Random Crap

Humor in church: the rite stuff?Fight truth decay” is a favorite. “Come in for a free faith lift,” is another — two examples of the toe-curling puns plastered across so many notice boards outside British churches. … Among the classics she cited were “Chxxch — Have you guessed what’s missing.UR!” and “God, you’re great!”

The Wisdom of Children (from Digg) – A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table:

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won’t tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I’m crazy!
GRANDFATHER: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don’t tell the kids.

No sex please, we’re daddy’s little girlsIt has all the ingredients of a wedding. The proud tuxedo-clad father, the frosted white cake, the limousines and an exchange of vows. But there is no groom and the girl in the long gown is no bride. She’s daddy’s little girl, there to take a vow of chastity.

Best of Car Talk Letters – Response to MIT’s invitation letterGentlemen: Given your recent reading of the college application essay and your ties to that other (lesser) institution in Cambridge, I thought you might enjoy this. Yours sincerely, Stan McGee. MIT certainly has a reputation to be proud of, but its admissions department went a little over-board, I think. The first letter is an honest-to-goodness mailing from MIT, the second is one prospective student’s reply.

IRS Urges E-Filing — But by Vendors Only, PleaseThe IRS recommends that taxpayers file electronically — e-filing saves the government time and money, and is more accurate than IRS employees who type in the data from paper returns. But the IRS refuses to set up its own Web portal to receive the filings. Instead, most Americans have no choice but to e-file through private companies like Intuit (Turbo Tax) and HR Block (Tax Cut). There is something very very wrong with this system. E-Filing should be free if not have an extra discount. I mean, how much man hours are we saving them by having all our tax documents and numbers in digital formats which they can simply import it into their database. But no, instead, they decide to outsource it to other companies which charge a fee to save IRS some time. Sigh…

The Cure for Insomnia (from Tera) – The Cure for Insomnia, directed by John Henry Timmis IV, is officially the world’s longest movie, according to Guinness World Records, as of its release in 1987. Running 5220 minutes (87 hours) in length, the movie has no plot, instead consisting of artist L. D. Groban reading his lengthy poem “A Cure for Insomnia” over the course of three and a half days, spliced with occasional clips from heavy metal and pornographic videos.

pSX emulator (from Angelus) – This emulator fully emulates the Sony Playstation. Compatibility is fairly high, most games I’ve tried work well. An R3000 debugger is contained which may be of interest to people working on translations. Check out the screenshots.

TomTom PLUS services – I get this email a few weeks back saying apparently I can download new voices for my TomTom GO 700 (for a price of course) and they were advertising Mr. T. Check out what he sounds like when giving directions.

popuri.us (from Digg) – A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more!

How do you prove photography to a blind man?That was the question I was asked: how would you prove to a blind man, that photography exists? A very interesting article.

Couple tie knot in ‘moving’ ceremonyBecause the bride is a snowboard instructor, her guests rode snowboards. The bridegroom is a ski instructor, and his guests were on skis. The Rev. Mike Boucher skied backward to face the crowd, wore a helmet camera during the ceremony and had a ski-mounted lectern that housed a public-address system.

People banned from SNLSaturday Night Live’s producers, especially Lorne Michaels, have famously and dramatically banned for life several celebrities from ever appearing on the television show. Reasons for these bans vary, as sometimes they can be seen as a rational response to a star’s grossly innappropriate on-stage behavior, while at other times the reasons are harder to understand as they stem from far more mild, or even superficial transgressions.

Eddie Griffin Crashes Ferrari Enzo (from Derek) – While practicing for a charity race to promote his new movie Redline, comedian Eddie Griffin crashed a rare $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo. I guess the Undercover Brother never learned how to drive a stick. How many Enzos have crashed? Isn’t there a limited number of them?

2 Chinese Boys Sing Jessica Simpson “A Public Affair” The two Chinese Boys who did Back Str… The two Chinese Boys who did Back Street Boys are ack doing Jessica Simpson’s new single “A Public Affair!” You get to see their roommate in the background, and you wonder how he can stand this. ;p

Random Crap

First I wanted to say Happy Birthday Stanman!!!

Then I just wanted to comment on how beautiful this past week was. The sun was out and everything was just gorgeous. With continuous rain for months, I think everyone’s happy that finally the sun is smiling.

Have you guys used the new Bank of America online login. There’s something about their new interface that really bothers me. After I enter my password and hit “Login”, it immediately displays this message underneath the password box:

Your request is being processed, Please wait…

Which always makes me think that I entered my password incorrectly. Maybe it’s just me.

According to Bloglines, my rss feed has 5 subscribers!

Today’s Japanese phrase is 匂い (nioi – odor; scent; smell; stench). It can refer to the general scent/smell, or if you use a different tone, you can refer to something that stinks/smells bad, like in English when we say, “It smells.” Another kanji for nioi is 臭い, which uses the kanji for stink/smells bad.

I worked from home today as I received a note that UPS needed my signature in person to deliver this package. Usually they just leave it at my front door or request that I sign on the back of the note and they’ll just drop it. But this one specifically had those 2 options crossed out and said I had to be here in person. I thought since it’s Friday, it’d also be nice to work from home. So when the doorbell finally rang, I went to open it. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen my UPS guy here. He goes, “Oh! You’re here.” He was already writing a 2nd note for me. At first I thought that was somewhat rude. Ring the doorbell and assume I’m not at home. I guess that’s usually the case, but this one required a signature in person, so you’d think he’d wait some time before actually writing the note. However, I forgave him when I saw how big and heavy the box was. I guess it would be rather stupid to have to carry this big box up the stairs and then back then if no one was home.

Site was down earlier today

Not to sure what the cause was, but my site was down earlier today for almost 9 hours. Email, FTP, and even SSH worked fine without any problems. Trying to connect via the browser just kept timing out.

Dreamhost didn’t really have any notice of what was going on, and a couple other people were also experiencing this.

According to InternetSeer:

Recovery Alert

Your Web Site is no longer on error

URL: http://www.krunk4ever.com
Time: Fri Mar 30 07:46:50 EDT 2007
Total Time on Error: 8 hours, 48 minutes, 37 seconds

It wasn’t too bad since a majority of those hours would be where people would’ve been sleeping. Besides me that is…

Oh well, at least it’s back up.

Comments

I had updated my blog email (was starting to get spam) and didn’t realized that the admin email was still pointing to the old one. All emails being sent to my previous blog email were automatically deleted. Therefore, when comments came in asking for approval, I never got them. I just realized today with a queue of 12 comments that I needed to approve, delete, or mark as spam.

If you had submitted a comment earlier that needed approval and it was “legit”, it should now show up.

Amazon.com Context Links

So I got an email from Amazon.com via the associates network a few days ago:

Dear Amazon Associate:

The Amazon Associates program is thrilled to announce the release of the Context Links Beta!

Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add links to your website and monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products, unlocking new ad inventory and saving you the time from having to manually create links. You can add the links to your pages in minutes, and we provide a wealth of options to customize how they are displayed.

You create the content. We’ll link it.

I decided to give it a try, but if you guys find it annoying, please let me know. Somewhat neat that it scans my page and automatically creates link in text that are already there. Most of them are pretty much on target, but then you get stuff like Kirkland Signature linking to KitchenAid Gourmet Essentials 10-Piece Hard Anodized Cookware Set, which doesn’t even have the phrase Kirkland Signature on the page.

The tool they provide is pretty configurable allowing you to include or exclude the following:

  • Logo
  • Product Image
  • List Price
  • Amazon Price
  • Customer Rating

and the ability to change to any colors you want. I haven’t played much with the color scheme yet and I’ve left everything at the default.

There is also a setting to “Match exact product names”, which might solve my Kirkland Signature problem, but I’m going to give it a few days to see how it turns out.

You can also set how many links they’re allowed to create per page. By default, the number is 10. I actually think it’s not that bad since the link looks normal and doesn’t blink nor have any animation to draw your eye to it. It does pop up a box with more information when you hover over it, which may get annoying. But we’ll see.

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 bagSkyWest 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.

First AdBrite Check

I got my 1st payment from AdBrite to the sum of $15 and change. They’re on a net-60 basis, which I found out meant even if I get $1 on a particular day, it won’t fully qualify to be withdrawn until 60 days later. Anyway, I’m averaging $14 and change for a 30 day period right now and it’s slowly been going up. I was only averaging $12 for a 30 day period just a few weeks ago. Since my hosting costs only $7.95/mo, I’m doing rather well.

I started hosting AdBrite ads about mid November, and given the 60 day wait before I can cash out, I think I’m doing rather well. While I’m not sure how well I would’ve done with Google Ads, I would never have expected to see a check in just a few months. With the minimum of $100 before you can cash out at Google, it’s quite a lot for a small site like mine to accumulate to. At the pace with Google Ads, I was expecting at least 8-9 months before I would see my 1st check.

With AdBrite, I’m not sure what the minimum amount you could specify is, but I currently have it set to mailing me a check whenever I hit over $10 at the end of the month.

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:

dead karl 1 - revenge
Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

dead karl 2 - watching the ring
Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

dead karl 3 - stealing candy from kid and running away from police
Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

dead karl 4 - fighting the teacher
Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

dead karl 5 - no beggars in mcdonalds
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 chargedAn 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 canvasWade, 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.

scott wade draws on dirty car windows

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.

Website was down earlier today

My website and email servers were down for a few hours earlier this morning.

According to DreamHost Status:

Planned Power Outage

We were just informed one hour ago from our building management that an emergency maintenance window is scheduled for this Saturday morning, February 24th, at 1AM PST. UPDATE! The building has just changed the window to be 23 hours later.. it is now scheduled for Sunday morning, February 25th, at 12:01AM PST. This maintenance window involves taking our entire building’s power offline for approximately 3 hours. The word from the building:

It was discovered by ABM Engineering during the power monitoring equipment installation, that a Phase C Conductor Cable on UPS #4 has been compromised to the point that immediate action to repair it is necessary or a ground fault will occur to the building systems.

Since only one of our three data centers is losing power, not all servers will be shut down. Unfortunately, our core routers and our upstream providers are in that data center, so there will be no network to any servers during the window. Gaah.

Since we have advanced (albeit limited) warning of this event, we will be onhand to physically power off all of our equipment at 11:15PM PST. Barring any unforeseen issues (on our end or the building engineer’s) we plan on having everything back up by 4AM PST, hopefully much sooner.

This outage will affect everyone’s sites and email. Email sent to our customers during this outage will be deferred on the sending server and will be delivered after service is restored.

We apologize for the inconvenience this no doubt causes, as well as for the short notice. We will be posting updates as possible during the outage.

The servers have been brought back online and should be fully functioning now.

Digg

Digg just released a easy script to integrate Digg on any website: Integrate: “Digg This” Button. Before you had to submit your story and then get the Digg button link, but now, the submit story and the Digg link are both the same. Unfortunately, most of my stories have not been submitted so they’re all stuck at a big fat zero. My best Digg story so far is How to download HD Trailers from Apple.com at 3, though through someone else’s Digg, I’ve been getting a lot of traffic to that entry.

They have 2 main skins: default and compact. The default skin looks like the normal Digg style with a big number and the word Digg underneath it. With compact (what I’m using), it’s a lot smaller, takes up less room, and fits inline with standard text.

You also have the option of setting a different URL than the current one. This is for pages with multiple blog entries (like my main page) and I don’t want to be Digging Krunk4ever.com, but the specific entry itself. I guess this can be abused, but I don’t really see it as that big of a problem.

There are options you can set like background color, default title, default summary, etc.

I didn’t really take much time to decide where to put it, so I’ve just randomly selected it to be under the Title right now. If you have a better suggestion of where the Digg block should be, please let me know. I’ve only added Digg code to my main index page and the individual entry’s page. Since the archive and search results only show a small chunk of the entry, I didn’t think putting Digg code there made much sense.