Krunk – Page 77 – Krunk4Ever!

May 7, 2007May 7, 2007

The Illusionist

Just saw this movie. This movie came out at the same time The Prestige, and since both were magician movies, I had opted to watch The Prestige with Christian Bale instead. But I’ve heard good things about The Illusionist so I finally decided to see what type of magic movie it was. I would have to say, the movie was somewhat easy to predict, though there were still some that I didn’t get.

Official Site
IMDb: 7.7/10 (31,377 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 75% / Average Rating: 7/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
MY RATING: 7.5/10

Spoilers: (Show)

May 6, 2007May 6, 2007

University of Washington

So I took my mom to check out UW’s campus (also my 1st time there). I printed out the map and the self-guided walking tour brochure so at least I have an idea of where I’m going. I’ve been meaning to check out the campus for some time, but never really had a reason to yet. Then again, I haven’t even been up the space needle before. Hehe.

This also gave me a chance to test out my new Canon PowerShot SD1000.

The campus was actually really big (a lot bigger than Berkeley at least) and very pretty, especially on a semi-sunny day like today. Good thing it didn’t rain as I didn’t really look at the forecast beforehand.

Here are some of the pictures I took:

I didn’t take too many, but you can see the rest of them in the album: University of Washington Visit

They also had guided tours, but for Saturdays, it required arriving there by 10:30am. I got up today at 1:30pm. There’s more info on their website.

May 6, 2007May 15, 2007

Random Crap

Experience the hardest Mario ever (no fluffing required!) (from Ungsunghero) – If you are ever in a situation where your little sister complains about a Mario game being too hard, please just slap her and show her this video. Created by a random somebody in Taiwan (my vote is for escaped mental patient), this Mario mod is like a sick work of art. Granted, I would most likely give up after about one minute, but the sadomasochist inside of me wants to play it to death until I complete it. I mean, seriously, beating this would give you the ultimate video game bragging rights. I don’t even think Lucas would stand a chance. This is the ultimate Super Mario Bros. level. You can also watch the version with commentary: Super Mario Bros: Frustration, which makes it a whole lot funnier. He does cuss a lot, so be warned. I love the hidden coin blocks which just so conveniently blocks many of his jumps causing Mario to fall to his death. Once you get to level 2, it starts getting really repetitive, so you might as well stop watching it. Both Ungsunghero and I noticed that he could have actually jumped to the top of the ceiling during one of tries. Ungsunghero theorizes that if he did it, it’d take him to the warp zone. I wonder if I could get ahold of this game and give it a try. I would however actually need to have quick state save.

Ipod saves Soldier’s Life (from MS newsgroup) – I have talked to Kevin and he has told me the real story of getting shot in the iPod. The Armor stopped the bullet. Kevin didn’t know he was shot. The iPod was how he found out. The full story: iPod tells soldier he was shot – the real story

Joke from MS newsgroup:

Two guys were speeding along in their beat up old pick-up. They approach a red light and the driver blasts right through. The passenger, startled, exclaims “that was a red light!” The driver turns to him and says, “don’t worry, my brother runs red lights all the time”. The passenger replies, “oh, okay”. They come up to the next light screeching to a halt. The passenger again startled exclaims “it is green, go!” The driver replies, “what are you crazy, my brother could be coming the other way”.

Someone replies: That’s not a joke, that’s driving in New Delhi 🙂

Cal Dining wins the Oscar of eateries (from MS newsgroup) – Chez Panisse, French Laundry, Spago, Charlie Trotters … and Cal Dining? That’s right. Berkeley’s campus dining service recently earned its place among these much-lauded establishments when it snagged (as the others have in the past) a prestigious Ivy Award. Given by the trade publication Restaurants & Institutions, Ivy Awards — the equivalent of Oscars for the food industry — recognize excellence in food service by restaurants, hotels, and institutions. Industry peers (and the previous year’s winners) submit nominations, a ballot is assembled, and the magazine’s 154,000 readers vote for their selections. What happened!?!?! The Dining Commons back when I was there was horrible!

Gates vs. Jobs (from Digg) – Bill Gates and Steve Jobs square off in the clean white virtual world of the iconic Mac ads. The voice of Bill Gates reminds me of Kermit the Frog.

spiderman 3 speed painting in photoshop 7 (from FuzzyWuzzy) – great paint session in photoshop 7! four hours in three minutes. music by Danny Elfman, spiderman’s sountrack composer. Wow! This drawing is amazing!

So I mentioned nightmares the other day to Ungsunghero and he replied back, don’t you mean daymares, which got me thinking what the etymology of the word nightmare is. I mean the word night is simple, since it just refers to it occurring at night (most people sleep at night and have nightmares I guess), but does mare (by itself refers to a female horse) mean bad dream? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, mare refers to goblin that causes nightmares.

Jack Bauer, Dammit! (from Digg) – Students would like Bauer to run for president in ‘08 because first of all, he’s better than anyone else trying to get nominated, and second of all, he helps students relax. Every time he says, “Dammit,” someone lifts a brew in his honor. As proof, check out the Jack Bauer Dammit video, if you haven’t already. Haha! A 24 drinking.

13 Little Things That Make A Geek Happy (from Digg) – The list is pretty accurate. Things I totally agree with include:

Someone submits something I wrote to digg.
A new referrer pops up
Someone posts a real comment on one of my blog entries.
My code works perfectly on the first try.
Technorati and Alexa Ranking that increases each week.

Errol Morris: Commercials (from Consumerist) – a bunch of amusing Miller High Life commercials. Reminds me of the Real Men of Genius commercials from BudLight.

Gentlemen, rate yourselves: cucumber or banana? – Singapore’s Society for Men’s Health and a pharmaceutical firm are proposing a four-point scale for erectile dysfunction, allowing men to rate their own hardness with four categories: cucumber, unpeeled banana, peeled banana and tofu (bean curd).

May 6, 2007May 27, 2007

Haloid

Someone from MS newsgroup sent out a link to this video: Haloid. It’s actually a really cool video showing a battle between Master Chief (from Halo) and Samus (from Metroid) and tons of those alien guys from Halo. The main battle music was from The Matrix where Neo battles a gazillion Agent Smiths. He even incorporated the spinning in a circle kick scene. The animation was done really well as well as the choreography. Unfortunately, even I knew Master Chief is suppose to be a guy. But I guess that gives it a twist. Oh, did I just spoil it for you? ;p

Artemyst wanted to download it, but GameTrailers didn’t make it easy. There was no direct download link and the actual location of the flv file was hidden since they call their flash movie viewer with an id, which goes and looks up the url in the background. However, nothing escapes Ethereal. I ended up getting this ip: 207.226.113.35 and this location: /gt_fanmovies/um_31603-91737-HaloidFull-1176793690.flv. However, apparently their movies are on a shared server and 207.226.113.35 resolves to 207-226-113-35.pccwglobal.net which gives me a 404 when I try to open the link.

However, Ethereal apparently also captures DNS lookups and the DNS lookup that resolved to 207.226.113.35 was trailers.gametrailers.com.

So if you want to download Haloid to watch on your own computer outside a browser, you can do so by downloading: Haloid flv file.

Do note, you’ll need a FLV player to watch this. VLC Media Player and Media Player Classic both support it natively I believe, or maybe I had to install ffdshow to get the flv codec.

Anyway, enjoy!

* UPDATE *

Thanks to jpm for donating this link: Download File – Monty Oum – Haloid – High Resolution:

MOV [123.3 MB]
WMV [118.1 MB]
MP4 [46 MB]

No longer do you have to suffer the bad quality of FLV.

Random Crap:
Moved Random Crap to a different entry.

* UPDATE #2 *
Turns out the new direct HD downloads doesn’t have the final piece Master Chick VS Samus, where they have a dance off. If you download the FLV above, it still has the 1 minute clip at the ending.

I’ve decided to rip the Master Chick VS Samus clip from the FLV file. The video quality is large and small respectively:

Don’t forget to checkout montyoum’s other works at deviantART and GameTrailers.

May 5, 2007May 5, 2007

Electronic Transfer

So the other day, I was making a electronic transfer from Fidelity to my HSBC Direct savings account and that got me thinking, what exactly goes on behind the scene of a electronic transfer. They go by many names including wiring money, electronic fund transfer, direct deposit, etc. How exactly does a EFT work? I mean metaphorically, it’s like bank A is sending money to bank B, but this being electronic and all digital, there is no real money being transferred.

Back in the days, when bank A sends money to bank B, little cars delivers sacks of money from bank A to bank B.

But nowadays, everything is digital and I would assume no actual money (paper bills, rare metals, etc) are actually being transferred between banks, making it more safe and secure. There are movies showing those armored trucks delivery big loads of cash, but I believe that is just transferring money from the branches into the main bank, or vice versa. Like when I write a Bank of America check and the payee deposits it into his Washington Mutual account, all they do is notify Bank of America and they transfer the money over. I think these days, they don’t even send the check back, but just make a scan.

But how exactly is money electronically transferred.

Within the same branch or even the same bank, it’d be easy. Bank of America oversees the entire transaction and the deduct money from account X and deposits that same amount into account Y. But to deduct money from account X in Bank of America and deposit that amount into account Y in Washington Mutual, it just seems to be changing the balance, however, it doesn’t appear to be as simple as it sounds.

What really happens as I imagined would be Bank of America takes money out of account X and puts it into their own. At the end of the day, thousands or millions of transactions occur between the 2 banks and only the difference is transferred. Afterwards, Washington Mutual will deposit the amount from the transfer into account Y.

It appears to be something quick and simple, but there needs to be some overseeing agency to make sure that Bank of America does indeed deduct that amount from their balance and Washington Mutual only increases that amount from their balance. If not, what is to say, that Bank of America “claims” to have transfer money to them, but not in fact deducted their own balance. The way I see this working is that each bank has an account with lets say the Federal Reserve, and they are basically making transfers of funds within the same bank (Federal Reserve). I can see that working, since the accounts have to be checked and balanced.

But I’m curious if anything tangible is actually transferred. Are money in forms of coins and dollar bills at the end of the month moved between banks. Bills and coins are just tender, and I don’t see why electronic numbers can’t completely replace them. If the banks deposit all their bills to the Federal Reserve, then it’s essentially the same.

Ungsunghero then brings up a good point. What about international transfers. How does money actually flow between countries? If I decided to transfer $100,000 to my Swiss account, what really happens? The transfer may take a few days, but how does the money leave the USA and enter Switzerland? Do we ship them bags of bills? gold? Is there any overseeing agency like the Federal Reserves that monitor international transactions?

Just something that’s been bouncing in my head.

May 3, 2007May 3, 2007

Canon PowerShot SD1000

I just got myself a new toy! Yay for me! My wallets been crying a lot lately though. We haven’t got along that well. He says I’ve been spending way too much and I blame Derek.

Anyway, I’ve been due another digital camera for awhile. I’ve had the Canon PowerShot S400 since sophomore year of college and it has all in all done extremely well. It wasn’t until a year ago when it started having problems and began corrupting my compact flash memory cards. I actually lost a Kingston 1GB CF memory card to it and have been using my spare Viking 1GB memory card ever since. I can’t even view or format the Kingston card on a USB memory card reader. And once in awhile, my camera would say: memory card error. I did however figure out what to do in that situation. All I have to do is turn my camera off and pound on it a few times, and then turn it back on. *Poof* memory card error gone!

So when Derek showed me the deal last week where the Canon PowerShot SD1000 was on sale for $150, I had to jump.

The feature set is rather good:

Slim, stylish 7.1 Megapixel Digital ELPH with 3x Optical Zoom lens
Chic modern minimalism in the ELPH’s classic Box & Circle design in two color variations to suit your personal style
DIGIC III Image Processor with improved Face Detection Technology and Red-eye Correction for sharper images and improved functionality
Vivid, high-resolution 2.5-inch PureColor LCD with scratch-resistant anti-reflection coating for easy on-camera viewing
ISO 1600 and High ISO Auto to reduce image blur and expand low-light shooting capability
Five movie modes including 30 fps VGA, Time Lapse and Fast Frame Rate
Print/Share Button for easy direct printing and downloading, plus ID Photo Print and Movie Print with select PIXMA Photo Printers, CP and SELPHY Compact Photo Printers

They’ve also messed up the naming of the cameras. You’d think that SD1000 is better than the SD900 which should be better than the SD800, but the fact of the matter is, the PowerShot SD1000 is the same as the PowerShot SD800IS in every aspect besides the fact that the SD800 has IS (image stabilization). On the other hand, the PowerShot SD900 is a 10.0MP camera compared to 7.1MP which the SD1000 and SD800 have.

So I got my digital camera today and haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but it’s so sexy and thin:

Their packaging wasn’t as cool as my 3rd gen iPod, but still rather neat. Unfortunately it didn’t come with a case, so it looks like I’ll have to splurge some more on something like this: Canon PSC-1000 Deluxe Grey Leather Case for the Canon SD1000 Digital Camera

Using my new Samsung SGH-t519, I took some pictures comparing my old camera (Canon PowerShot S400) with my new camera (Canon PowerShot SD1000). The camera phone’s photo quality wasn’t that good, plus it wasn’t taking in good light condition, so please ignore the fuzziness due to my shaking hands.

The PowerShot SD1000 only came with a 32MB SD memory card, which I’ll probably never use. I took out the SD card from my phone and will be using it in my digital camera until I find a good deal for a replacement SD card.

I also found my old PowerShot S400 retail box. It even still has an unopened 32MB CF memory card in it. Haha.

May 2, 2007

How to Poop at Work

This list was sent to me by Vivori and it was hilarious and I can so relate to many of them, I wanted to share it.

HOW TO POOP AT WORK

As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the survival guide for taking a dump at the office.

CROP DUSTING: When farting, you walk really fast around the office so the smell is not in your area and everyone else gets a whiff but doesn’t know where it came from. Be careful when you do this. Do not stop until the full fart has been expelled. Walk an extra 30 feet to make sure the smell has left your pants.

FLY BY: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.

ESCAPEE: A fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of embarrassment. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee. It is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.

JAILBREAK: When forcing a poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.

COURTESY FLUSH: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the poop hits the water. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME .

WALK OF SHAME: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. This can be minimized with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.

OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER: A colleague who poops at work and is damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.

SAFE HAVENS: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a same-sex pooper entering your bathroom.

TURD BURGLAR: Someone who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a poop at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.

CAMO-COUGH: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.

ASTAIRE: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.

WATERMELON: A poop that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.

HAVANA OMELET: A case of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.

UNCLE TED: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to poop when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.

April 30, 2007April 30, 2007

Updating WordPress Plugins

After upgrading wordpress to 2.1.*, I noticed that comments now had its own new tab. However, Akismet Spam was still under Manage. Turns out I was using Akismet 1.4 when 2.0 is already out. Upgrading took some work where I had to deactivate the plugin, download and extract the newer version and then reactivate the plugin.

After updating Akismet to 2.0, it moved the Comment Spam to the correct tab now.

Gallery’s plugin system was a lot user to use than WordPress, where all I had to do was click on the upgrade button. I can even see a list of official plugins, experimental plugins, and even community plugins and they’re installed with a simple click.

Maybe we’ll see this in a future version of WordPress.

April 30, 2007April 30, 2007

Letters From Iwo Jima & Flags Of Our Fathers

So I just finished watching Clint Eastwood’s 2 latest movies which I found out recently that they were meant to tell the same story, but from 2 different perspectives. Both are about the battle of Iwo Jima, but Letters From Iwo Jima was the story from the Japanese perspectives and Flags Of Our Fathers was from the American perspective. I thought both movies were done really well, and the message conveyed from both movies are rather different, yet feel the same.

Letters From Iwo Jima
Official Site
IMDb: 8.1/10 (9,924 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: A- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 91% / Average Rating: 8.2/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com HD DVD
Amazon.com Blu-Ray
MY RATING: 8/10

Flags Of Our Fathers
Official Site
IMDb: 7.2/10 (14,102 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B+ / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 73% / Average Rating: 7/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com HD DVD
Amazon.com Blu-Ray
MY RATING: 7/10

There’s really not much spoilers to these movies as they’re based on an actual events and we already know the outcome. Letters From Iwo Jima is shot almost completely in Japanese and attempts to reflect the view of the Japanese during the war time. The Japanese were a very proud race and they would rather suicide honorably when they’ve lost instead of begging for mercy from the enemy. It was suppose to be “an honor” to serve and die for the country, yet like us, many of them also have fear of going to war and never coming home. Their views of American soldiers were that we were pigs and barbaric like. Led by a great general, they have resorted to hiding in the mountains and what was supposed to be a couple day battle led on to last over a month. The story follows an ex-owner of a bakery who tries his best to survive in order to see his daughter which was born after he had left to prepare for war.

Letters From Iwo Jima mostly takes place on the island itself from the preparation of the battle to the end of the battler. Flags Of Our Fathers is a bit different in that it mashes 2 story lines together. The focus of this movie was on the photograph of the 6 men who had lifted the flag and stuck it in Iwo Jima. This story follows a corporal who was a medic for his platoon. The story goes back and forth between the battle grounds as the remaining heroes tour the country asking people to buy bonds. They message from this movie is that these are just regular people and not really heroes as we put them to be.

While watching Pumpkin Scissors, they talked about a secret unit which utilized flame throwers, and due to the inhumanness of burning enemies to death and the fact the soldiers who operated flame throwers for long periods of time suffered burns and problems in themselves, the project was scrapped. I recalled in WW2 movies that flame throwers were used and they’re actually quite effective. When I sawed them used in these movies, it got me thinking, are they banned now or did we just decide to stop using them. According to Wikipedia: Flamethrowers have not been in the U.S. arsenal since 1978, when the Department of Defense unilaterally stopped using them, because of public opinion concerns that found their use inhumane, although they are not banned in any international treaty the U.S. has signed. Thus, the US decision to remove flamethrowers from its arsenal is entirely voluntary. The USA Army does, however, use the M202A1 FLASH, a rocket launcher with four triethylaluminum-packed warheads.

April 29, 2007April 30, 2007

Random Crap

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CDMCC!!!

Random Crap:

Watch this water freeze instantly. This product will revolutionize shaved ice. (from Digg) – Honestly, I don’t really believe that’s just water. The 2 things that affect the physical state of water are temperature and pressure (if you remember that graph) and there’s a point where all 3 actually ~~meat~~ meet (a temperature and pressure where water is constantly changing between solid, liquid, and gas). However, a plastic water bottle doesn’t have enough strength to withstand the pressure needed to achieve what’s he’s trying to do, so my guess is something else must’ve been added. Also, after becoming ice for a bit, it pretty much changes back to liquid rather quickly. It actually reminds me of the supersaturation experiments we did back in high school chemistry.

Vertical Sitting Car (from Digg) – Is this satellite image on Google Maps showing that a car is parked vertically in the City of The Hague (Den Haag) in Netherlands? Or is it just optical illusion?

Great examples of Guerilla Marketing (from Digg) – I recently bought a book about guerilla marketing and it makes great reading. I love the idea of coming up with a truly unique idea for very little cash and turning any exposure you do get into sales. There are some great examples in this book so i thought id post a few of them here. If anyone would like to add to the list, please feel free. I’ve seen most of these before, but there were still a few good ones I haven’t seen before.

5 Free WordPress Plugins to help you Monetize your Blog (from Digg) – Here are 5 WordPress Plugins we’ve come across that can help you to monetize your blog.

The Complete Matrix Trilogy [HD DVD] – *drools*

Ten Reasons Why You’re not a Billionaire (from Digg) – People always are wondering, why am I not rich? Or, why can’t I make as much money as so-and-so? The answer is, that being rich is merely a state of mind. The excuse to why you are not yet a millionaire is really not because you don’t make enough money, its the way you use your money that determines why you are not yet a millionaire. I’ve been reading a lot of Donald Trump’s book, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life, and everything he says really does make sense.

Cool Cakes (from Digg) – Yes, these are all real cakes, made from flour and eggs and frosting. No plastic models here.

Plitvicka Waterfalls (from Digg) – Croatia: Plitvicka Jezera National Park: waterfalls at Plitvicka Jezera National Park. Photo ©2004 by Jack Brauer. This waterfall is amazingly beautiful! Also, I noticed some similar sounding the photographer’s name is to 24’s Jack Bauer.

Plasma Pong (from Digg) – They’ve released the game! It was fun for a bit, then the computer got too hard.

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality (from Digg) – Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing
was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

She told me we couldn’t afford beer anymore (from Digg) – Best beer ad ever

Soldiers out of cable (19 pics) – soldier figurines made completely made out of coil wires.

Starcraft Origami (from Digg) – Still lacking some paint, but besides that, they’re pretty good.

Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked? (from Digg) – Taylor, an American who has lived in Amsterdam for the last 25 years, thinks the negative reaction stateside is due to “puritanical prudishness,” which doesn’t balk at violence or soft porn on television, yet is offended by older nudity. “Now seeing older bodies — that’s reality TV if you want reality,” Taylor quips. A pretty good article about what’s very wrong about the American’s scale of what is bad. It talks about why art displaying nudity (such as the Jesus Christ status made from chocolate) is so bad, but you can have Victoria Secret models walk down the aisle on prime time TV (not that it’s a bad thing). Then there’s the common argument about violence vs sex.

Dark Lord of the Sky: Darth Vader Balloon (from Boing Boing) – When the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison first suggested that one of its members, Benoît Lambert, create a Death Star-shaped PVC helium balloon, he was not only thrilled but already envisioning a chance to show off his artistic talents as well as his love for Star Wars–and his skills as a hot-air balloonist.

Shocking: An Innovative iPod Case from DLO (from Digg) – In another shocking freezing over of hell, we have discovered an iPod case that is actually *gasp* innovative! This case for fifth generation iPods looks normal on the front, but the backside has a pretty nifty cable-management system. It has an extension that the cord can be wrapped around and the 3.5mm audio jack and earphones have their own little cutouts that they can reside in securely when not in use. It is available for $20 in clear or black. Too bad it only works with iPod headphones. This is genius! I’ve always never really quite knew what to do with the earphones as I wrap them around my iPod. Now this solves the problem. They need to make a iPod Nano version.

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel – using solar power (from Digg) – Their device captures energy from the sun, converts it to electrical energy and “splits” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen. Obviously carbon monoxide in and of itself is not great either but millions of pounds of it are used each year to manufacture chemicals including detergents and plastics. It can also be converted into liquid fuel.

Sugar Free: Ants, Muffin (from Digg) – The task was to communicate that anything made with Sugar Free tastes the same, as when made using sugar. To dramatize this, we decided to use the most credible ambassadors for sweetness – Ants. We experimented with syrup made of Sugar Free and sweet lime, and found that even the ants couldn’t tell the difference. We painted the stape of a muffin on a 14″ x 19″ poster, using this syrup. And, left the rest to the ants. I’m curious, doesn’t the sweet lime actually make this experiment not as credible?

Episiotomy delivers doctor to court, settlement reached – Sara Wallace regularly complained of pain in her uterus region after she gave birth. Then she awoke one morning to find feces in her vagina. She and her husband David sued the on-call doctor who delivered their baby.

Useless Facts: The difference between a blimp and a zeppelin (from Digg) – Like all tough questions in life, this is one Wikipedia could easily answer: A non-rigid airship, or blimp, differs from a rigid airship (e.g. a Zeppelin) in that it does not have a rigid structure that holds the airbag in shape. Xyon and I were just discussing the other day what the difference between a zeppelin and a blimp was.

Eating your own face (from Digg) – This guy can do it, can you?

12 secrets your car insurer won’t tell you (from Digg) – Knowing how the industry works can save you a lot of money and grief. Here are the secrets behind the premiums, and how you can save after an accident.

Village girl’s unusually large feet (from Digg) – Although I feel sorry for her, her feet reminds me of one of those creatures made up in Spore.

Guy gets pissed that his message telling the janitor to unclog the shower doesn’t get fixed, so he upgrades his dry erase marker to sharpie (from link)

Great Ads (from Digg) – another set of funny ones.