X-Men's fifth cartoon incarnation....

Marvel Entertainment has pacted with Indian animation company First Serve Toonz to produce an animated "X-Men" skein centered on the character of Wolverine.

Well, on the upside, at least they're admitting they're focusing on Wolvie from the get-go. On the downside, I can't yet convince myself that this won't somehow suck.

Nielsen on blogs

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). As with pretty much everything Nielsen does, I agree with him overall in principle and some of his ideas specifically, but certainly not all. This piece seems aimed specifically at those who'd blog for a living or with the intention of drawing an audience as opposed to those of us who just sorta splatter ideas on the wall like spaghetti:

Establishing and meeting user expectations is one of the fundamental principles of Web usability. For a weblog, users must be able to anticipate when and how often updates will occur.

I'm not sure anyone reading my work in this forum could adhere to this idea. We may have side projects in a blog-like format that have specific schedules, but my writing is independent of my audience's wants and needs (as I'm sure you've figured out).

If you have the urge to speak out on, say, both American foreign policy and the business strategy of Internet telephony, establish two blogs. You can always interlink them when appropriate.

Can you imagine? I'd have more blogs than Blogger if this were the case.

Certainly, you shouldn't post when you have nothing to say. Polluting cyberspace with excess information is a sin.

This is one of those nuggets of idiocy that makes me tune out Nielsen entirely and miss the valuable, insightful bits of his analysis. But I think I'll survive.

LOTR LFG OMG LOL

I'd seen this first from katiescarlet, but Boing Boing also caught notice: An LOTR-WoW animated GIF movie....

Not even counting the Warlords massacre of 1983

Via A², from the people who brought us the 200GB iPod Mini mod, Crimes inspired by video games - Uncyclopedia

1982

* January 8th - An explosion heard coming from underneath Flagstaff turned out to be caused by an attacker pumping explosive gases into a victim's stomach. Neither were identified.
* January 14th - A man riding atop an ostrich used a lance to kill two people and injure ten more.
* July 23rd - A Red Kangaroo mother managed to steal boxing gloves and went on a killing rampage in her Australian zoo, targeting each and every monkey in possession of an apple. The charges were later dropped when employees discovered the monkeys had kidnapped and blindfolded her joey.

In which gamers outclass lawyers, go figure

Penny Arcade's Tycho on anti-gaming zealot testament to Planned Parenthood Jack Thompson:

It was only a matter of time until a mod team took Jack Thompson's disgusting revenge fantasy and made it flesh - and, just as I suggested, it was deemed insufficient.

Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was "satire," and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I'm sure is just hilarious to people in need.

You know what, Jack? We're going to be the men you're not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibeler's choice. We've got a good guess that he'd direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We've just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars' worth. And we made it in your name.

Puh-owned (or however you say that)!