Angry Puppy

Bear with me on this admin post, and I promise to put a fun clip with Felicia Day and Neil Patrick Harris at the end.

FriendFeed: Look at the top of the right column on this page. That’s the Angry Puppy FriendFeed widget. If you haven’t used it, FriendFeed is sort of like Twitter++.

I like it better than Twitter because:

• There are fewer Fail Whales.
• It aggregates various other social network goodies (including Twitter) into one stream that you can view by web page or by RSS.
• Some of you may have noticed my dirty secret: I’m not a writer. FriendFeed lets me share links without all the messy English.

Let me know if you have a FriendFeed (or Twitter, for that matter) account so I can follow you!

• Angry Puppy FriendFeed
• Angry Puppy FriendFeed RSS
• You can see my personal one on my website, though there is some overlap.

San Diego Comic-Con 08: Neither of us could make it to Comic-Con. (Hell, I barely leave the East Village.) I know some of you went, though. Share your pictures and stories! Head over to our Facebook page and post your photos in the Fan photos section (under that lovely Batman picture).

Promised video: If you’re a Felicia Day fan, you’ll find this clip from a Doctor Horrible panel at SDCC08 cute. If not, go educate yourself.

Wait for Neil Patrick Harris’ comment at about the 35 second mark.

Naughty, naughty.

Hey, Angry Puppy readers!

We are happy to let you know that our readership has been growing and growing these last few months, and we appreciate every one of you. We have some administrative stuff we’d like to let you know about.

Angry Puppy on Facebook

At a party last year, we were talking about Battlestar Galactica (and how much we love Katee Sackhoff), when one guy said:

 ”Me too! But I’m usually embarrassed to admit that I like that geeky, sci fi stuff.”

We know that there are other LGBT (and friends) who are “afraid” to admit that they’re geeks or who feel like they just don’t have permission to be gay and geeky. That’s why we started the vlog and, eventually, this blog to accompany it.

In an effort to bring you all together more, we created a Facebook fan page for Angry Puppy. We’d love for you to join us there to meet other readers.

Angry Puppy Gallery of LGBT Characters

Judging by the page views, our Gallery of Gay Action Figures is one of your favorite parts of the site. Those of you who watch the vlog know that we have a lot more figures on the way, including some new ones that were never featured in our videos.

We’ve received a request from several readers for a gallery that is not restricted to characters with official action figures, and we think it’s a great idea. You know that if we do it alone, it’s going to start with Captain Jack, Willow, Jadzia and our other personal favorites. So, we wanted to give you a chance to let us know which are your favorite LGBT characters from sci fi, horror, games, comics and any other medium that we cover.

Send your favorites to us or post in the comments. We’ll tally your requests and start up the gallery in the very near future.

Angry Puppy on your iPhone (and other non-traditional platforms)

We’ve been noticing a surge in the number of visitors using non-traditional browsers and platforms. We expected some Linux and Opera users (it is a geek blog), and we want to give an especially hearty welcome to our PSP readers! I test the site on various browsers, but be sure to let me know if you have any difficulties using something beyond Firefox, IE7 or Safari to access us.

For our iPhone visitors, we’ve added a webclip icon for the site. Just visit us on your iPhone, tap the plus sign, then “Add to Home Screen”. You’ll get a nifty Angry Puppy icon on your home screen, and we’ll always be only one tap away.

The official Star Trek site has been updated again.

The forums are now active, so if you feel like kvetching, you can do it there. There’s also an official Star Trek Facebook group, so if you know exactly what the producers are doing wrong and exactly what they should do to fix it, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.

Look! We’ve seen nothing but the trailer, yet the disappointment is palpable.

Fan 1: “We already have rudimentary droids that can clean carpets (e.g. the Roomba) so when the starship begins construction in 2244, why are the welders still organic? Why aren’t self-aware, autonomous robotic welders doing the job instead? Aren’t we supposed to consign robots to the more dangerous and mundane work in as little as 20 years?”

Fan 2: “I am already disappointed that A) The Enterprise looks like the movie version instead of the TV version and B) Continuity is further disregarded because I always thought the Enterprise was supposed to be assembled in space, and the trailer makes it look otherwise.”

Fan 3: “In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.”

If you want to casually catch up on TOS, they’re available free and legal on Joost.

We weren’t the only ones irritated when Hasbro started cracking down on Facebook apps that resembled their own games (like Scrabble™ and Boggle™).

TastesLikeTV.com has posted a Scrabulous lovefest in music video form.

Our heroine reminisces about Game Night 1994 in East Santa Monica with her friends. Cut to present day at her desk, where she’s drinking coffee from a champagne glass. Those memories and Scrabulous are all that get her through the days at the office, where she’s ogled by co-workers and pestered by her mustachioed boss.

“L, T, S, R
ain’t gonna get you very far.
J, Z, Q, Dub
that’s the stuff you gotta love.”

Until the recent controversy! I’m sure I’ve mangled these a bit, but the gist of the bridge is:

“Now they’re taking it away cause they’re not getting paid
Telling me these crazy things that I don’t wanna know
They got money in the bank, so let me please be frank
All the suits I’d like to shank [inaudible]

So now Zuckerberg my friend, please help us make ammends
Just tell Hasbro and Mattel they can go to hell
But the internet is free, and that’s how it’s meant to be
At the office when you’re bored [you shouldn't need a board].”

It’s obviously a take on Fergie’s “Glamorous“, but it’s pretty funny even without the reference. It leaves me wondering two things: “Where’d they get all those Macs?” and “Do they have the rights for everything in the parody?”

A couple of weeks ago, Hasbro snatched the Boggle clone Bogglific from Facebook (and, by extension, from Marc) by presenting a DMCA notice.  He quickly turned to Mass Effect for solace, and I lost prime quality time with the Xbox.

Bogglific’s developer, Roger Nesbitt, lamented that he had neither the time nor the money to fight Hasbro, and, so, closed up shop.  Meanwhile, Scrabulous, a more popular game than Bogglific, faced the same fate, though the developers decided not to give in.

Fortunately for my gamerscore, we misunderstood the developer’s message.  Yes, Bogglific was shut down, but a new app, Prolific, has taken its place.

Here’s what’s funny about our copyright system.  If I understand this right, the only thing that may keep Prolific from suffering Bogglific’s fate is that Prolific has a slightly different scoring system and a special bonus square. Can the line between a successful innovation and a dirty, rotten criminal really be as fine as whether or not you highlight the letter “D” and give 5 points instead of 3?