Friday, December 29, 2006

awesome beard bonazza

here is a sample.

http://www.drivl.com/posts/view/466

tour of Number 10

Virtual Tour of Number 10 Downing St.

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/page41.asp

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Another shockwave distance game ... but

with some weird Japanese / Anime twist to it.

http://www.learnhax.net/f/src/nanaca_crash_v107.swf

My PB so far is 2509.99m. Try to press your left mouse when you get the special power-up. And don't bounce the bloke into the geeky girl.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Christmas Photo Tips for Newbies and Pros

Just in time for all the Christmas happy snaps...

16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas [via Gizmodo]

Lacing up your shoes with no hands

From digg...

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Clip: Little Girl Wii-Boxes Grown Man

Clip: Little Girl Wii-Boxes Grown Man

can't help wondering if they wii remotes are actually doing anything ?? she looks kinda cute standing there waving her little armies.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Geogreeting for y'all

http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?zfNZMZj7+dLbu7MS+izJ0LrL+g.c

SI.com Most Interesting Photos of 2006

a round-up of 41 photos that are interesting for some reason or another...

Smokin' Man's Flash Diffuser

If you want to DIY a flash diffuser for your DSLR flash...

Cigarette Packet Flash Diffuser [via Gizmodo]

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Google tells us the truth ....

about what the moon is made of ; go to http://moon.google.com/ and scroll to the maximum zoom.

What Happens To Your Body If You Drink A Coke Right Now?

(sorry to spoil your afternoon soda.... - dp)

Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant.

In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
>60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
>60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (As little as two if you’re a smoker.) But, hey, have another Coke, it’ll make you feel better.

http://healthbolt.net/2006/12/08/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-drink-a-coke-right-now/

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Down boy! Bad Dog...

Humpin' Dog USB drive... need I say more?

Monday, December 18, 2006

The Daily WTF

Amusing read about many daily anecdotes regarding the stupid/amusing things about working in IT...

Many might have seen this before, but some entries make me crack up... :)

The Daily WTF

Saturday, December 16, 2006

We'll all be gay when Johnny comes marching home!

... one of the 10 most dangerous play things of all time.

For the full listing including radioactive kits, flesh eating dolls and Battlestar Galactica killer missles .. clicky

funky pocket tripod for your camera

Definitive Proof of Alien Intelligence...
The Monsterpod

up tp 20oz. whats that in internationally recognised units of weight ?

David Pogue proves Vista is not copying OSX

Check out the video here:

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=d14603c1e23e6ce37920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&rf=bm

(courtesy tuaw.org)

Friday, December 15, 2006

got my itunes refund

Woot W00t ! I got my 1 song refund. Now to try to not spend it all at once ...

any suggestions ?

(couldn't work out how to put an image in a comment so starting a new post)

Pogue on Politeness

Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette?

685 diggs. “AWESOME astronomy poem.” (posted by MetsFan 3 days ago)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Before long, the people’s feedback begins, like this:
by baddude on 12/11/06
What’s yr problem, moron. You already said it’s a star, why would you then wonder what it is. Get a clue, or a life.
by neverland2 on 12/11/06
Dugg down as inaccurate. Stars do not twinkle. It’s the shifting atmosphere that causes an apparent twinkle. Or were you stoned all through science class?
by mrobe on 12/11/06
yo neverland2–It’s a poem, idiot. Nobody’s claiming that stars twinkle. Ever heard of poetic license?
Honestly, the intellectual level of you people is right up there with a gnat’s.
…and so on.

I keep away from digg now as it is just full of mean mean meanies.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

gmail troubles anyone else ?

anyone having bad gmail troubles today ? hours and hours of not being able to login or do anything :( including right now ...

those wacky willitblend boys

Not content with blending marbles or golf-balls, they blend a poor defenless 4G ipod.

Looks like you have to go to their web site, not youtubable yet.

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=ipod

Happy Snap your MacBook hax0rs

Take happy snaps of people trying to guess your password on your MacBook... :)

Take iSight snapshots during invalid login attempts [via engadget]

weird response from iTunes support

OK, so I'm trying to do the right thing and pay for my music. You'd think that the iTunes music store would have excellently encoded MP3s. (with DRM that is of course, actually .m4p files) Well a track in the latest Moby Album has a digital defect that makes it annoying to listen to. Thought I might contact them and see what they say.

`Sounds Bad' is one of the predefined problem names.

I don't want a refund, just um a proper copy of the track. Should I persevere ?

Re: iTunes Quality Report

Dear David,

Your request for a refund was carefully considered; however, according to our Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches our refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.
For more information, please review the entire Terms of Sale for the iTunes Store at http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/legal/policies.html.
Sincerely,
Brian
iTunes Store Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/

Customer First Name : David
Customer Last Name : Pascoe
email : xx@ii.net
Web Order # : M305055025
Support Subject : Songs
Sub Issue : Sounds bad
Comments : iTunes Account Name: xx@ii.net
Platform : iTunes/6.0.4 (Windows; U; Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)) DPI/96
Song Name : New York New York (Rock)
Location : Specific time 00:01:33 (hour:min:sec)
Comments:

There is glitch in this file at 1:34, New York New York (Rock) by Moby. I get a burp at this point on both my iPod and iTunes on my PC. Is there anything you can do for me ?

thanks, davidp.

if you've got 5 mins to spare for this vid

awesome stop motion animation. quick give these guys a job for all their effort. I love how the grass changes underneath them when they fly over it !

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Mac Dock Icon Pillows

Uh, yeah, someone created pillows to look like mac icons

via Mac DevCenter

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Clutsy Robot

Poor Asimo takes a tumble.

wiimotion flickrpool

ModTaco 001, originally uploaded by alwonger.

Adding to the wii hype, there is a flickr pool of photos of people playing the wii:

http://flickr.com/groups/wiimotion/

Raving Rabbids

As a followup to Nick's post.

This is the reason why I'm into em rabbits..

Raving Rabbids Merchandise

This one is for Zan. [Link]

world's hottest chilli found in Dorset

The chilli so hot you need gloves

THE world’s hottest chilli pepper does not come from a tropical hot spot where the locals are impervious to its fiery heat but a smallholding in deepest Dorset.

Some chillis are fierce enough to make your eyes water. Anyone foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly require hospital treatment.

Aktar Miha, from the Indus Bangladeshi restaurant in Bournemouth, said that even in its home country the naga chilli was treated with respect. “It is used in some cooking, mainly with fish curries, but most people don’t cook with it. They hold it by the stalk and just touch their food with it,” he said.

“It has a refreshing smell and a very good taste but you don’t want too much of it. It is a killer chilli and you have to be careful and wash your hands and the cutting board. If you don’t know what you are doing it could blow your head off.”

Scoville Heat Units

Pure capsaicin: 15m to 16m

US Police-grade pepper spray: 5m

Dorset Naga: 923,000

Red Savina habanero: 577,000

Scotch bonnet: 100,000-325,000

Jamaican hot pepper: 100,000-200,000

Cayenne pepper: 30,000-50,000

Jalapeno pepper: 2,500-8,000

Tabasco sauce: 2,500

Pimento: 100 to 500

Bell pepper: 0

Monday, December 11, 2006

Get a Mac Ads: The Christian Version

These Get-A-Mac ad parodies the difference between a Christian vs Christ-follower...

These are amusing and quite well done... :)

Christian vs. Christ-follower [via Gizmodo]

LED tail lights

Oh the effort some people put into these things!

Click on the video linked from here:

LED taillights

I reckon it needs programming to say 'back off' or something.

Heroes: the TV show

Continuing to hype a show that I haven't even seen yet:

tv.com summary of what the show is about

Sounds a LOT to me like Unbreakable the movie, but as a TV series. Which is a good thing.

XBOX360 vs PS3 comparison

Gamespot does it using roll-over image comparisons

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Blank DVD media quality guide & FAQ

The thing that must be realized is that most media is produced by a relative small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, some European locations. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from Taiwan or China (in stores) and Hong Kong (online).

This being said, understand that the media brand means nothing. Apple is a great brand, but they do not make their own discs, instead outsourcing to MXL (Hitachi/Maxell) or MCC (Mitsubishi Chemicals). Verbatim became infamous in 2002 by switching from high-quality MCC ID media to the inferior CMC ID media, although they quickly returned to using MCC. Companies like Memorex, Fuji and Imation all outsource to media vendors. When buying media online always be aware of fake media too (see the fakes information farther down the page).

It is the media ID that is important, as it reveals the disc manufacturer. Unfortunately, this is not written on packaging or anywhere else. Companies want consumers to be oblivious to this sort of behind-the-scenes information. To learn the media ID code, a blank disc must be put into a computer DVD burner drive and the ID read by a special utility. Some burning software reads the code by default (DVD Decrypter, for example, in ISO write mode). There are also a handful of freeware or trialware tools available:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

Friday, December 08, 2006

Friday Apple Bashing

It's predictable. If Apple got into medical devices, people would come out of Steve Jobs' speech proclaiming "The iBag is the easiest, most user-friendly colostomy device I've ever encountered."

Perspective: The Apple phone flop

wifey chrissy pressie sortie-d

These are slippers with small flashlights built into the toe, to make navigating through your luxury penthouse late at night easier, without having to wake what’s-her-name from the club.

We say penthouse because, at $70, you have to be a person of considerable income to waste your money on this crap.

[via Flashlight + Slippers = WTF]

you can never have too many nipples

Like every Thursday lunch break, today we searched Yahoo! for the word “nipples,” and somehow it returned something SFW that we can share with you gadget-obsessed nerds.

The Yahoo! business site tells the story of the Nipple Adapter, a gadget every parent of an infant or toddler should have. Put simply, it turns the mouth of any ordinary water bottle (or beer, if you’re from Blake’s family) into a nipple, something babies like to put their filthy wet mouthes on.
It’s one of those inventions that should have been thought up years ago, but it took Tommy Habeeb, formerly of TV’s “Cheaters” to come up with it. Why not just give babies drinks of water? Because, like prom dates, “infants are unable to swallow without using their sucking reflex,” according to Habeeb. The thing only costs $2, and is a work of simplistic genius. I’ve ordered a box to use for Holiday gifts.
Former Host of CHEATERS Invents the Next Must-Have Baby Product [Yahoo! Business] [via Your Baby Wants Nipple Adapters]

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Christmas Decorations degrade WiFi...

Apparently Christmas decorations degrade your WiFi signal, so if your brand new WiFi enabled gadgets that you got on Christmas morning doesn't find your access point very well... then move to another room... :)

Holiday Decorations Can Create Major Wi-Fi Disturbances [via Engadget]

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Where Google gets all that gmail drive space

Wii control problem?

I'm not sure what type of people are buying Wii's. But it looks like some of them lack basic motor skills. If these people went and played real tennis.. would their rackets fly out of their hands?

Wii-linky...

It's only a matter of time before someone gets impaled.

GT5 HD Video

Hm, 720p video of GT5 engine rendering Nissans or something like that:

http://www.gran-turismo.com/jp/movie/d453.html

Just checking it out now.

egad ! iPod not mentioned in choice mp3 review

In fact Apple earned a Shonky award for the iPod.

An iPod is a significant investment, so you don’t want your APPLE to be a lemon. And if there is something wrong with it, you’d expect an easy repair and warranty service. Podluck.

Level 1. Several readers complained about cracked screens, faulty batteries and problems with sound reproduction.
Level 2. APPLE doesn’t allow retailers to handle complaints under warranty (which is their obligation under Fair Trading laws) — you have to send your faulty iPod to APPLE yourself via Australia Post. And if they decide the fault isn’t covered by the warranty, you’ll have to foot the entire bill.
Some retailers will still deal with Apple for you and they remain your first port of call if something goes wrong.

Mmmm not much lovin for the iPod over at CHOICE.

What to buy

Flash

iriver T10 2GB $139

Samsung YP-Z5FQB 2GB $239

Hard disc

iriver E10 6GB $299

Toshiba gigabeat MES30V $399

The verdict

Flash

The iRiver T10 2GB achieved an excellent score for ease of use and a very good score for sound. It has the longest battery life in the test using a normal akaline AA battery.

The Samsung YP-Z5FQB has very good ease of use and sound scores as well as the second longest battery life in the test. It has a built-in rechargable battery.

However, the seven products which follow these two in the table are all very good overall performers and well worth a look.

Hard disc

The iRIVER E10 6GB has the smallest capacity for HDD models in this test, but is very easy to use and has the longest battery life of the HDD models.

If you need the 30GB capacity,the TOSHIBA gigabeat MES30V achieved equal second best sound score in the test and a good ease of use rating.

The other HDD models all perform well overall.

wireless controller for Christmas lights

Talking tech: Christmas lights

An old computer, some lights and a lot of spare time turned Christmas high-tech for this Brisbane man.

... But this system was far from perfect, so the following year he introduced a computer to synchronise the flashing and patterns. Brad used the programming experience he gained while completing an Advanced Diploma in Computer Systems Engineering with information from the internet and a computer made from spare parts.

http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=105487&catId=100461&tid=100008&p=1&title=Talking+tech%3a+Christmas+lights

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Now THIS is a coffee mod

http://www.slashgear.com/coffee-machine-modding-rancilio-silvia-gets-hacked-042750.php

Monday, December 04, 2006

The Asian Squat

I never could get it right... but now I'm inspired to try harder.

My local Borders imposes manga reading time limit

Zune

I'm a PC, and I'm a Mac. And I'm a Vaio?

Sony's done a Get-A-Mac spoof trying to flog their Vaio C Series...

But erm Sony... Aren't your Vaio laptops PC's?

Vaio C Series - the non-pc pc [via engadget]

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Sketchfighter!

haha, man this game looks cool.

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

canyon_de_chelly-13, originally uploaded by s.alt.

Saw a picture of this place via the photo history podcasts I'm going through (original photo by O'Sullivan, this pic found on flickr). This is a ruin called The White House which is embedded in the cliff face in the Canyon de Chelly.

How awesome does this place look? I'd love to visit it at some point in my life.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Is Microsoft Innovative ? Winer and Scoble go at it

Is Microsoft Driving Innovation Or Playing Catch-Up With Rivals?

Robert Scoble and Dave Winer exchange emails to share their views on this subject.

Dave Winer, 51, is a software developer and author of the Scripting News blog, which he has written since 1997. Mr. Winer has helped create several standards related to Web publishing, including Really Simple Syndication or RSS. He was the founder and chief executive of UserLand Software Inc., and a founder of Symantec Corp.

Robert Scoble, 41, writes the Scobleizer blog, which rose to prominence during his three years as "technical evangelist" at Microsoft. Mr. Scoble joined Microsoft from NEC, where he worked in technical and sales support. In June, Mr. Scoble left Microsoft to become vice president of media development at PodTech.Network Inc., which produces and distributes video podcasts.

I guess the shareholders (and lets face it, all those millions benefiting from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) all probably don't care about the answer to this question, just how much Microsoft will make in the next few years with Vista, Office 97, Xbox, Zune etc.

Google loos

How is this for the control panel on a Google loo?

The actual loo...

and the reading material...

Found at flickr... Linky