Unstoppable Robot Ninja

About the Author

I twitter. I flickr. I...um, deliciousr? This is just getting stupidr.

A bio, in haiku form:

I live in Cambridge.
I use Photoshop and code.
...dilettantes aren't sexy?

Suck it, Sōkan.

About the Name

I have something of a paper trail when it comes to picking domain names that don't exactly roll off the tongue. I'd like to say that the current one was especially inspired: that seraphim delivered The Brandest Namest of Brand Names from on high, borne aloft on shimmering wings from heav'nly bower to my brow. Instead, I think I was just digging my Deathbot t-shirt one night after a few too many beers. And really, what's more badass than having approximately six thousand syllables in your domain name?

Also, Dan tells me that at least I'm less stoppable than a stoppable robot ninja. And after all, isn't that what life's really about?

About the Site

URN is powered by:

• Photoshop and Illustrator, two programs that I love to hate use;
• TextMate, a powerful text editor that is damn near perfect (despite its pig-headed insistence that a single-character undo is The Way, The Truth, The Life^™);
• SegPub for excellent, reliable hosting;
• A 15" Apple MacBook Pro;
• A metric fuckton of music from my crappy iTunes library;
• Expression Engine, an especially robust little CMS that I’d recommend to—well, just about anyone.

My EE install uses the following plugins:

• FeedGrab, which allows me to pull in content from my del.icio.us and Flickr accounts;
• FreeForm, which I use for The 'Bot's Contact page;
• EE Gravatar, because everybody loves them some Gravatars.

If this site looks remotely sexy at all to you, it's likely due to the indiscriminate use presence of Whitney, a beautiful font from the Hoefler & Frere-Jones library. Lucida Grande is the default typeface for the body copy on OS X; Verdana is the default on other operating systems.

About the header graphics

A domain name about badassery requires some badass header graphics. (Like I needed to tell you that.) So what you see up above is randomly selected from a small pool of images, which I'll hopefully be growing as we move along. Here's the skinny on each:

• Boba Fett

  Don’t fuck with the Fett.

• Jue

  From the kickass Final Flight of the Osiris, an entry in The Animatrix collection.

• Megaman

  Consider this one my little silent prayer for this tie-in to be greenlit.

• Snake-Eyes

  That’s right, Snake-Eyes. Because blogging is half the battle.

  (Fuck. I really just wrote that.)

• Motoko Kusanagi

  One of the main characters of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga/anime/film franchise. This pic of the Major is taken from the Stand Alone Complex TV series, which is definitely worth checking out.

• Green dude

  From Ben Templesmith’s Singularity 7. If you haven’t encountered Templesmith’s artwork, you should. Just go buy anything of his. Really.

• Mr. Pendulum

  This badass individual is from Ben Templesmith’s excellent Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse. Hilarious? Definitely. Beautiful artwork? Oh, fuck yes. Gory as hell? My, ever so. Try to track down the trade paperback, if you can.

• Iron Man

  Originally posted because I was a little too excited about a certain movie, I realize that Iron Man is neither a robot or a ninja. But after seeing him on the big screen, I don’t especially care: The movie kicked my ass through several brick walls.

Naturally, the above are all the copyright of their respective authors and creators. Rockstars, each and every one of them.