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Music and Lyrics

This movie was actually rather fun to watch. A pretty feel good movie talking about a has-been 80s pop star trying to come back. Drew Barrymore was pretty cute in it too.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 6.8/10 (8,759 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 64% / Average Rating: 6/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com HD DVD
Amazon.com Blu-ray
MY RATING: 6/10

music and lyrics postermusic and lyrics poster

Spoilers: (Show)

Do check out the music video they made for this video:
PoP! Goes My Heart – Music & Lyrics (from FuzzyWuzzy)

The song’s actually quite catchy, despite how funny it is. As FuzzyWuzzy says:

haha
music and lyrics is so bad it’s good
god i love hugh grant movies
i wasn’t going to lose my head but then pop…goes my heart…
oh god that’s the best fucking lyric ever!!!!
so new wave
</sarcasm>

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Secret Sauce

RayAlome linked me to this video: United 300 which is a parody on what I can only assume to be a merge of United Flight 93 (during 9/11) and 300 (the new movie with Leonidas and his 300 Spartans). Hilarious parody I must say.

This ultimately led me to their website: Secret Sauce, which had a ton more hilarious parodies. Here’s a few I wanted to share:

  • The Defarted – The follow up to the Academy Award winning film. A spoof on The Departed about farting
  • Little Miss Jackass – Little Miss Sunshine’s Olive Hoover does stunts, a 9-year-old girl would Never do! Submitted for consideration in the 2007 MTV MOVIE AWARDS SPO
  • How to Bang My Wife – a parody of The Fray’s How to Save A life about trying to convince your wife to have sex with you.
  • HairyBack – a parody of Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack about hairy chests and backs.

Random Crap:

Patada subte Times Square (from Chokoboii) – algun dia me tenia que tocar a mi filmar algo asi. While break dancing, a little toddler wanders into the dance area and gets back-flip kicked. OUCH! A day or 2 later, someone’s made a remix of it: REMIX: Patada subte Times Square Techno Video Game Remix (from RayAlome). I couldn’t help but laugh.

My eBay Fox – My Friendly Fox (from Digg) – MyEBayFox is a version of the popular Firefox web browser that has been customized to provide you with a better eBay experience. Not really suggesting you to switch over to My eBay Fox, but I thought the fox was awfully cute!

my ebay foxmy ebay foxmy ebay foxmy ebay fox

Details emerge on IRS plans to tax eBay auctions – Internet auction sites will only be required to report customer revenue information if the customer does more than 100 separate transactions in a fiscal year and generates more than $5,000 in gross proceeds. Yay! I’m not covered!

Bank sells house complete with owner’s corpse – The corpse, preserved by salty air in the seaside town of Roses after an apparent death by natural causes, was discovered by Jorge Giro, who entered the house for the first time on Saturday after buying it at the auction, El Pais said.

Woman, cops exchange pepper spray blasts – Clay was originally going to be charged with disorderly conduct, according to police. She now faces felony battery and drug charges, plus misdemeanor charges. Sigh…

Baby issued Illinois gun ID card – Bubba Ludwig can’t walk, talk or open the refrigerator door — but he does have his very own Illinois gun permit. … The card lists the baby’s height (2 feet, 3 inches), weight (20 pounds) and has a scribble where the signature should be. You’d think there’d be some age requirement to own a gun…

Indian train driver asks passengers to push – Hundreds of Indian rail passengers got more than they had bargained for when the driver of their train asked them to get out and push. It took more than half an hour to move the stalled electric train 12 feet (4 metres) so that it touched live overhead wires and was able to resume its journey, officials said on Wednesday.

An Amputee Sprinter: Is He Disabled or Too-Abled? (from Digg) – Pistorius wants to be the first amputee runner to compete in the Olympics. But despite his ascendance, he is facing resistance from track and field’s world governing body, which is seeking to bar him on the grounds that the technology of his prosthetics may give him an unfair advantage over sprinters using their natural legs. Interesting… I’m not sure where I stand on this issue, but I do know, if people are allowed to modified their bodies to compete and if it’s proven that having these prosthetic legs allow you to run faster, many will be willing to chop off their own legs in order to compete for the gold. It’s the same reason why some people might want to become cyborgs or fuse weapons with their bodies. You can tell I’ve watched way too much anime. Then again, does becoming an amputee render you incapable of competing against regular people. It’s a tough question and I’m not sure there’s 1 correct answer.

* BE FOREWARNED, THE FOLLOWING LINKS CONTAIN DISTURBING AND DISGUSTING PHOTOS * I thought I knew insane. I didn’t know insane. (from Digg) – A very sad and disturbing story about the roommate from hell. While leaving poo everywhere was a side effect, she obviously needed help. Another blog entry has popped up about roommates from hell: People lived here – A guy from England rented his flat, people were living there and go away. and when the host returned he saw it.

The Lighthouse: An Innovative Green Skyscraper – The Lighthouse is another innovative green skyscraper to be constructed in Dubai. For energy generation, it will have three enormous 225 kilowatt wind turbines (29 meters in diameter), and 4000 photovoltaic panels on the south facing façade. To optimize performance and operational periods, the turbines have windward directional wind vanes or limited yaw. I really want to visit Dubai one of these days.

Strange alien world made of ‘hot ice’ (from /.) – Although the parent star is much cooler than the Sun, the planet orbits 13 times closer to the star than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. That means the surface must be a blazing hot 300° C or more, keeping water in its atmosphere in vapor form. But the high pressures in the planet’s interior would compress the water so much that it would stay solid even at hundreds of degrees Celsius – the expected temperatures inside the planet. There are a variety of exotic ‘hot ice’ states possible in such conditions, with names like ‘Ice VII’ and ‘Ice X’.

Making work even more of a slog takes weight off – Think work feels like a treadmill now? Try a new desk designed at the Mayo Clinic. … On average, their overweight volunteers burned 100 calories more every hour while walking slowly — at 1 mile per hour (1,6 km per hour) — than while sitting in a chair. Interesting concept. I wonder if I’d get annoyed to have to constantly walk.

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Gallery RSS Feeds

I finally got around to figure out how the RSS feeds plug-in for Gallery2 works. I still haven’t figured out how to define rss feeds yet, but I’ve got simple feeds working for every album and item. I doubt RSS feeds for items would be of any use at the moment as it’s an RSS feed of comments, which I haven’t really enabled yet. But it came free when I defined RSS feeds for albums, so why not I thought.

First you’ll need to download the RSS plug-in from Site Admin > Plugins > Get More Plugins.

After you install and activate it, you’ll notice a new category (RSS) in your Admin Options. On the settings page, you can define the max number of items in each feed, how long before rss feed aggregators refetch (aka TTL: time to live), and some other stuff. I left all the settings to be default.

On the next tab (Simple Feed Settings), you’ll find settings for the simple feed generator. Every item and album has its own simple feed which can be reached at:
main.php?g2_view=rss.SimpleRender&g2_itemId=itemId
(replace itemId with the item’s id)

Anyway, it defaults to items in this album only, so it ignores items in sub-albums. I’ve enabled “Items in the album and its subalbums”, which is the slowest of the bunch, but I would like to be able to subscribe to my main gallery RSS feed and be able to get updates for everything.

On the wikipage for the RSS Feed plugin, they mention if you enable the RSS feed block, it’ll enable hidden page headers which will give you the RSS feed icon in most modern browsers. However, I wasn’t able to get that working even when I enabled the RSS feed block. It might be because I’m using a non-standard theme: Ajaxian.

Also, since I don’t have any specially configured RSS feeds, all my RSS feeds block just shows this message: No feeds have yet been defined

Therefore, I decided to remove that block and just manually add it to the theme. If you goto /themes/themeName/templates (replace themeName with the theme you’re using. by default, it’s matrix), you’ll find a file called theme.tpl. Open that up in your favorite text editor and add this line after your stylesheet:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”/main.php?g2_view=rss.SimpleRender&g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}” />

I also noticed that my favicon.ico was no longer available for my Gallery. Must’ve forgotten to move it over when I transferred my gallery to this subdomain. Anyway, that’s fixed now.

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Free Joost Invites

Joost was first brought to my attention via MS newsgroup and it seemed like a really interesting idea. From What’s Joost?:

What’s Joost?
Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

Inside the box
You get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the program – so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like – as often as you want. Joost is completely free, and works with most modern PCs and Intel Mac-based computers with a broadband connection. Get Joost today!

Free TV
Now showing at Joost: hundreds of full-screen shows from your favourite channels.

Exciting extras
Chat, instant messaging, search and more – baked right into the TV experience.

Complete control
With Joost, you’re in charge. No more schedules – watch what you want, as often as you like.

Coming soon…
Write your own add-ons, watch yet more great content. Come back regularly for updates.

However, it appeared you needed to be invited to join the beta and I didn’t want to be one of the many sending a reply all email asking for an invitation.

Anyway, a day ago, this thread was brought to my attention: Free Joost Invites.

GigaOm, NewTeeVee and Joost are excited to invite you to experience the next generation of television

Get your invitation to Joost today and you’ll enjoy a TV-like experience enhanced with the choice, control and flexibility of Web 2.0. Joost can be accessed from your PC or Mac with a broadband Internet connection and offers broadcast-quality content for free.

To get invited, sign up here: Please invite me!

Within a few minutes after you sign up, you’ll receive a email:

GigaOm, NewTeeVee and Joost are inviting you to participate in the Joost beta testing program.

As you may know, Joost is a project that we think will completely revolutionize the way you watch TV. Joost brings you full-screen, high-quality TV on your PC or Mac – combined with the best interactive and community features of the Internet.

We hope you’ll join our beta-testing program and help us put the finishing touches on Joost. This is still a private, invitation-only beta, and the software is being rigorously tested, so we very much value your opinions and appreciate your feedback.

You can download the Joost software right away, by clicking on the link below. You’ll find instructions for installing and running the software on our download pages.

[insert Joost download link]

We look forward to seeing you on Joost!

Best regards,

The Joost team

Installation was simple and went through flawlessly. However, to launch the program, I needed to run as an administrator. My default account is running as a regular user, so that was a bit inconvenient, but oh well. The quality was really good. It wasn’t HD, but it was definitely TV quality or better. I watched some Robot Chicken and started browsing the other channels. It took me awhile to figure out how to convert it into Window mode (double click anywhere on the screen) and how to actually close the application. Had to turn to Ungsunghero for help. Apparently there’s a power button on the navigation control and by default this puts it to sleep inside your task tray. If you go to advance settings inside My Joost, you can change power to close the application.

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File Transfer

Windows’ Words of Doom (from B$) –

  1. The Time-Fluctuation Phenomenon
  2. The Delayed-Query Syndrome
  3. The Long-Filename Anomaly
  4. The Drive-Full Abort
  5. The Multiple-Folder-Slowdown Paradox
  6. The Yes-to-All Baffler
  7. The Cannot-Erase-File Gotcha

I’m not one to post Dvorak’s stories as I think he’s one of the biggest trolls around, but this article does have merit. Most file transfer systems on OS has many of these problems and it’s not just Windows.

I’ve always wanted a file transfer manager, sort of like a download manager. Features I would love in this file transfer manager:

  • Be able to queue up a list of transfers instead of executing them in parallel
  • Limit the number of simultaneous transfers
  • Continue to next file or transfer if error occurs or needs user action (i.e. overwrite a file or not)
  • Support Yes, No, Yes to All, and No to All
  • Be able to pause, stop, and resume transfers
  • Be able to re-order when transfers are executed
  • Show the speed of transfer
  • Better approximate time left for transfer
  • Force start a transfer to ignore the limit

This seems like a very easy system to write, yet no OS has this capability. I can of course write my own, but it would be so much better if it was incorporated into the core system, so I can copy or move files via the explorer and having automatically bring up the file transfer manager, like when I download using Firefox, the download manager automatically loads.

I am able to explain “the long-filename anomaly”. Windows XP has a 255 character limit for file names. Windows Vista supports up to 260 characters. But this not counted the same way you’d think filename characters are counted. Most people assumed that filenames only refer to the filename + file extension (i.e. MyPhoto.jpg would have 11 characters). Filename in this scenario includes the entire file path, so that means file “C:\Users\me\My Documents\My Photos\MyPhoto.jpg” really counts as 46 characters. So if you tried to move MyPhoto.jpg into a directory which already has 245 characters, it wouldn’t work.

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Hannibal Rising

This movie was somewhat disappointing when compared to Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon. All of those were a thriller trying to solve a puzzle. This one was just telling a story that was laid out in plain site and just executing with no sense of mystery at all. There was enough gore if that’s what you like.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 6.0/10 (7,639 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: D+ / Yahoo! Users: C+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 15% / Average Rating: 3.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Book
MY RATING: 5/10

hannibal rising poster

Spoilers: (Show)

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Emoticons – East vs West

Emoticons carry cultural baggage –

Emoticons act as proxies for facial expressions, and there are a lot of studies showing that many facial expressions can be interpreted correctly by all human cultures. Despite that universality, however, there are subtle differences in interpretations across cultures. The authors propose a model in which a culture’s interpretation of facial expressions is dependent upon a combination of the culture’s emotional openness and the challenge of controlling certain facial muscles. As they put it, “Given that the eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth when people express emotions, we predicted that individuals in cultures where emotional subduction is the norm (such as Japan) would focus more strongly on the eyes than the mouth when interpreting others’ emotions. By contrast, we predicted that people in cultures where overt emotional expression is the norm (such as the US) would tend to interpret emotions based on the position of the mouth, because it is the most expressive part of the face.“

You can download the research paper here (PDF). To bring this point across, they provide this example:

For example, in the United States the emoticons :) and :-) denote a happy face, whereas the emoticons :( or :-( denote a sad face. However, Japanese tend to use the symbol (^_^) to indicate a happy face, and (; _ ;) to indicate a sad (or crying) face (Pollack, 1996).

Random Crap:

Puget Custom Computer’s mineral-oil-cooled PC (from Maxxius) – We’ve definitely seen our share of wacky CPU cooling (and silencing) schemes, but most liquid-cooling setups aren’t as, uh, immersive as Puget Custom Computer’s mineral-oil-cooled PC. Essentially a motherboard in an aquarium topped off with fluid, the Washington company claims the oil effectively cools system components for up to 12 hours at peak load. While traditional homebrew oil-cooling setups use vegetable oil, the Puget crew chose mineral oil because it’s perfectly clear and, more importantly, doesn’t go rancid after a while. Disadvantage? Large quantities of mineral oil are difficult to find — Puget had to explain what they were doing to a local vet, who normally uses the stuff as a horse laxative. That means those of you looking to build one of these better get friendly with Fido’s doc, cause Puget isn’t planning on selling these. Peep a vid of the crazy setup — including the aquarium’s bubble bar in action — after the jump. I’ve seen my share of mineral oil cooled PCs, but this is the first one I’ve seen in a aquarium. Usually the ones I’ve seen are in Styrofoam boxes.

If this thread is true: Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard – 5% rebate again YMMV, those who have the Citi Dividend Platinum Select card might have their cashback program bumped back up to 5%. A few months ago, they dropped the cashback program from 5% to 2% and I’ve completely stopped using them and swapped over to my Chase Cash Rewards card, which had exactly the same 5% cashback program. However, that card is no longer available to apply for and basically I’m grandfathered in.

I found this image off someone’s FaceBook picture and thought it was really cute and decided to share it.
bleach kon plush
Kon Plush (from Bleach)

10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich (from Digg) – I wish I cam up with a stupid idea that made me rich too!

Wis. festival sells deep-fried testicles – Around here, it may be tough to pass up anything deep-fried. Wisconsinites have deep-fried cheese curds, candy bars and Twinkies. They now have deep-fried livestock testicles, too. … “Once you get over the mental (aspect) of what you’re eating, it’s just like eating any other food, and it tastes good,” Buster Hoffman said. … “After a few beers, you can’t really tell the difference,” Joubert said. Yum?

The “official” X-clamp Replacement Success Thread, Please read the first post carefully! (from Digg) – With the recent discovery of replacing the x-clamps on the motherboard being a good fix for 3RLOD, RBJtech suggested that we keep track of results. 3RLOD = 3 red lights of death, a pun on the BSOD (blue screen of death). Many Xbox 360s have encountered this unfortunate disaster. Microsoft hasn’t released any official numbers of how many Xbox 360s have received this fate, but I recall hearing less than 1%. You’ve probably heard of the Towel Trick. Many have guessed by using the towel trick, it heats the system to the point the re-solders the gpu back correctly. However apparently if you replace the x-clamps on the Xbox 360, many have reported success in fixing their Xbox 360s. The score so far is 150 vs 7 (95.5% success rate). So if your Xbox 360 is out of warranty, there’s no harm in trying to replace your x-clamps. Detail instructions are provided over at Tutorial : X-clamp Replacement – RBJtech’s Method and Tutorial : X-clamp Replacement – Lawdawg0931’s Method.

I was reading up on some new deals with Vizio and found out that they have a 0 dead pixel policy. I was shocked! Even Samsung doesn’t offer that here in America. Most companies have a 4-7 dead pixel policy where they’ll fix or replace your LCD if you find more than the given number of dead pixels. Vizio will replace your LCD if you find just 1. From A Lot of LCD for a Little Bit of Loot – And speaking of pixels, Vizio also offers a “no dead pixel” guarantee, which is rare in the LCD TV industry, particularly at entry-level price points. I examined the L42 closely and was not able to find a single dead pixel, so kudos to Vizio in that respect.

UserFriendly – Consumer Choice Enhancement – If HBO thinks it can get away by calling DRM Digital Consumer Enablement (which by the way, enablement isn’t a real word), by that logic piracy should be called Consumer Choice Enhancement.

Infrared – More Than Your Eyes Can See (from Digg) – I was watching this video about how night vision works and I had a hard time digesting the fact they were calling everything from radio waves to microwaves to even gamma rays light. I understand they are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but I’ve always associated light to only the visible range of that spectrum. According to Wikipedia: Light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength that is visible to the eye (visible light) or, in a technical or scientific context, the word is sometimes used to mean electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths. I guess with the latter definition, they were using it correctly.

MK vs. SF 3 (from RayAlome) – MK vs SF 3. See part 2 if you haven’t. Most likely the final one of the series. This is the 3rd and apparently final chapter of the MK vs. SF series (Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter). The animation is done really well as well as the fight choreography. All is done with sprites, which is amazingly pretty.

Fox sues website for “The O.J.Simpsons” (from Digg) – Fox doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor about a “Simpsons” parody that’s been going around the net called “The O.J. Simpsons,” reports TV Guide. The parody is quite obviously about O.J. Simpson, but done in the style of “The Simpsons,” with the same music and similar animation.

How not to ship a plasma TV – The guy who shipped this may or may not have been a professional delivery person. It’s tough to tell based on the work he did on this plasma TV. Seriously though, he might as well have shipped this thing using bowling balls. Or, I dunno, hammers. Ouch!

Cyclist OK after truck runs over head – A delivery truck ran over a cyclist’s head, leaving him only with a concussion and a mangled helmet. Ryan Lipscomb, 26, was shaken up, especially after he saw the condition of his helmet. Check out the damage of the helmet and you’d be surprise he’s still alive: Bike helmet crushed, but head fine (from Digg)

Teen hurt whacking bullets with hammer – – A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies. Sigh…

Texas man charged in Skittles heist – A man caught removing tires from a truck has been charged with stealing the tractor-trailer containing $250,000 worth of Skittles, police said. How many tons of Skittles is that!?!?!

Light Criticism (from Consumerist) – This is the first collaboration between the Anti-Advertising Agency and Graffiti Research Lab. Modified from Ji Lee’s Abstractor TV. We used black foam core ($10/sheet) cut with a laser cutter – however, this project can be done with an x-acto blade, black construction paper, and duct tape for next to nothing. It can be repeated using any backlit display – bus shelters, display ads, television store windows… dream big, act now. NYC’s TRUE GRAFFITI PROBLEM Watch the video here.

Coca-Cola settles lawsuits over benzene (from Consumerist) – Fanta Pineapple, Vault Zero had ingredients that could form substance. The Coca-Cola Co. has agreed to offer replacements to people who purchased two soft drinks to settle lawsuits over ingredients that can form cancer-causing benzene, the plaintiffs said Monday. The only interesting part of this article was the fact that I’m a big fan of Fanta Pineapple.

Weird Al – I’ll Sue Ya (from Consumerist) – Hilarious song from Weird Al from his new “Straight Outta Lynwood” album, done in the style of Rage Against the Machine. The vid features animation by Thomas Edward Lee. Enjoy! This is so sad, yet so true. Americans have become sue-happy.

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2-pin 3-pin Power LEDs?

So last night, I finally got enough motivation to figure out how to get my Power LEDs working in all my computer cases. All my computer cases have a 3-pin connector for the Power LED, while all my motherboards have only 2-pins for the power LED. What’s interesting is that there’s really only 2 sockets inside the 3-pin connector that are used? I always thought it was a new convention that new motherboards will be using, but the last 2 motherboards I got (one last summer: ECS P4M800PRO-M, and one just a month or 2 ago: abit IL9 Pro) both have only 2 pins for the Power LED.

I actually started searching online to see where I can buy a 2-pin to 3-pin converter for the Power LED and found this at Directron: 3-Pin Female to 2-Pin Male Power LED Adapter/Connector:
2-pin 3-pin power led adapter

Unfortunately it’s out of stock, but most importantly, it’s not the correct adapter. I have a 3-pin connector and 2-pins poking out on the motherboard. What I need is:
2-pin 3-pin power led adapter

The adapter that Directron was selling was converting cases that have only 2 pins for its Power LED connector to have 3 sockets. What is the purpose of the 3rd pin/socket anyway? A quick search online didn’t result in anything that provided a reasoning. It’s also unclear to me if the 2-pin connector is newer or the 3-pin connector.

Anyway I ended up on this thread: Case LED power indicator connector 3 pin, mobo 2 pin? which redirected me to this page: REWIRING A MOTHERBOARD HEADER CONNECTOR.

Don’t let those pictures intimidate you. It’s in fact quite easy to rewire these connectors. The only tool you need is a very thin and firm tool and a pair of hands. I ended up using a razor blade. Initially I tried it with a small flat head screw driver, but it was still too big. On the connector, there are these little tabs that hold the wires preventing them from sliding out of the connector. Use the razor blade and slightly lift up the tab that is keeping it from sliding out. Do be careful as I didn’t know how flimsy these tabs were and managed to snap one of them.

Anyway, you should also make sure you know which wire you want to move where. One end of this connector will be sticking out and the reversing the cables is not an option. My first try was a failure which ended up with my Power LED blinking when the system was off and the Power LED completely off when the system was on.

I hope this helps! Now all 3 of my computer cases have a functional working Power LED. I couldn’t believe the solution was so simple.

While I was working on one of file server box, I noticed that the 2 hard drives which are currently ghetto-rigged into the system were very hot. I had swapped out some 80mm fans because they were starting to make noise in my main box and thought I’d be able to use one of the less nosier fans with these hard drives. The final result is:

ghetto rigged hard drives with fans

They were originally stacked one on top of another and I was actually trying to stick pens in between them to allow air flow. But then I got to thinking what if the fan goes out? Would these pen melt? So instead, I have it set up like how my Lian Li case does it where they sit sideways and have the fan blowing at it from the front.

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Random Crap

Ceiling Height Alters How You Think – Workers have long been concerned about glass ceilings at the office. Now they can wonder if the physical ceiling is keeping them from their full mental potential. A recent study at the University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height affects problem-solving skills and behavior by priming concepts that encourage certain kinds of brain processing. “Priming means a concept gets activated in a person’s head,” researcher Joan Meyers-Levy told LiveScience. “When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts.”

Motorists drove around dead body on road – More than two dozen Israeli motorists maneuvered around the dead body of a road accident victim lying in the middle of a busy intersection, failing to stop to help in an incident captured by a traffic camera. Sigh… those 2 dozen people better have a good reason/emergency why they didn’t stop to help.

Microsoft pranks with oFone, Apple rolls eyes – Seeing as the Zune was such a hit, Microsoft decided to repeat the success and tackle the iPhone before it even gets out the gate; friends, we give you the Microsoft oFone. Not to be outdone by Apple’s multi-touch keyless interface, the oFone features not one or two, but three keyboards that can all pivot about the small central screen. Need to bag some wild game for dinner? No worries, oFone can do that too, simply extend the three arms (like in the pic above) and it apparently makes a decent boomerang. We’re loving where they’re going with this idea — cool and unusable, just how we like our fake phones. Check the vid after the break.

Oral sex can cause throat cancer (from Tera) – People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests. That means each oral sex partner you have increases your chances of throat cancer by 50%. The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers. The new findings should encourage people to consistently use condoms during oral sex as this could protect against HPV, the team says. Other experts say that the results provide more reason for men to receive the new HPV vaccine. Interesting…

Quadradius (from Hjo3) – The game’s interesting, though I’d suggest you go through the tutorial before jumping into the game. I was tricked when Hjo3 said it was like checkers so I tried jumping over opponents and setting myself to do so, which ended up with me losing a lot of soldiers. The pieces move up, down, left, right and 1 step at a time. No need to jump over an opponent to take his piece. There are these power ups and I suggest you familiarize yourself with them before using any. I managed to do some pretty disadvantage things to myself when executing power ups at the wrong time. All in all it’s a pretty fun game. I’m pretty sure my opponent thought I must’ve really sucked.

Richard Box’s ‘Light Field’ (from Digg) – Using wasted energy, Richard Box was able to get over a thousand fluorescent tubes powered by low overhead power lines. Derek had mention this at work. I think it was Derek and I mentioned it was similar to the scene in The Prestige when the guy lights up all the light bulbs.

richard box - fluorescent lights powered by power lines

Richard Box, artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, got the idea for Field (2004) – 1,301 fluorescent tubes powered only by the electric fields generated by low overhead powerlines – after a conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says the artist. ‘He said it lit up like a light sabre.’ Box decided to see if he could fill a field with tubes lit by the ‘waste’ energy emanating from powerlines. Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says.

The Simpson vs. Family Guy (from Digg) – With the ongoing pop-culture debate of which show is actually better raging at an all-time high, we at Unibrow decided to put an end to the conversation with the ultimate showdown. While Simpsons fans say that Family Guy ripped off The Simpsons, the Family Guy faithful declare that The Simpsons now rips off Family Guy. We figured the only way to settle this was by having the main characters of each show face-off in a no-holds-barred family cartoon slugfest.

Mr. Jukes’ Halo 3 Betalicious Video! (from Digg) – Check out Mr. Jukes’ Halo 3 “Betalicious” Video. Halo 3 looks like it’s going to be lots of fun. The red laser seems awfully powerful though. The guys over at Bungie like his video so much, they decided to distribute it.

Turning the tables on Nigeria’s e-mail conmen – Mike is a “scambaiter,” dedicated to fighting back against those who send out the notorious 419 e-mails, promising untold wealth to anyone gullible or naive enough to disclose their bank details. Ungsunghero tells me his code name is “shiver metimbers” and you can find his stories over at: 419 Eater.

perth hillarys australia day 2007 (from Digg) – This panorama shot is amazing! Fireworks on 1 side and lightning on the other. It’s just so pretty.

Truth About Food video (from Digg) – Find out how to be healthy, how to sexy, how to feed your kids, how to be slim, how to stay young and beautiful, and how to be the best. You can also watch the videos without using their interactive flash player: no flash.

101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes (from Digg) – The man who says “life is worth losing” turns 70 today. George would say that’s irony, not a coincidence. George Dennis Carlin was born May 12, 1937 in New York City and for the last 47 years he’s been doing stand-up comedy better than anyone else on the planet. In the process he’s pissed off a lot of people and accumulated some of funniest, and most controversial, quotes known to man. Even a list of 101 quotes is just scratching the surface. In no particular order here are his 101 best… I love this guy and his quotes. 🙂

Lawsuit Claims Pinkberry Isn’t Really Yogurt (from Ungsunghero) – Pinkberry has lots of fans — there is often a long line at the stores. But now there is controversy, and even a lawsuit, over whether or not it’s really frozen yogurt. For a company that’s only been around two years, Pinkberry has figured out how to make frozen yogurt a hot item. Now the company is catching some heat over what’s in its yogurt — or more specifically, what isn’t. It’s neither pink, nor a berry. And now critics say Pinkberry frozen yogurt isn’t even yogurt. … Bryan Williams of L.A. says there’s no “yo” in their “fro-yo.” Williams’ lawsuit says Pinkberry’s catchy jingle and signage claim its healthy, but that the frozen treats don’t have the bacterial cultures that make yogurt good for you. Ungsunghero then brings up another good point. If Pinkberry does win this lawsuit and is able to prove that they are indeed yogurt, then they’ve basically admitted to breaking the law. Well, if Katz provides evidence that Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt is, indeed, made out of yogurt, Katz would have another problem to deal with. Apparently, it is illegal in the state of California to manufacture yogurt anywhere other than a state-licensed dairy facility; Pinkberry manufactures their “yogurt” at each individual store.

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Random Crap

A new free XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game is available: Aegis Wing (from MS newsgroup). It’ll only be available free for a limited time, sort of like Texas Hold’em which was free for the 1st week. I downloaded the game last night and gave it a try. It’s a spaceship shooter type game like Gradius or Defender. It’s actually rather hard (even in normal mode). The fun part of it is you can play 4 players in local mode, which would be neat the next time I gather some friends over.

Evolution for cows is occurring rapidly lately:

  • Calf born with 6 legs on Nebraska farm – A days-old black Angus calf romps about a central Nebraska farm just like any other — only this one romps with six legs. “He’s a real freak,” said Brian Slocum, who said the calf was born Sunday to one of his cows. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
  • Wis. farmer finds new calf has two noses – Mark Krombholz had to look twice at his new calf, Lucy — one time for each nose. “I didn’t notice anything too different about her until I got her in the barn,” Krombholz said, “and all of a sudden I went to feed her a bottle of milk, and I thought maybe she’d been kicked in the nose and there were two noses there.”

6 legs and 2 noses, what more does a cow need for his next generation!

Woman’s 11-stone legs may be lost (from Digg) – A woman is campaigning to raise awareness of a rare condition which has left her with 11 stone (70kg) legs.

Brazil nixes online ad for sale of wife – The government has ordered an Internet auction site to remove an advertisement in which a Brazilian man offered to sell his wife for about $50.

Balls of Fury – I saw this trailer a week ago and this movie is awesome! It reminds me of Shaolin Soccer, but in table tennis (or ping pong) and instead of an all Chinese cast, this is mostly American. I believe that part of the trailer actually uses a track from Shaolin Soccer. Hiro Nakamura from Heroes actually makes an appearance!

Brewer must pay alcoholic beer taster – A Brazilian court has ordered local brewer Ambev to pay 100,000 reals (US$49,400; euro36,400) to an alcoholic beer taster who drank about a liter and a half (3.2 pints) of beer each day. The unidentified employee alleged that the company did not provide the health measures needed to keep him from developing alcoholism, a labor court in the Rio Grande do Sul state said in a statement Friday.

Google Search – she invented (from Digg) – Google suggests: Did you mean: he invented

Doctor finds spiders in boy’s ear – These guys weren’t exactly Snap, Crackle and Pop. What began as a faint popping in a 9-year-old boy’s ear — “like Rice Krispies” — ended up as an earache, and the doctor’s diagnosis was that a pair of spiders made a home in the ear.

U.S. spouses cheat like the French, but feel worse – Men in South Africa say they cheat instead of taking second or third wives, Americans lament that love has died in their marriages, and the Japanese believe ex-marital sex isn’t adultery if they pay for it. Haha!

monty python football (from FuzzyWuzzy) – monty python guys with their crazy ideas. What happens when you pit a bunch of German philosophers against Greek philosophers on the football (soccer) field.

Gran Turismo HD: Real Life Comparison (from Digg) – these image comparisons are amazing! I honestly couldn’t differentiate which ones were real and which ones were fake.

Japanese find sleep and shelter in cyber cafes – Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment. It’s cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning to basic office work. We need internet cafes more like that here!!!

VR Defender Y3K (from Artemyst) – Another Defend the Castle type of game where you build towers who purpose is to to stop those little guys from reaching your base. This one’s really done well and even has different levels.

Sumo-Mongolian sumo wrestler banned for car crash – The Japan Sumo Association, which forbids its wrestlers from driving, also fined Kyokutenho for smashing into the back of a car in Tokyo last month. Interesting… I wonder why they don’t let them drive? Too big to fit in a car?

Sentence: Wear a sign that says ‘I AM A THIEF’ (from Consumerist) – Don’t shoplift in Attala, Ala. That’s the message Judge Kenneth Robertson Jr. sent when he ordered two convicted shoplifters to spend eight hours wearing signs that say “I AM A THIEF I STOLE FROM WALMART” while standing outside the store. I love punishment like these.

The Dating Game (from Digg) – I didn’t lose a sofa, I gained a wife. All I wanted to do was sell my sofa. Is this suppose to be a good thing?

the legend of neil – webisode 1 – the beginning (from 1P Start) – the first episode of the second effinfunny original series finds neil trapped inside the legend of zelda video game. tony janning and mike rose star. Who knew that masturbating to the fairy in The Legend of Zelda and asphyxiating oneself would be a portal into the game!

The Luigi Story (from GameDrift) – The real story behind the infamous underdog plumber and everybody’s favorite player two. Best Short Film Winner at the 2006 GenCon Film Festival. This short film goes through the life of Luigi. Mario always gets the main focus. I mean it’s a game about 2 plumber brothers, but the title is always Super Mario Bros. What about Super Luigi Bros. or Super Segali Bros.? The main focus on all the cover art is also Mario and Luigi’s may be hiding in the background somewhere. Luigi’s life is tough and even tried to spin off and record his own album. Then he went into a life crime. Not all is bad. He did score the Princess and had a baby mushroom. Really funny stuff.

Unique USB gadgets (from Digg) – USB is intended to help retire all legacy serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals such as mouse devices, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras and printers. For many devices such as scanners and digital cameras, USB has become the standard connection method. Another compilation of funky USB devices.

And the real Lotto winner is … that man at the cash register (from Digg) –

  • January 4, 2005: Winning Lotto ticket worth $574,000 lodged at World Square newsagency. An employee, Chris Ong, substitutes claim form, and sends his claim and ticket to NSW Lotteries.
  • January 12: NSW Lotteries sends Ong a letter congratulating him on his win.
  • January 18: NSW Lotteries transfers money into his account. The following day Ong withdraws $574,000 in cash.
  • January 27: Ong leaves Australia.
  • January 31: The real winners, Mei-Yin Lee and Caroline Day, contact NSW Lotteries inquiring about their prize.

But three weeks later when Dr Lee rang NSW Lotteries to inquire about the money, a “bold” fraud by an employee at the newsagency came to light – and it would be another 27 months before the pair saw their money.

Vienna library launches erotica hotline – This isn’t the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library. Vienna’s City Hall has launched a “sex hotline” to raise money for the capital’s main public library, officials said Tuesday. It’s unusual, but it’s not particularly raunchy: Callers pay 39 euro cents (53 cents) a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

Gas station owner told to raise prices – But the state
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says those deals are too good: They violate Wisconsin’s Unfair Sales Act, which requires stations to sell gas for about 9.2 percent more than the wholesale price. What the f*ck? Why would the government care if I sold gasoline at lower than whole sale cost? Sigh…

FrontDeskTip.com – Your First Bet should be at Hotel Check-in – Not everything at the casino has house edge. Real experience shows that people have a 74.08% success rate of getting a hotel room upgrade by tipping the front desk clerk a $20! Interesting… It all started with this FW thread: LAS VEGAS FRONT DESK TIPPING! and someone decided to spin off a site based on the comments inside. I’m tempted now to slip a $20 bill to the clerk next time I visit a hotel.

The Cornucopia Institute: Wal-Mart Slapped for Misleading Organic Consumers – Consumer fraud investigators in the state of Wisconsin released their findings this week after a three-month long investigation into allegations that Wal-Mart stores throughout the state of Wisconsin had misled consumers by misidentifying conventional food items as organic. In a letter to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., based in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Wisconsin
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection stated they’d found numerous instances of conventional food products improperly labeled as organic by the retail chain. Specifically, Wisconsin authorities told Wal-Mart’s legal counsel that “use of the term ‘Wal-Mart Organics’ in combination with reference to a specific non-organic product may be considered to be a misrepresentation and therefore a violation” of Wisconsin state statutes. I wonder what their definition of Wal-Mart organic is…

tsa security (from Consumierist) – This is the SNL (Saturday Night Live) skit on TSA (Transportation Security Administration) security. This is a parody of what the training would be like when the new liquids and gel rule went into effect.

Confirmation: GrandCentral + TMobile = Cheap Incoming Phone Calls? – You can get cheap calls on your T-mobile plan by hooking it up with Grand Central, reader Noah’s T-mobile bill confirms. Grand Central is a free service that creates a new phone number that you can link to other phone numbers. When someone calls your Grand Central number, it forwards to the other numbers you have attached. T-Mobile has a “My Fave 5” plan that gives you unlimited nationwide calling to those numbers you put in your Fave 5 network. I’ve mentioned this in the past, but one thing I was never clear on was how the caller id would work. In order for My Fave 5 to work correctly, it has to tell T-Mobile it’s always calling from the same number. Unsunder posted a comment: It lets you know the caller info from your address book through Grandcentral when you answer. It would say call from “Ben”. So you would have to answer to find out who was calling. If they’re not in your address book then they are asked to state their name and the info is stored. So yes you do lose your caller id. Although you get it back in a crippled way.

World of Warcraft VISA Credit Card (from Ungsunghero) – Earn gametime with card purchases / Receive a month of WoW with first use. I was thinking, if I was an MMORPG and was issuing a credit card, I’d be giving out in-game money/currency/gold (costs me nothing) and if they accumulate a certain number of points, they can use it to obtain a rare item, maybe even an item that you can only retrieve by using the card.

A Sweet So Sour: Kool-Aid Dills (from Ungsunghero) – Those pickles were once mere dills. They were once green. Their exteriors remain pebbly, a reminder that long ago they began their lives on a farm, on the ground, as cucumbers. But they now have an arresting color that combines green and garnet, and a bracing sour-sweet taste that they owe to a long marinade in cherry or tropical fruit or strawberry Kool-Aid.