Category: Music

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New Music

I’ve purchased 2 new tracks from iTunes after I heard them on the radio and really liked the tune. They’ve been played back and forth between one another (50+ times already).

Nelly Furtado – Say It Right (YouTube Music Video)

nelly furtado - loose - cd album cover

Lyrics: (from Complete Album Lyrics)

In the day
In the night
Say it all
Say it right
You either got it
Or you don’t
You either stand or you fall
When your will is broken
When it slips from your hand
When there’s no time for joking
There’s a hole in the plan

Oh you don’t mean nothing at all to me
No you don’t mean nothing at all to me
Do you got what it takes to set me free
[ these lyrics found on http://www.completealbumlyrics.com ]
Oh you could mean everything to me

I can’t say that I’m not lost and at fault
I can’t say that I don’t love the light and the dark
I can’t say that I don’t know that I am alive
And all of what I feel I could show
You tonite you tonite

From my hands I could give you
Something that I made
From my mouth I could sing you another brick that I laid
From my body I could show you a place God knows
You should know the space is holy
Do you really want to go?

Rihanna & Sean Paul – Break It Off (YouTube Music Video)

rihanna - a girl like me - cd album cover

Lyrics: (from eLyrics)

[Sean Paul]
Break It Off
Breakin it off
And settin it off in da real way
Makin da girls dem chill dey mind
Makin dem have a good time
Ya man
SPZ long side RiRi
Come down now Rihanna
Tek it to dem Tek it to dem girl

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (most definitely)
Set if off boy
And make me hot all ova my body
(Break it off, take it off, miss take it off) (Break it off tonight) (Yo)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (yo, yo)
Set it Off boy (yeah, yeah)
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yo)

[Verse 1]
Struggle and pain wha she fell all de while
And she want a good man to give her de style
Wild child
So she dere pon me file
It’s a long time now me wha plow de sile
Plow de sile meh car run run like de nile
And de most energy meh whan gi her tonight
Give her tonight
Gan make she feel right
Make she fly like a kite that reach a new height
Ah we give it to de gyal dem
Make dem reel up and bawl
And make dem start call
Anytime she want it back she ha fi call Dutty Paul
Admittin it on de spot I know de real Sean Paul
When de traits so great
Cuz she feelin top up and tall wat de ting say

[Refrain]
Break it off boy (immediate if not before)
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (pumba)
Set if off boy
And make me hot all ova my body
(Break it off, take it off, yo miss take it off) (Break it off tonight) (Yo)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (yo, yo)
Set it Off boy (yeah, yeah, yo yo, yo a yo, RiRi, SPZ)
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yo, yo)

[Verse 2]
No doubt
Gyal u shoulda know SP and a scout(?)
Naughty sweat so shout(?)
Make ya bawl out (shout)
Make ya holla me gah give affection in your direction
We go all out
Gyal, just follow we if ya love energy
If ya whan pedigree
Cruise like Penelope
Make a see yuh just bounce wit de Dutty Lee
We keep givin you de Q to de U to de A (yea) to de L to de I to de T to de Y
Girl I got to try (try)
Take yuh booty make you reach to de S.K.Y.
Woman I got to say (say)
Da way u move is makin me hype
Girl cuh yuh know say yuh S to de E to de X to de Y (Pumba Pumba)

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (sexiness)
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body (yo, yah go yo, no doubt)
Break it off tonight (yo RiRi)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty (Blaze up on no rain no stress)
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight (yea, yo, ya yo)

[Rihanna]
Boy (Uh huh)
The way you push up on me I
Whan get da roughest wine I dun know ya like (ay, yo, ay)
Fuh sho we gonna break it off tonight (yoga macchugga uh)
Ooooo boy
We really shouldn’t waste no time (sing it)
Come let me back up on ya dancehall’s tight (bring it)
And I’m hopin baby u don’t mind
Cuz I really wanna break it off tonight (instantaneous)

[Refrain]
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty (ay)
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body (baby girl, yo, baby girl)
Break it off tonight (yo give it up give it up sen on)
Break it off boy
Cuz ya got me feelin naughty (yo)
I wanna know boy
If I could be ya shawty
Set it off boy
Make me hot all ova my body
Break it off tonight

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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…?

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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 milk - mario yoshi copy
Wahaha Calcium Milk blatantly copies the Mario/Yoshi combo (from Digg)

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Random Crap

Pictures From the Sky (from Digg) – Very pretty pictures. They appear to have been taken from YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND.ORG.

Bar Code Clock (from Digg)

Massive Pound-And-A-Half Rats Infest KFC/Taco Bell In The West Village – They are big. A pound or a pound and a half. Rats! Plump, healthy-looking and oh-so-agile. CBS 2 cameras caught dozens of them early Friday morning through the window of this closed KFC-Taco Bell in the West Village. And now CBS 2 has learned that the Department of Health will keep the restaurant closed until it can reinspect it. The video shows these big rants running around KFC. This KFC was in fact operational, and was opened even last night. Yahoo! News has more information about it.

No need to diet AND exercise to lose weight? – – A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise. … Thirty-five overweight but otherwise healthy adults — 16 men and 19 women — completed the 6-month study. Twelve were assigned to a diet-only group; they reduced their calorie intake by 25 percent. Twelve were assigned to diet plus exercise; they reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their exercise by 12.5 percent. The remaining 11 subjects made no significant diet or exercise changes. Redman and colleagues found that the diet-only group and the diet plus exercise group lost roughly the same amount of weight, albeit by different means. They lost about 10 percent of their body weight, 24 percent of their fat mass and 27 percent of their abdominal “visceral” fat — the deep internal fat linked to heart disease risk.

Meetings make us dumber, study shows (from Digg) – People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests. Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others. It’s not just “two heads aren’t better than one”, it’s “two heads are worse than one”.

Technical Support in Medieval Times (from MS newsgroup) – Shows what happened to scholars when scrolls were upgraded to books and the support they needed to use the new system. Hilarious skit.

PS3 Song (from MS newsgroup) – A rather funny parody song making fun of Sony and the PS3. The song is called “How To Kill A Brand” and this person just took the song and added a slideshow behind it. The song it’s parodying is The Fray – How To Save A Life.

**********GAMER CAST NETWORK**********

“How to Kill a Brand” by Doc Adams.

****I DID NOT MAKE THIS SONG****

I added the photos and made it into this video but the song is all Doc Adams.

*Puts on Flame Suit*

I found the song at GamerCast Network: How To Kill A Brand
(to save as mp3 right click and save as)

I want to offer a thanks to Doc Adams for endorsing this video. He did a great job I only put it here for all you to see. enjoy 🙂

******UPDATES********
Official name of the song is “How to Kill a Brand” -By Doc Adams and he has graciously given me the green light to keep this on here.

-Thanks to everyone for the feedback. If I would have know it was going to get this much attention I would have spent more time on the editing. Hopefully next time the video will be as good as the song. Thanks again.

***I DID NOT MAKE THIS SONG***

LYRICS

Step 1, You make your console cost the most,
You Beat your chest and proudly Boast,
Despite no good exclusive games
You make a bunch of ridiculous claims,

Then ignore our need to play online
Don’t make it fun like Xbox Live
Use Blue Ray, Which I don’t need
Now you’re getting your ass kicked by the Wii

Sony, you went wrong, with your PS3
I’ll just keep playing my 360
Hope this song has helped, you understand
Now you know, How You Killed Your Brand.

Phil Harrison yeah you know best
Except you didn’t Beta Test
Sure I can surf the net
But I can’t find my Gaming Friends

You Say Halo 3 Don’t worry you
Instead you offer Killzone 2
But Killzone 1 sucked before
So what made you think we wanted more?

Repeat Chorus..

Phil Quotes

Repeat Chorus

Phil Quote.

Photo Illusions (from Digg) – A photographer went around the world with objects and photos and realigned them to take the picture, showing you the original merging into the scenery of the current.

Smart Guys Date in Parallel (from Digg) – So a few days ago, I was on the phone, whining to my dad about throwing a Fifth Annual F—— Valentine’s Day party and trying to figure out my personal life. My dad listened thoughtfully, and then began explaining to me what I was doing wrong. The problem, he said, is that I date girls serially. His diagrams are hilarious! Tera then asks, “so… women are appliances?” I replied, “They’re resistors. Guys are batteries and we send the love current through them.”

Windows Vista (from Digg) – This set contains my work from the Microsoft Photoshoot I did late 2005 – early 2006. My mission was to create genuine images to be a part of the Windows Vista Wallpaper collection. Two shots from the Photoshoot (first two in the set) made it to Vista’s Wallpaper Collection, while many others remain here, and waiting to be uncovered. I couldn’t be honored enough for the privilege to work with Microsoft on this fantastic project. Special thanks go to Jenny Lam, and Luciana Misura from the MSX Design Team for this wonderful opportunity. Interview with me by Long Zheng about The Vista Photoshoot. You can download High Resolution (1920×1200) versions of most of these images on my website (www.hamaddarwish.com)

Aerial Photographs of Mexico City (from Awesome Pics of Mexico City) – This are a few of the pictures that I have taken while working as a Helicopter Pilot over Mexico City. The best and most recent Mexico City Stock Aerial Photography, I hope you find them interesting.

A few interesting test answers provided by kids today: (from Digg)

how to determine gender of a catadding imaginary objects in the system to get the desired resultwhy did the boss fire him?

New Zealand fishermen land massive squid – New Zealand fishermen may have caught the largest Colossal squid ever found — weighing around 450kg (992 pounds) and with rings the size of tyres.

largest collosal squid

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Pachelbel Rant

SueOn sent me this video a few days ago: Pachelbel Rant – A comedian rants about how much it sucks to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D on a cello. Recorded live at Penn State, this piece by comedian/musician Rob Paravonian has been a favorite on the Dr. Demento Show. The comedian/musician is Rob Paravonian and you can see more of him at RobPRocks.com.

The comedy sketch was hilarious. I’m a big fan of Canon in D as it’s a very soothing song. Also, if you know me well, I like music for their melody and not for the lyrics. That’s why I generally don’t like rap, though there are exceptions. Given that I really like Canon in D, all the example songs that use the same chords from Canon in D are songs that I really like. Even if I haven’t heard of the song, I found myself enjoying it.

The list includes:

I think I like every single song on that list (even the ones I’ve just barely heard). In fact Green Day’s Basket Case is one of my favorite songs and Dookie was one of the 1st CDs I ever owned. I actually got introduced to Green Day from Edward back in 4th grade. I guess the melody and chords of Canon in D are just too good.

Rob also has a video blog (or vlog as they call it nowadays): Life as a Comic and the videos he’s posted are actually quite funny:

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Dryer

I got my Whirlpool dryer installed a week ago. Haven’t actually gotten to use it yet though. It was pretty big and took more space than my old one, due to a fatter exhaust pipe. However, now my dryer and washing machine are matching. My next laundry is next weekend so I’ll report back to you how long it takes me to dry my clothes.

Random Crap:

Porn movie causes trouble for two men (from Digg) – Police made contact with the neighbor, a 39-year-old man, who told them he heard a woman screaming from upstairs and feared she was being sexually assaulted. The subject said he grabbed the 39-inch sword, went upstairs and kicked in the door to investigate. … The victim told his neighbor, and later showed police the evidence, that the noise came from a pornographic movie he was watching.

OpenCola – Open Source Coca Cola (from Digg) – OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License. The original webpage opencola.com is no longer available and has been replaced with a link farm, but you can find all the information you need on the Wikipedia page.

Sex in fast lane halts traffic on Israeli road – Israeli police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex.

Cyanide and Happiness – STD – At first I didn’t get the joke. What the heck is “the bar”? What are they talking about? But after Angelus mentioned it might be the censorship/mosaic rendering, it made much more sense.

Dave Devries The Monster Engine – Art (from Digg) – This guy apparently takes kid drawings and make the “cool” or as I would say coolify it. Pretty neat.

Tersumus eraser (from Digg) – The palm-size Tersumus eraser is shaped like the well-known key on a computer keyboard. Interestingly enough, I’ve never seen such a big “delete” key on any keyboard. Usually, they’re the default size on in the little island where my insert, home, end, page up, and page down keys are. My “backspace” key on the other hand does resemble that size.

tersumus eraser - delete key

How did the whole “Tooth Fairy” thing get started? (from Digg) – The Straight Dope tackled this topic back in 2004. According to their crack staff, “The tooth fairy as we now know her didn’t make an appearance until the early 1900s.” Her popularity may have hit the mainstream in 1949 when a popular children’s story by Lee Rogow was published.

Vista Ice Office (from Digg) – There appears to be a couple more here on this Russian site. From the Digg comments I also found these links: Windows Vista Week One Roundup and The Ice House That Gates Built. According to them:

So, about that giant ice house that Microsoft put up in Dundas Square: apparently 270,000 pounds of ice went into the construction of the 1,800 square foot structure, which includes a fully sculpted kitchen, dining room, study, living room, two bedrooms and bathroom all wired-up with televisions and computers (real, as opposed to of the ice variety) running demos of Vista and Office 2007. It’s lucky that the weather has finally decided to act wintery, because expensive electronics don’t tend to get along with melting slush.

The house is open to the public between 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. today through Saturday. Highlights include the working ice toilet paper holder, ice fire place, ice microwave, and the sweet ice stereo system. Bring mittens.

I remember watching some travel show at Derek’s house and they show this hotel made completely of ice (you even sleep on an ice bed) that is all year round. Crazy! I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but it’s somewhere in Canada.

Teton Fire (from Digg) – Brilliant morning color over the Teton Mountains from the west. 5xp hdr (I put the technique in a note below.) Wow! This is a really pretty photo. Would love it as a my wallpaper, but unfortunately, it’s not 1920×1200.

Table Hockey…On Real Ice (from Digg) – WiseGreek decided to build a mini hockey table using real ice to “see if the basic idea would work on real ice as opposed to using the air bearing principle.” Video after the jump. Pretty neat project.

Zelda Reorchestrated (from Digg) – ZREO stands for Zelda Reorchestrated. It is our goal to transcribe the musical masterpieces that you have heard in the greatest video game series ever created: The Legend of Zelda! Our goal is to give each and every song from The Legend of Zelda series a realistic and atmospheric sound with the quality that you would expect from such film composers as John Williams, Howard Shore, and James Horner. We don’t look to seek profit or fame. This is merely our own form of artistic expression that stems from The Legend of Zelda. If it weren’t for Zelda, ZREO wouldn’t exist. So we are grateful to have such a legendary video game series that can pull so much inspiration out of us. I’ve been listening to some of these Zelda songs on repeat. You can download them too if you want.

Tiny duckling has rare mutation: 4 legs – A rare mutation has left the eight-day-old duckling with two nearly full-sized legs behind the two he runs on. Nicky Janaway, a duck farmer in New Forest, Hampshire, 95 miles southwest of London, showed the duckling to reporters Saturday. Crazy! There’s so much mutations recently. Is it a sign that evolution will take it’s next big jump?

duck mutation with four (4) legs

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Ys – The Oath in Felghana

So I’ve been playing a new game called Ys – The Oath in Felghana (which is basically Ys III), a Japanese Action RPG. You can watch the trailer here. Goshtic first introduced me to Ys awhile back when he was playing Ys I and Ys II and uploaded some gameplay videos to me. The gameplay was awesome and really neat, but unfortunately it was in Japanese and given that it’s an RPG, it either meant I had to cheat (look at walkthrough) or not understand what I need to do.

However, Angelus brings to my attention a few days back that there have been people who have been translating the Ys series. The newest fan-translated is Ys – The Oath in Felghana. The person who has been working on these patches is Nightwolve. Unfortunately, the Felghana patch is still being worked on and the final version isn’t out yet. Unfortunately the beta translation patch for The Oath in Felghana isn’t posted on their site, but you should be able find it at your closest bittorrent index. The final translation patch for Ys I and Ys II are however posted, which I might get to after I finish The Oath in Felghana. A new Ys game seems to be released or will be releasing soon called Origin.

The game so far is like all typical RPGs. You’re some adventurer traveling through cities. Monsters started appearing out of nowhere. You help and you start to get to the bottom of this. You realize you have a special power and you get strong. The cool thing about Action RPGs is the fact it’s real-time and not turn based. So you just keep whacking enemies until they die.

I did hit a problem initially where the screen would black out and I was trapped inside this window. It didn’t respond to CTRL+ALT+DEL or WIN+L. I knew my machine wasn’t frozen because I could still see some mouse movement. Doesn’t this sound exactly like something else? ;p I wonder if desktop switcher would’ve worked here. I logged into another box of mine and remotely killed the application and was returned to my regular screen.

After searching online for the problem, apparently it has issues with ffdshow: Bug Report: FFDSHOW incompatibility. If you go into ffdshow’s video decoder configuration, in Info & Debug, add “YSF_Win.exe;” into Don’t use ffdshow in. After setting that, the game started up fine.

Random Crap:

Bathe in chocolate this Valentine’s Day – A Japanese spa is offering the perfect aphrodisiac for Valentine’s Day — chocolate baths. I’ve always wanted to jump into that chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Incredible Hand Made Sunglasses – Today you can see another “How to” video, but a video that will blow you away.You will see how people in China can make some amazing sunglasses.Now we have factories that make this work but China is providing what every company is looking for “low cost manufacturing”, that can maximize their profits.Now you can figure out how some people sell sunglasses just for $2.00.

Dishmaker: Never Wash Another Dish? (from Digg) – We actually linked to this story from Treehugger about a year ago, but with the advent of YouTube there is renewed interest in the product…at least to me. While the dishmaker appears unwieldy, this “dishwasher sized” apparatus can actually replace cabinets worth of dishes by storing them as flat disks. Only a small amount of pressure and heat is necessary to reshape the acrylic into a bowl (and back).

How To Open A Jar – The video features several different methods for opening stubborn jars, complete with scary zombie-like infomercial-style clapping as each jar falls. 3 easy ways to open a tightly sealed jar. I like the rubber band method.

Confessions of an eBay opium addict – A pleasure trip to the Internet auction site sent me into the hell of opium addiction. Could death be the only redemption? A guy gets addicted to poppy seeds which he was able to acquire in bulk from a “seed” seller.

We Didn’t Start This Website! (from Deadlock) – I don’t usually post YTMND (which I found out means You’re the Man Now, Dog), but this one’s tune was catchy and is a compilation of all the other YTMND websites.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire – What is the first name of George W. Bush? (from Digg) – This is the German version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? She was asked “Wie heisst George W. Bush mit Vornamen?” which I can only assume is the $100 (equivalent) question. That question translates to “What is George W. Bush’s first name?” After using 50/50 and doing a audience poll, she still got it wrong. I’m also very shocked with the response where 42% of the audience thought George W. Bush’s first name is Edmund. Did we ever have a president named Edmund?

Valued Customer… (from Digg) – After hearing yet another story of someone hitting the “invisible wall” on Comcast and getting the boot for a year, as a valued Comcast customer (I pay one of my scripters Internet bill, so the account is in my name) I decided to see what Comcast support officially had to say about the issue. I made up a story about a friend that had been booted off, and after a few minute wait to get into chat, the below transpired. Sorry about the image, it turns out you cant copy/paste a Comcast chat after it has finished. (don’t mind the spelling and typos, I was using my notebook on my lap. I’m sure you can all read “typing fast speak” anyways) From the conversation: While I am not able to locate a cap, I have been informed that it is around 200 Gigabytes in a month. Hmmmm, I’ve been awfully close.

Hot or Not Composite Images (from RayAlome) – a project where they grabbed all the images and ratings from hotornot.com and did an average composite of each rating range. The average face (as psychology also claims) is rather cute. 🙂

Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect (from Digg) – Google quietly added a small feature to Gmail this week called Mail Fetcher. When that feature launched, Gmail became perfect. Mail Fetcher allows users to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings. Gmail will now work in a very similar way as Outlook does on the PC desktop. This is confirmed on Google’s website.

I’ve been using Kayak.com to find cheap airfares, but the other day Liam asked me what’s a good site, I recall reading an article about Farecast which predicts Airfare prices. I personally haven’t used it, but I’ve heard good stuff about it, where it can usually predict quite well when the cheapest time to get airplane tickets is.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us (from Digg) – Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes. A very interesting video with a catchy tune, using browsing and text to show the evolution of text and the web. A higher quality version is available for download here. Please note that this is the second draft and the final version will not be available until late February after I review all comments and revise the video. Please return for a new download link at that time.

He Said, She Said (from FuzzyWuzzy) – WINNER “Best Music Video” in the YouTube Underground contest! buy our debut EP “Malfunction” here: http://store.imusicast.com The story of a loafer who sits around and watches TV all day and a girlfriend who threatens to leave him if he doesn’t get off his ass and do something, is told via animated comic book. Inspired by the “Take On Me” video from the 80’s (back when MTV still showed videos), this video combines live action and animation to tell it’s tale. The video was written, directed, and animated by the band itself. Made on a ZERO dollar budget in an apartment in Oakland, Ca.

charleston style (from RayAlome) – the charleston to daft punk. thanks for the support, you may return to your dancing. A pretty good sync of this video: Charleston Demo — Al Minns & Leon James to what appears to be daft punk/techno music.

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Free Prizes for Playing the Xbox 360

Got an Xbox 360 and well, play games? According to Xbox Rewards: Take Your Gaming to the Next Level (from MS newsgroup), they’ll be awarding players based on how many GP gamer points they currently have. If you look at my side bar, I currently have 945. Pretty weak, I know, but I’m not really much of a gamer. The prizes will be distributed as follow:

  • Level 1 (0 – 4,999 annual Gamerscore): You are developing your skills and gaining experience. Take some time to get used to the program and learn your way around. The Challenges will typically be easier and the rewards smaller. Prizes include: The popular Xbox Live Arcade game Contra (rated: E10+) from Konami (Retail Value $5.00). Exclusive Old Spice Level 1 Xbox Rewards gamer picture. An experience upgrade to Xbox Rewards Level 2.
  • Level 2 (5,000 – 9,999 annual Gamerscore): We are going to turn up the heat a bit. You have proved that you know how to play and are willing to put in the gaming time to reap the benefits. The Challenges will get a bit more difficult. Never fear, the reward value goes up as well. Prizes include: The popular Xbox Live Arcade game Contra (rated: E10+) from Konami Exclusive Old Spice Level 2 Xbox Rewards gamer picture. 100 Microsoft Points. An experience upgrade to Xbox Rewards Level 3.
  • Level 3 (over 10,000 annual Gamerscore): This is an arena filled with the who’s who of gaming. We don’t want to claim that Level 3 is an exclusive club, but if you find yourself winning Challenges here, you’ve obviously pulled out the big guns, so enjoy while it lasts. Prizes include: The popular Xbox Live Arcade game Contra (rated: E10+) from Konami Exclusive Old Spice Level 3 Xbox Rewards gamer picture. 200 Microsoft Points. Old Spice T-Shirt (Estimated Retail Value $10.00). A copy of Fuzion Frenzy 2 game (rated: E10+) (Estimated Retail Value $50.00).

Unfortunately I doubt I’ll be able to reach 5k given that amount of time, but this program is rather neat. The registration begins on February 12th at www.xbox.com/rewards. Enjoy!

Random Crap:

if peter griffin had a real daughter
If Peter Griffin had a real daughter (from ApeChild)

12 second Cure for Hiccups (from Digg) – an interesting idea where you hold your breath while stretching and bending your abdomen. Personally the holding breath trick usually works. If not, I pretend to take gulps of air down my air pipe (simulating drinking gulps of water without breathing).

People have been asking me what the difference between XP and Vista is and I really can’t give much of a good answer. There’s better security, nicer UI, tons of revamped applications, etc. Others also have been asking me what the difference between the versions (Ultimate, Home, Business, etc) were. I found this site: Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate – Comparison. They do a pretty good comparison between the versions, showing you what each version has and what each version is missing.

I was watching this magic trick: Jeremy Wai – Shadow Card Magic and the after clicking on a few more videos, I ended up here: Easy Float and the music was captivating. It sounded very much like ERA, but if it was ERA then I should’ve heard of it before. Apparently not. The song was indeed ERA and it’s called Ameno (Remix) on their 1st album.

How the “Pavement Picasso” Does It (from MS newsgroup) – A time lapse video of Julian Beever creating the Aveeno Fountain of Youth chalk drawing in Union Square, NYC on 01/15/07. See a full gallery of Julian’s work at pavementpicasso’s photos. They also posted this video: Julian Beever ( The Amazing Art of Julian Beever ) – Take a look at The Amazing Art of Julian Beever. It is hard to believe what you are seeing. This video meets VPG standards. You’ve probably seen all those 3D pavement drawings or sometimes referred to as Virtual Street Reality. The 1st video shows you how one actually does it.

tesla coil - eye of sauron
The Eye of Sauron – Tesla Coils (from Tesla Downunder)

Transcript: U.S. ‘friendly fire’ video (from Derek) – The Sun newspaper in Britain has released what it says is a cockpit video from a U.S. fighter jet being used in the investigation of a “friendly-fire” incident in which a British soldier was killed. You can watch the videos here:The “friendly-fire” death of a British soldier in Iraq. (p1) and The “friendly-fire” death of a British soldier in Iraq. (p2). I was shocked with today’s technology that we’re still unable to correctly identified friendly units. There was a phrase in the transcript I wasn’t familiar with: Hey, POPOV34, abort your mission. You got a, looks we might have a blue on blue situation. According to Wikipedia: The U.S. and British military refer to these incidents as blue on blue,[2] which derives from military exercises where friendly forces are “blue” and enemy forces are “red”.

Windows Vista’s SuperFetch and ReadyBoost Analyzed (from B$) – Vista comes with two mechanisms that effectively reduce the time required to launch popular applications: SuperFetch analyzes your behavior and proactively puts applications into available main memory, so they can be launched quicker. Of course this requires as much main memory as possible, which is where the second feature engages: ReadyBoost allows expanding the main memory size by plugging in a USB 2.0 Flash drive. Although the data transfer performance of USB 2.0 devices cannot compete with modern hard drives, access times for Flash memory are literally nonexistent, making these devices a nice and particularly cheap choice. Derek’s been using ReadyBoost and has nothing but praise for it, but for the price of 1 stick of flash memory (free after rebate), I’d be definite to try out these features.

My name got posted in The Consumerist: House Burglar’s Advice For Hiding Money. 😉

All about your child’s allowance (from The Consumerist) – a very good guide on when to start teaching your kids about money and how to train them.

As soon as your child begins to express a sincere interest in material wants (as in, “I want that!”), it’s time for an allowance. Depending upon the child, that’s probably around the ages of 3 to 5.

The first mistake most parents make is starting too late. The majority of parents wait until their children are tweens (9 to 12 years old) and they miss out on the opportunity to discuss money with young children who are more apt to listen to, and take, their parent’s advice. By the time kids are teenagers, they have additional influences on their spending habits, including friends, advertisements, pop culture and the media.

Woman uses daughter’s key to ‘steal’ car – A college student who reported that his car was stolen got a surprise when he learned a woman had mistaken it for her daughter’s car and taken it- using her key. … Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong said key technology wasn’t as sophisticated two decades ago, and there were only so many ways to cut a key, making it possible for such a mix-up to occur. He said the company now has a microchip embedded in the keys for 90 percent of its vehicles that allows them to start only with the correct key.

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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.