Mavervorl Media News

Our contributors' incidental blog of technology, lifestyle, commerce, and design

-- Saturday, October 18, 2008 --

The Possible Robocop

These images of a decontextualized Officer Murphy were sent to us with the subject heading "Don't ask me for an explanation because I don't have the slightest idea as to why these exist."

Like Mafia vendettas, deathbed requests, and angelic visitations, it's important to treat such statements as mandates, lest the world be thrown into disarray. So we don't know where these came from, and we are not asking.

Had things turned out differently for OCP and Robocop, had future Detroit been less prone to crime, we can easily imagine Robocop finding time for alternate adventures. But they didn't, and it wasn't, and some things won't be bought for a dollar.

Labels: art, context, geekery

-- Friday, August 1, 2008 --

Misbehaving Youtube videos and how to tame them

As if anyone's website features a column width of 425, YouTube videos, which are themselves that width, often appear awkwardly flushed left. Simply bracket the embed code with center tags to get them spaced properly for your website, like so:

You can also expand the video itself to fit your space, which involves plugging in your desired width (say 500px) and determining the closest 4:3 ratio. In the case of the video below, I took YouTube's 425:344 and made it 500:405, then added center/uncenter tags.

Does this mean we will now go back and center all the Youtube videos on this site? No it does not.

See also: Meet the Youtube filmmakers

Labels: geekery, how to, you tube

-- Saturday, July 7, 2007 --

Report: Geeks Still More Trustworthy than Justice Dept.

by Gram Ponante

LOS ANGELES -- You'd think that the Geek Squad wouldn't have to resort to stealing porn since they already get to keep those cool Beetles.

The comments on Consumerist's story about how the Gawker Media website used a program like Remote Desktop or Timbuktu to catch a Geek Squad employee downloading a client's personal photos - that included porn - onto his own hard drive were less about how interesting this story was than they were about how computer technicians stealing or at least snooping on personal files isn't news.

Labels: geekery, legal

Editor: Marty Barrett
Contributors: Frank Martin, Gram Ponante, Jose Aguilar, Esme Alarcon, Steve Rubinek