Sometimes when I see a really interesting video or news item online and I find out that it was apparently the talk-of-the-net several months ago I feel a little bad that I'm so far behind. On the other hand, it also probably means that I'm not a super-nurd, which is a comforting consolation. In any case, at the risk of looking stupid in the eyes of the geeks who read this, I'm going to blog about all of these interesting (yet somewhat old) stuff that I discovered today.

First, there is this extremely unbelievably retarded news video that aired on a local Fox station in july 2007. You'll cringe as you see this, but this is not a parody or hoax, it's an actual news report : check it here.

The way I found the video was by reading about the concept of imageboards, another seemingly big topic which had illuded me (there goes my big business idea).

How did I hear about imageboard, you say? I was reading about another internet meme called "Rick Rolling" and in the process found out that Rick Rolling was started at one of these popular image boards (4chan).

And finally, what started all of this was this xkcd strip. The rickrolling comment at the end made me curious and set of my wonderous journey in the internets.

Oh and since we're doing this, another example of why 80's was a disaster.

I beat Assassin's Creed on the weekend. I still have mixed feelings about the game. On the one hand I really enjoyed the realism and the free roaming nature, and of course the grandness of each city. On the other hand, I was as frustrated as everyone else with the repetetive gameplay. In any case, the ending is open-ended and sets up the sequel. What's interesting is that there are a ton of hidden secrets and messages laid out for you at the end. I almost overlooked all of these, but then I found an interesting link after finishing the game which explains the ending and it added a whole new dimension to the game for me. Check it out.

It finally came out yesterday. I had been following the development for Assassin's Creed for the past year, eagerly waiting for its release.

I'm not a hardcore gamer at all. I only play a game if I love it, and that means that I might play 2-3 titles per year (or sometimes no titles, if nothing comes out that's interesting to me). But the games I do play, I play with passion.

ME! well, sort of. Both of my entries won an award :

Labelheads, won Dr. Frank Piller's "Innovativeness" award. It was one of the panel awards in the competition. It also won the popular vote, which certainly surprised me in a very good way. Despite that and despite being in the panelists' top 3, it didn't get any of the main prizes. Spreadshirt felt it wasn't serious enough, a decision that I fully respect.

My second submission, Molecular Goodness, which was a collaboration with my designer friend Shahin, also won a panel award: Computerlove collaboration award, for best collaborative entry.

I must confess in the beginning I felt slightly let down because I had a lot of confidence that I would make Spreadshirt's top 3 cut, but I am very happy with my performance overall. It was the first competition of its kind that I had entered, and having 2 entires in the final 15 among 2,800 submissions, and both of them winning something was a great acheivement. During the 7 weeks that the OLP ran, I was truly addicted to the process and i'm thinking about participating in more competitions from now on.

The Spreadshirt open logo competition I wrote about earlier is now closed. After 7 weeks and 2800 entries they have narrowed it down to 15 finalists. I'm really happy to say that I have one and a half entries in the final!

Labelheads, the concept I came up with on week 3 is one of them. Spreadshirt is a company that lets its users customize their own clothing. So I tried to capture that essence with a customizable logo. They can always keep their logo fresh by changing it depending on the season and/or occasion.

The second one was a collaboration between me and my friend and talented designer/photographer Shahin. It's called Molecular Goodness. The three core values of Spreadshirt are represented by three basic shapes or molecules, that can be combined to form any shape (like a big "S", a t-shirt, or a tag).

The final winner will be chosen by Spreadshirt next week, and in order to help them make their decision they have made an online survey where you can see all the 15 finalists and vote for the best. If you're interested check it out and vote for your favourite (by which I mean us :D ).