Computer Man

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

This is one of my favorite songs.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Trio Tour)


Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence done on guitar by Kotaro Oshio:


Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence done on guitar:

Home Shopping Greatness

Here's a video of a Home Shopping Channel salesman getting injured on live TV.


Here he is again with an important message:
"Go in here, let the butterfly just fly in on that monkey."


Speaking of shopping at home, (I can't find the non-laughtrack version of this): Another video

Poem

Today's poem was placed on an actual car in an actual pet store parking lot. I took a photo with my camera phone, but it didn't come out very well.

Hello,
I was laughing so hard at your "LEFTIES DO IT RIGHT" bumper sticker that I hit another car! I hope that you will take some responsibility and agree to pay half (1/2) of the damages."
Ryan Niemi
555-555-5555

I gave them my real phone number, but they haven't called me yet. What is the world coming to?

Game Boy Around The World

A father has taken pictures of his son playing the Nintendo Game Boy at various scenic locations around the world. Part of me is glad that Nintendo wasn't around when I lived in Europe because I would have missed out on many amazing things, but another part is very jealous because history is boring!

I am Superman?

You are Superman

Superman 70% Spider-Man 70% Robin 50% The Flash 50% Supergirl 40% Hulk 40% Iron Man 40% Green Lantern 35% Wonder Woman 30% Batman 25% Catwoman 20%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

If I was still 7 years old, I would be happy as hell, but everyone knows that Superman is a dick.

Banksy Sneaks Art Into Disneyland

Banksy set up an inflatable doll dressed as a prisoner behind the fence at a Disneyland roller coaster. Read about it here.

I was wondering how Banksy can get away with this? His Wikipedia page lists that they already suspect who he is. It seems like if he was to actually travel to these locations where he places his own art in famous museums and paints the walls of Palestine, they could match his travel records. Is it possible that Banksy might not be an actual person, but a collective group that acts as single person. Wasn't that the theme from V? A man can be killed, but an idea is immortal.

Isis/Tool Concert

We got to the concert pretty early and heard Tool playing during their sound check. They played a couple songs: Stinkfist, 10,000 Days, Sober and (my favorite) the guitar solo for Jambi without any other instrumentation.

We were let in about two hours later, but were not allowed to enter the lawn area, so it was pretty odd. Isis started playing while we were in the new line that formed for getting into the lawn area. I was really upset because while Isis was playing, they still didn't let us on the lawn. It ended up being a sound check, but it didn't sound like it because they were playing full songs.

We were allowed on the grass after Isis stopped the sound check. We were some of the first people let in, so we thought it would be a good idea to stand front and center. "Mistaaaake!"

Isis played an hour later and it was amazing. I think they played 6 songs, but I only remember 5. It was about 40 minutes so they probably did only play 5 since their songs are so long.

So Did We
Dulcinea
Backlit (my favorite)
10,000 Shards
Holy Tears

Then we waited for tool to play and it started getting crowded. The lawn was completely packed with people and we made the mistake of staying front and center instead getting as far to the back of the crowd as possible.

When Tool started playing the idiots in the crowd around us became so annoying that I could barely focus on the music. The second song was The Pot and Maynard got hit in the head with a bottle within the first 1-2 minutes. After being dazed for a second he threw down the mic and walked off stage leaving us with an instrumental version. Then he came back out and stood silently while the band played an instrumental version of 46&2 and he finally sang the last verse.

Before their encore they sat and stared at the audience while almost everyone in the crowd held up a lighter. It was very amazing to see, but when they were playing 10,000 days, I smelled something like burning hair or plastic. I looked over and 100 feet away there was a group of retarded monkeys dancing around a garbage bonfire.

I've played enough Postal (the video game) to know that when a stupid person catches fire he will run towards two people, and they'll run towards two people and so on and so forth. Plus, it was so crowded that it would be hard to not catch on fire, so instead of enjoying the music, we had to retreat to a less crowded spot on the other side of the lawn.

In summation Isis was fucking awesome and Tool might have been more enjoyable if we had some metal chairs to keep the typical Tool fans a safe distance away.

Book Reviews

Amazon Book Reviews by someone who hasn't read the books!

"I have not actually read this book (Brokeback Mountain: Story to
Screenplay) but I did see the movie and I liked it very much. However,
I don't understand why people keep referring to it as the "gay cowboy
movie." Can't two men be very good friends without everybody saying
they're gay?"

Hilarious

Kilos of Fish

How many kilos of fish can one cat carry? 10 minutes of japanese
television has been dedicated to answering this question.

Shocking, But Not Surprising

AOL Admits 40% of Subscribers Don't Have Computers

"Well, these documents do explain one thing," said Kowshik. "I always wondered how AOL managed to maintain a customer satisfaction rate of 40%. Now we know exactly which 40% of their client base that is."

Red State Update

Red State Update comments on Al Gore The Movie.

Also:

Jackie and Dunlap have declared War! On Neil
Young! What can you do to help with the war
effort? Buy every Neil Young CD you can find,
just load up on 'em, even Arc, and send them
to:

Red State Update
PO Box 12181
Murfreesboro, TN 37129

When they get a mailbox full, Jackie and
Dunlap will burn 'em up, tape it, and put it on
the internet for you to enjoy.

And finally:
South Park's Al Gore The Movie

all the rest

Adolph Kitty

This cat looks like hitler.

"

Get used to it, Hitler."

I'm A Married Man

Prison Tycoon

There is a game called Prison Tycoon. Wow.

Depressing Comic

Internet Safety Tips

How to make Myspace.com suck a little bit less in Firefox (UPDATED FOR THE YEAR 2108)

Step 1: Update firefox

Step 2: Install the Grease monkey extension. Install Script Block.

Step 3: restart firefox

Step 4: Go to this page and browse to the myspace.com section. When on MySpace, you need to click on your script block icon and allow scripts from MySpace.com.

Step 5: Click on the first two extensions listed to install them. Now when you are clicking on other people's profiles, you are less likely to get infected by their virtual STDs (third party scripts). Now you would have to allow scripts for any page that uses Javascript to work properly. This could be annoying because you will find that more than 100 pages on the internet use the brand new javascript technology. Is the hassle of manually allowing scripts worth it? I think it is.



The End

Currently listening : Panopticon By Isis Release date:

Software Review

I was just updating and reconfiguring some software in the midst of some hard drive problems, so I thought I'd write a mini review of some of my favorite programs right now.

Ubuntu Linux is so awesome. I'm just running it off a live cd right now. I'm going to install it once I get my computer sorted out. It is the nicest Linux OS that I've tried. Very user friendly, which Is something I need right now.

Foobar 2000 is the best audio player available. If you customize it correctly, it can look really awesome. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to customize it. Especially since the community who makes the skins has horrible taste in graphic design and just to find something worth copying is impossible. If I could find the link to the customized layout that I'm using, I'll post it. Right now I have it set up to display album art and lyrics for the songs that it plays (Although I haven't got the lyrics plugin set up yet).

Crystal Player has replaced winamp as my favorite video player. I wish the playlist could be separated, but otherwise it is a pretty decent player. It has a lot of nice on screen displays to make it very easy to use a mouse to manage it. It can also be set up to display thumbnails of random parts of the video when browsing the playlist. I am haven't configured the hotkeys and programmed my remote for it yet, but I will shortly.

Synergy is the best program to use if you have more than one computer. It allows you to share a keyboard and mouse over the network so you can type, copy and paste seamlessly between two screens.

Song Bird is a audio player that is supposed to rival itunes. I am not a fan of itunes, but itunes beats this thing for now. It has really good ideas, though. It has a built in web browser and links to podcasts, allmusic and many other websites. I was able to listen to a podcast by Pen & Teller with just a couple clicks after installing it. This program may get better in the future, but it's a little bulky and clumsy right now.

That's all for now,

Niem

Currently listening : Dub Side of the Moon By Easy Star All Stars Release date: 18 February, 2003

Why, God Why?

Why is MySpace so popular? It's the ugliest social networking website available. It's loaded with spyware and ads. It runs very slow and is full of horrible music, videos, background art and font colors that hurt your eyes.

Why is it that friendster and orkut are so unpopular?

The only reason to use the bloody thing is because so many of my friends have been sucked into it's unholy vortex.

I love you, crazy fools. Please wear protection when surfing the internet. Run spyware and virus scans regularly. Back up your important information on CDs or DVDs (double back ups if necessary). If you let Firefox remember your passwords, at least set a master password. Encrypt files on your laptop because every 7 seconds, 1 billion laptops are stolen. And most importantly: Never teach kung fu to a zombie in hopes of making an unstoppable zombie army.

Much love and respect,
Niem

Portable MP3 Players

I am sick of MP3 players.

I held out for a long long time before buying an mp3 player because I was holding out for something that played Ogg formatted files and worked well. I finally cracked and bought a Rio Sport Forge from target on clearance. It doesn't play Ogg files, it has a slot for SD cards and it accepts AAA batteries. I use NiMH rechargeable batteries and it's very convenient to carry a fully charged spare battery with me.

The player was working great. The menu was clear and easy to navigate. I was really happy until it started to glitch out on me and had difficulty turning on. After doing some research, I found out that these types of problems were common because some problem with the memory chips. Also, Rio had just gone out of business so I could not really send it in for repairs.

After that, I ordered a replacement that I thought would be comparable. I bought a SanDisk e140 1gb player that also accepts SD cards for additional storage and AAA batteries.

After using it for a short period of time, I noticed a lot of issues with this MP3 player. It didn't play the songs in the order of the track number or even the artist name which was very upsetting. Also, the quality of the sound was really horrible, through the headphones and my car's stereo input are not the greatest.

I found that SanDisk had firmware for the device on their website that would allow tracks to be sorted by track number and artist name. Also, after tweaking with the equalizer settings, I was able to make the player sound acceptable.

Part of me wants to throw this thing at ebay and get a new MP3 player, but I can't find one that meets all of my needs. I would consider using an iPod if I didn't have to use the iTunes software.

I'll just stick with this thing for now.