Damnit

Anyone heard of this? A college kid in the UK is selling a million pixels on his homepage for a dollar each. And people are buying. Damnit, I want a million dollars.

Everyone is on the blogwagon

And here's the proof: The CIA has bloggers. That's right open, free to the public blogs. Intelligence about national security and the like harvested from 'open sources' and posted by official CIA operatives. Apparently its a big battle between the open source guys and the classified material guys (although sometimes its the same information). I wonder if I can get a class in "Advanced Internet Exploitation". At least check out the title of the article, a little fun poking never hurt anyone. (except maybe when you do it to the scariest publicly known government agency) I don't imagine thier sites are nearly as amusing as this site, but hey they're trying. Here's a tip from a pro guys: be cynical and condescending to whatever write about.

Don't expect any plot twists

I like google video. I like Grand Prix cars. I like boats. I like bikes. I like racing. I like British narrators. Its on.

And the horse you rode in on

I don't know about you but about 75% of the mail I get is junkmail. I get a new credit card offer every day, and yesterday I got two of the exact same offer from the same company postmarked on the same day. I get coupon mailings that I would never use and cheap furniture advertisements I never consider. I get mailings telling me that I should stop renting and mailings telling me I can increase the value of my house or reduce my mortgage. Its such a pain in the ass to sort through and pretty disgusting if you think about everyone in America doing the same thing. Why is all this being printed? Why is it sent to me? How can I stop it? Obviously.com has a nice summary of the different types of mail and what to do about them. I went to the valpak website and had them remove my address. Its apparently going to take three months to happen, but hey, at least the next person who lives in my apartment won't have to deal with it. Valpak had a link to this website: Mailandjobs.com Reading it just makes me feel dirty.

Dirtball repellent

This is interesting if not funny. An inventor in Wales has created a device that emits a whining noise that runs at a frequency that most people over 30 can't hear. People under 20 are driven away by the annoyance in droves. Ah ageism what can't you do? I can't wait till my hearing is bad enough that I can loiter in front of the seven eleven again, how bout you?

Shit, if you stole $500,000 in nickels and quarters, you earned it

Bored cleaning floors at a casino at night? Just do what the cleaning staff at a Slovenian casino do: play suck the cash. Whoever steals the most change without being fired wins! In this case it ended like a dairy challenge.

18 year old write-in candidate beats incumbent Mayor in Michigan.

Seriously. I don't know what else to say. Read it.

Top Ten Good Things About Being An 18-Year-Old Mayor

10. “Parents try to tell me what to do, I raise their taxes”

9. “Every night, a different member of the town council does my homework”

8. “It’s every teen’s dream: The power to regulate zoning laws”

7. “Goodbye, education budget — Hello, brand new X-box”

6. “I got a call from Demi Moore”

5. “Trying to get the city hall on an episode of ‘MTV Cribs’”

4. “I don’t have to wait in line at Applebee’s anymore”

3. “School bullies now have to deal with the Feds”

2. “Only victory speech featuring the word ‘Dude’”

1. “It’s flattering when President Bush calls me for advice”

Oh baby I missed you

So I didn't notice until I laid down for bed last night, but I hadn't slept in a bed since Monday of last week. My bed rocks. Whoever thought of sleeping on mattresses with pillows and comforters was amazing. Anyone who says otherwise is a dullard. Although technically I guess I use more of a duvet system on my bed. But there's just something about saying 'duvet' that strikes me awry.

But its in the middle of freaking Colorado

Forbes released its list of the best cities for singles. Topping the list is the Denver-Boulder area. Luckily the Washington-Baltimore came in 5th. The rating was damaged, like New York's, by a high cost of living and lackluster job growth. Closer inspection reveals that Denver kinda sucks for singles and nightlife, but its pretty damn cheap to live there. Make your own decisions.

Holiday Hott Spots

'Hott-- though not that pricey'
(Dee S Nutts #2)

Nice Lotus at a local bar.
Maybe I should go pick one up if they're not that pricey.

Brilliant

But we play bad guys, like take uh, The Empire Strikes Back from the Star Wars trilogy. The Death Star - just full of British actors opening doors and going: "Oh, I'm...oh...oh." "What is it, Lieutenant Sebastian?" "It's just the rebels, sir. They're here." "My God, man! Do they want tea?" "No, I think they're after something more than that, sir. I don't know what it is but they've brought a flag." "Damn! That's dashed cunning of them! Ah, Lord Vader'" [hollow breath] "Uh...hello?" Because he was only impressive because he had that James Earl Jones voice: [deep voice] "I'm...I am Vader. The force is strong with you." If he had a much more: [high wimpy voice] "'Ello! Look, I'm Lord Vader and just pay a-bloody-ttention alright? Luke, Luke the force is strong with you." "Is it?" "Yeah." "Well who told you that?" "Uh, s-some bloke. Yeah, he said the force is really rather strong with you." "Well how strong?" "Uh, as strong as a small pony." "Oh, that's quite strong, that is." It wouldn't have worked, would it?

wikiquote I don't know if reading Eddie Izzard is as funny if you've never heard it but I get a pretty good chuckle. I'm buying 'Glorious' on iTunes right now. I haven't heard any of it but I'm sure its hilarious.

The cunning use of flags

Go check out madeyouthink.org.
Its pretty funny. That's all.

Wikipedia search sucks

Luckily this site rocks. It uses an Ajax like interface to update the query return without loading a new page. That way you can be sure you're getting the disambiguation you wanted before you get Wikipedia to load it. No need to write a thank you note, just send a check.

No fish poon for wild salmon

Whoa, read this article about 100,000 escaped salmon trying to get their mate on. Scientists are worried about what it will do to the populations of wild Atlantic salmon. The hell with populations, I'm worried about joe-schmoe salmon out there. That dude is gonna swim his ass all the way up the river and not get any fish love to show for it. Just put yourself in the salmon's shoes (first imagine that salmon have shoes) You're out at a club enjoying yourself. You've been thinking of going over and talking to some biddy that's been sending you looks. Suddenly the door slams open and in come 25 Brad Pitts that have escaped from the government's secret Brad Pitt cloning program. The womens go wild and you get thrown on the ground, stepped on, and bitten in the frenzy. You'll go home sad and alone to eat some ketchup packets you stole from McDonald's. Yeah. Now you've got a little bit of sympathy for that scrawny fish that no one wants to spray their eggs, or have for dinner. Remember, I'm pulling for ya. We're all in this together.

Skyping on up... to the east side

So I finally bit the bullet and got a SkypeIn number. I'd been thinking about it since I got my SkypeOut account last month just hoping that I'd know when the time was right to sign up. Well, this is cool. Ok, so my new apartment is the kind with a buzzer outside and you let people in. The building uses your home phone to ring, not a dedicated speaker box. You see where I'm going? So I bought a SkypeIn number with the proper area code so that now when someone buzzes it'll ring on my computer no matter where I'm logged in. Wait, it gets better. Instead of just sending it to voicemail if I don't answer at a computer, I can set it up to forward the call. To my cell phone and simultaneously my two roommates phones as well. So now, instead of plunking down 40 bucks a month for a telcom phone number that only rings in one room, I've got a number that acts as a house phone for everyone. Come on, you WISH you though of that. Now I just have to wait a bit for the Skype wireless handsets to get a little more reasonable and it will be so on.

Who's fault is this?

I really hate all these fruity waters and special sports waters and lite waters. Come on folks, at least bill it correctly as a weak fruit drink. That's fine, lots of drinks are too strong, you're selling a watered down version for more and making a tidy profit. Good job. But for the love of Pete Sampras, don't call it water. Speaking of which, check out these two fruit ball drinks. The first is drinking water from deep in the ocean where it is apparently really cold. Its appropriately named 'Deep Sea Drinking Water'. The second one is called OGO Oxygen water and is sposed to have more oxygen than normal water and therefore be lighter. What? Isn't water with more oxygen hydrogen peroxide? Whatever. Crackheads.

How to make me not want to watch the Olympics... more

Holy crap. I though the old mascots were needlessly freaky. I'm not really sure what the point is of having mascots except for selling lots of crap in the giftshops. I just think they might have a harder time moving these than, oh maybe something that doesn't keep me up at night wondering if it'll kill me in my sleep.
Beijing Olympic Mascots released.

European Hott Spots

Dee S. Nutts #1

A Lamborghini Murcielago I saw in london.
I think they only make these in yellow and bright orange.

Why yes, my ipod does suck.

Nutt 2 sent me this Lifehacker link about speeding up your ipod. Basically it says to defrag it, which makes sense. Its fairly easy to do, the only obstacle is that it likes to have 15% free space to run the defrag. So I deleted 5 albums and Alice's restaurant to get up to 10% and ran it. It just took a little longer. Here's a good question: why did I ever think that 4 GB was a acceptable ammount of storage? I always want more. I'll have to see if the thing really does perform better now, I had noticed that it took a little delay now and then to get things going.

What?

Alright, so Thursday didn't go down too well. I did think of a couple posts, I just didn't get around to writing them down. They were amusing. Insert amusing anecdote here. One of them was about how cold and windy days require soup. So I went to Quizno's and bought a big-ass toasted sandwich and a bowl of soup. Anyway I was so warm and full and happy after that it was hard to give a crap about you guys or the internet in general. Also funny: "I'm sorry I was thinking about soup" was going to be my new esoteric response to people for a while. Its from Scrubs Season 2 and is pretty funny, just trust me. Anyway, the odd thing is that saying it every once in a while does actually make me think about soup more. So now when I say it, I might actually have been thinking about soup. Lets see, what else is there? Ah Boondock 2. That'll be good. Ummm... 'Novel Explosive' is a novel term. Read more at defense tech. The jist was that the marines have got this new thermobaric shoulder launched missile that, properly placed, will bring down a whole building. Pretty impressive once you get past the tool of war death and destruction thing. Alright, there. That's Thursday in a nutshell. And if you don't like that nut maybe you should have a sample of deez nutts.

You stupid sons of bitches

So you show baseball for god knows how long, deterring loyal viewers and then freak out when they all don't figure out that you're putting the last few weeks' shows on all the same night. So you yank it and show reruns of an hour long show that only covers about 15 minutes of plot. Are you guys just trying to piss me off? And now its raining. Great. I gotta go break something.

Make your own Elmo

So toys have been getting more complicated, these days there's a chip or program in everything from books to Susie poops-a-lot. So its only natural that people have begun to apply general computer trends to the toys that are adopting the technology. Mainly: if people can get it, people are trying to hack it. Case in point- the newest Elmo doll that remembers your kid's name. Read the link past Gagetopia for hacking Elmo.

I'm waiting for the day people start hooking Elmo into their continuous code testing systems: Elmo thinks you have a fatal error on line 223! Nice going jerk! Hee hee!

Having an elmo doll sitting on your desk as a peripheral would just be weird. The Uncanny Valley link he posts is good too, have a read if you're interesting.

IEview no more

Check this badboy out. Its called IE Tab. Yeah, now when a poorly designed webpage demands IE you can stick it to them in style; and in a tab of firefox. Heads up though, your mouse gestures won't work on that tab any more, its now converted to the dark side. Extension page

The 21st century dementia

Whoa, he's crazy... no wait, maybe he's on the phone. I've seen these guys, mostly at quizno's oddly enough. They stand in line and mutter things under their breath. You'd think we could come up with a better way to signal that someone is on the phone than by actually holding a phone to one's face. Read

I said turn left - fool

Well, the novelty of in-dash nav systems is kinda wearing off for me. Granted I'm not really keeping up with the new developments and niceties that they're prolly planning to add on. I'm sure they're getting better at the interface and routing, but when it comes down to it - you're pretty much asking someone for directions. This is just not done. I'd rather wander around for a half an hour and then go home empty handed than ask someone for help. Well, the novelty is springing back to nav systems; now that I can have Mr. T or Dennis Hopper tell me how to get to the nearest 7-11. Read the MSNBC article for a bit more. I dunno how much this'll cost or how long till it hits stores, but admit it, you'd be amused. At least for a while. Lets see... who else would you like to see record voice for nav instructions? My first thought is Bill Cosby.

Like number puzzles but not math?

Everyone in London is doing these things. They're called Su Doku and its actually fairly engaging, for a mindless time sink. You're trying to fill in a 9x9 grid with digits so that each row column and 3x3 square includes only one of each digit. Check out the times online game, its pretty good, although for the harder ones being able to write notes on paper, not just answers, is a definite help.

Sweet sweet television

Well, I finally got my Arrested development fix on last night after my flight got in. A solid hour of goodness (although since I have the DVD's I'm used to watching much more in a sitting) that I'd been waiting for what seems like months to see. Who the hell decides that America's national pastime is more important than this? Oh well, no use chewing gum and kicking ass over spilled milk. Here's a link, cause I know you like clickin. Scrubs season 2 is out today, so everyone knows what I'll be up to this week. It just makes me smile thinkin about it. Oh and just in case you're wondering, BBC 4 televises the Daily Show at 8:00 right after the real news.

Ahhh... I love the smell of tuesday.

Ok, I'm back. All-in-all a fine trip if not a little quick. I spose thanks are in order to Nutt 2 for a job... done. I know its hard to reach the benchmark of journalistic integrity and profound insight that I set and raise each day.

Flipped

Too cool. This research vessel flips up on its end to provide a stable platform to do all kinds of groovy marine research. The squid is photoshopped in... scientists, man, what a wacky bunch.

Lazy... But Oddly Enticing

I know I know. All this bravado, a grand mutiny, one lame post... then nuthin' Well, see, I'm lazy... which is why this is great. Whereas formerly walking the dog meant you burned a few calories yourself, now there's no need. With this fantastic invention your dog walks you. They claim you control steering and braking, but I'm sure you're just a squirrel sighting away from death.

Not Spot

Apparently this is the new Chevy HHR. Saw it this morning and have been trying to forget about it all day. I'm hoping that Chevy's really run by astute satirists who are all having a laugh at us, and we're just missing the joke (Like Starship Troopers, I admit I totally missed the boat on that one.) but sadly I'm guessing GM's serious about this one... why they're forever on the brink of collapse is beyond me.

Missing a Nut

No, not like in a "There's Something About Mary" kinda way. Nut Prime (as it were) is away, across the pond, incommunicato for the week. Now personally I have better things to do than read blogs all day (I don't)but maybe there's some kid trapped in a closet somewhere and he's rigged an old atari he found to pick up one, just one, website, and this is it (you shoulda picked something with a little more TnA junior, just sayin'), well then its our duty to press on in't it? Well I say it is, and I'm turning off comments for this post so you can just pound sand b*tches.

Nobody likes a hummer

This is pretty damn amusing. A hummer dealer has started storing unsold vehicles at a nearby hotel so as to prevent scaring off prospective buyers with the huge inventory of unwanted trucks. A few programmers tracked them down and took some pictures of the approximately 300 too-big-for-their-own-good SUVs.

Beta Bandwagon

Go check out Yahoo maps, they've migrated over to a flash interface that is similar to google's ajax. Its a new layout and more work to learn but it seems pretty cool. You can add multiple stops to a set of directions and it reroutes the entire trip appropriately. Pretty money.

Hott Spot

(Dee S. Nutts #3)
Matching Porsches is pretty hott.

Oh man

So you know what sucks worse than getting to work while its dark in the morning? Getting to work while its dark at night. Course a box of DVD's waiting on your desk makes it a little better.

Who can guess what I was for Halloween? Yeah, I can't tell either. Man my camera sucks in the dark.

The Snark Hunt

I've never personally been on a snark hunt but it sounds amusing, frustrating and dangerous. I imagine the amusement would be quickly abandoned. Check this thing out. You may already have quite a lot of definitions for snark under your belt, but get out the leather punch cause you're gonna need another notch. Gizmag has a snippet about the newest VTOL UAV from the New Zealand. Lemme lay out a couple of the finer points:

vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle.

Carbon Fibre Kevlar construction

174 mph

Near silent rotor blades

Radar and IR reduced profile (recycles exhaust gases, emits little heat)

1500 lb payload

Runs on diesel fuel

24 hour airborne duration

Yeah, diesel. The Army is loving it cause they've already got tons of that all over the place. Plus you can't hear it from 250 yards away. And 24 flight hours means you can operate 2,000 miles and still make the return flight. You've got to wait till 2006 for the civilian version but the Army and Navy should be getting their's in time for Christmas. Oh, they cost 5 mil a piece.

Powers of deduction

You remember Carmen. I'm not asking I'm telling. Cause if you don't you must have grown up in Turkmenistan(I just think its funny that the CIA has a factbook) or received a powerful blow to the head. Anyway, this site called Brewster Jennings Protects America uses Google Maps to achieve a similar type game. Of course its slanted towards saving the US from Terror attacks, not stopping a cartoon thief. Moderate enjoyment ensues.
Update
Check out the Wikipedia article on Brewster Jennings & Associates.

Sweet, Sweet November

Ah Halloween. I remember getting dressed up in my little costumes. Maybe a fire chief, maybe a ninja, maybe a football player. We'd go all around our neighborhood, the neighborhood next to ours, neighborhoods we heard had good candy and ones that we just assumed had good candy. We'd stay out all night, or at least what seemed like it. I must have been out till 9:30. Wild. I'd get all juiced up about the sack of candy I was lugging around even though there was no possible way I could eat it all. We'd dump our haul out on the living room floor and compare who got what and trade the coveted items for the more coveted ones. In the end I must have thrown away more than I ate, probably a good thing. Halloween was never really a scary or dreadful time for me, just one where people acted weird and gave out fistfulls of candy. Good times. Flip to this year where I spent my evening sitting alone in the dark hoping that those little dirtballs wouldn't come knocking. I watched a movie and went to bed at 9:30; it was pretty awesome. I know you might think I'm a big party pooper for not shelling out to those pudgy obtrusive extortionists. I just don't see much of the Halloween I remember in the more recent ones. Maybe that's my fault for letting a sweet nostalgic ritual become a drunken stumble. I sense this cynicism growing about holidays in general though. I'm pretty sure that holidays were not designed with my demographic in mind. Little kids are really the only reason I can see for keeping the charade, and I don't really know that many little kids any more. At least not since I stopped being one. Really my only hope is to gain some interest in recreating the holidays I knew for the new batch of youngins. That does seem like a lot of work though.