This guy ripped the guts out of an iPod shuffle, and stuffed them into an old NES controller. The buttons even work!

Well here it is. The new and improved clunkyrobot.com. Thanks for coming back to us after our short break. Being gone was... weird. There'd be all this stuff I wanted to talk about, I had to actually interact with other human beings. If you'll notice I still made some posts below even though there was nobody around to read them... heh.

huh, what's that?
Well, yeah. It looks exactly the same. Most of the upgrades are behind the scenes. And besides, over the past few months I had finally got this dump looking exactly how I wanted it to look, so I didn't want to change it just for the sake of changing it. But that felt a little... I don't know, unfulfilling. So I made a new desktop, and banner.

@ 1440 pixels wide (powerbook version)

@ 1600 pixels wide

This desktop features an illustration of our beloved 15inch Apple Powerbook. (now discontinued!) It also features a brain in a jar. Enjoy :)

Ta-DA!

This post is composed entirely on our shiny new installation of Movable Type 3.2, and is hosted snugly in our new SHARED... not DEDICATED... server provided at a reasonable price by the IX Webhosting company. This is what the server we live on now looks like:

Nice huh. When I told our old webhosting service that we would no longer be needing their services, they almost seemed sad. Or... maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.

Wait, if this post was made today Tuesday March 28th, then why are we waiting until Friday to do an official launch... Who am I even writing this for? Is anybody even reading this? I guess not...

I worked really hard to make sure that while transferring the website to keep it looking exactly the same as it did before. All this despite being upgraded and shuffled to a new server. It's take e this long to get the site looking how I wanted, but now as I look at it... I'm a little sad because it's such a better website, but nobody can tell.

So I'm working on a new banner/desktop to celebrate the upgrade. It's a whole new drawing, so I'm waiting until it's finished to officially re-open the website. So if your reading this via a rss feed. Make sure to check back on friday to see the new banner.

Onward!

So, Yeah.

Yesterday we got a very friendly email from our webhosting provider. Apparently within the past 2 months we have been consistently going over our transfer limit. This means that we've had more visitors than usual, and those visitors have been transferring a lot more data than normal. (robotLOVE, I'm looking at you...)

They said in their friendly email that we now deserved our own server. An actual computer that would be dedicated to running this website. (that's flattering)

Then they told us how much that was going to cost...
YIKES!
Even their cheapest dedicated server option was a bit pricey.
(read: MANY DOLLARS)

Needless to say we won't be going with that option. So we have one month to pack our bags, wrap our porcelain figurines in newspaper, hire some dodgy tough-necks, and move this bitch. Hopefully we won't have a Richard Pryor-esque miss-adventure like in the beloved 80's film "Moving." Hopefully, everything will go smoothly, and we won't even notice a ripple on this smooth glasslike website. We'll be weblogging just like normal, with no interruption of "services." Then at the end of the month, we'll cut the ribbon on our new digs.

The new host should provide us with some much needed improvements around here, and an up-to-date webloging software. It's an exciting time here at clunkyrobot.com. I've already picked out our new place, it's got a pretty picket fence, and under the carpeting I found impressive hardwood floors.
We're gonna dig it!

Spam to the left of us!
If you've made a comment recently and it has dissapeared, I apologize.

I am waging a silent but bloody war against spam comments, sadly last night was a major offensive. I know, the weblog savvy amongst you are saying that the newer versions of movable type have all but eliminated comment spam. I, however, have an older intall of movable type... call it "clunky."

Anyway, sorry if your comment was one of the fallen who've slipped into the digital ether, it's memory will live on forever in our hearts and minds.

This week in Nintendo news...

A new game for our favorite handheld gaming platform The Nintendo DS was released on monday. We were lucky enough to pick a copy up yesterday, It's the continuation of the Metroid franchise called Metroid: Hunters. What follows is a poor man's review...

It's an amazing game, and I'll tell you why.

I played Metroid Prime for The Gamecube, and found the game a little slow and clunky. (no offense... none taken) And while the single player mode on this new game has similar problems it is much more fast paced. And don't even get me started on the multiplayer game... It's almost too fast paced!

You play this game with the thumb pad and the touch screen. Moving the stylus around the touch screen aims your gun in the game, while the thumb pad controls the character's movement. This is the closest thing I've experienced to playing with a keyboard and a mouse. And because of it, the shootem-up action is smooth and fast, just like it should be. I suspect there will be a learning curve for this style of gameplay, but it seems like it'll be worth it. And implies shades of what the Nintendo Revolution, and it's radical game controller could offer...

This game really shines when you play online. The single player game is cool, and I suspect it's where you'll get the training to learn to play the game efficiently, but as I said, it suffers from some of the same symptoms the old Gamecube game did. Online play is super fast, and the best part... There is no verbal interaction between players. I don't have to hear jerkface children from the midwest cussing and being racist.

If there is one drawback to the game, I would list it's lack of quick game start-up and shutdown. In single player you have to travel back to the beginning of the level to save. And in multiplayer the wait for starting an online game is a little long. Since the game is portable, I'd much rather be able to open the DS up, start a game, play for 2 minutes, then shut it down. But as I said, minor complaints.

On a super positive note, you can play Metroid on up to 3 separate Ds's with only one game card. That's the kind of costumer centric thinking that blows me away. Usually game companies want to squeeze every dollar they can out of us.

For the Mac OS X operating system, a dashboard widget for those obsessed with Lost and with a lot of extra time on their hands.

Every 108 minutes, the button must be pushed. From the moment the alarm sounds, you will have four minutes to enter the code into the microcomputer processor.

Congratulations! Until your replacements arrive, the future of the project is in your hands. On behalf of the Degroots, Alvar Hanso and all of us at the Dharma Initiative, thank you. Namaste. And good luck.

*bonus Lost link*
The Egyptian symbols on the Lost clock deciphered... sort of.

Two things.

Another weekend passed, that means that The Kleptones have released another EP. With another track from their forthcoming full length mash-em-ups, plus some awesome b-sides. Go get it, while you can.

I'm not leet like Rob T. Firefly, so I had to wait until The SciFi channel brought the new Doctor Who series over to America before I could watch it. This weekend they premiered the 2 part series opener.

While I am a big fan of the original series, I am not a devotee. Meaning that: I used to watch it all the time as a kid, but now my memories of the show are kind of foggy. Of course I remember K9, and the Daleks, and mostly the curly, brown haired Doctor (the 4th Doctor in the series) but the details are blurry.

I liked this new series. I thought the new Doctor was charming and goofy, and even a little bit suave. A perfect mix for a Doctor I would think. Also, Warning: The show is very British. If you are expecting American style sci-fi, you might be disappointed. (it's not Battlestar Galactica, or even SG-1) I thought however, that the British nature of the show was a highlight... after all, it should be very British. Seeing as how that's who its made for, keep it real yo.

One thing that struck me about the show... The film quality was a bit lacking. Maybe I'm too used to the big budget American Network shows, because the lighting and special effects this newest iteration of The Who series seemed less polished than I expected. But again, it only added to the charm for me.

*bonus story*

This reminded me of a story about my friend Micah from art school. Micah was one of my best friends in college, and he was a huge Doctor Who fan, and a giant art fag. I used to sleep on his dorm room floor during freshman year.

When he graduated college he got some money from his family. His ambition was to move out to California to do 3D modelling for video games. He spent most of his graduaton money on the complete Doctor Who boxed set... On VHS. At the time, retailing at about $900. VHS, man that's funny.

A lego aircraft carrier with over 20 individual jets on board!

We at clunkyrobot.com are big fans of Benjamin Franklin, in fact... We, and by "we" I mean "I," have been waging a quiet but persistent campaign to name a possible first child of ours Ben Franklin, first name Ben, middle name Franklin. When people meet that kid, and figure his name out... it'll blow they're freaking minds, at least... It will in the scenario I have played out in my mind. Anyway it's been a hard sell to my special lady friend. Maybe I'll name our next dog that...

I grew up near Philadelphia, in what I would call "The Cradle of America." You can't walk 2 miles without running into a historical signpost for Ben Franklin's Fire Department, or some other founding father's beach-house.

What many people don't know about Ben Franklin is that he worked for England. He was the British appointed Postmaster General for The Colonies. He worked closely with The Crown, and he lived in London for quite a while leading up to the Revolutionary War. He often talks about how much he loved London, mostly because of the people who lived there with him, his neighbors. It was especially hard for Franklin to come back to America, knowing that his principles would lead him into a war that would banish him from his favorite city forever.

Well, Franklin's only standing long term residence located in London has been turned into a museum. Complete with his original workshop where he experimented with electricity.

"As a Senior Citizen, you are probably aware of the threat that robots pose. Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.

You need to feel safe, and that's harder and harder to do nowadays because robots may strike at any time."

- Sam Waterston for Old Glory Robot Insurance.
(Youtube link)

"I talked about it with my friends... and they agreed that if a person doesn't do good with the gifts they're given... Well... That's almost worse than doing evil isn't it?"
- Les Franken

Finally Micheal Rappaport makes something good again. In the movie Special he plays Les Franken, a metermaid who signs up to take an experimental anti-depressent. It has unexpected side effects.... like super powers... maybe.

There might be a trench as impressive on Earth as The Mariner's Valley is on the planet Mars (perhaps the similarly named Mariana Trench in the Pacific?). But we can't really know, because our deepest and widest trenches are under billions of gallons of water.

But we have robots on Mars, and flying around it. Based on Observer imagery The JPL Digital Image Animation Laboratory has reconstructed this giant trench that could fit the complete island of manhattan lengthwise on it's floor as a highly detailed computer animation. Google video does it again, take the tour of The Mariner's Valley.

Oh snap!

The Kleptones have already released EP2. It features another song from the forthcoming "24 hours" album.

He's smart... as each EP goes up, the previous one comes down. Did you get EP1 while you could?

You've probably heard about this, but the Cassini spacecraft that's been exploring the moons of Saturn has returned some very interesting data.

The southern polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus has shown Yellowstone-like geysers of icy water erupting from apparent liquid reservoirs very close to the surface. Why is this so exciting? Where there is ice, there is sometimes water, and where there is water, there is sometimes LIFE. The prospect of a form of life, even primitive, in our own solar system is very exciting. This isn't some far away planetoid in the arm of a distant galaxy. This is right in our own neighborhood. Granted: It's a big neighborhood, but still.

Be sure to check out the short video from Cassini

"If we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."
- Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at Space Science Institute

P.S. Oh, in other planetary news, there's a new red spot on Jupiter!

And now, a nice quote from author Neal Stephenson from his book Snow Crash regarding a man shedding his boyhood, and how we all want to be Batman even up until we're 25 years old:

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

*bonus quote*

"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from -- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."

...demand high resolution scans of our Country's most important documents. Because a lot of people, even one or two Chief Executives, seem to have forgotten what they say.

The National Archive listens, and steps up.

The National Archives does it again, this time offering downloadable versions of The Constitution of The United States of America, The Declaration of Independence, and The Bill of Rights. Those guys are finally using the internet like it's supposed to be used. (via boingboing)

Cool, somebody made a soundboard for the Bizarro episode of Sealab.

Turtleface.org

Mash-up artist Eric Kleptone released a new EP over the weekend.

Previously Eric was the mastermind behind the legendary Yoshimi Versus the Hip Hop Robots. A Mash-up that came in like a stealth bomber and laser beamed our concrete bunker with one of the best Mash-up payloads of all time.

If you're sad because you missed Yoshimi when it was released and can't find it now because he doesn't archive his albums, or you're even sadder because you missed the follow up album A Night at The Hip Hopera... Then download this EP and wait in anticipation like we are for his forthcoming full length album "24 Hours."

This is a 4 song EP, so just as it gets cooking it's already over. His plan is to release 3 or 4 more EP's and then only 1 song from each EP will be included on the full length. So this is more of a preview, with some treats thrown in for good measure.

Don't miss out on this, Eric is taking the Mash-up artform to the next level. It's grown beyond putting hip hop vocals over Beatle tracks... he's mining the depths of mowtown and first wave Ska in ways that make us happy. Don't you want to be happy like us? Download before it's gone.

Everybody's favorite heart that wears a crown recently re-designed his website. (or as some people refer to the character: "A strawberry") And when I say recently I mean a while ago, but anyway, he's added another cool feature to his site.

The Natty Bumperstore.

Check it out, everything he sells he made himself, like t-shirts, and stuffies, and buttons, and art cards. And he's got a store that works and is easy. Nice.

We at clunkyrobot.com are big fans of the ABC TV show Lost, just like the rest of the world. While there is still speculation as to whether the show will eventually reveal the answers to all it's mysteries, it consistently is entertaining. For an episode of Lost to be fully successful for me, it must meet a few requirements. These past couple of episodes have done just that.

I do not need to have the mysteries explained to me, in fact, I would rather they are not. And if a mystery is in any way clarified, it must be couched in at least 2 more mysteries. (for example: "We found another hatch! wait... we found 2 more hatches!!)

Also, layered clues especially make me happy. Here is an example from the past couple of episodes that was pointed out to us by our co-worker Neil: The mysterious man that the French Woman captures in her net says his name is Henry Gale. He says he crashed on the island while flying around the world with his wife in a hot air balloon. Henry Gale is also the name of Dorothy's uncle in The Wizard of Oz, who also plays the Wizard himself... who also flies away in a hot air balloon!

tight!

Back when we went to see "comedian" Neil Hamburger with our friend Andisheh we were blown away by Neil's opening act, and one man show called Pleaseeasaur.

Pleaseeasaur is JP Hasson as the man/beast/cyborg performer Pleaseeasaur, and Thomas Hurley III as the behind the scenes costume designer, projectionist, propmaster and co-writer. Wow check out Thomas' website, he makes some rad stuff... and from what I can tell he worked on some Bill Nye shows.

Their stage show consists of JP wearing a ridiculous but well made costume while singing a series of funny songs, like the seminal "Warning: These Cobras are Totally Cool" While behind him Thomas would run two slide projectors full of drawings that tell the "story." Warning: These Snakes are totally Rad! is apparently about a school buss that breaks down in the desert and then is attacked by Cobras wearing sunglasses.

Well, they just signed a deal with Comedy Central to make a couple albums. They will be CD/DVD double Disc Sets, but it looks like if the albums do good, ol' Pleaseasaur might get a chance to do "more" with Comedy Central. Right now you can buy 2 Pleaseeasaur albums on iTunes. I have them, and they're funny, but it doesn't do his live show justice, which is why I think the CD/DVD will be great.

We spoke to JP after we saw his show, something that I certainly don't normally do, but he was very nice. And he was a fan of Sealab. The other day JP was nice enough to ask us if we would produce some animation for the DVD's. About 11 minutes worth of animation. We agreed.

This should be a pretty awesome project, those guys are hilarious.

The play we're doing right now in The Top Shelf at Dad's Garage got reviewed in this week's Creative Loafing by Curt Holman.

It's called Get Downsized, and it runs for 2 more weeks.