Read about Pioneer One today in one of the blogs I regularly visit – and got stuck. That was a blog post that cost me more than half an hour of my life and ten bucks – but it was definitely worth it. Much better than get sucked in one YouTube video after another until you feel as put through the wringer.

In the process I learned of another video site – vodo.net – which seems to be one for a bit bigger projects. Pioneer One does seem to be a bigger undertaking as the first show of this series is a half hour long professionally made video, intended to be mainly distributed as a torrent (in this case of about 1.1 GB.)

What is it about? The site describes it tersely as

An object in the sky spreads radiation over North America. Fearing terrorism, U.S. Homeland Security agents are dispatched to investigate and contain the damage. What they discover will have implications for the entire world.

This first show, according to the liner notes, cost a mere $6000, due to the fact that pretty much all of the contributors did it as volunteers. The next three shows are planned to use up about 20k and satisfied and curious viewers are asked to donate to hear and see the story continue.

I certainly want to know what’s happening next so I did my fair share (*) and did contribute – and now I can’t wait.

Want to have a little spoiler? The last word in the show is ‘absofuckinglutely!’

If that convinces you go there (click on the image above) and enjoy.

(*) This is meant as a stab in the direction of US Tax attorneys that force people at gun point to pay their ‘fair share’ – nothing fair about THAT! Contrary to the situation here where there is no initiated violence involved, just a voluntary contribution in the amount what YOU think is fair.

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So, here is the short link: bit.ly/tldW

and here the long one.

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Here is one example…

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Click here to view the embedded video.

If this happens to our clueless office worker right there at work, could it not also happen to a boy of 11 and his little sister?

And, indeed, it has. These events are cronicled in the “Underlander Chronicles” by Suzanne Collins, a series of book that I can only warmly recommend if you are a parent who likes to read to the off-spring. The first book, Gregor the Overlander, got into our hands at a second hand book store for a mere quarter – you just have to recognize a treasure when it finds you. We read this chapter by chapter as good night literature and had to continue with the second book immediately. Today we finished this one and now we have a problem how to quickly get the third one.

Just in case you are looking for this as well, here are all the five books in the series (wondering if there is a number 6 in the works)…

• The Underland Chronicles
  • Gregor the Overlander
  • Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane
  • Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods
  • Gregor and the Marks of Secret
  • Gregor and the Code of Claw

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Stumbling along I ran into one campanion stumbler who could my eye – wonder if there is any male on this planet who’s eye this person would not have caught. Take a look…

If your eye get caught what can you do? The rest of the body, including arms and finger that are usually operating keyboard and mouse have to follow. You can’t just detach them, can you?

So, following the eyes, the keyboard and mouse fingers operated the browser controls in a way that the eyes ended up at the web site belonging to this stumble-upon member with the name of FNA.

And what a great website that is! I really must recommend to every designer to take a look. It certainly appeals to me based upon its clear and minimalistic design.

A site like this invites you to explore and so I did. The eyes still commanding the rest of my body to look for more pictures – and then I found it – the email address…

It starts with Frank!

Frank??

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Click here to view the embedded video.

and

Click here to view the embedded video.

For me, Microsoft has redeemed itself for all the bad things it has done in the past. That might sound a bit strong, but these ads are so good that I admire Microsoft that it had the guts to run them. OK, it must have been so far beyond anything the usually confused participants in this game could understand that it was mostly rejected – and the ads have been pulled.

I think that the ads have nearly a Monty-Pythonishness and only a person well trained in Douglas-Adamishness can really appreciate them. This group is rather small, so it was drowned by the masses.

Compared to the Apple ads with John Hodgman as PC and Justin Long as Mac the Microsoft ads are so totally senseless that they have broken reality – and I can’t help it, but I like surreal. Forces you to look beyond the daily seriousness. OK, the Apple ads don’t appear serious, but they are, they are adversarial in nature by trying to put down the PC. (Funny side note that the PC character became the more lovable and better known, publishing books and being interviewed by Xeni Jardin of Boing-Boing fame.)

Now lets look at the MS ads – off-the-wall, surreal and imaginative – and, I forgot, weird. What MS shows me here is that they could be just as unusual as Apple as a company, but that they have decided not to go this route because there were too few people to understand what they would have been doing. Instead they went with that what is real to most people – confusion!

So, by catering to the reality of this majority of the population, they managed to dominate the world with their software and now they can come out of the closet – and they did.

Congratulations!

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We have not seen yet, real skyscrapers  or bridges built out of Legos (or better Lego Bricks, how the company want us to call them) but I can not imagine that this will be too far in the future.

Ho do I get such a crazy idea, you might wonder.

Look at this, if this guy can build glasses that are so much more useful than regular ones with just a bit of ingenuity, boring subjects like houses, and bridges can not be far behind.

During engaging computer work…

and while taking a little rest…

Lego inventors unite! Let me know what else you created.

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