Computer – Page 14 – Krunk4Ever!

April 17, 2007April 21, 2007

Random Crap

Jishaku – Telephone Club – Japanese comedy skit performed by the duo Jishaku (magnet). Taken from the TV show “Enta no Kamisama”. Subtitled in English for the benefit of foreign audiences. The translation notes can also be viewed on this page: ハッピー・エープリル・フールズ・デイ . A very hilarious skit revolves around a telephone club. A “Telephone Club” is a sort of telephone dating network. Guys pay to enter a booth and wait for who want to hook up to call in. Google “Telekura” for more details if you’re curious. You can also see it on YouTube: Japanese Comedy – 磁石　テレクラ　（エンタの神様より、英語字幕あり）

China restaurant forks out $75,000 for lucky fish – A Chinese restaurant has paid $75,000 for a giant golden-coloured tiger fish, a symbol of wealth and good fortune, state media said on Tuesday. The fish, weighing in at 48 kg (105 lb), was caught on Sunday off the coast of Zhanjiang in the booming southern province of Guangdong, the China News Service said.

The Male Brain vs The Female Brain – Some interesting differences between men’s and women’s brains, collected from sources listed below. Read with a grain of salt, and further investigate the ones that get you riled up.

nullDC (New DreamCast Emulator) v1.0.0 Released! (from Digg) – Thanks to floopy for bringing attention that the first public beta for the latest and greatest Dreamcast emulator, nullDC, has been released. Here is what drkIIRaziel has to say at emuforums regarding the emulator:

After many months of coding, here is the first public beta of nullDC.
Read the ReadME before you ask anything.

Setup (includes all needed runtimes, recomended)
http://emudev.com/funstuff/nullDC_100b1_setup.rar

Plain files :
http://emudev.com/funstuff/nullDC_100b1.rar

oh, and happy april fool’s day (make sure to check Google’s jokes )

Enjoy

PS. Site/forums should be up within this week
PS2. This is rev 525-118

Americans are NOT stupid – WITH SUBTITLES (from Top 10 April Fool Pranks 2007) – So what if they don´t know how many sides a triangle have? Or who Tony Blair is? That is not fair…just because their president is as intelligent as a door, it doen´t mean they´re all like that…if you still think american people are stupi, watch this video and change your mind 🙂 Hilarious film, yet so sad…

~~Der Knut-Song! (from Digg)~~ der knut-song – The really cute baby polar bear is back! With its own song. ~~If you’re getting access denied because you’re not in Germany, just reload the page and it should work.~~ clipfish.de has been started to giving me the access denied constantly, so I’m linking to a different website that doesn’t have the Germany requirement. Along the way, I also found these extra videos: Knut der kleine Eisbär – www.knutlied.de and Knut der kleine Eisbär Kitty & Knut Video. Apparently this polar bear already has a song about him.

PIXELATOR (from Digg) –

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.

Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA’s effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.

In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA’s video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.

(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)

Add Compact Flash to almost any iPod (from Digg) – Well, Mark Hoekstra is back with a new CF card modding picnic that works with any 1/2/3/4G iPod. The mod works (eventually, anyway) by installing a CF adapter of Hoekstra’s design. No need to solder all 88 connections yourself!

97 – Where (and How) Evolution Is Taught In the US (from Digg) – Scientists generally accept the theory of evolution as the back-story of how animal species (including humans) came into being over a period of several billion years. Religious literalists maintain their belief in creation, as laid down in the Bible: God made the earth and all that is on it (including humans, after His own image) in one week, a couple of thousand years ago. This has a map of what different parts of America is teaching the kids today.

On the same line: School Bans Pokemon Games for Promoting Evolution (from Digg) – The Kansas State School Board has banned all things Pokemon from its schools–not because it’s keeping kids from doing their schoolwork, but because they claim it promotes evolution. Oh, but wait, it gets better. Teachers will now have to search the students before each class to make sure they’re not in possession of any of eighty bazillion different Pokemon games; if they are, the game will be confiscated permanently and the student will face punishment that could range from simple suspension to expulsion from school. Kicked out of school. For Pokemon.

One of the keywords that Amazon’s script has highlighted was Monterey Park, which returned this book: The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California. I didn’t know there was a book on Monterey Park!

Richards says father comment a joke – The 63-year-old rocker caused an international uproar on Tuesday when newspaper New Musical Express quoted him as saying: “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow … . It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.“

Why the long face? Rio’s obese treated like horses – Rio de Janeiro hospitals have been sending obese people to share medical test equipment with horses at the local race track, drawing complaints from activists who say the practice is humiliating.

Porn swap sparks Japan defence leak furore -report – Three Japanese naval officers who swapped pornography on their computers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive data linked to Japan’s missile defence system, a newspaper said on Thursday. … The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer’s hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Man to Live Underwater for 2 Weeks (from Digg) – Marine biologist Lloyd Godson is attempting a brave experiment to investigate sustainable living. He’s going to live in a sealed box for two weeks, which will be placed underwater. The experiment is taking place near Albury-Wodonga, in Australia. Godson will be cultivating algae both as a food source, and to produce oxygen. He will also have electricity via a stationary bike that he’s using as a generator.

April 16, 2007April 17, 2007

Random Crap

Forgot to wish Tekman HAPPY BDAY!

I’ve added 2 new categories: Food and Comics

I found this bumper sticker and found the slogan hilarious: My kid has a cooler job than your kid. – Microsoft College

Otters holding hands (from Esca) – Vancouver Aquarium: two sea otters float around, napping, holding hands. SO CUTE! You know, I haven’t visited Vancouver Aquarium yet.

I know it’s way past April Fool’s day, but it appears that after you graduate from college, people just forget about April Fool’s day. I got so many people IMing asking me if this was real: Google TiSP and when I mention it was April 1st / April Fool, they go, “Oh yah! I forgot about it.” Another Google joke was GMail Paper.

Along the same topic, there was Ten of the best April Fool’s Day hoaxes: US museum (from Digg) – Here were the ones I liked:

In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home.
In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Outraged citizens called to express their anger before Taco Bell revealed the hoax. Then-White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale and said the Lincoln Memorial in Washington had also been sold and was to be renamed the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial after the automotive giant.
Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original “right-handed” version.
Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth’s gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

Bulgaria goes into debt to buy fleet of Porsche Cayenne ambulances (from Digg) – There’s few things that could make one turn away from the blue light at the end of the tunnel and return to the land of the living, but a ride in a Porsche Cayenne ambulance just might do the trick. Apparently Bulgaria agrees, as the cash-strapped country’s health ministry is using a loan from the World Bank to buy a fleet 32 Cayenne’s destined for ambulance duty (a Russian Porsche Cayenne police vehicle is shown above). Maybe I should work as an ambulance driver for the Bulgarians.

Don’t buy an HDTV without reading this first (from Digg) – Forking out a few thousand dollars or even just a few hundred is a serious investment, and the last thing you want to do is buy an HDTV with lousy color rendition. Navigating the minefield in consumer electronics is a confusing proposition even for the seasoned gadget geeks, so I created this survival guide to help you make a wise decision. I’ll explain the various types of HDTVs as well as cabling and testing the color depth of your display. I think this guy does a rather good explanation of the difference between the types of HDTVs and all those random specs one usually has no idea what they’re talking about.

MPAA names its Top 25 movie piracy schools – The MPAA may be gearing up for an RIAA-inspired assault on US colleges and universities. Last week the group announced its support for the “Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act (2007),” and MPAA head Dan Glickman said that his organization would work with school administrators to put an end to movie piracy on campuses, which Glickman says costs the industry $500 million annually. Stanford and Berkeley rank 24 and 25 respectively.

HostTracker (from Digg) – website monitoring service. I’ve been using InternetSeer, but this one looks good too.

tapefailure (from Digg) – tapefailure lets you record your users’ browsing sessions and play them back, just like a tape, as well as view numerous useful statistics about your users. Really sounds like a neat feature when it gets released.

Panama co. says brews world’s biggest cup of coffee – Panama’s top coffee producer said it believes it has set a new record for the world’s biggest cup of coffee, after brewing 750 gallons (2,840 litres) in a giant mug on Sunday.

Very Clever Marketing Campaign (from Clip Haven)
However, if I was bowling in this alley, I’d sort of be creeped out.

April 16, 2007April 30, 2007

Crisping Tray

Once again, it’s been a long week. My random crap has already been backlogged to 3/28. I haven’t even check Digg ~~and~~ in 3 days. It’s going to take me awhile for me to push this crap onto you guys. ;p

A few weeks ago, IRobertI IMed me asking what the those gray disks that microwavable pizza come with are called. I had always thought they were just just paper cardboard with some plastic/wax thing on top of it. He tells me if you try microwaving a pizza normally without this special cardboard, the pizza’s crust becomes all soggy. I ~~think~~ then propose the fact that since most of these dishes allow air to go underneath it, that may have something to do with making it crispy.

Here’s what one of them look like:

I started searching online and there’s a bunch of threads and patents that popped up, but nothing really that describe how it works. Some claim there’s some sort of metal in it and it acts as a resistor, heating up when microwave frequencies hit it. But isn’t putting metal into the microwave counterintuitive? Anyway, I started reading the back of my Bagel Bites box and they refer to it as a crisping tray.

I decided to take apart one and unless the gray coating on top of cardboard is the metallic part, I found ~~now~~ no evidence of any sort of metal hidden inside the cardboard. If anyone knows exactly how this magic is done, I’d like to know.

Random Crap:

Bruce Lee – high speed painting – This is a bit different from my normal stuff. Check out my other art at http://www.philinthecircle.com / MySpace. Music: Elephine / Song: Five / http://www.myspace.com/elephine Nice painting, but sure spent a lot of time and energy.

UPS: Request Delivery Intercept – UPS has rolled out a new service where when you pay some extra amount, you can request UPS to perform one of the following actions:

Return to Sender: Return the package to the shipper
Deliver to Another Address: Reroute the package to a new address
Reschedule Delivery: Hold the package for delivery on a future date
Will Call: Hold the package for pickup by the consignee

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico (from Digg) – A very interesting article. First get rid of corrupted officials. Second, don’t just drop them at the border and give them a chance to just get back across, take them deep into Mexico before releasing them.

Yahoo Mail Announces Unlimited Storage (from Digg) – Yahoo is announcing that all Yahoo Mail users will have free unlimited email storage starting in May 2007. The current storage limit is 1 GB per account (2 GB for $20/year premium users). With this change, Yahoo leapfrogs Gmail (2.8 GB and growing) and Live.com Mail (2GB). Yahoo mail currently has 250 million global users, more than any other online service (Live.com has 228 million and Gmail has 51 million users). See this feature by feature comparison of the services for more information. I wonder what paying users get then…

Japanese goldfish live in (and clean) a deep fryer (from Consumerist) – More here: Deep-fry diving for goldfish in Japan. Someone commented: Unfortunately they don’t really explain well enough to understand well. But there is a cooling system between the water and the oil. It took them ten years to develop it. So the bits of tempura batter fall down and stick together, which keeps the oil clean (the bits don’t float around and burn). Also, if you throw frozen pieces of food into a fryer, usually the oil will react violently, but now the waters sinks and cools instead of becoming vapor.

Gateway 2 (from Digg) – a pretty fun, yet somewhat depressing flash game. It’s one of those escape from the room type games, but in this one you’re trying to piece together a story. If you need help, walkthrough, or solution, scroll down to beppe1’s post over at Escape The Room.

Home is where the heart is for world’s tallest man – The world’s tallest man, whose search for a bride covered the world, ended up marrying a woman from his home town nearly half his age and more than two feet shorter, Chinese media reported on Wednesday.

Mad Track in a Japanese Game Show – Sasuke 2007 (from Digg) – The Japanese are famous for their extreme game shows on TV. Here is an example of the tracks the competittors need to finish on a TV program called Sasuke. This is their spring special aired march 21st 2007. It’s quite amazing (and this is just the first level). Wow, this really puts American Gladiators to shame.

If you like the previous IMDb page layout, apparently you can still visit it at http://former.imdb.com/.

Real Life Comics – Relevant Information – As someone who does computer tech support for my family and relatives and friends, these little jokes always hit it home.

Google Maps – from Chicago, IL to London, UK (Consumerist) – If you take a look at step #20: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi. Appears to be some sort of joke that the developers decided to add in. The minimal amount of driving directions come from Boston, MA to Le Havre, France, which still results in a 29 day swim. At 3,426mi in 29 days, we’re still talking about 119 miles per day and 5 miles an hour (non-stop). Programatically, all they had to do was connect Boston to Le Havre in their map and give it a distance and time. Therefore, any location that’s connected into the USA can reach any destination that’s connected into France. Unfortunately, Mexico doesn’t have any maps on Google, so Central and South America are basically cut from this. And it looks like only Western Europe can connect into France.

xkcd – The Difference – The difference between a normal person and a scientist. 😉

Don’t Do This With a 19 Inch Dildo (from Tera) (content is work safe, but ads are not) – Here’s something not to do with a 19 inch dildo. So my friend is a nurse. She tells starts telling me this story about a guy walking into the emergency room hunched over and walking funny. The guy says he has a pain coming from his stomach and butt. He doesn’t mention anything else to doctors. So they Xray him to find out what’s wrong. Here’s what they found.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid’s construction is turned inside out (from Digg) – In Paris tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Houdin will unveil the fruits of eight years’ work by describing at a conference how the pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu was built from the inside out. He will propose that the Egyptians carried the building blocks up an internal ramp that formed a spiral tunnel within the structure’s outer wall. These tunnels, he believes, must still exist today. With the help of sophisticated computer software developed by the French company Dassault Systemes, M. Houdin has been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional simulation of how the great limestone and granite blocks of the pyramid were put together stone by stone.

WiigoBot: The Perfect Game – Presenting a Lego NXT Wii Playing Robot that can bowl a perfect game. I wonder if the robot knows when its his turn again, or if it’s just timed.

Wonderbra Ad Malfunctions (from Derek) – Really clever ad for the Wonderbra or just a broken billboard?

Amazing French Beatboxer Part 2 – The same awesome beat boxer we posted last week was back on French idol dropping some sweet beats. This time he does a little Justin Timberlake and I gotta say this guy is talented. Here’s Part 1 (Looks like this is from an American Idol type show in France, one of the contestants is an amazing Beat Boxer. Listen him seamlessly go from Michael Jackson Billy Jean to Usher Ya! When does he breathe?) and part 3 (The Amazing French Beatboxer is back and again with another great performance. This time he mixes a little techno music with Britney Spears and more.) if you’re interested.

April 14, 2007

New PC

So I finally got all my parts for my new PC. I started to build it early this week, but I should’ve really waited for the weekend as I really didn’t have time this week to mess with it. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been on and off AIM a lot as I install and reboot and tinker around with it. I was contemplating either to install Vista or XP, and decided to go with XP for now as driver support for Vista isn’t all that great yet and I have a bunch of programs I don’t know if they’ll run in Vista or not. As a media center PC that I don’t use mostly other than to watch media, Vista is awesome. But for my main box, I decided to stick with XP for now.

My PC now consists of:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz
Abit IL9 Pro Motherboard
Asus Radeon EAX1600PRO Silent X1600PRO 256MB
Kingston 2 x 1GB DDR2 PC5400 SDRAM
Seagate SATAII 500GB Hard Drive
LG GSA-H42N-BK 18x DVD Burner
Lite-On 48x CD Burner
Ultra V Series 500W Power Supply

A pretty simple machine. Motherboard contains 5.1 surround sound + digital and optical ports. It also has a gigabit ethernet port so I didn’t need to buy another one. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with it. However, I have noticed that I’ve been getting flickers with this CPU, motherboard, graphics card combination. When I launch a video, the moment right before the video starts playing, I see these funky colors/lines for a split second. Also, sometimes I see a line flash out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure it’s related to the video card.

Initially I thought I had a bad video card so I contacted Newegg and Asus support. However, I decided to see if this problem repros on my MCE box. Indeed it does. It’s even running Vista, so it’s not exactly the same setup. Derek suggested I try upgrading to ATI’s newest drivers. I had been using the drivers provided on Asus’ download site and they’ve worked well for the most part. I installed the newest drivers: Catalyst 7.3 onto both boxes and the flickering still reproed. I’ll need to ask Xyon if he seems something similar as he has the same video card I have.

Also noted by Derek is the fact that these new Catalyst drivers have a problem with our Vizio 47″ LCD TV. For some reason, it overscans or underscans. In my case, you see a black border around my screen about 1″ thick. I downgraded it to Catalyst 7.1 and the overscanning still existed. Finally downgraded to 8.31 (not exactly sure how the number system worked before 7.1) and the overscanning problem went away.

I’ve also had another flickering problem with Quicken 2007. When it does any sort of animation, my screen jitters like crazy. At first I thought it was related to these other video card problems I’ve been having. However, a quick search online revealed this thread: Screen Flickering. Apparently there’s a problem with Quicken and ipoint.exe. ipoint.exe is the Microsoft IntelliPoint software that you install for your mouse that provides it with the magnify and instant viewer functionality. I actually thought the instant viewer was nice and was sort of a hacky version of expose. Apparently when Microsoft rolled out version 6.0 of ipoint.exe, Quicken’s been having problems with this massive amount of flickering. With ipoint.exe killed, if you look very closely, the flickering still occurs, but at a much quicker pace. I think they just have a very unoptimized way of redrawing their entire window.

As for my old parts, I was planning to build another file server. I have 3 Seagate SATAII 500GB drives that I purchased just for this. However, it hit me when I was installing my new PC that my current motherboard didn’t support SATA. I searched online. There are some SATA I PCI cards that support upto 4 SATA devices, but PCI cards can only support upto 2 devcies if you want SATA II. They were about $40 each and that’s an additional $80. The I tried searching for motherboard that support Socket-A and had SATA II connectors. My previous CPU was a AMD Sempron 2800+. On Newegg, they only carry 4 socket-A motherboards and none of them have SATA connectors. So I thought I might as well wait for the next Fry’s CPU+Motherboard combo for $79 or lower and as long as it has 4 SATA connectors, I’d be fine.

Honestly, it’s been a pretty bad week for me. But that’s a story for a later day.

April 8, 2007

Random Crap

First of all, I apologize for the lack of posting. It’s been a busy week at work and I haven’t been getting that much sleep, coming home around 11pm-1am. Even had to go into work today for a few hours to finish testing some stuff.

NYC couple hail cab for 2,400-mile ride – Betty and Bob Matas have retired and are moving to Arizona, but like many New Yorkers they don’t drive, and they don’t want their cats to travel all that way in an airliner cargo hold.

Swimmer’s life at risk after record Amazon trip – Slovenian Martin Strel, after braving crocodiles, piranhas, disease and the threat of an imminent heart attack, on Sunday completed a record-setting 66-day, 3,274-mile (5,268 km) swim down the Amazon River and was taken to a hospital.

Jesus drinking Coca-Cola? Not this Easter – An Italian film showing Jesus Christ drinking Coca-Cola sparked such strong protest from the soft-drinks giant that it blocked the film’s Easter weekend premiere, the film makers said.

Captured Lightning: 2.2 million volt Lichtenberg Figure (from Digg) – The interior of an 18″ square x 1″ piece of Plexiglas was charged to 2.2 million volts (MV) using a 5 MV particle accelerator. A layer of excess electrons become trapped deep inside, When discharged, the excess charge escaped with a bright flash and a loud bang. The hot, lightning-like discharge created thousands of microscopic fractures inside the acrylic, resulting in a branching “Captured Lightning” sculpture (or Lichtenberg Figure). Read more about how these beautiful objects are made at:
http://lichdesc.teslamania.com

Debunking myths about the “Third World” (Amazing graphics) (from Krrkb) – With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Prof. Hans Rosling uses software from Gapminder debunks a few myths about the “developing” world. This global health visionary has discovered a powerful new way to communicate complex data about the world; his remarkable interactive graphs help deliver profound insights about global trends and will change forever the way you think about “us” and “them.” Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA.) More TEDTalks at www.TED.com

Take a Peep at This Story – Americans eat enough peeps before Easter to circle the equator — twice. Interesting video about those Easter marshmallow candy.

Today’s realistic video: GTA IV trailer in real life (from Digg) – While its not a down-to-the-finite-details replica of the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer, it’s pretty darned spot-on. If you factor in that he made it using only clips that he could find on YouTube, it’s even more amazing. When they cut to that one shot of the actor … you’ll be wondering if they used that for the actual game trailer. Compare that to the real trailer of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Puff Piece – Harvard tells Hollywood to ban cigarettes from kids’ movies. – Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at U.C. San Francisco and creator of the Smoke Free Movies campaign, says Glickman probably expected Harvard to come up with a limp education campaign and leave it at that. But Harvard got tough. In recommendations presented to the industry last month and made public this week, Harvard said the studios should eliminate smoking altogether from films “accessible to children and youth.”

Uganda scraps “sexist” adultery law – Uganda’s Constitutional Court ordered the changes to the Penal Code, under which it was legal for a married man to have an affair with an unmarried woman but against the law for a married woman to have an affair with an unmarried man.

Photo in the News: Century-Old Fish Caught in Alaska – Commercial fishers in the Bering Sea recently hauled in the female shortraker rockfish seen above, which scientists say was between 90 and 115 years old. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used growth rings in the fish’s ear bone, or otolith, to make their age estimate.

Badass origami stuff – Some REALLY amazing origami art here.

360’s Guitar Hero II guitar works in Windows, Frets on Fire – The USB-equipped X-plorer guitar that ships with the just-released Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 has some interesting tricks up its nonexistant but metaphorically convenient sleeve. No, we’re not talking about breaking or shape-shifting (sheesh) — we’re talking about things like effects pedals and oh, what’s this, Windows support? Randy tipped us off that the guitar controller works in Windows Vista, but we had to check for ourself. The above image was captured in Windows XP. The five frets control the first five buttons, Back and Start control buttons 7 and 8, the d-pad and strummer control the Point of View Hat, the whammy bar controls the X Rotation, Star Power controls the Y Rotation, and the Z Axis sorta just wiggles when you move the guitar. The X Axis / Y Axis does nothing (gotta save something for that effects pedal, no?). Sweet! I can’t wait for the wireless version to come out now so I can play Frets on Fire with a wireless guitar on my Vista box.

Wrapped in Subway Logos, Free City Condom Is a Hit – In just a month, the city gave away five million of its new subway-themed condoms, officials said yesterday. Lest you read past that number unimpressed, consider that that was about two condoms for every man living in the city — more than the city distributed in all of 2003.

Online hoax ad strips home of everything – An online ad offering everything in the house for free left one landlord with quite a shock. By the time she realized what was going on, the house had been stripped of its light fixtures, hot water heater — even the kitchen sink. … “In the ad, it said come and take what you want. Everything is free,” she said. “Please help yourself to anything on the property.”

Sub loses job over pinchy punishment – Four boys said spring-type clothespins were placed over their upper or lower lips for talking too much in class, Amanda-Clearcreek Primary School principal Mike Johnsen wrote in a letter to parents this week.

Girl had suspected ‘boyfriend’ was woman – A 14-year-old girl authorities allege was sexually abused by a 30-year-old woman who posed as a teenage boy said she didn’t know about the ruse but eventually suspected it.

March 28, 2007March 28, 2007

Calculus Airband 2000

So a week ago, CheyBoyAhDi IMed me asking if I still had the airband videos somewhere. I scratched my head. For a very long time, they were were stored on my hard drive, but I was pretty sure I backed up them a year or two ago when I needed disk space. Disk space may be cheap nowadays, but during college, cheap still didn’t cut it.

Anyway, I said I would get back to him and began searching through my spindles and spindles of CDs and DVDs and I finally found it. It was labeled AirBand 2000.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term airband, it’s this traditional thing (well not anymore since Kimura has retired) that every Calculus class did for our Christmas party. I believe ours was called Winter Jamboree, but I could be confused between my junior year and my senior year. Yes, I went through two years of this, but unfortunately, I don’t have any records of my junior year. I won’t bore you with our propaganda about getting ‘5’s and being committed, but it was basically dancing in tune with cuts of random music of our choice. Although it may not look that great, it did take a lot of time and we had a lot of fun. I’ve decided to upload everything that I have online: Calculus Airband 2000.

I had burnt everyone in BC a copy of the performances on a CD, but there were extra stuff which I didn’t include such as the photos, the practice videos, and the slideshow. Back then I don’t think DVD burners were even out yet and only a select few had CD burners.

Each available video has too versions. Original encoded at 640×480 and small is re-encoded at 320×240. Video streams I believe were taken from AMonkeyJ’s camcorder. We originally had 2 (one shooting from each side), but I forget why, but the other one had malfunctioned pretty much at the beginning. The re-encodes were made after complaints of “long” download times and I don’t blame them. The performance videos are about 200MB each. The small versions are about 100MB each. If the streaming isn’t working for you, underneath each video is a Download movie link, which you can right click and “save link as”.

Performances: (original / small)

AB Period 0:

AB Period 4:

AB Period 5:

AB Period 6:

BC:

When rewatching these, it was rather embarrassing. SueOn agreed and said they might’ve been better buried in my stacks of CDs and DVDs. However, if I don’t post them now, they’ll probably be lost forever.

The practice video is stitched together with scenes during class and during our airband practice. But for some reason, there was no audio track associated to these videos, and I no longer have any idea who has the source to these. Therefore, I just tacked on our airband music and looped it. I was thinking of syncing it with relative music and random voice tracks, but that project would be probably left for another day and time somewhere in the far far future. Be warned, this video is 1.5hrs long and the original encode is over 1GB.

Then there’s the our famous ending slideshow. When I was rewatching our performance video, I was like, where the heck did we get that projector. I don’t recall the school having one. After asking SueOn, apparently it was his church and it all came back to me.

Here’s the original mp3 of our airband song:
Calculus_BC_Airband_2000_Song.mp3

And finally some random photos taken during our airband practices: Calculus BC Airband Photos

Did I mention how embarrassed I am about rewatching these videos?

Oh yah, if you’re experiencing playback problems on Firefox saying you don’t have the right plugins installed, I found the fix: Firefox can’t play application/x-mplayer2 embeds. All you have to do is download those 2 .dll files and drop them into your Firefox plugins directory.

March 25, 2007

Random Crap

Decided to split this off after the other post got too long.

The Perry Bible Fellowship – Hard Read – another reason why you should never get caught reading cliff notes.

Silverbrook’s Memjet printer technology available late 2007, company says (from Derek) – The company has released astounding videos of desktop, photo and wide-format printers that print pages and photos 5 to 10 times faster than products from current printer market leaders HP, Canon, Epson and Lexmark. This printer is amazingly fast and the colors are awesome.

Search With Kevin (from Cari) – Apparently K-Fed has a search engine. It’s somewhat like Blingo where he’s giving away prizes, but unlike Blingo, he’s giving away prizes no one wants: Kevin Federline Autograph 8×10, Kevin Federline T-Shirt, Playing With Fire Autograph CD, Entry into Autograph Sweepstakes.

Super Mario Level 1-1… In Line Rider (from Cari) – Recreating the first level of Super Mario Bros. using Line Rider. It was too funny not to share, especially the ending (which I guess is only funny if you’ve messed around with Line Rider at all).This guy really had a lot of time on their hands.

Toys that should not exist (from Digg) – some of these are hilarious.

No money for stamps? Advertiser happy to help – For Dutch consumers who wish to save 44 euro cents (30 pence) on posting a letter, there is a solution: an advertisement on the back of the envelope. I wouldn’t mind doing that.

Malaysian DVD pirates want sniffer dogs dead – Malaysian movie pirates have put a bounty on the heads of two sniffer dogs who busted a fake DVD ring with a seizure of discs worth about $3 million (1.5 million pounds), media and officials said on Thursday.

Inside Japan’s Puzzle Palace (from Digg) – Will there be another puzzle craze after sudoku? Perhaps kakuro? What about nurikabe? If so, chances are it will spring from a Japanese company called Nikoli, run by the self-proclaimed godfather of sudoku, Maki Kaji. Check a flash version of these new games that have been mentioned.

Bill Gates to finally receive his Harvard degree (from Digg) – It’s not like he needs it to beef up his résumé, but the world’s richest college dropout finally is getting his degree. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, will speak at Harvard University’s commencement ceremony in June and, like all commencement speakers, will receive an honorary degree from the institution.

Automakers say: Look at cars not women – South Korean carmakers plan to cut down on the number of scantily clad models at the Seoul Motor Show hoping people will look at the cars instead.

New Jersey thieves snatch $12,000 in underwear – Three brazen New Jersey shoplifters made off with nearly $12,000 (6,100 pounds) in women’s underwear by stuffing the goods into bags designed to foil anti-theft equipment at a Victoria’s Secret store while the shop was open for business, police said.

STOP MOTION DRUMS by the “Hyperactive Beatbox” guy (from Artemyst) – A guy with no musical training creates a great song using stop motion. This is the same guy that made “The Human Beatbox” or as other … all » people call it “Hyperactive“, Lasse Gjertsen.

Picture on the dust (from Digg) – This guy drives his car around just to get enough dirt on his windshield so he can draw on it. His drawings are rather good.

Husband rips wife’s eyes out after she refuses sex (from Digg) – Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari’s eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him.

Housewife convicted of frying husband – A Brazilian housewife was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in prison Friday for killing her husband, chopping his corpse into small pieces and frying it.

There’s just some crazy people in this world…

Beautiful Night Shots Of Yokohama, Japan (from Digg) – Great night shots of Yokohama which is the third largest city in Japan at night. The large Ferris wheel is one of the largest in the world with a capacity of 480 passengers and at a height of 112.5 metres. If the night shots entice you and still can’t get enough of it, here’s a Quicktime Panorama VR of Yokohama of which you can actually spot out some of the landmarks. 18 more pics afte the jump.

Advanced Test Pattern for THX Optimizer (from SD) – All US versions of the feature film Cars were shipped with an encoding error on Pixar’s Advanced Test Pattern within THX Optimizer. In an effort to provide you with the best possible set up tools, Pixar and THX will send you a complete version of THX Optimizer and THX Blue Glasses. Please submit this shipping form to receive your copy of THX Optimizer (including Pixar’s Advanced Test Pattern). From okayplayer: Just in case its needed the actual ISBN is 0-7888-5798-3

Dont Bother Me (from Angelus) – another awesome routine of smidget! This guy does this amazing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) performance with flips and moonwalks and a bunch of other crazy stuff.

March 23, 2007March 25, 2007

derrich.com

A few days ago, Derrich left a comment on my mp3 searching post and mentioned that I was in his 2007 Bloggers Tournament, Take 2. Honestly, I don’t think too highly of my own blog as it’s filled with random crap (see below) and of the category I’m in (The Gamut), I’m ranked 7 out of 8 according to Alexa Rankings.

gamut: the entire scale or range: the gamut of dramatic emotion from grief to joy.

Looking at my opponent: Kineda (who’s ranked 2 out of 8.), I don’t really think I have much of a chance.

However, if you still want to vote, the poll is located at PollBurner.com.

Random Crap:

Desktopography (from Digg) – Desktopography is an exhibition, a showcase of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide. Designers spend around 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors. This year we present over 40 new desktop wallpapers for you to display and enjoy. They have some really neat wallpapers.

Porsche dealer – “I got it wrong with the buy one get one free card”. (from Digg) – Glen Fergusson – Sales and Marketing manager for a brand new Californian Porsche dealer. Has lost his job and faces possible legal proceedings as the company strives to reclaim the costs of the 18 Porches given away free under Glen’s Opening day “buy one get one free promotion” “I admit I didn’t really do the numbers properly on this one” said Glen who told reporters that he had “seen the concept work really well for coffee stores” and in terms of numbers you could argue that Glen’s campaign worked. As the new Porsche dealer sold 18 Porches in the first hour of the store opening. Wish I knew about this deal!

Frets On Fire (from Digg) – With StepMania being the open source version of DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), Frets on Fire is the open source version of Guitar Hero. Currently there aren’t any USB guitars, but the Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360 will be coming out soon and supposedly it’s wired and the only wired inputs the Xbox 360 has are USB, so *cross fingers*.

little gamers – Luggage and time – a funny comic strip making fun of British people and time.

FofR Configuration v0.6 (from RayAlome) – foobar2000 has been a rather popular replacement for playing music and I personally liked it when I gave it a try. However, it was lacking in the UI aspect as it was very text based (although some of you may really like that). Apparently with a few plug-ins, you can get foobar2000 to look awesome.

Unbelievable graphic art pictures by Rob Gonsalves (from Digg) – One of these pictures was found at blogs and takes me to deep stupor. Extremely imressive retouch technique, amazing effect of visual illusions, perfect pictures quality engaged me to search and find all what i can find from this author. 37 pictures below! Very imaginative drawings and the images tries to confuse the viewer by merging 2 multiple similar looking things into one.

Phosphor – Rasterwerks (from Digg) – Phosphor is a first-person shooter created with Macromedia Director (links will open in new window). The Shockwave Player allows the game to run within a web browser on Windows and Mac OS computers. Both single player (with AI-controlled bots) and multiplayer (using peer-to-peer Internet or LAN connections) game modes are supported. Our goal is to create a gaming experience similar to classic FPS games like Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, but with the accessibility of a webgame. Game actually works rather well. I suck at FPSes though.

Man relieves himself in air-sickness bag – SkyWest Airlines apologized to a passenger who said he wasn’t allowed to use the restroom during a one-hour flight and ended up urinating in an air-sickness bag.

Family Portraits (from Digg) – My four favourite brats and their parents ( plus an additional Ike, cause he’s awesome xD ) These sketches of the 4 main characters’ families from South Park are really good.

Prevent Your Dryer From Catching Fire – Consumerist actually posted one of my blog entries: Clothes Dryer Warning. Apparently this has been on Snopes also.

Dog Chases Fake Soccer Ball (from Deadlock) – This poor confused Jack Russel Terrier chases down a computer generated soccer ball projected onto the floor. He spent all day chasing his tail and now this, he must be so frustrated!

Best Rube Goldberg Ever (from MS newsgroup) – This is from the guys that brought you the Dorm Room Rube Goldberg. They continue to amaze us with their intricate set ups and executions. I miss Pythagora Switch.

Stardust Implosion (from MS newsgroup) – Implosion Of the Stardust Hotel Casino Las Vegas Nevada – March 13th 2:30am Explosions are always fun to watch. Implosions are not as fun, but still fun.

Human Timeline (NSFW) (from FuzzyWuzzy) – As you can see throughout human history, all we do is beat the crap out of each other and have sex.

Ballad of Black Mesa (from Angelus) – A very iPod like video using machine guns and machines to make music. Produced by Mighty Cran Films. You can also download the HD version.

Amazing Girl in American Idol (from Artemyst) – a 11-year old girl with beautiful voice. Wow! This Bianca Ryan has an amazing voice.

I’m all about the cheese, baby (from Digg) – Check out the packaging material used to ship this Mac.

The Entire US Super Nintendo Collection – Complete!! (from Digg) – 720 GAMES COMPLETE PLUS 74 ADDITIONAL FACTORY SEALED!! For the small price of $15k, this could be all yours.

Why Do Guys Get Sleepy After Sex? (from Digg) – “Men go to sleep because women don’t turn into a pizza.” Haha. Though the rest of the article does go further into details about the chemicals released in our brains and etc. Side note: prolactin also explains why men are sleepier after intercourse than after masturbation. For unknown reasons, intercourse orgasms release four times more prolactin than masturbatory orgasms, according to a recent study.

Comparison of 300 move against the comic (from Digg) – and I must say that the movie did a really good job at staying true to the comic.

March 22, 2007July 6, 2008

Free TaxCut and Other Deals

Some deals I wanted to share:

Download your FREE TaxCut Premium Software (from SD) – The tax cut off date is coming soon and hopefully you’ve started working on filing your taxes. Anyway, H&R Block has decided to give away a free download of TaxCut Premium in hopes that you’ll purchase their state software. For states with no state income tax (i.e. Washington), this basically means a free tax software for our return!

USPS & MasterCard Make Saving a Priority (from SD) – From March 1, 2007, to April 30, 2007, use your MasterCard® card to buy a 25-pack of USPS® Prepaid Priority Mail® Flat Rate Envelopes and you’ll receive a 5-pack of envelopes FREE—compliments of MasterCard®! A really good deal if you ship via USPS Priority Mail often. Plus the impending postal rates raising in April, this is one sweet deal!

Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) (from SD) for $13.99. Limit 3 per order. Free shipping if order is $24 or more, or you can always opt for in-store pick up and not pay any shipping and handling fee.

Random Crap:

Speeding teen wanted to catch school bus – – A teenager clocked driving at 93 mph told a deputy he had to get home in time to catch the school bus, police said. Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent sentenced the teen to ride the bus to school after an earlier speeding conviction, Porter County Sheriff’s deputies said.

Hebron museum to preserve four-legged chicken – A museum that displays animals with shocking physical abnormalities in a cave near the West Bank city of Hebron will be adding its newest exhibit this week: a four-legged chicken.

Serial lingerie thief arrested – Police found more than 4,000 pieces of lingerie in the home of a Japanese construction worker who used climbing skills developed on his job to steal women’s underwear.

Delutube (from Ars Technica) – Delutube offers users a way to view deleted YouTube videos

Passover Produces a Real Coke Classic (from Consumerist) – Kosher-for-Passover Coke is made with sugar — not corn syrup — just like in the old days. And that’s why many true Coca-Cola fans stock up during the Jewish holiday. NPR’s Linda Wertheimer talks about the difference in taste with Ralph Roberts, co-author of Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. I actually want to find this coke. I’ve missed coke made with pure sugar cane sugar that I’ve had outside of the USA.

German brothel offers pensioners 50 percent off – A brothel in Germany hopes to capitalise on the growing number of pensioners by offering them a 50 percent discount for sex in the afternoon. Guess it’s time to retire and go to Germany ;p

Ubuntu is sexy alright (from Digg) – Could the new Ubuntu Splash get any more phallic?

Sphere (from Digg) – another one of those escape from this room games where you randomly click on things hoping to uncover some hidden stuff. Unfortunately the tab trick doesn’t work. Solutions are posted somewhere if you know how to search.

Russian Man Grows Penis on Arm (from Digg) – Russian doctors have conducted an 11-hour operation to replace a patient’s deformed penis with one grown on his forearm, the Moskovskiy Komsomolets daily reports. … The doctors had the penis removed and attached to the man’s arm. Using his body tissue it grew to six-and-a-half inches and was sewn back on to his groin. Silicone tubes were inserted into the organ to ensure an erection was possible. Doctors also created a scrotum from the patient’s own skin and placed silicone testicles in it.

Prosecutor: Unicorn defense was a mixup – On Tuesday, a Billings prosecutor had told a district judge that Phillip C. Holliday Jr., 42, claimed a unicorn was driving when his truck crashed into a light pole earlier this month.

Girlfriend dumped live on radio (from Digg) – From Galaxy Radio show – dj calls cheating girlfriend, tricks her into thinking her boyfriend is going to ask her to marry him then reveals she is actually being dumped.

Ivy – Sonata of Temptation (from Stanman) – Korean Pop singer ‘IVY”s 2nd album title song. it samples Beethoven(For Elise), and Music Video parodys FF7-advance children(JAPAN GAME) A Korean music video with real live actors acting out the fight sequence in the church from Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children between Tifa and that strong arm guy.

Maburaho @ MS Paint – It`s my third MS Paint drawing. I`ve spent about 2 hours and a half in it. It`s pretty cool! Enjoy! Another really cool drawing using MS Paint. A quick search on YouTube for ‘mspaint‘ reveals a bunch of other interesting videos of people using MS Paint to draw.

March 21, 2007

New Love

Did you know that M&M’s now come in dark chocolate!?!?! Our group admin had a jar of plain M&M’s in front of his office and I grabbed a handful, and the moment I popped a few in my mouth, I was like, “these M&M’s are especially delicious. I looked at the M&M’s themselves and they now say m Dark.

I think I just found my new love: M&M’s Dark

Interestingly enough, Walgreens appears to have a deal on it this week (from SD).

2 bags for $3 (11oz to 14oz). The original price is 2 bags for $4.

On top of that, if you purchase $10 (before coupons) worth of M&M’s (11oz to 14oz bags), you get a free Easter plush. See page 27 of the EasySaver Catalog PDF file (page 52 in the actual catalog).

There’s a mention of an additional coupon from something called Valassis, which appears to be some sort of marketing company, but I have no idea what they’re referring to.

I had noticed a limit on the coupon, but someone claimed that Walgreens ignores the limit, while another says that that some Walgreens ignore while others are strict about it. Anyway, it looks like I need to purchase at least 5 bags of M&M’s before I qualify for the free Easter plush.

Random Crap:

I was watching a new Chinese TV series and they used a phrased that my dad frequently used when we were kids: 自覺 (zi4 jue2). I believe this is a Cantonese only phrase and doesn’t really have a meaning in Mandarin. It has never dawned upon me that these were the 2 characters that were used to make up this phrase. The overall meaning to the phrase is similar to self discipline. 自覺D啦 = Have more self discipline or be more obedient. The words by themselves translate to literally self feel, but I think it’s a shortening of 自己覺得 or 自己發覺 which means self opinion or self realization, which is still pushing it to be self discipline or self obedient. I guess when you can realize the truth about something, self discipline comes afterwards.

Did you know that WIKI was an acronym for What I Know Is? (from Acronym Finder)

My Costco only sold cup ramen of chicken flavor which I really dislike. Maybe it’s because I ate too much of it back at home, but then again I ate a bunch of shrimp flavored but I never seemed bored of that. Anyway, they didn’t sell the shrimp flavor here in Washington (at least the 2 Costco’s I’ve been to), so I stopped bothering to look for it whenever I went to Costco. Anyway, I happened to be in instant ramen section the other day and noticed they know have Kirkland Signature cup ramen! I wonder what Kirkland Signature doesn’t have. Anyway, there was only chicken flavor, but I decided to get it a try. I was shocked. I actually liked this new KS cup ramen. I’m not sure, but I think they actually have little chunks of chicken in it, but that may just be my imagination. They’re actually produced by Nissin (the same company that makes Top Ramen and 出前一丁). If you don’t know, 出前一丁 is my favorite ramen.

Scandal brews over China tea-for-urine samples – A group of Chinese reporters came up with a novel idea to test how greedy local hospitals were — pass off tea as urine samples and submit the drink for tests. The results: six out of 10 hospitals in Hangzhou, the capital of the rich coastal province of Zhejiang, visited by the reporters over a two-day period this month concluded that the patients’ urinal tracts were infected.

Boy puts urine in teacher’s coffee pot – An eighth-grader faces expulsion after admitting he put urine in a teacher’s coffee pot, officials said. The Wilson Middle School teacher noticed that the coffee had an unusual odor Friday and reported it to the principal, Muncie Community Schools officials said. A student who overheard classmates discussing it also reported the incident to officials.

Teen ends up on ice chunk in Miss. River – Amos Benjamin Cohen, 19, stood frozen with fear as the six foot by 15 foot ice chunk swirled in the water, floating toward shore then drifting back to the middle of the river, witnesses and rescuers said. “He stood there so still,” like the Statue of Liberty, said Sue Hillberg who spotted him from her mother’s kitchen window.

Lawsuit Says Education Dept. Overcharged on Student Loans (from Consumerist) – The Education Department penalizes consolidated loan borrowers who fail to make all of their annual payments by June 30 by adding penalties to the principal of their loans, on which they then have to pay extra interest. Pfeiffer discovered that she was being fined unfairly, her lawsuit says. She made her June payments on time and sometimes early. But the department was penalizing her for not making a separate payment for the days between her June payment and June 30, the suit says, even though her next wasn’t due until July 21. The penalties were then capitalized — or added to the principal of her loan. Interesting… Maybe I should start looking more closely at my loans.

Activist to zoo: Wrong to save baby polar bear (from Cari) – The baby polar bear is SO CUTE!!! Do check out the cute video.

Hundreds line up for sheep testicles – Hundreds of people waited in lines for up to an hour for a chance to taste something different at the 16th annual Mountain Oyster Fry. Servers at five booths dispensed about 130 pounds of “fried oysters,” or sheep testicles, at the Saturday event in this historic mining town about 25 miles southeast of Reno.

Burglars steal 220-pound gold bar – A group of burglars stole a massive block of gold worth over $2 million from a Japanese museum in a heist that police said could have been prevented — if only the curators hadn’t left the showcases wide open. The Ohashi Collection Kan museum in Takayama, in central Japan, kept the 220-pound gold bullion unguarded by sensors or even by a case because it wanted visitors to be able to touch it, local police officer Shinji Kurake said Monday.

Windows Vista: more than just a pretty face – Windows Vista has had something of a troubled birth. Hyped features were pulled, and the project as a whole took far longer to complete than expected, partly due to standing still while MS dropped everything to work on Windows XP Service Pack 2, but in part also due to a decision to “reset” and scrap much of the new development. This has led some commentators to dub the project a “train wreck.” But is it? I found the review rather good as it actually tells you what is different in Vista instead of just the “new look”.