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This week, we learned of a guy who proposed to his girlfriend in the game Super Mario World. Using an editing program called Lunar Magic, he put the words "Lisa Will You Marry Me?" inside a game level. And (spoiler alert): she accepted.
(Credit:
JD Andrews)
But that's not the first geeky marriage proposal we've heard of.
Way back in the early days of the Information Superhighway, Slashdot co-founder Rob Malda popped the question to Kathleen Fent on his own "News for Nerds" site.
More recently, one of our readers engraved a proposal on the back of a new iPod Nano. Of course, there are those who have taken the risk of floating the big question via Twitter. We even dug up an awesome patent application for "Method and instrument for proposing marriage to an individual," wherein one Ryan Grace asks for the hand of his true love, Ellie.
If none of those melt your hardened heart, Wired has a few others in its list of five geeky marriage proposals. A couple of our faves include a Google employee who posed the question via Google Maps and a guy who modded his girlfriend's favorite game, Bejeweled, so the jewel pieces formed the shape of a diamond ring. Awww...
So, what's the most romantic geek proposal of them all? Vote in our poll. And surely, some of our inventive readers have told their inamoratas (inamoratos) how they feel in a way only geeks can. Made a Facebook app? Rearranged the keys on your loved one's MacBook? Created a shmoopy comic? Let us know in the TalkBack section below.
I have always wanted to propose marriage to someone.
It's just that somehow the moment's never seemed right. Or, well, the lover in question leaves before the question can be popped.
So perhaps I might learn from this dashing, daring, and technically very correct man who found one of the more romantic ways to tell his girlfriend of five years he would like to spend at least the next five years with her.
He seems to be something of a geeky sort, so he reached for an editing program called Lunar Magic and inserted the deeply felt words "Lisa Will You Marry Me?" into a Super Mario World level.
Touchingly, the words were spelled out in gold coins.
The Super Mario suitor didn't reveal his name on YouTube, but the poster's identity is BradSmith182. So I know some of you might conclude his name is Brad Smith and he is a large aficionado of Blink 182.
The video does not start in a promising or loving way. Lisa somewhat rattily declares: "Why are we playing this?" as if, perhaps, there was some more cerebral game she had in mind.
But once she sees the magic words and BradSmith182 brings out the ring, she agrees somewhat shyly to be with him for better, for worse, and for Mario.
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It's Wilson's turn again to choose The 404 semi-weekly audio draft sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.FM, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and CNET News and Reviews 5000, so naturally we're a little skeptical (but not nearly as skeptical as we are about the moon landing), but Mr. Tang comes through again with the beautiful music of Priscilla Ahn, a young singer-songwriter with a light, ethereal voice that drifts through the layered atmosphere of her acoustic folk melodies.
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(Credit:
Priscilla Ahn/Last.FM)
Like many of the artists featured on our Draft Pick, Ms. Ahn also brings several instrumental talents to her songs, incorporating her harmonica and even a kazoo on top of the gentle plucks of an acoustic guitar.
Today's featured song, "Dream," was recently featured in an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," and with good reason: the layered harmonies make the perfect soundtrack to quiet, rolling landscapes...also, I think it's pretty cool that's she's on Blue Note Records, the jazz label responsible for putting out albums by John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis.
She put out her first record last year called "A Good Day," and is currently touring Japan and Korea before heading back to Los Angeles on August 1 to play at the Troubadour. Give her a listen and let us know if you're in love with her as much as I am!
As usual, this episode is also jam-packed with current newz, including MCA's YouTube announcement (get better soon!), Facebook self-love (not like that, dummy), and another Facebook story about the most EPIC PARTY EVER!
One final note: does anyone have the original text/code for our Wikipedia page? I know it's been awhile, but somebody must have it, right? Our intentions are secret for now, but we definitely have a stew a-brewin', so hit us up at the404(at)cnet(dot)com if you have a copy of it!
EPISODE 386
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Convergence: The occurrence of two or more things coming together. In this case, cars and couches, shoes and bathtubs, and last but not least, showers and aquariums. Try to wrap your brain around that!
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EPISODE 137 |
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CNET Networks, Matt Hickey)
The iPhone is far from perfect, despite what the fanboys claim. Don't get me wrong, it's very, very good. But it has some glitches that still need to be worked out, like the dropped calls some users experience, the lack of copy and paste, and that weird bug where it takes a photograph of your crotch and e-mails it to a woman.
That, anyway, is what seems to be behind the situation in this amusing thread on the official Apple forums. A woman says she found an e-mail on her husband's iPhone with a picture of his, um, stuff attached that he'd apparently sent to another woman. The man is blaming a glitch. What's odd, though, is that other iPhone users are backing him up.
I've never heard of pictures automatically attaching themselves to e-mails sent from the iPhone. Perhaps this is just someone's idea of a joke, and the Apple support community bit the troll hard. But now, as an iPhone user, I have to wonder: has my fancy handheld been sending pictures of my parts to my friends, family, and co-workers? Have any of you Cravers ever heard of this problem?
Sorry, fellas. I have dibs on Terminator 3.
(Credit: Linternaute.com)If you love robots so much, why don't you marry one?
This may be possible in the future, according to artificial intelligence researcher David Levy. According to Levy's Ph.D thesis, titled "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," robots will become so humanlike and pseudo-emotional that we won't be able to keep from falling in love and making out with them. Aw yeah.
The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands liked the thesis paper so much that they married it awarded Levy a doctorate.
Silly and pervy as the idea of marrying a robot sounds, the amount of research Levy did for the paper was impressively thorough. According to this Daily Mail article, he based the thesis on "about 450 publications about psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction."
Levy's paper also examined the reasons why people fall in love and have sex. He concluded that a combination of future robots' aesthetic features and artificial personalities, as well as the fact that human attitudes towards sex are becoming more and more liberal, means that there will be little to no barriers for human-robot love.
Just so you can plan ahead, YesButNoButYes has a list of the 10 sexiest robots of all time. And Donald Bell has been seen about town with this hot bot. Yee-ouch!
[Via The Daily Mail.]
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