin at 12:48 pm

I want a tire swing.

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Jan 232012
 

I’ve never had a tire swing. Having grown up in the South, one might think that I would have had one hanging from a big old oak tree in every house I’ve ever lived in. The truth is, I never have. I know, I know. I’m as shocked as you are. As well as thoroughly embarrassed.

Think about this. What kind of adults do kids who grew up with a tire swing turn out to be? I’ll tell you. They grow up to be loving, happy, successful, well-adjusted, intelligent, and wealthy grown-ups. How do I know this? Read on friends. Did Bill Gates have a tire swing? Of course he did. What about the founder of Wal-mart, Sam Walton? You know he had one. And Bill Clinton? That dude was so successful he probably had a tire swing AND a treehouse. Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abe Lincoln? Yep, all had tire swings. And speaking of former presidents, what about Thomas Jefferson? I think he invented the tire swing.

You know who didn’t have a tire swing? Joseph Stalin, Timothy McVeigh, the Beatles, the Unabomber, Bill O’Reilly. It’s true. And I can’t help but think that the world would be much different place if these guys had someone build a tire swing for them when they were kids. I know you’re thinking- causation doesn’t necessarily imply correlation. And you’d be right, but the link is simply too strong to ignore.

That’s it. After writing this, I’ve just decided that I’m going to build one for my kids as soon as we can buy a house with a big enough tree. I hope they’re not already in college before that happens. It could be too late by then.

Image source: thelonggoodbye.wordpress.com

 Posted by admin at 2:29 pm

2012 New Year’s Resolutions

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Jan 192012
 

Every year I make at least a couple of New Year’s resolutions. And like many people I half-heartedly pay attention to them for a little while and then abandon them for whatever else has recently caught my attention. This year I’m trying something different. I’m going to try and half-heartedly pay attention to them the entire year. Yep, you heard me. I recently made my list of ten resolutions for 2012 and I’m committing myself to at least think about accomplishing them throughout the entire year. They may not all get done (and several probably won’t), but as of right now, I’m putting them all on my back beside the proverbial monkey, and I’m going to force myself to pay attention – and then feel guilty when I start slacking.

I’m posting here simply so I’ll have some place to look back on throughout the year to check on my progress (or lack thereof). So here they are. Prioritized in the order of which I think I want to do them. This is a summarized version – maybe I’ll try to expand on some of them in individual posts later. Continue reading »

 Posted by admin at 2:17 pm

Game 2 vs. Shredder 1406

 Chess  No Responses »
Jan 042012
 

So one of my New Year’s resolutions is to really start studying and training to get better at chess. I’m declaring 2012 my year to go from rank amateur to at least a club-level player. I’ll detail my training plan in a different post but part of it will be to play several games a week against Shredder. I plan on doing a rudimentary analysis of every game and a detailed analysis every so often. Then maybe I’ll post the PGNs here every week or so. Someday when I’m a little more experienced it should be interesting to look back on these early games. That’s the plan anyway.

Here’s tonight’s game. I’m playing Shredder at the default level (the computer picks a level based on my recent play against it). He’s playing somewhere around 1400. Note: I’m playing with “coach mode” turned on which warns when you’ve just blundered. And I had two moves in this game which it let me take back. Cheating, I know, but I’m very early in my training program so I’m giving myself some slack right now.

 Posted by admin at 11:15 pm

Not the Worst Album Covers Ever, but Pretty Close

 Miscellaneous  1 Response »
Dec 272011
 

Welcome to the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s day. This is kind of an odd week of the year when lots of people are still on vacation, there’s not a whole lot going on at work, and it’s hard to get motivated after a few days of feasting and opening presents.

As such, I’m one of the few people at work and not a whole lot of missile engineering is happening. So I just spent half my lunch break looking at Google images of bad album covers. Why? I don’t know. But I’m certainly glad I did. It’s given me something to spend the next fifteen minutes writing about. And maybe even a source for more fun future posts. Here are a few I came across today, and my thoughts on them. Continue reading »

 Posted by Matt at 12:55 pm

027. This has got to be the worst Christmas song ever recorded

 Miscellaneous  No Responses »
Dec 212011
 

Unfortunately, this is not Spike Jones.

I just heard what I think to be the worst Christmas song ever. This is maybe the third time I’ve heard it this season. The song? Spike Jones singing “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.” Now I’d heard of Spike Jones. I mean, the dude has a pretty cool name. He’s got to be some macho man on par with Clint Eastwood or Bruce Springsteen, right?

Until looking him up on the Internet, this was my mental picture of him. A big, tough guy. Probably wore a purple pimp hat with a feather in it during the seventies. May have even had a gold tooth or two. He could get away with wearing a long fur coat. Chicks would dig him.

But then you hear him sing “All I want for Christmas” and you think, whoa, this big tough pimp-looking guy wouldn’t be singing this crapfest of a song. So you do what any good investigative journalist would do — you look him up on Wikipedia.

That’s exactly what I did and I have to admit, my worldview was shattered just a little bit when I learned Spike Jones isn’t who I thought he was. Or I should say “wasn’t” who I thought he was since he’s dead. Another fact I didn’t know about him. If you didn’t know what Spike Jones looked like, take a quick break and go look him up. It’s quite disturbing. Continue reading »

 Posted by Matt at 1:44 pm

The Protopterus and Heather King – two noteworthy tetrapods

 Science  No Responses »
Dec 192011
 

African Lungfish

I read an interesting story in the Science section of the NY Times this morning. It seems that Heather King (a biologist at the University of Chicago) and her team observed a few African Lungfish taking alternating steps with their back fins.

Can you image the fish pictured above, with those tiny back legs, hopping along a muddy riverbank? Of course not. Those appendages look like something from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But… once upon a time, all animals lived in the water. According to these guys, and smart biologists everywhere, this was as recent as about 400 million years ago.

Why is this significant? The first animals to poop on land and eventually build space shuttles and particle accelerators, were likely very similar to the guy pictured above. Speaking of that, I’ve often wondered why these lobe-finned fish decided to leave the comforts of their oceans and boggy marshes. Probably a combination of the water becoming less oxygenated, or drying up, or the fact that there just weren’t enough good restaurants in their neighborhood. I’m sure they were disappointed to learn they were the first inhabitants of this new dry land and no one up here had invented restaurants yet. Continue reading »

 Posted by Matt at 10:11 am  Tagged with:
 Older Entries
© 2012 mattoneal.com Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha