Category: Games

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Random Crap

First I want to wish Lsiymle a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

100 FREE Downloads from eMusic (from Decathanerd) – appears to be for people who purchased a COWON product, but I don’t believe the registration requires any sort of proof. I haven’t done this myself, but eMusic is famous for no DRM on their music and that their songs work on any digital music playing device. The default account gets 25 FREE songs and signing up from this link bumps it to 100. Let me know what your experience is with this service. You have 30 days to choose 100 songs from 1 million.

Tooth chipped on cookie ruled work-related – A salesman who chipped a tooth on a cookie while visiting a customer is entitled to compensation for his dental work after a court ruled it a work-related injury. I just found this to be awfully silly. It seems to make work reliable for everything you do on their clock, including “any” accidents that may happen outside of the work area.

Jeremy Wai – Cap Through Coke Bottle (from Artemyst) – A coke cap penetrates a coke bottle. Jeremy Wai is a pretty neat magician which has a ton more magic tricks on YouTube.

listpic – Craigslist Pic Viewer (from The Consumerist) – as the title goes, it’s a picture viewer of all craigslist listings and sorts them by date and price. For example, you can do a query, set a min/max price and the results will come back as images instead of just text and links where people generally have aren’t good at filling out. For example, here are all the furniture listings for Seattle.

VG Cats – Detergent – BAN… KAI!!! It’s a reference anime watchers will get. This is based of a anime/manga called Bleach. Now does the title of the comic make more sense? I’m not sure if this kitties have names, but the the pink female one is representing Kuchiki Byakuya and the gray male one is representing Kurosaki Ichigo. I’m not sure what the reference of the “rat” or “morning-star” is. Maybe someone can explain that to me.

After look up morning-star on Wikipedia, it apparently was a medieval weapon in the form of a spiked club resembling a mace, usually with a long spike extending straight from the top in addition to a number of smaller spikes around the circumference of the head. I guess the “rat” comes from the part where they’re cats and cats eat rats. Maybe?

According to ElBandMonkey and Nekobo: I think it’s from Dungeons and Dragons, where people joke about the ultimate weapon being a rat on a flail, an allusion to back in the day when people use to catapult dead rats during sieges over castle walls to poison the populace. According to their Bleach entry, Leo’s Bankai form and the Rat Morning-star (build up on the Rat Flail) were tough.

Student wants to ‘rent’ a girlfriend – A desperate Chinese university student wants to “rent” a girlfriend for 10 days so he can show her off to his parents over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media reported Wednesday. … Wang Jisheng, a professor with the Psychology Institution of the Chinese Academy Sciences, was quoted as saying Zhu was trying to show filial piety to his parents but was only cheating them.

Bellevue scores high again in water quality report (from MS newsgroup) – Drinking water in Bellevue remains safe for consumption. According to the 2006 Water Quality Report, prepared in accordance with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, Bellevue’s drinking water meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards.

Apple UK: “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC.” Smashing, isn’t it? (from Digg) – Here’s the UK version I’m a Mac, I’m a PC ad.

Top 5: Piggy Banks, Stylish Savings (from The Consumerist) – these piggy banks are rather cute!

Windows Vista in pictures (from Digg) – Look at all the pretty pictures ;p

Fan made Star Wars Wii video (from Digg) – One reader’s idea of how a Star Wars game might work on the Wii. Now if we could just get Lucasarts to actually make one! The other day I was just talking to StanMan about a Star Wars Wii game where the Wiimote would act as the light saber holder. This guy takes it to the next level.

Uncle Sam spoils dream trip to space (from MS newsgroup) – Brian Emmett’s childhood fantasy came true when he won a free trip to outer space. But the 31-year-old was crushed when he had to cancel his reservation because of Uncle Sam. … Then reality hit. After some number-crunching, Emmett realized he would have to report the $138,000 galactic joy ride as income and owe $25,000 in taxes. Unwilling to sink into debt, the software consultant from the San Francisco Bay area gave up his seat. There was a discussion thread on paying taxes on the actual value of gift and not the MSRP. For example, if you get a free copy of Windows, although the MSRP is like $300, the actual value is closer to $100-$150, so you only have to pay taxes on the actual value. I forgot what the term was.

Famous quotes on Sex (from Digg) (NSFW) – some pretty funny quotes by famous people. Worth the read and laugh.

Casino Changes Tune; Retiree Gets Jackpot After All (from Digg) – Stephen Wilkinson is a happy man this weekend — $102,000 happier. Wilkinson thought he struck it rich Monday while playing slots at a new parlor at Philadelphia Park. But the parlor then said it was all a mistake and refused to pay him the jackpot, offering two free meals instead. On Friday night, the operators of the parlor at the Bensalem racetrack had a change of heart and phoned Wilkinson, saying they wanted to do the right thing. An update to the previous posted story of him getting ripped off because of a “software glitch”.

If Women Acted Like Men (from Deadlock) (NSFW!) – This beautiful girl acts in this hilarious underwear commercial as a guy in the morning Caught on Video. The way this girl acts she can be passed as a guy.

The Fancy Pants Adventure (from Digg) – a really fun flash game that seems to have a mix of Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog in this side-scroller.

Keifer Admits to Abusing Bauer Action Figure (from Digg) –

“We took the doll out for a night to have some fun and we’d had some drinks. We sat it on the corner of the table. We started torturing him around 11 o’clock at night, and, by two o’clock in the morning, we had set him on fire in the parking lot.

“We got up the next day and there was just this puddle of wax. His clothes didn’t burn, which I thought was pretty cool…and then I got a call the next day saying, ‘Did you like the doll?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it was great.’ And they said, ‘Well, OK, good, you gotta send it back to us because that was the prototype…It took that guy a year to make it.’ I said, ‘Well, let me look for it, I think I left it in the trailer.’ This went on for about a week and then I had to just kinda come clean.”

Google TV – An Elaborate Hoax (from Digg) – A heavily produced YouTube video from Mark Erickson at “Infinite Solutions” shows users how to get in on the super-secret (and non existent) Google TV beta. It’s rather amazing if this was true.

USAA Lets You Remotely Deposit Checks – We got a flier in our recent USAA bill announcing they’re now letting customers deposit checks from. Just sign and scan your checks and send it in through the USAA website. As far as we know, USAA is the only bank to offer this service to consumers. I always wished that such a service existed. I mean I can do all my banking electronically. The only thing I can’t do is get cash and deposit checks. 1 of the 2 problems are solved, now we just need some way to print cash ;p

Paint.NET v3.0 is OUT! (from Digg) – I’ve been using Paint.NET v2.0 as a replacement to Photoshop as it basically does all that I need to do inside Photoshop. The best part is it’s free. It does have 1 slight problem where it only supports WMI scanners and mine I’m guessing isn’t WMI compatible.

NES Nintendo – EVERY GAME EVER MADE – 670 LOT Licensed (from Digg) – I remember my friend Jeff Tori in Jr. High who told me he’d give up all his games and future games if he could just have an NES console with all the games. At that time I recall Playstation was the popular console and FFVII was the popular game at that time.

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Free International Phone Calls

You’ve probably heard of AllFreeCalls and Future Phone where you call some number in Iowa and make free long distance calls. They make their money with a new law that all incoming calls are charged a few cents and then just pipe you over the VoIP network. It’s been brought to my notice that Future Phone is no longer available. I also found it funny that they have a big red sign across their homepage saying: THIS SERVICE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. However AllFreeCalls is still going strong and getting more people everyday.

I was thinking… with Google Maps’ Click to Call feature Windows Live’s Call for free feature, we can have free calls and not pay long distance to Iowa. I’m assuming that AllFreeCalls will still get paid since it’s still considered an incoming call and even more people will start to use this service.

I’ve always considered these features to sort of be like Jajah, where Jajah initiates the call to both ends and therefore is the one paying the toll. Google and Windows Live just supports it for businesses, and well, AllFreeCalls is considered a business. If they decide to add their listing to Google Maps or Windows Live, it’s basically free calls for everyone.

Random Crap:

I’m thinking, given that I tend to write multiple entries in one sitting and not write anything for a few days, I’m going to start queuing them up. Meaning, I’ll still be writing multiple entries in one setting, but I’ll change the publish date instead of immediate to a day or 2 later. That way it won’t be like reading 5 posts of random crap in 1 day vs reading 5 random crap posts over period of 5 days.

Also wanted to wish GwaGwaSan and Mister0124 a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Product Placement (from Digg) – news article headline shows: Teacher hit by car outside Queens school and then there’s a pop up ad for Toyota. ;p

The Best Homework Ever? (from Digg) – Cassidy Curtis’s marvelous surface drawings Those drawings are rather neat. Reminds me of Mechy.

Iowa students get laundry e-mail alerts – Ding! Time to throw your drawers in the dryer. That’s the message University of Iowa students can now receive by e-mail. Thanks to software installed along with new high-efficiency washers last fall, the school’s dormitory residents can receive e-mail alerts when their laundry cycles have finished. I wished this was available back when I was in college. Usually I remember to go down to get my clothes, but once in awhile, I don’t remember until the next day.

Artist to honour Wii heroes with statuettes – In the old days, heroes were commemorated with stone statues in public squares. In today’s video game obsessed society, players can get a Mii. U.S. artist Paul Thiel is crafting figurines that are replicas of the virtual characters users of Nintendo’s popular console Wii play games with. Neat! If you have a Mii that really resembles you, I can see this being a totally awesome gift.

Web site helps name that tune in your head – You know that annoying tune that you can’t place or get out of your head? A U.S. company has recently launched a Web site, www.midomi.com, that names most tunes that you can hum, sing or whistle a tune into your computer microphone. If you give this a try, do let me know if it works.

Man bets wife in card game, loses – A Russian man lost his wife in a game of cards after putting her up as a stake instead of cash. … When he lost the game and his opponent Sergey Brodov turned up to claim his winnings his wife Tatiana was so angry she decided to divorce her husband and started a relationship with Brodov. Haha! Awesome way to get rid of your wife. 😉

One Year Later, Quadruple Amputee Still Wants Answers (from Digg) – A local woman went to the hospital to have a baby, and while she was there, she contracted a flesh-eating bacteria, WESH 2 News reported. Doctors had to amputate both her arms and both her legs to save her. That was one year ago, and she’s still searching for answers. Such a sad story… If I was her, I’d like some answers too!

Pink milk puzzles farmer – A farmer whose cows produced pink milk after eating carrots solved the problem by feeding them white carrots instead. Pink milk reminds me of strawberry milk.

Why can’t a person tickle himself? (from Digg) – . Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. Ahhh! So that’s the key to not being ticklish!

That’s an ad on your egg – Which came first — the chicken or the ad? In a month-long campaign that began in Japan on Thursday, 1.8-cm (0.8-inch) advertising stickers touting chicken ramen instant noodles will be stuck on the shells of ordinary eggs, sold in packs of 10. Updated the link that has an image of it.

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Ruckus

Ruckus (from Krrkb) – Krrkb introduced me to this site, which allows you to download music “legally” for free if you’re a college student. You can read more about it on their blog entry: Ruckus is Now Free for All College Students – As of today, January 22nd, Ruckus Music is now totally free for every student on America’s college and university campuses (Sorry Canada, maybe next year). All you need to do is have an *.edu email address and “claim” you’re a student (not alumni or staff).

ruckus player

Their player really sucks. It seems to try to mimic iTunes, but fails horribly. They also include IE inside their player, which I’m guessing is so that you can access the website to download music. Horrible design in my opinion. The player is also littered with advertisement, but I guess that’s how it can afford to be free to all college students. What I’ll give the player is that it’s A LOT more responsive than iTunes. It takes up less memory and doesn’t lag at all. However, my collection is only at a mere 400MB right now, so I’m not sure how it’ll fare when I have many gigs worth.

I’ve been using Firefox to search for songs through their website. To download songs through the browser, you download these files with the extension: *.ruckusdownload which launches the player and the download begins. The music selection is pretty big. However, I did find songs it wouldn’t allow me to download. These songs were rather new, and I’m guessing they’ll be available as they get older. The download speeds are really good. I get a constant 1MB/s.

The songs are DRMed so you’re not able to transfer to a music device or burn to a CD without upgrading. They have a 1 day limit before expiring and you’ll need to reget the license again, which means you’ll need an active internet connection. I misread the expiration date of the license. It really expires in 1 month, so you’ll have to reget the license then. The music is encoded in wma at 192kbps.

Since I mention how awesome Pan’s Labyrinth’s soundtrack was, you can download it from Ruckus: Javier Navarrete: Pan’s Labyrinth.

Honestly, if I was a student, I’d actually be pretty satisfy with Ruckus if I didn’t care about transferring music to my iPod or any other music device. It’s like Napster, but without the need to share/upload, and every song at my fingertip.

At first I confused this with Grooveshark (from Digg). Grooveshark is a web-based application for sharing music within a community of music lovers. We distribute DRM-free MP3s across a mostly p2p network. The basic actions a user can take are outlined below. Krrkb mentioned the music was “free (DRMed)”, but for some reason that registered in my mine as DRM-free. Anyway, this is an interesting new program to check out. It’s not available to the public yet, but it rewards (compensates) users for sharing which I thought was a neat system. It didn’t mention how the rewards/compensation system worked, but I’d like to know where more is announced.

Random Crap:

Miracle fruit (from Tekman) – A Miracle Fruit Plant, sometimes known as Miraculous Berry, (Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum Daniell) is a plant native to Tropical West Africa. It produces 2 crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet high in its native habitat, but does not usually grow higher than 5 feet in cultivation. It is an evergreen plant that produces red berries. Although the berry itself is not sweet, they contain a protein called Miraculin, which masks the tongue’s sour taste buds, causing foods such as lemons and limes to taste sweet. This effect lasts for up to 30 minutes but sometimes longer, maybe two hours. It will not however, make sweet foods taste sweeter. The Miracle fruit has been used to sweeten bitter medicines. Tekman was telling the story of how the guy giving the tour would ask people to try out the berries. People said it didn’t really taste all that great. The tour guide agreed that the berries weren’t really that great, but then she the really cool plant is his sweet lime tree coming up next. Haha. I don’t really think they make sour things taste sweet. They just inhibit the sour taste it appears. I’m personally a big fan of limes and lemons and can eat them whole without wincing. They just taste good. Maybe it’s because my sour taste buds are weak or I’ve killed them throughout the years by eating too many sour things, but limes and lemons are naturally sweet with just a strong sour taste. If you block your sour taste buds, then all you taste is the sweetness of the lime or lemon.

The Cute Project (from Digg) – a worthy rival of Cute Overload!. Tons of cute animal pictures.

May I take your order? (from Digg) – a hilarious Chinese restaurant menu where the translations of the dishes seemed to be pulled directly from the likes of Babelfish. My favorite has got to be Good to eat mountain (花雕). I never really seen a dish called 花雕, but it can be a type of beer or a way to cook food (especially crabs or chicken). As the poster mentions, “what’s with all the verbs?” You can see more funny pictures at rahoi.com.

Japanese TV apologises for false “natto” diet tip – Shortly after the show was broadcast nationwide on January 7, thousands of Japanese, keen to lose weight, rushed to stores and bought up all the natto on the shelves. Article wasn’t that interesting, but if I had known, I’d invest in so natto stocks. ;p

Sensitive Light : Coloured Smoke (from Digg) – a gallery of pretty neat smoke effects.

The Case of Mistaken Gamedenity (from Digg/Tera) – A hilarious recount of how a mom demands the new Mario game for the Xbox 360.

Phone thief repents after 21 text messages (from Cari) – A Chinese thief has returned a mobile phone and thousands of yuan he stole from a woman after she sent him 21 touching text messages, Xinhua news agency said on Monday. … “I’m Pan Aiying, a teacher from Wutou Middle School. You must be going through a difficult time. If so, I will not blame you,” wrote Pan in her first text message which did not get a response. … But on her way out on Sunday morning, she stumbled over a package that had been left in her courtyard only to discover it was her stolen bag. Nothing had been taken. “Dear Pan: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please forgive me,” a letter inside said. “You are so tolerant even though I stole from you. I’ll correct my ways and be an upright person.” A touching story of how a thief has repented his ways and have asked for forgiveness.

Precision driving with Russ Swift (from Derek) – Jeremy Clarkson and Russ Swift do some precision driving Cool parking skills and driving a car on just 2 wheels. Apparently that’s just like riding a bicycle.

Top 10 Magic Trick Tutorial Videos (from Digg) – Today I went to the liberty of scouring the internet to track down the top 10 video magic tutorials that I could find. Many of these are simply amazing, others are simple yet stunning. I hope you enjoy.

High rollers’ Las Vegas hangouts can be yours for a [high] price (from Digg) – These Las Vegas suites are amazing! Too bad the price is so high. But one can dream, right?

McDonald’s And Food Network: Subliminal Advertising? – Reader Janeka sends in this video from You Tube. Someone was watching Iron Chef America when they noticed their screen flash red, and when they went back to see what it was, they found a McDonald’s ad on just one frame! Oooh, scary! It looks to us as if someone just screwed up, or was screwing around. Then again, maybe it’s an insidious attempt to brainwash food nerds into eating more quarter-pounders. Either way, it’s on You Tube now, so we guess the McTerrorists win. Did the Food Network switch from fine dining to fast food? Maybe they should do an Iron Chef where the main ingredient is Big Macs.

Car Dealership Breaks Into Customer’s Home, Steals $70,000 – In July, 60 year old mentally ill Richard Grey wheelchaired into the Huling Brothers dealership in Seattle, his pants encrusted with feces and urine, and bought a truck with $30,000 in cash in a plastic bag. The salesmen learned he had more at home and three of them broke in and stole $70,000 more. I mean how evil can people be?!?! Interestingly enough when I was driving home today, the car in front of me for most of the route as a Chrysler PT Cruiser with a license plate holder showing Huling Brothers on the bottom.

Sinfest – In The Know – Q: What does a microwave do? A: It does this: vvvmmmmmmmm PING! Haha! Awesome answer! I love the dog.

Dunking parakeet becomes Web video star – Teaching a parakeet to putt is no tap-in. Ask David Cota, who spent months training his Indian ringneck parakeet A.J. to use a tiny putter to sink putts on a miniature green, making the 5-inch tall bird an Internet video star. I remember seeing this video a long time ago, but for those who haven’t seen it, enjoy!

Testers Wanted – Nintendo Virtual Reality (from Digg) – This is a live-action performance from the annual Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center’s (http://www.etc.cmu.edu) Building Virtual Worlds Show. The performance is from December 6th, 2006, and students have TWO weeks to brainstorm, develop, and implement a virtual world, which in this case, was required of us to make an entertaining experience for a large audience. The performance is given in McConomy Auditorium in Carnegie Mellon, via the technology of the Playmotion. The playmotion is a motion sensor technology that receives data on the user’s head and two hands.

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More and more junk

Sigh… My blog entries are queuing up faster than I can blog:

Your Drafts: Unknown, Open Season, The Queen, Blood Diamond, An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 – Evening Harder, The Corporation, Kanon, Poseidon, Hacking Democracy, Accepted, Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 黑社會 (Election), DragonZakura, Superman Returns, L.A. Confidential, Cars, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, ゼロの使い魔, Sneakers, The Notebook, Little Miss Sunshine, The Triplets Of Belleville, Love Actually, Transamerica, Two for the Money, Thumbsucker, When Do We Eat, The Sentinel, Who Killed the Electric Car?, The Benchwarmers, Basic Instinct 2, Sympathy for Lady Venegance, Saving Electricity, Food Scarcity, xxxHOLiC, Blood+, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Episodes, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Episodes 1 – 8, Temperature Scales, Black Cat, REC, Fate/stay night, Bleach Episode 71 – 83, Hellsing Ultimate OVA, Detective Academy Q Episodes 31 – 39, Dial Tone, Monster Episodes 66 – 74, Initial D Fourth Stage Episodes 21 – 24, 24 – Season Four, Full Metal Panic – The Second Raid Episodes 9-13, Naruto Episode 150 .

Every time I think of something or watch a movie, I just create a new draft post and enter the title and any little details I don’t want to forget. Then it just starts piling up. I’ve pretty much given up on posting a blog for each anime episode. If I feel like it, I’d have entries on certain episodes that really stood out, or I’d blog about once I complete the series.

Random Crap:

Mysterious samurai saves Police in UK (from Digg) – A samurai sword wielding vigilante has come to the rescue of two Police officers when they were attacked by an armed gang in South Shields, England. Could it be a Hiro wannabe? I’m curious what the guy dressed like, or if they just labeled him as “a samurai” because he was wielding a curved sword. Who knows if the sword was even curved…

h&r block refund Freudian slip
H&R Block’s Freudian Slip (from The Consumerist)

It’s estimated Americans overpaid their taxes by nearly a billion dollars.* Don’t be one of them. H&R Block will get you the maximum refund you’re entitled to, or your tax preparation is FREE. So every dollar you’ve earned is where it belongs. In our pocket.

It’s funny how much a difference a ‘y’ would make in this case.

Netflix offers streaming movies to subscribers –

The new service will be rolled out gradually but should be available to all Netflix subscribers by July. The amount of video that can be watched on the PC varies depending on the subscription plan. Users with the $5.99 plan will get six hours of online viewing each month, while those with the more common $17.99 plans get 18 hours. The decision to offer this in terms of “hours” rather than “movies” could potentially frustrate customers who don’t want to wait until next month to see the second half of Casino Royale, but it does allow for stopping, starting, and switching films without developing some convoluted definition of what it means to “watch a film.”

The initial selection is fairly thin, with only 1,000 titles available (out of more than 70,000 available on DVD), but this was the same number of DVDs that Netflix launched with back in 1999. It’s probably just as well; Netflix has made clear that they want to roll out the new technology slowly to make sure that everything works correctly. As CEO Reed Hastings notes, this isn’t a market that is going to pay big dividends for a few years yet.

A rather interesting service. From the feedback I’ve read, the quality’s really good, almost as good as DVD quality, though I’d believe it when I see it. Then again, DVD quality is only 480p and I’ve been spoiled with 720p and 1080p content recently. I’d like to see how far this goes and how big it can become. Maybe I’ll cave and get a Netflix subscription.

Male panda said too fat to have sex – Chuang Chuang the Panda is just too heavy to have sex. Thai authorities have put him on a strict diet as part of a long-running campaign to get him to mate with female partner Lin Hui at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand. Haha.

Are You Gonna Do It? (from Digg) – “I’ll just walk into Steve’s office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It’s guaranteed to work.” We laughed, thinking that not even Burrell would have the guts to do that. … “Are you gonna do it? Are you really gonna do it?”, asked Steve. Somehow, word about the urination threat had gotten back to Steve, and he was genuinely curious if Burrell would go through with it or not. I was disappointed he didn’t do it.

My Kids Are Perverted (NSFW) (from Tera) – Hilarious story of what the kids keep asking this teacher. Since it’s not safe for work, you’ll have to click the show button. (Show)

Jeep® Waterfall (from Digg) – From Detroit to Beijing, the Jeep Waterfall has mesmerized auto showgoers from across the globe. Tune in to discover how this H20 wonder works. Amazing piece of engineering. Apparently you can drive this waterfall/rainfall as if it was an inkjet printer. Rather interesting.

Boy, 9, sneaks on to plane (from The Consumerist) – Police in Lakewood, Washington, say the boy (Semaj Booker) has a history of stealing cars and running away from home. He was apparently trying to get to Dallas, where his grandfather lives, and where the boy himself used to live. But he came up short, only getting as far as San Antonio after hopping two separate flights. Police say he apparently found a Southwest Airlines boarding card and made it through airport security. I really wonder if airport security really exists, or is it just their to inconvenience people like us.

Porsche – Double Take (from Derek) – An interesting ad, but it does show where a car’s *cough* is.

Life Lessons (from SD) – A bunch of figurines being sold by TLC with rather funny sayings. Like #20 If you want to get rid of a guy,tell him you love him. Or #58 – Never introduce her as “my future ex.”

Punchy! (from RayAlome) – It’s all fun and games until someone gets punched in the face. And then it’s even more fun! Funny skit where some guy can’t control punching people in the face.

The Towel Trick fixes 360’s? (from MS newsgroup) – Everyone’s dreaded the red circle that appears on your Xbox 360 to notify you it’s broken. Recently, there’s been a spread of the “towel trick” and apparently many people who’ve gotten the red circle of death are claiming it fixes their Xbox 360. What you do is wrap your Xbox 360 completely in a towel (basically enclosing the whole thing) and turn it on and wait 10-15 minutes. At this time, your Xbox 360 will get really hot, and I mean REALLY HOT. Turn it off and turn it back on and your machine might magically work. No one really knows why this is fixing their Xbox 360s, but CDMCC suggests that it might have to do with the soldering problem.

College Saga – Episode 1 (from Cari) – Once upon a time, when Earth was still a beautiful place, an evil force came to turn all living things into Vegetarians. Three students from suburban Massachusetts would step up against this catastrophe… to end Vegetarian Supremacy. Mark, Jesús, Maria and their foes would make amazing personal discoveries as the two forces clash. And so began the ultimate saga about friendship, heritage, sex and explosions. A hilarious skit done by a group of college students, where they go through college as if it was a RPG game.

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Kanon – Sayuri’s Story

This clip was taken from Kanon (2006) episode 14. Baby Sayuri is so cute and she has a very cute little brother too! Yet the story becomes so sad… *sniff*

Large version:
Kanon - Sayuri's Story (large)

Small version:
Kanon's - Sayuri's Story (small)

Random Crap:

Sessions with R. Tam (from Digg) – an excerpt from the Firefly series. Appears to be sessions held with River Tam during their experimentation. Comments claim that the interviewer is Josh Whedon.

Terry Tate Compilation (from FuzzyWuzzy) – just a bunch of painful scenes. this is what happens when you don’t have office etiquette.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman (from Digg) – Remember those series back when you were kids. I remember having tons of post-its to remember how to trace back so I don’t have to start all over again when I get a bad ending. They’re giving away this one for free and apparently works on your iPod and even has colored pictures. I haven’t given it a try yet, but seems interesting.

China: Teahouse is threat to morality – – A Shanghai tea house whose name translates roughly as “Frog Keeps a Mistress” has been deemed a threat to public morality and told to get a new moniker, local media said Friday. The “Qingwa Bao Ernai” shop was violating China’s advertising law, the Shanghai Daily and other newspapers said, citing a local commercial bureau official, Xu Jun. Article wasn’t that interesting. It took me awhile to figure out how Qingwa Bao Ernai = Frog Keeps a Mistress. Turns out to be 青蛙保二奶.

Real-time quotes for free (from Digg) – Apparently you’ll soon be able to get real time stock quotes from Google Finance.

Starcraft in 3D! (from Digg) – I first heard about Project Revolution a couple years ago. At the time, I remember thinking there was no way it would ever get off the ground once Blizzard got wind of a Warcraft III total conversion to recreate Starcraft in 3D. Well, here we are a few years later and it appears the folks over at Snowflake Entertainment have made some real progress. Check out the video.

Simple Workaround for Ctrl Print Screen (from Helldesk) – hilarious video of a guy apparently trying to print a screenshot, but the printer messes with him. He takes his frustrations out on his computer and on the copy machine and attempts to photocopy his monitor screen, even though the monitor is probably no longer connected to his computer.

Optical illusion in 3D:
optical illusion in 3d

Whenever I see these things, I try to imagine how it would appear if I look at it from the side, but my mind just won’t work that way. You can see similar objects at Impossible figures in the real world and Impossible Objects in Real Life no.2.

Why do we open our mouths to yawn properly? (from Digg) – The involuntary act of yawning usually includes opening the mouth very wide while slowly taking in a deep breath. This contortion of the mouth puts pressure on the salivary glands causing the eyes to sometimes tear-up, causes the throat to better open, and tightens the muscles around the mouth making sure the yawn is better accomplished. Couple other interesting questions answered include: Why do some people have three nipples?, Is it true that a woman’s breasts can grow enormously overnight?, and Why is it absolutely impossible to sneeze with your eyes open?.

Ex-Playmate Reveals Playboy Mansion Secrets (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) (from Digg) – Now, for the first time ever, one of those blonde beauties has done the unspeakable. She has broken the mansion’s revered code of silence. Jill Ann Spaulding, a stunning professional poker player with all the obvious attributes that one might find inside Hef’s stable of potential Playmates, has written a tell-all book entitled, “Jill Ann: Upstairs.” Ever wonder what the life of Hugh Hefner is like? or even one of the bunnies that live in the Playboy mansion? Well, this little interview gives some insight, though it’s hard to tell how much of what she says is the truth.

Bash Quote #207373 (from Tera) –

<anamexis> oh man
<anamexis> I was opening a coke, right
–> Beefpile (~mbeefpile@cloaked.wi.rr.com) has joined #themacmind
<anamexis> and it exploded
<anamexis> ALMOST all over my keyboard
<anamexis> but I got it away just in time
<– Beefpile has quit (sick fuckers)
<anamexis> :<

Stationary biker rests after record bid – George Hood didn’t go to Disney World after riding a stationary bike for an apparent record of 85 hours. He checked into a hospital. After two days of recovery and lots of fluids and sleep, the 49-year-old Aurora man pronounced himself almost back to normal Monday as he described his bid, still awaiting certification, for a place in the Guinness World Records book.

Victoria Harbour – Hong Kong at different hours of day and night (from Digg) – the images are rather pretty.

A PC that you can install in your WALL! (from Derek) – It’s called Jack PC, and it can fit into a network wall port. Just plug your keyboard, mouse and monitor into the wall. The Jack PC runs Windows CE and it’s equipped with an equivalent of a 800MHz to 1.2GHz x86 desktop processor. pretty neat!

Breast boosting beer sells like hot cakes – The millet-based ale called Boza allegedly makes women’s breasts bigger, but was previously expensive.　Now thousands of tourists are travelling to the Bulgarian border town of Ruse to buy Boza for their wives and partners. Haha!

The Greatest Martial Arts Moments – The Crippled Masters (from Digg) – I was going through this kung fu moments. Some were decent, some were eh, but then I saw this one. One guy has no legs and the other guy has no arms. It’s curtains for any all-limbed sucka in the room when they join forces to create an unstoppable two-armed and two-legged punching and kicking machine. Keep this scene in mind the next time you’re going to pick a fight with the handi-capable guy at the bar. It was rather disturbing…

Street Fighter: The Later Years – Part 3 (from RayAlome/DeadLock) – not sure why I forgot to post this when RayAlome showed it to me the 1st time. Must’ve not entered the queue of links to be posted. Anyway, the 3rd part is available for viewing now. Introduces Vega, E. Honda, and Blanka!

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Happy Birthday to ME!

Sigh… One year older…

Speaking of which, due to the crazy weather, snow storms, and freezing temperature we’ve been having, check out this slideshow of crazy traffic and abandoned cars.

Derek also showed me this video: Bumper cars in Portland, Oregon. Crazy! Cars skidding and bumping everywhere, but instead of regular bumper cars, we’re talking 20-50K cars… That’s why on snow days, I work from home. Just need to make sure I stock up on food.

Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 兎 (usagi) which means rabbit.

How to avoid crying when chopping onions (from SueOn) – apparently the part of the onion that makes you cry resides on the bottom cone.

How We Shower (from Digg) – Heres a funny comparison on showering practices between guys and girls. Funny and true! HOW MEN AND WOMEN SHOWER DIFFERENTLY… Rather funny read.

2006 Ice Storm – Follow Up Visit (from Digg) – Amazing when 2″ of ice forms on a wire from a power utility pole.

spacecoyote did some artwork on what would The Simpsons and Futurama characters would look like if they were drawn in anime style (from Digg). Titled The Simpsonzu and Futurama: Super Happy Fun Show (click images to enlarge), she landed herself a contract with Bongo Comics:

THANK YOU INTERNET

Long story short: Bongo Comics, Matt Groening’s comic book company, is hiring me to do the pencils for a short manga-style Simpsons comic. Also, I’ve been contacted by 20th Century Fox. They want me to do work for them somehow. I might get a job for the upcoming new Futurama series!

Why all this sudden success? Why are my childhood dreams coming true? This is madness, I tells ya! MADNESS!

EDIT: I don’t think all credit should go to just one website! My recognition is thanks to deviantART, Digg, Drawn, ABC News Australia, among many other websites and blogs. Not to mention word of mouth. Hence why I am thanking the Internet as a whole. 🙂

“Nurse” bleeds lonely hearts with flirty SMS – A Chinese company has duped about 400,000 people by creating the character of a young female nurse to solicit text messages and collect revenue from lonely men, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday. … Yang said “Wang Jing” would ask mobile phone users flirty questions before luring them unwittingly into subscribing to the nurse’s chat for 10-30 yuan (65 pence-2 pounds) a month, the paper reported. Yang, who would receive up to 2,000 text messages from people all over China in a single shift, said the nurse scam had reaped hundreds of thousands of yuan a month, the paper reported.

Japan school to test applicants’ chopstick skills – As if reading, writing and arithmetic weren’t enough, one Japanese high school now also plans to include chopstick skills on its entrance exams. The Hisatagakuen Sasebo Girls’ High School in western Japan will require a 10 minute test using chopsticks to transfer beads, marbles, dice and beans from one plate to another. Haha. Sounds like a skill my dad would love to show off.

Ford, Microsoft team up on new dashboard OS – I didn’t find this article too interesting, but it reminded me of the joke back in the day:

IF CARS WERE BUILT LIKE PC’S

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If G.M. had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got one-thousand miles to the gallon.” In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating,

If G.M. had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

  • For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
  • Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
  • Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart, and drive on.
  • Occasionally, executing a manner such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
  • Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought “Car95” or “CarNT”, but then you would have to buy more seats.
  • Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
  • The oil, water, temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.
  • New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
  • The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
  • Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
  • It would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a G.M. subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by fifty percent or more. Moreover, every time G.M. introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
  • You would press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

Have you seen Nepal? Not really, Peru says – Royal Nepal Airlines has apologised to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal.

Moms, kids arrested in R.I. school brawl – Two mothers and their 13-year-old daughters were arrested after police say one woman drove her already suspended daughter to school to fight a teenage rival. Haha.

Dracula’s castle is for sale for $78M – The Habsburg family said Wednesday that it wanted to sell a Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th century medieval ruler who inspired “Dracula” for 60 million euros, or $78 million, to the local authorities, an attorney said.

Disneyland – Club 33 (from Digg) – Apparently there’s a secret club at Disneyland and even Snopes.com claims its true: Club 33, open only to members and their guests, has been a part of New Orleans Square since 1967. Originally intended as a private facility where Walt Disney could entertain park sponsors and lessees, Club 33 did not open until several months after Disney’s death. The club’s facilities were made available to the public through limited memberships, and Club 33 has operated unobtrusively in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square ever since. However, it seems rather expensive to join…

CES 2007: HD DVD versus Blu-ray – The porn industry says HD DVD – Looks like we have our winner for the next gen video format war.

You’ve probably seen this picture around the net:
kevin carter - vulture

But do you know the story behind it? I was probably reading Digg and they mentioned this image and the photographer Kevin Carter. According to wikipedia:

The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a seemingly well-fed vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the girl:

“The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”

…

He later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened and helped the child. Journalists at the time were warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease. … Portions of Carter’s suicide note read:

“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

Flash Element TD (from Digg) – another fun flash game where you build towers to blow up enemies. However, unlike others where you need to defend your castle, this one deducts a life for each the enemy passes the checkpoint. Somewhat hard to play given the fact you can’t get extra lives (if you could, I didn’t figure out how).

Bee Movie teaser – was going through the new movie trailers and saw this hilarious teaser with Jerry Seinfeld with others playing insects on a car windshield.

The Mac (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) (from Digg) – a music video by Setty Smooth. Welcome to the world of Setty Smooth – where his quest to find love leads him on the most extraordinary of journeys . In this episode, Setty Smooth guides five fine ladies through an intimate video chat session, a little something he likes to call “cyber love”. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride as Setty drops his first single and video, “The Mac” from his unreleased debut love ballads album.

Sand sculptures in Lommel (from Digg) – tons of rather neat sand sculptures.

LEGO church (from Digg) – Lego creations continue to amaze us. TN4046 has sent this gallery of a … church, created entirely with LEGO bricks.

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BitTyrant

“BitTyrant” promises faster downloads at the expense of the whole – Everyone loves to get something for nothing, but there is usually a hidden cost associated with any promise of gain without effort. Such is the case with a new BitTorrent client called BitTyrant, whose authors claim will increase download speeds by an average of 70 percent over standard BT clients.

This is a selfish bittorrent client, but not selfish in the way meaning it won’t upload. BitTorrent has always been about sharing, but by being selective who you share with, you can find peers who “share faster”. Many people disregard this as a cheat for bittorrent, but I would actually like to see the statistics. Being selfish doesn’t mean you won’t share just as much. In fact, I can see being selfish (but uploading just as much) having an overall positive effect to the system. So instead of people connecting across the world to find peers, peers will hopefully be around the same proximity, giving an overall speed increase. Also, by being selfish, the number of seeds will increase rather quickly, providing more traffic later on in the game. Of course the world’s not perfect and there are people who stop uploading immediately after the transfer is done, but I’d really like to see the statistics on how the system.

I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but if you have, I’d like to hear how it has been for you. Do you notice a general speed increase? How does it compare to other clients such as uTorrent, BitComet, and Azureus?

Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 歴史 (rekishi) – history. Nothing to specially about this phrase. I just heard it on Kanon and it sounded very familiar to the Chinese counterpart, which made me take notice to this word. At first I kept hearing rikshi, but I knew that wasn’t possible in Japanese. So I tried all the permutations: rikishi, rikeshi, etc. Finally had to listening to it carefully a few times before I determined it was an ‘e’ instead of an ‘i’.

Looking To Establish Enthusiast Credibility, Toyota Previews FT-HS Concept (from Digg) – Toyota appears hell bent on re-establishing its credibility among enthusiasts. With the euthanizing of the Supra and MR2, there’s been little in the automotive juggernaut’s stable to quicken the pulse, but recent announcements like Lexus’ forthcoming “F” lineup should help reinvigorate the brand with driving aficionados. As should the FT-HS Hybrid Sports Concept previewed here. This car looks sweet! Plus it’s a Hybrid!

NETS MADE BY SPIDERS FED ON DRUG-DOSED FLIES (from RayAlome) – These spiderwebs are woven by spiders on drugs such as LSD, msecaline, hashish, and caffeine. The caffeine one looks the worse, but apparently caffeine is a pesticide.

50 Reasons – why its great to be a Guy!! (from Digg) – Here’s a few I liked and found funny include:

  • Your bathroom lines are 80 percent shorter.
  • You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
  • You can be showered and ready in 10 minutes.
  • Wedding plans take care of themselves.
  • You can be president.
  • Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
  • If something mechanical didn’t work, you can bash it with a hammer and throw it across the room.

Calf with two faces born at Va. farm – One of the newest arrivals at Kirk Heldreth’s dairy farm is drawing crowds. A calf with two faces was born Dec. 27 at Heldreth Dairy Farm, and word has spread in southwest Virginia as residents flock to his farm. Are mutations occurring everywhere nowadays? Or is it just being reported more?

Air Hockey (from Digg) – a fun little flash game. A bit difficult to control though, or maybe I just suck.

Samorost2 (from Digg) – I saw my brother playing this over winter break and it looked mildly fun. It’s one of those where you click random objects to advance to the next page. Sometimes you have to click on them in a particular order. A fun little short flash game.

Brainiac – Crane Game (from Geiger) – this video shows you how to beat the claw game. Apparently each crane has 2 settings, how many losses before a win and how strong the grip is. Interesting watch. I’d like to see it perform in person.

Japanese put their New Year resolutions in ink – I just wanted to point out that little girl’s calligraphy is amazingly good.

NowNow (from Digg) – a new service by Amazon.com where you ask it a question and real people will help you research for the solution and within 24 hours, you should will get up to 3 replies back. Pretty nifty. It currently requires an invite to try it out. If you’ve gotten an invite and have tried out the system, I’d like to hear your feedback.

Inventor of instant noodles dies at 96 (from RayAlome) – Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96. My favorite instant noodles is still Nissin’s 出前一丁, which apparently is the company he founded. Favorite flavor is the original: sesame seed. Many people miscall instant noodles as ramen as they’re not the same thing. It can be called instant ramen. Calling instant ramen as ramen is like calling instant coffee as coffee.

Price Protectr (from Digg) – Ever buy stuff from stores that offer a 30 day price protection guarantee? If they lower their price within 30 days of when you purchased it, they’ll refund you the difference. Sounds great… except how often do you remember to the check price again? Now you don’t have to. Let Price Protectr do it for you! It’s free. It’s easy. It’s free and easy money. How often do you get that offer? A very useful service. I’ve used Refund Please and Amazon Price Drop Tracker and they’re quite useful. Amazon.com’s price drop policy is actually very easy to utilize. If within 30 days of your purchase, if Amazon.com drops the price on the item, you’re entitled for a refund of the difference. All it takes it just a short form to fill out. I wonder why they just don’t automatically refund you the amount. I guess that’d be asking too much. The stores that this new service supports include: Amazon, Backcountry.com, Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Future Shop, Jenson USA, Office Max, Sears, or Target.

Water Cooling Computers With A Swimming Pool (from Digg) – An interesting project where he pumps in water from his swimming pool to cool his system. He says there’s really not much to worry about the chlorinated water, but I still have a weird feeling about it. Plus the fact there’s also a bunch of other junk in the swimming pool.

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Aim Ad Hack 5.2

I finally installed Aim Ad Hack 5.2 on my machine at home. I TS into that machine and use AIM as the file transfer utility. However, because AIM has an animated gif for the ad, it really lags when the AIM buddylist is not minimized. So I finally got pissed enough, I decided to give Aim Ad Hack a try. To my surprise, this is an all in one deal. You don’t even need to install AIM 6.0 separately. It’ll even download the correct version of AIM that it supports for you.

Along with ad disabling, there’s also the removal of the other crap like Viewpoint player, AOL Desktop, etc. There’s also these 2 plugins that it comes with. Some location plugin and some facebook plugin. At first it seems somewhat neat, but the fact that I have to login manually into facebook every time I sign onto AIM was rather tedious. Same with the location plugin where it forced you to select a location every time you signed in. The facebook plugin does have its function. Whenever someone updates their profile or when someone writes on their wall, you get this little notification box.

All in all, it was a pleasant experience installing Aim Ad Hack.

Random Crap:

I’d like to apologize beforehand if I credit the incorrect source. I have random crap queued up since Christmas and am barely rolling it out.

Japanese word of the day: 縫いぐるみ or 縫い包み (nuigurumi) – stuffed animal or plush toy. I was watching Kanon and Sayuri got a big stuffed ant-eater for Mai’s birthday. At first I though she said muigurumi or muigumi, but JDIC didn’t have anything that sounded like that. I finally tried searching in the opposite direction and searched for the word ‘plush’ and got nuigurumi instead. Here’s how you say you want a plushy: 縫いぐるみがほしい (nuigurumi ga hoshii). If you haven’t figured out yet, sticking “ga hoshii” after a noun means you want it (i.e. aisu curi-mu ga hoshii = I want ice cream)

Parasite ‘turns women into sex kittens’ (from Digg) – A COMMON parasite can increase a women’s attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

Consumerist.com chunk moved to new entry.

I was found UserFriendly comic strip rather funny and wanted to share it.

Q: What do you call someone who blogs a few days and never blogs again, filling the web with dreck?
A: Since the internet is a bunch of tubes, may I suggest the term “clogger”.

PlayStation 3 kiosks freezing up … on purpose! (from Digg) – I love this response:

“So dude over there,” I said pointing to the busy clerk, “says he keeps the kiosk off because it keeps freezing up.”
“Nope. No it doesn’t.”
“Well, actually, yeah. It does. I’ve seen it happen myself.”
“No. It doesn’t. We did that on purpose,” he said.
“You make the entire console lock up on purpose because … why?”
“We do that so that people won’t play it all day long,” he explained. “Specifically during Motorstorm, we made it freeze up a lot.“

A real Christmas story – A Hong Kong schoolboy who died in a traffic accident has brought festive hope to at least seven other patients through the rare mass donation of a large number of his vital organs. Fourteen-year-old Miu Chi-ho died from brain injuries after being hit by a bus several days ago, but doctors were able to save the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, skin, bones and corneas of the healthy and athletic teen-ager. “There were at least seven recipients of the organs,” said a spokeswoman with Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority.

Prizes for prostitute-free New Year – The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.

A tale of two cities for confused tourist – A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site. Ouch!

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Viva Piñata

So I purchased Viva Pinata from the company store before I left for Christmas, but didn’t really have a chance to play it till now. All I’ve got to say is MY PIÑATAS ARE SO CUTE!!! It’s basically the first kids game for the Xbox 360 and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. It reminds me of Sim Farm, but 10,000x cuter. You plant fruits and trees and grass and nuts and flowers, and these attract piñatas to your garden. After your garden completes a certain set of requirements (i.e. having green grass), they become your piñata (or more like a pet). After they become yours, you get to command them around. If you have 2 or more, you get to make them have baby piñatas.

The only sad thing about this game, is that some piñatas are carnivores and they have to eat other piñatas. Like in order to get my bird piñatas to have a baby bird piñata, one of the requirements was that they eat a worm piñata. Sometimes these piñatas get into a fight and you can whack them or sprinkle them with water, or else you end up with a sick limping piñata which you have to call a doctor to come and it’ll feed it medicine.

Other times, I attracted a mouse piñata and the snake piñata comes and eats it. Thank god you only really attract 2 of each kind (so they can mate), so I ended up losing 2 mouse piñatas and getting 2 more.

Part of the game requires you to sell the piñatas to make money, but they’re just so cute that I can’t bear to sell any yet. It was EXTREMELY hard for me to tell one of my piñatas to eat another my piñata, but it’s just part of the the game.

Did I mention HOW CUTE these piñatas are? They’re SO CUTE!!! They’re even cuter than the 5 minutes I watched the cartoon for.

Anyway, it was either posting random crap or playing Viva Piñata, and you know which one I opted for.

Last but not least, I wanted to stick this in somewhere. A few days ago, the 1st 4 episodes of 24 – Season 6 was leaked. Please visit your nearest bittorrent site to satisfy that hunger. I’m guessing they were planning to air 4 episodes over one weekend like for Season 5, but ooops…

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Christmas Vacation

Don’t think I got a chance to say it earlier, but HAPPY NEW YEAR!

My Christmas vacation comes to an end tomorrow when I head back to Seattle. It’s been a fun 2 weeks. Spent most of my time sleeping and eating and relaxing. Didn’t really get anything that interesting for Christmas, but I did get myself a TomTom GO 700 Portable GPS Navigation during the American Express My Wishlist promotion for $300 (with a potential $100 rebate). It’s pretty neat, though I find myself using that screen to drive instead of looking out the windshield when I was playing with it. It has that 3D mode and it feels like I’m driving in a video game. Other stuff I got included some gift cards, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, some new clothing, and this really cool dragon puzzle thingy (picture to come later).

I also hung out with a bunch of friends during this vacation. SueOn and I went Christmas shopping the day after Christmas at the Citadel and the place wasn’t as crazy as I would’ve imagined. Then again, we went around 11am, so maybe all the good deals that were supposed to happened at 7am was already over.

Speaking of shopping, I went to Fry’s for the 3rd time to purchase a wireless bridge. My uncle’s setup needed a bridge to connect his Slingbox with wireless router. Searching on Fry’s.com for “bridge” resulted quite a few available wireless bridges, however I was shocked that they didn’t have any bridges available in the retail store. The closest thing they carried were wireless print servers. By default, most wireless routers don’t come with client/bridge mode. I didn’t really have time for something to be shipped, so I was contemplating if it was better to go with Ethernet through power outlets or a wireless print server. Both were $100. I ended up getting the wireless print server (Netgear WGPS606) as it had a whole bunch of extra features. I’m still shocked they didn’t carry a simple wireless bridge in the largest electronic store.

Anyway, back to meeting with friends. I met up with Ungsunghero and chilled at his new place and had dinner. It’s been a year since I’ve seen him and it was really fun catching up.

Then Decathanerd, Cari and I took a 3 day trip up to north California. Our initial intention was to visit Mechy, but he apparently had a “vague” memory of trying to booking tickets to fly home on Sunday, but ended up getting tickets for Monday because Sunday was full. It was a shame since I haven’t seen Mechy in quite a long time and was hoping to see him again this trip. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saw tons of cool fishes and stuff. Decathanerd was testing out his new Nikon 10MP digicam which took some really nice pictures. My pictures will be uploaded shortly (probably when I get back, since my upload speed here sucks). We also met up with some friends and played on Cari’s new Nintendo Wii. It was really fun. Now if I can just find a deal… We visited Berkeley on our last day to check out the new buildings. Unfortunately we visited Berkeley on New Year’s Eve and due to our unfortunate luck, every place we wanted to go to was close (i.e. Student store, Sweet Hearts, gellato place, Quickly, Yogurt Park).

We got back around 10ish and I met up with some Mark Keppel friends to break into the new year. JoeHK, DNG, Kyle, Glendia, LilSneezy, MMouse, Vvorivi, Ohfuee, Norybic and I all counted down and cheered with apple cider, though some had theirs spiked. We went to Garden Cafe afterwards and just chilled and chatted. We went back to Glendia’s place afterwards and basically gossiped about everything. Glendia even busted out the year book and we went through it telling stories of things I never knew.

The day after, SueOn came back from Minnesota and he tried to get a group of people to have dinner with me, but it being last minute and all, not too many people made it. Though the food at Tofu House (Korean BBQ) was really good.

Afterwards, I met up with Ohfuee, CDPlayer, and Decathanerd and we went bowling. I was rather pathetic (probably since I haven’t bowled in such a long time), I got 68 followed by 58 or something like that. It was rather disappointing. We went over to ABC Cafe and chilled till they told us that we needed to move our car and that’s when we realized it was 3am already.

I did have to apologize to GwaGwasan and LilPebbly because they had called me the previous day asking if they could come over and give me some snowballs they had made, and I ‘promised’ I called back when I got home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do so since I came back at 3am and had totally forgotten about this the next morning. They decided to call me again and I felt really bad for having not called back. They dropped by around 10 today and gave me these cookies (called snowballs apparently) which were really good. It was like cookies with pecan nuts covered with powered sugar. Yummmm. We chatted for quite a bit and it was nice to see them again.

All in all, my break’s been great. Too bad I have to go back. 🙂