VoipBuster no longer free…

Booo! The month after I pay my 5€, calls through VoipBuster within the USA are no longer free.

There is a new company. Seems to be exactly like VoipBuster. Probably just a spawn and that’s how VoipBuster plans on making money. The new company is called VoipStunt and they currently allow free calls to any of the following countries:

Free calls to any regular landline in:

Australia       Austria         Belgium
Canada          Chile           China
Croatia         Cyprus          Denmark
Finland         France          Germany
Gibraltar       Hong Kong       Hungary
Iceland         Ireland         Israel
Italy           Japan           Liechtenstein
Lithuania       Luxembourg      Malaysia
Monaco          Netherlands     New Zealand
Norway          Poland          Portugal
Singapore       Slovak Republic South Korea
Spain           Sweden          Switzerland
Taiwan          United Kingdom  United States

Too bad I’m not willing to bust out another 5€ for this new service. I’ll just sit around and wait and see. I do have 100 free minutes each month with TelePacket already.


Random Crap:

Optical Mouse cam (from /.) – People get bored sometimes, and when I get bored I sometimes open up stuff to find out what makes it tick. One time, I did this with an old optical mouse. Well, a mouse only has 2 chips inside: the optical sensor and a chip for the usb/ps2-interfacing. I looked up the datasheet of the optical sensor (which is an ADNS2610) and it told me the sensor has a tiny 18×18 CCD, which can be read out using the serial port (the one which normally interfaces to the PS2/USB-chip). So I start Visual Basic (I usually do my stuff under Linux, but I’m no star at using anything graphical like QT or GTK, so for this quick’n’dirty project I fell back in my old habits) and hack something up using a few wires to the trusty ole parallel port. The result: crisp lo-res b&w imaging 🙂 People these days come up with the craziest things when they’re bored.

100 things we didn’t know this time last year (from Tera) – Each week the Magazine picks out snippets from the news, and compiles them into 10 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Week. Here’s an end of year almanac. Pretty interesting and fun read. Interesting ones I notice include (the bolded ones were the one I found to be the most interesting):

  • 3. While it’s an offence to drop litter on the pavement, it’s not an offence to throw it over someone’s garden wall.
  • 5. Nicole Kidman is scared of butterflies. “I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don’t like the feel of butterflies’ bodies,” she says.
  • 6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine – it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub’s toilets.
  • 14. It’s possible for a human to blow up balloons via the ear. A 55-year-old factory worker from China reportedly discovered 20 years ago that air leaked from his ears, and he can now inflate balloons and blow out candles.
  • 19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.
  • 20. The Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.
  • 32. “Restaurant” is the most mis-spelled word in search engines.
  • 35. The name Lego came from two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. It also means “I put together” in Latin.
  • 37. Cyclist Lance Armstrong’s heart is almost a third larger than the average man’s.
  • 41. Tactically, the best Monopoly properties to buy are the orange ones: Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street.
  • 43. The spiciness of sauces is measured in Scoville Units.
  • 52. You’re 10 times more likely to be bitten by a human than a rat.
  • 53. It takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone.
  • 59. Oliver Twist is very popular in China, where its title is translated as Foggy City Orphan.
  • 63. It takes less energy to import a tomato from Spain than to grow them in this country because of the artificial heat needed, according to Defra.
  • 66. The hotter it is, the more difficult it is for aeroplanes to take off. Air passengers in Nevada, where temperatures have reached 120F, have been told they can’t fly.
  • 67. Giant squid eat each other – especially during sex.
  • 69. First-born children are less creative but more stable, while last-born are more promiscuous, says US research.
  • 73. One in six children think that broccoli is a baby tree.
  • 76. The day when most suicides occurred in the UK between 1993 and 2002 was 1 January, 2000.
  • 78. One in 18 people has a third nipple.
  • 87. Pulling your foot out of quicksand takes a force equivalent to that needed to lift a medium-sized car.
  • 94. Bill Gates does not have an iPod.

morning musume watches clip from ring (from artemyst) – an oldie, but still so funny! It’s Morning Musume put on stage and forced to watch a clip of Ringu. Haha. It was pretty sweet to see their reactions, especially the finale.

$20 Bill Printed Over Sticker Nets $25,300A $20 bill printed on paper that mysteriously had an ordinary fruit sticker on it sold Friday for $25,300, an auction company official said. Somebody’s been eating bananas while on the job.

Ocean view — as soon as the poison worksA Vancouver woman pleaded guilty on Thursday to poisoning several trees that border the city’s downtown Stanley Park to improve the view of the ocean from her condominium.

Ali G Feminism (from Fuzzywuzzy) – Ali speaks about feminism

Ali G interview with Posh & Beckham (from fuzzywuzzy) – Ali G interview with Posh & Beckham

Check out this hilarious bash quote (from Tera): MY CAT JUST JIZZED ON ME

Two-Headed Snake for Sale for $150,000For sale: One albino snake. Has two heads. Asking $150,000 or best offer. The World Aquarium in St. Louis has been home to We, a one-of-a-kind two-headed albino rat snake, since 1999. President Leonard Sonnenschein has decided to sell the reptile, and bidding on reptileauction.com will start at $150,000.

Church Selling Toilet Paper to Raise Money“The rolls are larger than the standard, with 450 sheets per roll, and it’s two-ply,” he told The East Oregonian newspaper. “We’ve heard all the jokes. People really enjoy that it’s Angel Soft, but what else would a church sell?”

Free booze makes Canada’s homeless healthier-studyGiving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of booze may improve their health and their behaviour, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said in a study published on Tuesday.

Canon in D Guitar (from Fuzzywuzzy) – Japanese playing great song on Guitar. This guy is good! Turns Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D into an awesome rock song. Also known as Canon Rock (from Artemyst).

Water Cooled Xbox 360 (from /.) – The world’s first water cooled Xbox 360! A full Xbox 360 breakdown that will show you how it is done easily.

18 Tricks to Teach Your Body (from deadlock) – Soothe a burn, cure a toothache, clear a stuffed nose… Pretty cool list, but when my throat ticked, scratching my ear didn’t work.

Humans display their stupid side to wildlife“I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don’t understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you,” said James Cameron, a South African professional hunter. Haha. Blaming Disney movies because you didn’t know how to deal with wild animals. HAHAHAHA.

USPS rates raised again

I just learnt that USPS raised their rates again. 1oz First Class mail now costs $0.39. I haven’t even finished my roll of $0.37 stamps. Boo!

You can check out the new rates at USPS – New Rates and Fees.


Random Crap:

It’s been awhile, so I might split them over 2 days depending on how much I dig up.

Left Brain, Right Brain (from RayAlome):

While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Pretty Cool!

Top Gear Ariel Atom (from deadlock). You must check out how cool this car is!

Exploding Overclocking Extreme AMD Duron Vaporizing (from deadlock). See what happens when you remove the heatsink from an overclocked AMD Duron CPU. It literally blows up into smaller pieces and punches a hole through the motherboard.

Parents Discover Babies Were SwitchedTwo babies born on the same day in the same hospital in Thailand were accidentally switched at birth, but nobody knew about it for a decade.

PortForward.com – Free Help Setting up Your Router or Firewall (from skylancer) – A pretty useful site teaching you how to set up port forwarding on most routers so you can get data through that firewall in many applications such as BitTorrent or IRC.

Scientists Finally Figure Out How Bees Fly (from /.) – “The honeybees have a rapid wing beat,” Altshuler told LiveScience. “In contrast to the fruit fly that has one eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second.” This article interested me because back in high school, Daizie would always say this quote: “Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.” Guess, that quote is no longer true.

DSMs Still SHOWING up V8s. (from deadlock) – some idiot trying to impress a friend saying that he can outrun the police and had outrun police in several states because of his powerful car.

Most-Educated Cities in the United States (from Antegra) – Guess what! Seattle’s #1 with 51.3% of our population over the age of 25 having a college degree or higher. Antegra did make a good point that the work market here may be a more packed.

Sad, on so many levels..Almost a third of young Britons have passed off a ready-made meal as their own creation in order to impress someone, according to a survey by the Department of Health. Women were the worst offenders, with 40 percent saying they had claimed food bought in a shop as their own, compared to 22 percent of men. Haha. I’m still a college guy. Everyone knows I still eat out all the time and have the simplest of food to make (i.e. microwavable).

Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil (from /.) – an interesting case mod and cooling system by filling the entire case with cooking oil. Years ago, I posted some pictures of Dr. Freeze and his mineral oil project which was pretty similar to this. If you don’t read the article, at least look at the pretty pictures.

Afrotech’s Hard-disk Sound System (from /.) – Why pay 500$ for Klipsch’s latest speaker system? You can make something that looks way cooler for the price of a DIY amplifier and some HDDs out of a dumpster. It doesn’t sound quite as good but who cares! There really isn’t much to say about this project… It’s fun as hell to watch, easy to do, and impressed the crap out of everyone I’ve showed it to. Just download the movies already. Project is actually pretty neat. Do at least check out the The Star Wars theme video. He also made a parody of /. called Afrodot.

Mouse Thrown Into Fire Sets Home AblazeA mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man’s house and set it on fire. So the next time you think about hurting those small creatures, think again!

50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod (kottke.org) (from /.) – In the four years since its introduction, the iPod has proven to be a versatile little device. Despite a relatively closed architecture, hackers have found their way in. Content creators and software makers put information at your fingertips when you’re on the go. Would-be designers have added to the fashionable stylings of the now-ubiquitous white ear buds. Hardware makers and enthusiasts have augmented the iPod with new add-on gadgets. Here are a few dozen things you can do with your iPod besides listen to music. I don’t exactly agree with their ordering, but their list is pretty neat. It also isn’t exactly 50 either.

Waiting…

Just saw Waiting… today. IMDB users give it a 7.0. You can watch the trailer here. Movie was pretty funny. It features that guy from Van Wilder. A lot of hot girls in this movie too. It actually wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, but I’m comparing it to Van Wilder, which is really a big mountain to overcome. You can preorder at Amazon.com for $20.

waiting...

Spoilers:

The main storyline is about some kids who are waiters and waitresses at a grill and bar restaurant called Shenanigan. It’s basically about growing up and ending up nowhere and how life as a waiter is sometimes cruel and sometimes awesome. Ever think your waiter messes with your food? This movie shows it all. Tips are another big thing in this movie. So is inter-staff relationships.

Movie has tons of hot chicks and pretty gross tricks and plenty of insults all around.

One of the coolest thing in the movie is the game they invented where you try to get others to look at your schlong and if you catch them looking, you get to call them a fag and kick them in the butt. There’s a whole bunch of rules regarding what you can do and what you can’t and how many number of kicks you get to kick them in the butt depending on your position you were in when they looked at your schlong. They even have names for the positions like chicken leg, batman, goat, etc.

If you have time to waste, a definite recommendation.

Baracuda – Ass Up!

I recently downloaded a music video and the tune of the song is pretty good. It also has a nice beat. Of course it helps there’s a hot chick singing the song too. As some of you may know, I usually like most trance and techno songs with female signers. Their high pitch just gives a nice sound to the song.

The song is Baracuda – Ass Up! I’d post a cd cover, but I think it’s a bit too explict for most readers and definitely not work safe. The lyrics also are pretty explicit as the title of the song already tells you. But the music is really good dance music and has a nice beat.

You can preview the song here (direct link) or check out the album cover..

You can also watch the music video here.

After some digging around, you can download the mp3 from this compilation I found linked on some forum: EURO DANCE MIX 2005 VOL. 2.

Enjoy!

Dirty Deeds

Watched Dirty Deeds today. IMDB users give it a rating of 5.3. You can watch the trailer here. The movie was fun. Basically another American Pie clone. Somewhat better than many of the recent movies that have come out.

dirty deeds

Spoilers:

It’s basically jocks against the rebels. It’s homecoming weekend, and one of the kids has reach his tolerance in dealing with the jocks and says he’ll do the Dirty Deeds. The Dirty Deeds is a list of 10 deeds one has to complete on the night before homecoming to prove himself. There were more rules such as only one person can do it per year and that if a senior wanted to do it, he had priority, etc etc. Anyway, the sister of that boy comes and asks Zach to get her brother out of this. Zach has a crush on this girl and decides to help her, but the only way to help save his brother face was by the rule where seniors had priority and he took up the 10 dirty deeds dare.

The 10 dirty deeds were pretty gross and crude and evil. The ones I can remember include:
» Drink beer in front of a cop.
» Punch the toughest guy in town.
» Put “special sauce” into a loaf of bread.
» Bring the gigantic leprechaun from the car lot to the school.
» Bring a corpse to school.
» Steal a car worth over $100,000.
» Steal some security gaurd’s fake leg.
» Find a previous Dirty Deeds champion
» Get a bra from a homecoming queen and have it signed.
» Ruin the school carnival.

I pretty much said the whole movie in the previous 10 lines, but the movie was fun by itself and then there’s the entire side story about how a freshman hosts a party in a house he claims is his, but turns out to be his neighbors. It was a funy movie. Great to watch if you have nothing better to do. I know, I know, I should catch up on all the blogging I’ve missed for the past few days.

Fun With Dick And Jane

Went to watch Fun With Dick and Jane yesterday with harrybons. IMDB users give it a rating of 5.7. You can watch the trailer here. At first, I wasn’t too sure what the movie was about. The trailer seem to say that Dick and Jane were getting rich from robbing people, but the story was completely different from what I imagined. Having rewatched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room earlier this week with Antegra, SueOn, and DNG, there were many similiarities with the Enron scandal. In fact, at the end of the movie, they had listed Enron, WorldCom, and several other companies which went bankrupt for financial fraud as contributors to the movie.

fun with dick and jane

Spoilers:

The movie starts off with Dick (Jim Carrey) getting a promotion, shortly followed by the stock of the company plumetting. Frank was the CFO which basically mimicked Andrew Fastow from Enron. He was taking the blame and Sam, the CEO (basically Ken Lay) was pleading ignorance, but had secretly liquidated all his stocks before the fall of his company. You also learnt that the company had created a bunch of fake companies to take in the debt of the main company, just like what Enron did.

Dick and his wife plays the part of one of the employees who lost their job, their retirement savings and most of their assets because most of their investments were tied up in company stock and their house’s value dropped below what they owe the bank since there’s no employment in that area. People were desperately trying to find work, but no work was available. When a spot opened up, hundreds of employees would be lining up.

Times got so desperate, they had to pay their nanny with appliances (still not too sure why they kept the nanny) and they sold almost everything in their house. It was so bad, it got to the point where Dick had to welcome people into Walmart clone, fight among the illegal immigrants to get hard labor (as you see in the streets of LA), get deported, and finally robbing banks and local stores.

The movie itself had it’s funny moments, but I wouldn’t say the movie overall was that great. It was fun and worth the time though.

In the end, they were able to trick Sam into donating all his money into their employees who lost their jobs pension fund and everyone got a check.

Harrybons is actually up in Seattle for his Microsoft interview. Tonight, he treated me to Cheesecake Factory. Good Luck to him tomorrow!

The Insider

Just watched The Insider with SueOn, Antegra, and DNG. IMDB users gave it a 7.9. You can view the trailer here. The movie was pretty interesting and dramatic, but was 2 hours and 40 minutes long. You can get the DVD from Amazon.com for only $10.99.

the insiderthe insider

wigand crowe pacino bergman
Jeffrey Wigand, Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Lowell Bergman

Spoilers:

The movie deals with a fired corporate vice president of a tobacco company. The story is actually based on true events, though they did say parts of the movie was exaggerated. Russell Crowe plays the part of Jeffrey Wigand, the fired executive and Al Pacino plays the part of Lowell Bergman, the producer of the show 60 minutes on CBS. Bergman got in contact with Wigand and finds out he was recently fired and was forced to sign a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). However, Wigand just bought a new house and new car, and his daughter had asthma. The company gave Wigand and nice severance payment and medical support to keep his mouth shut. They even later threatened him that if he said anything, his family and him would both be in danger.

At this time, the tobacco company was a very powerful force you don’t want to deal with. Bergman continues to provoke Wigand to tell his story and promises that his story would be heard. However after Wigand gave up everything, losing his family because the wife could no longer stand the pressure and threats, having the state of Kentucky serve him to keep his mouth shut or else go to jail, in the end, he stepped out and talked. He did a whole piece on 60 minutes which was going to air the following weekend. However, corporate America gets involved. CBS got scared that the tobacco company would sue them and told them to not air the interview. Bergman fought to his end about how if 60 minutes was news or a corporate tool. He had promised Wigand that his story would be heard.

On the other side, the tobacco company was scooping up dirt about Wigand and sending it to Wall Street Journal, making him look like a liar. When WSJ was about to release an article about the validity of Wigand’s testimony, Bergman got in contact with a friend in WSJ and provided proof that all the information they received has only the surface and provided a more indepth research. In turn, the WSJ released an article about how the tobacco industry was doing a smear campaign on Wigand.

Later, the original interview was aired, but Bergman resigned stating that he couldn’t stand the fact he was forced into the corner like that. He could no longer have confidence in promising the sources he finds that their story would be told.

It was quite a touching story.

From Wikipedia:
In 1995, former Brown & Williamson (B&W) Vice President for Research & Development Jeffrey Wigand provided information to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman that B&W had systematically hidden the health risks of their cigarettes. Furthermore, it was alleged that B&W had introduced foreign agents (fiberglass, ammonia, etc.) with the intent of enhancing the effect of nicotine. Bergman began to produce a piece based upon the information, but ran into opposition from Don Hewitt. Because of the hesitation from Hewitt, The Wall Street Journal instead broke Wigand’s story. The 60 Minutes piece was eventually aired with substantially altered content, and was missing some of the most damning evidence against B&W. The exposé of the incident was published in an article in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner, entitled The Man Who Knew Too Much. The New York Times wrote that 60 Minutes and CBS had “betrayed the legacy of Edward R. Murrow.” The incident was turned into a seven-times Oscar-nominated feature film entitled The Insider, directed by Michael Mann and starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.

Other stuff from that same Wikipedia link above that I found interesting:
In 1986, Don Hewitt greenlit a story concerning the Audi 5000 automobile, a popular German luxury car. The story concerned a number of incidents where the car purportedly accelerated without warning while parked, injuring or killing people. 60 Minutes was unable to duplicate this behavior, and so hired an outside consultant to modify the transmission to behave in this manner, and aired a story about it. The incident devastated Audi sales in the United States, which did not reach the same level for another fifteen years. The initial incidents which prompted the report were found by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Transport Canada to have been attributable to operator error, where car owners had depressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. CBS issued a partial retraction, without acknowledging the test results of involved government agencies. A rival to 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, would be found guilty of similar tactics years later regarding fuel tank integrity on General Motors pickup trucks.

Happy Birthday Johno!

Happy Birthday Johno!

I haven’t posted much recently due to several factors. I’m still pretty sick for those that know that yet. I’m actually working from home today. Second, SueOn, DNG, and Antegra are up here visiting me, so I haven’t had much time to do much else.

Hopefully, I’ll get better soon and my posts will resume.