Category Archives: On the Net

| On the Net, Technology

You don’t remember Jack

via Stony Curtis (in turn via Metafilter): You Don’t Know Jack, the hilarious smart-assed trivia computer game, is now playable online.

There’s only one seven-question game up so far. The other challenges are Dis or Dat, where you are given a name and have to guess between two categories. The ones they have there are refreshingly amusing, like: Crayola crayon colour or porn movie? Open-source software or part of a woman’s reproductive organs? Software or member of the Justice League of America (or both)? Basketball team or dish made with animal testicles? Surprisingly, some of these are very difficult to figure out.

I’ve always been a big fan of YDKJ for two reasons: it’s well-written, entertaining and very funny. It’s also well coded, with smooth graphics, seamless gameplay and hundreds of questions recorded in audio form that still fit on a CD. I still think that’s very impressive.

Hats off to you, Cookie.

| On the Net

If a babe does air guitar and there’s no sound…

It’s voting time for the Vlog Deathmatch air guitaress challenge, a hilarious competition between some female video-bloggers, including Montreal’s Casey McKinnon of Galacticast (her entry). According to the official rules, the contestants have to perform 30-60 seconds of silent air guitar with no edits or cuts. That makes for some strange-looking videos, reminding us that air guitar without music just looks weird.

Speaking of Galacticast, who can now count Kevin Smith as a fan, there’s video online of them being interviewed on Global’s This Morning Live by resident interviewerbabe Gelareh Darabi. I still think my interview with them was better.

Meanwhile, their latest episode is a funny mashup of Super Mario Bros. and the Sopranos. Watch it.

| Montreal, On the Net

The Montreal Screwjob

Among my many RSS feeds (about 300) I have a few set to scour the Internet for any new mentions of “Montreal”. While this alerts me to press releases from companies based here, news about the city and news from abroad that has some connection to here, it also picks up on a few things regularly that aren’t quite what I’m looking for:

1. The Montreal Canadiens. The last major sports team in the city. NHL digests, standings, briefs, game reports and other information are all over the place online, and so a single AP story will generate hundreds of hits all about the same game that I just watched on TV.

2. The band “Of Montreal”, who are not actually from Montreal. Tour date announcements (they’re playing here next week), reviews, and random MySpace rants for and against the band, or diaries of people going to see the band.

3. My favourite: The Montreal Screwjob. Of all events that have happened in this city, from the Richard Riots to Expo 67, none has so little relevance to people who live there and yet so much relevance to a worldwide niche as when Vince McMahon double-crossed Bret “the Hit Man” Hart at the Molson Centre. The Wikipedia article is extensive, as are articles still being written about it a decade later. The story is a fascinating look at the politics of professional wrestling, and an interesting spin on the idea that “professional wrestling is fixed.”

| On the Net

Yet Another Social Networking Site

Midnight Poutine has a review of another presenter at DemoCamp: ilovetoplay.com, a social networking site for amateur athletes.

It’s an interesting idea to get people to find others who want to play the same sports, though such a thing would require a pretty high critical mass before it really gets interesting. One question I wanted to ask but didn’t get time was how having people sign up for this site could be more convenient than simply joining a local sports group on Facebook or MySpace.

| Montreal, On the Net

More attention for a Montreal band

The manager of Montreal-based singer/band Dee (couldn’t he pick a more search-engine-friendly name?) emailed me today to let me know that this music video, a parody of renowned video diary fraudster lonelygirl15 which I wrote about last year, has been (finally) chosen as a featured video on YouTube’s homepage, and that another song by the guy/group is being used for a big Ford commercial that a lot of money was spent on but is not original in any way.