Happy Halloween from Shaktronics!  I hope you enjoy your holiday and have a safe and fun night amongst the ghouls and ghosts!

The Skeleton Dance is Walt Disney’s first Silly Symphony cartoons.  It’s also widely considered one of the best cartoons of all time, despite being 70 years old.  It’s still a hoot today!

All good things must eventually come to an end.  For those of us who rely on Hulu to catch up on missed TV programs and for entertainment while trapped in our work cubes, it might end up costing a little money come this time next year.  Sadly, the free TV online service has announced plans to roll out a subscription-based option starting sometime in 2010.

Now, that’s not guaranteed to be bad.  If Hulu provides the same amount of advertizing-supported movies and television shows, then I’ll continue to use it.  If they put everything behind the subscription wall, no dice.  I’m used to watching network TV for free thanks to commercials, and the reason why people use Hulu is because it’s network TV for free thanks to commercials.

The fact is, if they make Hulu paid, people are going to stop using it.   I’ll just start using Crackle for my video-watching needs.  While the TV isn’t as good, the movie selection is spectacular.  If I miss an episode of The Office or Family Guy, I’ll just watch them at their respective official network websites.

I love this movie.  The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my absolute all-time favorites.  Stylish, incredible music and songs, and great character design.

Man, this multi-track human beatbox version of the Ghost Busters theme is just incredible!  That reminds me, I need to watch Ghost Busters again sometime.

It’s a great combination of the old school and modern technology.  Take a gander at the awesome Cylon Pumpkins from Evil Mad Scientist’s Cylon jack-o-lantern kit!  I know, it looks cool, right?  Well, just watch it in motion!

isn’t that great?  Wouldn’t it be really cool to have on the front porch this Halloween (and to reuse those LEDs for future jack-o-lanterns?  It’s the perfect blend of sci-fi nerdery and Halloween fun!

Twitter, the microblogging platform that’s become the hottest thing on the Internet since Facebook, has really been taking off.  In fact, 20% of Americans have embraced Twitter.  Or at least Twitter-like microblogging services.  They’re not terribly specific on what services they count in the study.

Taking an in-depth look at the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s demographics yields some fascinating information.  For example, 26% of African American in the study are Twitter users while 21% of women use Twitter.  That 33% of folks 18-29 are Twitterers isn’t surprising, but in the sizable 30-49 demographic, 22% of people Tweet.

That kind of turns the steretype of young white male nerds as gadget-centric on its ear, doesn’t it?  Technology has truly become a democratizing force, if only because everyone uses it!  It does make me wonder how corporate Twitter accounts are counted, though.

I seriously have no words.  If I did, I wouldn’t be able to type them without a Klingon keyboard.

For those of you who need a prepaid cell phone, starting Sunday you’ll have another choice.  Best of all, it’s from a company you already know that has locations pretty much everywhere in the US.  That company would be Walmart, via a partnership with Tracfone.

Yes, Walmart is entering the phone service world with their Straight Talk service.  No contracts, no hidden fees.  For $30 a month, you can have up to 1000 minutes of talk time and 1000 texts, or for $45 a month, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts.  When you run out of texts and time, or your 30 days are you, you just buy a new card and continue on using your phone.

There’s not a wide variety of cell phones available, just the LG200, the MOTORAZR, and the MOTO W385, but given that the top end phone is only $100 (and the bottom end $30), you can’t expect a whole lot of selection.  Plus the program is just beginning; if it takes off, I imagine they’ll add any number of phones to the lineup.

View the glorious full size and more Lego Zombies at io9.