The Passion of the Cruise
This is what Scientologists actually believe.
Why FOX cancelled Firefly
Memorandum
To: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Television Incorporated
From: Shillton Skankowski, FOX Television Entertainment Network Group
Date: February 19th, 2002
Dear Joss,
After that power brunch we had yesterday I just thought I’d send you a memo and let you know that I’ve talked with the other executives here at FOX and we’ve decided to give your little space western idea another chance. However, and I’m sure you’ll understand why, we ask for a few simple adjustments to your marvellous show idea before we can continue. Read the rest of this entry »
Sportsgirl Stole A Threadless Design
As a follow-up to Johnsee’s article “Sportsgirl Stealing Designs or about to sell Threadless?“, I decided to go and get photos of one of the stores, tell my side of the story, and give my thoughts on what happened.
The Situation
My girlfriend and I were shopping at a particular shopping centre in Brisbane last week. She and I have become avid Threadless browsers and buyers over the past year, so we’ve become pretty familiar with all the designs that have been printed. As we went past a Sportsgirl store (a popular young women’s clothing franchise here in Australia) she noticed in the display window a “kissing birds” sticker that looked strangely familar:
The last picture is from a Threadless shirt called For The Birds, and, like all Threadless prints, was designed by a member of the Threadless.com community. It was created by Travis Matthew Stearns and submitted on 25 July 2005, so there’s definitely no confusion as to which one came first. Read the rest of this entry »
Extras series 2 stars announced
Extras, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (masterminds behind The Office, BBC’s most successful sitcom ever) is a British sitcom (sans the usual canned laughter) that follows Andy and his friend Maggie as they work as movie extras, with each episode being based around a different film.
Andy (Ricky Gervais) tends to spend a lot of his time looking for ways to get a speaking role, while Maggie is more content with looking among the cast and crew for a boyfriend. Darren Lamb (played by Stephen Merchant) is Andy’s agent, who fails to procure Andy substantial roles. Every episode has at least one guest star (a television/movie celebrity) that play “twisted” charicatures of themselves.
With the first run of the show host to such big names as Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewart, Les Dennis, Ross Kemp and Vinnie Jones, it seemed quite a season to beat. Luckily, the new lineup doesn’t disappoint.
Gervais’ international renown has helped him secure a number of high profile actors and celebrities including David Bowie, Orlando Bloom, Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf, Magneto), Stephen Fry, Chris Martin (Coldplay), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) as well as smaller guest stars Ronnie Corbett, Moira Stewart, Dame Diana Rigg, Richard Briers and Germaine Greer. Gervais has also announced in his eighth video podcast that Robert Lindsay (of My Family) will be appearing in the last episode.
Extras series 2 begins 14 September on BBC2, while the first series is slated to premiere in Australia on ABC TV around the same time. No dates have been announced yet for series 2 on America’s HBO (which aired the first series last year in September).
Exciting news… Obviously.
Chuck Norris READS Chuck Norris Facts
Finally! Proof that Chuck Norris has a good sense of humour! A video has made it’s way onto the internet of him reading out his top 10 random facts on The Best Damn Sports Show Period.
HA! IN YOUR FACE MEGAN YOU BITCH! (If you don’t know what i’m talking about read any comments made by “Megan” on our previous Chuck Norris articles)
Just don’t make fun of his reading skills or else, well, you know what you’ll get.
Related articles:
Random Facts About Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris Responds To Random Facts
Young Chuck Norris
HD vs DVD quality comparison
Wonder if the quality of HD is going to be that much better than DVD? Check out these screenshots from The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD transfer and compare them to their HD counterpart. The difference is amazing!
DVD screenshot (cropped)
HD screenshot (sampled down, cropped)
When you go to the link, the HD screenshots have been sampled down from their native resolution (1920×1080) to DVD resolution (852×480), so be sure to click on them to get the full effect.
[Link]
Men are More Romantic than Women
Ahh, Valentine’s Day, aka Singles’ Awareness Day. Obligatory love-related article follows…
I was reading a book a few years ago entitled How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You by Leil Lowndes (1996), half out of curiousity, half out of quiet desperation. Anyways… one of the most interesting excerpts I found was this:
A Quiz: Who Loves More, Men or Women?
Men suffer a bad rap for being less romantic than women. Naturally, if you do a survey of men or women at the mall asking “Who’s more romantic?” the majority will say women. At first glance, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that women are the romantics. Indeed, they are when it comes to saying “I love you,” remembering Valentine’s Day, and knowing “it’s the little things that count” (like an engagement ring). But when it comes to the truly deep and important definition of romance, you men are the big winners.
At some point in your life, gentlemen, the woman of your dreams will probably say accusingly (in response to one of your everyday “insensitive” remarks) that “you men are all alike! You’re so unromantic!” My gift to you is the following. Someday it will come in handy, in self-defense. I’ve packaged it neatly in the form of a quiz that you can give her when she calls you unromantic.
Who really is capable of loving more, men or women? Read the rest of this entry »
Caption This: Black Box on Google Maps
A mysterious black box has been found on Google Maps in Russia. I wonder what it could be?
Digg users have provided some suggestions. With spelling and grammar corrected, here are the good ones…
- In an attempt to hide the biggest dildo in the world, the Russians ironically gave away it’s location.
- It’s Petoria! (nice Family Guy reference.)
- Osama’s hideout.
Top 11 Sandstorming Articles of 2005
As a result of all the changes to Sandstorming, it has been harder to keep an accurate track of the site’s traffic data from last year, and I was unsure how I was going to approach this article because of this.
One thing that we have been able to track though is the number of comments. So, whilst these may not be the best or most viewed articles of last year, they’re certainly the ones that created the most response.
And why “Top 11″ you ask? Well I started writing the Top 10 ages ago, and one of the later articles from 2005 got a bit more popular and made it into the list. I didn’t want to delete my awesome journalistic efforts, so I just added one more.
Anyways, here it is. The Top 11 Sandstorming Articles of 2005. Enjoy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Sandstorming.com: The Year at a Glance
2005 was a huge year for Sandstorming. What started out as a one-man blog has grown into a three-man website, with Julz and myself joining Johnsee on the writing force at various stages during the year.
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Not being one to brag or anything, but here is a list of things we achieved in the past year:
- We actually started getting comments on our articles (averaging at just over 5 per article now).
- We changed blogging programs (from Blogger to WordPress). This allowed us to do a lot of cool stuff we couldn’t do before, such as: category tags on articles, user accounts, cleaner and faster site design, more creative themes, and release our dependence on any 3rd party website (eg. Blogger.com).
- We received our first Google AdSense cheque (with a second one winging its way shortly).
- 4 of our articles made it to the front page of Digg, and 1 of them made it into the Diggnation podcast.
- Our Google PageRank (a ranking out of 10 that helps determine where your site will show up in search results) went from practically nothing to a 4 (for comparison, digg.com is a 6, and news.com.au is an 8).
- We changed servers (from Windows to Linux), and we changed our site statistics analyser (from AWStats to Google Analytics).
- Sandstorming.com now averages just over 450 visits per day.
We also branched out a bit and tried some other projects. Our Jack Thompson Random Fact Generator has been very successful, with over 100 submissions and 31,700 votes cast. Unfortunately, some other projects didn’t take off, such as Globecast. (Although if you would still like to submit an application, the offer is still there. We need more applications.)
Overall, this year has been great, and things can only get better for us as we put more projects into the pipeline with the money we earn. Thanks for everyone’s support, and we’ll see you all through 2006 and beyond!
Also, stay tuned for the Top 10 Sandstorming Articles of 2005.
