I am not sure about the origin of this XBox commercial. It might be spec work, or it might be a foreign commercial. In any case, it’s pretty awesome. Not as good as the banned ad, but excellent in its own right. Enjoy.

[via manny.]

4 years, $52 million. Holy shit. Johnny Damon is a Yankee.

UPDATED 12/21, 5pm: Here’s an excellent ESPN article by Jim Caple, “Damon still an idiot,” about why Johnny Damon is not a good fit in NY. Hint: The dress code, haircuts, and corporate pinstripes. Excellent piece, in my opinion, also nailing why Giambi has been broken since joining the Yankees for the same reason.

[via kottke.]

I have really been getting into this Firefox thing. I’ve been using it for a while, but my recent discovery of Tab X opened up this new world of extensions to me. I have always known there were some useful ones out there, but I never really looked for anything for myself. Well, I have discovered some excellent ones which have vastly improved my browsing and developing over the last week or so. I thought I would share in case you don’t know these. (UPDATED 12/21)

DeerPark
Technically this is not an extension, but I thought I should mention it. I am running the DeerPark version of Firefox 1.5, optimized and recompiled for G4 (Mac) processors by Neil Lee of beatnikpad.com.

Tab X
Simple, excellent addition of close buttons to each open tab. Just like Safari, so much better than one “x” in the corner.

Del.icio.us Extension
This new version of the extension integrates so well. Del.icio.us is now EXACTLY what I have always wanted in bookmarking. So good.

GMail Delete Button
Sweet extension adds a “delete” button right into the interface of GMail. The only mistake Google has made in recent history is excluding this button.

StumbleUpon
If you are feeling lucky, you click the button and it brings you to a great new website. I have really found some nice sites this way.

Clean cookies of this site
Long name for a simple little function. If you are developing or testing, deleting cookies on just one site can be very, very useful.

Web Developer
Unbelievable new extension that adds a huge array of development and debugging functions right to the browser. “Outline Bloc level elements” is my favorite.

DOM Inspector
Nice little inspector put out by the Mozilla folks. This can be very useful.

Spellbound
Very nice spellchecker extension that utilizes the open source spellchecking dictionaries that are part of the Mozilla effort. This allows you to spellcheck any text you enter into any open text field. So useful. (Hint: You have to install the extension and the dictionary.)

That’s about it for now. These are the only ones I am currently running. You need these, but please feel free to enlighten me about anything I have forgotten or don’t know about.

I am pretty sure, but not positive, that this is Tony Jaa, from Ong Bak, doing an on-stage demonstration of his otherworldly martial arts ability. If not Tony Jaa, this Thai kickboxer is also going to be very famous very soon.

[via drunkencat.]

This is awesome. I don’t want to ruin it. Just watch this video.

Heli Attack is a complicated but really amazing Flash platform game. Sort of stunning that you can do all this, this well, in Flash. Nice work over at miniclips. Excellent pixel art too.

[via drunkencat.]

From Regret the Error, Crunks ’05, Correction of the Year for 2005, as published in the Denver Daily News on July 27:

The Denver Daily News would like to offer a sincere apology for a typo in Wednesday’s Town Talk regarding New Jersey’s proposal to ban smoking in automobiles. It was not the author’s intention to call New Jersey ‘Jew Jersey.’

Sweet. Happy Chanukah.

[thanks rob.]

Maybe I am just a pussy, but I “worked from home” today because of the NYC transit strike. For any of you outside of NY, it might be news for you to learn that the corrupt MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) and it’s workers in the greedy TWU (Transit Workers Union) are having painful contract negotiations, and failed to reach an acceptable agreement by the extended deadline, last night at midnight. Now, 34,000 workers are on strike, and NYC buses and subways are out of service.

There are not many non-MTA options to get from Astoria into Manhattan. I’m about a mile and a half away from the Queensborough Bridge. It’s now 33 degrees outside, but this morning it was more like 27. Not a pleasant walk over the bridge. When we had that big blackout in 2004, it took me over 2 hours to walk home from work over the bridge. I just decided I could get more done from home than spending 4+ hours walking in the blistering today. Sorry to all of you who suffered through it – you are better people than I.

So I am home, warm, trying to get work done with IM. I hate IM so much I never go on anymore. I just can’t maintain 8 coherent conversations at the same time. I wish there was a better way to control who you are visible to. IM is totally broken. I wish AOL and everyone else would get their acts together and make IM good. Competing standards have really created a shit situation.

Speaking of shit situations, let’s discuss this stupid strike. The MTA is one of the most fucked up organizations in NY, and THAT’S saying a lot. They raised the fares last year amidst some real controversy about their finances. At least a billion dollars was “uncovered” during the process, but they couldn’t rescind the rare increases because “it would have been too expensive to reprogram all the stations and turnstiles.” They were sued, but nothing ever became of it. This year, I wonder why, they had a billion dollar surplus that they are “giving back” partially with retarded holiday discount fares, despite a contract dispute with their employees, claiming they won’t have enough money in the coming years. it is fucking ridiculous. All of this, plus attempts to remove conductors from the trains and attendants from the stations, stations closing, service reductions, and of course, public money to keep them going. It is a fucked up, fucked up organization and somebody, ahem – Bloomberg, needs to do something about it.

I am glad the workers are striking, despite the fact that their union president is incompetent, the public and the workers don’t really understand what’s going on, and they have showed absolutely no good faith in negotiating, repeatedly walking away from the table without counter offering. They’re demands are too lofty, even though that’s how negotiations are supposed to start, and they refuse to be reasonable when it comes to many aspects of the contract. They are already making more than most public service workers, have what appears to be a sweet compromise on the table, and are known for being the fattest, laziest, least helpful workers in the city.

All of this confusion, laziness, and incompetence leads to one important thing – a strike that should be perfectly within the rights of any worker – EXCEPT – this strike is absolutely 100% a safety risk to every single person in this city. That is why striking for the police department, fire department, and TWU is ILLEGAL! Just this morning alone, I saw some pregnant women on the news with 5 minute apart contractions, stuck in traffic for 3 hours. When the Police finally were alerted they did everything they could to shuttle her through, but 3 HOURS! IT’s ridiculous and its unavoidable and its dangerous.

Last thing, or course are the financial repercussions, estimated at something close to $400 million per day to paid in overtime and lost revenue to local businesses. This strike is hurting everyone, and is ultimately only going to hurt the workers who are trying to help themselves.

This whole thing is a mess and a mistake. Corrupt MTA, greedy TWU, retarded TWU spokesman, angry New Yorkers, and 4 days away from Christmas no less. Merry fucking Christmas.

A college writing professor had a brilliant idea some years back. In order to explore the differences between the way men and women think and write, he assigned students in male/female pairs to each write paragraph of a short story back and forth for the entire class. One would start, and the other would continue, on and on for the whole period.

Actual students, Gary and Rebecca, turned in this short story, untitled, the greatest short story ever written.

[To be perfectly honest, who knows if this is real or not? What I do know is that is some funny, funny shit.] Enjoy it anyway.

I didn’t see Saturday Night Live this past Saturday, but I think this short film aired for the first time during it. “Lazy Sunday,” The Chronic of Narnia is a brilliant rap video that you must watch right away.

The Chronic [WHAT?] Cals of Narnia!”

[via waxy.]

Fuck the fast and the furious. This guy was hot, so he took drastic measures. God bless American ingenuity.

[via savemanny.]

I know this post makes me gay. I know it, and I don’t care. Cute Overload is a new blog dedicated to compiling photos of cute. Yes, cute. You might think that sounds dumb – well, it’s not. It’s fucking great. I laughed out loud more than once. Please go look at this, and test your masculinity.

[via boingboing.]