Games – Page 7 – Krunk4Ever!

March 23, 2007March 25, 2007

derrich.com

A few days ago, Derrich left a comment on my mp3 searching post and mentioned that I was in his 2007 Bloggers Tournament, Take 2. Honestly, I don’t think too highly of my own blog as it’s filled with random crap (see below) and of the category I’m in (The Gamut), I’m ranked 7 out of 8 according to Alexa Rankings.

gamut: the entire scale or range: the gamut of dramatic emotion from grief to joy.

Looking at my opponent: Kineda (who’s ranked 2 out of 8.), I don’t really think I have much of a chance.

However, if you still want to vote, the poll is located at PollBurner.com.

Random Crap:

Desktopography (from Digg) – Desktopography is an exhibition, a showcase of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide. Designers spend around 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors. This year we present over 40 new desktop wallpapers for you to display and enjoy. They have some really neat wallpapers.

Porsche dealer – “I got it wrong with the buy one get one free card”. (from Digg) – Glen Fergusson – Sales and Marketing manager for a brand new Californian Porsche dealer. Has lost his job and faces possible legal proceedings as the company strives to reclaim the costs of the 18 Porches given away free under Glen’s Opening day “buy one get one free promotion” “I admit I didn’t really do the numbers properly on this one” said Glen who told reporters that he had “seen the concept work really well for coffee stores” and in terms of numbers you could argue that Glen’s campaign worked. As the new Porsche dealer sold 18 Porches in the first hour of the store opening. Wish I knew about this deal!

Frets On Fire (from Digg) – With StepMania being the open source version of DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), Frets on Fire is the open source version of Guitar Hero. Currently there aren’t any USB guitars, but the Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360 will be coming out soon and supposedly it’s wired and the only wired inputs the Xbox 360 has are USB, so *cross fingers*.

little gamers – Luggage and time – a funny comic strip making fun of British people and time.

FofR Configuration v0.6 (from RayAlome) – foobar2000 has been a rather popular replacement for playing music and I personally liked it when I gave it a try. However, it was lacking in the UI aspect as it was very text based (although some of you may really like that). Apparently with a few plug-ins, you can get foobar2000 to look awesome.

Unbelievable graphic art pictures by Rob Gonsalves (from Digg) – One of these pictures was found at blogs and takes me to deep stupor. Extremely imressive retouch technique, amazing effect of visual illusions, perfect pictures quality engaged me to search and find all what i can find from this author. 37 pictures below! Very imaginative drawings and the images tries to confuse the viewer by merging 2 multiple similar looking things into one.

Phosphor – Rasterwerks (from Digg) – Phosphor is a first-person shooter created with Macromedia Director (links will open in new window). The Shockwave Player allows the game to run within a web browser on Windows and Mac OS computers. Both single player (with AI-controlled bots) and multiplayer (using peer-to-peer Internet or LAN connections) game modes are supported. Our goal is to create a gaming experience similar to classic FPS games like Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, but with the accessibility of a webgame. Game actually works rather well. I suck at FPSes though.

Man relieves himself in air-sickness bag – SkyWest Airlines apologized to a passenger who said he wasn’t allowed to use the restroom during a one-hour flight and ended up urinating in an air-sickness bag.

Family Portraits (from Digg) – My four favourite brats and their parents ( plus an additional Ike, cause he’s awesome xD ) These sketches of the 4 main characters’ families from South Park are really good.

Prevent Your Dryer From Catching Fire – Consumerist actually posted one of my blog entries: Clothes Dryer Warning. Apparently this has been on Snopes also.

Dog Chases Fake Soccer Ball (from Deadlock) – This poor confused Jack Russel Terrier chases down a computer generated soccer ball projected onto the floor. He spent all day chasing his tail and now this, he must be so frustrated!

Best Rube Goldberg Ever (from MS newsgroup) – This is from the guys that brought you the Dorm Room Rube Goldberg. They continue to amaze us with their intricate set ups and executions. I miss Pythagora Switch.

Stardust Implosion (from MS newsgroup) – Implosion Of the Stardust Hotel Casino Las Vegas Nevada – March 13th 2:30am Explosions are always fun to watch. Implosions are not as fun, but still fun.

Human Timeline (NSFW) (from FuzzyWuzzy) – As you can see throughout human history, all we do is beat the crap out of each other and have sex.

Ballad of Black Mesa (from Angelus) – A very iPod like video using machine guns and machines to make music. Produced by Mighty Cran Films. You can also download the HD version.

Amazing Girl in American Idol (from Artemyst) – a 11-year old girl with beautiful voice. Wow! This Bianca Ryan has an amazing voice.

I’m all about the cheese, baby (from Digg) – Check out the packaging material used to ship this Mac.

The Entire US Super Nintendo Collection – Complete!! (from Digg) – 720 GAMES COMPLETE PLUS 74 ADDITIONAL FACTORY SEALED!! For the small price of $15k, this could be all yours.

Why Do Guys Get Sleepy After Sex? (from Digg) – “Men go to sleep because women don’t turn into a pizza.” Haha. Though the rest of the article does go further into details about the chemicals released in our brains and etc. Side note: prolactin also explains why men are sleepier after intercourse than after masturbation. For unknown reasons, intercourse orgasms release four times more prolactin than masturbatory orgasms, according to a recent study.

Comparison of 300 move against the comic (from Digg) – and I must say that the movie did a really good job at staying true to the comic.

March 22, 2007July 6, 2008

Free TaxCut and Other Deals

Some deals I wanted to share:

Download your FREE TaxCut Premium Software (from SD) – The tax cut off date is coming soon and hopefully you’ve started working on filing your taxes. Anyway, H&R Block has decided to give away a free download of TaxCut Premium in hopes that you’ll purchase their state software. For states with no state income tax (i.e. Washington), this basically means a free tax software for our return!

USPS & MasterCard Make Saving a Priority (from SD) – From March 1, 2007, to April 30, 2007, use your MasterCard® card to buy a 25-pack of USPS® Prepaid Priority Mail® Flat Rate Envelopes and you’ll receive a 5-pack of envelopes FREE—compliments of MasterCard®! A really good deal if you ship via USPS Priority Mail often. Plus the impending postal rates raising in April, this is one sweet deal!

Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) (from SD) for $13.99. Limit 3 per order. Free shipping if order is $24 or more, or you can always opt for in-store pick up and not pay any shipping and handling fee.

Random Crap:

Speeding teen wanted to catch school bus – – A teenager clocked driving at 93 mph told a deputy he had to get home in time to catch the school bus, police said. Porter Superior Court Judge Julia Jent sentenced the teen to ride the bus to school after an earlier speeding conviction, Porter County Sheriff’s deputies said.

Hebron museum to preserve four-legged chicken – A museum that displays animals with shocking physical abnormalities in a cave near the West Bank city of Hebron will be adding its newest exhibit this week: a four-legged chicken.

Serial lingerie thief arrested – Police found more than 4,000 pieces of lingerie in the home of a Japanese construction worker who used climbing skills developed on his job to steal women’s underwear.

Delutube (from Ars Technica) – Delutube offers users a way to view deleted YouTube videos

Passover Produces a Real Coke Classic (from Consumerist) – Kosher-for-Passover Coke is made with sugar — not corn syrup — just like in the old days. And that’s why many true Coca-Cola fans stock up during the Jewish holiday. NPR’s Linda Wertheimer talks about the difference in taste with Ralph Roberts, co-author of Classic Cooking with Coca-Cola. I actually want to find this coke. I’ve missed coke made with pure sugar cane sugar that I’ve had outside of the USA.

German brothel offers pensioners 50 percent off – A brothel in Germany hopes to capitalise on the growing number of pensioners by offering them a 50 percent discount for sex in the afternoon. Guess it’s time to retire and go to Germany ;p

Ubuntu is sexy alright (from Digg) – Could the new Ubuntu Splash get any more phallic?

Sphere (from Digg) – another one of those escape from this room games where you randomly click on things hoping to uncover some hidden stuff. Unfortunately the tab trick doesn’t work. Solutions are posted somewhere if you know how to search.

Russian Man Grows Penis on Arm (from Digg) – Russian doctors have conducted an 11-hour operation to replace a patient’s deformed penis with one grown on his forearm, the Moskovskiy Komsomolets daily reports. … The doctors had the penis removed and attached to the man’s arm. Using his body tissue it grew to six-and-a-half inches and was sewn back on to his groin. Silicone tubes were inserted into the organ to ensure an erection was possible. Doctors also created a scrotum from the patient’s own skin and placed silicone testicles in it.

Prosecutor: Unicorn defense was a mixup – On Tuesday, a Billings prosecutor had told a district judge that Phillip C. Holliday Jr., 42, claimed a unicorn was driving when his truck crashed into a light pole earlier this month.

Girlfriend dumped live on radio (from Digg) – From Galaxy Radio show – dj calls cheating girlfriend, tricks her into thinking her boyfriend is going to ask her to marry him then reveals she is actually being dumped.

Ivy – Sonata of Temptation (from Stanman) – Korean Pop singer ‘IVY”s 2nd album title song. it samples Beethoven(For Elise), and Music Video parodys FF7-advance children(JAPAN GAME) A Korean music video with real live actors acting out the fight sequence in the church from Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children between Tifa and that strong arm guy.

Maburaho @ MS Paint – It`s my third MS Paint drawing. I`ve spent about 2 hours and a half in it. It`s pretty cool! Enjoy! Another really cool drawing using MS Paint. A quick search on YouTube for ‘mspaint‘ reveals a bunch of other interesting videos of people using MS Paint to draw.

March 13, 2007

FFDShow’s XviD Thumbnail Generator Not Working?

For quite some time, FFDShow’s XviD thumbnail generation has stopped working on my main box. I first realized this when I uninstalled the XviD codec because it was crashing explorer whenever it was trying to create thumbnails for what I can only assume to be faulty formatted XviD files. After unistalling the XviD codec, explorer no longer crashed, but it would no longer create thumbnails for XviD files. I thought maybe uninstalling the XviD codec removed something FFDShow installed, so I reinstalled FFDShow, checked the reset all settings box and tried again. I even rebooted my machine just because it said something similar to “To complete the setup, you must restart the computer.” Anyway, XviD thumbnail generation still didn’t come back. I even logged into my administrator account (since I’m running as a non-admin user for my default account) to see if it could be something related to being an administrator. That didn’t fix it either.

I actually resorted back to installing the XviD codec so thumbnail generation would work and avoided directories I knew which would crash on me.

Anyway, after Ryan brought up the issue a few days ago, I decided to to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Once again, I uninstalled the XviD codec and installed the latest FFDShow. And it still didn’t work. I tried forcing FFDShow to decode every codec possible in the list provided. That didn’t work either, which I then reverted.

Finally, I remember these 2 new pages in setup that asked for a whitelist of programs that FFDShow should only be allowed to be used in. I remember, I had to add oblivion.exe and morrowind.exe before to the do not use FFDShow in list. I went into the Video Decoder Configuration and in “Info & Debug”, after the “Don’t use ffdshow in:” line, there was a “Use ffdshow only in:” line. I was like, this wasn’t here before… I check the list and indeed, explorer.exe was not listed in there and the checkbox was enabled. I added “explorer.exe” and guess what… my thumbnail generation for XviD files via FFDShow is working!

Random Crap:

GDC: LittleBigPlanet ‘Full Demo Run’ (from MS newsgroup) – MUST SEE demo of new, amazing PS3 game. I have to say, that game looks rather cool and fun. Not enough to get me to buy a PS3 though. Kudos for those game developers! In the same thread, someone posted La réalité augmentée (Augmenting Reality) which I was totally amazed with what it could do. You have to see their live demonstration. Do note, this is in real time and not post-processed.

Piotr Fox Wysocki – The Artist himself (from Digg) – A very realistic human facial 3d rendering.

Electricman2HS (from Digg) – a very fun stick figure fighting game. Reminds me of Xiao Xiao. I beat all x levels on Easy, but it was an amusing 30 minutes.

Fable 2 Dog Demo (from Digg) – With Fable 2 just around the corner, they’ve introduced a new aspect to the game, which is your dog. Really cool. Reminds me of the level of interactivity with your pet in Nintendogs. The dog’s awfully cute. I wonder if I could choose which breed it is.

Stereo Eclipse (from Digg) – “What an extraordinary view,” says Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO Program Scientist at NASA headquarters. The fantastically-colored star is our own sun as STEREO sees it in four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. The black disk is the Moon. “We caught a lunar transit of the sun,” she explains. The stereo eclipse looks like an eye ball that needs some eye drops.

Wonder Woman, Your Car Is Ready… (from Digg) – Computer-generated outline? Nope. It’s real. Dubbed “Modern Japanese Classic,” this 1:1 Subaru Impreza wire frame sculpture is the work of British artist Benedict Radcliffe. Apparently local traffic cops weren’t pleased that the art was parked outside of the gallery on the street, as over the course of a few days, it was issued a few parking tickets! The marilyn-bmw-hood.jpgpiece was recently displayed as part of a larger Radcliffe show at the Paul Smith Gallery in Mayfair last month, and we’re sorry we missed it. I was thinking and thinking… where’s the car? All the images looked like there was a computer outline of a car on them. However, upon closer inspection, that is really a frame and not CG.

Wipe out a single memory (from Digg) – Drug can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact. A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact. Neat! This can totally be like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Tremendous Symbiosis of Progress and Nature (from Digg) – The Stockholm Metro, or Stockholms tunnelbana, is the metro system in Stockholm, Sweden. The system has three main lines and one hundred stations, 47 of which are subterranean and 53 are aboveground (surface and elevated) stations. This subway station is totally awesome!!!

The Best Auteur You Never Saw (from FuzzyWuzzy) – Svankmajer has spent much of the past 40 years working in the relative cinematic obscurity of Prague, his hometown, where he has handcrafted 32 wondrously bizarre, funny and deeply disturbing films. Though he remains the most anonymous of the world’s essential filmmakers, Svankmajer’s also one of the more influential: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and David Cronenberg are all students of what might be called the Svankmajer School of the Grotesque. Those moving meat are rather creepy. Interesting film though.

OK kids, colour in a gangsta… (from Angelus) – FURIOUS parents last night demanded that a colouring book for kids showing gun-toting rappers should be taken off the shelves. The 30-page Gangsta Rap book, which has a loaded pistol on its cover, is on sale at Topshop for £6.

The extreme end of stubbornness (from Derek) – Developers came and bought up all the houses around these guys. They refused. The bulldozers came anyways. Apparently the family has government connections, and is not expected to be forced out. According to one of the commenters:

This is in Chongqing, China.

The problem was this. The owner of the house would not leave without getting paid a large sum of money, how much? 20,000,000RMB, that’s about $2mil. No one is living in there, but the owner would not move unless the money is paid. And house owner claims to have connections with the officials, and dares anyone who destroys his house.

http://news.cq.soufun.com/2007-03-11/975176.htm

Throughout IRAN (from Digg) – This is a gallery intended to show views of other side of Iran, different with what you may have seen in the media. And now after about 4 month, this gallery obtains more than 100,000 hits, locates among top popular galleries in 90 days period and the most importantly, attracts attention of those nice people who visits, leaves COMMENT and VOTE; I appreciate all these supports. This encourage me to keep this Gallery live with new views of my country, as long as I can take picture. (12.03.07)
Hope to enjoy it. I have to say, Iran is a lot more beautiful than I had imagined.

Ants test nonviolence of Buddhist monks – Buddhist monks, who are bound by faith to nonviolence, are grappling with how to rid a temple of a severe ant infestation without killing the insects. I think leaving a trail of coke to another temple would work. ;p

March 11, 2007

Daylight Saving Time

It’s that time of year again, but this time, we’re a couple weeks ahead of schedule due to changes in policy. Since it’s Spring, we’re set the clock forward (spring forward, fall back). Both my computer and my Weather Channel radio controlled clock jumped from 2am to 3am.

UserFriendly – Sundial – Suddenly. These are looking pretty fabulous to software maintainers.

Random Crap:

There was another strip from UserFriendly that I found amusing: Cracked Copy of Vista for Cracked Copy of Civilization 4.

RayAlome had sent me a link to the trailer of Paprika. The animation was amazing. I really liked the quote it had near the end:

Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.”

-Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Stereogram Tut Animated Shark Small (from Digg) – I was just talking to Lisymle the other day about Magic Eye and Stereogram images and she told me she has never gotten a magic eye to work. I tried to show here a few websites and techniques on trying to focus beyond the screen and merge the 2 images, but she hasn’t been able to do it yet. This was the first magic eye in animation that I’ve seen. Pretty neat. See if you can see the shark wiggle.

Big Brother State – An animated short about public surveillance by David Scharf (from Digg) – an interesting film. When I saw it earlier, it was a higher quality version. It appears you can still download the higher quality version off bittorrent or download it from Internet Archive. I do have to disagree with his bit on TC (Trusted Computing). It may be true that TC will warn users about particular software that’s being installed, but I still have final say if something gets installed or not (or at least I hope so).

German man chainsaws house in two in divorce split (from Digg) – A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck. Awesome!

Mom accused of driving son to fight boy – The mother of a 13-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly driving her son to a fight with another boy, then cheering him on as he struck his smaller opponent. Police say the mother shouted down another woman who tried to break up the fight across from Sutter Middle School on Monday. A student caught the scene on video.

Hole in pyjamas reveals Internet plagiarism – Candidates for British universities have been caught red-handed copying their applications from the Internet after hundreds mentioned “burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight” on their online entrance forms. The phrase, taken from a Web site which provides examples of personal statements used by successful candidates, describes an early encounter with a chemistry set.

Fans pay to chat with Jackson in Japan – ) – Excited fans got the chance to meet Michael Jackson in Tokyo on Thursday — but only those who could afford to pay 400,000 yen (1,770 pounds) for the privilege.

Animaniacs – Rob Paulson (Yakko) – Nations of the World (from RayAlome) – Here’s a little thing a friend of a f… Here’s a little thing a friend of a friend of mine went to. She saw Rob Paulson who is absolutely awesome! He’s here singing the world song! You can hear her scream her lungs out at the end! Enjoy! =P It’s been so long since I’ve watched this cartoon. Oh what sweet memories.

Beijing’s Olympic Stadium (from Digg) – I’ve got to say, the design is rather cool.

25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video (from Digg) – Not long ago, we wrote a popular piece about UC-Berkeley’s iTunes initiative which, to sum it up, allows anyone, anywhere, to download complete university courses to their iPods for free. Amazing. Today, we want to point out that Berkeley also makes available full-fledged courses via video/webcast. You can find the complete list of courses here, but below we have listed below 25 courses that figure into a “core” undergraduate curriculum. In short, this list includes many good nuts and bolts courses, which will teach you a lot and, even better, cost you nothing. Each of these courses, coming straight from the classroom, can be accessed with Real Player, and some can also be accessed as MP3s. I remember when I had to go through a whole semester’s worth of these before finals. Or did I…?

March 10, 2007March 8, 2007

PlayStation Home

PlayStation Home revealed (from MS newsgroup) – Good news for the PlayStation camp, full details of Sony’s PlayStation Home have been revealed, and it ain’t no slacker. Alongside those avatars and achievements we heard about earlier, the “service” seems to be a new-gen Second Life killer, with public hangouts, personal apartments (to show off those fancy prizes you’ve been racking up in recent frag fests) and voice chat. The seeming-MMO even includes casual games such as pool, bowling and arcade machines embedded into the world, but at any time you can invite a fellow resident to join in on any PlayStation Network-capable game. I was pretty amazed at what PlayStation Home was. As a online game match setup mediator, I personally don’t think it works that well, but like Second Life and other MMO (massive multiple player) games, I’ve always considered it as a social chatroom.

Of course, Sony’s going to charge an arm and a leg for this. The joining aspect might be free, but to purchase real estate, to furnish your home, to purchase clothes that match your style, is going to cost you.

I personally am not a big MMO fan as I don’t really see a point in it. It’s like why would I want to furnish a virtual house, when I could be using that money to furnish my real house. But the concept is still pretty cool in my opinion.

They had a small demo where you can play music and everyone that’s around you would be able to listen. That got me thinking. When these people chat, you see dialog boxes like comic strips pop up on top of them. With Xbox Live, practically everyone has a headset/microphone. How cool would it be, instead of chatting, you could hear everyone around you?

Of course, there’s going to be settings you can customize, like if you want to only be able to hear friends or hear everyone around you, how far you want to be able to listen, how far you want your voice to broadcast, if you only want friends or everyone to be able to hear you, etc. For example, I could set that I want to hear everyone around me within a 5ft radius and I want my voice to travel also a 5ft radius, that way everyone that’s within 5ft of me will be able to hear what I’m saying.

If you’re in a park, you’ll hear the birds flutter and chirp, little kids having fun, basically background noise. Then you have your circle of friends and you’re just chatting. The voice will also be directional, so if Tim was on my right, his voice would mostly be coming out from my right speaker. Multiple people can speak at once also so you can really have a conversation going. Hehe. I might’ve taken this tangent a little too far.

Random Crap:

Geometry Wars (from MS newsgroup) is available to be downloaded for the PC. Interestingly enough the game is 61.5MB, a lot bigger than the Xbox Live Arcade counterpart. If you want the full version, it also costs $7.95, about $3 more than what it would could via Xbox Live Arcade (which is 400pts = $5, and if you can get a deal on points, you can get it for cheaper). Geometry Wars is rather fun and it’d be interesting controlling it with the keyboard/mouse. I tend to be more accurate with the keyboard rather than the joystick.

Meat-loving calf eats chickens (from MS newsgroup) – But Ajit Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually solved the puzzle when he caught his cow — a sacred animal for the Hindu family — gobbling up several of them at night. … “The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth,” Ajit added.

Tofu Thriller Dance (from MS newsgroup) – A pretty cool 3d animation video of Tofu The Vegan Zombie dancing and singing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

aPhone by Microsoft (from MS newsgroup) – a parody of Microsoft coming out with a product to compete against Apple’s iPhone.

japanese 5 year old kid playing ddr! awesome (from MS newsgroup) – founded in the net… awesome 5 year old kid playing ddr!! gotta watch!! he’s so cute playing it XD Ryota’s name reminds me of the shy little boy from At Home Dad. Anyway, this little boy’s amazing on the DDR pad. After he wins, he even goes announce to his mom he got an AA score. Very cute.

RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 (from RayAlome) – The hotly-anticipated sequel to the original YouTube phenomenon. Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement. Send this video to all your friends! High-quality version available at stage6.divx.com. YouTube messed up the sound mix so the quality is better all-around on Stage 6. Their light saber battles have always been interesting. You can visit their homepage too. Do be warned, the higher quality version is 430MB.

SinFest – The Next Step in Evolution – the dog and cat are always so cute, but another proof that cats are evil.

Entertainment Savers Guide (from SD) – Register at the SaversGuide for access to hundreds of discounts. Save at restaurants, hotels, retailers, attractions and more! … Your registration is valid for one year. A pretty slick deal. Go and print coupons from the Entertainment booklet for FREE. I was looking at movie tickets and you can pre-order a bunch for $5-6, which is a very good deal.

Illinois Man Fined Thousands And Threatened With Felony Prosecution For Using Untaxed Biodiesel (from Digg) – David Wetzel, a 79 yr old retired chemist from Decatur IL had been using recycled vegetable oil in his 1985 Volkswagen Golf diesel car for 7 years. This January, ” the State of Illinois Dept. of Revenue sent 2 “special agents,” Gary May and John Egan to his house. The two agents threatened the couple with felony charges and asked them to post a $2,500 bond!” Sigh…

March 7, 2007January 2, 2008

smartycast

My friend Ryawn imed me today and told me about this new site he’s working on called smartycast. In fact, I’ve actually linked to his site in my friends list for some time, however when I added that link, their site was still just a place holder. He noticed that I had an entry on uTorrent the other day and told me the purpose of his site.

His first tutorial on that site is How To Automatically Download TV Shows. As his disclaimer states: By learning how to download TV shows you’ll also learn a little bit about Bit Torrent in the process. Keep in mind that you may be violating copyright laws and I am not in any way responsible for any trouble that you might get yourself into. With that said, let’s get to work! I also do not endorse any illegal activity that may be “inspired” by my site.

His tutorial shows you step by step on what to download and how to configure the application so downloading TV shows online doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Random Crap:

TMNT Arcade confirmed for release on Xbox Live Arcade (from Digg) – While a release date has not been announced yet (the new movie comes out in March), we do know that Ubisoft is working with Digital Eclipse to port the Heroes in a Half Shell onto XBLA. The finalized title is expected to cost only 400 points, and will include co-op support for up to four players via offline and Xbox Live modes. No word yet if they’re including upgraded support for HD. Sweet! 4 player TMNT here I come!

50 States in 10 Minutes (from Hjo3) – You have 10 Minutes to remember as many of the 50 United States as you can. After 10 Minutes, the correct answers will appear in this space so you can see which ones you’ve missed. I missed 6. (Show). I actually did a lot better than I thought I would.

Biggest Shotgun In The World (from Derek) – This shotgun is so big it takes two men to carry it. I guess its called a punt gun and I cant think of a practical use for it, except to destroy a lot of stuff at once. To me, it’s more like a portable canon. Hehe.

Teenager leaves “deposit” in bank (from Cari) – An 18-year-old man has been detained for repeatedly defecating in front of a cash machine in a bank vestibule in the southern German town of Eggmuehl, police said on Tuesday.

Mario Too – A new Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip that I found rather amusing.

Fat toddlers ‘risk early puberty’ (from Digg) – Girls who are overweight at the age of three risk reaching puberty as early as nine years old, a US study suggests. What about boys?

Great Firewall of China (from NextLust) – Want to see which sites are blocked behind the Great Firewall of China? Just visit this site and pass in your link. Apparently all livejournals are have been block recently. I just tested krunk4ever.com and it appears to be valid within China.

50 Amazing Ads You Haven’t Seen (from Digg) – A set of 50 advertisements that stand out from the rest. Each of these is unique and creative. Collected over a 5 month period. These are rather interesting and funny.

Xbox360 Homebrew in Progress: MAME360, ScummVM (from Digg) – We got this interesting email from a trusted developer that wishes to remain anonymous for now. He has been working on a port of MAME and ScummVM for the Xbox360 for some time now. The development and pictures below are from a devkit, but with the recent Hypervisor Exploit (kernel 4532/4548 only for now) there’s hope you’ll be able to run this on a retail Xbox360 some day. Wow! Speaking of which… maybe I should setup MAME on my Media Center PC, get one of those Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

I was introduced to Dead Karl on 4chan, but I found a bunch more on this thread: [Animation Gif] Dead Karl. The Chinese name is 史前動物 (史前动物) which translates to Prehistoric Animal. He’s created a bunch of animated gifs which I wanted to share:

Click image to start animation or view it in the gallery.

I do have to warn you, these little animated stories are somewhat gory.

Off-duty Northwest employee charged – An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

Dirty car windows become artist’s canvas – Wade, with his scraggly graying hair and a fondness for shirts with wacky prints, doesn’t wash his car when it first develops a fine coating of limestone dust. For the past four years he’s created art on it instead.

The People’s Mario (from Cari) – Based on that silly Rumor saying mario had subliminal communist propaganda. What if Mario was really a Communist? A short flash animation showing you Mario with a hammer killing Goombas and Koopa Troopas backed by Communist music.

First ever HD South Park episode for free on Xbox Live Marketplace (from SD) – This coming Tuesday is a big day for people that are both fans of South Park and Xbox 360 owners. Comedy Central is releasing the first ever high definition episode of South Park on the Xbox Live Marketplace to all members (we’re assuming this means Silver and Gold) for free. That’s right, everyone’s favorite word — free. It will be on Marketplace at that low, low, price of free for two weeks, and will also be available as a free HD-DVD to people buying a new Xbox 360 console or the HD-DVD add-on drive at Best Buy from March 20th through April 3rd.

Discover just updated their list of 5% Cashback Bonus for the months of April through June (from SD) – Lowe’s, Linens ‘n Things, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ace Hardware, Sears, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Dillard’s, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Circuit City, Borders, Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., FTD.COM. Pretty sweet list. Guess if you have house improvements, you should just wait up the next 2 months.

March 4, 2007March 4, 2007

Hot Pot

A bunch of my UW friends came over today and we did hot pot. We had a ton of food, which I’d have to say about 1/5 was thrown away at the end. We had enoki mushrooms, regular mushrooms, spinach, bak choi, tang oh, beef slices, squid, fish balls, beef balls, tofu, daikon, taro, shrimp, tripe, mussels, and some other stuff that escapes my brain at the moment.

I had gone to Uwajimaya and picked up a Iwatani butane powered gas stove. I had actually dropped by Costco earlier to see if I could find this: Coleman InstaStart Single Burner Butane Stove, but unfortunately they didn’t carry anything similar in the store. I knew Uwajimaya was going to be expensive, but $50 seem somewhat excessive. I guess that’s what happens when you’re not buying these when they’re on sale. A can of butane gas lasted us about 2hrs and cost $2.75 at Uwajimaya, which I’m guessing would be cheaper elsewhere. Saran also brought his butane powered stove and we had 2 simultaneous hot pots going at the same time.

We had 3 different types of sauces. A special soy sauce combo that Stanman made (soy sauce + cooked oil + sesame oil + green onions + ginger + sugar + serrano chiles (substitute for Korean red chile) + garlic + whatever else he put in there). Then there was the peanut shabu shabu sauce I picked up. Saran also brought his spicy sweet Thai sauce.

After everyone was stuffed, it was time for dessert. Saran and Desperajo busted out the cupcakes from Cupcake Royale. These cupcakes were awesomely delicious. Interesting… “awesomely” is a word! Or maybe Firefox spell check is broken. Anyway, the flavors are unique and interesting. We got to try: Red Velvet, The Classic, The Coconut Bunny, MoFro, The Lemon Drop, and The Orange You Glad.

I was just thinking, tripe is called tripe because if it was called cow inner stomach lining, no one here would ever buy it or order it in a restaurant. ;p

After dessert, we sat down and played around of Fuzion Frenzy 2. The mini games were pretty fun and Stanman pretty much dominated, though near the end, it got pretty close.

We played Settlers of Catan afterwards and once again I got shafted. Last week, I had a high 70% chance of winning because I was next and I had a soldier card which would give me the largest army. However, 2 other people were also close to winning and if he rolled 1 of 3 #s, one of them would win. However, the Settlers god was not on my side that day and awarded the win to Stanman. Today, I had 3 ways of winning and was already at 9 points. I had 3 roads in my hand (3x brick and 3x wood), I had a “Year of Plenty” which awarded me 2 cards of any choice. I also had a “Road Building” card. I was 6 behind the longest road, but if I wanted to, I could try and get it. However, I had a 3 to 1 port and could get 4 cards of anything (2 from trading and 2 from the “Year of Plenty”), but that wasn’t enough to build a city. I could also on the other hand trade in for 2 development cards and hope that one is a victory point. After conversing with the other people, I decided to take the safe route and hope I hit an ore. In fact, Saran immediately after me gave me an ore, so I was pretty much set to win (everyone else had 8 pts or below), but I had to wait for the “special building phase”. I thought I had won. However, he was at 8 points and was able to upgrade one of his settlements to a city pushing him to 9. He then just barely had enough cards to get a development card which gave him the last victory point. There you have it, the Settler gods are out there against me. The only time I wont Settlers with this group was when I partnered with someone else and made him do all the dice rolling and I did the strategic thinking as he was new to the game.

All in all, it was a fun day.

March 2, 2007March 2, 2007

Calculator Hot Keys

So Xyon and I were playing with the Windows calculator the other day and I brought up the fact that in scientific mode, there wasn’t a square root button, while on the other hand in standard mode, there was. The only way to do square root in scientific mode is to hit the x^y button and then punch in .5.

Anyway, I’d imagine that to do x^y (or x to the power of y), you would hit x followed by “^” followed by y followed by enter. However, Xyon tells me that “^” really means XOR in calculator. I’m like there must be some shortcut key (or hot key) to activate the power. Turns out, for the 1st time in history, when you right clicked something and clicked “What’s this?”, something useful actually got displayed.

We right clicked the x^y button and clicked “What’s this?” and it showed:

Computes x raised to the yth power. Use this button as a binary operator. For example, to find 2 raised to the 4th power, click 2 x^y 4 =, which equals 16.

To calculate the yth root of x use Inv+x^y.

Keyboard equivalent = Y

So according to this tooltip, to do square root of 49, I could hit 49 -> y -> .5 -> enter OR 49 -> i -> y -> 2 -> enter, which both will yield 7.

Here is the full list of keyboard shortcuts (from the help file):

Button: Key
%: %
(: (
): )
*: *
+: +
+/-: F9
–: –
.: . or ,
/: /
0-9: 0-9
1/x: r
=: ENTER
A-F: A-F
And: &
Ave: CTRL+A [average]
Backspace: BACKSPACE
Bin: F8 [binary]
Byte: F4
C: ESC
CE: DEL
cos: o [cosine]
Dat: INS [
Dec: F6 [decimal]
Degrees: F2
dms: m [degree-minute-second]
Dword: F2
Exp: x [exponent/scientific notation]
F-E: v [scientific notation toggle]
Grads: F4
Hex: F5 [hexadecimal]
Hyp: h [hyperbolic]
Int: ; [integer]
Inv: i [inverse]
ln: n [natural logarithm]
log: l [logarithm]
Lsh: < [left shift]
M+: CTRL+P
MC: CTRL+L
Mod: %
MR: CTRL+R
MS: CTRL+M
n!: ! [factorial]
Not: ~
Oct: F7 [octal]
Or: |(pipe)
pi: p
Qword: F12
Radians: F3
s: CTRL+D [standard deviation]
sin: s [sine]
sqrt: @ [square root]
Sta: CTRL+S [statistics]
Sum: CTRL+T
tan: t [tangent]
Word: F3
Xor: ^
x^2: @ [squared]
x^3: # [cubed]
x^y: y [raised to the power of]

Most are pretty intuitive. Others are somewhat obscure. One thing I did noticed was that @ was reused. In standard mode, it means square root. In scientific mode, it means squared. VERY BIG DIFFERENCE.

Random Crap:

Super Mario Snow Art (from Digg) – Some bored New Jersey college kids turned a snowy night into a kick ass piece of art. – Nic, Daniel, Garrett Ian, Daniel , Justin and Craig are engineering and computer science students at New Jersey Institute of Technology, so when they saw that mother nature was dropping some white stuff on the ground outside, they decided to construct a wonderfully nerdy shrine to their favorite Italian plumber. Apparently, they used a string grid to get it, right. We’re not quite sure what that means, but the result sure is cool.

Steampunk Keyboard Mod (from Digg) – My goal with this project was to build a retro keyboard that was fully functional and of a sufficient quality that it could be used everyday by a touch typist. In order to achieve this I chose a high quality (though widely available) keyboard as my starting point. This is an IBM Model M “Clicky” keyboard. They were made starting in the mid 1980’s and a version is still manufactured today. This particular keyboard was made in 1989 and shipped with and IBM PowerStation 530, a UNIX box the size of a kegerator.

Kanon – Shiori Cosplay (from 4chan) – thought it was really well done and she’s really cute. The 2nd image is the actual scene from the anime.

WoW: Best birthday cake evar (243KB of visual awesome inline) (from Digg) – My good friend makes kick-ass cakes as a hobby. Last year she started dating my old roomate who plays World of Warcraft a fair amount around his job; for christmas she aquired a “WoW stole my boyfriend” t-shirt. She is good-natured about his love of Warcraft, however, as shown by the birthday cake she made him three weeks ago. The birthday cake actually looks really neat.

Newspaper says it fell for fake Gucci ad – Some people will do anything to appear in the papers. But few have the audacity of a man in Switzerland, who conned one of the country’s biggest media companies into publishing a two-page ad he created of himself posing semi-naked beside a bottle of Gucci perfume. You can view the actual ad at adfreak.

Jealous husbands may face trial in court – Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women told a local newspaper on Friday. … Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are “crazy” even if they are caught red-handed having an affair, are guilty of indifference, she said. Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. Mexico’s individual states will determine the punishments, it said. I wonder if there’s a similar law for women, where if they avoid having sex with their husband, to be tried and punished ;p

March 1, 2007February 28, 2007

My New HTPC

I finally got my hard drive replacement yesterday and reinstalled Vista and now my living room setup is semi-complete. I’m still missing a few key items which I’ll be getting along the way which include a small coffee table, a better TV stand, a HDTV tuner card, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse set, and a surround sound system.

Anyways, let’s talk about my HTPC. It’s made up of the following components:

Motherboard: Abit IL9 Pro Motherboard – $85
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU – $204
Case: Lian Li PC-C30A Case – $130
Graphics Card: Asus EAX1600PRO SILENT Radeon X1600PRO 256MB – $93
Memory: 2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 DDR2 667 RAM – $136
Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB SATA – $140
Optical Drive: NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD Burner – $29*
Power Supply: Ultra V Series 500W – $0
Input Devices: Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center – $25; Remote Keyboard for Media Center – $45
Cables: HDMI DVI Cable – 10ft – $5.74; 3.5mm Stereo Plug/2 RCA Plug cable – 6ft – $1.25
UPS: APC BX 1500 Battery Back-UPS – $100

The final total comes up to be $994. Most of these items were purchased out of state (via Newegg), so there wasn’t any sales tax and most of them had free shipping.

I originally had purchased a Seagate 7200.10 500GB SATA hard drive with perpendicular recording, but the drive was rather noisy, especially when writing, so I swapped it out and replaced it with the Western Digital 500GB SATA drive which people have commented on to be quiet, and indeed is.

*I also swapped DVD burners between my main machine which had the NEC ND-3550A (or 3540A) which is very quiet, but no longer carried by Newegg. I had gotten the NEC 7170A-0B 18X DVD Burner, hoping that since it’s still NEC, it’d be nice and quiet like their previous models, but boy was I wrong. Apparently this drive is actually manufactured by Optiarc, a joint company formed by Sony and NEC. I’ve tried tools like CD Bremse and Nero CD-DVD Speed as recommended by those at CDFreaks.com, but neither worked. Someone also suggested AnyDVD, but I have yet to try it. What these tools are suppose to do is set the drive to run at a slower speed, so it can never goes into high speed mode (i.e. 18X), because who really needs 18X when watching a DVD. I’ve tried flashing the drive, but the tools don’t seem to be able to control it. On the contrary, both were able to control my ancient NEC ND-3550A.

Here are some pictures of while I was building the HTPC:

Installing Vista was a breeze, a lot easier than I had expected after hearing “horror” stories. Though then again, I was installing it on a clean machine and had been warned what hardware was compatible and what were causing problems (apparently nVidia Vista drivers are still iffy). After updating drivers and running the performance test, I hit 4.3 and the limiting factor was my graphics card. 4.3’s already an really good score, so I wasn’t too worried.

My next problem as I realized was there wasn’t a easy way for me to connect my HTPC to the existing network and internet. Derek and I had spent something walking up and down my stairs trying to figure out the best way. At first I thought I would just get a wireless bridge and use 802.11g to talk wirelessly. However, with all the HD content that I’ll soon be accumulating, having gigabit would be nice. So I ended up pulling a long cable from my switch to my new HTPC. I purchased a bunch of these cable hooks from Lowes and hammered them around my stair frame. I also didn’t have a ladder, so I used my plastic table as a platform to stand on.

I’ve also rearranged the couches so that I have more living room space to actually put something in between the couch and the TV. The main reason being that I was setting up StepMania with my USB dance pads and they didn’t really fit in the old configuration. Now that I pushed the sofas back, I have a lot more space and can actually fit a coffee table or maybe even an exercise bike. What’s neat is also there’s 2 front USB ports on my Lian Li case and that’s perfect for 2 DDR dance mats.

Our company store today just announced that the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 was available. Derek and I have been looking at the Logitech diNovo Edge. However, I wonder when the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 will be released.

Here’s some pictures of my semi-final TV setup with my so pretty Vizio 47″ 1080p LCD HDTV:

Remember, each picture also has a FULL SIZE.

February 28, 2007February 28, 2007

Random Crap

Rapidshare Search Engine (from Angelus) – An interesting tool I didn’t know existed.

Tesco Cans Refunds Policy After 360 Pricing Mishap (from Tera) – A pricing error in January meant that XBox 360 games consoles were advertised in the store for £297.81. When the machines’ bar codes were scanned at the till, customers were asked to pay £299.97 — £2.16 more. Under the policy, Tesco allowed the shoppers to take the consoles for free. Ouch. Great news for crafty British shoppers, but for Tesco, not so much. They’ve now, rather wisely, ditched the offer, replacing it with a deal where “customers will get back double the amount they were overcharged”. Guess that’s what happens when you abuse a good policy.

Chocolate Wii Controller (from Digg) – Wondering what to do with the packaging that your wiimote and nunchuck controller came in? Why not fill them with chocolate! We did. They’re both stuffed with sponge fingers to fill them out a little, otherwise we’d have used a lot more chocolate. Not a bad thing in itself, but we didn’t have that much chocolate. I would’ve thought the hot chocolate would’ve melted the plastic.

There’s a common saying in Cantonese during the new year: 恭喜發財, 利是逗來 (gong hey fat choy, lai see dao lar), which literally translates to wish you good fortune, hand over the red envelope (money pouch). I didn’t know how to write the character for dao, so I was searching online for this phrase. I landed on this page: 舒展超之大玩派 (they’re using Chinese Traditional Big 5 encoding if you’re seeing random characters). Anyway, there was this post that I found hilarious:

農曆新年期間，例牌在手機上收到相當多的賀年短訊（SMS）。當中有的頗為「行貨」，求其整兩句「恭喜發財，萬事如意」便算；有的則明顯是對方收到後，再順手轉寄的，否則怎會整篇都是簡體字？

但無論「行貨」也好「借花」也好，心意是一定有的。這種短訊祝福雖然很數碼化，但也一樣可以見字如見其人吧！

說到「如見其人」，不得不提我收到的一個賀年MMS；這MMS與SMS的不同之處，就在個M字，代表Multi-Media（多媒體）也！而拜3G手機所賜，這個M字也可以說是Movie吧！

話說年初一那天，手機「嘟嘟」響起，收到短訊；打開一看，卻是一則多媒體短訊（MMS），由朋友P君寄來的。當中包含了一段短片，須先下載才能觀看，我就不由分說同意下載了。

不消一會，下載完畢，影片播出。只見一個歲零兩歲的細路，一副拜年的裝束，向我邊抱拳邊牙牙學語；背景有一男聲，明顯是其父親P君，在指導（指使）他說：「恭喜發財，利是逗來。」細路就照樣學道：「公器罰財，你屎倒來。」

我看了之後，哭笑不得！忽生一計：既然你用MMS拜年，我就用MMS派Cyber利是！於是用手機自拍一段派利是的短片，回了過去！夠絕！

The overall post talks about a guy receiving Chinese new year greetings over MMS and SMS. One of them included a video clip of a very young kid learning from his father how to say, “Gong Hey Fat Choy. Lai See Dao Lar.” Chinese has a bunch of characters that sound the same and in Cantonese. To complicate that even further, there’s like 6 or 7 tones for each sound, making it even easier to screw up. In Mandarin, there’s only 4 default tones, with a soft 5th tone. So the kid basically says most of the sounds correctly, but in the incorrect tone, making a completely new sentence saying “public machine fines wealth, your poop has arrived.” It’s a common tradition when a kid wishes you good fortune to give them a red envelope (usually filled with some cash). However, since this person used a MMS to greet him, he decided to reply with a cyber red envelope, instead of a real one with cash.

I was telling this story to Cari and she tells me a story in return:

haha my mom’s god son.. he says fat choi like the vegetable.. the black hair like things we eat. so his sister made fun of him and said.. why is he congratulating a vegetable?

How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug (from SueOn) – Pretty funny to tutorial.

clocky (from Digg) – The alarm clock that runs away and hides when you don’t wake up. Clocky gives you one chance to get up. But if you snooze, Clocky will jump off of your nightstand and wheel around your room looking for a place to hide. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time. Haha! Perfect gift for your kid going to college. They’ll need it.

Photosynth Technology Preview (from Digg) – Welcome to Photosynth, a new technology from Microsoft Live Labs that takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space. Pretty neat and it utilizes Windows Presentation Foundation for the neat UI graphics.

What your Sleeping position says about you (from Digg) – Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are. The names they gave to the sleeping positions are rather funny: Foetus, Log, Yearner, Soldier, Freefall, and Starfish. I definitely swap between the Foetus and Soldier positions.

Beer launching fridge (from Digg) – Wow. Now this is an idea that could pick-up: a mini fridge with a catapult on top and an automatic beer launcher. The cool part is that it’s very small and incredibly accurate. Seriously, it’s a gadget that I would buy! I really like the little contraption on how they pull the can out from the fridge.

Stand-in Chinese mistress sought to take wife’s abuse – A Chinese businessman has advertised on the Internet for a stand-in mistress to be beaten up by his wife to vent her anger and to protect his real mistress, Chinese media reported on Monday.

TMNT Arcade ‘Level 1’ gameplay (from MS newsgroup) – I remember spending countless quarters playing this game (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) at the arcades. If this game supports multiplayer (all 4 controllers), it’d be super neat!

Guess what’s in my pants (from Angelus) – Jimmy Kimmel from The Man Show sticks something inside his pant pocket and asks random women on the street to feel it and guess what it is. Rather hilarious. One woman actually starts biting it.

Russian Tunnel Video (from Tera) – This 3150 m long tunnel in Russia is the longest in-city tunnel of Europe. There is a river running over it and water leaks at some points. When the temperature reaches -38 degrees like it did this winter, the road freezes and the result is the attached video taken during a single day with the tunnel camera. And the answer to the most popular question: the name of the song on the video is “Avalon” performed by an artist who goes simply by the name “Juliet”. The album is “The Best of NYC Afterhours – Volume 3”. You’d think they’d put up big red flashing signs warning people to drive slower…

Beatboxing flute inspector gadget remix (from Hjo3) – Beatboxing Flute player Greg Pattillo inspector gadget with a twist like nothing you’ve heard (unless you’ve been wandering through washington square park and heard him there) The 2nd song he’s playing is actually Axel F (from Axel Foley) and isn’t really related to Inspector Gadget.

The Really Big Guide To Secret Menu Items – More secret menu items at Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Chipotle, Subway, Jamba Juice, In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, Dairy Queen, Chili’s, Blimpie, Burger King, Popeye’s, TGIFriday’s, Denny’s, and Arby’s.

Costco’s Electronics Return Policy (from The Consumerist) – Due to abuse, Costco is once again updating their return policy. The following items now have a 90-day return window: Televisions, Computers, Cameras, Camcorders, iPod/MP3 players, and Cellular phones. However, it does come with 2 year warranty from the date of purchase, which is rather neat. This only applies to purchases after this policy goes into effect which is being slowly pushed into all stores. Good thing I bought my TV before then 😉 There is something new where Costco is offering in-home TV setup. I wonder if that means they’ll deliver the TV too, which was one of the main reasons I didn’t get a TV till recently.

Parents raise copycat risk from TV’s revhead tot (from /.) – AN award-winning TV commercial showing a toddler driving a four-wheel-drive has been pulled off the air. The Advertising Standards Board said it had banned the ad for Hyundai’s Sante Fe 4WD after more than 80 viewer complaints. You can watch the ad here: Hyundai Santa Fe. I thought the ad was rather cute.

Toilet Paper Folder & Dispenser Prototype (from Digg) – This is a project that me and my friends built for school (UC Berkeley). Its made of lego mindstorms, scissors, and some scrap metal. With all things considered, I think it turned out alright. Not only does it fold your paper for you, it also cuts it. It would be the perfect accessory for a fancy, high-tech, Japanese bathroom! This video shows two test runs; the first run works well, while the second one could have gone a little smoother… Haha! I need one of these!

Wahaha Calcium Milk blatantly copies the Mario/Yoshi combo (from Digg)