mrshl | blog

So last night was my bachelor party, and I got more hammered than I’ve been in a long time. As far as I know, I did not consign anyone to dust or urinate in public. Still, I think I remember saying some very dumb things. I could have dreamed that part but if I said anything offensive or idiotic, I trust you’ll remember that I would normally keep such things buried and locked away in the untidy darkness of my soul.

I made a video when I woke up this morning, and it does a fine job thanking everyone and showing off the presents I received. Just the same, I’d like to thank everyone who came out to Hooters, Palace Lanes, and the Astros game with me. I’d also like to thank you for the awesome gifts. Finally, I’m really glad everyone got to meet my brother, Scott. He organized everything, spent the day with a bunch of strangers, and drove my drunk ass home. He’s a great guy, and I’m glad he’s going to be my best man. If you met Scott yesterday, you should friend him on Facebook.

The day after from Marshall Preddy on Vimeo.

Via Coudal Partners.

How does a band of DJs/sound collagists play on live TV? They hire a bunch of fellow ’80s impersonators to flesh out their stage show. Justice rules.

Via Metafilter.

I only thought I knew compliance. Thanks to Jacob.

Andy Samburg has become the primary reason SNL remains a must watch for me. I saw this on last night’s season premiere, and today it’s blowing up the Internet. Samburg might never translate to the big screen the way Adam Sandler did, but his work on Saturday Night Live beats the hell outta Opera Man.

And because I love it when SNL hires people who can hit more than one note, I’ve included a couple other infamous shorts from the Lonely Island veteran.

Little Girl vs Big Yellow Dodge Ball

I’m not sure whether the maniacal laughing is part of the scene or if it was added later. Either way, this poor unfortunate girl has already achieved some measure of internet fame in her young life. So dry those tears, young one.

Tonight, I updated the blog to Wordpress 2.3. What does this mean for you, our loyal readers? Well, for starters, let me know if you notice any glitches. These things don’t always run so smoothly.

I’m sure you’ve probably noticed the new layout, including the welcome return of our beloved, if poorly designed, cassette-tape logo. I think it’s prettier, and a bit more in line with the purpose and goals of this site. Which is to say the design isn’t quite so “pro blogger” style.

Now, you should also notice a couple of new features. First, I’ve converted our unwieldy categories to tags. For you readers, that probably won’t make much difference, excepting the obvious tag “cloud” in the right-hand column. For the writers, it’s now a bit easier to tag our posts. Basically, adding tags works just like posting to LiveJournal now.

The bigger news is that I think the upgrade finally solved a problem that’s been bugging the hell out of me. Since I started the blog, I hadn’t been able to publish the full RSS feed. It was only publishing the truncated feed. This means that people accessing our blog through a feed reader weren’t able to see the full post without clicking through to our site. Since I personally hate sites that don’t have full feeds, this annoyed me to no end.

Well, problem solved (I think). Wordpress 2.3 supports Atom feeds. So long as you’re accessing our feedburner feed you should be getting the full feed now! You should even get pictures and video! If, for some reason, you aren’t accessing our feed, click on one of the new icons to your right to add our feed and try one of our recommended feed readers. I personally use Google Reader, but the other options ain’t bad.

Anyhoo, most of the other technical stuff is pretty boring. Just tell me if you see anything funky. Especially tell me if you start getting our old, busted feed. Either leave me a comment or post something in our message board.

Thanks!

So I’m pretty sure everyone has seen this ad for Halo 3:

But I bet most of you haven’t seen the virtual fly through of the entire diorama!
Halo 3 “Fly Through”

Check out all of this “making of” stuff, the ad campaign they interview all the survivors and veterans of this war that takes place in the future, it’s pretty amazing.
Halo 3 “War Stories”

Interview with the creators of the commercial (and diorama):
Halo 3 “Making Of”

An excerpt from one of the interviews:
“Tell me about New Deal, Stan Winston and MJZ director Rupert Sanders’ work on the diorama.

SD: You have to understand that for the diorama, it turned into becoming the focus point for this campaign. We wanted there to be a museum where the diorama would just be a part of the museum. Rupert Sanders orchestrated this whole thing. The vision for us was to make this story come to life with real figurines on a real set and a massive diorama. It was time and cost-prohibitive to say the least, but Rupert just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He teamed up with Stan Winston and New Deal Studios in making this thing come to life completely—30 feet x 40 feet, 900 figurines or something like that and every weapon and vehicle.

MH: Those figurines are based on scans of real people.”

If you’ve ever tried to explain a Web site to your folks (or a dense pal), you know how difficult it can be to include both the nuts and bolts of how a site works and why a site is useful in the first place.  For social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us or Magnol.ia, the problem is more difficult because the benefits aren’t as obvious as they are with YouTube or Flickr. 

This video does an excellent job explaining the how and why of social bookmarking and del.icio.us. The dude’s voice is a bit annoying, but it neatly simplifies one of the most useful, exciting applications the web has to offer.

del.icio.us / blog: how to explain delicious to your parents