Legless LEGO Legolas, Chasing a Streetcar, and Printed Wikipedia

A few updates of things I discovered today, and some other various things.

Legless LEGO Legolas

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I was scrolling through Tumblr, and (two years late to the game) discovered (or maybe I already know about it and forgot) the Legless LEGO Legolas meme.
This meme was started in 2012 by Martin Freeman on an episode of The Colbert Report. Skip to 0:51 in the video for the joke.

It has been carried on here;

and has multiple images and other jokes when you Google it, including Legless LEGO Legolas’ Lego Legs, and Legless LEGO Legoas’ LEGO Lass’ LEGO Lasso (it’s okay, there’s a lot to wrap your head around).

My Trip to the Streetcar

I tried to catch the streetcar at PSU& it was 12 minutes. A young woman waiting under the rain shelter had her umbrella open. I walked on.

— Nathanial G (@nathanialjg) February 20, 2014

At this stage, I was mostly just confused as to why anyone would stand under a rain shelter with their umbrella still open. But, it IS Portland, and I have seen stranger things.

The CL was pulling up to the next stop but I was stopped by traffic at a crosswalk. Streetcar sat for a moment. Thought I could catch it. — Nathanial G (@nathanialjg) February 20, 2014

It was exasperating to see the streetcar come around the corner of a normally relatively quiet street, just to be followed by a giant pack of cars. With no way to safely jaywalk, and no hope for the light to turn anytime soon, I was sure I had missed the streetcar.

Ran up, pressed the button, waited a minute. It left without me. Exasperated by the day I chased it north to the next stop.

— Nathanial G (@nathanialjg) February 20, 2014

Yes, that is correct. I made it to the streetcar, but the doors were closed. Despite still having to wait for a red light, the streetcar doors did not open. After running a block to catch it, I was pretty determined, and really did not feel like waiting up to 12 minutes for the next streetcar. So as it took off, I ran alongside it. I figured I could use the exercise anyway.

So if you see a sopping wet dude sweating on the streetcar, that’s me. — Nathanial G (@nathanialjg) February 20, 2014

Oh, did I mention? I was running in the rain, and this was my first time running in awhile. So I was dripping from the rain AND pretty sweaty.

Printed Wikipedia

As I was browsing Twitter this evening, I came across information about a new project from PediaPress. PediaPress, whom I had never heard of before this evening and just spent a couple hours browsing with, is a company that will print Wikipedia articles you select into a bound book.
After playing around with the Book Editor function in Wikipedia and making a book on my current city, Portland, I watched the instruction video.

Currently, PediaPress has an IndieGoGo campaign to print all of Wikipedia for the Wikimania London conference in August 2014. Wikimania is a conference for editors of Wikipedia and members of the Wikipedia community to gather together. They estimate that the bookshelf to hold all these books would be 8 feet tall and 32 feet long, and the books would be almost instantly outdated. Despite this, plans are to have the books travel around the world as a demonstration of the collective knowledge of humanity at a certain point.

Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer

It’s here! The Trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. A number of famous internet people have pointed out that every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a bit of a risk for Marvel Studios because they have all been new and groundbreaking in some way, and this one follows that tradition. Guardians of the Galaxy is the biggest gamble Marvel Studios has made so far. This rag-tag team has had a cult following for a couple decades, but has primarily been a B-line in the comics. Thrusting them forward into a film set in the MCU is an interesting decision. For one, I am hoping (on many levels) that it is as incredible as it looks. We are going to see a lot more publicity about this through the spring before the promotions ramp up in the summer for this August release. Who knows, maybe I will see it again on my birthday. Check out the first trailer here.

Book Giveaway

For those of you who entered my Book Giveaway, I am hoping to have an announcement of winners tomorrow! I am planning on doing the selection on video, which I will upload to YouTube (and of course post here), hopefully before 8pm Pacific Time. Winners will also be notified by e-mail tomorrow evening. I saw the author speak live at Solid Rock on Sunday, and am hoping to be able to type up my notes from his speaking, which was really great and helped me reframe the importance of the book a bit.