Category: Uncategorized

Gasoline Prices:
Regular: ARM
Plus: LEG
V-Power: FIRST BORN

Photo taken from Gas station’s shocking sign of times: – Gas really does cost an arm and a leg in places these days. This weekend, a Manhattan Beach, California, gas station said the price of regular gasoline was — an arm. The price of mid-grade — a leg. The price of premium — your first born.

Sigh…

Speaking of which, someone posted this on a MS newsgroup: Car Powered By Water A Reality: Klein has invented the world’s first water powered car. It runs on what he calls “Aquygen.” Aquygen is water or H2O, broken down and turned into HHO gas, something scientists once thought impossible. I have no idea if this is fact or fiction, but do check out the video. There hasn’t been an entry on Snopes.com yet, but I’m not exactly too sure when this was first discovered. The article was written on 5/23/2006, so I’m guessing at least relatively new. This is just bizarre and quite hard for me to believe. Fox News also has a video of this: Water Fuel.

Klein first started using water and mixing it with propane to make a high power torch that wasn’t hot to touch, but could burn through metal (what the… how the.. *BEEP* *BEEP*). He later uses this same technology in his car. At first I thought it was a 100% water powered car, but it turns out to only be a hybrid currently, mixing fuel and water which is giving him 50% more mileage. The reporter claims that Klein says he’s also getting more horse power using this technology, but it didn’t seem the like the reporter really knew what the heck he was reading off the teleprompt. Klein imagines in the near future, there will be cars powered only by water and you can get 100 miles with just 4 oz of water. To give you an idea of how much that is, there’s 128 ounces per gallon. So in other words, 1 gallon of water can get you 3200 miles. Just imagine how much mileage a 15 gallon tank gives you. Some how I keep thinking my leg is being pulled. How can this be true?!?!? Wasn’t April Fools a long time ago?

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Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese phrase are related to friendship:
友達 (tomodachi) – friend; companion [this is how you address your regular friends]
仲間 (nakama) – company; fellow; colleague; associate; comrade; mate; group; circle of friends; partner; [in animes, this word is used to refer to comrades who you’re willing to die for]
真親友 (shinyuu) – literally means real dear friend [ this is an uncommon phrase that my Japanese IME didn’t even know. WWWJDIC also doesn’t have an entry for it ] Update: Thanks to hiro for correcting correcting my error.

Ryuu in Detective Academy Q said:
同じ志を持つ仲間。いいえ、真友です！
(onaji kokorozashi wo motsu nakama. iie, shinyuu desu!)
[They’re comrades who share the same will. No, they’re real friends!]

So it appears, that 真友 (shinyuu) refers to a friendship with a stronger bond than 仲間 (nakama) which is someone you’re already willing to die for. Then again, I could be pulling this out from my ***** since this is the 1st time I’ve heard it.

Another interesting world is 志 (kokorozashi). kokoro by itself is 心 (heart), but by sticking ざし (zashi) onto the end, you get a new kanji which means – will; intention; motive;
I never knew you could do that in Japanese, where you stick some more syllables at the end of a character and it’ll become a completely new character. This never happens in Chinese (well, that’s because all our characters all have 1 syllable).

Saw this on someone’s profile: “True success isn’t measured by the position you reach but by the obstacles you overcome in life.” – Evercare

I’ve seen this phrase in many shapes and forms, but is it nothing more than comfort talk? I mean, you have starting point, you have goal. If you never reach your goal, can you really say you succeeded? I know the way to your goal is definitely important, but this is like saying, “It’s okay that you didn’t make it. At least you got a lot of valuable experiences.”

Got this riddle from Wrexen’s blog:

Two men play a game of draw poker in the following curious manner. The spread a deck of 52 cards face up on the table so that they can see all the cards. The first player draws a hand by picking any five cards he chooses. The second player does the same. The first player may now keep his original hand or draw up to five cards. His discards are put aside out of the game. The second player may now draw likewise. The person with the higher hand then wins. Suits have equal value, so that two flushes tie unless one is made of higher cards. After a while the players discover that the first player can always win if he draws his first hand correctly. What hand must this be?

I think I may have the answer to the riddle (will be posted in the comments).

Here’s the ranking of the hands if you don’t know about poker (suits don’t matter):
Royal Flush
Straight Flush
4 of a Kind
Full House
Flush
Straight
3 of a Kind
2 Pair
1 Pair
High Card

An interesting question someone raised was how will it turn out if there were 3 players.

This was originally posted as a comment in one of my random crap posts, but since people don’t exactly read my comments, I thought it’d be nice to post it as a valid entry.

From (/. comment #15371864):

If you go to the apple store fifth avenue’s website and click on “05:00” you’ll see an Asian gentleman telling his girlfriend (presumably) that he loves her and proposing. Wait for it to get light out in the time lapse, you can’t miss him and his pad of paper.

Cute.

It indeed is there. If you watch it several times, you would’ve noticed the man on the screen before, and then a 2nd time where he times I’m guessing how long between shots, so he can determine how long to stay.

The signs he displays (in sequential order) is:
Uschi Lang
I Love You
Will You Marry Me?

So while I was updating my blog, a bug falls from the ceiling into my cereal bowl. I’ve seen this bug a day or 2 earlier and I squished it as it after noticing it crawling across my 24″ LCD (a spider’s done that too, but I like spiders so I let him get away). No, I didn’t squish it on my 24″ LCD. I waited for it leave the screen and fall off. But today I was surprised as one fell from my ceiling and into my cereal bowl. Good thing I’ve already finished my cereal. I’ve actually seen this type of bug back in my college apartment when they were renovating our bathtub and they were labeled as Silverfish (I was searching for silvertail and didn’t find anything earlier).

Here’s some pictures of it before I washed it down the drain:

Today’s Japanese phrase is 未来 (mirai) – (1) the future (usually distant); (2) future tense; (3) the world to come;

Ever want to leave a comment on a LiveJournal, but didn’t want to register an account. So you go and look up what exactly OpenID is, but find out that they don’t really provide you with an OpenID you can use. Wait no longer, VeriSign is providing a free and open OpenID server you can register and use at any site that supports OpenID: Personal Identity Provider (PIP) (from Ars Technica).

Ark. Mayor Accused in Sex-For-Water Case – Waldron’s mayor was released on a signature bond Wednesday after being accused of soliciting two women for sex after they fell behind on their water bills. Troy Anderson, 72, is accused of abusing the public trust and patronizing a prostitute. After hearing complaints about delinquent water bills, Anderson solicited sex from the women, authorities said.

California home for sale for $75 million – The 30,000-square-foot custom-built estate belongs to Frank Pritt, founder of software company Attachmate Corp. The estate features a car museum, entertainment complex, gymnasium and mini water park. Can you add the car museum into the price of the house? I mean if I stick the Mona Lisa into my house, can I include the price of the Mona Lisa as the house’s worth? I’m not saying you can’t add extra things to sell the house along with, but it shouldn’t really be considered part of the house’s worth.

A very strange sign of the times… – Exhausted Japanese workers in need of a pick-me-up will soon be able to get a hit of canned oxygen at their local convenience store. … “People are under a lot of stress and can’t get much exercise, so they aren’t getting enough oxygen,” said Minoru Matsumoto, a spokesman for Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd, Seven-Eleven’s parent company. O2… *drools*

iloveegg song – an old favorite, yet pretty cheesy (or should I say eggy). More ilovegg animations at: iloveegg.com. If you can’t stand cuteness, I’d advise against you clicking on the links.

K-1 Ernesto Hoost – gaki no tsukai (from lowjack) (also available at thatvideosite.com: Yet another Japanese variety show, this includes something titled “slapping machine”) – a hilarious video where Ernesto Hoost is hosting a Japanese TV show: ガキの使い. The setting appears to be in a library, but it’s pretty obvious it’s stated. They have rounds where one out of the group of 6 people get chosen for an unfortunately event including pulling out nose hair, eating wasabi sushi, smelling foul air, popping a giant balloon under your shirt, etc. For some reason, I think the cards were staged as 2 people got chosen the most. I believe the crew is the same as the video I posted several days ago: You DO NOT laugh when this Japanese man tries to speak English.

Looks like AOL’s another competitor that’s entering the online video market: UnCut Video

History of Console Prices (or: $500 ain’t the worst…) (from /.) – Is the $500 price tag for the crippled PlayStation 3 historically high or low? I did a bit of number crunching to try to put that number in perspective. These graphs tell the story. Pretty interesting graphs. It’s also interesting that Nintendo has never launched a console for over $200.

Today’s Japanese phrase is 世界　(sekai) – the world; society; the universe

This must be why they call it a cell block – Family visits in Sao Paulo prisons only take place once a week but jailed Brazilian gangsters chat on their contraband cell phones every day. Smuggled cell phones are used to keep in contact with families but also to direct criminal operations outside the penitentiary walls — such as the gangster offensive unleashed in Sao Paulo in the past week. You’d think they’d scramble the frequencies there blocking cell phones from entering or leaving.

Friends Repay Joker With Human-Cage Prank – A practical joker got a taste of revenge when friends turned part of his apartment into a human-sized hamster cage, complete with shredded newspaper bedding, a six-foot exercise wheel and a giant water bottle. “It was a lot of work, but it was one of those cases where you do it because you have to,” said Keith Jewell, a longtime friend and neighbor who engineered Monday’s hamster-cage prank on Luke Trerice. Trerice, 28, had it coming: In 2004, he enlisted others to help him encase another friend’s apartment and most of his belongings in aluminum foil. … The group worked through the night before Trerice’s arrival, shredding newspaper, blowing up a beach ball, installing the water bottle in a window and filling a metal feed bucket with Cheetos. There wasn’t time to finish a few details, such as lining the walls with wire fencing. Sounds like fun!

Girl, 10, Goes for Drive, Hits Other Cars – A 10-year-old girl who drove off with her guardian’s sport utility vehicle with a toddler and a 5-year-old on board crashed the vehicle into several cars, authorities said. … Sheriff’s deputies charged the girl as a juvenile with kidnapping and false imprisonment and vehicle theft. The highway patrol charged her with careless driving, not having a driver’s license and not using a child restraint. I just found the charges silly…

Chinese salesman jailed for organising gay orgies – A Chinese salesman has been jailed for a year for organising homosexual orgies through the Internet, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Morgellons Disease Baffles Patients And Doctors (from /.) – … Instantly, he says, a bolt of pain shot up his arm. He tugged on another one and the pain snaked up his neck. Then the really creepy part began. “It felt like bugs under the skin of my arms, in my joints,” Lawrence says. “I freaked out.” Across the country, thousands of people complaining of the same horrifying phenomenon have formed an illness subculture. They share lists of symptoms, medical speculation and tales of run-ins with mainstream doctors at www.morgellons.org, the official Web site of a group called the Morgellons Research Foundation. This totally reminded me of the scene from Oldboy.

Apple Store, Fifth Avenue (from /.) – Grand Opening – The Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, is now open — and it will stay open 24/365, so we can help you around the clock. Wow, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year… Wow. Do check out their photo gallery. Apple stores are so pretty. I think Belldandy has a reason now to visit NYC.

Gotcha! (MOST DEFINITELY NOT WORK SAFE!) Internet cybersex pranks… Good thing the guy didn’t show his face. This is like bloodninja on a totally different level.

Elephants Dream (from /.) – A 3D animation project completely done using open source software. The video is also licensed under the creative commons license. From Wikipedia: Elephants Dream is a story with quick-witted dialogue, tightly designed architecture and unusual sound effects. The main characters, Emo (a cool young trumpeter) and Proog (a confused – or maybe not? – loner) are each stuck in a world of their own. At a certain moment they cross paths with one another. The oddball Proog cautiously tries to introduce his young friend Emo to his world. When Emo realizes that Proog primarily wants to push his ideas on him, this leads to a conflict between them. But can Emo survive in Proog’s world? And can they overcome their conflicts, or will they each go their own way in life? Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen create two unique personalities that command the imagination, and carry the viewer along into a bizarre world that consists of a bleak wasteland with a tangle of cables and other alien landscapes, a living typewriter, an enormous elevator shaft, and especially a lot of very strange birds. It was a weird experience. I didn’t think much of the 10 minute video at the beginning. The animation and designs were incredible, but the voice acting and the storyline was truly lacking. However, reading the description from Wikipedia, I guess it was a bit deeper than what I had orginally imagined. They have torrents for 480×270 | 720×405 | 1024×576 | 1920×1080. The last one also comes with AC3 5.1 SRS.

Japanese lab creates ‘Da Vinci’ voices (from /.) –
Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab says it has analyzed the skeletal structures of the historical figures’ faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded. The voices are part of the intense promotion of the Hollywood film on Microsoft’s Japanese site at http://promotion.msn.co.jp/davinci/voice.htm. … Suzuki, who frequently appears in popular media, has used his skills in a variety of fields, such as analyzing voices in purported recordings of Osama bin Laden. Many people on /. were arguing how does one compensate for local accents and other factors. I’m not an anatomist, but I’m guessing the facial bone structure and other factors like height and body size can give a pretty good estimate on what pitch and tone someone is likely to have. Thinking about it some more, I believe the pitch/tone someone uses in normal daily conversation is probably the voice that requires the least amount of energy. I mean I talk in a really high pitch, but that would require me exerting extra energy to accomplish. What would be interesting would be to see them do it on real people today. The article claims they have done a sample on Osama bin Laden. It would be interesting to see how well it compares to the recordings.

Friend left as deposit at gas station – A German woman left her friend as a deposit at a gas station because she did not have enough cash to pay for her petrol, police said Wednesday. “She didn’t have enough money to pay the bill, so her friend stayed behind as a human deposit while she went to withdraw cash,” said a spokesman for police in the southern town of Muenchberg. “Unfortunately, the woman did not return.”

Woot! HSBC Direct has bumped up its interest rate to 4.65% APY from 4.50% APY: http://www.hsbcdirect.com/

Sweet!

Still not the best compared nationally: Highest Money Market and Savings Account Yields

From 24 Season 5 Episode 22:

Jack – “What makes you think I’m not going to kill you the second this is over?”
Chris – “Because you’re going to give me your word. And I know what your word is worth to you. So it’s all I need.”

This reminds me of the moment of the exploding flash memory he gave to the German intelligence and that’s just how much Jack’s word is worth. Just thought it was funny… Jack’s words are worth sh*t when dealing with terrorists.

Also, every time technical jargon comes out of Chloe’s mouth, my ears bleed:
Not a Pheonix. It’s a poison pill firewall. Any attempt at circumventing it and the hard drive does a cold start erase, at which point you can forget about retrieving any data.

WTF is a poison pill firewall? Search on that string results in only 24 references. I’m guessing it’s like a suicide pill where if they detect they’re getting invaded, they’ll drop the bomb. And the WTF is a cold start erase? Cold start implies the device hasn’t been on for some time and by starting it, it’s starting it cold. If a hdd is running, to cold start it requires a cool off period. I can’t believe I’m trying to analzye Chloe’s statements. sigh…

Several of my friends has asked me to do theirs, so I thought I might as well put up my own.

Krunk4Ever’s Johari Window – I’d like to know how you’d describe me in five or six words from the list.

Today’s Japanese word is: 狐 (kitsune) – fox. xxxHOLiC featured a fox making おでん (oden) – Japanese hodgepodge. There was also this cute little fox kid. Oh! How adorable he was! He wasn’t cute as in drawing cute. It was his actions.

I hope every mother had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Mr T – Treat Your Mother Right (from RayAlome). A very old school video, but tune’s pretty catchy. Here are the lyrics (from MTBSOBSF):

FEMALE CHORUS: (x2)
Treat her right
Treat your mother right
Treat her right
Treat her right

MR. T’s CHORUS:
Mother
There is no other
Like Mother
So treat Her right
Mother
I always Love Her
My Mother
So treat Her right, treat Her right

M is for the moan, and the miserable groan
from the pain that She felt when I was born

O is for the oven with it’s burnin’ heat
where She stood makin’ sure I had something to eat

T is for the time that She stayed up at night
and took my temperature when I wasn’t feelin’ right

H is for the hard earned money She spent
to keep clothes on my back and try to pay da’ rent

E is every wrinkle I put on Her face
and every worry that I caused when I stayed out late

The last letter R is that She taught me Respect
and for the room up in Heaven that I know She’ll get

MR. T Chorus

Female Chorus

She’s a Queen
Second to none
Take care of Mother
You only get one

Female Chorus

Music

MR. T Chorus

Click image to start the animation or view it in the gallery.
Spinning Gun Firing (from 4chan)

Liam IMs me a week ago asking if I was doing the Da Vinci Code game. I told him I wasn’t and he tells me about the prizes: the Cryptex replica that 10,000 people were getting and the bigger prizes later on. Anyway, it appears that people are receiving their Cryptex already and tons are already on eBay (from MsticAzn). So far the highest it sold for (Buy It Now) is at $99. The cheapest was at $35. However, there’s one open auction at $209.39. Pretty amazing…

Can you be summoned and ordered to appear on Judge Judy? (from MS newsgroup) – So if Judge Judy, who is not without her detractors, can’t compel litigants to appear, how does the program attract participants? This article explains how researchers scour small claims cases nationwide and report potential cases to the show’s producers. After selected plaintiffs and defendants agree to come on the show, they “sign papers saying the judge’s decision will be binding.” The award limit is $5,000. There is also an additional payment for showing up.

Quote from /. (#15328948):

If I do something stupid and 8 people see, I might shrug it off. If I do something stupid and 80 people see, I might not hang around that part of town. But if I do something stupid and 80,000 people see, then I might be scarred for life. It’s just not meant to work that way.

Hey, you’re not alone, especially not on slashdot. The same thought goes through every Open Source coders mind when they submit code to the repository.

🙂

Worry over mobile phone explosions – At least five mobile phones have exploded over the last two months in Brazil, causing anxiety among phone users and making news headlines. The incidents, representing only a fraction of the 89 million phones in circulation in Brazil, all involved Motorola phones. The company said it was investigating and Brazil’s telecommunication agency is pursuing the case as well. KABOOM!

Bears Eat Monkey in Front of Zoo Visitors – Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned. Horrified? It would’ve been so cool to see this in action! I mean you see these on the Discovery Channel everyday.