Imagine a bunch of twenty-somethings getting their hands on a dubbing rig and a bunch of old, cheesy kung fu films. Now imagine that they threw out the old audio tracks and completely redubbed scenes from the films.

That's Uncle Morty's Dub Shack, currently airing on ImaginAsian TV. Here are a few YouTube clips to give you an idea of their humor (despite the titles, they're all clean):

• Exploding Apples
• Red Ninja Sex Slave
• The Oldest Mugger in the World
• Insomniac

Hilarious in strange, postmodern ways.

I enjoy making homemade soda. It's usually delicious, and I have no problems.

Except with ginger ale. For some reason, ginger ale gets incredibly carbonated. Explosively carbonated.

So, when I found an old bottle of it in the back of the fridge, I figured I'd do a Diet-Coke-and-Mentos sort of video. I took it outside and filmed myself opening it.

Didn't quite work out as planned.

Soda Fountain - Ginger Ale Version from Brent Newhall on Vimeo.

If that weren't enough, I found a bottle of strawberry soda, and decided to open that. Which worked out even less like I'd planned.

Soda Fountain - Strawberry Soda Version from Brent Newhall on Vimeo.

Ah well.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have recently been cracking down on various kinds of internet traffic. Some is understandable; others interfere with legitimate uses of the 'net. Worse, ISPs often do this without telling anyone.

Well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is striking back: they recently released Switzerland, a tool that will test your internet connection to see what your ISP blocks. It's still very basic--you have to run it from a terminal or command line prompt--but it can provide very useful information. Download it here to check your own ISP.

Read a fascinating book lately: Boogiepop and Others.

It's the first novel in a whole franchise, which itself takes some explaining. The franchise focuses on an entity called Boogiepop, which exists in the collective unconscious, and surfaces in certain people whenever a paranormal danger to humanity manifests. So, yes, it's something of an urban fantasy.

This first book describes the initial conflict that brings Boogiepop to the surface today: a creature called the Manticore who feeds on human souls. The franchise went on to spawn numerous novels, a live-action movie, an anime TV series, and a manga. This is where it all started, as a single (award-winning) young adult novel.

The book's split into several parts, each one told from a different character's perspective. Because of this, you often get to see the same scene from different characters' eyes, which changes your interpretation of that scene, and what was actually going on. A great hook

The whole story takes place in a high school, which is key to the franchise. Boogiepop is really about the high school years, when young people begin to solidify their philosophies on life. Each character in the novel sees life very differently, but I can sympathize with all of them to varying degrees.

As a whole, I really enjoyed it.

For the past two weeks, I've been trying to figure out how to describe the online comic North World. And I can't.

That's one of the reasons I like it. North World has elements of a fantasy story--the protagonist wields a sword and confidently fights creatures in the wilderness. But that's crossed with a very normal, modern world of cars and coffee shops. It's a modern world with wildernesses that contain spirit bears.

Not long into the story, the protagonist returns to his hometown, a place he never wanted to come back to. He left it a mess, and now he has to face it. Which means he has to face himself, and the choices he's made. And he doesn't like them.

He loves fighting in the wilderness, but he's alone. And here with his family and old friends...he realizes everyone is together and happy. And he's not. In running off to pursue his dream, he burned his bridges, and he's beginning to realize the folly of that.

An unusual sort of story, and now that I think about it, I realize it's quite similar to Zot!, which I just finished (and heartily recommend to any human). It pulls together the supernormal and the everyday, without debasing either.

An achievement, if nothing else.

I'm developing Gunwave, a tabletop RPG for playing war with giant robots. You get to play the pilot of a giant robot in the midst of a big war.

If you're not familiar with tabletop RPGs: Imagine a game of "Let's pretend," but with defined rules. The hero you play has this much strength and charisma, and that much intelligence.

You play in the traditional tabletop format: a bunch of players, and a Game Master (GM) who describes a scenario, and adjudicates the players' responses.

Okay, now that that's clear: Gunwave is designed for casual gamers. Folks who haven't played tabletop RPGs before, but want to immerse themselves in a difficult era and smash up some giant robots.

As such, Gunwave uses relatively few stats to track characters and mecha (the giant robots). Characters have:

• A few basic stats, like health and charisma
• A race (the universe is full of mutants, psychics, and aliens, if you wish)
• A specialty (spy, munitions, hand-to-hand combat, leader, etc.)
• Skills (perception, diplomacy, martial arts, hacking, etc.)
• Powers (psychic blasts, flash of insight, desperate block, etc.)

Mecha consist of a few attributes, like armor and speed, and their own powers. Plus, of course, weapons; there are 18 of them, plus various kinds of ammo.

I borrowed powers from the D&D fourth edition rules (which was a strong inspiration for Gunwave). Powers replicate the surprising spin, the leap forward to rescue a friend, the psychic blast, and the unexpected resilience of a cool mecha pilot. Some powers can be used as often as desired (they often change the rules of an attack to give you an advantage over certain foes), some can only be used once per fight, and others once per day (these usually do massive damage or provide life-saving assistance).

What's really interesting about all this, though, is the kind of story this supports. I love Gundam because of its stance on war, and showing how powerful and destructive and tragic it is. This lets me tell those sorts of stories, but in an exciting, entertaining way.

I hope.

I've been playtesting the game with a bunch of friends, and thanks to all of you who've helped me so far. It's not ready for a wider release yet, since I'm changing it so much. It's a fascinating little project.

Freelancing has challenged me far more than anything else I've attempted in my life. I have to be disciplined, and focused, in new ways.

At work, there's always someone giving you work to do. And there's always work to do. Work is structured and busy. While that carries its own challenges, I've figured out the basics of office productivity (how to organize my work load, keep email under control, etc.).

At home...I can just walk outside. Nobody will stop me. That freedom pulls at me constantly, and resisting it requires more discipline than I'm used to.

Far more than I have at the moment, it looks like.

So, I'm learning to focus. To get started on productive, paying work as soon as I'm settled in the morning. To set an alarm when I'm doing things that can suck up too much time (checking Twitter and FriendFeed, for example). To be more conscious of my paying time.

So, I learn and grow.

I'll be giving a short presentation on my Otaku, No Video podcast today. The presentation's called "Free Podcasting: How I Publish a Podcast Without Paying a Cent (Almost)." It covers the software I use to publish the podcast, and our publication process.

You can view the presentation online, thanks to SlideRocket, an awesome online PowerPoint competitor.

I've noticed that a lot of folks online don't take security very seriously. They use weak passwords (123456, their name, etc.), they use the same password everywhere, they don't change their passwords, they turn off their virus scanner; every security violation you can think of.

And I can understand that. It's annoying and time-consuming. Besides, even if you want to be more secure, where do you start? What do you do?

So, I've written an eBook that answers those questions. It includes a comprehensive plan for identifying areas where you could be more secure, and what you can do to be more safe. It includes links to solid software to plug security holes, and a complete description of my own (somewhat paranoid) security procedures.

You can buy my Smart Computer Security eBook for $9.99 at Your Online Life. It'll be sent to your email inbox within 24 hours, as a PDF file which you can read on any computer.

As always, let me know what you think of it.

I've written before about my Kindle, and how much I've used it (I read 3 books in the first week). Now that I've had it for 6 months, my passion has cooled.

I still enjoy my Kindle, and I'm glad I bought it. I like being able to read the WSJ any time I want to, without dealing with a paper. I occasionally flip it open and read a bit more of a novel.

But I only use my Kindle every week or two now. I have free books from the library, compared to paying a few dollars for Kindle versions. And I'm not as mobile as I was, so I don't benefit from having a dozen books at my side all the time. I have a thousand books right here.

But I'm still glad I bought it. It's certainly much more convenient for books that my library doesn't have, and I do believe that devices like the Kindle are the wave of the future.