If Browsers Were Women
I need to make one of these about ad networks instead of browsers…
Updates from February, 2013 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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NegBox
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NegBox
Tim Minchin’s Storm – Animated Movie
The “beat poem” was already priceless – The animation takes it to 11.
ADHD Highlights:
- By definition “Alternative”medicine is medicine that has not been proven to work, or has been proven to not work.
- Alternative medicine that has been proven to work is called… Medicine.
- Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.
- Watch Scooby Doo. Throughout history, every mystery ever solved turned out to be… Not Magic.
- Isn’t THIS amazing natural world enough that we have to invent MORE shit?
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NegBox
Media Buying IQ Test: Find the Odd One Out
Question 1 of 2:
Can you spot the odd one out from this group of banners that returned from a query on WhatRunsWhere?
Question 2 of 2:
Now that you passed Test #1, comes the hard part. Test #2. Can you find the odd one out of THIS screenshot:
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NegBox
Mr Nobody
How many times have you seen a movie that you think about every single day for two months straight?
Never.
This is easily the best movie I have ever seen.
People blessed with ADHD simply watch this trailer and move on
Mr Nobody tells a story the way I personally view reality.
I’ll be brutally honest here: I’m putting my money on 98% of people not being able to grasp half the concepts the movie is based on. That shouldn’t keep anyone from enjoying the pretty pictures, though – its a beautiful film every way you look at it. Now that I’ve finished insulting everyone, lets move on to the movie…
Mr Nobody shows the life of a person who:
- Is conscious across multiple parallel worlds in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
- Can see / move across a Static Interpretation of Time
- Knows everything at once thru the static interpretation of time and the many-worlds interpretation, so he can unravel determinism behind the chaos in chaos theory.
- Weights potential against realization – and has a hard time making decisions.
Here’s one of Nemo’s main choices:
Trust me on this: Pick the one on the right
Like the movie’s main character ‘Nemo’, I will play in my mind dozens of possible outcomes and try to figure out the likelihood of each – I hope lots of other people do this too or we’re fucked. Years ago when dating and creating an online profile I had to put up a “range” of ages I wanted to date and match against, I sat down for a few hours and ran through my mind the most likely scenarios of what would happen with women of each and every single particular age, that way I could determine how low and how high I would go… Of course I don’t do this when choosing the flavor of my next ice cream – for big deals like that, its worth it to think and decide. Just like Nemo does with Jean, Elise and Anna.
Nemo's difficult decision at "Chance" station
Which brings me to another interesting area of the movie: Decisions. Nemo has a very hard time choosing – he seems to want to make a perfect choice, and given that that is extremely difficult, he hesitates and tries to stretch the amount of time where a decision remains potential and unrealized – by NOT choosing. While personally I do quite the opposite – I do it for the exact and opposite reason the movie shows – to remove potential and bring reality – its amazing to see and imagine what life would be on the flip-side.
"You have to make the right choice. As long as you don't choose, everything remains possible."
What also struck a chord was the idea of clearly identifying decisions. I call them simply “decision points” in my life – and I keep a close eye on my decisions – I also make sure I clearly identify if a decision is in the past, present or future and act accordingly – Unlike Nemo I can’t remember the future so I guess my best and try my best – However I sometimes screw up on purpose – If I could only really control myself.
The movie does not at any point explore the ideas and implications of simulated realities – That would have probably been one twist too many. There are passages that look surreal and hint at all of the reality we have just seen being in the mind of the child trying to make a decision about which parent to go with. He seems to choose none, runs off to a field and blows on a leaf – literally using the “butterfly effect” from chaos theory to alter the events of his life years down the road.
The leaf he blows at age nine alters his reality at age 34
There are loads of things Nemo does in the movie that I sometimes do myself. This made me feel not-so-crazy. Every couple of months I’ll sit quietly in a particular place in a particular park and try to imagine what my future self would tell me if he could speak to me. Then I imagine what I would tell myself if I could speak to myself in the past.
Mr Nobody Talking to Himself
There was one bit of the movie which boggled my mind for about three weeks: Why did they open the film with an explanation of Pigeon Superstition? … Just to say “what did I do to deserve this”? – that opening needs no pigeons.
Religious Pigeon
Pigeon superstition is in every human being – Ever heard of cargo cults? Religion? Well… What if… What if what we hold as basic truths – from gravity and throwing a ball up and having it fall down, to every part of our existence was our own interpretation of something outside of our awareness and comprehension?
I’m not talking about bearded gods and flying saucers -I’m talking about being too retarded to understand the very nature of our existence. That seems a lot more likely than a deluding myself the epicenter of the universe.
Mr Nobody at 118 years old
When I mix pigeon superstition, many-worlds interpretation and static time what I get is the idea that even the most basic of our assumptions about how the world works and how causes relate to effects are perhaps nothing but our limited interpretation of something entirely beyond our comprehension. Some (like Pauli) have pointed at a complete disconnect between causes and effects, with the only relationship being synchronicity as we perceive it and nothing more. Which had always brought to my mind the question of why am I experiencing this reality and not another one? And is there a way to move to a different one? What is my consciousness? Does it even really exist? What is the meaning of being alive in a deterministic universe? Does it even make sense?
Ah… Most everyone else already has all the answers – You know… Zodiac signs, gods, rules, natural laws, etc, etc — Meanwhile I’m still looking for the right questions. That’s why Mr. Nobody strikes a chord with me. It spares me the answers and gives me more questions in an amazing format.
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Mike Chiasson
This definitely sounds like a must see. I almost always find myself exactly opposite of you here, kind of like the character in the movie. I constantly have trouble making a decision because I am always trying to work out every possible consequence in my mind before I can choose.
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NegBox
@Mike, don’t get me wrong, I do struggle – I struggle with balancing the approach I take. On one hand I’m concerned about making decisions in an effort to avoid painful uncertainty (a childish inability to cope with ambiguity). On the other hand I’m concerned about taking too long in an attempt to avoiding making a decision (if you wait long enough, all decisions are made for you eventually) which might hide fear of being exposed as wrong and faulty in whatever decision it was.
Now the movie… Yes, its a must-see.
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NegBox
I should really write a follow-up post. Its been 18 months since I saw this movie and I still think about it pretty much every single day. Amazing.
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NegBox
25 Reasons I Owe My Mother
1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”2. My mother taught me RELIGION.
“You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
“If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of
next week!”4. My mother taught me LOGIC.
” Because I said so, that’s why.”5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
“If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you’re not going to
the store with me.”6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
“Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”7. My mother taught me IRONY
“Keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper.”9. My mother taught me about CONTORTION-ISM.
“Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!”10. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
“You’ll sit there until all that spinach is gone.”11. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
“This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.”12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
“If I told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t exaggerate!”13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
“Stop acting like your father!”15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
“There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t
have wonderful parents like you do.”16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
“Just wait until we get home.”17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
“You are going to get it when you get home!”18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
“If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way.”19. My mother taught me ESP.
“Put your sweater on; don’t you think I know when you are cold?”20. My mother taught me HUMOR.
“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
“If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.”22.* _My mother taught me GENETICS._*
“You’re just like your father.”23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
“Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?”24. My mother taught me WISDOM
“When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.”25. And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE
“One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you”-
Eric
HOW DID THIS POST NOT GET ANY COMMENTS!
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NegBox
LOL. We must all be ingrates!
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NegBox
Sex Sells Everything – Even Washing Machines
I’m clearly in the wrong area of marketing. Talk about epic advertising.
TIP: Go full-screen, High Def is the only way to watch boobs falling from the sky.
Here is “The making off…” .. Even more tits and ass…
This is from 2008… Watching boobs fly never gets old for me.
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Ryan Buke
This is awesome! lol
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NegBox
Spot Where I Fucked Up
Lets see who can spot where I fucked up, changed the landing page and went to bed ASS-uming everything was just fine.
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NegBox
Funny AffBuzz Banner
Good chuckle out of this AffBuzz ad on http://whatwouldryaneagledo.com/
I have Ryan on Twitter and sometimes I wonder what kind of glue he’s sniffing – whatever it is, you have to recognize he’s got talent to brand himself to the point he can be recognized by the writing style and even the glasses!
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NegBox
Taking Back My Blog
Ever since I removed that plug-in that allowed me to punch in posts from the front page like it was a real-time chat, the amount of posts has gone downhill.
We can argue the quality has gone up…
One of the reasons for this blog is that I hate Twitter’s 140-char limit… So this doubles as my twitter stream. Lately, it hasn’t done much for me. Time to call it in.
Truth of the matter is, I don’t give a fuck about post counts, quality or visitors (yeah, sorry about that – nothing personal) . This is my creative outlet, so I’m bringing back the short-form-blog style posts.
Just so I keep myself focused, I’ll start by backlinking to my all-time favorite worthless and useless blog post on this blog: http://negbox.com/crashing-bed
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NegBox
Marketing or Engineering?
Being a former engineer and current marketer I can vouch for the accuracy of this cartoon. Years ago I thought anyone could do what I did – I was dead wrong.
Now I don’t know why the guy hates sales. Sales is dinners and lap-dances. There’s only one rule to remember: You can’t expense the lap dances.
This video sums up being in sales quite nicely:
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NegBox
How to Talk Like a Corporate Drone
If you’re heading towards the corporate ranks, grab this Douchebag Dictionary and memorize it. You’ll be a corporate douchebag in no time at all!
Every area of life has its own lingo… The cube farm is no exception.
Here’s an excerpt:
Elevator PitchUnsucked: Overview or summary.
Hard Stop
I want to make sure we cover everything we need to in this meeting, but I have a hard stop at two p.m.
Unsucked: Another meeting or obligation.
Rightsize, Rightsizing
Due to rightsizing, we’ll be eliminating 50% of the department. We still have the same deliverable targets.
Unsucked: Layoff.
Skull Session
There’s a marketing team skull session tomorrow on the fallout from having Mel Gibson as the celebrity spokesperson for the new product line.
Unsucked: Meeting.
Social Media Strategy
Here’s a ten-step guide to developing a killer social media strategy for your company.
Unsucked: Typing into text areas.
Synergy
We are actualizing synergy amongst team members directly related to the project.
Unsucked: Working together.
If you are really headed to cubefarm, here’s a video sneak peek at life behind the suit: Endless conference calls.
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NegBox
Enter LIMBO
It was a dark and stormy night… I couldn’t sleep.. It was 2:00 AM.. The house was quiet. I went downstairs and fired up the Xbox 360. My favorite game, Fable 2, had lost its luster… Then I saw it… Limbo…Available for Download.
Limbo is an amazingly creepy, gruesome and fun platform puzzle game. I’ve played it to the end – only 5-6 hours – but I made sure I only played it at night. The atmosphere of the game is simply amazing, the sounds draw you in, and the gruesomeness of some of the parts… Well… Makes it interesting – It did take me a while to get comfortable (and not have my heart jump) with the little boy getting decapitated, impaled, crushed, electrocuted and eviscerated so frequently.
This is really a very unique game – and the atmosphere of shadows, shades, and despair it creates is amazing. Check it out.
IGN did a nice video review of Limbo
A few screenshots:
This part is one of the most fun... The letters of the HOTEL sign start falling as you climb on them, shooting sparks everywhere
Itsy-bitsy-spider climbed up the water spout... Itsy-bitsy spider ate the little boy... Down came the rain and washed the boy out...
That's gotta be the river Styx
Is he the lost son of Indiana Jones?
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NegBox
Fable 2 Banshees
One day I will go into how I play games and why I always cheat at videogames.
I love sandbox-style games where you go wherever you want… Right now top of mind is Fable 2. Fantastic game – I think one of the best characters is a class of ‘monsters’ called the Banshee. The banshee has a raspy voice and will scream/whisper demoralizing phrases that strike at your heart. Some of my favorite phrases:
Fable 2 Banshee Sends Her Children Your Way While Screaming Demoralizing Phrases
- “Did you know Rose didn’t die right away from that shot? No, she watched you fall through that window, heard as your body thudded against the ground and cried bitter tears before a final shot from Lucien ended her life.”
- “Do you really think everything in existence revolves around you? This world will carry on without your parasitic presence.”
- “Nothing you do means anything and when you die you will be forgotten.”
- “You bring only despair to this world. It is better off without you.”
- “What would Rose say if she could see you now? Do you think she would be proud? Do you think she would recognize the creature you’ve become?”
- “The people you see, all the people you talk to, they are not real. You are alone in this universe. Terribly alone.”
- “The prisoners of the Spire cry out your name. Where are you? Where is their Hero?”
- “Could you do nothing to save your sister? Too weak to stop her death?”
- “You still hear Rose’s death cry when you try to sleep at night, don’t you?”
- “Think of all the time you’ve wasted fighting blame, when you could have been leading a normal life.”
- “Rose would have done anything to protect you. She even gave her life, and what have you done about it? Nothing, nothing at all.”
- “It is all over. After your death awaits the void. You will cease to exist completely.”
- “Lucien laughs every night as he remembers that night in his study. He still keeps the gun with which he shot you and your sister.”
- “You didn’t have the backbone to put Bob out of his misery.”
- “Hammer still thinks her father’s death is your fault. One day she will betray you in revenge.”
- “Your son/daughter hates you, he/she will get a blade in the night and plunge it through your heart.”
- “Your husband/wife is cold and alone right now. Balverines will feast on his/her flesh.”
- “Your son/daughter is so sweet, like honey. Last night when I visited your home, he/she screamed your name as he/she died.”
- “Think about all the endless hours you’ve wasted playing this game. And for what? Nothing!”
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NegBox
Split-Testing Nightclub Music Mixes & The Science of Hedonism
Some folks are simply fucking brilliant, like Yale Fox.
The guy wrote Inside the DJ Booth: How A Disc Jockey’s Strategic Track Selection Can Enhance Experience, Foster Loyalty, and Boost Profits
Talk about testing – this time the patterns of how people move and buy drinks in a club depending on the songs played – to balance fun and revenue. Brilliant.
His blog is a journey of discovery – Did you know Barry Manilow had been WEAPONIZED? You give Aussies a spoon and they give you a tunnel, give them Manilow and they give you Armageddon.
Interesting article on the Optimal Price for Drinks in Different Demographics. What also blew my mind was the existence of a Journal of Addiction that has been in publication since 1884.
I certainly didn’t know that drinking bull pee could be beneficial for anything – but it seems Red Bull helps with the symptoms of Vodka intoxication… Well, some.. It makes you feel less drunk – but does it make the ugly chick in the corner look ugly again? Didn’t think so.
Ah.. the science of Hedonism – bring it on!
nside the DJ Booth: How A Disc Jockey’s Strategic Track Selection Can Enhance Experience, Foster Loyalty, and Boost Profits
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NegBox
Safety Video is Actually Cool and Ronald McDonald is Still a Creeper
Looking for a video marketing company I bumped into this children safety video billed as “creepy”… Well, its actually pretty damn good – and creepy enough to be remembered.
Now… Wanna see something scary? Really scary? How about Ronald McDonald telling kids that he is an exception to the child safety video above?
PS: If you’ve ever wanted to do something to a kid that their parents would object to, do everyone a favor and hang yourself with the nearest extension cord. Feel free to leave a note saying you read it on negbox.com – I could use the publicity.
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NegBox
Jedi Assholes
They could make a feature-length movie out of this idea:
Couldn’t help noticing the Brawndo shirt. If you don’t know what Brawndo is, you’re like stupid or somethin’… ’cause its got electrolytes and shit.
This guy behind the videos is Freddie Wong and he’s got a wicked YouTube channel.
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NegBox
LOST in 3 Minutes
Awesome 3-minute summary of LOST in video
Now I don’t have to waste even one more minute to understand what people talk about… Especially since the story is pretty retarded regardless of the execution.
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NegBox
Technorati’s Twisted Sense of Humor
I have an RSS feed that uses a Google query for my name… And no, my real name is not “Slave”. Every day I get random stuff from Technorati in that feed. I don’t quite get it – It seems that Google is picking up my name as part of the post tags! My name is nowhere to be found when I get to the article, however… In this case that’s a real relief.
I couldn’t resist an entry with my name in the tags, titled “Scareware Scumbags Facing Fraud Charges” – For a moment my heart stopped – I thought they found me!
Its about a $100M scareware fraud… I love how the article ends…
Unfortunately, the two guys that ran the main operation, Bjorn Sundin and Shaileshkuma Jain, live in the Ukraine and Sweden respectively. In really nice houses. Where they’ll probably be able to hole up watching movies and snorting coke off of hookers’ special places until they die.
The article does highlight how you have to think globally in everything you do… No matter how legit it is.
Scareware Scumbags Facing Fraud Charges -
NegBox
Girls on Theme
Mike made me realize my bosom babes were going out on the RSS feed - Its a long and irrelevant story, but essentially I managed to get babes showing up from a really big list without a timeout and without going crazy with hash tables – mind you I haven’t done any real programming in years, so this wasn’t as easy as it looks.
I’ve taken the babes off the posts themselves and integrated them into the theme – I’m using Headway – The best theme I’ve even seen after searching for a very long time. It has some really nifty hooks and I’ve just hooked my “babe insertion routine” into the “After Post content” hook. Slam-dunk, now the babes appear at the bottom of every post randomly… They probably refresh (new image) every time you refresh the page unless you’re getting a cached page from the server or somewhere in between.
Now go crazy!
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Mike Chiasson
Yay I no longer have to fear about the political radicals at my work flipping out as I refresh my RSS reader!!
My recent post Martha Coakley WTF Pwnz My Server!
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NegBox
The Oatmeal
I love The Oatmeal – The guy’s comics are a blend of sophisticated, poignant, blunt, hilarious, rosemary and parsely sugar on top… Stop drooling over the broad and go check out The Eight Websites You Need to Stop Building at The Oatmeal, along with the oldie but goldie “Eight phases of Dating”
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NegBox
NegBox: Now Rated “R” for Really Good Rumps
The Votes are in… In a landslide win, 4,578 people clicked on the women, and 17 on the businessmen.
Not really, but if it works for fake review sites, might as well work for me.
From now, all posts will get a randomly-selected (via a really simple script) girl attached on creation from a pool of a little over 11,000 images. The images all come from met-art’s webmaster promotional materials (so there will be no donkeys crapping on transsexuals, sorry) and link to met-art using my affiliate code pointed at the “low price” offer – I signed up to the CCBill and this site’s referral program. Nice. Interesting to see that I could pick from two different price points for the people I send them. I really don’t expect much, but hey – its experience.
The remarkable bit that I just hinted at is that if you used this link, when you get to the signup page, you end up paying $29 a month for the length of your subscription. If you follow this other link, you pay $19… Then if you followed this one you’d pay $9 for the first 15 days, then the standard $29 a month. This means I could fine-tune depending on traffic source – brilliant!
The “Price” is one of the infamous “P”s of Marketing – which are anywhere between four “P”s and fifty-seven trillion “P”s, depending on who you ask or what book you grab. The first time I learned the “P”s there were five… Then when I took classes on Services Marketing with Sultan Kermally it was seven Ps… Anyway… I’ve yet to see this idea at a network level, though. It would be very interesting if a (small) network had variable marketer-selected pricing – The offer would have a minimum, no set maximum and somewhere on your link you’d be sending in the price – which would get picked up by the offer as well as the network upon checkout. Any model other than one where the price can vary by target is most likely leaving money on the table.
PS: I manually selected this first picture… I was trying to say something about not going down without a fight… Whatever. The ones that are coming up are most likely to feature nudity – not really hardcore, but certainly female nudity.
Bottom line: If you’re offended by nudity: Fuck off my site!!! -
NegBox
My Boring Site
Agh… This site looks so bland… I’m going to spruce it up a bit somehow. I’ll take it well outside the domain of “Safe for Work”. Since I work from home, its all the same to me… and frankly, I don’t give a shit.
In the interest of appearing fair, I will submit this to a voting. Take a close look at your preferred picture by clicking on it and I’ll count the ‘votes’ soon.
BTW, it is the APPEARANCE of fairness -not real equity- what counts to human beings. This becomes really clear when you put people to play games like dictator and ultimatum.
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NegBox
Life After Marriage – Saving the Princess
Watching this video was the best six minutes of Wednesday. Whoever did this little video must have been peeking through the keyhole.
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NegBox
Geocities-izer
Type in any URL here: Geocitizicer to make it look like a 1996 geocities page. I suggest hiding the address bar and playing a good prank on an unsuspecting non-techie… Really funny how far “The Web” has come… Does anyone remember using gopher too? Am I a dinosaur? Don’t answer that last one…
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NegBox
Bang in the Sky for $1K – Sex Partner not Included – But That Can Be Arranged Too
I wonder if anyone would object to me booking my next trip with this airline:
I hear rave reviews.
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NegBox
My Workspace – A Peek
When folks walk behind me in my workspace they usually go “WTF?” I have a 4:3 monitor in Landscape mode, and a 19:8 monitor in Portrait mode (kinda the opposite of what you’d expect). My main browser runs in portrait mode and is the only thing on the portrait monitor. Other browser windows go in the other monitor along with all the other crap.
Here’s a quick snapshot of my browser (blurred) in the middle of a day… Note the gazzillion tabs – I was doing research on offshore hosting.
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NegBox
Sperm Covers my Patio Furniture
I was just sitting outside and noticed the yellow film of pollen on the patio furniture… Then it dawned one me… This is plant jizz… Nice, real nice.
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Mike Chiasson
pwnd
My recent post Scraper Sites Stealing Your Clicks and Cash
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NegBox
To Party or Not to Party – Difficult Decisions
Booking business travel. How hungover am I going to be the morning I’m returning?
Let’s re-frame the problem more accurately: “If I book an early flight, will I crash asleep so bad at the hotel that I’ll miss the flight?” or better yet, “Will I be having so much fun it takes five bouncers to drag me out and I regret the early flight?”
Decisions, decisions…
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NegBox
Expensing Lap Dances & Dancing with Poles
Having worked in corporate Sales, this video struck home when I saw it a couple of years ago. Its simply hilarious. Just got a memo from the Rat Maze Overlords saying something about not taking customers to “indecent entertainment” or some other euphemism… In other words: Folks, don’t take customers to nightclubs or brothels – depending on your location.
Meanwhile… Azoogle wants to take everyone to the PlayBoy Mansion for a “Job Well Done” or a “Well Done Blow Job”, I’m not sure yet – Jeremy sure has a big grin on his face in this picture.
Boy… What a stark contrast!
NegBox and 
Eric are discussing. 
Ryan Buke is discussing. 
Harry 11:19 pm on February 16, 2013 Permalink |
For IE, all I can say is: Meh.. MY EYES HURT!!!
NegBox 7:37 am on February 21, 2013 Permalink |
That was the whole point