2008/04/28
Thunderbird
Today, I stood about 30 feet away from Thunderbird, the world's sixth fastest supercomputer in 1996.
2008/04/27
The Reason I Want a Mac
I've been a Mac user for a long time, but skipped the iMac and went to PC for gaming. I missed Apples, but dealing with the ridiculous problems in Windows 98 and above has definitely increased my technical proficiency, so I don't regret my Apple abandonment.
One thing that I've always loved about the Mac OS is speech. Windows has never and will probably never match the quality voice control that you can get with a Mac. A great thing to do when using a Mac is to set a keyboard shortcut for speech. While playing video games or working, you can select the text of a lengthy article and press Apple+Ctrl+Alt+S and read with your ears. Windows does not seem to provide this feature without expensive software. What's the point?
One thing that I've always loved about the Mac OS is speech. Windows has never and will probably never match the quality voice control that you can get with a Mac. A great thing to do when using a Mac is to set a keyboard shortcut for speech. While playing video games or working, you can select the text of a lengthy article and press Apple+Ctrl+Alt+S and read with your ears. Windows does not seem to provide this feature without expensive software. What's the point?
2008/04/24
Cheap and Effective Organizer
I was looking at using a small expandable mini-file for shopping card organization after reading this article at lifehacker.com. I really didn't feel like going out to a store and spending money on something that I could easily replicate on the cheap. After a couple minutes of searching, I found a great way to keep gift cards: Cheap CD/DVD sleeves of which I have hundreds.
Just spread them out so each one is visible and pop them into a cheap CD Sleeve. The clear plastic window allows you to quickly see the contents. Keep one for membership cards, one for gift cards and coupons, or whatever else you could think of. Perhaps this could be used for business cards or coupons as well. Toss them in your glove box or laptop bag and you'll be ready to use them whenever the need arises.
Just spread them out so each one is visible and pop them into a cheap CD Sleeve. The clear plastic window allows you to quickly see the contents. Keep one for membership cards, one for gift cards and coupons, or whatever else you could think of. Perhaps this could be used for business cards or coupons as well. Toss them in your glove box or laptop bag and you'll be ready to use them whenever the need arises.
2008/04/23
Getting The Most Out of Gift Cards
I always forget how much money is left on gift cards that I've used. I've tried using a pen to write on the back, but it's very hard to write and read with a normal pen. Then today, I realized that using a sharpie to write on the front of the cards is much easier to write with and very easy to quickly see what your balance is. Just another reason to always carry a sharpie.
That's the actual card number. If you can use that money before me, You win.
That's the actual card number. If you can use that money before me, You win.
2008/04/22
2008/04/19
Juno
If you've made the horrible mistake of watching the movie Juno, then you should read this.
Update:
I had to respond to Milkman Dan's comments in this post because I really want to embed this hilarious video that he linked.
Juno is worth watching if you're a Michael Cera fan, but he doesn't have a huge role in the film. I would guess that he is in the movie only fifteen percent of the time, but he provides more than fifty percent of the funny. That math doesn't lie.
The problem with Juno is that the dialogue is so pretentious that it's distracting. The main character has all these contrivances that she makes an effort to display, yet act casual about. A good example is the famous hamburger phone scene, where she casually brings up the fact that she's using a novelty phone while scheduling an abortion. How wacky! It's not that my belief is suspended, because I'm sure there are more pretentious people than her in existence, but it's god damn annoying. I wouldn't want to spend more than an hour watching them without Michael Nelson providing commentary.
The deciding factor on how many stars to give this movie was the terrible music. This movie suffers from the same problem as The Darjeeling Unlimited. It unrelentingly assaults the viewer with horrible music. The movie plays multiple, full-track songs from horrible indie bands and edits the scenes to be longer so as totorture impress the audience with how indie it is. When you watch this movie, you're going to want a mute button handy.
Update:
I had to respond to Milkman Dan's comments in this post because I really want to embed this hilarious video that he linked.
Juno is worth watching if you're a Michael Cera fan, but he doesn't have a huge role in the film. I would guess that he is in the movie only fifteen percent of the time, but he provides more than fifty percent of the funny. That math doesn't lie.
The problem with Juno is that the dialogue is so pretentious that it's distracting. The main character has all these contrivances that she makes an effort to display, yet act casual about. A good example is the famous hamburger phone scene, where she casually brings up the fact that she's using a novelty phone while scheduling an abortion. How wacky! It's not that my belief is suspended, because I'm sure there are more pretentious people than her in existence, but it's god damn annoying. I wouldn't want to spend more than an hour watching them without Michael Nelson providing commentary.
The deciding factor on how many stars to give this movie was the terrible music. This movie suffers from the same problem as The Darjeeling Unlimited. It unrelentingly assaults the viewer with horrible music. The movie plays multiple, full-track songs from horrible indie bands and edits the scenes to be longer so as to
2008/04/16
In The Dark
There was an hour long power outage tonight. I think it's a bit exciting whenever the power goes out at night. It takes away all modern forms of entertainment and forces you back into reality. No TV, no Internet, no Virtual Mario Tennis. When the lights go out, you're forced to do real things.
I was at my father-in-law's house when the power went out and, after we lit some candles, he pulled out and acoustic guitar and started playing. He didn't even have to plug it in to anything! It was more enjoyable than talking over the background noise of the television.
I can't recall a time when I was happy about the end of a blackout. There is something exciting about the anticipation for electricity to resume. It makes you wonder what you would do if the power doesn't return. When it does, it's as if the moment of real is sucked away by the humming of electric machines.
--
Stop motion video of man trapped in elevator for 40 hours.
I was at my father-in-law's house when the power went out and, after we lit some candles, he pulled out and acoustic guitar and started playing. He didn't even have to plug it in to anything! It was more enjoyable than talking over the background noise of the television.
I can't recall a time when I was happy about the end of a blackout. There is something exciting about the anticipation for electricity to resume. It makes you wonder what you would do if the power doesn't return. When it does, it's as if the moment of real is sucked away by the humming of electric machines.
--
Stop motion video of man trapped in elevator for 40 hours.
2008/04/04
Chemical Memories
By the grace of all that is good about science: Science Badges.
I claim a few of these badges, but I wish I could claim the shower badge. Those showers in chem lab always freaked me out. I remember watching the lab safety video in high school and noticing two things:
1. Male student A spills mystery chemical on himself and immediately runs to the shower and starts stripping. Male student B idly stands by and watches with no expression on his face. If he expressed fear or concern, it would be less disturbing, but his lack of expression was, to me, his suppressed joy of a deadly strip tease. After viewing that, my love of chemistry was dwarfed by my fear of spilling mystery chemical on myself and having some creepy guy stare at me excitedly as the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music starts to play.
2. Rubber gloved hands break a glass rod and shove the glass through the palm of the other (obviously fake, yet still bleeding) hand and keeps shoving way past the point where one would react to the pain. It was almost like the person just gave up on life after the accident and just decided to commit suicide via hand stabbing.
Are all safety videos made to be funny? Maybe it's a method to make them more memorable. This German forklift safety video is pretty well known classic.
I claim a few of these badges, but I wish I could claim the shower badge. Those showers in chem lab always freaked me out. I remember watching the lab safety video in high school and noticing two things:
1. Male student A spills mystery chemical on himself and immediately runs to the shower and starts stripping. Male student B idly stands by and watches with no expression on his face. If he expressed fear or concern, it would be less disturbing, but his lack of expression was, to me, his suppressed joy of a deadly strip tease. After viewing that, my love of chemistry was dwarfed by my fear of spilling mystery chemical on myself and having some creepy guy stare at me excitedly as the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music starts to play.
2. Rubber gloved hands break a glass rod and shove the glass through the palm of the other (obviously fake, yet still bleeding) hand and keeps shoving way past the point where one would react to the pain. It was almost like the person just gave up on life after the accident and just decided to commit suicide via hand stabbing.
Are all safety videos made to be funny? Maybe it's a method to make them more memorable. This German forklift safety video is pretty well known classic.
Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtle Madness
Today was turtle-rific! Dinsaur Comics' T-Rex recently talked about the lyrics to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme song. He was discussing whether Splinter taught them to be ninja teens or ninja teams. T-Rex said, "You don't have to be taught how to be a ninja TEEN. If you're a ninja and you're a teen, then you're already being a ninja teen!"
John from Sinosplice translated the Chinese version of the lyrics to English and solved the mystery. The Chinese version of the lyrics are very interesting. It turns out that, in the Chinese version of the show, Raphael was only a bit crude and Splinter is a rat brimming with passion.
In other parts of the web, Darwin's Natural Selections had pictures and videos of strange teenage mutant ninja toys. In fact, the fake commercial is so humorous, that it I found it necessary to embed the video below for all the lazies who don't like clicking on links, but will click on play buttons of videos which are embedded in amazingly content-rich blogs such as this one.
It's a green day in hell.
John from Sinosplice translated the Chinese version of the lyrics to English and solved the mystery. The Chinese version of the lyrics are very interesting. It turns out that, in the Chinese version of the show, Raphael was only a bit crude and Splinter is a rat brimming with passion.
In other parts of the web, Darwin's Natural Selections had pictures and videos of strange teenage mutant ninja toys. In fact, the fake commercial is so humorous, that it I found it necessary to embed the video below for all the lazies who don't like clicking on links, but will click on play buttons of videos which are embedded in amazingly content-rich blogs such as this one.
It's a green day in hell.
2008/04/02
Future Theater of Scientific Mysteries
One of my favorite shows in the history of the televisual universe is Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you are also a huge nerd, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find that even after Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo returned to earth many years ago, they are still subjecting themselves to audio/visual torment (spiritually, at least).
The most exciting of these new projects is RiffTrax. RiffTrax features Michael J. Nelson, the head writer of MST3K, as well as many different guests who join Nelson in creating entertaining commentary tracks for some new DVD releases. All you have to do is download the mp3 and use your own home stereo (or with the RiffTrax Player) to Sync the audio with the movie, much like watching The Dark Side of Oz.
Raise your hand if you've already checked out some sweet RiffTrax action and, if so, what was your favorite episode? My favorite, so far, was Roadhouse. Nat and I have also watched Transformers, The Lord of the Rings, The Fifth Element, Firewall, Casino Royale, Point Break, Fantastic Four and Mike Willey's Chocolate Factory. All of them were equally funny. We fell asleep while watching Star Trek V and 300, so I am unable recommend them. We are currently set to watch Glitter, Triple Ex, The Mattress, and Night of the Living Dead when we find the time.
Another MST3K spin-off project is Cinematic Titanic. Cinematic Titanic features five former MST3K veterans. They have their first movie available to download as of today, but I haven't watched it yet. I have high expectations.
The Film Krew is another way to get some Mystery Science action. I think I've only watched one Film Krew movie from start to finish. It was Hollywood After Dark and it features a stripper from The Golden Girls. Hot!
Mike Nelson also recorded commentary tracks for some old movies released on DVD such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, House on Haunted Hill, Night of the Living Dead, and Carnival of Souls. My favorite of these is the colorized Reefer Madness, which is funny even without the commentary track.
While I'm at it, I might as well add that Mike Nelson has also written several books. I have them all, but I have only read the picture books: Happy Kitty Bunny Pony, Love Sick and Goth-Icky. Nat has read his two novels Mike Nelson's Mind over Matters, Mike Nelson's Death Rat! as well as Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese.
All of this comedy greatness has inspired me to create my own commentaries for some of my favorite bad movies. I'll let you know when the project is complete. Of course, it will be free to download and enjoy via the magic of the Interwebs and it will be the cherry on top of my extensive comedy portfolio (which exists only in my mind). If you're reading this, Michael J. Nelson,
from left to right: Crow T. Robot, Bill Corbett, Michael J. Nelson, Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy
2008/04/01
April Fools' Gold
April 1st is one of the biggest Internet holidays celebrated world wide. Even I partook in the fun of digital trickery long ago in Internet past, but when I saw the trailer for The Legend of Zelda movie, it was I who became an April fool.
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