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April 28, 2005
Touch Dic
Here is a new product from South Korea.
Touch Dic.
It's a Touch Screen Dictionary/Translator for the Nintendo DS. What did you think it was?
Gross.
Posted by Bryant at 11:30 PM | Comments (3)
April 27, 2005
33 Free Itunes Songs
I have been a longtime fan of Audis. They make great cars with fast turbo engines and their legendary quattro all-wheel drive provides great handling.
Now if you fill out this form and go to the dealership for a test drive of the new A3, they will send you a certificate that will give you 33 free itunes.
Tell them that Bryant sent you.
Posted by Bryant at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
Pets in Uniform
I was beginning to lose faith in the internet. I was thinking perhaps we had run out of new and creative ideas. I thought perhaps we had seen the end of bold new internet startups.
Here to restore my faith in the internet and humanity is PetsInUniform.com.
For only 19.99, you can upload a digital photo of your pet. These photoshop wizards will take your cherished pet and artistically immortalize them in a military uniform. These hi-res prints are then available for download and printing.
Remember mother's day is coming up, and you can never shop too early for christmas.
Posted by Bryant at 12:33 AM | Comments (1)
April 23, 2005
Mystery of UnPopped Popcorn Solved
I'd like to preface this post by saying that we still don't have a cure for cancer.
But apparently instead of doing real research, scientists at Purdue have concluded that the reason why there are unpopped kernels in your popcorn is due to the composition of the hull.
Apparently the unpopped kernels just have leaky hulls.
I would have thought Orville or his own team of scientists already knew this. And why Purdue was spending money on this study, I'll never know.
Posted by Bryant at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)
Xbox 360 Photo
Supposedly this is the photo of the Xbox 360.
Things to notice:
No Controller ports: Does this mean wireless controllers?
Power button and Eject button sideways on one of the photos: Does this mean that it supposed to run vertically?
Also the first one looks more fake/photoshopped than the second one.
The logo on the Cd-Try looks pretty lame... probably not the real one?
More information as it develops ...
A link to another photo of a "Real xbox 360"
I'm thinking that the second Xbox looks more like the real photo. The first one looks like a mockup, Also I don't think the top will be concave like this. Too hard to make, stack, etc... I'm guessin the front might be curved, try and look at the corner picture with a different perspective.
Here's a quick xbox 360 render playblast I made to illustrate my point.
Posted by Bryant at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
Seinfeld's Soup Man Coming to You!
NO Soup For you!
Looks like the real "Soup Nazi" that inspired the Seinfeld episode is selling out big time and bringing his famous line of soups to a grocer near you. Soon you will be able to heat up a pouch of Soupman Jambalaya and try the soup that drove Newman, Kramer, and Jerry crazy.
The Soupman is also hoping to open over 1000 stores nationwide over the next 7 years.
Apparently at first Al Yeganeh didn't like the publicity that Seinfeld brought him and he was quoted as saying that he would like to "smack" Jerry Seinfeld's face.
However, now he seems to be embracing and capitalizing on the jokes and the attention.
Posted by Bryant at 01:32 PM | Comments (2)
April 21, 2005
Ti85 Emulator for the Nintendo DS
So Major nerd alert here...
David Rorex has ported a TI-85 emulator to the Nintendo DS. It's actually pretty cool. It has the screen on the top screen and buttons on the lower touch sensitive screen.
This will allow you to always be able to play DS games, graph y1=x^2, play drug wars, and perhaps even run the nintendo emulator on the TI-85 emulator on your DS.
Posted by Bryant at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
Don't Press the Red Button
Posted by Bryant at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)
Tiger Woods Chip Shot
I missed this when it happened a couple weeks ago, but here's the awesome video clip of Tiger woods sinking the chip shot at the Masters.
The ball seriously hangs for about 2 seconds and waits for a dramatic pause before going in. Nike couldn't have asked for a better place to put their logo. It looks like something staged for a golf movie
Posted by Bryant at 01:25 AM | Comments (0)
Play Rock Paper Scissors with yourself
While you must be truly bored to play this, I'm assuming that some of you might actually use this to train for the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships.
Here is an online trainer you can use from the World RPS Society.
Posted by Bryant at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
At least you don't live on Dork St.
There's a street Southeast of LA that is called Dork St.
It's a rural area so the street didn't have a street sign for a while. Ester Avetisian says that she might not have moved into her house if she had known what the name of the street was.
"I didn't know the name until my husband and I were signing (mortgage) papers," Avetisian recalled. "I was pretty shocked when I found out."
Mario Saucedo had a resume kicked back because he had Dork St. written at the top of it. "I had a resume kicked back because someone thought I was kidding," said Saucedo.
Posted by Bryant at 11:21 AM | Comments (3)
April 14, 2005
Contrarily, the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea...
If you don't understand the top sentence, it's ok. It's a sentence that was randomly generated by a computer program.
This sentence was just one of many gems that were produced by SciGen, a Computer Science Paper generator program.
The real funny part is that a paper written by this software was accepted by the WMSCI2005 Conference.
From their website:
One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to "fake" conferences; that is, conferences with no quality standards, which exist only to make money. A prime example, which you may recognize from spam in your inbox, is SCI/IIIS and its dozens of co-located conferences
Here's another not so randomly generated submission to the conference.
Posted by Bryant at 09:25 PM | Comments (2)
Help I can't handle my 12 year old daughter
Lori from Watauga, Texas came home to find her two daughters fighting. One of them was 12, the other was 13. Instead of being a parent and stopping the fight, she decided that she'll instead call 911.
She called and said she came home from work and her kids were fighting.
The 911 operator, Mike Forbess, that received the call said, "Ok... Do you want us to come over to shoot her?" He then said it was just a joke.
Suddenly this woman's "emergency" wasn't so important as getting the name of the 911 operator.
Now she filed a formal complaint against Mike Forbess and wants him fired.
I think Lori should get a bill from the county requesting babysitting fees and a fine for tying up an EMERGENCY ONLY line.
Click here to listen to the call
Posted by Bryant at 12:49 PM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2005
Wisconsin Rocks Literally...
Thanks to sco for the link:
on the day we, as a state, pave the way for cat hunting there is one small bright note... very very small. as small as a grain of sand. a zircon crystal that is believed to the oldest thing on earth resides in madison wisconsin. in order to honor the sand UW is throwing a jazz party for it and the public will be allowed to look at a microscope at it. although dont try to steal it.... its under police guard...
my poor state seems very lame today...
Posted by Jesse at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)
Wisconsin is the Cats Meow
well not for long, a bill was approved today to make cat hunting legal at all times in wisconsin. (insert red-neck joke here)
Posted by Jesse at 09:40 PM | Comments (3)
N64 Portable
Here is a n64 portable that someone made himself. This probably took about a gazillion hours and a good amount of money. I think it's just easier to get a Nintendo DS or PSP.
Posted by Bryant at 09:34 PM | Comments (2)
The Man Date
A fun article on the intricacies of the "man date" (a date between two straight men).
Bryant insists on wearing perfume for our man dates.
Posted by Edwin at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)
Looks like we'll be seeing these on Hondas
I hate rice. You might think that's funny, but it's true. It's not as bad down here in Virginia, but up in Rhode Island, you would see the most ridiculous things ever done to Honda's.
People would take wings right off of a 747 and bolt it down unpainted on the rear of their car. Then you got the stupid chrome wheels, ground effects, stupid fiberglass body kits, stupid chinese character logos, and that god awful coffee can muffler.
That's why I laughed when I saw this new car "mod": Tire Tagz It's like those clocks that you see in the Sharper Image that take an LED wand and use persistance of Vision to create a pattern. With this little wand locked onto your wheel, you will be able to slap any logo you want onto the side of your wheel in street legal Orange LED's. They come with a USB interface so theoretically you could put a picture of each one of your family members on each wheel.
Oh the abuses of technology.
Posted by Bryant at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Touching Great White Sharks
Finding yourself unexcited and bored lately? Feel like you need to take more risks? Why don't you go pet a Great White Shark.
Posted by Edwin at 12:43 PM | Comments (2)
April 08, 2005
My nose is clogged...
This story sounds like one of those urban legends where somone urinating in a stream has a small fish swim up the urine stream and into his... well, you know what story I'm talking about. Well this story is similar, but it involves a woman's nose and a 2-inch leech.
Posted by Edwin at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
Why Comcast Users Cried Last night
Comcast our lovely cable giant seems to have gone under attack last night.
Last night I came home to a deeply dissapointed apartment mate. He was trying the ol resetting the router and resetting the cable modem trick. But this time, it seemed to yield no results.
I figured it was just some routine maintenance so I went out for dinner and figured it would be all better when I came home. After returning a couple hours later and finding that the apartment was still without internet I went into panic mode.
The odd thing was that after a bit of tinkering, I found out google worked perfectly fine, Gaim seemed to be working at about 80%, and my email was working. The funny thing was that I couldn't load Comcast's own web page.
Then slowly over the next hour or so, the internet started to come back to life.
I figured it was a comcast error after asking others on IM if they were having problems with their internet.
So if you're curious to find out exactly why the internet went down for you and why its probably not just "routine maintenance" as Comcast claims, here's some more technical info. Apparently it was due to a DNS poisoning vulnerability in networks with a Windows DNS Server.
If you have problems like this in the future, you can manually work around it by using Verizon or somebody else's DNS servers.
Posted by Bryant at 02:04 PM | Comments (1)
April 07, 2005
Phishing Requests
This is just a question for everyone, I had never received a phishing scam until the one I posted about a few weeks ago.
Now it seems like I get one a week? Has anyone else seen a rise in this kind of activity? I've received one now for Citibank, MBNA, Ebay and a couple others. Why would anybody really want my ebay account info?
And can't some feds do a trace to this phishing IP address?
http://211.220.195.72/ws/eBaySuspension/signin.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dllSignIn-ssPageName-hhsin.php
Posted by Bryant at 03:54 PM | Comments (3)
Mo Money Mo Problems
Looks like Mike Bolesta should watch how he flashes his fancy money.
Mike Bolesta runs a tour operating company for kids. When he gives them money for meals, he hands over money in 2 dollar bills. I guess this encourages kids to save the money rather than spending it.
What he found out however is that he might be handing out jail time. He went in to a Best Buy to settle a bill for a Car Installation and he thought it would be funny to pay in all 2 dollar bills to get back at them for charging him for an stereo installation gone bad.
"I'm just here to pay the bill," Bolesta says he told a cashier. "She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money. Like she's doing me a favor."
Then she proceeded to mark each of the bills with a verification pen. While doing so she noticed some ink smudging on the bills. This in turn caused the police to come in. They took Bolesta downtown and held him there until Secret Service came in.
Now Best Buy, was this worth everyone's trouble over 114 dollars? I'm just waiting for an eager beaver trial lawyer to take this guys case.
I'm including the full text of the Article from the Baltimore Sun after the jump if you don't want to register.
PUT YOURSELF in Mike Bolesta's place. On the morning of Feb. 20, he buys a new radio-CD player for his 17-year-old son Christopher's car. He pays the $114 installation charge with 57 crisp new $2 bills, which, when last observed, were still considered legitimate currency in the United States proper. The $2 bills are Bolesta's idea of payment, and his little comic protest, too.
For this, Bolesta, Baltimore County resident, innocent citizen, owner of Capital City Student Tours, finds himself under arrest.
Finds himself, in front of a store full of customers at the Best Buy on York Road in Lutherville, locked into handcuffs and leg irons.
Finds himself transported to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, where he's handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service is called into the case.
Have a nice day, Mike.
"Humiliating," the 57-year old Bolesta was saying now. "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole -- and to know you haven't done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating."
What we have here, besides humiliation, is a sense of caution resulting in screw-ups all around.
"When I bought the stereo player," Bolesta explains, "the technician said it'd fit perfectly into my son's dashboard. But it didn't. So they called back and said they had another model that would fit perfectly, and it was cheaper. We got a $67 refund, which was fine. As long as it fit, that's all.
"So we go back and pay for it, and they tell us to go around front with our receipt and pick up the difference in the cost. I ask about installation charges. They said, 'No installation charge, because of the mix-up. Our mistake, no charge.' Swell.
"But then, the next day, I get a call at home. They're telling me, 'If you don't come in and pay the installation fee, we're calling the police.' Jeez, where did we go from them admitting a mistake to suddenly calling the police? So I say, 'Fine, I'll be in tomorrow.' But, overnight, I'm starting to steam a little. It's not the money -- it's the threat. So I thought, I'll count out a few $2 bills."
He has lots and lots of them.
With his Capital City Student Tours, he arranges class trips for school kids around the country traveling to large East Coast cities, including Baltimore. He's been doing this for the last 18 years. He makes all the arrangements: hotels, meals, entertainment. And it's part of his schtick that, when Bolesta hands out meal money to students, he does it in $2 bills, which he picks up from his regular bank, Sun Trust.
"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"
At Best Buy, they may have perceived the protest -- but did not sense the comic aspect of 57 $2 bills.
"I'm just here to pay the bill," Bolesta says he told a cashier. "She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money. Like she's doing me a favor."
He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"
"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."
A Best Buy manager refused comment last week. But, according to a Baltimore County police arrest report, suspicions were roused when an employee noticed some smearing of ink. So the cops were called in. One officer noticed the bills ran in sequential order.
"I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank,'" Bolesta says. "I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'
"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'"
Bolesta was then taken to the county police lockup in Cockeysville, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in.
"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."
Finally, Secret Service agent Leigh Turner arrived, examined the bills and said they were legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."
This will be important news to all concerned.
For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."
The other day, one of Bolesta's sons needed a few bucks. Bolesta pulled out his wallet and "whipped out a couple of $2 bills. But my son turned away. He said he doesn't want 'em any more."
He's seen where such money can lead.
Posted by Bryant at 01:24 PM | Comments (3)
Video: Moscow Dance Ghengis Khan Style
i have no clue what this is but it is surreal to the max. it might be a dance video from dschinghis khan moskau. ghengis khan? wow crazy... once again we post the hot new internet videos before they are fads.
anyone out there know what they are singing or what the deal with this is......
Posted by Jesse at 11:07 AM | Comments (11)
April 06, 2005
Animal Oddities: A Lonely Tag...
we used to have a whole slew of great animal odditties posts but theses days they seem to be scarce. this pic from florida shows oodles of sharks waiting for slow moving retired senior citizens to enter the water.... its a pretty neat pic...
source
Posted by Jesse at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
Chinese Delivery Man Found in Elevator
Ming Kuang Chen a Delivery man for Happy Dragon must have been quite upset after spending more than 3 days in a stuck express elevator. Firefighters said that when they asked Chen how long he had been in the elevator, he pointed to his watch and swirled his finger repeatedly around the dial.
Apparently he had used that little emergency phone in the Elevator several times, but due to language barriers or a complete idiot on the other side of the line, couldn't explain that he was stuck in an elevator.
I would think that after receiving 5 or 6 calls from the same elevator, the elevator company would at least send someone over to see what the deal was.
Also, I would think that after the entire apartment building had been searched with police door to door and bloodhounds and cadaver dogs someone would have noticed a stuck elevator.
Maybe they were doing him a favor and allowing him to starve so he could experience euphoria.
Posted by Bryant at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
Woman Loses Ms. Wheelchair Title
This sounds like a familiar Seinfeld Episode.
Janeal Lee, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a scooter, had the Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin title taken from her after photos of her standing up surfaced.(left)
Although she does have a disability and does use a scooter, Apparently she is not handicapped enough for the powers that be.
"I've been made to feel as if I can't represent the disabled citizens of Wisconsin because I'm not disabled enough," Lee said. She had raised $1000 dollars to go on the trip with her sister.
I wonder if she'll stand up and fight, or if she'll take it sitting down...
Posted by Bryant at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
I forgot I'm from Wisconsin
Earlier I reported on the Enormous sandwich from Burger King. You may or may not remember that I seemed impressed by this sandwich. Our very own Taemin even declared it to be too much.
We now have two new tasks for our reviewers.
Wisconsin is home to the double brat sandwich. You can construct this at home. It's sort of like another Wisconsin feature, the double wide. Sure one trailer or brat is good, but why settle for one when you can get two and stick em together?
Wisconsin is also the home of the 4 pound hamburger. You can enjoy this delicate delicacy at Kelly's Bleachers, 5218 W. Blue Mound Road in Milwaukee. "It's like eating 16 Quarter Pounders at McDonald's," said Kelly's Bleachers owner Patrick Guenther. "I've gone to McDonald's and ordered two Quarter Pounders, but I never asked for 14 more," he said.
Posted by Bryant at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
Napoleon Dynamite Interview at the X-Games
This post is for Napoleon Dynamite Fans, but not true die hard Napoleon Dynamite fans who will be upset that now flippin everbody is seeing this. They'll also be made because he's quoting from the movie.
Anyways, this is a clip of Napoleon Dynamite doing an interview for the Late Late Show on CBS. It has its moments.
Posted by Bryant at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)
Canadians Out of News Stories
Today I burst out laughing at lunch when CNN carried a story that Canadians are surprisingly happy.
In a recent poll 96 percent of Canadians said that they are happy. One percent said they were very unhappy and three percent was somewhat unhappy.
Things that made them happy were friends, family, and kraft dinner.
I wonder why 50% of Canadians I know are unhappy.
Posted by Bryant at 01:14 PM | Comments (1)
April 01, 2005
Gmail on Phones and PDA's
Finally!
Gmail turns 1 today. If you go to the front page you'll see that everyone's storage is ticking up. Supposedly it will reach 2 gigs. There are a whole mess of other features too.
The news I'm more excited about however is the support for gmail now on basic HTML devices. This allows me to check my gmail on my phone and my PocketPC. Chalk one up for nerds!
Sorry about the pic quality, took it at work with my phone cam the second I found I could do this.
Posted by Bryant at 05:09 PM | Comments (2)
Finger Length May Determine Agressivity...
a study of some 'scienctists' has found a link between index to ring finger ratio and agressive behavoir.
1. if you ring finger is longer than your idex finger your all man (like me!)
2. if you ring finger is shorter expect to have your lunch money stolen.
im happy science is undertaking such useful projects.
Posted by Jesse at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
Need a Lift?
Don't know who to trust today. This almost seems to good to be true.
Google Labs has released google ridefinder. Basically combining GPS And google maps, they can show you where cabs are in your city.
Seeing sample cities with real cab companies makes me think this may be real.
Washington DC
Beloit, Wisconsin
Posted by Bryant at 10:20 AM | Comments (2)
Say Cheese
Heard about this through work.
This is on the NASA forums:
Google (www.google.com) has been gracious enough to provide us with 24 hour access to their global imaging satellite, gSat.
We invite the World Wind community to participate in this great event; the gSat will be imaging the entire Earth this Friday, the first of April.
If you want to be photographed in this new dataset, the gSat's special orbit should mean that it passes over your respective time zone between 10:00am and 11:00am.
Simply go outside that hour and wave, feel free to make signs supporting World Wind or other message, but please keep things appropriate. This new set of images should be in the next major version of World Wind due in a few months. Thanks again for the community's support and interest in World Wind!
Posted by Bryant at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
USA will cease to exist in 2007
April fools!
Uh. Wait this guy is actually serious. A Koran scholar says that through analysis of the Koran, it is said that the U.S. will be hit by a major tsunami. The asian tsunami was just a "rehearsal." Because the US is such a superpower, this will disrupt the entire world economy. Therefore, having the US be such a superpower is a bad thing.
I only wish this were a joke. Hopefully by 2007, I'll have my terrawind and I'll be impervious to any tsunami.
Posted by Bryant at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)