Author: Krunk

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Umbrella

Album Cover
rihanna - umbrella album cover
Album available at Amazon.com

There’s a new song by Rihanna that I like called Umbrella. You can watch the music video: Rihanna – Umbrella. I thought the tune was rather catchy and the beat was nice, though I didn’t particularly like the intro, as I’m not a big fan of rap. The ella, ella, eh, eh is especially catchy.

Here are the lyrics (from metrolyrics) (Show):

Anyway, the radio stations around here has been playing a remix of the song Umbrella and has inserted a guy singing You can be my Cinderella. I thought the newly added lyrics fitted well with the original song, though I think they still had some cutting/editing problems as the song had some parts that didn’t flow too smoothly. You can listen to the music in this video: Rihanna ft. Chris Brown- Umbrella/Cinderella (with lyrics). The video is just a collage of images.

Here are the lyrics (from metrolyrics) (Show):

When I first showed this song to RayAlome, he was commenting on how slow the song was. Apparently he has been listening to the Lindbergh Palace Remix, which is like twice or thrice the speed of the original. Not a bad remix either, as the beats are nice. When the song first started playing, the first few words of ella, ella, eh, eh, eh was really fast and having been told by RayAlome that he was accustomed to listening to the song a 3x the speed, I was totally expecting chipmunks. However, the voice sounded normal through the song. I was wondering if they had Rihanna sing fast for the remix and RayAlome said she must’ve. Cause when you increase speed, the pitch gets all messed up. There was also the Seamus Haji & Paul Emanuel Radio Edit which is also beaty. Not sure if I like that one yet. Both songs are available on her Umbrella CD.

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Push Ups

Since my fall back in January or February, I’ve basically completely stopped doing push ups. Then again, back then I was doing push ups, sit ups, and DDR as my daily workout. After my fall, I would try to do a push up every other day and wasn’t able to last even one, which was what actually prompted me to go see the doctor and hand specialist which told me I damaged my tendon. Anyway, I’m not sure what fixed it, either the exercises I was told told to do, the splint which kept my thumb from moving, or the special Chinese ointment my mom help rub on my hand for a few days, the pain eventually disappear.

Anyway, during our rafting trip last week, I noticed how much weaker my upper body was. It could be the fact that everyone’s upper body gets really sore from rafting, but I felt it was weaker than normal. I mean that could be case given the fact my exercise bike doesn’t really exercise my upper body, so I decided to put push ups back into my daily workout. Boy was I weak. After only 40 push ups, my arms were literally shaking. I remember doing that with ease just 6 months ago. I felt the pain in my triceps pretty much immediately, which is a good sign I guess that I’m actually working them out. My triceps remained sore throughout the next day too (shows you how weak I’ve gotten) and I almost wasn’t able to do push ups the following day.

What this is going to lead into is how to properly do push ups. You’ve seen people bend their knees and back and I’ve even seen someone that looked like they were humping the floor. We would always laugh during P.E. But what I’m referring to is the arm distance and the legs and so on. I mean some people put their arms really far apart, while others put their hands together and form a triangle with their thumbs and pointer finger. Then there’s the proper leg formation. Are the suppose to be together or separate and how far apart?

I’ve always done the hands at elbow length apart and the feet together and lowering myself till I hit a right angle with my elbows, but I think I might actually be doing it incorrectly and might end up hurting myself. And push ups definitely put a lot of stress and pressure on my wrist and I don’t want to end up damaging it again.

A search revealed a couple sites telling you how to do a proper push up:

The last 2 links were interesting as it revealed to me that the push up variation I was doing is called the wide push ups where your hands are 4 feet apart, however the consensus for most is that your hands are shoulder width or a little more apart and feet together. Lower your body until your chest touches the floor. I always wonder how people can make their chest touch the floor, but it makes sense since my arms are farther apart, it becomes difficult to make an acute angle with my elbows to lower my body even further. If my hands were say closer together, an acute angle is very possible. With the many different variations of push ups displayed in the last 2 links, I’m not actually quite sure which ones are safe to do. There were quite a few I think can easily hurt yourself with.

Anyway, another variation of push ups I do, but I can only do about 5 before I have to give up, is the knuckle push up. A knuckle push up is where you form fists with your hands and push yourself up with fists instead of your hands being flat. It actually requires a lot more strength than a regular flat palm push up and is quite a workout. I used to end my push up workouts with 1 knuckle push up.

One thing that I see very common is that some people do push ups with the legs spread apart. There’s many pictures showing this, but the instructions do say to keep the feet together or parallel. I then found this link: Air Force Technical School Physical Fitness Requirements which says legs should be together or upto 12″ apart. I’m guessing if your feet are apart, it gives better balance and makes it a bit easier. One of the videos above had the guy do a 1 hand push up, and that was the only push up that he had his legs spread apart in.

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Fans and Air Purifiers

So I recently purchased a tower fan from Costco. It does get hot here in the peak of summer and thought I’d prepare myself this time. Plus the fact that it was on sale at Costco prompted me to pick one up. The one I got is the Seville UltraSlimline Fan Combo Pack. It was only $49.99 in-store and also comes with a tiny fan which I had yet decided where to put.

seville ultraslimline tower fan, staples shredder, honeywell 18155 air purifier

Anyway, it dawn upon me today that I never really figured out how tower fans worked. With the regular circular fans with the 3 rotating blades, those are usually the fans I’ve been accustomed to. My initial guess was that maybe there’s a small rotating blade on the bottom (or top) pushing air upwards (or downwards) and the innards of the fan just angles it so it blows out equally in the front. So I shined a flashlight into this tower fan and noticed a cylindrical object with many many slits in it spinning. It works similarly like a cyclone CPU fan where the spinning cylindrical object as able to move air in the mass. It’s actually quite genius because not only do you move a lot of air, it’s also very quiet. I wonder if we’ll start seeing these for computers.

And if you look to the right of my tower fan (no, not the shredder), you’ll see my air purifier. I purchased this at Costco over a year ago, probably more like like 1.5 years since I got it awhile before moving into my new home (which is almost a year now). The one I got is the Honeywell SilentComfort™ True HEPA Air Purifier with Germ Reducing Permanent Filter, model 18155 (a bit cheaper on Amazon.com). I have this guy pretty much on 24/7, and I can only assume it’s doing its job.

For the longest time, there’s these 2 lights that are on all the time: HEPA Filter and Prefilter. They both have a button next to them. I always just thought it meant if those lights were on, the filters were working. However, I noticed pushing those buttons don’t exactly turn it off, so that got me curious to exactly what those buttons did and what those lights did. I couldn’t find the manual in the box, so I ended up searching online and found the manual.

It turns out, if those lights are on, it means to go check the filters. I can’t remember the last time those lights weren’t on. I’ve checked the top filter every once in awhile, and it always appears to be clean (not a good sign I guess), but I totally forgot there was also a filter on the bottom. When I opened the bottom today, there was literally a centimeter of dust on what they call the prefilter. Ungsunghero says prefilter is just Honeywell’s fancy way of calling their carbon filters, which apparently is the case:

Honeywell® Universal Pre-filter – The Honeywell Universal Carbon Pre-filter helps capture large airborne particles before passing through the HEPA filter, therefore maximizing the HEPA filter life. The activated carbon per-filter also helps reduce common household odors.

After you check the filters and they’re okay, you’re suppose to hold down the associated button for 10 seconds and it’ll turn the light off and probably come back on 3 months later.

Anyway, the manual recommends changing the prefilters ever 1-3 months, and it’s been about 18 already. No wonder a thick layer of dust is there. Since I didn’t have any replacement prefilters at the moment, I took a vacuum and sucked out most of the dust and will be using that in the meantime until I find some replacement prefilters. I started searching online and found the cheapest to be at Amazon.com: Honeywell 38002 Enviracare Universal Replacement Pre-Filter for $10.73. Unfortunately my Prime membership had expired earlier this month and I didn’t renew it. So I’m contemplating, should I buy 3 prefilters, find some other filler, or pay $79 for another year of Prime membership. I decided to go the Prime membership route after finding an accomplice to join in the fun.

It also turns out my HEPA filter (the big giant roll) is a permanent filter and doesn’t need to be replaced. It does recommend that I vacuum it once in awhile to remove dust and dirt.

With that done, I was looking around at other fans and stuff and noticed some fans came with HEPA filters while others came with an ionizer. They were marketing the ionizer feature as an air purifier and that got me thinking how exactly ionizers work. According to Wikipedia: Ionic air purifiers use an electrically charged plate to produce negative gas ions that particulate matter sticks to (in an effect similar to static electricity). Many ionisers are sold as air purifiers, but in this regard they are very inefficient. They will clean the air to a small degree, by charging dust and smoke particles which will then be attracted to a neutral or positively charged surface. Heavier combined particles may precipitate (fall) out of the air should two smaller particles of different charge clump together.

And that ends my fun filled weekend. Sigh… I’ve spent so much money this weekend. With the Onkyo home theater system ($350 + tax), TV stand ($190 + tax), Maxtor 160GB SATA hard drive ($75 + tax – $50 rebate), Prime membership ($79, most likely /2), and Honeywell prefilters ($11), I’m looking at about an $800 initial bleed. Fortunately, many of these are one time purchases.

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Ultra-Pasteurized Milk

A long while back, I was at Safeway looking at the different brands of milk they carried and most of them had an expiration date of a week or 2, but there was this one brand, Darigold that had an expiration date of at least a month and a half away. I asked an attendant walking by if he knew why this particular milk lasted so much longer and if there was any preservatives in it. He shrugged and said he wasn’t sure.

darigold reduced fat milk

I mean, to have milk last that long, one must’ve added a whole bunch of preservatives in it.

Let me step back and give a little explanation of why I was looking into this. This milk isn’t cheaper, but if I recalled correctly, it cost about $0.10 to $0.20 more. But I hardly eat at home, and I never eat breakfast. Work has milk if I really wanted milk and the only time I’d ever get to drink milk at home would be on the weekends. So assuming I do eat cereal every weekend, that’s only 2x per week. A regular half gallon of milk would most likely be only utilized about 50% before I pour it down the drain. Therefore, I was very interested in this Darigold milk that lasts 1.5 months.

Anyway, Xyon, Aurash, and I were talking about milk awhile back. I hope I spelled Aurash’s name correctly. Anyway, Xyon hates milk with a passion. Well, more like he doesn’t like the taste. Aurash actually likes milk and would like to drink or use it more, but he is lactose-intolerant (sorta like my father), which is a condition where his stomach lacks an enzyme to break down lactose in milk, which ends up causing upset stomachs. I mentioned to him about Lactaid which actually makes milk products for lactose-intolerant people or he could opt for pills which do the same thing.

Anyway, back to the story, we got to the point of pasteurization and Xyon was telling us how the pasteurization process was initially developed to kill bacteria in beer from causing it to taste bad. The pasteurization process actually involves heating a liquid to a certain temperature where all the bacteria die. However, this process also ends up breaking down a bunch of organic material which causes milk to expire really fast. The process is no longer used for beer since as you can see, beer can last for months. However, they adapted this process to milk to kill off most bacteria.

I brought up the ultra-pasteurization milk that I had seen and purchased and he also didn’t know much about it, but if it was ultra-pasteurized, the name itself seems to imply strong pasteurization which should lead to shorter shelf life.

I went home and searched for pasteurization on Wikipedia. This is what I found out:

Pasteurization typically uses temperatures below boiling since at temperatures above the boiling point for milk casein micelles will irreversibly aggregate (or “curdle”). There are two types of pasteurization used today: high temperature/short time (HTST) and ultra-high temperature (UHT). There are two methods for HTST pasteurization: batch and continuous flow. In the batch process, a large quantity of milk is held in a heated vat at 63 °C (145 °F) for 30 minutes, followed by quick cooling to about 4 °C (39 °F). In the continuous flow process, milk is forced between metal plates or through pipes heated on the outside by hot water. UHT processing holds the milk at a temperature of 138 °C (250 °F) for a fraction of a second. Milk simply labeled “pasteurized” is usually treated with the HTST method, whereas milk labeled “ultra-pasteurized” or simply “UHT” must be treated with the UHT method.

…

Pasteurization is typically associated with milk, first suggested by Franz von Soxhlet in 1886. HTST pasteurized milk typically has a refrigerated shelf life of two to three weeks, whereas ultra pasteurized milk can last much longer when refrigerated, sometimes two to three months. When UHT pasteurization is combined with sterile handling and container technology, it can even be stored unrefrigerated for long periods of time.

Very interesting. Looks like from now on I’ll be picking up more Darigold Ultra-Pasteurized milk. The image of my milk above has an expiration date of July 27 2007 and was actually purchased 2 weeks ago. Usually, 2 weeks after I purchase a carton of milk, I’ll need to pour it down the drain already. This one has almost an entire month left!

What I really want to know is, how long does unpasteurized milk last. I found this site: A Campaign for Real (Raw) Milk!, which is a group trying to bring back unpasteurized milk because it’s “natural”. I’ve read it a bit, but not really for or against it. It’s interesting though that the pasteurization not only destroys bad bacteria, but also good bacteria along with helpful enzymes and vitamins. However, they didn’t mention anything about expiration dates or shelf life.

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Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 Review

So with Microsoft’s fiscal year ending, I decided to check out the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000. It was a $100 investment (not a cheap keyboard/mouse combo), but I thought worse case scenario, I’ll just give this to my parents back home, since their media center wireless mouse and keyboard are rather short ranged.

microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000microsoft wireless entertainment desktop 7000

The regular wireless mouse and keyboards (using wifi/radio frequencies) have about a 6ft range. Infrared (the media center remote and keyboard) has a longer ranger, but are less sensitive and requires a direct line of sight. So I decided to that my next media center keyboard would have to be a bluetooth device.

Derek and I’ve been checking out different keyboards. The ones that we’ve been looking at include:

The diNovo Edge was sort of pricey, but the others weren’t cheap themselves. However, being a Microsoft employee, we get discounts on most hardware. Since the 8000 hasn’t been released yet, I decided to get the 7000 and check it out.

I’m going to be focusing mostly on the keyboard since for the media center, I don’t really find the mouse that useful. Plus the fact that the keyboard comes with a navigational pad (think touch pad), it makes the mouse even more useless in my case.

Although the keyboard isn’t split for ergonomics, the curved keyboard isn’t that bad. I still position my hands as if it was a split keyboard. The keyboard is super light and easy to carry around. Unfortunately, the keyboard itself isn’t rechargeable. It uses 4 AA batteries (included) and I don’t really have any idea how long it’ll last. There’s an on off switch on the back of the keyboard and I usually turn it off when I’m not using it, so I’m guessing the batteries would last for years, since I don’t really use the media center PC as my main computer.

The mouse itself uses 1 AA battery. A rechargeable NiMH battery is included. The mouse charge is a bulky, but I’m hiding it behind the TV.

On the bottom of both the keyboard and the mouse, there’s a bluetooth sync button and getting the devices to sync with the included bluetooth adapter was pretty simple.

Distance wise, I sit about 9ft from the bluetooth adapter behind my PC which is enclosed inside the TV stand. I get perfect reception on my comfy couch. At about 20ft, the farthest distance I can stand while still being able to see my TV, the reception started waning off. There were some dropped keys and so on. However, as I said, the bluetooth adapter is sitting on the back of my PC and is really blocked by wood on all sides, with the exception of the computer side which is aluminum. I think if I stuck the bluetooth adapter to the front USB ports or get an USB extension cord, reception should definitely be better.

On the upper right hand side, there’s this navigational pad, which is similar to a touch pad. It actually works fairly well. I would’ve preferred it to be in between my 2 thumbs, making mouse control easier, but the location up there isn’t too bad. However the surface area is a bit tiny and takes about 3 left to right scans to get across the entire screen. I guess having my resolution at 1920×1080 doesn’t help.

The F1-F12 keys are actually not regular keys, but touch sensitive keys, which are a bit funny to use at first, but nothing too bad about them.

There is no numpad, but not really something I care about on a media center PC. Not having the arrow keys island and the insert/delete island is a bummer though. I never really used the media keys and if I could redesign the keyboard, I would replace those with the islands.

The worse thing about this keyboard and I truly mean the worse is the Windows key. I’m not sure how often you use the Windows key (the key stuck between Alt and Ctrl), but I use it all the time. To bring up explorer (Win+E), to bring up the run prompt (Win+R), to lock my computer (Win+L), to show my desktop (Win+D), etc. They’ve moved the Windows key to underneath the space bar and it’s one of those hard to press keys (which actually requires a little muscle), like they don’t want you to hit it by accident. This got REALLY ANNOYING REALLY FAST.

The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 hasn’t been released yet. According to the website, it looks like the release date is in September 2007. I hadn’t know about this release date before I got the 7000. The 8000 does have some better features over the 7000 including a rechargeable keyboard, backlit keys, and USB ports. The USB ports are actually part of the charging station. At first I thought it’d be neat and be like wireless USB if the ports were on the keyboard. A bit too early for that dream I suppose. However, it looks like they still have the same stupid Windows key problem.

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Human Resources

human resources I was watching this music video: Human Resources (*WARNING* VIDEO IS NOT WORK SAFE!)

I thought the tune was rather catchy and it was actually a somewhat cool music video, stitched together with a bunch of clips from 80’s movies and TV shows.

I don’t know who the artist is and no one seems to have posted the lyrics yet, but I’ve ripped the song from the video to an mp3 and uploaded to my site: Listen / Download

Update:Thanks to softskilled for notifying me the artist/band is actually called Countdown. You should check out their album: Scratch & Sniff.

Here are the lyrics:

What’s your name and number and where do you sleep?
What is the color of your hair? We’ll be discrete.
And what’s your sexual preference or religious ties?
Do you have any diseases or political ties?
And we will need to know exactly the color of your eyes.
And have you ever done drugs or have you ever lied?
And need a fingerprint please. And what’s your mother’s maiden name?
And have any family members ever gone insane?

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

Where do you buy your clothes and do you rent or own?
Have you ever been arrested? Do you have a cell phone?
Do you find that people always like you right away?
Have you ever stolen something? Just forgotten to pay?
Do you have any children, or dogs, or cats?
And do you buy your cigarettes in cartons or packs?
Do you prefer to be on top? Do you like coffee or tea?
We just need a little more information please.

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

And we will need to know exactly the color of your eyes.
And have you ever done drugs or have you ever lied?
And we’ll then need a fingerprint. And what’s your mother’s maiden name?
And have any family members ever gone insane?

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

We’re the human resources.
We need to know what your every choice is.
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.
We are the human resources.

We are the human resources.

Hello.

There is one line that I’m not sure if it’s correct:
What you like to drink, fight, fuck, and your voices now.

It just doesn’t seem to sound right… If you can actually hear what they’re saying, please do tell me.

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HD-Trailers.net

Here’s my latest project: HD-Trailers.net

Screenshot:
screenshot of hd-trailers.net

First, I attempted to do this with a blog: HD Trailers, however I thought it would be much cooler if I could represent in a much easier to use interface. So I started playing around ideas. The 1st part was coming out with a data structure that would be easily extensible. I thought about XML at first, but I’m not that familiar with PHP and their XML encoding/decoding. I ended up taking the easy way out and am using the included serializer for PHP, which turned out quite useful.

This started as a pet project because I enjoy checking out movie trailers and I definitely enjoy watching stuff in high definition (especially 1080p). However, neither Apple and Yahoo make it easy to download these trailers and I don’t particularly like being forced to watch it in Quicktime, since the free version Quicktime doesn’t allow full screen and is actually quite a poorly written video player. I’d much prefer to watch it in Media Player Classic or VLC.

I’ve figured the trick to download Apple HD trailers awhile back, and recently started collecting trailers from Yahoo! Movies. I do have to say that trailers at Yahoo! Movies are typically sub par when compared to their Apple counterpart, but they also have some non-overlapping HD trailers (like Transformer and Golden Compass).

The parsing of Yahoo’s HD trailers page was actually a bit more difficult than Apple’s. I actually had to download a qtl which redirects me to makeplaylist.dll and includes the SID to the trailer file. It took me awhile to figure out that in order to download the correct qtl file, the referrer has to be within Yahoo’s domain, which was easy to set up with PHP’s curl.

Halfway through my project, Apple decided to change their trailers page completely and I thought I was screwed. However, Apple switched to JSON (Javascript Object Notation) and in the latest PHP, they support JSON decoding, so that made my life even simpler and also gives me additional data which I wasn’t collecting before.

I just finished the caching system, where instead of parsing in the data table and creating the entire page for every load, it’ll be loading from a static class unless something triggers it to to delete the cache. The data is automatically updated every 24 hours and is smart in the fact that the cache will only be deleted if changes have been made. Individual movie pages also have a similar caching system.

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Internet Withdrawal

It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last post. I was planning to spend last night playing catch up on my backlog of interesting links I’ve collected for the past 2 weeks, but my internet went out at around 10pm. I was in the middle of working on my “secret” site, when time stopped moving.

While still brushing up on my php, I found myself switching back to Firefox a lot and searching for php functions, only realizing afterwards that I still don’t have internet. I’ve always known I was very dependent on the internet, but not to this extent. I would constantly hit F5 (refresh) on my router status page waiting for it to get an IP. Once in awhile, I would get a valid IP, but no site would load. I was actually able to ping google.com with the valid IP, but wasn’t able to load their webpage.

I’ve tried rebooting my router and my modem. All the green lights would come on, but I wouldn’t get a real IP (only my cable modem IP). I decided to wait it out, but when I started to lay down in my fetal position and sucking my thumb, I knew something was horribly wrong.

For the first time in months, I started watching cable TV. Watched some MadTV, some SNL, and then some Dirty Jobs (Discovery Channel – in case you were thinking of something else). During every commercial break, I would walk back to my computer, checking to see if my connection was back.

I finally gave in and called Comcast. Good thing I remembered their tech support number (1-888-COMCAST), and they confirmed there was an outage in my area and said since it was this late already (2am), it probably won’t be fixed till Sunday morning. At this point, my internet withdrawal was going to make me ask when it was going to be restored, but he had already answered it. I thanked him and hung up.

I finally decided there really wasn’t much I could do, so I went ahead and did my daily exercise and ended up watching 2 movies in my queue.

Finally, at 7am, my internet has been restored!

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New Projects and Blogs

Wow… It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’ve been working on a new project which isn’t quite ready to be revealed yet. It will be in due time. I’ve also started 3 separate blogs:

  • HD Trailers – A blog about HD (High Definition) Trailers and how to download them
  • Modern Evolution – Evolution is happening everywhere around us today.
  • Sue Happy – Just how “Sue Happy” is America?

The latter 2 are just collections of articles which I find particularly interesting, while also giving my opinion on them. The 1st one (HD Trailers) might be retired once my “project” gets completed.

Random Crap:

Perfect Petzzz (from Cari) – These sleeping puppies and kittens plush / stuffed animals are so cute!!!

Yahoo! Be a Better Planet (from SD) – Yahoo! is on a mission to find and reward America’s most eco-friendly city. Can your hometown claim that title? Join in now to help your city win a fleet of hybrid taxis, and get free compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) for your efforts. I’ve also been a big fan for fluorescent light. Not only because it saves me a bunch on my electricity bill, but also the fact that it’s white light compared to the yellowish light most regular light bulbs emit. Also, you never burn yourself trying to touch one, because it just never gets that hot.

Prosthetics (from Digg) – Robert Barron is a master of disguises. He uses his artistry to create realistic body parts for those who are missing them.

The man who owns the Internet – Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of, reports Business 2.0 Magazine. Here’s how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire.

Online Savings from Washington Mutual (from SD) – Wamu apparently has joined the rank of the online high interest savings account game. Although 5% isn’t shocking to many, the good thing about Wamu is the fact they have branches everywhere. You can easily link up your checking account and online savings account. When you use your Wamu ATM card at any ATM, they won’t charge you any fee. I’m not certain if they’ll refund the fees that the ATM itself charges, but Wamu has always been customer friendly in my opinion.

Robot Arm Pours Beer Into Glass (from MS newsgroup) – You’ve probably seen the Kuka Robotic Arm in other videos before (one even had it swinging samurai swords around), but this one is program to perfect beer pouring from a bottle into a glass.

Hjo3 posted this awhile back about how the opening song of BPS (Battle Programmer Shirase) is actually using the melody of Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up. I never knew this, then again I’m not that familiar with songs from the 80’s and 70’s, but this was interesting trivia knowledge. I do have to say, Rick Astley’s voice doesn’t quite match his face.

Ant Buster (from Digg) – Another Tower Defense type of game, where this time, there’s actually more freedom for the attackers, and the attackers (ants) are actually stealing pieces of pizza from you.

Xbox LIVE Brings You Even More Matrix Content (from Ars) – I got my copy a few days ago. Circuit City had it on sale for $20 (price mistake) and they actually decided to ship 1 copy per customer, which was pretty cool. Then again, I don’t have a HD DVD player yet, but Matrix being my favorite movie of all time, I have a hard time deciding if I should sell this or not. Plus the fact, I can download the Animatrix in HD via Xbox Live makes it even tougher. When you purchase The Complete Matrix Trilogy, you will also receive a token in the box to download the entire Animatrix series from Xbox LIVE® Marketplace. Unfortunately, I posted this a bit too late, but you were also able to download HD trailers and clips of the Matrix via Xbox Live: From May 15 through May 25, download free content like HD trailers from all three Matrix movies and some of your favorite scenes in HD like “Bullet Time in the Subway” and “Morpheus fighting Agent Smith.” You can also purchase and download themes for all three films plus Animatrix.

Captive shark had ‘virgin birth’ (from Digg) – Female hammerhead sharks can reproduce without having sex, scientists confirm. Story was somewhat interesting, but the funniest was when commented: Jesus Shark?

Top 4 Ways You’re Wasting Gas When You Think You’re Saving It (from Digg) –

  1. Driving across town to save a nickel on a gallon of gas.
  2. Driving on the highway with their windows down to avoid using the air conditioner.
  3. Driving with their truck’s tailgate down.
  4. Accelerating extremely slowly.

#1 is a toughie. I agree that it’s rather stupid to drive across tow to save a nickel per gallon, but what about driving 3 blocks or planning a trip across town so you can stop by the cheap gas station? CDMCC and I had an argument about this awhile back. It wasn’t really about saving on gas, but the time you spent driving 3 extra blocks to save a dime per gallon. If you have a 15 gallon tank, that equates to a saving of $1.50. To drive those 3 extra blocks, you’ve wasted more than 5 minutes already. Is 5 minutes of time really worth the $1.50 savings? I dunno, but coming from a family that squeezes the most out of a penny, I’m always willing to drive the 3 extra blocks, and with tools like Seattle Gas Prices (or the corresponding gas price searching tool for your area), it makes it easy to find the gas stations that is cheap and not too far out of your way.

#2 is also something I’ve known for awhile, since Mechy often talked about aerodynamics of car. Opening windows just breaks that efficiency.

15 (Painfully) Unforgettable Cartoon Theme Songs (from Digg) – It’s tragic, really. For every math formula forgotten, every anniversary that passes unremembered, and every pet ferret dead from starvation, there’s a cartoon theme song from our youth, tenaciously hogging our limited mental hard drive space. In what is perhaps some sort of small attempt to exorcise these demonically persistent tunes from the depths of our consciousness, we’ve ranked 15 of them through the highly technical and thoroughly researched process of writing down whichever ones we could remember/find on YouTube first. Enjoy. Haha! Ungsunghero and I enjoyed this post as it sure brought back a bunch of memories. We even pointed out a few that they forgot to include: Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. What happened to cartoons? They use to be awesome and now, they’re just the same stupid crap over and over again.

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StarCraft 2

OMG! StarCraft 2 is coming out! *drools*

Check out the trailer and gameplay videos: Starcraft 2 Gameplay Videos & Cinematic Trailer. You can also download them directly off Blizzard or GameTrailers. I just realized that if you download via Blizzard, you’re actually downloading via Bittorrent. They download is an exe file that is a bittorrent client + the hash and tracker information. Interesting idea.

*drools* some more.

Random Crap:

Colbert Knows Why Pro-Torture Responses Got Loud Applause at GOP Debate (from Digg) – Colbert adds his two cents in as to why the GOP candidates’ answers on torture were so warmly received and slams McCain for being soft on torture “enhanced interrogation techniques.” My favorite part of this clip was when one mentioned of them mentioned, “I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time.”

Speaking of Jack Bauer. 2 of the TV series I’m watching this season has aired their finale: Heroes and 24. 24 didn’t have much of a surprise, but you know his father’s still alive. What scary is the thought that he might still have the Russian component, and you know that’s going to come back to haunt them later. Why the heck didn’t Jack Bauer get the component back before leaving his father to die. It’s as if he was allowing him to escape WITH the component. But Keith Sutherland’s signed up for 2 more seasons of 24. We’ll see how that goes.

As for Hero’s finale, I thought it was okay. The final fight was disappointing, but I’ll let my comment on Ungsunghero’s blog described what I felt:

To be honest, “Save the cheerleader, save the world” came out of future Hiro’s mouth. After the episodes where Hiro meets future Hiro, those words really didn’t have any meaning anymore.

As you said, that phrase was meant to mean to keep Sylar from taking the healing ability. I wouldn’t think that Hiro had any underlying meaning to it. If Hiro was an oracle and offer tellings with ambiguous meanings, I may believe, but future Hiro himself was confused when Sylar was still alive.

Another interesting thing was the introduction of Simone’s father. Obviously he has some powers. Linderman mentioned about an old group of friends (himself, Mama Petrelli, Hiro’s father, and Simone’s father so far).

We know what Linderman’s power is, but the other 3 are still up for grabs. We know that either Mama Petrelli or Simone’s father has the power to dream the future and past (you might remember Peter’s dreams about him blowing up, or how he saw Nathan get into a car accident). I’m leaning towards Simone’s father, but I thought that was an interesting twist in the end by bringing him back.

RayAlome tells me that both Nathan and Peter got their contracts renewed for season 2. That doesn’t mean they don’t die (maybe one has only an episode or 2, or maybe only shows up in flashbacks), but we’ll see.

If heroes were going to die, I would think Parkman with 4 bullet wounds has a higher chance of dying than D.L., but maybe both will.

Speaking of Sylar, if 4 bullets doesn’t kill Parkman immediately, I don’t see how 1 stab would cause more damage. Honestly, I was mad at Hiro for celebrating that too early. I was expecting him to stab, then chop off Sylar’s head.

I was totally expecting dinosaurs too. Awhile back, a preview showed a painting of a guy with a sword fighting a dinosaur. My guess was that Hiro would be the one to transport the bomb out of New York back into the Jurassic age and kill off all the dinosaurs.

However, I guess they needed a way for Nathan to redeem himself.

And like you, I honestly thought the fight was weak and too few powers were used during their fight. I was totally expecting a fight like the future one that was about to happen when future Hiro got killed.

I’ll end this with a comic strip from Real Life.

15 Useless or Even Dangerous Eyesight Myths (from Digg) – It’s important to separate fact from fiction, especially when the topic is eyesight. And old wives’ tales abound about the eyes. Many of these have no basis in fact and, for that matter, can be dangerous if you followed the advice put forth. An interesting list and I’ve heard of quite a few on the list. I wonder if the masturbation would make you blind has ever deterred anyone away from *cough*.

Family Guy vs. Capcom (from Ungsunghero) – What button makes a random pop culture reference again? What if you had a fighting game which involved Family Guy and Capcom. This video shows a fight between Peter and Sakura. Really hilarious.

Hershey sues man who made pot candy – The Hershey Co. has sued Affolter, 40, for giving his marijuana goodies names like Stoney Rancher, Rasta Reese’s and Keef Kat. Each came in packaging similar to Hershey’s Jolly Rancher, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat candies, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

I saw this video awhile back: oc spoof-dear sister, however the title was a bit different before. It just said something along the lines of SNL Short – Dear Sister. I had no idea what it was spoofing and although I found it a bit amusing, I didn’t find it exactly funny. I finally found the origin: The source for the “Dear Sister” SNL spoof. Apparently it’s spoofing the season 2 finale of O.C.

Pac-Man’s skeleton (from Digg) – Ever wonder what Pac-Man’s skeleton would look like? Well apparently so did the artist that created this. What do you think, did he capture the spirit of the true Pac-Man or is it just a circle with teeth?

10 Reasons It Doesn’t Pay To Be “The Computer Guy” (from Ungsunghero) – I tried to for seven years. I’ve worked in the computer industry in various ways — help desk support, web design, consulting and sales, field technician, freelance computer specialist, and whatever other fancy name you want to give “the computer guy.” I stopped enjoying it. There were certainly times when I enjoyed myself, but most of those times were when my computer talents were still developing. Once I stopped learning new things on the job, I would become fidgety and want to move on to something else. My favorite reasons include: Reason #7 – Your Talents Are Forcibly Undervalued and Reason #5 – People Ask You To Perform Miracles. For #7, it’s not so much as monetary value as they take what I do for granted. You’ve probably heard similar phrases as, “Aw, come on. It shouldn’t take you too much time. You probably can do it with a hand tied behind your back.” Of course I may have exaggerated here, but helping people like that always gets on my nerve and I usually don’t repeat the mistake of ever helping them again. As for miracles, I’m guessing it’s because people don’t have an understanding of how computer works and assume everything is fixable and everything can be recovered.

Software Notebook: How does Gates shape up as a seer? (from Digg) – Interesting statements made by Bill Gates, but what really made it interesting was this:

What Gates didn’t predict: One quote frequently attributed to the Microsoft chairman is that “640K of memory should be enough for anybody.”

However, Gates has long denied ever saying it, and no evidence has ever surfaced to show that he did. In 1996, when Gates was writing a syndicated newspaper column, a reader asked about the quote, and he replied, “No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.”

“I’ve said some stupid things and some wrong things,” he wrote, “but not that.”

I had always thought he DID say that. Interesting…

Girl calls for police help over messy room – A nine-year-old German girl was so upset about having to tidy her room she put up a sign in her window urging passers-by to call police for help. Pedestrians in the central city of Braunschweig saw the girl crying in the window, holding up a sign up saying “Help! Please call the police!” Next to her sat a small boy.

Start school later in the morning, say sleepy teens (from Digg) – A survey of sleep-deprived teens finds they think that a later start time for school and tests given later in the school day would result in better grades. The survey was presented at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference, on Sunday, May 20. The survey of 280 high school students confirmed what most parents with a teenager know: they are not getting enough sleep. More sleep would translate into improved academic performance, according to the teens questioned. They all attended Harriton High School in suburban Philadelphia, where the school day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 2:25 p.m. Does starting the day later really change things? Assuming you still have the same amount of homework and allocate the time you spend playing and working, you’d still end up with the same amount of time to sleep. However, it is true, some people work better at night (i.e. me).

The Top of the Class – The complete list of the 1,200 top U.S. schools (from Digg) – Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2006 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 5 percent of public schools measured this way. If you have 2006 data showing that your school should be on this list, please contact Mathews at challenge@washpost.com. For complete coverage, visit NEWSWEEK’s Top High Schools section. Another year, another list. Mark Keppel ranked 570 this year. What’s interesting is now they have a search function you can use to search the city, state, or school name. A lot easier than going through the entire list looking for your school.

“I Think We’re Dead.” (from Digg) – I like when news anchors break character. And snort. A recorded telephone call about a police officer and his wife getting high off eating brownies with marijuana. They reportedly claim that time was going really slow and he thinks they’re dying or dead.

‘He Looks Like A ‘Bob” Is True (from Digg) – For example, when people hear the name “Bob” they have in mind a larger, round face than when they hear a name such as “Tim” or “Andy.” Robin Thomas, associate professor of psychology, and colleagues not only show that this link exists, but they also show that if people try to learn face-name pairs that go against their expectations, they have a hard time doing it. I knew you always looked like a Robert!