Anime – Page 6 – Krunk4Ever!

March 11, 2007

Daylight Saving Time

It’s that time of year again, but this time, we’re a couple weeks ahead of schedule due to changes in policy. Since it’s Spring, we’re set the clock forward (spring forward, fall back). Both my computer and my Weather Channel radio controlled clock jumped from 2am to 3am.

UserFriendly – Sundial – Suddenly. These are looking pretty fabulous to software maintainers.

Random Crap:

There was another strip from UserFriendly that I found amusing: Cracked Copy of Vista for Cracked Copy of Civilization 4.

RayAlome had sent me a link to the trailer of Paprika. The animation was amazing. I really liked the quote it had near the end:

Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.”

-Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Stereogram Tut Animated Shark Small (from Digg) – I was just talking to Lisymle the other day about Magic Eye and Stereogram images and she told me she has never gotten a magic eye to work. I tried to show here a few websites and techniques on trying to focus beyond the screen and merge the 2 images, but she hasn’t been able to do it yet. This was the first magic eye in animation that I’ve seen. Pretty neat. See if you can see the shark wiggle.

Big Brother State – An animated short about public surveillance by David Scharf (from Digg) – an interesting film. When I saw it earlier, it was a higher quality version. It appears you can still download the higher quality version off bittorrent or download it from Internet Archive. I do have to disagree with his bit on TC (Trusted Computing). It may be true that TC will warn users about particular software that’s being installed, but I still have final say if something gets installed or not (or at least I hope so).

German man chainsaws house in two in divorce split (from Digg) – A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck. Awesome!

Mom accused of driving son to fight boy – The mother of a 13-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly driving her son to a fight with another boy, then cheering him on as he struck his smaller opponent. Police say the mother shouted down another woman who tried to break up the fight across from Sutter Middle School on Monday. A student caught the scene on video.

Hole in pyjamas reveals Internet plagiarism – Candidates for British universities have been caught red-handed copying their applications from the Internet after hundreds mentioned “burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight” on their online entrance forms. The phrase, taken from a Web site which provides examples of personal statements used by successful candidates, describes an early encounter with a chemistry set.

Fans pay to chat with Jackson in Japan – ) – Excited fans got the chance to meet Michael Jackson in Tokyo on Thursday — but only those who could afford to pay 400,000 yen (1,770 pounds) for the privilege.

Animaniacs – Rob Paulson (Yakko) – Nations of the World (from RayAlome) – Here’s a little thing a friend of a f… Here’s a little thing a friend of a friend of mine went to. She saw Rob Paulson who is absolutely awesome! He’s here singing the world song! You can hear her scream her lungs out at the end! Enjoy! =P It’s been so long since I’ve watched this cartoon. Oh what sweet memories.

Beijing’s Olympic Stadium (from Digg) – I’ve got to say, the design is rather cool.

25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video (from Digg) – Not long ago, we wrote a popular piece about UC-Berkeley’s iTunes initiative which, to sum it up, allows anyone, anywhere, to download complete university courses to their iPods for free. Amazing. Today, we want to point out that Berkeley also makes available full-fledged courses via video/webcast. You can find the complete list of courses here, but below we have listed below 25 courses that figure into a “core” undergraduate curriculum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts courses, which will teach you a lot and, even better, cost you nothing. Each of these courses, coming straight from the classroom, can be accessed with Real Player, and some can also be accessed as MP3s. I remember when I had to go through a whole semester’s worth of these before finals. Or did I…?

March 7, 2007January 2, 2008

smartycast

My friend Ryawn imed me today and told me about this new site he’s working on called smartycast. In fact, I’ve actually linked to his site in my friends list for some time, however when I added that link, their site was still just a place holder. He noticed that I had an entry on uTorrent the other day and told me the purpose of his site.

His first tutorial on that site is How To Automatically Download TV Shows. As his disclaimer states: By learning how to download TV shows you’ll also learn a little bit about Bit Torrent in the process. Keep in mind that you may be violating copyright laws and I am not in any way responsible for any trouble that you might get yourself into. With that said, let’s get to work! I also do not endorse any illegal activity that may be “inspired” by my site.

His tutorial shows you step by step on what to download and how to configure the application so downloading TV shows online doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Random Crap:

TMNT Arcade confirmed for release on Xbox Live Arcade (from Digg) – While a release date has not been announced yet (the new movie comes out in March), we do know that Ubisoft is working with Digital Eclipse to port the Heroes in a Half Shell onto XBLA. The finalized title is expected to cost only 400 points, and will include co-op support for up to four players via offline and Xbox Live modes. No word yet if they’re including upgraded support for HD. Sweet! 4 player TMNT here I come!

50 States in 10 Minutes (from Hjo3) – You have 10 Minutes to remember as many of the 50 United States as you can. After 10 Minutes, the correct answers will appear in this space so you can see which ones you’ve missed. I missed 6. (Show). I actually did a lot better than I thought I would.

Biggest Shotgun In The World (from Derek) – This shotgun is so big it takes two men to carry it. I guess its called a punt gun and I cant think of a practical use for it, except to destroy a lot of stuff at once. To me, it’s more like a portable canon. Hehe.

Teenager leaves “deposit” in bank (from Cari) – An 18-year-old man has been detained for repeatedly defecating in front of a cash machine in a bank vestibule in the southern German town of Eggmuehl, police said on Tuesday.

Mario Too – A new Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip that I found rather amusing.

Fat toddlers ‘risk early puberty’ (from Digg) – Girls who are overweight at the age of three risk reaching puberty as early as nine years old, a US study suggests. What about boys?

Great Firewall of China (from NextLust) – Want to see which sites are blocked behind the Great Firewall of China? Just visit this site and pass in your link. Apparently all livejournals are have been block recently. I just tested krunk4ever.com and it appears to be valid within China.

50 Amazing Ads You Haven’t Seen (from Digg) – A set of 50 advertisements that stand out from the rest. Each of these is unique and creative. Collected over a 5 month period. These are rather interesting and funny.

Xbox360 Homebrew in Progress: MAME360, ScummVM (from Digg) – We got this interesting email from a trusted developer that wishes to remain anonymous for now. He has been working on a port of MAME and ScummVM for the Xbox360 for some time now. The development and pictures below are from a devkit, but with the recent Hypervisor Exploit (kernel 4532/4548 only for now) there’s hope you’ll be able to run this on a retail Xbox360 some day. Wow! Speaking of which… maybe I should setup MAME on my Media Center PC, get one of those Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

I was introduced to Dead Karl on 4chan, but I found a bunch more on this thread: [Animation Gif] Dead Karl. The Chinese name is 史前動物 (史前动物) which translates to Prehistoric Animal. He’s created a bunch of animated gifs which I wanted to share:

Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

I do have to warn you, these little animated stories are somewhat gory.

Off-duty Northwest employee charged – An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

Dirty car windows become artist’s canvas – Wade, with his scraggly graying hair and a fondness for shirts with wacky prints, doesn’t wash his car when it first develops a fine coating of limestone dust. For the past four years he’s created art on it instead.

The People’s Mario (from Cari) – Based on that silly Rumor saying mario had subliminal communist propaganda. What if Mario was really a Communist? A short flash animation showing you Mario with a hammer killing Goombas and Koopa Troopas backed by Communist music.

First ever HD South Park episode for free on Xbox Live Marketplace (from SD) – This coming Tuesday is a big day for people that are both fans of South Park and Xbox 360 owners. Comedy Central is releasing the first ever high definition episode of South Park on the Xbox Live Marketplace to all members (we’re assuming this means Silver and Gold) for free. That’s right, everyone’s favorite word — free. It will be on Marketplace at that low, low, price of free for two weeks, and will also be available as a free HD-DVD to people buying a new Xbox 360 console or the HD-DVD add-on drive at Best Buy from March 20th through April 3rd.

Discover just updated their list of 5% Cashback Bonus for the months of April through June (from SD) – Lowe’s, Linens ‘n Things, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ace Hardware, Sears, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Dillard’s, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Circuit City, Borders, Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., FTD.COM. Pretty sweet list. Guess if you have house improvements, you should just wait up the next 2 months.

March 2, 2007March 2, 2007

Calculator Hot Keys

So Xyon and I were playing with the Windows calculator the other day and I brought up the fact that in scientific mode, there wasn’t a square root button, while on the other hand in standard mode, there was. The only way to do square root in scientific mode is to hit the x^y button and then punch in .5.

Anyway, I’d imagine that to do x^y (or x to the power of y), you would hit x followed by “^” followed by y followed by enter. However, Xyon tells me that “^” really means XOR in calculator. I’m like there must be some shortcut key (or hot key) to activate the power. Turns out, for the 1st time in history, when you right clicked something and clicked “What’s this?”, something useful actually got displayed.

We right clicked the x^y button and clicked “What’s this?” and it showed:

Computes x raised to the yth power. Use this button as a binary operator. For example, to find 2 raised to the 4th power, click 2 x^y 4 =, which equals 16.

To calculate the yth root of x use Inv+x^y.

Keyboard equivalent = Y

So according to this tooltip, to do square root of 49, I could hit 49 -> y -> .5 -> enter OR 49 -> i -> y -> 2 -> enter, which both will yield 7.

Here is the full list of keyboard shortcuts (from the help file):

Button: Key
%: %
(: (
): )
*: *
+: +
+/-: F9
–: –
.: . or ,
/: /
0-9: 0-9
1/x: r
=: ENTER
A-F: A-F
And: &
Ave: CTRL+A [average]
Backspace: BACKSPACE
Bin: F8 [binary]
Byte: F4
C: ESC
CE: DEL
cos: o [cosine]
Dat: INS [
Dec: F6 [decimal]
Degrees: F2
dms: m [degree-minute-second]
Dword: F2
Exp: x [exponent/scientific notation]
F-E: v [scientific notation toggle]
Grads: F4
Hex: F5 [hexadecimal]
Hyp: h [hyperbolic]
Int: ; [integer]
Inv: i [inverse]
ln: n [natural logarithm]
log: l [logarithm]
Lsh: < [left shift]
M+: CTRL+P
MC: CTRL+L
Mod: %
MR: CTRL+R
MS: CTRL+M
n!: ! [factorial]
Not: ~
Oct: F7 [octal]
Or: |(pipe)
pi: p
Qword: F12
Radians: F3
s: CTRL+D [standard deviation]
sin: s [sine]
sqrt: @ [square root]
Sta: CTRL+S [statistics]
Sum: CTRL+T
tan: t [tangent]
Word: F3
Xor: ^
x^2: @ [squared]
x^3: # [cubed]
x^y: y [raised to the power of]

Most are pretty intuitive. Others are somewhat obscure. One thing I did noticed was that @ was reused. In standard mode, it means square root. In scientific mode, it means squared. VERY BIG DIFFERENCE.

Random Crap:

Super Mario Snow Art (from Digg) – Some bored New Jersey college kids turned a snowy night into a kick ass piece of art. – Nic, Daniel, Garrett Ian, Daniel , Justin and Craig are engineering and computer science students at New Jersey Institute of Technology, so when they saw that mother nature was dropping some white stuff on the ground outside, they decided to construct a wonderfully nerdy shrine to their favorite Italian plumber. Apparently, they used a string grid to get it, right. We’re not quite sure what that means, but the result sure is cool.

Steampunk Keyboard Mod (from Digg) – My goal with this project was to build a retro keyboard that was fully functional and of a sufficient quality that it could be used everyday by a touch typist. In order to achieve this I chose a high quality (though widely available) keyboard as my starting point. This is an IBM Model M “Clicky” keyboard. They were made starting in the mid 1980’s and a version is still manufactured today. This particular keyboard was made in 1989 and shipped with and IBM PowerStation 530, a UNIX box the size of a kegerator.

Kanon – Shiori Cosplay (from 4chan) – thought it was really well done and she’s really cute. The 2nd image is the actual scene from the anime.

WoW: Best birthday cake evar (243KB of visual awesome inline) (from Digg) – My good friend makes kick-ass cakes as a hobby. Last year she started dating my old roomate who plays World of Warcraft a fair amount around his job; for christmas she aquired a “WoW stole my boyfriend” t-shirt. She is good-natured about his love of Warcraft, however, as shown by the birthday cake she made him three weeks ago. The birthday cake actually looks really neat.

Newspaper says it fell for fake Gucci ad – Some people will do anything to appear in the papers. But few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country’s biggest media companies into publishing a two-page ad he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume. You can view the actual ad at adfreak.

Jealous husbands may face trial in court – Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women told a local newspaper on Friday. … Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are “crazy” even if they are caught red-handed having an affair, are guilty of indifference, she said. Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. Mexico’s individual states will determine the punishments, it said. I wonder if there’s a similar law for women, where if they avoid having sex with their husband, to be tried and punished ;p

March 1, 2007February 28, 2007

My New HTPC

I finally got my hard drive replacement yesterday and reinstalled Vista and now my living room setup is semi-complete. I’m still missing a few key items which I’ll be getting along the way which include a small coffee table, a better TV stand, a HDTV tuner card, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse set, and a surround sound system.

Anyways, let’s talk about my HTPC. It’s made up of the following components:

Motherboard: Abit IL9 Pro Motherboard – $85
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU – $204
Case: Lian Li PC-C30A Case – $130
Graphics Card: Asus EAX1600PRO SILENT Radeon X1600PRO 256MB – $93
Memory: 2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 DDR2 667 RAM – $136
Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB SATA – $140
Optical Drive: NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD Burner – $29*
Power Supply: Ultra V Series 500W – $0
Input Devices: Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center – $25; Remote Keyboard for Media Center – $45
Cables: HDMI DVI Cable – 10ft – $5.74; 3.5mm Stereo Plug/2 RCA Plug cable – 6ft – $1.25
UPS: APC BX 1500 Battery Back-UPS – $100

The final total comes up to be $994. Most of these items were purchased out of state (via Newegg), so there wasn’t any sales tax and most of them had free shipping.

I originally had purchased a Seagate 7200.10 500GB SATA hard drive with perpendicular recording, but the drive was rather noisy, especially when writing, so I swapped it out and replaced it with the Western Digital 500GB SATA drive which people have commented on to be quiet, and indeed is.

*I also swapped DVD burners between my main machine which had the NEC ND-3550A (or 3540A) which is very quiet, but no longer carried by Newegg. I had gotten the NEC 7170A-0B 18X DVD Burner, hoping that since it’s still NEC, it’d be nice and quiet like their previous models, but boy was I wrong. Apparently this drive is actually manufactured by Optiarc, a joint company formed by Sony and NEC. I’ve tried tools like CD Bremse and Nero CD-DVD Speed as recommended by those at CDFreaks.com, but neither worked. Someone also suggested AnyDVD, but I have yet to try it. What these tools are suppose to do is set the drive to run at a slower speed, so it can never goes into high speed mode (i.e. 18X), because who really needs 18X when watching a DVD. I’ve tried flashing the drive, but the tools don’t seem to be able to control it. On the contrary, both were able to control my ancient NEC ND-3550A.

Here are some pictures of while I was building the HTPC:

Installing Vista was a breeze, a lot easier than I had expected after hearing “horror” stories. Though then again, I was installing it on a clean machine and had been warned what hardware was compatible and what were causing problems (apparently nVidia Vista drivers are still iffy). After updating drivers and running the performance test, I hit 4.3 and the limiting factor was my graphics card. 4.3’s already an really good score, so I wasn’t too worried.

My next problem as I realized was there wasn’t a easy way for me to connect my HTPC to the existing network and internet. Derek and I had spent something walking up and down my stairs trying to figure out the best way. At first I thought I would just get a wireless bridge and use 802.11g to talk wirelessly. However, with all the HD content that I’ll soon be accumulating, having gigabit would be nice. So I ended up pulling a long cable from my switch to my new HTPC. I purchased a bunch of these cable hooks from Lowes and hammered them around my stair frame. I also didn’t have a ladder, so I used my plastic table as a platform to stand on.

I’ve also rearranged the couches so that I have more living room space to actually put something in between the couch and the TV. The main reason being that I was setting up StepMania with my USB dance pads and they didn’t really fit in the old configuration. Now that I pushed the sofas back, I have a lot more space and can actually fit a coffee table or maybe even an exercise bike. What’s neat is also there’s 2 front USB ports on my Lian Li case and that’s perfect for 2 DDR dance mats.

Our company store today just announced that the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 was available. Derek and I have been looking at the Logitech diNovo Edge. However, I wonder when the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 will be released.

Here’s some pictures of my semi-final TV setup with my so pretty Vizio 47″ 1080p LCD HDTV:

Remember, each picture also has a FULL SIZE.

February 3, 2007February 3, 2007

Random Crap

First I want to wish Lsiymle a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

100 FREE Downloads from eMusic (from Decathanerd) – appears to be for people who purchased a COWON product, but I don’t believe the registration requires any sort of proof. I haven’t done this myself, but eMusic is famous for no DRM on their music and that their songs work on any digital music playing device. The default account gets 25 FREE songs and signing up from this link bumps it to 100. Let me know what your experience is with this service. You have 30 days to choose 100 songs from 1 million.

Tooth chipped on cookie ruled work-related – A salesman who chipped a tooth on a cookie while visiting a customer is entitled to compensation for his dental work after a court ruled it a work-related injury. I just found this to be awfully silly. It seems to make work reliable for everything you do on their clock, including “any” accidents that may happen outside of the work area.

Jeremy Wai – Cap Through Coke Bottle (from Artemyst) – A coke cap penetrates a coke bottle. Jeremy Wai is a pretty neat magician which has a ton more magic tricks on YouTube.

listpic – Craigslist Pic Viewer (from The Consumerist) – as the title goes, it’s a picture viewer of all craigslist listings and sorts them by date and price. For example, you can do a query, set a min/max price and the results will come back as images instead of just text and links where people generally have aren’t good at filling out. For example, here are all the furniture listings for Seattle.

VG Cats – Detergent – BAN… KAI!!! It’s a reference anime watchers will get. This is based of a anime/manga called Bleach. Now does the title of the comic make more sense? I’m not sure if this kitties have names, but the the pink female one is representing Kuchiki Byakuya and the gray male one is representing Kurosaki Ichigo. I’m not sure what the reference of the “rat” or “morning-star” is. Maybe someone can explain that to me.

After look up morning-star on Wikipedia, it apparently was a medieval weapon in the form of a spiked club resembling a mace, usually with a long spike extending straight from the top in addition to a number of smaller spikes around the circumference of the head. I guess the “rat” comes from the part where they’re cats and cats eat rats. Maybe?

According to ElBandMonkey and Nekobo: I think it’s from Dungeons and Dragons, where people joke about the ultimate weapon being a rat on a flail, an allusion to back in the day when people use to catapult dead rats during sieges over castle walls to poison the populace. According to their Bleach entry, Leo’s Bankai form and the Rat Morning-star (build up on the Rat Flail) were tough.

Student wants to ‘rent’ a girlfriend – A desperate Chinese university student wants to “rent” a girlfriend for 10 days so he can show her off to his parents over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media reported Wednesday. … Wang Jisheng, a professor with the Psychology Institution of the Chinese Academy Sciences, was quoted as saying Zhu was trying to show filial piety to his parents but was only cheating them.

Bellevue scores high again in water quality report (from MS newsgroup) – Drinking water in Bellevue remains safe for consumption. According to the 2006 Water Quality Report, prepared in accordance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, Bellevue’s drinking water meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards.

Apple UK: “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC.” Smashing, isn’t it? (from Digg) – Here’s the UK version I’m a Mac, I’m a PC ad.

Top 5: Piggy Banks, Stylish Savings (from The Consumerist) – these piggy banks are rather cute!

Windows Vista in pictures (from Digg) – Look at all the pretty pictures ;p

Fan made Star Wars Wii video (from Digg) – One reader’s idea of how a Star Wars game might work on the Wii. Now if we could just get Lucasarts to actually make one! The other day I was just talking to StanMan about a Star Wars Wii game where the Wiimote would act as the light saber holder. This guy takes it to the next level.

Uncle Sam spoils dream trip to space (from MS newsgroup) – Brian Emmett’s childhood fantasy came true when he won a free trip to outer space. But the 31-year-old was crushed when he had to cancel his reservation because of Uncle Sam. … Then reality hit. After some number-crunching, Emmett realized he would have to report the $138,000 galactic joy ride as income and owe $25,000 in taxes. Unwilling to sink into debt, the software consultant from the San Francisco Bay area gave up his seat. There was a discussion thread on paying taxes on the actual value of gift and not the MSRP. For example, if you get a free copy of Windows, although the MSRP is like $300, the actual value is closer to $100-$150, so you only have to pay taxes on the actual value. I forgot what the term was.

Famous quotes on Sex (from Digg) (NSFW) – some pretty funny quotes by famous people. Worth the read and laugh.

Casino Changes Tune; Retiree Gets Jackpot After All (from Digg) – Stephen Wilkinson is a happy man this weekend — $102,000 happier. Wilkinson thought he struck it rich Monday while playing slots at a new parlor at Philadelphia Park. But the parlor then said it was all a mistake and refused to pay him the jackpot, offering two free meals instead. On Friday night, the operators of the parlor at the Bensalem racetrack had a change of heart and phoned Wilkinson, saying they wanted to do the right thing. An update to the previous posted story of him getting ripped off because of a “software glitch”.

If Women Acted Like Men (from Deadlock) (NSFW!) – This beautiful girl acts in this hilarious underwear commercial as a guy in the morning Caught on Video. The way this girl acts she can be passed as a guy.

The Fancy Pants Adventure (from Digg) – a really fun flash game that seems to have a mix of Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog in this side-scroller.

Keifer Admits to Abusing Bauer Action Figure (from Digg) –

“We took the doll out for a night to have some fun and we’d had some drinks. We sat it on the corner of the table. We started torturing him around 11 o’clock at night, and, by two o’clock in the morning, we had set him on fire in the parking lot.

“We got up the next day and there was just this puddle of wax. His clothes didn’t burn, which I thought was pretty cool…and then I got a call the next day saying, ‘Did you like the doll?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it was great.’ And they said, ‘Well, OK, good, you gotta send it back to us because that was the prototype…It took that guy a year to make it.’ I said, ‘Well, let me look for it, I think I left it in the trailer.’ This went on for about a week and then I had to just kinda come clean.”

Google TV – An Elaborate Hoax (from Digg) – A heavily produced YouTube video from Mark Erickson at “Infinite Solutions” shows users how to get in on the super-secret (and non existent) Google TV beta. It’s rather amazing if this was true.

USAA Lets You Remotely Deposit Checks – We got a flier in our recent USAA bill announcing they’re now letting customers deposit checks from. Just sign and scan your checks and send it in through the USAA website. As far as we know, USAA is the only bank to offer this service to consumers. I always wished that such a service existed. I mean I can do all my banking electronically. The only thing I can’t do is get cash and deposit checks. 1 of the 2 problems are solved, now we just need some way to print cash ;p

Paint.NET v3.0 is OUT! (from Digg) – I’ve been using Paint.NET v2.0 as a replacement to Photoshop as it basically does all that I need to do inside Photoshop. The best part is it’s free. It does have 1 slight problem where it only supports WMI scanners and mine I’m guessing isn’t WMI compatible.

NES Nintendo – EVERY GAME EVER MADE – 670 LOT Licensed (from Digg) – I remember my friend Jeff Tori in Jr. High who told me he’d give up all his games and future games if he could just have an NES console with all the games. At that time I recall Playstation was the popular console and FFVII was the popular game at that time.

January 20, 2007

More and more junk

Sigh… My blog entries are queuing up faster than I can blog:

Your Drafts: Unknown, Open Season, The Queen, Blood Diamond, An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 – Evening Harder, The Corporation, Kanon, Poseidon, Hacking Democracy, Accepted, Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 黑社會 (Election), DragonZakura, Superman Returns, L.A. Confidential, Cars, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, ゼロの使い魔, Sneakers, The Notebook, Little Miss Sunshine, The Triplets Of Belleville, Love Actually, Transamerica, Two for the Money, Thumbsucker, When Do We Eat, The Sentinel, Who Killed the Electric Car?, The Benchwarmers, Basic Instinct 2, Sympathy for Lady Venegance, Saving Electricity, Food Scarcity, xxxHOLiC, Blood+, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Episodes, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Episodes 1 – 8, Temperature Scales, Black Cat, REC, Fate/stay night, Bleach Episode 71 – 83, Hellsing Ultimate OVA, Detective Academy Q Episodes 31 – 39, Dial Tone, Monster Episodes 66 – 74, Initial D Fourth Stage Episodes 21 – 24, 24 – Season Four, Full Metal Panic – The Second Raid Episodes 9-13, Naruto Episode 150 .

Every time I think of something or watch a movie, I just create a new draft post and enter the title and any little details I don’t want to forget. Then it just starts piling up. I’ve pretty much given up on posting a blog for each anime episode. If I feel like it, I’d have entries on certain episodes that really stood out, or I’d blog about once I complete the series.

Random Crap:

Mysterious samurai saves Police in UK (from Digg) – A samurai sword wielding vigilante has come to the rescue of two Police officers when they were attacked by an armed gang in South Shields, England. Could it be a Hiro wannabe? I’m curious what the guy dressed like, or if they just labeled him as “a samurai” because he was wielding a curved sword. Who knows if the sword was even curved…

H&R Block’s Freudian Slip (from The Consumerist)

It’s estimated Americans overpaid their taxes by nearly a billion dollars.* Don’t be one of them. H&R Block will get you the maximum refund you’re entitled to, or your tax preparation is FREE. So every dollar you’ve earned is where it belongs. In our pocket.

It’s funny how much a difference a ‘y’ would make in this case.

Netflix offers streaming movies to subscribers –

The new service will be rolled out gradually but should be available to all Netflix subscribers by July. The amount of video that can be watched on the PC varies depending on the subscription plan. Users with the $5.99 plan will get six hours of online viewing each month, while those with the more common $17.99 plans get 18 hours. The decision to offer this in terms of “hours” rather than “movies” could potentially frustrate customers who don’t want to wait until next month to see the second half of Casino Royale, but it does allow for stopping, starting, and switching films without developing some convoluted definition of what it means to “watch a film.”

The initial selection is fairly thin, with only 1,000 titles available (out of more than 70,000 available on DVD), but this was the same number of DVDs that Netflix launched with back in 1999. It’s probably just as well; Netflix has made clear that they want to roll out the new technology slowly to make sure that everything works correctly. As CEO Reed Hastings notes, this isn’t a market that is going to pay big dividends for a few years yet.

A rather interesting service. From the feedback I’ve read, the quality’s really good, almost as good as DVD quality, though I’d believe it when I see it. Then again, DVD quality is only 480p and I’ve been spoiled with 720p and 1080p content recently. I’d like to see how far this goes and how big it can become. Maybe I’ll cave and get a Netflix subscription.

Male panda said too fat to have sex – Chuang Chuang the Panda is just too heavy to have sex. Thai authorities have put him on a strict diet as part of a long-running campaign to get him to mate with female partner Lin Hui at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand. Haha.

Are You Gonna Do It? (from Digg) – “I’ll just walk into Steve’s office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It’s guaranteed to work.” We laughed, thinking that not even Burrell would have the guts to do that. … “Are you gonna do it? Are you really gonna do it?”, asked Steve. Somehow, word about the urination threat had gotten back to Steve, and he was genuinely curious if Burrell would go through with it or not. I was disappointed he didn’t do it.

My Kids Are Perverted (NSFW) (from Tera) – Hilarious story of what the kids keep asking this teacher. Since it’s not safe for work, you’ll have to click the show button. (Show)

Jeep® Waterfall (from Digg) – From Detroit to Beijing, the Jeep Waterfall has mesmerized auto showgoers from across the globe. Tune in to discover how this H20 wonder works. Amazing piece of engineering. Apparently you can drive this waterfall/rainfall as if it was an inkjet printer. Rather interesting.

Boy, 9, sneaks on to plane (from The Consumerist) – Police in Lakewood, Washington, say the boy (Semaj Booker) has a history of stealing cars and running away from home. He was apparently trying to get to Dallas, where his grandfather lives, and where the boy himself used to live. But he came up short, only getting as far as San Antonio after hopping two separate flights. Police say he apparently found a Southwest Airlines boarding card and made it through airport security. I really wonder if airport security really exists, or is it just their to inconvenience people like us.

Porsche – Double Take (from Derek) – An interesting ad, but it does show where a car’s *cough* is.

Life Lessons (from SD) – A bunch of figurines being sold by TLC with rather funny sayings. Like #20 If you want to get rid of a guy,tell him you love him. Or #58 – Never introduce her as “my future ex.”

Punchy! (from RayAlome) – It’s all fun and games until someone gets punched in the face. And then it’s even more fun! Funny skit where some guy can’t control punching people in the face.

The Towel Trick fixes 360’s? (from MS newsgroup) – Everyone’s dreaded the red circle that appears on your Xbox 360 to notify you it’s broken. Recently, there’s been a spread of the “towel trick” and apparently many people who’ve gotten the red circle of death are claiming it fixes their Xbox 360. What you do is wrap your Xbox 360 completely in a towel (basically enclosing the whole thing) and turn it on and wait 10-15 minutes. At this time, your Xbox 360 will get really hot, and I mean REALLY HOT. Turn it off and turn it back on and your machine might magically work. No one really knows why this is fixing their Xbox 360s, but CDMCC suggests that it might have to do with the soldering problem.

College Saga – Episode 1 (from Cari) – Once upon a time, when Earth was still a beautiful place, an evil force came to turn all living things into Vegetarians. Three students from suburban Massachusetts would step up against this catastrophe… to end Vegetarian Supremacy. Mark, Jesús, Maria and their foes would make amazing personal discoveries as the two forces clash. And so began the ultimate saga about friendship, heritage, sex and explosions. A hilarious skit done by a group of college students, where they go through college as if it was a RPG game.

January 19, 2007January 19, 2007

Kanon – Sayuri’s Story

This clip was taken from Kanon (2006) episode 14. Baby Sayuri is so cute and she has a very cute little brother too! Yet the story becomes so sad… *sniff*

Large version:

Small version:

Random Crap:

Sessions with R. Tam (from Digg) – an excerpt from the Firefly series. Appears to be sessions held with River Tam during their experimentation. Comments claim that the interviewer is Josh Whedon.

Terry Tate Compilation (from FuzzyWuzzy) – just a bunch of painful scenes. this is what happens when you don’t have office etiquette.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman (from Digg) – Remember those series back when you were kids. I remember having tons of post-its to remember how to trace back so I don’t have to start all over again when I get a bad ending. They’re giving away this one for free and apparently works on your iPod and even has colored pictures. I haven’t given it a try yet, but seems interesting.

China: Teahouse is threat to morality – – A Shanghai tea house whose name translates roughly as “Frog Keeps a Mistress” has been deemed a threat to public morality and told to get a new moniker, local media said Friday. The “Qingwa Bao Ernai” shop was violating China’s advertising law, the Shanghai Daily and other newspapers said, citing a local commercial bureau official, Xu Jun. Article wasn’t that interesting. It took me awhile to figure out how Qingwa Bao Ernai = Frog Keeps a Mistress. Turns out to be 青蛙保二奶.

Real-time quotes for free (from Digg) – Apparently you’ll soon be able to get real time stock quotes from Google Finance.

Starcraft in 3D! (from Digg) – I first heard about Project Revolution a couple years ago. At the time, I remember thinking there was no way it would ever get off the ground once Blizzard got wind of a Warcraft III total conversion to recreate Starcraft in 3D. Well, here we are a few years later and it appears the folks over at Snowflake Entertainment have made some real progress. Check out the video.

Simple Workaround for Ctrl Print Screen (from Helldesk) – hilarious video of a guy apparently trying to print a screenshot, but the printer messes with him. He takes his frustrations out on his computer and on the copy machine and attempts to photocopy his monitor screen, even though the monitor is probably no longer connected to his computer.

Optical illusion in 3D:

Whenever I see these things, I try to imagine how it would appear if I look at it from the side, but my mind just won’t work that way. You can see similar objects at Impossible figures in the real world and Impossible Objects in Real Life no.2.

Why do we open our mouths to yawn properly? (from Digg) – The involuntary act of yawning usually includes opening the mouth very wide while slowly taking in a deep breath. This contortion of the mouth puts pressure on the salivary glands causing the eyes to sometimes tear-up, causes the throat to better open, and tightens the muscles around the mouth making sure the yawn is better accomplished. Couple other interesting questions answered include: Why do some people have three nipples?, Is it true that a woman’s breasts can grow enormously overnight?, and Why is it absolutely impossible to sneeze with your eyes open?.

Ex-Playmate Reveals Playboy Mansion Secrets (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) (from Digg) – Now, for the first time ever, one of those blonde beauties has done the unspeakable. She has broken the mansion’s revered code of silence. Jill Ann Spaulding, a stunning professional poker player with all the obvious attributes that one might find inside Hef’s stable of potential Playmates, has written a tell-all book entitled, “Jill Ann: Upstairs.” Ever wonder what the life of Hugh Hefner is like? or even one of the bunnies that live in the Playboy mansion? Well, this little interview gives some insight, though it’s hard to tell how much of what she says is the truth.

Bash Quote #207373 (from Tera) –

<anamexis> oh man
<anamexis> I was opening a coke, right
–> Beefpile (~mbeefpile@cloaked.wi.rr.com) has joined #themacmind
<anamexis> and it exploded
<anamexis> ALMOST all over my keyboard
<anamexis> but I got it away just in time
<– Beefpile has quit (sick fuckers)
<anamexis> :<

Stationary biker rests after record bid – George Hood didn’t go to Disney World after riding a stationary bike for an apparent record of 85 hours. He checked into a hospital. After two days of recovery and lots of fluids and sleep, the 49-year-old Aurora man pronounced himself almost back to normal Monday as he described his bid, still awaiting certification, for a place in the Guinness World Records book.

Victoria Harbour – Hong Kong at different hours of day and night (from Digg) – the images are rather pretty.

A PC that you can install in your WALL! (from Derek) – It’s called Jack PC, and it can fit into a network wall port. Just plug your keyboard, mouse and monitor into the wall. The Jack PC runs Windows CE and it’s equipped with an equivalent of a 800MHz to 1.2GHz x86 desktop processor. pretty neat!

Breast boosting beer sells like hot cakes – The millet-based ale called Boza allegedly makes women’s breasts bigger, but was previously expensive.　Now thousands of tourists are travelling to the Bulgarian border town of Ruse to buy Boza for their wives and partners. Haha!

The Greatest Martial Arts Moments – The Crippled Masters (from Digg) – I was going through this kung fu moments. Some were decent, some were eh, but then I saw this one. One guy has no legs and the other guy has no arms. It’s curtains for any all-limbed sucka in the room when they join forces to create an unstoppable two-armed and two-legged punching and kicking machine. Keep this scene in mind the next time you’re going to pick a fight with the handi-capable guy at the bar. It was rather disturbing…

Street Fighter: The Later Years – Part 3 (from RayAlome/DeadLock) – not sure why I forgot to post this when RayAlome showed it to me the 1st time. Must’ve not entered the queue of links to be posted. Anyway, the 3rd part is available for viewing now. Introduces Vega, E. Honda, and Blanka!

January 18, 2007January 19, 2007

Happy Birthday to ME!

Sigh… One year older…

Speaking of which, due to the crazy weather, snow storms, and freezing temperature we’ve been having, check out this slideshow of crazy traffic and abandoned cars.

Derek also showed me this video: Bumper cars in Portland, Oregon. Crazy! Cars skidding and bumping everywhere, but instead of regular bumper cars, we’re talking 20-50K cars… That’s why on snow days, I work from home. Just need to make sure I stock up on food.

Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 兎 (usagi) which means rabbit.

How to avoid crying when chopping onions (from SueOn) – apparently the part of the onion that makes you cry resides on the bottom cone.

How We Shower (from Digg) – Heres a funny comparison on showering practices between guys and girls. Funny and true! HOW MEN AND WOMEN SHOWER DIFFERENTLY… Rather funny read.

2006 Ice Storm – Follow Up Visit (from Digg) – Amazing when 2″ of ice forms on a wire from a power utility pole.

spacecoyote did some artwork on what would The Simpsons and Futurama characters would look like if they were drawn in anime style (from Digg). Titled The Simpsonzu and Futurama: Super Happy Fun Show (click images to enlarge), she landed herself a contract with Bongo Comics:

THANK YOU INTERNET

Long story short: Bongo Comics, Matt Groening’s comic book company, is hiring me to do the pencils for a short manga-style Simpsons comic. Also, I’ve been contacted by 20th Century Fox. They want me to do work for them somehow. I might get a job for the upcoming new Futurama series!

Why all this sudden success? Why are my childhood dreams coming true? This is madness, I tells ya! MADNESS!

EDIT: I don’t think all credit should go to just one website! My recognition is thanks to deviantART, Digg, Drawn, ABC News Australia, among many other websites and blogs. Not to mention word of mouth. Hence why I am thanking the Internet as a whole. 🙂

“Nurse” bleeds lonely hearts with flirty SMS – A Chinese company has duped about 400,000 people by creating the character of a young female nurse to solicit text messages and collect revenue from lonely men, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday. … Yang said “Wang Jing” would ask mobile phone users flirty questions before luring them unwittingly into subscribing to the nurse’s chat for 10-30 yuan (65 pence-2 pounds) a month, the paper reported. Yang, who would receive up to 2,000 text messages from people all over China in a single shift, said the nurse scam had reaped hundreds of thousands of yuan a month, the paper reported.

Japan school to test applicants’ chopstick skills – As if reading, writing and arithmetic weren’t enough, one Japanese high school now also plans to include chopstick skills on its entrance exams. The Hisatagakuen Sasebo Girls’ High School in western Japan will require a 10 minute test using chopsticks to transfer beads, marbles, dice and beans from one plate to another. Haha. Sounds like a skill my dad would love to show off.

Ford, Microsoft team up on new dashboard OS – I didn’t find this article too interesting, but it reminded me of the joke back in the day:

IF CARS WERE BUILT LIKE PC’S

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If G.M. had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got one-thousand miles to the gallon.” In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating,

If G.M. had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart, and drive on.

Occasionally, executing a manner such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought “Car95” or “CarNT”, but then you would have to buy more seats.

Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.

The oil, water, temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.

New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.

Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

It would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a G.M. subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by fifty percent or more. Moreover, every time G.M. introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

You would press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Have you seen Nepal? Not really, Peru says – Royal Nepal Airlines has apologised to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal.

Moms, kids arrested in R.I. school brawl – Two mothers and their 13-year-old daughters were arrested after police say one woman drove her already suspended daughter to school to fight a teenage rival. Haha.

Dracula’s castle is for sale for $78M – The Habsburg family said Wednesday that it wanted to sell a Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th century medieval ruler who inspired “Dracula” for 60 million euros, or $78 million, to the local authorities, an attorney said.

Disneyland – Club 33 (from Digg) – Apparently there’s a secret club at Disneyland and even Snopes.com claims its true: Club 33, open only to members and their guests, has been a part of New Orleans Square since 1967. Originally intended as a private facility where Walt Disney could entertain park sponsors and lessees, Club 33 did not open until several months after Disney’s death. The club’s facilities were made available to the public through limited memberships, and Club 33 has operated unobtrusively in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square ever since. However, it seems rather expensive to join…

CES 2007: HD DVD versus Blu-ray – The porn industry says HD DVD – Looks like we have our winner for the next gen video format war.

You’ve probably seen this picture around the net:

But do you know the story behind it? I was probably reading Digg and they mentioned this image and the photographer Kevin Carter. According to wikipedia:

The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a seemingly well-fed vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the girl:

“The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”

…

He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened and helped the child. Journalists at the time were warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease. … Portions of Carter’s suicide note read:

“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

Flash Element TD (from Digg) – another fun flash game where you build towers to blow up enemies. However, unlike others where you need to defend your castle, this one deducts a life for each the enemy passes the checkpoint. Somewhat hard to play given the fact you can’t get extra lives (if you could, I didn’t figure out how).

Bee Movie teaser – was going through the new movie trailers and saw this hilarious teaser with Jerry Seinfeld with others playing insects on a car windshield.

The Mac (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) (from Digg) – a music video by Setty Smooth. Welcome to the world of Setty Smooth – where his quest to find love leads him on the most extraordinary of journeys . In this episode, Setty Smooth guides five fine ladies through an intimate video chat session, a little something he likes to call “cyber love”. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride as Setty drops his first single and video, “The Mac” from his unreleased debut love ballads album.

Sand sculptures in Lommel (from Digg) – tons of rather neat sand sculptures.

LEGO church (from Digg) – Lego creations continue to amaze us. TN4046 has sent this gallery of a … church, created entirely with LEGO bricks.

December 13, 2006

$3 Swiss Army Knife

Don’t know if this deal will still be alive when you see this, but the Amazon Customers Vote program is selling the Swiss Army Ranger Pocket Knife (Red) for just $3! That includes shipping too!

BargainShare discussion thread
SlickDeals discussion thread

Anyway, it looked like the web guys had a field day with this. To verify you’re not a robot, they made you do a little test.

Mine was spelling a word backward: radar

At first, I thought it was just a pick of a draw I got a palindrome, but it turns out everyone did too. One of my friends got kayak and another got reviver.

Other people got multiple choice which involved: Pick the right one:

Choose me
Wrong way
Not even
Wrong way

Belldandy got a math question: 16+8.

As you can see, I sort of spammed it to everyone online at 12am. Doesn’t really make it up for those who tried to get the Xbox 360 for $100 though. They’ve gotten smart though. If I recall correctly, Amazon.com was down for like 15 minutes during that promotion, but all the Xbox 360s were gone within the 1st 12 seconds as people tried to keep hammering their servers. Maybe I just pulled those numbers out of my *cough*, but you get the jist. Since that they, they sort of have had a raffle system, where if you voted, you can come back on day X and check to see if you were one of the randomly selected few to get the winning item at the promo price. After a day or so and there’s still left overs, they then sell the remainder away to first come first serve. A better system I suppose, though I haven’t won anything yet.

Anyway, I’ll end this post with the opening scene of Kanon:

Kanon – Opening (large: 856×480)

Kanon – Opening (small: 428×240)

Everytime I watch Kanon, I always watch the opening sequence because theres this scene where Mai wears bunny ears and Yuuichi chases her across the field which is SO CUTE! The scene is about 40 seconds into the trailer. At first I thought that was Naiyuki because of the bluish hair color, but it’s really Mai who has purplish hair color. The song is pretty nice too!

December 12, 2006

Happy Birthday Mechy!

Just wanted to wish Happy Birthday to Mechy, since he no longer signs onto AIM.

I “was” going to make this a random crap post, but then I noticed it was past 5am already, so it looks like just a short post today.

Lsiymle sent me this cute animation called The Sky-colored Seed:

Large Video (640×480)

Small Video (320×240)

Speaking of which, I noticed many online video players have gotten fancy recently, then I noticed:

wmp11

and then I realized it was because I upgraded to Windows Media Player 11 recently (WMP11). I believe I never even bothered to download 10 and was running WMP9. Well, with WMP11, apparently I can talk to my Xbox 360 without download the Xbox Media Connect software which needs administrator access and needs to be run as a service, which I didn’t particularly like. So I decided to upgrade to WMP11 and see how it works. I haven’t tested it yet, but will let you know when I do. I don’t use WMP11 anyways. There’s always Media Player Classic and VLC and they basically cover everything I need. Of course you’ll need the “plug-ins” like Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative.

I’ve got to say though, the new player looks a lot better than the old one. Much sleeker.

Oh yah, the Japanese phrase that appears above the green pig(s) (are they even pigs?) says:
みんなの中に、私はいます。 –> I am inside everyone.

Not really sure what it’s trying to say, but I’m guessing seeing how the pigs are coming out of his snout/mouth, I’m guessing it’s pretty literal.

The phrase underneath the green pig says:
40th 日本テレビ –> 40th Japanese TV

Guess this animation was done for the 40th anniversary for this TV station.