Package Thief vs. Glitter Bomb Trap

Mutant Homecoming: Disney Acquires Fox

First it was Spider-Man. Now it's the X-Men and Fantastic Four. We really don't need another megacorp, but as a fanboy, this is exciting.

Leonard Nimoy Tribute

A selfie mosaic from William Shatner and a bunch of Star Trek fans.

Stack Overflow Easter Egg

Sir Christopher Lee 1922-2015

22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir Christopher Lee

One commenter nailed it:

F*** the Dos Equis guy. This is the most interesting man in the world.

Horror-ble Ice Creams

Horror Movie-Inspired Ben and Jerry’s Flavors

Avengers: Age of Ultron

You are worthy.

Stick a Fork in It

Longest... Beta release... Ever.

After seven long years of limbo, I finally managed to work my way through the bazillion small things that needed to be completed before officially releasing version 6.30 of CLIPS.

Whew!

The major new feature in 6.30 is performance improvements, but this marks the first release where the distribution CLIPS executables—both Windows and Mac OS X—are code signed. The warnings you get when attempting to download and run unsigned executables from the Internet are pretty intimidating, so while the signing may go unnoticed by many, I’m glad I took the time and effort to get it done.

The CLIPS documentation has gotten a facelift as well. The box headers that for some reason we thought looked good twenty years ago are gone; spacing has been adjusted to improved readability; and the diagrams and tables have been updated with a modern look.

Now to decide what’s next for CLIPS…

The Prodigal Son Returns

Sony Pictures Entertainment Brings Marvel Studios into the Amazing World of Spider-Man:

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

It’s hard to think of a $4 billion dollar franchise as a failure, but nonetheless the last three Spider-Man movies have been creatively disappointing. I'm hopeful that the second reboot will breathe new life into the ailing franchise.

Most filmgoers are likely unaware that in the 1990s Marvel sold the movie rights to many of its most popular characters including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. As this infographic from the Geek Twins illustrates, at the end of 2014 Spider-Man lived in a world of his own. Without a deal, he was unable to appear in the wider world of character rights still owned by Marvel.



So the studio that was able to turn a group of second tier characters into a cinematic blockbuster generating universe, now has a big gun in its arsenal. I’m all atingle.

Battered Bliss

Chicken fried steak, fried corn, and onion rings.

Lavalantula

You only have to watch one of the SyFy channel’s “combo” movies to discover that their awesome titles are ruined by actually watching the movie. Seriously, how could you go wrong with gems like these:

Dinosaur + Crocodile = Dinocroc
Man + Mosquito = Mansquito
Shark + Octopus = Sharktopus
Dinosaur + Shark = Dinoshark
Piranha + Anaconda = Piranhaconda
Shark + Tornado = Sharknado

And now with their latest movie, Lavalantula, they’ve managed to botch the title as well.



How do you combine “lava” and “tarantula”, words containing a total of two ‘l’ letters, and get “Lavalantula”, a word containing three ‘l’ letters? It’s baffling.

And the title needs to evocatively roll off your tongue. Lavalantula sounds too much like Lollapalooza. There’s nothing scary about a movie festival.

So if you’re reading my blog SyFy channel, here’s a million dollar movie title for you:

Tarantula + Avalanche = Tarantulanche

Now that’s scary.

Lego Captain America

Awesome!