Tag Archives: April Fools Day

Man travels from the future to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from destroying the world

CNET UK is reports: “Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.”  If you have been keeping up with the news lately, you should know that the scientists at CERN recently had the Large Hadron Collider successfully collide particles at record force.  Their aim is to smash together atoms, create mini-black holes, and attempt to discover what exactly happed during the birth of our univierse, the Big Bang.  Ever since its inception people are worried that the Switzerland-based LHC experiment might go awry and cause a huge black hole on Earth leading to instant worldwide death.  Time-traveller Cole was at one point captured by Swiss police and explained why he came to stop the LHC from continuing its work: “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”  According to the latest reports, “Mr. Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.”

[Via CNET UK]

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1988

The next installment of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is here!  The narrative jumps abot 80 years into the future from  lasy year’s “Century: 1910” to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1988.  Is that Dr. Emmet Brown front and center?  Synopsis, people:

When war-hero-turned-handyman Kesuke Miyagi is found drained of blood, it becomes clear that the occult gang known as the Lost Boys are targeting the only individuals that can stop them from complete domination of America. It’s the perfect case for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–except that their government contact, Oscar Goldman, disbanded the team in 1979 after they defeated Mr. Han’s army of the living dead.

Now, disgraced scientist Emmet Brown has to put together a new team to combat the growing threat of the Lost Boys and their leader, a newly resurrected vampire kingpin Tony Montana: Transportation specialist Jack Burton, ex-commando B.A. Baracus, tech wizard Angus MacGyver and the mysteriously powerful femme fatale known only as “Lisa.” But will Brown be able to stop the Lost Boys before time runs out?

1988 is written by Moore, but, according to ComicsAlliance, one Rusty Shackles will  fill in for illustrator O’Neill “due to the latter’s crippling addiction to “Pokemon SoulSilver”.”

[Via ComicsAlliance]

Google knows how to celebrate April Fools like no other

As I am sure many of you noticed today, Google changed its name to Topeka.  But why, you ask?  Well because the town of Topeka, Kansas changed its name to Google for the month of April.  Topeka, Kansas is one of many communities that have entered a pool of contestents to vie for a fiber-based 1 gigabit broadband network to be provided by Google sometime in the near future.  To get Google’s attention, Topeka Google’s Mayor Bill Bunten changed the town’s name and this is how Google pays it forward.  Though it’s quite a gesture of gratitude, Google has this to say: “We want to be clear that this initiative is a one-shot deal that will have no bearing on which municipalities are chosen to participate in our experimental ultra-high-speed broadband project, to which Google, Kansas has been just one of many communities to apply.”  And that’s why you see Topeka at www.google.com today.

“Google Translate for Animals” does just what you think an app with that name would do.  Check it out in action in the video above.

The latest addition to YouTube is TEXTp, a text-only mode way of watching (most) YouTube videos.  Once you flip the switch (found in the same place to select SD/HD modes) the YouTube video will playback in ASCII code, or a dumbed down jumble of letters and numbers.  It’s pretty neat!  The Lego Matrix stop motion video was made to be dressed in ASCII code, and Trololo (the Creepy La-La-La Guy) looks downright funky.

Google on the new addition: “TEXTp is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements.”  “For every person who selects TEXTp and keeps it on while you watch a video, you save YouTube $1 a second, resulting in potentially billions of dollars of savings for us.”

Head over to YouTube to check out your favorites in TEXTp mode, or add append &textp=fool to the end of any video URL to enable the feature.  This better not be a one-day deal, Google!

And lastly there’s the new Google Wave wave notifications.  They’re real time, real life notifications from a human male in a lab coat who literally waves at you when your Wave account receives a new message.  To enable the new notification system, access the the drop down menu that appears in the Inbox Navigation panel.  There you can choose from four levels of loudness: Silent, Medium, Loud or Vibrate.  Now see what it’s all about in the video above.

[Via Google, here, here & here]