Page 115 – Krunk4Ever!

May 25, 2006May 8, 2008

Gasoline Prices

gasoline prices - arm, leg, or first born
Gasoline Prices:
Regular: ARM
Plus: LEG
V-Power: FIRST BORN

Photo taken from Gas station’s shocking sign of times: – Gas really does cost an arm and a leg in places these days. This weekend, a Manhattan Beach, California, gas station said the price of regular gasoline was — an arm. The price of mid-grade — a leg. The price of premium — your first born.

Sigh…

Speaking of which, someone posted this on a MS newsgroup: Car Powered By Water A Reality: Klein has invented the world’s first water powered car. It runs on what he calls “Aquygen.” Aquygen is water or H2O, broken down and turned into HHO gas, something scientists once thought impossible. I have no idea if this is fact or fiction, but do check out the video. There hasn’t been an entry on Snopes.com yet, but I’m not exactly too sure when this was first discovered. The article was written on 5/23/2006, so I’m guessing at least relatively new. This is just bizarre and quite hard for me to believe. Fox News also has a video of this: Water Fuel.

Klein first started using water and mixing it with propane to make a high power torch that wasn’t hot to touch, but could burn through metal (what the… how the.. *BEEP* *BEEP*). He later uses this same technology in his car. At first I thought it was a 100% water powered car, but it turns out to only be a hybrid currently, mixing fuel and water which is giving him 50% more mileage. The reporter claims that Klein says he’s also getting more horse power using this technology, but it didn’t seem the like the reporter really knew what the heck he was reading off the teleprompt. Klein imagines in the near future, there will be cars powered only by water and you can get 100 miles with just 4 oz of water. To give you an idea of how much that is, there’s 128 ounces per gallon. So in other words, 1 gallon of water can get you 3200 miles. Just imagine how much mileage a 15 gallon tank gives you. Some how I keep thinking my leg is being pulled. How can this be true?!?!? Wasn’t April Fools a long time ago?

Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase are related to friendship:
友達 (tomodachi) – friend; companion [this is how you address your regular friends]
仲間 (nakama) – company; fellow; colleague; associate; comrade; mate; group; circle of friends; partner; [in animes, this word is used to refer to comrades who you’re willing to die for]
真親友 (shinyuu) – literally means ~~real~~ dear friend [ this is an uncommon phrase that my Japanese IME didn’t even know. WWWJDIC also doesn’t have an entry for it ] Update: Thanks to hiro for correcting correcting my error.

Ryuu in Detective Academy Q said:
同じ志を持つ仲間。いいえ、真友です！
(onaji kokorozashi wo motsu nakama. iie, shinyuu desu!)
[They’re comrades who share the same will. No, they’re real friends!]

So it appears, that 真友 (shinyuu) refers to a friendship with a stronger bond than 仲間 (nakama) which is someone you’re already willing to die for. Then again, I could be pulling this out from my ***** since this is the 1st time I’ve heard it.

Another interesting world is 志 (kokorozashi). kokoro by itself is 心 (heart), but by sticking ざし (zashi) onto the end, you get a new kanji which means – will; intention; motive;
I never knew you could do that in Japanese, where you stick some more syllables at the end of a character and it’ll become a completely new character. This never happens in Chinese (well, that’s because all our characters all have 1 syllable).

Saw this on someone’s profile: “True success isn’t measured by the position you reach but by the obstacles you overcome in life.” – Evercare

I’ve seen this phrase in many shapes and forms, but is it nothing more than comfort talk? I mean, you have starting point, you have goal. If you never reach your goal, can you really say you succeeded? I know the way to your goal is definitely important, but this is like saying, “It’s okay that you didn’t make it. At least you got a lot of valuable experiences.”

May 25, 2006May 25, 2006

iPod God

If there was an iPod God, he must’ve heard my complain, because mysteriously my iPod Nano is fixed. So for the longest time, whenever I pull my earphones out, my iPod would continue playing, but whenever I plugged it back in, it would stop playing. I thought that was the most bizarre thing and quite counter-intuitive. I was just complaining to Decathanerd the other day on how Apple should’ve reversed that behavior and he tells me that’s how his iPod Nano behaves. When he unplugs his earphones, the iPod stops playing and not when he plugs it in. However, when he plugs it in, it doesn’t start playing which I’m okay with.

So I verified that wasn’t the case for me. Decathanerd said it took awhile for it to stop playing, so I waited 30 secs after unplugging for it to stop playing, but it continued playing and the moment my earphones touched the input hole, it immediately stopped playing.

I went to Apple’s support site trying to find a way to ask for help, but apparently they don’t have online email support, only through phone or I can visit one of their stores (which there are a couple in the Seattle area). However, I did find this article: iPod (Click Wheel) pauses when headphone connector is unplugged:

Getting a surprise pause when you unplug something?

iPod (Click Wheel) pauses playback when anything connected to the headphone jack (such as headphones or the remote) is removed. Pressing the Play button will resume playback.

So it appears my iPod was defective and Decathanerd and I were plotting on how to get Apple to replace my iPod because I’ve also got it scratched a lot.

But today, when I unplugged my earphones, my iPod Nano magically stopped playing, as if it was never broken to begin with. I did this couple times with different start states (playing, not playing, etc) to verify it wasn’t just a fluke. Maybe there was a way I was unplugging my earphones before that made my iPod Nano wacky. Welp, I’m happy now and I don’t have to stop by the Bellevue Apple store this weekend.

Another thing I got for my iPod Nano was this new skin: iPod Nano Crystal Shield – Enhanced. When I first got my iPod, they only carried the iPod Nano Crystal Shield – Rugged (which wasn’t even distinguished between Enhanced and Rugged before). This rugged skin wasn’t as clear as I hoped for and it came as 2 big sheets of sticky plastic which made controlling the wheel and pushing the center button a bit hard. I was also seeing random colors on the screen due to distortion of the sticky stuff they’re using.

However the new Enhanced version is so much better. As they state: If you’d prefer a clearer display and don’t need the thickness of the “Rugged” item, we’d suggest looking at our “Enhanced” series of crystal shields for the Nano. The “Enhanced” series covers almost the same area but is made of a special multi-layer composite material.

From the description of the Enhanced version: The “Enhanced” series of body protectors are a three piece 99% transparent, special multi-layer composite piece designed to fit the face of the iPod (including the screen), the outer portion of the clickwheel and the chrome back of the device.

I can’t describe how much happier I’m with this new skin. It even came with its own microfiber soft cloth to clean your iPod before applying the skin and a small piece of firm cardboard (could’ve been firmer, but I’m not complaining) which you can use to push out air bubbles. The real reason why I decided to get a new skin was there was a air bubble in the old skin I was using and it was annoying me. so I peeled of one corner to get it out, and from that point on, that corner was ruined and started to slowly peel by itself.

Another difference was my original skin was just 2 pieces of plastic while the new versions (both the Enhanced and Rugged) now has a big hole cut out for th wheel and a seperate donut plastic for the wheel. The skin is so thin, it’s like it’s not even there. I see people carrying theirs in thick silicone skins and that just really defeats the purpose of purchasing something so tiny.

You can read their Skinning Demystified to see how exactly their skins work. Of course take it with a grain of salt, since they are sales people, but as advertised, my iPod Nano hasn’t been scratched since I started using their skins and there is pratically no noticable difference now that the transparency issue has been fixed.

May 24, 2006May 24, 2006

Poker Riddle

Got this riddle from Wrexen’s blog:

Two men play a game of draw poker in the following curious manner. The spread a deck of 52 cards face up on the table so that they can see all the cards. The first player draws a hand by picking any five cards he chooses. The second player does the same. The first player may now keep his original hand or draw up to five cards. His discards are put aside out of the game. The second player may now draw likewise. The person with the higher hand then wins. Suits have equal value, so that two flushes tie unless one is made of higher cards. After a while the players discover that the first player can always win if he draws his first hand correctly. What hand must this be?

I think I may have the answer to the riddle (will be posted in the comments).

Here’s the ranking of the hands if you don’t know about poker (suits don’t matter):
Royal Flush
Straight Flush
4 of a Kind
Full House
Flush
Straight
3 of a Kind
2 Pair
1 Pair
High Card

An interesting question someone raised was how will it turn out if there were 3 players.

May 24, 2006

Danielle Bollinger – Kiss the Sky

This artist was introduced to me by RayAlome: Danielle Bollinger

She has 2 tracks available to listen to on her website:
Kiss the Sky
When the Broken Hearted Love Again

and 2 music videos for you to watch on her website:
Kiss the Sky
Kiss the Sky (Club Remix)

The Kiss the Sky song was so good, I downloaded the Mike Rizzo Global Club Mix from iTunes ($0.99 for a ~8min song), although the Mike Rizzo Global Radio Edit seems more popular.

I wasn’t able to find the lyrics online, but so I’ve tried to decipher it:

The ocean holds me captive
And it keeps me from the truth
Though I don’t know how I got here
But I know I’m missing you

And I know the day is coming (coming)
When I’ll be back inside your arm
But as much as I believe it
The day seems so far

So I’ll kiss the sky good night
And pretend I’m by your side
And in the dark I’ll feel the light
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky

Every time the wind blows
I hear it call your name
And even in the darkness
I can see your face

Every second brings my freedom
Much closer into view
So the ocean will not hold me
And I’ll be one with you

So I’ll kiss the sky good night
And pretend I’m by your side
And in the dark I’ll feel the light
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

And when I kiss the sky good night
You will be right by my side
And in the dark I’ll feel the light
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky

I’ll kiss the sky good night
And pretend I’m by your side
And in the dark I’ll feel the light
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

And when I kiss the sky good night
You will be right by my side
And in the dark I’ll feel the light
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

So I’ll kiss the sky good night (I’ll kiss the sky)
And pretend I’m by your side (I’ll kiss the sky)
And in the dark I’ll feel the light (I’ll kiss the sky)
I’ll be loved (I’ll kiss the sky)
I’ll be loved
I’ll be loved

I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky
I’ll kiss the sky

You can get this song off her When the Broken Hearted Love Again album.

May 23, 2006November 14, 2007

LeekSpin

I’m now addicted to a new flash video/song: LEEKSPIN DOT COM (from Decathanerd). The song is mesmerizing and has a light joyous hint to it. I’ve set up a mirror in my gallery.

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

The character you see spinning the leek is a female character from Bleach (the anime) named Orihime. She’s a bit of a klutz, but pretty cute:

After searching online for awhile, it turns out this song is called Ievan Polkka. This version was performed by Loituma in 1995. Both Wikipedia entries were started after this flash animation started spreading around (5/8/2006 and 4/27/2006 respectively). From Wikipedia:

The song is sung in Savo, the eastern dialect of the Finnish language, making it even more comical for Finns.

The intermezzo, which was used in the Flash movie, is just phonetically inspired gibberish with some Finnish words in it. It is not the part of the original song by Eino Kettunen, but rather is introduced by Loituma.
—

This song is best known from an a cappella performance by the Finnish quartet Loituma, first released in their album “Loituma” in 1995, re-released in album “Things of Beauty” in 1998.

The song, popular in Finland but previously unknown to the rest of the world, became better-known on the Internet since April/May 2006 because of a Flash cartoon.

—

A flash animation including this song has gained popularity on the internet. The cartoon consists of a 4-frame animation of an anime character twirling a leek to a 26-second loop from the song. Like many other such cartoons, it is set to loop continuously. Due to the infinity, the nonsensical sound of the singing, the simple energizing melody, the girl’s cheerful facial expression and the absurdity of spinning a leek the cartoon is considered very funny and has been spread by quite a number of people. Within a few days, tens of thousands of pages directed to the possible origin or had the file uploaded on their own webspace.

The “leekspin girl” is the BLEACH character Orihime Inoue, she spins the leek because she is telling her friend what she is planning to cook (usually something weird).

For the cartoon the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) have been used; apparently they have no meaning and are therefore not included in the official lyrics. This is overlooked in most cases by the users who post the lyrics, often causing confusion.

It was originally made by an anonymous user of the image board 4chan and posted on the site’s flash board.

By now there are multiple videos and remixes of the song which have been inspired by the flash cartoon.

You can get the song in Loituma’s Things of Beauty album. You can listen to a preview of Ievan Polkka/Ieva’s Polka at Amazon.com.

Here you can view a video of Loituma Live (from Decathanerd) performing Ievan Polkka (Ieva’s Polka). An awesome thing about this group is they perform as a capella which always has this cool aspect to it. Here’s a mirror in case the original ever goes down.

May 21, 2006May 21, 2006

Man proposes at Apple’s NYC Cube Store Video Camera

This was originally posted as a comment in one of my random crap posts, but since people don’t exactly read my comments, I thought it’d be nice to post it as a valid entry.

From (/. comment #15371864):

If you go to the apple store fifth avenue’s website and click on “05:00” you’ll see an Asian gentleman telling his girlfriend (presumably) that he loves her and proposing. Wait for it to get light out in the time lapse, you can’t miss him and his pad of paper.

Cute.

It indeed is there. If you watch it several times, you would’ve noticed the man on the screen before, and then a 2nd time where he times I’m guessing how long between shots, so he can determine how long to stay.

The signs he displays (in sequential order) is:
Uschi Lang
I Love You
Will You Marry Me?

May 20, 2006May 20, 2006

Bug falling from my ceiling

So while I was updating my blog, a bug falls from the ceiling into my cereal bowl. I’ve seen this bug a day or 2 earlier and I squished it as it after noticing it crawling across my 24″ LCD (a spider’s done that too, but I like spiders so I let him get away). No, I didn’t squish it on my 24″ LCD. I waited for it leave the screen and fall off. But today I was surprised as one fell from my ceiling and into my cereal bowl. Good thing I’ve already finished my cereal. I’ve actually seen this type of bug back in my college apartment when they were renovating our bathtub and they were labeled as Silverfish (I was searching for silvertail and didn’t find anything earlier).

Here’s some pictures of it before I washed it down the drain:

May 20, 2006

Pandora Techno Recommendations

So through Pandora, I found some new songs that I really like:

Within Temptation – Jillian (I’d Give My Heart)

You can find this track on their The Silent Force album. You can watch them perform live in this video. The music has some ghostly/scary feeling to it, mixed with some electronica and of course the necessary high pitch female voice that makes all techno/trance songs better. I would say their style is pretty similar to Evanescence. You can hear a better quality version of it by watching this compilation with scenes from Serenity.

Lyrics (from Sing365): (Show)

Reflekt – Need to Feel Loved

Another techno-y song with heavy beats and a high pitch female singer. You can watch their music video here. You can find this song in their Need to Feel Loved album.

Lyrics (from Only Lyrics): (Show)

Lasgo – Alone
Lasgo – Something

There’s 2 songs that were played by Lasgo that I liked. You can watch the music video of Alone or music video of Something. You can also listen to a preview of Alone or a preview of Something. You can find both tracks in her Some Things album. If those weren’t proper nouns, the few sentense I just type made no sense.

Lyrics (from Sing365/Sing365): (Show)

May 20, 2006

.dd-wrt v23 SP1

So .dd-wrt v23 SP1 was released earlier this week and I didn’t have time to flash my Linksys WRT54G v4 till today. Linksys now has 3 varieties of this router: WRT54G, WRT54GS, WRT54GL. The main difference between the 3 is that the WRT54G no longer supports outside firmware, and that line was renamed to WRT54GL (L = Linux). The WRT54GS comes with SpeedBooster technology. According to Linksysinfo.org, the only difference is that the WRT54GS comes with twice as much RAM.

You can download the newest firmware here or click one of the following direct links:
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_micro.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_mini.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_standard.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_voip.zip
dd-wrt.v23_sp1_vpn.zip

I went with the standard as usual, since I didn’t want to limit my options and didn’t really need it customized for VPN or VoIP. To give you a better idea on how to decide, this was taken from their homepage:

DD-WRT v23 SP1 final is now available for download in the following distributions:
micro – made for low memory and flash space devices. its does support the WRT54G/GS v5 too. but you need a jtag adapter to get it on this unit for the first time. consult the dd-wrt wiki for step by step instructions
mini – minimal feature set dd-wrt. it contains almost everything you need and leaves also enough flash space free for doing some customization using jffs
standard – standard feature set dd-wrt which contains almost everything you need for professional usage including snmp, hotspot features like chillispot and sputnik ™.
voip – contains a additional SIP Gateway Routing system for managing SIP capable devices in a private network
vpn – contains a full featured openvpn client for high secure network connections.

Some notes, the default username has been changed from admin to root. So you have to log in using root and your previous password. Also do note, they recommend you to reset your router to factory settings and I always forget what my default WRT54G username/password is. So if you have forgotten, the default username/password is (blank)/admin (from Default Router Usernames and Passwords).

Under DHCP, the default Client Lease Time was set to 1440 minutes. I thought that was a funky number, so I changed it to 3600 minutes. Later I realized was thinking 3600 seconds per hour and if that was minutes, it would mean 60 hours. So I went and calculated how many minutes per day, and guess what, 24 * 60 = 1440 minutes per day. Haha. The default was what I already wanted. Previously the client lease time was set to 10 minutes. Not sure if that was the default, or I somehow managed to set it to that low.

Of course I’ve bumped up my Xmit Power from 28mW to 251mW, however it appears there’s this new setting labeled Noise Reference which can be set between 0 and -100db. It’s default to -98db, so I’m just going to leave it there for now, but if you know what the advantages of changing that (yes, I’m too lazy to go look it up right now), please let me know.

I haven’t played around with the settings much yet. Re-enabled my port forwarding table and setup my wireless security and things have been working fine so far. One thing I noticed is that DNS lookup seems to break afterawhile, and I had to set my DNS servers manually to bypass resetting the router everyday. I wonder if this update fixed that.

May 20, 2006

Era – Misere Mani

I was watching a music video and fell in love with this song: Era – Misere Mani. It’s just so beautiful. You can watch the music video here. You can find the song on Era, Vol. 2.

era, vol. 2 cd cover

Lyrics (from Lyrics And Songs):

Pera menora
Infane lia
Doven anore
Misere mani

I will look in the sky
I will search for the sun
Who’ll tell us all about
Where we’ll be tomorrow

I will read all the books
On my knees countlessness
To tell you what about
The legends of the past

I will wait for the sun (Pera menora )
On the top of the world (Infane lia)
To tell you all about (Doven anore)
The beauty of the light (Misere mani)

If you look inside your soul
The world will open to your eyes
You will see…

Pera menora
Ifano mia
Misere mani
Doven adore
Ifane nia
Misere maneo
Doven adore
Ifane tia
Misera omane

I will stand in the rain
Hoping sun will come through
And I’ll see the colours of a misty rainbow
I’ll stay up in the night
Looking on shooting stars
To tell you how magic
Is the whole universe

If you look inside your soul
The world will open to your eyes
You will see…

Pera menora infano lia
Misere mani
Doven anore
Infane lia
Misere manio
Doven anore
Infane lia
Misero omane

Pera menora
Infane lia
You will see…
Doven anore
Misere mani

Ooooo…

I will wait for the sun
On the top of the world
To tell you all about
The beauty of the light
I’ll stay up in the night
Looking on shooting stars

Doven anore
Infane lia
Misere manio
Doven anore
Infane lia
Misero omane

I will look in the sky
I will search for the sun
I will wait for the sun
On the top of the world
I will look in the sky
Of the world, of the world, of the world.