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-relatedA 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 – DetergentBAN… 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 girlfriendA 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 ChecksWe 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.

Antivenom

At dinner the other night at Ruth’s Chris, Xyon brought up the topic if we knew how snake antivenin was made. None of use knew, so he tells us how they milk the snakes venom out of their fangs and inject a small amount of it into a horse. Apparently the horse’s immune system is a lot better than humans and given their large body mass, it was easier for them to produce antivenom for snake poison. Apparently from that point on, they just extract the antivenom from these horses. Rather neat!

Random Crap:

Iguana’s stubborn erection to get the chopMozart, an iguana with an erection that has lasted for over a week, will have his penis amputated in the next couple of days. Veterinarians at Antwerp’s Aquatopia had sought to treat the animal’s problem, but decided removal was the only solution because of the risk of infection. The good news for Mozart and his mates is that male iguanas have two penises. *shivers* I guess having a backup penis is always a good thing.

I have no idea why anyone would still use RapidShare given that 1 download/hr and the 2 minute wait before your download would start. There was a thread on Digg that introduced me to MediaFire and this new service really neat! The one I’ve been using for awhile now is Files.to. It’s a nice way to share 1 file to a bunch of friends without wasting your own bandwidth. The only advantage I see MediaFire having over Files.to is the fact there is no file size limit. Tera and HJO3 both mentioned to me that there was a 100MB file size limit which I missed initially. However, as I responded to them, with a tool like WinRAR where I can break any file into chunks and with their simultaneous download feature, it’s become a non-problem. I’ll admit it’s a bit more hassle, but come on, it’s free. I forget if there was a wait for Files.to, but even if there was, it was rather short and I could have multiple downloads at fast speeds. MediaFire has the best of all worlds. They don’t have a file size limit, simultaneous downloads, and no wait time!

Microwave zaps germs on sponges, study findsTwo minutes in a microwave oven can sterilize most household sponges, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. A team of engineering researchers at the University of Florida found that two minutes of microwaving on full power killed or inactivated more than 99 percent of bacteria, viruses or parasites, as well as spores, on a kitchen sponge. 2 days later: Microwave experiments cause sponge disastersThey described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. (Microwave zaps germs on sponges.) But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge. “Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off,” one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters. Hahahaha. Unfortunately, I think Reuters/CNN is to be blamed here. If you read this article: Microwave ‘sterilisers’ warning (from The Consumerist), it clearly advises users to do the following (twice): The researchers said people should only try to microwave damp sponges. … He recommended microwaving damp not dry sponges to minimise the risk of fire and to only microwave non-metal scrubbing pads. However, in the condensed version posted on Reuters/CNN, there is no such advice posted anywhere.

Humvee Driving In Iraqi Traffic (from Derek) – This is a really cool video of a Humvee driving through Iraqi traffic. In order to avoid insurgent attacks they cant stop or slow down, even if that requires some improvised driving. As Derek says, this is the reason to own a Humvee.

Try a Free Sample of Gillette Fusion (from SD) – A new Walmart promotion allowing you to get free Gillette Fusion razor (with 5 blades). It also brought me back to StartSampling, a site I used to get a bunch of freebies from:

Samples Ordered

  • Games for Windows Magazine 01/24/07 04:49 AM
  • Swiffer Duster® Sample & Coupon 01/24/07 04:48 AM
  • Herbal Essences Intensive Blends 03/13/03 03:36 AM
  • $1 Off Lysol Products 11/15/02 06:56 PM
  • Razor Defense™ by Neutrogena MEN 10/03/02 03:35 AM
  • Musician Dana Mase: Free Album* 04/26/02 05:20 AM
  • BIC® PLUS™ Shaver – Men’s 03/05/02 06:48 PM
  • Nescafé Coffee 01/14/02 09:15 PM
  • Fit Fruit and Vegetable Wash 04/18/01 12:19 PM
  • Twizzlers Twists 10/06/00 04:34 PM
  • 3D Movie Madness 09/22/00 05:29 PM
  • Cranberry Horseradish Coupon 09/18/00 04:27 PM
  • Sight Savers Lens Cleaners 09/03/00 11:14 PM
  • Airheads Candy 08/17/00 12:33 AM
  • Shout Wipes Stain Treater 07/17/00 05:27 PM
  • LifeSavers Wint O Green 07/15/00 05:11 PM
  • Slim Jim Snacks 06/21/00 07:02 PM

Boy’s screaming kills chickens, for crying out loudHundreds of chickens have been found dead in east China — and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog, state media reported on Wednesday. … A court ruled the boy’s screaming was “the only unexpected abnormal sound” and that 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.

I was watching the latest episode of 24 and was like OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Apparently Jack has more family! They first mentioned Jack’s father and I was like ooooh. Then they said he had a brother, and I was like OOOOOH. Then when they showed us who his brother was, I was like OH MY GOD! If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you MUST see it. Then they showed the brother’s wife and I was like is that who I think it is… no… is it really her? Apparently the actress playing the wife is the same actress that plays Nathan Petrelli’s wife from Heroes. Her name is Rena Sofer.

Japanese marine park captures rare shark on filmA species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 meters (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week. … Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive. Check out the the video. The shark is freaky!

Frozen Tidal Wave / Melting Glacier (from Digg) – really neat photos!

durex - happy father's day
Durex Condom Ad (from Squiffy’s House of Fun) – Happy Father’s Day.

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 bidGeorge 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 cakesThe 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!

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…

Origin of 二五仔

I was watching 賭場風雲 (Dicey Business) and 25 came into talk. Usually I don’t think much when they call people 二五仔 (literally means 2,5 person, but is slang for a snitch or traitor).

Anyway, they drugged this poor guy and started painting 25s on his face and body, and my sister asked me what’s 25. I told her it referred to 二五仔 because they believed he snitched on them. Then my sister asked me why 25 referred to a snitcher and I had no idea. At first I thought maybe it was because it’s easier to write instead of 厭仔, but it turns out there’s not such a phrase.

I asked my dad and he believes it refered to 2 5’s which is the number of fingers on your hand. People who snitch are like finger pointers. I decided to search for the phrase online to see if I could find the origin and I found these 2 links:

二五仔的由來?

至於「二五仔」則是出自一個坊間盛傳的故事,話說清朝年代,少林寺有一百零八位武僧,一名叫馬寧的,因犯事而被主持逐出少林寺,他懷恨在心,竟走到官府告密,透露少林寺的保安機密資料,包括洩露有民間反清份子為避官兵的追捕,逃入少林寺假扮僧侶,馬寧並帶領官兵火燒少林寺,追捕欽犯。有說法指馬寧是百多位武僧中輩份排行第七,另一則說他的武功之高是眾僧中排第七,結果,江湖中人便以馬寧出賣少林寺一事,將「七」字分拆為「二五」,再諷剌地叫他「二五仔」,並以「二五仔」統稱出賣兄弟者。

為甚麼是「二五仔」?

「二五」代表的其實是它們的總和—-「七」。故事須從火燒少林寺說起︰話說清朝康、雍年間,朝廷要徹底消滅反清復明的秘密會社,查得少林寺與天地會有千絲萬縷的關係,於是派兵前往剿滅。但需要有少林寺內奸策應,所以收買了武功排名第七的少林俗家弟子馬寧兒。馬寧兒窮凶極惡,犯下大罪,被逐出山門,含恨引清兵入山,火燒少林寺。秘密會社中人不恥其所為,日後便稱那些告密者、叛徒為二五仔 (指排第七的馬寧兒)。

According to the sources, 25 refers to the sum of its digits: 7.

During the Qing dynasty, there was a group of people called 天地會 (Heaven Earth Group) that wanted to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty. They were quite intertwined with the Shaolin temple. There was a monk in Shaolin named 馬寧 (Ma Ling) and he was exiled from the temple for commiting a crime. With hatred in his heart, he went to the government and snithced on the Shaolin temple and how they were hiding fugitives and the connections that they had with 天地會. The government sent an army and burned down the temple and from that day on, 馬寧 was known as a traitor. There were a total of 108 monks and they were ranked. 馬寧 was ranked number 7 and from that we have 二五仔 which is a Cantonese slang for snitch/traitor.

Random Crap

School board finds name hard to swallowSome Bay District School Board members have a problem with the proposed name for a new elementary school — Breakfast Point Academy. … “Pat and I want to know what the mascot is going to be,” Littleton asked. “The Croissants,” Sabiston answered. Board attorney Franklin Harrison suggested “The Biscuits.” Haha!

Wisconsin hunter bags deer with 7 legsRick Lisko hunts deer with a bow but got his most unusual one driving his truck down his mile-long driveway. The young buck had nub antlers — and seven legs. Lisko said it also had both male and female reproductive organs. “It was definitely a freak of nature,” Lisko said. “I guess it’s a real rarity.” Unfortunately they didn’t have a good photo of the whole deer.

death kitty and the fat man (from Cari) – the flash was really cute and really sad. though the kitty does becomes Death’s pet in the end, she’s not as cute as before.

What if you took the summary of Star Wars and changed all the character’s names into Harry Potter characters. This is what you’ll get (from Esca):
star wars harry potter exchange essay

Monzy performs at Stanford Univ. (from RayAlome) – Raw footage of a performance that “CS rapper” Monzy gave last summer outside Stanford University’s Computer Science building. This footage was shot for the documentary, NERDCORE FOR LIFE. Nerdcoreforlife.com A very geeky song called Kill -9 (dash nine).

Jerome Murat (from Digg) – A French performing artist that does a really AWESOME show. The music the orchestra is playing along is just pure harmony. He’s painted completely in white with some sort of port and does this little magic show where he has 2 heads and it’s really neat. I haven’t totally figured how he did it yet, but I’m pretty sure a hand was involved with the 2nd head. The solemn facial look and the movements just made the head look really alive. It’s really cute. In the end, he kisses the announcer on the cheek and leaves some white powder on her.

Humming Search – If you have a tune stuck in your head and don’t know what the song is nor the lyrics, you can hum into your microphone and this website claims to be able to tell you what the song is. I haven’t tried it yet, but that’s probably because I don’t have my microphone setup yet. If you try this with success, please let me know.

Dead crows scare away living crows – It’s pretty obvious that dead corpses scare away animals of the same species, unless you eat dead corpses (i.e. vultures), then it’s a happy scene.

Had a car crash? It’s all in the stars, study saysAccording to a study by InsuranceHotline.com, a Web site that quotes drivers on insurance rates, astrological signs are a significant factor in predicting car accidents. The study, which looked at 100,000 North American drivers’ records from the past six years, puts Libras (born September 23-October 22) followed by Aquarians (January 20-February 18) as the worst offenders for tickets and accidents Leos (July 23-August 22) and then Geminis (May 21-June 20) were found to be the best overall. That’s why my dad drives so slow. As a Capricorn, I’m goal oriented. They’re more concerned about the destination than the journey. They feel that the rules of the road are for other drivers to follow so that Capricorns can get to their destination faster. If insurance companies do use these statistics, go check out what they say about you at Car Carma

Family Guy Spoof on Mad TV (from Digg) – A spoof of Family Guy that aired on Mad TV. Hilarious spoof. They even have a real live version. There’s also Making of Family Guy (from Digg) and I’m surprised that Seth MacFarlane is the voice of so many characters. I was even more surprised the the voice of Meg was the girl from That ’70s Show.

Top 10 Gamer Cakes (from Digg) – As a gamer, I want to show my gamer pride, and what better way to do that than to adorn your celebratory cakes in a gamerly fashion. After hours upon hours of scouring the net, pouring through pages of cakes, skipping over numerous Cakemania images, and whatever the hell this is, I have sorted through the cream of the crop of the geekiest of the geek. Behold mortals, the top 10 gamer cakes. Here’s the story behind the gamer wedding cake: Have Your Games and Eat Them Too! (from Digg)

Gambia gives ex-presidents free holidays for lifeThe bill entitles ex-leaders of the West African nation to have three cars with drivers and fuel, holidays abroad each year, personal secretaries and 1 million CFA francs (1,000 pounds) a month, courtesy of the state. … A bird lover who often carries a ceremonial sword, Jammeh has said he wants to rule the former British protectorate — where 60 percent of people live on less than $1 (50 pence) a day — for another three decades. Sigh…

Lettuce ladies urge Kazakhs to go vegetarianTwo British animal rights campaigners clad in nothing more than bikinis made of lettuce leaves braved freezing temperatures on Tuesday to urge the people of Kazakhstan to stop eating horses and go vegetarian. You can check out the video: Vegetarian Protestors or check out the gallery of girl protestors from PETA.

Peeking at your gifts? You’re not alone-surveyCan’t resist a quick shake and peep at that present under the Christmas tree? You’re not alone, with a U.S. survey finding one in five adults are present peekers.

Humping Dog (from Digg) – This is Humping Dog. USB MEETS LOVE. Only humping,no function. I like how they censored the USB “connector”.

Greatest Video Game Collection Ever (from Digg) – Now that’s what I call a video game collection. This person probably owns every game, console, and accessory in existence. Lots more pics after the jump. Wowza! It’s like a geek fantasy come true!

Nuckin’ Futs – The JibJab Year in Review (from Digg) – JibJab’s version of all the important events that happened this year. Really funny. All sang by little kids.

Game periods – a comic strip from little gamers explaining why video games and couches were invented.

Srcubs JD’s AirStrike (from Digg) – From the first episode of Season 6. JD on Scrubs describes his “experience” using war terminology. Really hilarious.

iTude 0.1 released (from Digg) – The other night, I awoke with a start: How, if iTunes requires you to authorize your computer with their servers, play iTunes purchased music offline? This guy figures out how to authorize as many computers to play DRMed music purchased from iTMS as you want. I generally wouldn’t care about this, since Apple allows you to authorize up to 5 computers, but they have a broken system where you’re only allowed to reset once a year. In the event your hdd crashes or your library gets corrupted or somehow your computer gets deauthorized, but their main system doesn’t know about it, you’re out one authorized computer. Apparently this trick works in Windows too and the files you need to backup is located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\SC Info.

Virtual Reality (from Digg) – (NOT WORK SAFE!) UCB at its finest. Quite a sketch I’ve got to say.

Fast Hands (from Digg) – 2005 National Hammered Dulcimer champion Max Zbiral-Teller plays ‘Apple Juice.’ an original composition at Bard College. You can find this piece on his latest CD ‘Many Tastes Are Loaded,’ at his website www.maxzt.com and shortly on his YouTube page. Pretty neat instrument. Reminds me of those ancient Chinese instruments: the guqin.

Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? (from Digg) – Back when IE7 launched, Yahoo! created a customized version and began to market it to our existing IE users. … Today it seems that Google has similar intentions. So similar, that they decided to basically copy our page and slightly Googlify it. If you look, the design, layout, and most of the text are the same! I wonder what was going through the head of the programmer in charge of this… There’s another blog entry in regards to this here: The Race for Optimizing IE7

Street Pranks (from Digg) – Tape Sculpture and Street Installations by Mark Jenkins aka Storker. Courtesy: xmarkjenkinsx.com Really funny situations made with tape sculptures and half mannequins.

XNA Game Studio Express Has Been Released! (from MS newsgroup) – XNA Game Studio Express will allow people to develop games for the Xbox 360. The framework is free, but if you plan on reselling games or want samples to help you start, there’s a subscription fee.

Mythbusters Rube Goldberg machine (from Digg) – The Mythbusters build a rube goldberg machine. Happy Holidays from the Mythbusters. Witness the longest piece to camera in mythbusters history. It’s a Rube Goldberg machine. That should be enough to get you to watch it.

Computer Repair Fraud (from Digg) – Who can you trust to repair your computer these days?

33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names (from Digg) – I’m actually surprised some of these things have names! (i.e. ARMSAYE – The armhole in clothing; MINIMUS – The little finger or toe.)

TelePresence (from Digg) – Visit to Cisco TelePresence demo at Headquarter Campus (San José, CA) by projectteam Fontys University. Wow! What a neat way to hold conferences. One day, every house will have something like this and you won’t even have to go into work.

New Eyeglasses

So I picked up my new glasses this weekend and have been dizzy for the pass few days, though I am starting to get use to it. It’s like a see the world in 3D now where things just sorta jump out at me. It could also be the fact now both eyes have the same clarity and I actually see in better stereo now.

Anyway, here’s what they look like:

geoffrey beene bacchus gunmetal 140geoffrey beene bacchus gunmetal 140

Speaking of which, my eye problem seems to have gone away. The tired eyes that is. It could be the fact that I used “Refresh Tears” for a week or so, but I really think it’s because I stopped playing Kameo.


Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese term is 熱い (atsui) and 寒い (samui) which mean hot and cold respectively. Don’t like the extremes? Then you can use 安宅ぃ (atakai) – warm. Interestingly enough, there’s a another homonyms for 熱い (atsui) which also means hot: 暑い – hot; warm; The former (熱い) refers to hot to touch. The latter 暑い refers to hot/warm weather. As for 寒い (samui), that also refers to weather. If you want to say something is cold (like an ice cube), you’ll use 冷や (hiya).

Zamzar (from RayAlome) – It’s a free online file conversion (i.e. one image format to another, or one video format to another). There’s an 100MB upload cap at which point they’ll convert it. After the conversion is complete, it’ll email you a link to download the conversion. I personally haven’t tried it, but it sounds like a neat service, though for video and image conversions, I generally prefer to do it myself as I can control the quality and with free tools like IrfanView and VirtualDub, this becomes rather easy. You can see their entire list of supported file types here.

NBC has just aired the last episode of Heroes for the time being. It was a good final episode, but as the preview indicated, it’ll be opening a bunch of new cliffhangers. They decided to take a break mid-season and resume in mid-January. Unfortunately, they’ll be competing with 24 at that time, but I guess I can watch both. NBC has decided to post all 11 episodes of the series up to watch online, so if you missed one and don’t mind watching some ads, go for it.

Mad TV – Crista’s Black Friday (from Digg) – Keegan-Michael Key opens the show, then a wounded Crista Flanagan stumbles on stage with blood splattered all over her body. Watch to find out what happens. From Season 12, Episode 7. BTW, video looks more sharp with the smaller window because that’s the original size.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows Review (from Digg) – Rock your wireless 360 pads on the PC. The newest piece of the ‘Games For Windows’ puzzle. I received a Xbox 360 newsletter recently with a whole bunch of new wireless gadgets like the driving wheel and the headset. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I read this review today. They made a Xbox 360™ Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows® that allows you to use your Xbox 360 controllers on your PC!!! How cool is that!

Halo 3 Sixty-Second Trailer (from Digg) – Last week we announced that Microsoft and Bungie were set to debut the latest trailer for Halo 3 during ESPN’s Monday Night Football on December 4th and tonight we managed to capture the commercial as it aired shortly after the broadcast started. As always, commercials are very pretty. Though it did get me wondering if they introduced the new can-o-shield or not. That’d be neat!

CanvasPaint (from Digg) – A near pixel-perfect copy of Microsoft Paint in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, using the <canvas> tag as specified by WHATWG and supported by Safari 1.3, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9. This web app is not authorized by, supported by or in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Interesting idea. First word processors and spreadsheets, now paint!

Revolution – A Response To Dove Evolution (Digg) – Our take on the Dove Evolution commercial that has been circulating on the internet. Quite a funny parody of the Dove Campaign for Beauty.

Bus shelters get cookie scentHoping to stir up thirst for milk, officials installed advertisements in several San Francisco bus shelters on Monday that give off the scent of freshly baked cookies. … The effort at five bus shelters is part of a campaign cooked up by the California Milk Processor Board, whose iconic “Got Milk?” campaign has adorned famous figures from around the world with milk moustaches for 13 years. Clever!

Zudeo (from Digg) – Another video competitor has entered the market. Zudeo works in conjuction with Azureus, the bittorrent client. The most interesting thing is that it shares HD content. Ever thought the quality of YouTube videos or even Google videos were quite pixelated and subpar, well Zudeo has the answer. And to conserve on bandwidth bills, it plans of using bittorrent to share these HD videos, which is rather ingenious. Unfortunately, you have to use their client, and I’ve decided against Azureus after it started using up hundreds of megs of RAM.

How to run explorer.exe as another user

So with the introduction of IE7, my little hack no longer worked, which was having the following shortcut: runas.exe /u:administrator "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"

With the IE7 update, when I enter C:\ into the location bar, it actually opens up a new Explorer window, running as my current user. Before it would automatically open C: drive in the same IE window and let me browse as administrator.

With this block, I decided to see if I could get explorer.exe to launch instead of going through iexplore.exe. Running explorer.exe from an administrator command prompt didn’t do anything. I was able to run start . and get an Explorer window opened, but that was running under me again. I search for explorer.exe switches and found this site: Command-Line Switches for Windows Explorer, however none of those switches seem to work. Calling explorer.exe /? returned immediately without displaying any kind of help.

Finally, I just went and searched for “how to launch explorer as another user” and found this: How do run Explorer as another user which had a very useful reply.

Apparently, the switch you have to pass in is /separate. At first I thought it was just a fake, but then realized I was spelling seperate incorrectly. If you execute the following command: runas.exe /u:administrator "explorer.exe /separate", you’ll be able to start explorer.exe as another user.


Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 雪 (yuki) which translates to snow, since we’ve recently had a bunch of snow, but due to today’s warm weather, it’s pretty much gone. Guess I won’t be needing wheel chains anymore. Along with snow, there’s 冬休み (fuyuyasumi) or Winter Vacation. 冬 (fuyu) is Winter and 休み (yasumi) means to rest by itself, but when stuck to onto another noun like one of the 4 seasons, it means vacation. The other seasons are 春 (haru) – Spring; 夏 (natsu) – Summer; 秋 (aki) – Autumn.

Japanese Zen Gardens (from Digg) – a very nice collection of Zen Gardens with you combed through sand and the nice and peaceful rocks (are rocks ever not peaceful?).

Apple Sells “Refreshed” Laptop Filled With Porn To 11 Year Old Girl (from Digg) – An Apple customer was shocked, shocked, when he bought a Macbook from the London Apple Store for his 11-year old daughter, and the desktop was full of pornographic JPGs. As RayAlome says, that’s a feature!

Richard Simmons explains his steamer on Letterman (from RayAlome) – Watch Richard Simmons try to sell you his steamer on The Letterman Show and how Letterman provokes him and finally the KABOOM!

SNEAK PEEK: ‘Heroes’ Mid-Season Finale (from Heroes Revealed) – (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS) ‘Heroes’ Mid-season Finale Clips! Check out these clips from the upcoming episode. A nice long 5 minute sneak preview of the episode 11.

Spilled Doritos chips wash up on Outer Banks (from Digg) – A cargo container that apparently fell from a ship washed up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina today and spilled thousands of bags of Doritos brand tortilla chips on the beach. Scavengers collected the chips, which were apparently still fresh due to their airtight packaging. It was unknown which ship had lost the cargo or to what port it was bound.

Cell Phone Towers In Disguise (from Digg) – Dr. Debbye Turner reports some folks say cell phone towers can be unsightly, so some providers are becoming masters of disguise. Turner discusses the creative compromise with Julie Chen. 1/4 of all cell phone towers are disguised to blend in with the environment so it isn’t such an eyesore.

fire box traps pranksters
The sending of false fire alarms by mischievous persons may be eliminated through use of a newly developed call box. To use the device, the sender of an alarm must pass a hand through a special compartment to reach the signal dial. Once the dial has been turned, the sender’s hand is locked in the compartment until released by a fireman or policeman with a key. (from Modern Mechanix)

Haha! What if it was a real fire and the you got trapped right next to it. ;p

50 THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW (or 50 Completely Useless Facts!) (from Digg) – quite an interesting list. The ones I found interesting were:

  • Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon. – Worm definitely does not taste like fried bacon, unless you get to fry it beforehand. Then I don’t know.
  • What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France.
  • You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath – Do you pass out before you suffocate?
  • Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
  • Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different! – Guess if we have a licker on our hand, it’d be easy to identify him.
  • Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails! – No wonder my fingernails need more chewing.
  • Women blink nearly twice as much as men. – That’s cause they flirt twice as much as men. Just kidding. ;p
  • An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain
  • A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue! – I wish I could do that.
  • Dolphins sleep with one eye open! – Just like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states, Dolphins are much smarter. They won’t let you get close, not even when they’re sleeping!
  • Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food! – Some humans would too!

Sex educators plan spray-on condom“We’re trying to develop the perfect condom for men that’s suited to every size of penis,” he said. “We’re very serious.” Krause’s team (spraykondom.de) is developing a type of spray can into which the man inserts his penis first. At the push of a button it is then coated in a rubber condom. Haha! Awesome!

Bill Gates for President! (from Derek) – Bill Gates for President dot net is a movement of people from all over the world who share a set of beliefs. These beliefs are:

  1. The President of the United States of America is not just a political leader in the USA. He or she has an important role in international politics as well.
  2. The President of the United States should not be a slave to large corporations. We see the reality of multi-million-dollar presidential campaigns, but feel worried about the way they are being funded.
  3. The President of the United States should not just be a politician. A true leader has a great variety of competences. A good President is also a manager.

You should also read Scott Adams blog entry: Bill Gates for President

Halfway there

So halfway there generally makes sense when you’re talking about distance or time in regards to traveling, but I was just thinking, it doesn’t work the same way for exercise.

When I need to drive 400 miles, I’m halfway there at the 200 miles mark, or if I need to sit through a 2 hour lecture, I’m halfway there when an hour goes by.

But when you’re doing 80 sit-ups, you’re not really half way there after 90 sit-ups because the last 45 sit-ups take twice as much effort as the 1st 45 sit-ups. If the twice as much effort holds true, you’re really only halfway there when you complete 2/3 of the alloted amount. In other words, you’re really only halfway there when you complete 60 out of the 90 sit-ups.


Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese terms are:
可笑しい (okashii) – strange; funny; amusing; ridiculous; (the kanji literally translates to “worth laughing”)
変 (hen) – change; incident; disturbance; strange; flat (music); odd; peculiar; suspicious-looking; queer; eccentric; funny; (the kanji literally translates to “change”)

Both mean weird/strange/odd and can be used interchangeably. 変 (hen) is also used in 変態 (hentai) which can mean transformation; metamorphosis; abnormality; pervert; but mostly pervert. The kanji literally translates to “change personality/attitude”.

PvP The Series (from Digg) – It is with great pride that we announce the first season of PvP: The Animated Series. Starting in February 2007, PvP will be offered as an animated feature via the web. Each month, via a subscription service, we’ll be delivering a new 4-6 minute episode. This is not your typical flash animation. These are traditionally 2D animated with professional voice actors all collaborating to bring the staff of PVP magazine to life for the first time. Similar to CTRL+ALT+DELETE, PvP is now producing an NON-FREE animated series. It’s currently $20 for 12 4-6 minute episodes, which like CTRL+ALT+DELETE, I think is a rip-off.

One Picture Every Day Spoof (from Digg) – This guy has created a hilarious spoof of those videos where people take a picture of themself every day for a year then combine them into a flip book like montage. His facial expressions are rather funny.

Duct Tape On A MuthaFcukin’ Plane! (from Digg) – I dug up this video I shot back in December ‘04 when I was aboard an Air Deccan flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. Looked out my window and what did I see, A group of guys repairing the wing with some sort of muthafcukin’ duct tape. There’s some more repairs to the left of the one they are working on with what seems to be the same technique. Crossed my fingers, tossed back a shot of Black Label, and stayed on the flight.

Scientists Levitate Small Animals (from /.) – Scientists have now levitated small live animals using sounds that are, well, uplifting. … Xie and his colleagues employed an ultrasound emitter and reflector that generated a sound pressure field between them. The emitter produced roughly 20-millimeter-wavelength sounds, meaning it could in theory levitate objects half that wavelength or less. After the investigators got the ultrasound field going, they used tweezers to carefully place animals between the emitter and reflector. The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair. When they levitated the fish and tadpole, the researchers added water to the ultrasound field every minute via syringe. Someone made a funny comment on /. saying why the heck would a ladybug need to be levitated? It can already fly!

The Making of a LEGO Brick (from /.) – Let’s hear it for LEGO! Forty-eight years after they were introduced, LEGO toys are still much beloved by children and parents alike for their bright colors, durability, and the amount of imagination they inspire during play. Compared to the high-tech toys of today, LEGO bricks look exceedingly simple. But their precise production process is nothing to scoff at. Each LEGO brick must have that perfect grasp — strong enough to hold onto another brick but easy enough for a child to pull apart. The production of LEGO bricks is so accurate that only 18 out of 1 million LEGO elements produced is considered defective. It’s an astonishing number, considering that 15 billion LEGO components are made every year. We take a look at how classic LEGO bricks are made.

Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth (from Digg) – (NOT SAFE FOR WORK!) You’ve all seen the original Google Sightseeing Topless Sunbather already, but did you know that the Hague is in fact completely overrun with naked and semi-naked Dutch men and women? Yes people, it’s time to get your magnifying glasses out, because here comes the Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth!

You’ve probably heard of Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) blasting off his guests using the N-word and how he later went onto Letterman’s to apologize. National Lampoon pieced together clips from the incident, the apology, and Seinfeld episodes and made this rather funny video: Seinfeld – The Lost Episode

Court says U.S. discriminates against blind with currencyThe U.S. government discriminates against blind people because American currency is not designed to be distinguishable to visually impaired people, a federal judge said on Tuesday. … “Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and colour in all their denominations,” he wrote. I always wondered why other countries used different sized paper bills.

Innovative supermarket in China (from Digg) – What do you get when you merge a roller coaster with a supermarket? Well, see for yourself. I wonder if it makes shopping longer or shorter (for the men of course).

Street Fighter: The Later Years – Part 2 (from RayAlome) – CollegeHumor returns to the lives of the Street Fighter characters 1 day later. But, like, 1 day later than 10 years later or whatever. Another episode in this amazing series! Though… M. Bison doesn’t really look like M. Bison.

Scientists say trained bees can sniff bombsScientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war. I wonder how much bee is worth.

Impeachment

I just had a horrible thought. If President Bush does get impeached and is convicted, guess who becomes our next President… *shivers* I think I’d rather have Bush stay as President for 2 more years.


Random Crap:

Following the same line of a previous Japanese term, 耳飾り (mimikazari) means earrings, but in modern day, it’s more commonly known as ピアス (piasu) which was derived from the word pierce. For the finger ring, you’d think it be yubikazari, but unfortunately this breaks the rule and is actually termed as 指輪 (yubiwa) – ring. However, modern times has also used another familiar term for those who’ve seen the movie: リング (ringu).

LineRider ZaDa (direct link to swf) (from Digg) – The new and improved Line Rider with advanced and much needed tools such as the eraser and the accelerating lines.

Heroes: Non-US Promo Clip (from Digg) – (WARNING: SPOILERS) Although the title says it’s a promo, I believe this is a preview for episode 10. I didn’t particularly get what following comment referred to: Pay particular attention to a painting with a certain type of dinosaur and the little guy next to it.

heroes - promo clip - dinosaur

What about the dinosaur and the little guy? Hiro is going to travel back in time and fight a dinosaur? Is Hiro going to take the exploding man back in time and coincide it with the meteor hitting earth? Or is it really the exploding man that cause the extinction of the dinosaurs?

Coin In Plate With Water (from Digg) – here is a cool scientific way to take a coin in a plate with water without wetting your fingers. I was thinking instead of of complicated candle and glass setup, can I just put on some waterproof gloves and pick the coin up without wetting my fingers?

China urges pre-flight toilet training to save fuelA Chinese airline has calculated that it takes a litre of fuel to flush the toilet at 30,000 feet and is urging passengers to go to the bathroom before they board. … “The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10 kilometres,” Captain Liu Zhiyuan, who flies regularly between Hangzhou and Beijing, was quoted as saying. Citing a survey by the company’s logistics department, Liu said carrying one kilogram of items such as blankets and pillows by air for one hour uses 0.2 kg of fuel. Interestingly enough, pee and poop weighs a lot too. If everyone took a dump or a piss before boarding the plane, the less weight would also save fuel.

Tony vs. Paul (from Esca) – A stop motion battle between two friends turned enemies. A point and shoot animation done frame by frame. Pretty neat actually. The sand movement animation totally reminded me of Gaara’s move in Naruto: Desert Funeral.

Wii Have A Problem… (from MS newsgroup) – “Wii have a problem” is a blog focused on bringing you the latest trend in gaming violence. That of damaged electronic loved ones caused from Wii related activities. Why? Because we’re fanboys that’s why. Someone questioned how this is different then throwing an Xbox 360 controller at the TV (I assumed jokingly). However, he then made a comment about saying it’s the users fault, how you don’t really need to use all that force to play with the wiimote, people are releasing the controller instead of holding it like they’re suppose to, and how after many hours of playing, the wiimote never slipped from his hand. At this point, I chimed in and said there is a difference. Normally, you wouldn’t take a bat or a tennis racket inside the house to practice your swing, especially not your living room with your TV and tons of other easily breakable items. If I do practice my swing in my living room and it slips my hand and crashes into my TV, then I can really only blame myself for being *cough*. However, the wiimote was intended to be used in front of your TV, so there’s no avoiding that. I also didn’t see a problem with using a lot of force with the wiimote. When you get into a game, often times you start button mashing really hard and really fast, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Playing with little activity is one way to play it, but playing the Wii with real swings vs wimpy swings should be perfectly fine. There are multiple ways to decrease accidents like these. Of course everyone’s mentioned the thin strap. A better gripping material would also help, like the stuff they use on the handles of tennis rackets and bats.