moar funny pictures Previously on The Phantom City, Interest Ratings Falling.

I can’t wait to see how much search engine traffic comes in for that headline! During my usual daily visit to the Yahoo! home page, I saw a featured article titled " Is She Attracted to Me?" Since that was a topic I was always terrible with during my dating days, I thought it’d be worth a look. (I don’t have to worry about it now, though. I’m married, and I’m pretty sure that means my wife is legally obligated to find me attractive. At least, I think that’s what all those “fat guy married to hot wife” sitcoms are relying on. What else could explain the longevity of something like Still Standing other than shared cultural experience?) ...

Like vocabulary words? Like filling bowls with rice? Then FreeRice.com is the place for you. For each word you successfully define, 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations to alleviate world hunger. My favorite line from their FAQ: “FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice–you are earning it 10 grains at a time.” :)

If you go to this site to rate your own blog, take a look at the results code before you paste it in. Mine had a link to a cash advance site. Link courtesy of the ACC Basketblog.

That’s really all there is to be said. Play the game, and don’t forget your grid paper. Link courtesy of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Hey, I work across the hall from this guy! He’s got a window, but since he’s published I won’t begrudge him that. ;) The article is a good tutorial on the CFEclipse plugin for the Eclipse IDE, which I use for ColdFusion coding at work. (Eclipse and I have come to a pause in our struggle and are trying to normalize relations to avoid future conflict.) I had been ignoring the snippet feature for a while, since I didn’t see a lot of time savings with it, but Jim’s article convinced me to use it again. ...

Rumors have been swirling for quite a long time that Google was coming up with a hardware competitor for Apple’s iPhone. Apparently not. They’ve just announced Android, a collection of OS, UI, and applications for mobile devices that is meant to run across various hardware supplied by major mobile device makers. They’re planning to release an SDK for developers in November, with phones based on the platform showing up later in 2008. ...

LOLCats has given birth to LOLCode, which I’m pretty sure is the programming language of the future. Consider: > [I HAS A <var> ITZ ...](http://lolcode.com/keywords/i-has-a) > > Declare a variable. Note the following: > > - Every variable is an array. > - ITZ … has been reserved for future usage and should not be used (except possibly for initialization of single-element arrays) > - At present, all arrays are heterogeneous (they can have different types of values in them). This may change in the future! > > All values are typed, and the types are: > > - NUMBAR (signed integer, at least 32 bits wide) > - YARN (string) > - ARRAY (contains NUMBARs and/or YARNs and/or ARRAYs) > > Currently the interpreter and/or compiler does type checking at compile and/or runtime. This may get nailed down to one or the other in future recommendations. There is also a .NET compiler. ...

Watching nature shows as a kid, one of the things I found most interesting is that apparently every form of life in Australia is dangerous. Sharks, snakes, spiders…even koalas, with their deceptively cute looks and long claws…everything moving can kill you. (Well, except for Michael “Aussie” Southam from ESPN’s Madden Nation. Then again, he could just be lulling his prey into a false sense of security.) My Australian doctor has a poster of the alphabet made up of her native land’s animals; I like to think of it as My First Deadly Alphabet. ...

When making tough decisions in life, sometimes it seems like you should ask yourself “What Would Chuck Norris Do?” This is a mistake, because you are not capable of doing what Chuck Norris would do. So, anyone who was thinking of endorsing Mike Huckabee for President? Don’t. He’s got all the endorsement he’ll need. Oh, and by the way, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos? Best five-episode animated series framed by live-action Chuck Norris segments from what appeared to be his basement ever. :) ...