Much like the Amish setting out on their carriages to roam the land for hedonistic delights, my modem and I have traversed the internets and now return with sweet, sweet video.

We begin with Firefox Flicks. In a nutshell, a few months ago the benevolent dictators who run that open source gig asked for 30-second ads promoting Firefox. All entries would get put up on the web, and there would be celebrity judges and big prizes for the winners. And I thought, yeah right. It’s one thing to put a link to getfirefox.com on your blog. But how many Firefox fans were going to front up with the talent and sheer volume of work required to produce a 30-second video?

Turns out, about 250. And many of them are surprisingly good – I was humbled by their awesomeness and my wrongness. 100 or so have been added to the site so far, and the winners have just been announced. I guess they are not the winners I would have picked, but then again, I would have given every single prize to Wheee!. I wouldn’t name my console that, mind, but that is one seriously funny ad. I also recommend Bask in the Smell (also not an especially inviting name) amongst many others. But why stop there – see them all! (And see also children impersonate the Wheee! ad.)

Now we move on to my other favourite topic, dissing Microsoft. Someone thought to ask what would have happened if Microsoft had designed the iPod? And I mean, yeah. It’s (very) funny because it’s true. What was even more interesting is that I later discovered the video had been made by Microsoft as a sort of internal kick-up-the-arse that someone had thoughtfully leaked to the web. It’s certainly promising to see they at least realise what they’re doing wrong. Apparently that’s the hard bit.

Perhaps you missed this April Fool’s parody of Ruby on Rails. Introducing – and I’m thilled about this – a screencast of SQL on Rails. Why learn more than one language to develop web apps!

And finally, a series of Nintendo DS Lite reviews by Cabel Sasser. Nintendo DS Lite First Look, Second Look and Third Look. If you tend to snort or otherwise embarrass yourself when you LOL, ensure you are alone when you watch these, because I’m warning you now, you will LOL.

Some people seem to still be inexplicably getting this wrong, so I have prepared what they call a table:

Guide to Women’s Footwear

See? It’s really quite simple.

There are, no doubt, even hotter examples, but this was closest to hand. Anyway, you may know Famke Janssen from such films as X-Men, X-Men 2 or X-Men 3.

And in Trademe news: shit.

I received this in my email today:

Dear David,

It was nice meeting you at Manhattan School of Music the other day. It is always a pleasure to meet another fine pianist (Karina says wonderful things about your playing.) Would you like to play for our next Music by Candlelight concert on Friday or Saturday, April 21-22?

It is an opportunity for us to get to know you and your music. We have several venues for paid performances that we can set up for you in the future. Karina is performing the Diabelli variations in our Bedford venue on Sunday April 30 at 6 pm.

We live in Suffern, which is 45 minutes from MSM. We will give you a ride to and from Manhattan, picking you up at 6 pm. There will be 2-3 other pianists, so you can plan to play 20-30 minutes of music. If there are fewer pianists, you may be able to play more if you wish.

I look forward to meeting you again soon!

Yashar Yaslowitz

I have never played the piano. Now I want to, though. It was with great restraint that I resisted sending a response, “I’ll be there!”. Also, I don’t think Karina will pick me up from Auckland. (Perhaps this is just the next wave of extremely subtle spam, courtesy the piano manufacturing industry. Keep it coming, I say.)

Watch out for Bartleby. Seriously, I would watch out for that guy. Upon reflection, I think I would go for cremation myself. I mean, you know, I’ll be dead, it’s not really going to be a big issue for me at the time, but I guess if it all goes horribly wrong, I would rather be burned alive than buried alive. Hmm. Actually, that’s a tough choice. Ask me closer to the time. Put me down as a “maybe”.

Speaking of tough choices, I was watching the Commonwealth Games the other day and have the following question for you: would you rather be a judge at Javelin, Discus or Shotput if you had bad reflexes and a tendency to wander onto the pitch? I imagine many people would rule out javelin right away, but don’t be so fast: a single clean incision is surely better than being crushed to death. Anyway, just putting it out there. So many tough choices we face in life.

Here’s a really awesome graphic of the history of the universe. Simple as that, huh? The growth curve is a bit of a worry though. Damn dark matter. Show yourself, fiend!

Anyway, on to my favourite topic, drinking. And my other favourite topic, fucking hilarous. Especially this one and this one. (And a shout out to Dunc.) I bet these are the same people that buy stuff from spam.