Krunk – Page 105 – Krunk4Ever!

August 6, 2006January 2, 2008

Pinky Promise

I was watching xxxHOLiC and several things connected regarding the pinky. So there’s the pinky promise where 2 kids would make a promise to each other by entwining their pinkies. Then there’s the red string of fate, familiar in Asian cultures where 2 lovers are connected by the red string of fate. Although the Wikipedia states it’s a Japanese belief, many Chinese folktales also have this tidbit in it.

Apparently, these seemingly unrelated things are totally connected. Apparently the pinky is connected to your heart, therefore love and promises are connected to your pinky.

Doumeki: Since your heart is connected to your little finger, the red string of fate is also tied to it. By the way, during the Edo Period, there was even a custom where the ladies of the time would cut off their right little fingers, and give them to the person they liked. It was proof that they wouldn’t betray the one they loved. The Pinky Promise song also comes from that custom.

Yuuko: It might exist. But, you can’t guarantee that the string is tied to only one person. (contrary from what I’ve always believed, I had always thought there was only 1 red thread and the person connected to it would be your soul mate)

So the pinky was a promise for eternal love between 2 people. However, as it slowly changed, it became a gestured used by kids to refer to any promise they make.

From Wikipedia entry on the little finger: A pinky promise (also known as a pinky swear) is made when a person wraps one of their pinky fingers around the other person’s pinky and makes a promise. Traditionally, it’s considered binding and the idea was originally that the person who breaks the promise must cut off their pinky finger. In a similar vein, among members of the Japanese yakuza (gangsters), the penalty for various offenses is removal of parts of the little finger (known as yubitsume).

Random Crap:

Click image to start the animation or view it in the gallery.
(from Tera)

Oddball: The pain game (from MS newsgroup) – The No. 261 reason Japanese television is better than ours: when you mess up a tongue-twister on a Japanese game show the punishment is swift and brutal. Yet another crazy video from Hey Hey Hey.

Doctors offer to maim beggars in TV sting – Secretly filmed footage taken by the CNN-IBN news channel and broadcast Saturday showed one of the doctors asking for 10,000 rupees (about $215) to amputate a lower leg, leaving a stump that may draw sympathy — and a few rupees — from passersby.

Magic Revolution (from Artemyst) – I showed you a video with the magic hamburger awhile back. Apparently this guy has another similar magic trick on video. This time instead of a hamburger, he produces ice coffee! Pretty neat!

August 6, 2006

Left-sided and Right-sided Driving

I was watching Your Safety First from Vintage ToonCast and somewhere along the line, they said how we used to drive on the other side. This peaked my interest and I searched for more information.

From Why do some countries drive on the right and others on the left?

About a quarter of the world drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies. This strange quirk perplexes the rest of the world; but there is a perfectly good reason.

In the past, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because that was the most sensible option for feudal, violent societies. Since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. Moreover, it reduced the chance of the scabbard (worn on the left) hitting other people.

Furthermore, a right-handed person finds it easier to mount a horse from the left side of the horse, and it would be very difficult to do otherwise if wearing a sword (which would be worn on the left). It is safer to mount and dismount towards the side of the road, rather than in the middle of traffic, so if one mounts on the left, then the horse should be ridden on the left side of the road.

In the late 1700s, however, teamsters in France and the United States began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver’s seat; instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since he was sitting on the left, he naturally wanted everybody to pass on the left so he could look down and make sure he kept clear of the oncoming wagon’s wheels. Therefore he kept to the right side of the road.

Random Crap:

Hundreds expected to come to Masturbate-a-thon – Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe’s first “Masturbate-a-thon”, a leading reproductive healthcare charity said on Friday.

Apparently Sylvester Stalone must be running low on money. He’s making another Rocky movie which features him as an old guy trying to come back to fight against the reigning champion of today. What the heck is that storyline!?!? Then there’s Rambo IV…

ImReallySad.com (from Esca) – At first, I thought these were suppose to be pictures of sad animals. But it’s really pictures of cute animals to cheer you up when you’re sad.

Ah, this should certainly put him in the mood… – Police in the German city of Aachen received an unusual call for help late Wednesday when a woman telephoned to complain her husband was not fulfilling his sexual obligations.

Police offered prizes for most tickets – Charlotte-Mecklenburg police supervisors offered prizes to officers who wrote the most traffic tickets during an eight-day period over the July Fourth holiday.

August 4, 2006August 4, 2006

Dirty Pretty Things

I had actually skimmed through this movie awhile back (probably over a year or so) and decided it didn’t look worth watching. However, after being recommended again by ChemChampion, I gave it another shot. The movie was actually quite beautiful and intriguing. I was actually shocked that the trailer below practically revealed nothing. As you know with trailers today, they always reveal too much.

IMDb: 7.6/10 (8,890 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B+ / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 94% / Average Rating: 7.8
Teaser Trailer
Amazon.com DVD

Spoilers: (Show)

The movie is basically about some the untold story about London or basically any big city which is run on the backs of immigrants (legal or illegal). The story focuses on 2 of these immigrants, Okwe and Senay (pronounced Shenay apparently). Senay is a refugee that has seeked asylum, while Okwe is an African who apparently has quite a complicated history/past. You know he’s very educated and is good with medicine. Everyone calls him doctor and one of the first scene, you see him go down when another guy pulls down his pants. It was quite disturbing until you realize that guy contracted an STD of some sort and needed it to be looked at.

So the other characters involved in this story include a hooker, a greeter (doorman), Senor Juan (owner or manager of the hotel), and a mortuary person named Guo Yi, which all play a role in the escape.

So the story revolves in the underground selling of body parts (especially the kidney). This is facilitated by Senor Juan. He gets paid £10,000 for the kidney and in return, he gives the “donor” an identity (basically a passport).

At first, I thought the story was going to loop back where it turns out that the STD was transmitted by the hooker, but that wasn’t the case.

The story basically ends up with Senay having reacher her snapping point and wants to leave this system and go to America, Senor Juan tries to coax Okwe into helping him perform the kidney removal surgeries, and Okwe trying to convince Senay there’s a better life if she can hold on.

I’m not going to reveal the ending nor Okwe’s past, because it’s worth that much to see it. One thing I will say, was I was expecting Okwe to actually not run away and when he picked up the phone, to actually call the cops. In other words, I thought his story about his daughter in Lagos was made up to trick Senay to get her to leave. But it turns out it was a true story and I was once again fooled.

One thing I didn’t understand was the story behind the heart. Didn’t Okwe go into that room because the hooker said that room needed cleaning up? The room looked like someone just had sex with the ash tray on the bed. Does that mean the heart was already in the toilet in that room before the sex? If the heart is in the toilet, what happened to the rest of the body? It’s just questionable why someone would want to flush down the heart. Did it have anything to do with the hooker?

Another thing I didn’t get was way back in the beginning of the movie where Okwe was trying to get people to take the cab, the person asks, “Are you from Sajit?” Okwe replies, “I’m not here to meet you in particular, but I am here to rescue those who’ve been let down by the system.” After which the 2 men decide to take the cab. At first I thought this was just some code, like a secret message they’re suppose to use to contact each other, but they never showed up again. The conversation was sort of cryptic.

The last thing I didn’t get was why the immigration office was after Senay. They let her seek asylum here, but won’t let her work? What gives? Do they expect her to just find food magically? That part didn’t make sense, or it might just be the director pointing out a flaw in the asylum program that England has.

August 1, 2006

Akismet Spam Detector

4 more slipped through since my last report
6,438 Caught / 60 Missed / 0 False Positives (99.1% accuracy / down 0.03%)

July 30, 2006

IKEA Charity

So CDMCC tells me that IKEA owns a charity that is even bigger than Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I search for it online and find an article on the Economist: IKEA – Flat-pack accounting. Of course it must’ve been in the Econimist, this is CDMCC. He reads movie reviews from the Economist.

Anyway, the article is a very interesting read on how the entire IKEA business is setup and how they move money around to avoid taxation.

It’s sickening actually, that because of different charity foundation laws in different countires, IKEA has found a loophole to do the following:

IKEA says only that this money is used for charitable purposes and “for investing long-term in order to build a reserve for securing the IKEA group, in case of any future capital requirements.” IKEA adds that in the past two years donations have been concentrated on the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden. The Lund Institute says it has recently received SKr12.5m ($1.7m) a year from Stichting Ikea (which also gave the institute a lump sum of SKr55m in the late 1990s). That is barely a rounding error in the foundation’s assets. Clearly, the world of interior design is being tragically deprived, as the foundation devotes itself to building its own reserves in case IKEA needs capital.

July 30, 2006July 30, 2006

Lego Trademark

I was just reading an article about Lego Mindstorm and then an interesting thought popped into my head, and that was if the name Lego was still copyrighted. Like Kleenex, Xerox, and even Photoshop, they almost lost their trademarks because people were using them as ‘nouns’ isntead of ‘adjectives’ and the companies were not doing anything to protect the trademark. But of course, after the notice, they notified everyone of the illegal usage and told them to comply with the copyright law.

Legos, Legos, Legos… What else do you call them? Apparently you’re supposed to call them Lego bricks. But either way, no one ever calls them bricks. You even call the imitation ones Legos. Maybe building blocks might work, but that’s stretching it.

According to Wikipedia, The Lego trademark:

The Lego Group’s name has become so synonymous with its flagship toy that many use the words “Lego” (collectively) or “Legos” to refer to the bricks themselves, and even to any plastic bricks resembling Lego bricks, although the Lego Group discourages this as dilution of their trademark. Lego catalogues in the 1970s and 1980s contained a note that read:

“The word LEGO® is a brand name and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks as ‘LEGO Bricks or Toys’ and not ‘LEGOS.’ By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you! Susan Williams, Consumer Services.”

A similar message also appeared to everyone who errantly visited http://legos.com in the year 2005, however it was removed within the next several months, but not before generating a media buzz of notable proportions.

“Lego” is officially written in all uppercase letters. The company asserts that to protect its brand name, the word Lego must always be used as an adjective, as in “LEGO set,” “LEGO products,” “LEGO universe,” and so forth. Nevertheless, such corporate admonitions are frequently ignored and the word lego is commonly used not only as a noun to refer to Lego bricks, but also as a generic term referring to any kind of interlocking toy brick.

I guess they still own the copyright to that word.

July 30, 2006

Another Microsoft Blunder

Apparently when displaying their new voice recognition software that’s coming with Vista (accessibility application), everything goes wrong again.

Here’s the video of what happened: Windows Vista Speech Recognition Demo Gone Awry (MSN Video link)

According to Rob Chambers, the reason for the demo failure was because:

As I posted yesterday, I got a chance to check out the machine that Shanen used for the Financial Analysts Meeting demo. I confirmed that it was just what I suspected: An audio gain issue.

If you watch the video clip on MSN Video you can see in the speech user interface that the microphone “volume” is very high. It pushes up into the red frequently while Shanen is speaking to the computer. That’s caused by the fact that the audio sub-system wasn’t respecting the audio gain settings we’ve asked it to use.

This is a known bug in current builds, and has already been fixed by the audio team in their private builds in preparation for RTM.

Here’s the transcript (from /.):

Microsoftie says this
Speech recogniser ~~hears~~ types this

Dear mom
comma
Dear aunt,

[laughter]

Fix aunt
Let’s set

Delete that
Delete that
Delete that
so

I think it’s picking up a little bit of echo here
Delete… select all
double the killer delete select all

[laughter]

Final Text: Dear aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all

Random Crap:

Female impersonation tarts up online games (from /.) – Kathryn Wright, WomenGamers.com’s consulting psychologist, earlier this decade found that 60 percent of male players who don female avatars, or on-screen personas, do it to gain an advantage in game play. An enthusiast with the online handle Jackpot649 nailed the zeitgeist in his response to the About.com query: “I’m a guy, but if I gotta look at an avatar all day, I’d sooner look at a female avatar. Plus, people give you more free stuff.”

Naked women leave police speechless – “Police only watched … they could not approach the tourists because they spoke no English,” a local newspaper in the southern Albania coastal town of Sarande said. Haha! What an awesome excuse. I don’t know about you, but doing charades or pictionary could’ve easily gotten message across that they couldn’t be topless. But can’t speak English, I’ve got to remember that one for when I get ‘in trouble’.

Giant dead eel tossing contest canceled – For more than 30 years, crowds have flocked to the small English fishing village of Lyme Regis to watch an annual tradition — two teams of fishermen standing on wooden platforms as human bowling pins, hurling a dead giant eel at each other. But the ritual was abruptly abandoned after an animal rights activist threatened to draw negative publicity to the latest tournament, organizers said Saturday. The practice, known as conger cuddling, is the annual highlight in the small coastal town about 155 miles southwest of London. The object of the game is to knock the opposing team off the platform by swinging a 25-pound eel at them. That sounds like such an awesome game!

Police arrested over sweets theft – The confectionery at Hailsham Police Station in Sussex operates on an honour system and officers help themselves to candy and drinks before leaving money in a tin. Maybe they should’ve implemented the ‘eye system‘ (from my previous entry).

Woman in doghouse over Jehovah’s Witness sign – A British woman has been ordered by police to take down a sign on her garden gate which read “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Such an awesome sign. Sucks that she took it down. Maybe she could put up a new sign that says: Our dogs were fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Photo Tourism: Exploring Photo Collections in 3D (from Ars) – Photo Tourism is a system for browsing large collections of photographs in 3D. Our approach takes as input large collections of images from either personal photo collections or Internet photo sharing sites, and automatically computes each photo’s viewpoint and a sparse 3D model of the scene. Our photo explorer interface enables the viewer to interactively move about the 3D space by seamlessly transitioning between photographs, based on user control. Looks neat!

July 30, 2006August 1, 2006

Akismet Spam Detector

3 more slipped through since my last report
6,188 Caught / 56 Missed / 0 False Positives (99.1% accuracy / 0.03%)

July 30, 2006July 30, 2006

Free WinRAR 3.51 – Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, they were giving away WinRAR 3.51 for free for only 24 hours. That has commenced a couple hours ago and the site is getting hammered. To register for the free software, submit your information through this form. Apparently, they’re using this attempt to force you to subscribe to their newsletter. Good thing I have email addresses to spare ;).

Anyway, after you register, you get a email with the following:

Dear User,

Thank you for filling out our small questionaire.

In order to receive your license key file for the WinRAR 3.51 non upgradeable version, please click on the following link or copy and paste this link in the navigation/address bar of your Internet browser:

http://www.win-rar.com/bestoverallutility/download.php?id=13698

IMPORTANT: You only have two attempts to download the key using this link.

The download contains a RAR archive, including your license key. Please SAVE this archive to your disk. By opening it with double click on it’s icon, WinRAR registers your version automatically and you get the information:

“Correct registration: Thank you for support”.

For further information please read the readme.txt

Please remember that your license key file is valid for the WinRAR 3.51 non upgradeable version of WinRAR only. We recommend making a backup copy of your key file as soon as you receive it. Although we can recover lost keys, there may be a small charge and delay involved in recovering any lost key files.

Stay informed about future WinRAR releases, WinRAR news and technical tips.
Sign up for the WinRAR/RAR newsletter at

http://www.win-rar.com/newsletter.html

If you face any problems applying the registration information or keys, or if you have any other questions, please check our “Knowledge Base” at

http://www.win-rar.com/knowledgebase.html

It contains all kinds of information about WinRAR/RAR. If you can’t find a solution there, you can contact our support staff directly at support@rarlab.com.

Please feel free to send us any suggestions so that we can continue perfecting our software according to your needs.

Enjoy using WinRAR.

With kind regards,

win.rar GmbH
Unser Lieben Frauen Kirchhof 10
28195 Bremen
Germany

The link above will download a registry key you import into your system which will basically register you unlicensed version of WinRAR 3.51. I registered a couple more times to see if different people got different registry keys, but although the download link id is different (the above id has been modified), the file you download and the registry key inside is completely the same. If the link above fails, just try random ids: 13xxx or even 1xxxx and you should be able to hit one that hasn’t been used twice.

Now that you have the registry key, what do you do? Well, of course you need the software itself, which you can download at RARLab: WinRAR 3.51

July 29, 2006July 29, 2006

Watch ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for $1

NWF (National Wildlife Federation) is giving out free tickets to An Inconvenient Truth. To get instructions on how to get your tickets, visit Take Action: Reserve Your Free Tickets for “An Inconvenient Truth”. The reason for the $1 charge is because they’re going through Fandango and Fandango is charging you $1 for “processing”.

Anyway, you don’t really need to sign up to get these free tickets. Just follow these instructions they’ve emailed me:

Thanks again for your interest in “An Inconvenient Truth.” DO NOT DELETE THIS MESSAGE! You will need the promotional code below in order to take advantage of this offer. The code is good while supplies last, so reserve your tickets now.

YOUR FANDANGO PROMOTIONAL CODE IS:
AnInconvenientTruth3

How to Redeem Your Promotional Code:

1. Go to http://www.fandango.com

2. Type your zip code or city in the “Search Showtimes & Buy Tickets” box in the top right corner of the Fandango site and click “GO”.

3. Find “An Inconvenient Truth” at a theatre in the list presented that offers online ticketing, and click on a red show time to begin the purchase process.

4. Enter the number of tickets you would like to purchase. The promotional code is good for two tickets of any kind.

5. Check the box where it says, “Click here if you have a Fandango Bucks or a promotional code to apply to this order.”
Then click “Continue”.

6. If you have a Fandango account, sign in. If not, click “Create My Account.”

7. Enter your Promotional Code and click “Apply.”

8. Follow the instructions provided by Fandango and enter any further required information on the next page of the process.
Please note that if you are purchasing more than two tickets, you will be required to enter billing information for the remaining balance of your transaction prior to completing the purchase.

9. Instructions for picking up your tickets vary by theatre.
Please review the instructions on your order confirmation page carefully for specific details.

10. Enjoy the show!