Happy Birthday CrabyAple

Happy Birthday CrabyAple!

And everyone on my team gets the entire next week off! Yay! A 9 day vacation. 🙂


Random Crap:

PS3 Line Insanity; Pregnant Woman Tries Not To Give Birth While Waiting (from Digg) – Apparently, one woman who is nine months pregnant, has been trying to ignore her contractions in order to stay in line, while another woman who isn’t even interested in gaming decided to line up just for the hell of it. Sigh… PS3 before baby. I wonder how the kid will turn out since the mom will probably ignore him/her while enjoying the PS3.

Free long distance calls through Google? (from Digg) – Although it’s almost certainly against the terms and conditions, the new feature could theoretically allow users to make free long distance phone calls to any North American number. Interesting idea, but putting your phone number out there is like posting your email in a public directory. You’re bound to get more phone calls from telemarketers. On the other hand, you have free services like Jajah.

Petit jeu connu (from Digg) – I’ve seen the baby picture a bunch of times already, but someone decided to photo shop it and does a pretty decent job. We have Hulk Hogan, KISS, Michael Moore, and a bunch of other hilarious ones.

Windows Vista testers get free copy of RTM (from Digg) – If you’re a Vista tester, Windows Vista Business (by default, Ultimate if you ask for it) is yours – check your email account associated with your Connect profile. If you qualify (if, that is) then you’ll get a free copy in form of a unique Connect invitation to a new sub-page with the build on. You must have submitted one bug at least to get a free copy and be on the technical beta. I thought that was pretty neat.

Smash My PlayStation 3 (from Angelus) – We will be one of the first people to get our hands on a PlayStation 3. After we do, we will destroy it in front of all the PS3 fanboys moments after we buy it. This is only a social experiment, for the entertainment of the donors, and visitors of this site. Hahahahaha.

Roomba and CO Detector

So a month back or so, my CO (carbon monoxide) detector went off. At first I thought it was a fluke, but it was periodical, meaning it would beep for half a minute then stop, and start beeping again a minute later. So I opened all the windows around me, but it still didn’t stop beeping. Finally I got pissed at it and moved it to another location. The beeping stopped. That led me to think there was something in the bathroom coming out that was triggering it. Anyways, I didn’t worry much about it.

A couple weeks ago, I moved the detector back since what good is a detector if I’m just going to put it in some random corner. It went fine for awhile, but started beeping again last week. At first, I was confuzzled, but then I noticed my Roomba was vacuuming the floor at the same time, so I started connecting the dots. The CO detector has this feature where you can test it by using your remote control. My Roomba has these virtual walls that also emit infrared signals.

So I took my virtual wall and aimed directly at it and the beeping went crazy. I turned off my virtual wall and the beeping stopped completely. Guess we found the culprit. Anyways, I didn’t need that virtual wall there. Turns out my Roomba has stairway detection so it won’t fall down the stairs.

Forgot to mention the fact that it went off last week was due to the fact I increased the power of the virtual wall. The virtual wall has 3 settings: 3′, 4′-7′ and 8’+ walls. I had increased the virtual wall from 3′ to 8’+ because I was working from home and didn’t want the Roomba to enter my little office.

PS3 Pre-Launch

DENTIST HIRES 60 PEOPLE TO GET HIM PS3S (from Digg) – Murray Newlin, a dentist in Columbus, Ohio, wants to buy 15 PS3s this holiday season for his grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. A feat not even Santa Claus himself could accomplish. So he set out to do the impossible by paying 60 different workers to take eight hour shifts waiting in line in at four different Wal-mart stores in the Columbus area. Ouch! Similar to the Japanese business Eiji who paid homeless people ~$200 for each PS3 they obtained for him, but the difference being, he’s planning to KEEP these friggin’ PS3s.

I’m assuming these are legit workers who work for minimum wage (I’m guessing is around $6/hr). He could’ve also hired illegal immigrants for a lot cheaper, but I don’t think there’s too many of those in Ohio. But who knows how much he is paying. Let’s just assume the worse. The entry mentions he paid 60 people for 8 hours shifts each. So that means each PS3 probably has 4 person waiting for it and at $6/hr, that’s $2880. If the launch is at midnight, then they probably started lining up around 4PM on 11/15 since the PS3 launches on 11/17. If stores open around 8am, those people probably started lining up at midnight of 11/16.

Actually even though that $2880 might look like a lot, consider the fact that the retail of the PS3 is around $500 – $600, making 15 PS3s an investment of $7500 to $9000. If he buys in the aftermarket, where prices are ranging between $1500 to $2500, we’re seeing a savings of over $10,620.

However, not everything is happy and cheery for PS3 resellers either. PlayStation 3 fetching mostly ho-hum prices on Japan Net auctions (from Digg) – But some of the 4,000 PlayStation 3 consoles up for auction on Yahoo! Japan Wednesday were downright bargains. Some had game software thrown in with the machine, selling near the retail price of about 60,000 yen (US$510; €400) for the more expensive model with a 60-gigabyte hard drive, and 50,000 yen (US$420; €330) for the cheaper model. Ouch!

Sony taking big hit on each PS3 sold; Xbox 360 in the black – what’s interesting about this article is the fact that the Xbox 360 might not be sold at a loss anymore. Also, if you haven’t noticed, there might be a (BIG) chance that Amazon.com will be selling the Xbox 360 core system for $100 next Thursday. There will only be 1000 units and I believe the selling starts at 11am PST on Thanksgiving. Go to their homepage and vote for the Xbox 360 system.


Random Crap:

Owner claims kittens have dog-like traits (from Digg) – Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, claims her cat’s offspring has been born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour’s dog in the Brazilian city of Passo Fundo.

cat puppies
(image from Yahoo!)

Ten things not to do with your data (from Digg) – Deaths at the hands of bananas, smelly socks and WD-40 are some of the unusual fates to have befallen innocent hard drives, according to a data recovery company that has released a list of the most remarkable cases of data loss witnessed this year. I original read this article on BBC, but it appears they have pulled the article.

And a university professor appeared not-so-clever when he heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop and decided to open the case and spray in some WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, this was largely because he had also stopped the drive from working.

Easy Mental Multiplication Trick (from Digg) – How to transform a multiplication into addition through the drawing of a stool. It works with any numbers if you keep the right partition. You can verify with your calculator! an interesting trick, but I highly doubt it’s faster than straight out multiplication, especially when dealing with large numbers. What essentially the person is doing is straight multiplication. 2×3 = 6 because 2 lines intersect 3 lines 6 times. With the curves the person draws, that’s the addition part, where you’re suppose to add multiple lines together. The diamond shape is used for the shifting where if you recall, the each additional number in the bottom multiplier, an extra space you give it before you add.

Random Crap

Some dude is reselling 100 PS3s, gonna get paid (from Angelus) – Some Japanese consumer named Eiji (who we can only assume is a legitimate ninja) somehow managed to scoop up 100 PS3s in both 20GB and 60GB varieties and is reportedly planning to resell them. It’s believed this is the same guy that hired homeless people to get in line for 20,000 yen (~US$200).

Weird Al – Do I Creep You Out – another music video from Weird Al’s latest album. This one’s pretty funny too! Interestingly Derek and I noticed that you get an ad before the video starts if you watch this on IE, but on Firefox, you don’t get any ad. At first, I thought it was Adblock, but it turns out not to be the case. Even with Adblock disabled, the ad doesn’t play in Firefox. Maybe they just realized that Firefox users are smarter. ;p

As you might’ve heard, the Zune was launched today, and reviews of it have been pretty bad for the most part. Ars Technica’s reviews tend to be quite in depth, and here it is: Microsoft Zune. But you may have heard of all the problems that the Zune is riddled with. I was shocked to find out it was not supported on Vista. Did some guy just think that they didn’t need to support an OS that was coming out later in January of next year for the consumer? Plus the fact that we don’t allow you to use the Zune as a portable hard drive is just plain stupid.

Kiwi! (from Deadlock) – pretty neat animation showing you how birds got wings. Reminds me of why the giraffe grew long necks.

Mario’s movie impressions at E3 (from Digg) – Mario talks? That’s right! Charles Martinet, voice of Mario does a bunch of impressions (and bashes Sony) at E3. Pretty funny. Mario does some funny impressions from movies, including Star Wars. Interestingly, when he cusses, it beeps it out with the coin noise.

Animator vs. Animation II (from Digg) – The badass stick figure is back and this time it’s personal. In this episode, victim becomes victimizer as he breaks out of Flash and takes on mighty opponents like Firefox, the AOL IM guy and the Photoshop* icon. You can also watch the original Animator vs. Animation.

Donations from Console Launches

I was thinking, if I was Best Buy or Circuit City, how can I take advantage of the situation that people are buying the PS3 and Wii consoles and reselling them for 5x their original cost, but also not garner bad press in doing so. The answer: donations. People are willing to pay $1500 – $2500 for the PS3 as eBay and Craigslist listings have shown. Have a minimum donation required of lets say $500 (just a random figure) and this donation will guarantee you a PS3 on launch in front of all the people who have been waiting in line for a week. Of course they could also do allotments where 1/3 goes to people waiting in line and 2/3 goes to people who have donated.

Donations of course since it’s in the spirit of Christmas will go to Toys for Tots or hospitals.

Of course, I’m thinking as a consumer and not a money hungry corporate business. Maybe they see that $500 donations as $500 that could’ve been theirs if they used it to buy games and accessories. But given that the fact that there has been less than 1 game per PS3 sold so far, most people are buying to resell, so to them, making $500 less wouldn’t be much of a problem, when their profit will still be between $500 to $1500. As shown in my previous entry, businessmen were hiring bums in Japan to line up to purchase the PS3s. Each homeless person was paid ~$200 to do the job and in return the businessmen will be making a hefty profit.


Random Crap:

Samsung develops machine gun sentry robot costs $200kSamsung has partnered with Korea university and developed the machine-gun equipped robotic sentry. It is equipped with two cameras with zooming capabilities one for day time and one for infrared night vision. It has a sophisticated pattern recognition which can detect the difference between humans and trees, and a 5.5mm machine-gun. The robot also has a speaker to warn the intruder to surrender or get a perfect headshot. The robots will go on sale by 2007 for $ 200,000 and will be deployed on the border between North and South Korea. I didn’t know it was that hard to distinguish a human from a tree… Do check out the video.

CAD Animation (from Digg) – Looks like Ctrl+Alt+Del is making an animation/cartoon. The trailer is actually rather good. However, they’re charging a membership fee which isn’t cheap. Then again, I guess you can wait for all of season 1 to be done, get a month subscription and download all of them since you have access to old episodes and archives. Currently a month subscription is $2.95 and the remainder of season 1 (expiring 1/31/2007) is $14.95. Which is interesting… If I get monthly subscriptions till 1/31/2007, it’ll only cost me $8.85.

Robot Chicken: Calvin and Hobbes – a hilarious take on Calvin and Hobbes and how people would really see him in today’s world if he believe he had a pet tiger.

T-shirt turns air guitar into musicThe T-shirt has motion sensors built into its elbows that pick up the wearer’s arm motions and relay them wirelessly to a computer which interprets them as guitar riffs, said Richard Helmer, an engineer who leads the research team from the government’s Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Hacking the XBox 360’s HD-DVD for the PC (from /.) – Want a cheap HD-DVD drive for your PC? Apparently, it’s been hacked to work with XP and OSX already.

America Freedom to Fascism Authorized version (from Deadlock) – a very interesting documentary on income taxes and how it began and if it’s even legal or not… I was shocked to find out the Federal Reserves weren’t even controlled by the government, but instead in the hands of a few bankers.

iPod shuffle – Ars Technica does an awesome review of the new iPod shuffle clip.

2 Dead Plants

So I just found out the previous owner left some potted plants for me. I’ve only found 2. Maybe there’s more. Anyway, they’re all brown now and looks pretty much dead. One’s hanging from balcony #2 and the other is hanging near my font door. Both are places I frequent very little. I usually enter/exit through my garage and I hardly go out on either of my balconies.

Anyway, I’ve started to water them. Not sure if they’ll revive. If they don’t, guess I’ll just chuck them, but now I have a Tupperware (I thought it was spelled Tuppleware) sitting on my kitchen counter so I remember to water it every night.


Random Crap

Physics promises wireless powerThe answer the team came up with was “resonance”, a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied. “When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly,” Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website. Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example. “When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate,” he said. Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team’s system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays. Neat! No more plugging in my laptop or cell phone or iPod. These chargers will probably be as widely available as WiFi, so I can just walk around with these devices in my pocket and they’ll automatically charge.

KFC targets extraterrestrials with huge logoFrom space, extraterrestrials and astronauts can look back to earth and see The Great Wall of China — and KFC’s Colonel Sanders. Here’s a blog entry: KFC’s logo first to be seen from space (from /.) that tells you the story and has a video of the logo being made in progress.

kfc logo as seen from space

Getting People To Slow Down – Denmark’s Solution (from MS newsgroup) – (NOT WORK SAFE) Denmark has always been a very advanced country. They use novel approaches at solving problems. In Copenhagen, like in many other big cities, speeding is a problem. Most countries would put draconian radar controls, Police check points, speed bumps, etc. But not the Danes….. Here’s the most user friendly and novel approach for getting people to slow down. I like the name they chose: Speed Control Bikini Bandits

Restaurant comes to lobster’s rescueThe Monstro raffle was so successful that Cunha extended it to another lobster, a 9-pounder who’d joined Monstro in the tank a couple of weeks ago. That lobster was set free, too. I should just catch a bunch of fish or animals and ask people to pay me to free them. ;p Of course the money will be donated to better the animal welfare.

Below the Mean (from ChewyDenise) – A comic strip by a Cal student of Cal life. (Cal = U.C. Berkeley). Pretty funny so far. Some humor requires you to actually be a student to understand it, like the Evan’s reference. It only has 5 strips so far, but I see a good future for it.

Bloglines (from Tekman) – Tekman’s actually told me this awhile back. In fact I added bloglines as to my whitelist of being able to load my images. Anyway, with Firefox 2.0, they have several suggested RSS feed aggregators. Bloglines was one of them, so I decided to give it a try. It’s pretty neat! I split my RSS feeds into: Blogs, Comics, Deals, News, and TV. Unfortunately a “couple” of my friends don’t support RSS feeds on their blogs so they’ll probably be frequent less often now.

Older Brothers Suck (from SueOn)- I hope this kid grows up and kicks the crap out of his older brother. Thank god I don’t have an older brother. Then again, thank god I am one. *evil grin* Poor kid. At least the brother had the decency to let him wear a helmet for the “ultimate attempt”.

Worst Burglar Ever (from Digg) – A burglar tries to rob a convenience store but was able to enter, but unable to get out. During his escapade, he screws up multiple times and finally just waits for the owner to come in and when he does, he lays flat on the floor as if he’s given up and waiting arrest.

Inventionland (from Digg) – A pretty amazing place to work. Apparently, this is where you can submit your ideas and they’ll bring to life. However, there’s been a secondary report that only about 0.001% (I just pulled the number from by ***, but it was something extremely small) of the inventions they make for people ever get to see a profit.

Chocolate addiction leads to sweet discoveryThey were so addicted, they just could not give up their favourite daily snack — not even in the interest of science. But chocolate lovers who flunked out of a Johns Hopkins University study on aspirin and heart disease helped researchers stumble on an explanation of why a little chocolate a day can cut the risk of heart attack. I didn’t need another reason to eat chocolate.

Thumb-thing for the record booksA Singaporean student broke the Guinness World Record for the shortest time needed to type a 160-character SMS message Sunday after whizzing through the task in less than 42 seconds in a competition. I would’ve thought the Japanese would be the best at these things. You ever see how fast they pump up kanji and hiragana?

5 Toothpick And A Star… (from Digg) – See 5 toothpicks moving without any help…. from nothing to a star… I’ve probably seen this trick before, but it’s always neat. Explanation from PorkyPig: It’s not fake. There are five toothpicks broken in the middle but not snapped, the two halves remain attatched. the wood fibres in this attatched section have been compressed due to the bending action. As the wood absorbs the small amount of water, the fibres start to expand. Very hot water should enable this to happen more quickly. Use a hot spoon to add the water.

Thai zoo finds gold in giant pandas’ dungA Thai zoo has discovered a way to utilise unwanted dung from a couple of pandas by using it to make paper for souvenirs, the country’s panda project manager said on Tuesday. One panda’s poop is another man’s gold. Reminds me of the story Kimura tells us:

There’s a father or a doctor who’s doing an experiment. There’s 2 kids and he puts them into separate rooms. The first kid is placed in a room filled with toys, while the second kid is placed in a room filled with horse shit. The man began studying the 1st kid in the room with toys. After awhile, the kid began to cry and the man asked him what was wrong. The kid said the toys were no longer fun. The man thinks, if this kid is behaving like this already, I’m afraid to see what the other kid will be like. He went over to the second room to check on the kid in the horse shit room. To his surprise, this kid was having the time of his life. He was digging inside the poop and throwing it around and laughing all along. The man asks the kid why he was so happy and what he was doing. The kid replies, “If there’s this much horse poop, there must be a horse nearby.”

The moral of the story is similar to when given lemons, go make lemonade. Even when given a dump of horse shit, you can still have fun.

Bar Soap

Having a batch of baked chocolate chip cookies sitting in front of me at 2am is not a good thing. I’ve already taken two already. Hopefully that’ll be the end of it.

Now onto the main topic. So my current bar of soap has been shrinking toward non-existence. However, it’s almost the size where you’d just chuck it out because it’s no longer efficient to use it. The surface area has decreased so much, you have to rub several times before you get enough lather. It becomes easy to slip from your hands and down the drain. Even my soap holder’s grills aren’t skinny enough to hold it.

I do have spares already. I purchased a 20pk of Irish Spring from Costco for like $6.50. Some will probably bio-degrade completely by the time I get to it, but it seemed like a decent deal.

What they should make bar soaps do is assimilate into a new bar, so none goes to waste. Sort of like playdough. That would be neat. I know liquid body wash exists, but they’re just different than bar soap and I’m not a big fan of liquid body wash.

I also had the same problem with erasers back when I was in school. I never was able to completely finish using one as they’d get so small and I would lose them always. I believe they actually make erases like that already, but I forget the name, but it exhibits similar properties to gum.

Microsoft Firefox

Microsoft(R) Firefox (from MS newsgroup) – a hilarious parody site. It’s actually changed a lot since I first saw it (when it was just one page). They now have multiple pages and even a video to show you how amazing it is. Definitely check out the features page. The idea they wanted to get across is that IE7 is just Microsoft’s version of Firefox. Even the download link sends you to the IE7 executable.


Random Crap:

Deadlock introduced me to a new comic: Questionable Content. The series is okay, but did the AnthroPC is just too cute!!! Please read this strip: Chicks Dig Disc Drives – “You don’t have my raw electromagnetism.

Speaking of comics, Xyon introduced me to another one: Sinfest. The piggy is so cute!

Sketch your furniture in the air (from MS newsgroup) – Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialize free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined. Some people mentioned that it’d be difficult without the tactile feedback. I think instead of feedback, I’d rather see what I’m drawing. How do I know where to connect the legs of the chair if I can’t see the edge of the seat? But its pretty neat how they could do this.

Passing of an old friend: (from MS newsgroup)

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin.

Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.

Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive roll model for millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, two children, John Dough and Jane Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

WiFi Speed Spray (from MS newsgroup) – Do you live in a polluted environment such as Los Angeles? If so, you’ve probably experienced the heartbreak of data transfer slow-down. WiFi Speed Spray™ can overcome the effects of pollution, increase fidelity, and provide you with the fastest wireless data transfer possible. Approved by the FCC, and 802.11b compliant! Compatible with Windows and most versions of Linux.

You’ve probably seen the GOW (Gears of War) ad using Gary Jule’s Mad World (song was also featured in Donnie Darko). If you haven’t seen the ad, you can watch it on GameTrailersHD version / SD version. The game’s being touted as probably the best game this Christmas. I’m just waiting for it to be available in the company store. Anyway, people have been making spoofs of the commercial by timing it against other songs and some are pretty hilarious: Gears of War Ad Spoofs (from MS newsgroup).

Longhorn concept (from MS newsgroup) – The conceptual vision of Vista was pretty amazing. Yet our product doesn’t look like that at all. It’s amazing what you can do with flash.

HD Movies

So I watched 2 HD movies this weekend, both involving the Wachowski brothers.

The 1st one is my all time favorite movie: The Matrix
Followed by another awesome movie: V for Vendetta

I’m part of the Xbox 360 beta program where we get to test new things before they’re push down onto everyone and in a week or two, they’re about to unveil their TV and movie downloads in the marketplace. For more information, please read about it at Movies and TV on Your Xbox!

To celebrate its first birthday on November 22, Xbox 360™ becomes the first and only gaming console to provide HD and standard-definition TV shows and movies direct to you.

After an intense game of Gears of War®, turn on Peter Jackson’s King Kong on HD DVD, play PAC-MAN on Xbox Live® Arcade, or even watch an episode of CSI: Miami that you downloaded earlier.

Xbox Live Marketplace is the place to download your favorite movies and TV, and remember to check back on Xbox.com to see what’s new!

Most TV shows come with both SD and HD version. SD costs 240 points and HD costs 320 points. That translates to about $3 and $4 respectively. $4 for an HD version vs $2 on iTMS for a 320×240 version. I’d definitely go for the extra resolution and pay the extra $2. Or I could *cough* *cough*. Anyway, the biggest problem right now is the small hard drive. With only 20gigs and a movie like V for Vendetta being 6GB, it’s obviously not enough. The initial line up isn’t bad either, though it’s far from being great. Unfortunately, movies could only rented at the moment. You must watch within 14 days and once you start playing the movie, you have 24 hours to complete or rewatch as many as possible. It’d be nice if I could keep an HD version of these great movies.

The servers aren’t extremely fast, though I guess 6GB in a few hours is reasonable, considering I’ve also been downloading on my main computer. I’ve also download a couple episodes of Numb3rs as Liam has recommended that series to me, so I guess I can check this series out while testing this new marketplace.

The picture quality is amazing. I can’t even describe how pretty they were. I was mesmerized by the beauty. I’ve started to dislike the quality of DVDs as I’ve been spoiled by HDTV episodes and now HD movies. Even many animes nowadays come in HD resolution. I’m thinking of buying one of those HD-DVD drives that was just released for the Xbox 360 and then I remember, I don’t have an HDTV yet. Been eyeing a few, but it still seems rather expensive. The cost is between $2000-$2500 for a 56″ – 62″ DLP rear projection TV. My minimum requirement is that it supports 1080p.

Oh well, maybe it’ll be a Christmas present for myself. Maybe a deal will pop up around Black Friday (god forbid that I’ll actually go shopping on Black Friday this year). It’s what I decided to get for myself with my bonus money this year, which has been just sitting around accumulating interest at 5.05% at HSBCDirect. Speaking of which, Krrk told me about E-LOAN awhile back and they’re doing 5.50% savings. However, the minimum they need is $5000 (which I do have), but not enough that I wouldn’t pull from this. Plus HSBC has been treating me well and not like how INGDirect screwed their current customers in favor of new customers.

Ghosts of the Heartland

My friend Sschwartz has directed a new film: Ghosts of the Heartland.

Explore the trials and tribulations of two roommates who endure supernatural anomalies in the heartland.

Written/shot in 1 hour on zero budget with a 50 dollar DIY 35mm adapter like the redrock M2 micro35. Used a Nikon 50 f1.4 and Nikon 35 f2.

Directed/DPed by Sheldon Schwartz; starring Drew Greene and Pablo Parravicini – written / adlibed on the spot.

It’s rather amusing and hilarious. Pablo does an awesome job. Sschwartz’s usage of his 35mm adapter and having the out of focus background worked greatly for this film.


Random Crap:

Study shows why young shun condomsSome sexually active under 25s associate condoms with a lack of trust, while others believe carrying them could imply sexual experience, which might be a plus for men but not necessarily for women.

gotAPI/search (from RayAlome) – an awesome tool for web developers! Searches through many documented APIs such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Perl, etc.

Blockbuster to take mail order returns at storesEffective today, customers of Blockbuster’s online DVD rental service—Blockbuster Online—will be able return movies to the company’s stores through a program called Blockbuster Total Access. Blockbuster Online customers who opt to drive their rented DVDs to a local Blockbuster for return will be rewarded with a coupon for a free in-store rental. Those rentals would then be subject to regular store rental terms and would have to be returned at the same store from which they were rented. I called it! I said this would be one of the best moves that Blockbuster could do to attract customers away from Netflix. By making returns faster, this gives people more movies per month. However, this also means that they can not group a bunch of movies to ship back to the warehouse and save on postage/shipping.

www.dontclick.it (from /.) – an interface design where the user never has to click anything, but instead just mouse over or do mouse gestures. See how long you can navigate through that UI before you click and you’ll see how entrenched clicking has become for us.

propan-2-ol (CH3CHOHCH3) (from Angelus) – The instructions of the hanging strips said to use “isopropyl rubbing alcohol” to clean the wall surface before use. Isopropyl alcohol sounds like some cheem chemical but if you go to any hardware store, I almost gurantee you that you won’t be able to find it there. … Hahaha… most of us would probably have one of these lying around at home, or used it before. It used to be quite popular as your simple floppy disk drive cleaner. I thought this blog post was hilarious where they were trying to find rubbing alcohol and had to go through all this work. I for one always have a bottle nearby. *sniff* mmmmm, smells so good.

This is how we built the Mac-O-Lantern (from /.) – the beauty of the functional and organic pumpkin case mod is its fleeting existence. the coolest thing about this project is the fact that such an extraordinary amount of precious time was squandered on a fruitless(!) pursuit. there are better case mods out there, and there are sweeter jack-o-lanterns. we split the difference.

Man builds 3,300-pound rubber band ballWith all due respect to The Spinners and T.I., prepare yourself for the new rubber-band man. Steve Milton, through concentration and perseverance, has created a 3,300-pound ball comprised of rubber bands. His creation measures almost 5 feet tall and takes up half his two-car garage. Though it’s not official, the 26-year-old Eugene man believes he has broken the record for the heaviest such ball, eclipsing John Bain’s mark of 3,120 pounds. The Wilmington, Del., man’s record has stood for eight years. You can also visit his MySpace page and watch videos of him using the rubber band ball to crush things like TVs and computers.

Man tries to use fake $100 ‘Bill’ billPolice knew this Bill wasn’t authentic. A man has been arrested for trying to use a $100 bill with no president’s face and the name of former President Clinton. I would love to see this bill.

Batman helps Ga. town infested by batsThat’s what the local bat remover goes by. George Perkins often makes public appearances in the caped crusader’s costume and drives his own Batmobile — a retro-styled Chrysler Prowler with bat emblems. Callers to his office in Eufaula, Ala., known as Bat Cave 1, or Union Springs, Ala., known as Bat Cave 2, hear the “Batman” TV show theme while on hold.

First question wrong on Who Wants to be a Millionaire (from Angelus) – the 100 dollar question, the easiest question on the show.. wrong! Hahahahahaha!!! Guess sometimes caffeine just can’t replace good old natural sleep.