From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So during the Anti-Super Bowl party, Guy brought up an interesting game. Let’s say this game exists (no one really plays this game and I’ll explain why later). The game works like this. There are 2 players. Player 1 chooses a number between 1 and 9. Player 2 then chooses a number between 1 and 9, but not any number that has already been picked. This goes back and forth till either player has any 3 numbers that can add up to 15. If all 9 numbers are used and neither player can add up to 15 with 3 numbers in their set, it’s a tie.

Is there a winning path? Does the 1st player always have the advantage since he gets 1 extra number? I’ll let you think about this for a bit and if you’re ready to learn more about the game, open the spoilers.

Spoilers: (Show)

Do you remember magic squares? A 3×3 magic square is defined as having the sum of the numbers in each row, column and diagonal equal to 15.

In a sense, playing the 3 numbers to add up to 15 game is like playing tic-tac-toe, but the spaces are defined by a rotatable and flippable 3×3 matrix of numbers.

Pretty interesting huh?

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Random Crap:

Made several updates to my previous posts:

1. Added a new all 3D CG scenes video to Final Fantasy VII – Dirge of Cerberus.
2. Corrected who the artists of The Internet Is For Porn were.

Did you know that Dead or Alive‘s Hayabusa was taken from Ninja Gaiden? Ninja Gaiden dates back to 1988 back on the NES and I actually owned Ninja Gaiden 3 on the SNES. I had no idea that the ninja in Ninja Gaiden was called Hayabusa, but Cari showed me a picture today and she was saying how he was from Ninja Gaiden and then saying he was from Dead or Alive. I asked her to clarify which game he was from, but apparently he’s from both!

Kirby-ful Color (Oil Painting) (from Cari)
Taken from Into The Pixel 2005

The Cubes (from Skylancer) – Hilarious site selling products with the effects of Dilbert and Office Space.
Corporate Protester (Personnel File)
Job Title Generator – (Personnel File)

Runaway Cars Tagged to Stop Chases (from /.) – Car chases, a staple on cable news channels, often end in deadly outcomes. Last year alone, there were more than 600 pursuits in Los Angeles and more than 100,000 nationwide. That’s like almost 2 chases / day in LA. Sigh…

Whisky PC (from /.) – I already had a powerful computer setup so I wanted something more quiet, small and low power consumptioning to function as a basic home server. I love to tinker with hardware etc. so I wanted to make something quite unique for a case. I have seen many nice and creative cases before but none of them were made out of a bottle. In November I bought an industrial 3.5″ SBC board (with Socket370). For the project I selected a 1.5 litre Ballantine’s bottle for case. That was the proper size and shape for the task at hand. Pretty cool how they were able to fit all the PC parts into a whiskey bottle. Sort of reminds me of the mod that made it looked like 3 volumes of an encyclopedia.

Brokeback to the Future (YouTube mirror / Putfile mirror) (direct download) – Hilarious parody taking Back to the Future scenes out of context and mixing it with Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. Brokeback Mountain the movie just never appealed to me as something enjoyable to watch, but I’ve got to say, the soundtrack from the trailer is pretty amazing. This parody was released by Chocolate Cake City.

Today was the Super Bowl something, whichever number it is on. Anyway, earlier this week, Tekman invites me to his Anti-Super Bowl party, where we do nothing that’s related to football. The party was planned to counter the Super Bowl completely. The party started at 3pm today and I left his place almost at midnight. It was really fun! He made barbeque ribs and both honey and spicy chicken wings. There was shrimp cocktail and even homemade cookies by Angel. There were also gummies (worms, sharks, fried eggs) that were brought by Guy. Other people that attended the party included Jeremy, Eric, Christine, David, and Ryan #2.

I actually had a lot of fun! More than I expected. Ryan #2 brought his XBox360 and we played Gauntlet, Hexic, Marble Blast, and Geometry Wars, all which are available for download through Xbox 360 Live for a few dollars. Geometry Wars was actually really fun. Check out the videos here. It reminded me of asteroids, but the graphics are a lot better. You also control 2 joysticks, one for controlling the plane and the other for controlling the direction of the fire power. It was originally a easter egg or hidden feature of Project Gotham Racing 2. We also got to check out the other features like demos and HD trailers. One of the games Ryan #2 showed us was Full Auto. The graphics were stunning and one of the coolest features in the game is the instant rewind. Did a turn that you didn’t like, you have a bar that increases as you race and that defines how much time you can rewind. The remaining video game we played (or more like they played) was DDR Max and I’ve gotta say, Angel is good!

The events continue with the series of board games. I got to learn 2 new games today! I first played Ticket to Ride with Guy, Eric, and Christine. The only person who’s played the game was Guy in our group, so he had the honors of explaining the game to us. It’s a pretty simple game. The object of the game is to get the most points by building train tracks to connect big cities in North America. You can get points in 3 different ways.

1. Each track you build gave you points depending on the length.
2. You fulfill tickets by connecting cities defined by the ticket which gave you points. However, if you have a ticket you couldn’t fulfill, you lose that amount of points.
3. The longest track would get an extra 10 points.

I came in 3rd out of 4th in this game, but it was so fun!

Next I played Puerto Rico. I may have mentioned this game before, but this was my 1st time playing it. It’s somewhat like settlers without the trading between players and a much more complicated turn. It’s much more complicated than I can describe here, but it involved plantations that grew crops like sugar, tobacco, coffe, corn, and indigo and buildings that refined them. Then there was the trading aspect where you get money from the bank and the shipping of products to get victory points. Then there’s the concept of people working on the plantations and buildings. It’s a lot more complicated than Settlers, but it requires a lot more strategy. I was basically pulled along in this game and ended up last place. But it was a very close game. The # of victory points starting with me was 28, 29, 30, 31.

So I get home today past midnight and through MandalayX’s instant message, I find out that the Seahawks had lost. I checked the scores online, and the defeat was pretty embarassing. 21 – 10? I thought we were suppose to be good. Oh well. Good thing I didn’t have to go through that I guess. MandalayX also helped fill in some of the blanks and made some corrections on my lyrics I had attempted to transcribe from the Seahawks Rule song I posted yesterday.

Xombie: Chapter 7 (from Deadlock)

Finally! A new chapter! You can visit the official website Xombie Online to see the rest.

Xombie: Chapter 7 is a continuation of the Xombie Animated Series, which chronicles the adventures of Dirge – a hybrid zombie with a mind of his own – as he battles global zombie infestation in the year 2033.

Chapter 7 pits Dirge against the Vulture, a mysterious battleship piloted by his otherworldly nemesis; the Xar-Ggothua.

I’ve been waiting this for ages. Just to give you an idea, chapter 6 was released on 6/21/2005.

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Random Crap:

How to dance like a white guy (from Artemyst) – Great Instructional video. Showing all the hippest and raddest dance moves known to white men.

Internet is for porn (from Artemyst) – This is not a porn movie.. Just a wow movie about internet is for porn. Hilarious video! I’m thinking the video is from WoW, but I can be wrong. The song sounds like it was originally imitating Sesame Street characters. Thanks for MandalayX for updating me with this information. Apparently, this song was from a Broadway musical done called Avenue Q by Avenue Q. You can check out the album on Amazon.com or iTunes.

Is it best to expect the worst? (from /.) – Most people believe that mentally preparing for the worst outcome in an examination or race will soften the disappointment if we flunk or flop – and heighten the joy if we succeed. But the idea has rarely been put on scientific trial. Quite an interesting study and the results are quite shocking. Does that mean what I’ve practice all these years in college was all for nothing? Anticipating failure at a forthcoming mathematics test or public talk, for example, is thought to help some anxious people motivate themselves to study harder and avert their dismal prophesy. Psychologists call such individuals ‘defensive pessimists‘. I think I’m a defensive pessimists according to psychologist… though, even if I anticipate failure, I don’t bother studying harder. Hahaha.

The Wisdom of Parasites (from /.) – As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. Basically what’s happening is these wasp like insects are turning cockroaches into zombies that hosts their eggs. Pretty scary…

Bash Quotes:

#533472 (from Tera)

<yoozer> the speed of sound is defined by the distance from door to computer divided by the time interval needed to close the media player and pull up your pants when your mom shouts “OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING”

Sailor Gets Angry Reply to Bottle Message – A sailor who sent a message out to sea in a bottle says he received a reply from England — accusing him of littering. “I kind of felt like no good deed goes unpunished,” Harvey Bennett, 55, told the East Hampton Star.

Whale soul for sale — one tragic owner – It used to be a practice confined to pacts with the devil, but now an anonymous vendor in America is attempting to sell the soul of the London whale.

Man Downs 173 Chicken Wings to Win Contest – A 22-year-old from San Jose, Calif., won Wing Bowl on Friday by setting a new record at the annual chicken wing-eating contest. Joey Chestnut ate 173 wings to take the title and top prize, a 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara. I wonder how much time was given…

Karate Experts Hired to Control Parrots – Organizers of a vintage car rally have hired karate experts to protect vehicles from marauding native parrots, a media report said Friday.

Octopus Eats Shark (from Deadlock) – Sharks arent that bad. I wonder if this octopus develop a taste for sharks after joining the aquarium, or before… Do octopus actually eat sharks in the while?

McDonald’s videogame (from Deadlock) – Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all. Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaught, from the restaurant management to the branding. You’ll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest company of the world. This game actually entertained me for quite some time. It reminds me of one of those Sim games where you have to manage many aspects in order to make profit. Here you have to manage cows and cow feed, the slaughtering, the cooking (if you can call that) and cashiers, the promotions/advertisements, and even the corrupting of officials. Then you also have to worry about organizations rallying against you, disgruntled employees who spit in the food, diseased cows, and even land from getting overused.

Overcrowed Disneyland in Hong Kong (from JS8) – This video link was taken from TVB 6:30 Evening News. It’s completely in Cantonese, but you can pretty much make out what’s happening. Due to Chinese (Lunar) New Year, many tourists are visiting Hong Kong and visiting the new Disneyland. Of course with bad planning, the park was overbooked and people who purchased tickets months in advance weren’t able to get in. Some people accepted the refund offer, but others who had planned this vacations months in advance got physical and even started to jump over the gate. At 1:30pm, they reopened the gate, but the situation wasn’t any better. The line for teacup was 2hrs according to a man. I wonder what the wait time for the better rides were.

New device fights tooth decay with electricity (from /.) – The Israeli company Fluorinex Active has developed a new technology for fighting tooth decay. The company is currently working on a small device which together with a gel will impose an efficient ion exchange process through an Electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the Hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth. This is intended to produce a new mineral layer with significantly improved chemical and physical resistance to the aggressive bacteria and the resulting acidic environment in the mouth.