Let's call this site dead

I've really abandoned good ol' Whitmarshall. I've set up a new personal site under my own name at www.brianwhitmarsh.com. If you are interested in Brian musings and updates, please check it out. I'm going to try and stay away from the random collection of link reposting that Whitmarshall basically ended up being.

Plastic Logic

Just saw some info on this new e-paper product from Plastic Logic.  This is good; a step in the right direction.  It seems like it has been years that people have been talking about e-paper and e-book readers, and there are several out there, but they are pricey and still don't seem to have great usability.  I'm going to keep an eye on this one (still some glitches apparent in the presentation in that company link).  If someone comes up with a good reader, I'll definitely look into buying on.  I do still love the physicalness of a real book, but this looks like a great way to carry around several, and to access other document types as well.

Here's some more video of the device at the DEMO convention earlier this week:

(remember to buy Brian's products from Zazzle!)

Braid

I recently downloaded the game Braid via the Xbox 360 Live Arcade, and just finished up playing through it. I can't say enough good about this game. It is a little indy game by a small team (essentially two guys), and it is very much worth the $15 bucks for it. I'd love to see more creative works like this. It is hard to tell from still photos (which might even look kind of childish and silly), but it is a very beautiful game, with painterly graphics and a fantastic score. It is mainly a platformer (with heavy nods to Super Mario Bros.) but includes the use of time-manipulation to collect puzzle pieces that help you proceed or add to the story.  The story and approach is so refreshing: it is well thought out, it is thought provoking, and it is mature.  I can see how some people might be put off by the ambiguous, arty story, but it is challenging (story wise and many of the puzzles) and you'll be rewarded by well earned a-ha moments (again in the story and from solving the puzzles).  Without spoiling anything, I was at first kind of confused and underwhelmed by a change of style of the last level, but then when I figured out what was going on, it completely floored me and made me appreciate the game much more.

Other recent games (not so thought-provoking):

• Oblivion: Shivering Isles - Fairly recently finished this. If you are looking for a game (an older one) that will give you a ton of hours of play, it is Oblivion.
  
• NCAA Football 2007 - I found this for $5, so I bought it. Oh, Iowa State, why can't you be more powerful?
  
• Soul Calibur IV - Far from thought-provoking or life changing, the Soul Calibur series is still a fun bit of mindless fighting.
  

Jon Stewart on media, fun election merchandise

Well, political season is in full swing again, and that is angrying up my blood so I thought I would try to start posting every once in a while again.

First stop:

• Jon Stewart on Palin's Media Surrogates found on Comedy Central Insider.  I'm really glad that someone pays attention to what these people say over time.  His examples are all Republicans, I believe, but I certainly don't think this kind of two-faced-ness is limited to just that party.  I would love to see a 24-hour media channel that constantly challenges people on their changing positions and hypocrisy, or shows video proof of contradictory stances.

• Otherwise, I've put some hopefully fun political designs on my Zazzle Store.  Please feel free to check them out and buy many, many items. (Using the link in the first sentence of this paragraph gives me a better royalty, by the way, thank you.)
  

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

A lot of fish, bubbles, customer service, monitors, laterals, music

Here's a little link potpourri for you on:

• Plentyoffish: 1-man company might be worth $1 Billion. OK, that's impressive. In the article you find that he recently hired a second person.
• Bubblewrap, now in electronic form! And it is refreshable, so you can pop it over and over.
• The Ultimate Consumerist Guide to Fighting Back. I haven't read through all of it yet, but looks like it might be a good resource for those unfortunate times when you don't get the service you need.
• Make the most of dual monitors. Some neat tips and freebies for those of us with two (or more) monitors.
• I'll close with a couple videos:
• Here was an amazing football clip showing a great (but unusual) use of laterals:
• And this last one... all I can say is brilliant:
• 
  

The electric company

I'm not generally a huge YouTube scavenger, but occasionally I link to it from some other forum or site and get sucked into chasing a nostalgic path. Like today, when I ran across a link to a video from the old "The Electric Company" children's show from my youth (it was "Billy Lick a Lolly"), and that started me browsing for more. I was pretty sure I had watched this show, and now that is confirmed because in seconds of video, or just from the video titles, it all comes back to me. (What a strange and awesome show this was!) Other good ones:

• It really blew my mind
• Steady Freddy
• Whimper and Whine
• Freeze
• T-I-O-N (shun, shun, shun, shun), which is a song I never really forgot, along with
• Eleven Twelve (this one is a bit of a remix) from Sesame Street
• Lost Kid and Yo-Yo Master - another one from those trippy 70s episodes of Sesame Street

Browse around YouTube and you'll find tons more (just be careful about getting the songs stuck in your head).

Five differences

Remember those activities in magazines when you were a kid where you had to look at two pictures and identify the differences in the two? Well, someone used the power of the Internet to make an updated version with nice animations. Five Differences is a neat little time waster.