Food – Page 5 – Krunk4Ever!

May 17, 2007May 17, 2007

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.

May 14, 2007May 14, 2007

Service Buffer

I was thinking, if I was going to provide a service that has a limit for a given amount of time (i.e. number of minutes per month, gigabytes of transfer per month), I’d provide a 1 month tolerance for you to get below the limit.

Lets say if you have a 1000 minute cell phone plan. One particular month, you went over and used 1100 minutes. If you could keep below 900 minutes in the following month, you’d wouldn’t be charge anything extra.

You’re thinking this sounds awfully similar to Cingular’s Rollover minutes, but it’s not exactly the same. Cingular allows you to save up minutes to use on a rainy day (sort of like a savings account), but what I’m suggesting is more like a buffer zone/tolerance level. It’s sort of like those fines the EU commission has given Microsoft. If Microsoft can comply with their orders by a certain date, they’d be off the hook. However, if they fail to comply by the given date, the fees will back date to when they were found guilty.

Sometimes one just can’t anticipate when emergencies might occur or forgets to monitor ones usage, but when notified, they’d try to be more careful next time. So like a warning, I thought such a system would be very user friendly.

Random Crap:

Fat Brit kids hunt Australia’s outback and viewers – New reality television series “Fat Teens Can’t Hunt” — a kind of “Survivor” meets “The Biggest Loser” — will see 10 overweight British teenagers sent to Australia’s outback to live and eat with remote Aboriginal communities.

Museum pays cash for live cockroaches – – A Houston museum is paying cash for live cockroaches as it seeks to populate a new exhibit. The 25-cent-per-bug offer comes from the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Judge sues cleaner for $65M over pants – The Chungs, immigrants from
South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation’s capital. For the past two years, however, they’ve been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants. I can’t believe someone who’s job is a judge can do something so inhumane. Manning said the cleaners made three settlement offers to Pearson. First they offered $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000. But Pearson wasn’t satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants. Sigh…

Spare any change? Canada unveils C$1 million coin – The Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a welcome addition to any piggy bank on Thursday — a monster gold coin with a face value of C$1 million (455,000 pounds) that it says is the world’s biggest, purest and highest denomination coin. Maybe USA should bring back the $1000 bills.

Frog juice in high demand in Peru – She’s preparing frog juice, a beverage revered by some Andean cultures for having the power to cure asthma, bronchitis, sluggishness and a low sex drive. A drink of so-called “Peruvian Viagra” sells for about 90 cents.

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Trailer (from Digg) – A first look at the Robot Chicken: Star Wars special that premieres on June 17 on Adult Swim. The creators of “Robot Chicken” will be at Celebration IV offering a sneak peek at the show. Check out the news here. Here’s the Direct link to watch video.

The Keyboard Waffle Iron (from Digg) – Because breakfast isn’t nerdy enough, I present to you the Keyboard Waffle Iron. There’s really nothing else to be said about this wonder of modern technology, but I invite you to make your best keyboard/waffle puns in comments. Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.

Yesterday’s ‘Heroes’ (from Digg) – Niki/Jessica as scream queen? Micah Sanders as sitcom moppet? Nathan Petrelli on Cruise control? Before their characters go forward, check out some of the past roles of the actors who play them. I didn’t know Sylar was in 24!

May 10, 2007May 12, 2007

Random Crap

15 ways stores trick you into spending (from Consumerist) – Ever notice how you can go to a store to pick up just one thing and then, by the time you get to the check stand, you have five or six things in your cart and a bigger bill than you had anticipated? The list is in my opinion pretty much common sense. That’s why retail stores are so much about will power and people who purchase online don’t often have this problem. Unless of course if you browse deal sites all day long. Like this weekend, I purchased a new KitchenAid knife set ($54 shipped), some software (make $13 after rebate shipped), leather case for my Canon PowerShot SD1000 ($21 shipped), a photo color printer (make $4 after rebate shipped). See why my wallet cries every night?

Woman ‘tricked into sex’ by penis cream treatment (from Digg) – A Syrian-born airline pilot allegedly tricked a schoolteacher from Haverfordwest into having sex with him by pretending he had to administer ointment on the end of his penis, a jury heard yesterday (Tuesday).

Gene explains why people are night owls – A genetic mutation called the “after-hours gene” may explain why some people are night owls, it is revealed in Science journal today. I so must have this gene! I’m typing this at 4:52am.

German thief betrays himself to get free beer – A German phone thief led police right to his front door when they called the stolen mobile to say he had won some free beer and he willingly gave his address.

Legendary ‘Hogzilla’ to hit big screen – Hogzilla, a near-mythical monster hog that roamed south Georgia, is about to get a little bigger.

That’s one giant hog!

Porn dominates Saudi mobile use (from Digg) – Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers’ mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

Only another 5,500 calories to go … (from Digg) –

A Swedish university has replicated Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me junk food binge under lab conditions. The early results are surprising, says Marten Blomkvist.

…

Well, at one Swedish university, a group of students are getting the chance. At the University of Linköping, the Spurlock experience is being replicated under clinical conditions. In February, seven healthy medical students in their early 20s spent weeks stuffing themselves with hamburgers, pizzas, milk shakes and 200g bacon breakfasts – all on the university’s tab. A second group of subjects are just now hitting the junk food. Physical exercise is to be avoided. Bikes are out. To discourage walking even the shortest distance, free bus passes have been issued.

…

The students managed to gain between 5-15% extra weight over the month. They felt “tired and bloated”, especially during the first week, but there seemed to be no signs of the mood swings towards the end that the rather despondent Spurlock reported.

Final results from the questionnaires will be released at the end of the study. But judging from the provisional results, no one suffered anything like as much as Spurlock. One of the most shocking scenes in the film is when his three doctors urge him to abandon his experiment after getting the results of blood tests which show that his liver is so badly damaged it looks as though it is the result of heavy drinking – “You’re pickling your liver!”. While Nyström and his team also noted “significant” changes in the liver, relating to the liver enzyme levels in the blood, and the content of fat in the liver, the changes were “never even close to dangerous”.

Japanese patch measures pet stress – Wondering if your dog or cat is stressed? Just stick a special patch on the bottom of its paw and you’ll be able to tell, according to a Japanese company. Reminds me of those flat heat sensor things that measure your stress by the color it changes to when you put a finger on it.

Pipe cleaners are the new sexy (from Digg) – With that in mind, it’s no surprise that nobody put me in charge of the “Really Cool 3-D Video Game Pipe Cleaner Sculpture” department. Someone over at HumorMe has, thankfully, filled that spot. Those pipe cleaner models are actually pretty cute.

Indian groom too drunk to wed, so brother steps in – Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s more sober brother instead, police said on Monday. … “The groom apologised for his behaviour, but has been crying that word will spread and he will never get a bride again,” Singh said by phone.

Feeling Cingular (from Consumerist) – Check out the Feeling Cingular music video. Watch as the tragic story of Feeling, the spurned Cingular customer, trying to find his missing, depressed speaker, Most Blown 2 after his other speaker Most Blown 1 was killed by Cingular/ATT’s GSM RF interference. Ever experience your speakers going tk tk tk tk when your cellphone is next to your speakers and is about to ring? Well, this guy made a pretty cool video of how his cellphone blew out his speakers.

Incredible monitor setups (from Derek) – So many LCDs! *drools*

The voice of Pikachu (from RayAlome) – this is awesome! The Japanese voice of Pikachu!!! She even sounds like Pikachu in real life!

9 things I learned about the world according to anonymous stock photo models. (from Digg) – The list is hilarious. The ones I enjoyed included:

Attempts to portray sincere parent/child relationships always seem creepy.
Kids love manual labor.
That one-handed, one-knee laptop bullshit is the preferred way to get real work done.
Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason. – Ungsunghero said instead of “ass”, it should be replaced by “douchey prick“

Inmates take swipe at toilet paper cuts – One side effect of the policy could be that toilet paper will become a new form of currency among inmates.

Duck penises show “arms race” between sexes – An exception is ducks — especially mallards. Although mallards pair off to mate, females are often raped by stray males. Yet studies show that these rapes do not pay off for the males. “Even in a species where 40 percent of the copulations are forced copulations, the ducklings still are mostly sired by the mates,” Brennan said. … What they found surprised them — corkscrew-shaped oviducts, with plenty of potential dead-ends. “Interestingly, the male phallus is also a spiral, but it twists in the opposite, counterclockwise, direction,” said Yale ornithologist Richard Prum in a statement. See what real duck genitals look like in this article: Duck genitals locked in arms race (from Digg).

May 8, 2007May 8, 2007

Sherbert vs Sorbet

The other weekend at Bellevue Square, Stanman, Saran, Carolyn and I were discussing about ice cream, which ended up either Stanman or I bringing up ordering Rainbow Sherbet at Thrifty (before they got bought by Rite-Aid). Rainbow Sherbet has been and still is my favorite ice cream flavor (I think…). Anyway, we got to the point where we were debating how to pronounce sherbet and what sherbet really was.

When I was small, I called sherbet, well sher-bet or sher-bert, but then I learnt the word sorbet (pronounced sor-bay), so I thought, maybe that’s how you pronounce it (i.e. sher-bay). Others chimed in that sherbet was a derivation of sorbet (but pronounced differently) or that it was just another way of spelling sorbet and are in fact the same thing.

Then I mentioned that sherbet wasn’t really ice cream because it didn’t contain any milk (needed for the cream part of ice cream), but Stanman argued that it was an ice cream and does in fact contain milk. I’ve always associated sherbets with frozen fruit juices and they don’t really taste like they contain any type of milk in them. I mean when I get a “dream” smoothie from Jamba Juice, those taste like it has milk.

According to Merriam-Webster, the correct pronunciation is sher-bet, with a variant: sher-bert.

Anyway, thank god for Wikipedia: Sherbet (U.S.)

Sherbet (often pronounced and even occasionally spelled sherbert in American English) is a frozen dessert made from iced sweetened fruit juice or puree. Sherbets usually have more ingredients, such as milk, egg whites, or gelatin, than sorbets, which are generally made from iced fruit puree and other ingredients. Sherbet in the United States must have a milkfat content between 1% and 2%, and a slightly higher sweetener content than ice cream; else, it must be sold as ice cream if the fat content is higher or sweetener content lower, ice milk if milk or sweetener content is lower, or as sorbet if no milk is present at all. American sherbets have a minimum density of 6 lb/gal (720 g/L) and are flavored either with fruit or other ingredients.

There you have it. Sherbet does in fact contain milk, but is not ice cream due to the lower milkfat content and the higher sweetener content.

Random Crap:

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader – Larry pledge (from SueOn) – Contestant Larry gets confused on a 1st Grade Grammar question.

Mathematicians set Chinese test – Maths enthusiasts are being challenged to answer a sample question from Chinese university entrance tests. The Chinese math entrance exam is actually quite difficult. I was able to solve i and ii, but iii has been giving me trouble. Plus my math skills are still rather rusty. On the other hand, the English Math test was a joke.

‘Kryptonite’ discovered in mine (from Digg) – Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes. A new mineral matching its unique chemistry – as described in the film Superman Returns – has been identified in a mine in Serbia.

Police: Thief tries to trade stolen Jeep – A Bridgeport man has been arrested after he tried to trade in a Jeep to a car dealer, a month after allegedly stealing the same Jeep from that same dealer, police said.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Sprite Comparison (from Digg) – Man, Ryu has never looked so slick! French website Gamekult has posted this “confidential” slide from a Capcom press conference showing a comparison between the original SSFII Ryu sprites scaled up to HD resolution and what the new HD sprites will look like. What a difference, eh? If the other characters and backgrounds look as good as this one (which one naturally assumes they will), this will be one of the must have games on XBLA and well worth the MS points to purchase it. The evolution of Ryu!

Exclusive Cakes You’ve Never Seen (from Digg) – “It is sweet miracle cake, a piece of childhood in a serious adult world. All you need is to blow out a candle and make a wish. Cakes are very different, but made with sincerity and therefore loved.” Enjoy. These custom cakes look awesome.

Man cuts off penis in restaurant – A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London restaurant.

The Most Expensive Movies Ever Made (from Digg) – interesting list. Read the story here.

The Most Excruciatingly Painful, Yet Typical, Customer Service Call Ever – I was listening to a call recording from our Service Quality Tracker, and the call was so ordinary, yet pointless, that I was inspired to create some video commentary.

Suspected robber flushes money in toilet – Deputies with a search warrant removed the toilet from its plumbing and found shredded U.S. currency in the toilet trap, Swanson said. I’m actually curious. Since it’s confirmed that the $50,000 stolen was shredded and flushed down the toilet, does the bank get the money back, in the form of new bills or depositing electronically into their account?

CalTV: UC Berkeley’s Online TV Station (from MS newsgroup) – sounds like the cal press has gone video.

WordPress Theme Generator (from Digg) – This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge. Change the colors, settings, layout, preview live, click “save” and download your unique WordPress theme zip-file. Extract, upload, set, and you are done! If you have any questions or need additions email me. Interesting… I haven’t had time to play with it yet, but let me know what you think about it.

GH2 – Dead! – XBOX360 – Expert (8 Years Old) (from Digg) – Guitar Hero II – XBox 360 – Dead! – My high score is 259,820

Cities plagued by rodents, emergency declared – The rodent population in six Peruvian regions has ballooned due to unusual weather patterns and the government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday to control the plague, including in the capital city, Lima.

May 6, 2007May 15, 2007

Random Crap

Experience the hardest Mario ever (no fluffing required!) (from Ungsunghero) – If you are ever in a situation where your little sister complains about a Mario game being too hard, please just slap her and show her this video. Created by a random somebody in Taiwan (my vote is for escaped mental patient), this Mario mod is like a sick work of art. Granted, I would most likely give up after about one minute, but the sadomasochist inside of me wants to play it to death until I complete it. I mean, seriously, beating this would give you the ultimate video game bragging rights. I don’t even think Lucas would stand a chance. This is the ultimate Super Mario Bros. level. You can also watch the version with commentary: Super Mario Bros: Frustration, which makes it a whole lot funnier. He does cuss a lot, so be warned. I love the hidden coin blocks which just so conveniently blocks many of his jumps causing Mario to fall to his death. Once you get to level 2, it starts getting really repetitive, so you might as well stop watching it. Both Ungsunghero and I noticed that he could have actually jumped to the top of the ceiling during one of tries. Ungsunghero theorizes that if he did it, it’d take him to the warp zone. I wonder if I could get ahold of this game and give it a try. I would however actually need to have quick state save.

Ipod saves Soldier’s Life (from MS newsgroup) – I have talked to Kevin and he has told me the real story of getting shot in the iPod. The Armor stopped the bullet. Kevin didn’t know he was shot. The iPod was how he found out. The full story: iPod tells soldier he was shot – the real story

Joke from MS newsgroup:

Two guys were speeding along in their beat up old pick-up. They approach a red light and the driver blasts right through. The passenger, startled, exclaims “that was a red light!” The driver turns to him and says, “don’t worry, my brother runs red lights all the time”. The passenger replies, “oh, okay”. They come up to the next light screeching to a halt. The passenger again startled exclaims “it is green, go!” The driver replies, “what are you crazy, my brother could be coming the other way”.

Someone replies: That’s not a joke, that’s driving in New Delhi 🙂

Cal Dining wins the Oscar of eateries (from MS newsgroup) – Chez Panisse, French Laundry, Spago, Charlie Trotters … and Cal Dining? That’s right. Berkeley’s campus dining service recently earned its place among these much-lauded establishments when it snagged (as the others have in the past) a prestigious Ivy Award. Given by the trade publication Restaurants & Institutions, Ivy Awards — the equivalent of Oscars for the food industry — recognize excellence in food service by restaurants, hotels, and institutions. Industry peers (and the previous year’s winners) submit nominations, a ballot is assembled, and the magazine’s 154,000 readers vote for their selections. What happened!?!?! The Dining Commons back when I was there was horrible!

Gates vs. Jobs (from Digg) – Bill Gates and Steve Jobs square off in the clean white virtual world of the iconic Mac ads. The voice of Bill Gates reminds me of Kermit the Frog.

spiderman 3 speed painting in photoshop 7 (from FuzzyWuzzy) – great paint session in photoshop 7! four hours in three minutes. music by Danny Elfman, spiderman’s sountrack composer. Wow! This drawing is amazing!

So I mentioned nightmares the other day to Ungsunghero and he replied back, don’t you mean daymares, which got me thinking what the etymology of the word nightmare is. I mean the word night is simple, since it just refers to it occurring at night (most people sleep at night and have nightmares I guess), but does mare (by itself refers to a female horse) mean bad dream? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, mare refers to goblin that causes nightmares.

Jack Bauer, Dammit! (from Digg) – Students would like Bauer to run for president in ‘08 because first of all, he’s better than anyone else trying to get nominated, and second of all, he helps students relax. Every time he says, “Dammit,” someone lifts a brew in his honor. As proof, check out the Jack Bauer Dammit video, if you haven’t already. Haha! A 24 drinking.

13 Little Things That Make A Geek Happy (from Digg) – The list is pretty accurate. Things I totally agree with include:

Someone submits something I wrote to digg.
A new referrer pops up
Someone posts a real comment on one of my blog entries.
My code works perfectly on the first try.
Technorati and Alexa Ranking that increases each week.

Errol Morris: Commercials (from Consumerist) – a bunch of amusing Miller High Life commercials. Reminds me of the Real Men of Genius commercials from BudLight.

Gentlemen, rate yourselves: cucumber or banana? – Singapore’s Society for Men’s Health and a pharmaceutical firm are proposing a four-point scale for erectile dysfunction, allowing men to rate their own hardness with four categories: cucumber, unpeeled banana, peeled banana and tofu (bean curd).

April 29, 2007April 30, 2007

Random Crap

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CDMCC!!!

Random Crap:

Watch this water freeze instantly. This product will revolutionize shaved ice. (from Digg) – Honestly, I don’t really believe that’s just water. The 2 things that affect the physical state of water are temperature and pressure (if you remember that graph) and there’s a point where all 3 actually ~~meat~~ meet (a temperature and pressure where water is constantly changing between solid, liquid, and gas). However, a plastic water bottle doesn’t have enough strength to withstand the pressure needed to achieve what’s he’s trying to do, so my guess is something else must’ve been added. Also, after becoming ice for a bit, it pretty much changes back to liquid rather quickly. It actually reminds me of the supersaturation experiments we did back in high school chemistry.

Vertical Sitting Car (from Digg) – Is this satellite image on Google Maps showing that a car is parked vertically in the City of The Hague (Den Haag) in Netherlands? Or is it just optical illusion?

Great examples of Guerilla Marketing (from Digg) – I recently bought a book about guerilla marketing and it makes great reading. I love the idea of coming up with a truly unique idea for very little cash and turning any exposure you do get into sales. There are some great examples in this book so i thought id post a few of them here. If anyone would like to add to the list, please feel free. I’ve seen most of these before, but there were still a few good ones I haven’t seen before.

5 Free WordPress Plugins to help you Monetize your Blog (from Digg) – Here are 5 WordPress Plugins we’ve come across that can help you to monetize your blog.

The Complete Matrix Trilogy [HD DVD] – *drools*

Ten Reasons Why You’re not a Billionaire (from Digg) – People always are wondering, why am I not rich? Or, why can’t I make as much money as so-and-so? The answer is, that being rich is merely a state of mind. The excuse to why you are not yet a millionaire is really not because you don’t make enough money, its the way you use your money that determines why you are not yet a millionaire. I’ve been reading a lot of Donald Trump’s book, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life, and everything he says really does make sense.

Cool Cakes (from Digg) – Yes, these are all real cakes, made from flour and eggs and frosting. No plastic models here.

Plitvicka Waterfalls (from Digg) – Croatia: Plitvicka Jezera National Park: waterfalls at Plitvicka Jezera National Park. Photo ©2004 by Jack Brauer. This waterfall is amazingly beautiful! Also, I noticed some similar sounding the photographer’s name is to 24’s Jack Bauer.

Plasma Pong (from Digg) – They’ve released the game! It was fun for a bit, then the computer got too hard.

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality (from Digg) – Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing
was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

She told me we couldn’t afford beer anymore (from Digg) – Best beer ad ever

Soldiers out of cable (19 pics) – soldier figurines made completely made out of coil wires.

Starcraft Origami (from Digg) – Still lacking some paint, but besides that, they’re pretty good.

Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked? (from Digg) – Taylor, an American who has lived in Amsterdam for the last 25 years, thinks the negative reaction stateside is due to “puritanical prudishness,” which doesn’t balk at violence or soft porn on television, yet is offended by older nudity. “Now seeing older bodies — that’s reality TV if you want reality,” Taylor quips. A pretty good article about what’s very wrong about the American’s scale of what is bad. It talks about why art displaying nudity (such as the Jesus Christ status made from chocolate) is so bad, but you can have Victoria Secret models walk down the aisle on prime time TV (not that it’s a bad thing). Then there’s the common argument about violence vs sex.

Dark Lord of the Sky: Darth Vader Balloon (from Boing Boing) – When the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison first suggested that one of its members, Benoît Lambert, create a Death Star-shaped PVC helium balloon, he was not only thrilled but already envisioning a chance to show off his artistic talents as well as his love for Star Wars–and his skills as a hot-air balloonist.

Shocking: An Innovative iPod Case from DLO (from Digg) – In another shocking freezing over of hell, we have discovered an iPod case that is actually *gasp* innovative! This case for fifth generation iPods looks normal on the front, but the backside has a pretty nifty cable-management system. It has an extension that the cord can be wrapped around and the 3.5mm audio jack and earphones have their own little cutouts that they can reside in securely when not in use. It is available for $20 in clear or black. Too bad it only works with iPod headphones. This is genius! I’ve always never really quite knew what to do with the earphones as I wrap them around my iPod. Now this solves the problem. They need to make a iPod Nano version.

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel – using solar power (from Digg) – Their device captures energy from the sun, converts it to electrical energy and “splits” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen. Obviously carbon monoxide in and of itself is not great either but millions of pounds of it are used each year to manufacture chemicals including detergents and plastics. It can also be converted into liquid fuel.

Sugar Free: Ants, Muffin (from Digg) – The task was to communicate that anything made with Sugar Free tastes the same, as when made using sugar. To dramatize this, we decided to use the most credible ambassadors for sweetness – Ants. We experimented with syrup made of Sugar Free and sweet lime, and found that even the ants couldn’t tell the difference. We painted the stape of a muffin on a 14″ x 19″ poster, using this syrup. And, left the rest to the ants. I’m curious, doesn’t the sweet lime actually make this experiment not as credible?

Episiotomy delivers doctor to court, settlement reached – Sara Wallace regularly complained of pain in her uterus region after she gave birth. Then she awoke one morning to find feces in her vagina. She and her husband David sued the on-call doctor who delivered their baby.

Useless Facts: The difference between a blimp and a zeppelin (from Digg) – Like all tough questions in life, this is one Wikipedia could easily answer: A non-rigid airship, or blimp, differs from a rigid airship (e.g. a Zeppelin) in that it does not have a rigid structure that holds the airbag in shape. Xyon and I were just discussing the other day what the difference between a zeppelin and a blimp was.

Eating your own face (from Digg) – This guy can do it, can you?

12 secrets your car insurer won’t tell you (from Digg) – Knowing how the industry works can save you a lot of money and grief. Here are the secrets behind the premiums, and how you can save after an accident.

Village girl’s unusually large feet (from Digg) – Although I feel sorry for her, her feet reminds me of one of those creatures made up in Spore.

Guy gets pissed that his message telling the janitor to unclog the shower doesn’t get fixed, so he upgrades his dry erase marker to sharpie (from link)

Great Ads (from Digg) – another set of funny ones.

April 19, 2007April 22, 2007

M&M Easter Plush!

Forgot to wish Liam HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

My M&M Easter Plush came! I got the yellow peanut guy. It has these little cute bunny ears too!

As FuzzyWuzzy says: your m&m looks stoned krunky

I brought 4 of my 6 bags of almost-a-pound dark chocolate M&M’s original to work and they were gone within a week or 2, mostly by me. Hehe. I still have 2 bags left, but I’m saving those for some other time.

Random Crap:

Eibeler’s Platinum Parachute (from Tera) –

Here’s a run down of what he gets for being fired:

$2,475,000 in severance pay.

Immediate vesting of stock options and shares which includes 100,000 shares of restricted stock, options to purchase 450,000 shares at $21.28 and options to purchase 75,000 shares at $19.89

Accrued but unpaid base salary and vacation and unpaid expenses through his last day at the company.

A job as a consultant for the company through Oct. 4, 2007 paying $50,000 a month.

No change in his health care benefits through his consultancy

An $800 a month car allowance through his consultancy

Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink – A British dentist was found guilty Thursday of urinating in his surgery sink and using dental tools meant for patients to clean his fingernails and ears.

Chilled oil bath may cool hot processors (from Digg) – Submerging computer chips in oil could make them more energy efficient, according to a UK company that hopes to start selling such systems within a year. … Hopton first got the idea after seeing computer enthusiasts discuss the idea online. Oil does not affect the function of electronic components and offers a potentially useful cooling solution since it transports heats more efficiently than air. The company that’s planning to do this is called Very PC. I remember posting images awhile back (awhile meaning like 5,6 years ago) of some guy’s whose project was a styrofoam box, 3 jugs of mineral oil and a PC.

Study reveals “Robin Hood impulse” in human nature – People taking part in a game designed to explore egalitarian impulses in human nature consistently robbed from players assigned the most money while giving money to those with the least, scientists said on Wednesday. Tekman and Xyon were just discussing about the origin of Robin Hood the other day, if it was originally a book or if it was tale told from mouth to mouth. We finally decided to Wikipedia it and it turns out it was not originally a character from a story, but appears to be a tale told among the people.

Buy A Shredder, Hamster Powered Or Otherwise – A post on BoingBoing about a hamster-powered shredder reminded us to tell you that you need to buy a shredder. Everyone should have one. We got a small one at Target for 15 bucks. A video of it in action would be nice.

Frucall (from B$) – While shopping out in a store, have you ever wondered: “How much would I save if I bought this on the Internet?” Call Frucall to get your answer. Frucall not only reads back the best online prices to you, but it also allows you to buy items directly from online merchants while you’re on the phone! Try it now in 3 simple steps. It’s free, easy, and fun! Just add the number into your cell phone or remember the simple: 1-888-DO-FRUCALL. Google has it’s free 411 now and I’ve been using 1-800-FREE-411.

FICO® Score Estimator (from Consumerist) – Answer these ten easy questions and we’ll give you a free estimated range for your three FICO® scores, plus customized product recommendations from myFICO, the most trusted name in credit scoring. This is my estimate: Your FICO® scores are estimated to be between: 695-745 I think I’m higher than that though… Need to apply for my WAMU card to get free credit scores.

Building houses 2 (from Hjo3) – The idea is to build up the solid shape indicated by the views to the left – but only using the number of cubes given. There are 10 problems, called figuur1 to figuur10. Be warned: they are not easy. The only one I didn’t get was figure 1. Hjo3 showed me the answer later. The color coding is a bit confusing. Green means you’ve satisfied the top/front/right diagrams, but you’re still using too many blocks. When it turns yellow, it means you’ve solved it with the minimum number of blocks.

Wifi Signal Strainer (from Consumerist) – In this instructable I make a common WiFi Thumbdrive into a beefy wifi extender!’ The parabolic Asian cooking(dumpling) strainer is the perfect candidate for this project. I was able to pick up 20 more access points in the city and connect to a network a few blocks away! This is BY-FAR the most simple of all Wifi extensions!

Safe table saw (from Deadlock) – Could this be the end to shop teachers with missing fingers? Really interesting idea to stop most injuries with the table saw.

Contronyms (from FuzzyWuzzy) – The word contronym (also the synonym antagonym) is used to refer to words that, by some freak of language evolution, are their own antonyms. Both contronym and antagonym are neologisms; however, there is no alternative term that is more established in the English language. Very interesting list…

April 17, 2007April 21, 2007

Random Crap

Jishaku – Telephone Club – Japanese comedy skit performed by the duo Jishaku (magnet). Taken from the TV show “Enta no Kamisama”. Subtitled in English for the benefit of foreign audiences. The translation notes can also be viewed on this page: ハッピー・エープリル・フールズ・デイ . A very hilarious skit revolves around a telephone club. A “Telephone Club” is a sort of telephone dating network. Guys pay to enter a booth and wait for who want to hook up to call in. Google “Telekura” for more details if you’re curious. You can also see it on YouTube: Japanese Comedy – 磁石　テレクラ　（エンタの神様より、英語字幕あり）

China restaurant forks out $75,000 for lucky fish – A Chinese restaurant has paid $75,000 for a giant golden-coloured tiger fish, a symbol of wealth and good fortune, state media said on Tuesday. The fish, weighing in at 48 kg (105 lb), was caught on Sunday off the coast of Zhanjiang in the booming southern province of Guangdong, the China News Service said.

The Male Brain vs The Female Brain – Some interesting differences between men’s and women’s brains, collected from sources listed below. Read with a grain of salt, and further investigate the ones that get you riled up.

nullDC (New DreamCast Emulator) v1.0.0 Released! (from Digg) – Thanks to floopy for bringing attention that the first public beta for the latest and greatest Dreamcast emulator, nullDC, has been released. Here is what drkIIRaziel has to say at emuforums regarding the emulator:

After many months of coding, here is the first public beta of nullDC.
Read the ReadME before you ask anything.

Setup (includes all needed runtimes, recomended)
http://emudev.com/funstuff/nullDC_100b1_setup.rar

Plain files :
http://emudev.com/funstuff/nullDC_100b1.rar

oh, and happy april fool’s day (make sure to check Google’s jokes )

Enjoy

PS. Site/forums should be up within this week
PS2. This is rev 525-118

Americans are NOT stupid – WITH SUBTITLES (from Top 10 April Fool Pranks 2007) – So what if they don´t know how many sides a triangle have? Or who Tony Blair is? That is not fair…just because their president is as intelligent as a door, it doen´t mean they´re all like that…if you still think american people are stupi, watch this video and change your mind 🙂 Hilarious film, yet so sad…

~~Der Knut-Song! (from Digg)~~ der knut-song – The really cute baby polar bear is back! With its own song. ~~If you’re getting access denied because you’re not in Germany, just reload the page and it should work.~~ clipfish.de has been started to giving me the access denied constantly, so I’m linking to a different website that doesn’t have the Germany requirement. Along the way, I also found these extra videos: Knut der kleine Eisbär – www.knutlied.de and Knut der kleine Eisbär Kitty & Knut Video. Apparently this polar bear already has a song about him.

PIXELATOR (from Digg) –

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.

Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting (an estimated $274,000 per month per screen) prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA’s effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended, selected works remain wholly fixated on commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.

In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA’s video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works of art without any knowledge of their participation.

(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)

Add Compact Flash to almost any iPod (from Digg) – Well, Mark Hoekstra is back with a new CF card modding picnic that works with any 1/2/3/4G iPod. The mod works (eventually, anyway) by installing a CF adapter of Hoekstra’s design. No need to solder all 88 connections yourself!

97 – Where (and How) Evolution Is Taught In the US (from Digg) – Scientists generally accept the theory of evolution as the back-story of how animal species (including humans) came into being over a period of several billion years. Religious literalists maintain their belief in creation, as laid down in the Bible: God made the earth and all that is on it (including humans, after His own image) in one week, a couple of thousand years ago. This has a map of what different parts of America is teaching the kids today.

On the same line: School Bans Pokemon Games for Promoting Evolution (from Digg) – The Kansas State School Board has banned all things Pokemon from its schools–not because it’s keeping kids from doing their schoolwork, but because they claim it promotes evolution. Oh, but wait, it gets better. Teachers will now have to search the students before each class to make sure they’re not in possession of any of eighty bazillion different Pokemon games; if they are, the game will be confiscated permanently and the student will face punishment that could range from simple suspension to expulsion from school. Kicked out of school. For Pokemon.

One of the keywords that Amazon’s script has highlighted was Monterey Park, which returned this book: The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California. I didn’t know there was a book on Monterey Park!

Richards says father comment a joke – The 63-year-old rocker caused an international uproar on Tuesday when newspaper New Musical Express quoted him as saying: “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow … . It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.“

Why the long face? Rio’s obese treated like horses – Rio de Janeiro hospitals have been sending obese people to share medical test equipment with horses at the local race track, drawing complaints from activists who say the practice is humiliating.

Porn swap sparks Japan defence leak furore -report – Three Japanese naval officers who swapped pornography on their computers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive data linked to Japan’s missile defence system, a newspaper said on Thursday. … The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer’s hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Man to Live Underwater for 2 Weeks (from Digg) – Marine biologist Lloyd Godson is attempting a brave experiment to investigate sustainable living. He’s going to live in a sealed box for two weeks, which will be placed underwater. The experiment is taking place near Albury-Wodonga, in Australia. Godson will be cultivating algae both as a food source, and to produce oxygen. He will also have electricity via a stationary bike that he’s using as a generator.

April 16, 2007April 17, 2007

Random Crap

Forgot to wish Tekman HAPPY BDAY!

I’ve added 2 new categories: Food and Comics

I found this bumper sticker and found the slogan hilarious: My kid has a cooler job than your kid. – Microsoft College

Otters holding hands (from Esca) – Vancouver Aquarium: two sea otters float around, napping, holding hands. SO CUTE! You know, I haven’t visited Vancouver Aquarium yet.

I know it’s way past April Fool’s day, but it appears that after you graduate from college, people just forget about April Fool’s day. I got so many people IMing asking me if this was real: Google TiSP and when I mention it was April 1st / April Fool, they go, “Oh yah! I forgot about it.” Another Google joke was GMail Paper.

Along the same topic, there was Ten of the best April Fool’s Day hoaxes: US museum (from Digg) – Here were the ones I liked:

In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home.
In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Outraged citizens called to express their anger before Taco Bell revealed the hoax. Then-White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale and said the Lincoln Memorial in Washington had also been sold and was to be renamed the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial after the automotive giant.
Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original “right-handed” version.
Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth’s gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

Bulgaria goes into debt to buy fleet of Porsche Cayenne ambulances (from Digg) – There’s few things that could make one turn away from the blue light at the end of the tunnel and return to the land of the living, but a ride in a Porsche Cayenne ambulance just might do the trick. Apparently Bulgaria agrees, as the cash-strapped country’s health ministry is using a loan from the World Bank to buy a fleet 32 Cayenne’s destined for ambulance duty (a Russian Porsche Cayenne police vehicle is shown above). Maybe I should work as an ambulance driver for the Bulgarians.

Don’t buy an HDTV without reading this first (from Digg) – Forking out a few thousand dollars or even just a few hundred is a serious investment, and the last thing you want to do is buy an HDTV with lousy color rendition. Navigating the minefield in consumer electronics is a confusing proposition even for the seasoned gadget geeks, so I created this survival guide to help you make a wise decision. I’ll explain the various types of HDTVs as well as cabling and testing the color depth of your display. I think this guy does a rather good explanation of the difference between the types of HDTVs and all those random specs one usually has no idea what they’re talking about.

MPAA names its Top 25 movie piracy schools – The MPAA may be gearing up for an RIAA-inspired assault on US colleges and universities. Last week the group announced its support for the “Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act (2007),” and MPAA head Dan Glickman said that his organization would work with school administrators to put an end to movie piracy on campuses, which Glickman says costs the industry $500 million annually. Stanford and Berkeley rank 24 and 25 respectively.

HostTracker (from Digg) – website monitoring service. I’ve been using InternetSeer, but this one looks good too.

tapefailure (from Digg) – tapefailure lets you record your users’ browsing sessions and play them back, just like a tape, as well as view numerous useful statistics about your users. Really sounds like a neat feature when it gets released.

Panama co. says brews world’s biggest cup of coffee – Panama’s top coffee producer said it believes it has set a new record for the world’s biggest cup of coffee, after brewing 750 gallons (2,840 litres) in a giant mug on Sunday.

Very Clever Marketing Campaign (from Clip Haven)
However, if I was bowling in this alley, I’d sort of be creeped out.

April 16, 2007April 30, 2007

Crisping Tray

Once again, it’s been a long week. My random crap has already been backlogged to 3/28. I haven’t even check Digg ~~and~~ in 3 days. It’s going to take me awhile for me to push this crap onto you guys. ;p

A few weeks ago, IRobertI IMed me asking what the those gray disks that microwavable pizza come with are called. I had always thought they were just just paper cardboard with some plastic/wax thing on top of it. He tells me if you try microwaving a pizza normally without this special cardboard, the pizza’s crust becomes all soggy. I ~~think~~ then propose the fact that since most of these dishes allow air to go underneath it, that may have something to do with making it crispy.

Here’s what one of them look like:

I started searching online and there’s a bunch of threads and patents that popped up, but nothing really that describe how it works. Some claim there’s some sort of metal in it and it acts as a resistor, heating up when microwave frequencies hit it. But isn’t putting metal into the microwave counterintuitive? Anyway, I started reading the back of my Bagel Bites box and they refer to it as a crisping tray.

I decided to take apart one and unless the gray coating on top of cardboard is the metallic part, I found ~~now~~ no evidence of any sort of metal hidden inside the cardboard. If anyone knows exactly how this magic is done, I’d like to know.

Random Crap:

Bruce Lee – high speed painting – This is a bit different from my normal stuff. Check out my other art at http://www.philinthecircle.com / MySpace. Music: Elephine / Song: Five / http://www.myspace.com/elephine Nice painting, but sure spent a lot of time and energy.

UPS: Request Delivery Intercept – UPS has rolled out a new service where when you pay some extra amount, you can request UPS to perform one of the following actions:

Return to Sender: Return the package to the shipper
Deliver to Another Address: Reroute the package to a new address
Reschedule Delivery: Hold the package for delivery on a future date
Will Call: Hold the package for pickup by the consignee

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico (from Digg) – A very interesting article. First get rid of corrupted officials. Second, don’t just drop them at the border and give them a chance to just get back across, take them deep into Mexico before releasing them.

Yahoo Mail Announces Unlimited Storage (from Digg) – Yahoo is announcing that all Yahoo Mail users will have free unlimited email storage starting in May 2007. The current storage limit is 1 GB per account (2 GB for $20/year premium users). With this change, Yahoo leapfrogs Gmail (2.8 GB and growing) and Live.com Mail (2GB). Yahoo mail currently has 250 million global users, more than any other online service (Live.com has 228 million and Gmail has 51 million users). See this feature by feature comparison of the services for more information. I wonder what paying users get then…

Japanese goldfish live in (and clean) a deep fryer (from Consumerist) – More here: Deep-fry diving for goldfish in Japan. Someone commented: Unfortunately they don’t really explain well enough to understand well. But there is a cooling system between the water and the oil. It took them ten years to develop it. So the bits of tempura batter fall down and stick together, which keeps the oil clean (the bits don’t float around and burn). Also, if you throw frozen pieces of food into a fryer, usually the oil will react violently, but now the waters sinks and cools instead of becoming vapor.

Gateway 2 (from Digg) – a pretty fun, yet somewhat depressing flash game. It’s one of those escape from the room type games, but in this one you’re trying to piece together a story. If you need help, walkthrough, or solution, scroll down to beppe1’s post over at Escape The Room.

Home is where the heart is for world’s tallest man – The world’s tallest man, whose search for a bride covered the world, ended up marrying a woman from his home town nearly half his age and more than two feet shorter, Chinese media reported on Wednesday.

Mad Track in a Japanese Game Show – Sasuke 2007 (from Digg) – The Japanese are famous for their extreme game shows on TV. Here is an example of the tracks the competittors need to finish on a TV program called Sasuke. This is their spring special aired march 21st 2007. It’s quite amazing (and this is just the first level). Wow, this really puts American Gladiators to shame.

If you like the previous IMDb page layout, apparently you can still visit it at http://former.imdb.com/.

Real Life Comics – Relevant Information – As someone who does computer tech support for my family and relatives and friends, these little jokes always hit it home.

Google Maps – from Chicago, IL to London, UK (Consumerist) – If you take a look at step #20: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi. Appears to be some sort of joke that the developers decided to add in. The minimal amount of driving directions come from Boston, MA to Le Havre, France, which still results in a 29 day swim. At 3,426mi in 29 days, we’re still talking about 119 miles per day and 5 miles an hour (non-stop). Programatically, all they had to do was connect Boston to Le Havre in their map and give it a distance and time. Therefore, any location that’s connected into the USA can reach any destination that’s connected into France. Unfortunately, Mexico doesn’t have any maps on Google, so Central and South America are basically cut from this. And it looks like only Western Europe can connect into France.

xkcd – The Difference – The difference between a normal person and a scientist. 😉

Don’t Do This With a 19 Inch Dildo (from Tera) (content is work safe, but ads are not) – Here’s something not to do with a 19 inch dildo. So my friend is a nurse. She tells starts telling me this story about a guy walking into the emergency room hunched over and walking funny. The guy says he has a pain coming from his stomach and butt. He doesn’t mention anything else to doctors. So they Xray him to find out what’s wrong. Here’s what they found.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid’s construction is turned inside out (from Digg) – In Paris tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Houdin will unveil the fruits of eight years’ work by describing at a conference how the pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu was built from the inside out. He will propose that the Egyptians carried the building blocks up an internal ramp that formed a spiral tunnel within the structure’s outer wall. These tunnels, he believes, must still exist today. With the help of sophisticated computer software developed by the French company Dassault Systemes, M. Houdin has been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional simulation of how the great limestone and granite blocks of the pyramid were put together stone by stone.

WiigoBot: The Perfect Game – Presenting a Lego NXT Wii Playing Robot that can bowl a perfect game. I wonder if the robot knows when its his turn again, or if it’s just timed.

Wonderbra Ad Malfunctions (from Derek) – Really clever ad for the Wonderbra or just a broken billboard?

Amazing French Beatboxer Part 2 – The same awesome beat boxer we posted last week was back on French idol dropping some sweet beats. This time he does a little Justin Timberlake and I gotta say this guy is talented. Here’s Part 1 (Looks like this is from an American Idol type show in France, one of the contestants is an amazing Beat Boxer. Listen him seamlessly go from Michael Jackson Billy Jean to Usher Ya! When does he breathe?) and part 3 (The Amazing French Beatboxer is back and again with another great performance. This time he mixes a little techno music with Britney Spears and more.) if you’re interested.