New PSI Released Cool, version 0.9 of PSI, an open source Jabber client, is out. Some highlights are gnupg integration, Gnome2 tray icon support via the freedesktop standard, and lots of other good stuff. I've used PSI on linux, windows and os/x and it's a sweet program for all your Jabber needs.

Lan Party Humor Lan party types.

The Audiophile: He claims he forgot his headphones, but we all know he won�t play without his sub-woofer. Characteristics: Every sound in every game can be heard from his direction louder than anyone�s headphones will allow.

and many more...

Real Life Far Side The Something Awful photoshop friday is all about recreating far side cartoons in real life.

Great Computer Quotes Joel on Software has a nice list of computer quotes in his forum. Funny stuff. Also see my own personal .sig collection.

My faves from JOS so far are:

Vim: it's like software that's 95% easter eggs

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

Jennifer Lopez and her Bathroom Obsession Ever think that some people really need a good swift hit to the side of the head with a cluestick? Via fark.

Favorite Live Act RollingStone.com's favorite live act, as chosen by you. Thanks Foot_Note.

Gates on Spam A good dissection of Gates' spam manifesto over on The Register. Personally I think the better way to stop spam is to start hunting down spammers one by one and after using the tried and true draw and quarter method, display them in a public area. This I'm sure will start to persuade spammers that getting a real job is a much better idea.

Jabber Web Presense indicator and New Clients Mrinal has a nifty new jabber web presense indicator called Webber.

A nifty new windows (.net) client I saw just now for the first time is rhymbox, which looks very nice (and very similar to the new messanger.

Soapbox Reading Found spl's soapbox via the /. story today about the G5 benchmarks. Good reading there, not sure I agree with it all, but it's good to waste a bit of time with anyway.

Photoshop Tutorials from Greg Martin Greg Martin, of artofgregmartin.com has put out a couple of very tutorials on how to make planets in photoshop. If you're not familiar with his art, he has high quality wallpaper of a (mostly) space nature available for free off his site. Fantastic work, and great to see the tutorials!

Kitten Cuteness This is too cute to be legal I think. Kittens, kittens, and more kittens with even more pictures of Siberian kittens. Sorry for the brief intrusion of cuteness, we now return you to our standard @array of blood, gore, and Illiad prision stories.

How to Win at Tic-Tac-Toe Want to become a world champion TTT player? Check out this guide (pdf) which should give you everything you need.

American Apology Shirt Oh come on, you know you want the American Apology Shirt. Thanks Jeremy.

Dogs Changing a Light Bulb Read more for an amusing joke that was forwarded to me titled: How Many Dogs Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? Golden Retriever:
The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid light bulb?

Border Collie:
Just One. And then I'll replace all the wiring that's not up to code.

Dachshund:
You know I can't reach the stupid lamp.

Rottweiler:
Make Me.

Boxer:
Who cares? I can still play with my squeaky toys in the dark.

Lab:
Oh, Me, Me!!!! PLEEEEEEZE Let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I?
Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I? PLEEEEEEEZE, Please, Please?!?

German Shepard:
I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, check to make sure I haven't missed any, and make one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.

Jack Russell Terrier:
I'll just pop it in while I am bouncing off the walls and the furniture.

Old English Sheep Dog:
Light bulb? I'm sorry, I don't see a light bulb?

Cocker Spaniel:
Why change it? I can still pee on the carpet in the dark.

Chihuahua:
Yo Quiero Taco Bulb.

Pointer:
I see it, there it is, there it is, right there...

Greyhound:
It isn't moving. Who cares?

Australian Shepard:
First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little circle...

Poodle:
I'll just blow in the Border Collies ear, and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.

THE CAT:
* Dogs do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So the real question is how long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner, and a massage?

ALL OF WHICH PROVES, ONCE AGAIN, THAT WHILE DOGS HAVE MASTERS, CATS HAVE STAFF...

MozillaFirebird Icons and Artwork If you're one of the lucky folks who have joined the Mozilla Firebird revolution, you may want to check out http://www.phoenity.com/bird/ for some sweet looking icons and splash screens. http://iconpacks.mozdev.org/phoenix/ seems to have the same/similar icons, not sure if one is the old/unofficial site or not.

As I was setting myself up I thought that the default mozilla icon really didn't fit the firebird scheme, so I found some different ones, and shared. The things I do for you 12 people out there, I'm so good.

The Art of Turboing Tech Support A great article on the Art of Turboing, that is, avoiding the flucky first line tech support folks and getting to talk to someone who can actully help you with your problem.

This is a bit different than my buddy foz's technique of calling the person on the other end of the phone a @#$@$^@#$@ and a !@#&*&&*( and then a @#$^(*&&#$#, asking if they are paid to take abuse, and asking to get forwarded to someone who is (repeat as needed, until your CDROM gets fixed).

A good read nonetheless. Something to think of next time you need to avoid the "check your control panel and reboot" answers.

Flash Click to Play Extension for Mozilla Firebird This has got to be reason #4,821 to get Mozilla Firebird. An extension called Flash click to play that will display a button instead of a flash object and only play it when you click said button. Makes me want to cry, just like the guy who pointed it out (though not to me).

Credit Card Pranks Does your credit card signature really matter? It appears not. Great read and very funny, if for nothing but the description of his own writing/drawing talent. Link from random($foo).

The only time I've ever heard of any problem with credit card signatures was when I was down in Yosemite many years ago and was on the phone and overheard the young guy on the phone next to me telling someone (parents? relative) how he had denied someone a purchase because he didn't belive the signature was legit. That's it. Sometimes I will jokingly ask "that close enough?" when I hand back the credit card slip, and generally get a "sure" or polite smile that one reserves for people who ride the short bus but who are on a field trip.

We're all NOT Gonna Die! I'm happy to report that statistically the human race will last "205,000 to 8 million more years".

Finally I can sleep at night.

An Abridged Matrix Reloaded Mostly only funny if you've seen the Matrix Reloaded already, but The Matrix Reloaded: The Abridged Script was most amusing to me. Thanks foz for the link.

Where is Jesus Can you find where Jesus is? If not, you can console yourself in the store, and maybe pick up the one true thong.

Yes, I know I'm going to hell for this...

Safari Pics Not mine, but these images from Tanzex Safari Tours really make me want to head to Africa.

ReiserFS v4 A long paper on Reiser4 and what is going to be cool about it (long).

High Tech Beer Cooler BSpudd threw an article to me with a brilliant high tech beer cooler.

While drinking certain dark beers in the sun, I came to think about how to keep the beer cold until I finished it. Normally this isn't a big problem as I usually finish them before they get warm, but on really hot days this can be a problem.

Reason #4,815 for owning a Hummer Right under "cause it's cool" and "I can mount a machine gun in the roof for rush hour traffic" as reasons to own a hummer, you can add "Useful for chasing and running over robbers who just ripped off your store".

Iceland Pictures Some very cool pictures from the air over Iceland. Found the link via the Image of the Day site.

Ask Gollum Ask Gollum allows you to email in your questions to Gollum and him reply in mp3 format for your (and my) listening pleasure. Thanks again foot_note!

TV Show Guide Foot Note pointed me towards epguides.com - Full Menu of All Series which has an index of air times, summaries of shows, etc, for everything from 24 to the A-Team. Very cool!

Lame Pick up Lines Some really really bad Pick-up Lines, sure to not get you a date.

Ximian Desktop 2 Review A very good ximian desktop 2 review over at osnews.com. Nicely done, with screenshots and some good critiquing of the install process and some of the niggly bits that are as of yet unfixed. I also installed this not that long ago and am continuing to use it on my pII-700 work machine (no XD2 for gentoo on my home box yet). I threw up a quick review a bit ago for all ya'll.

To be honest though, some things in Linux/GNOME are beginning to piss me off. There were a flurry of posts over the last couple of days on the gnome-desktop-devel list about the gnome clipboard, and how to fix it (you can't copy from an app, close the app, and paste... the app has to stay open). All I could think was "this is what is still trying to be fixed???!!!" Gnome is in a 2.2, almost 2.4 release, and the GTK toolkit has been around now for years, and the clipboard still doesn't work "properly" for text (we're not even talking about graphics here yet)! WTF?

That doesn't stop me from using it every day in a desktop environment though, because I still feel it's better than the alternatives.

Halo 2 8 Minute Demo Bittorrent links etc are here. Main page is here. I can't say if the movie rocks or not, I'm still downloading (but at decent speed, and without having to go through a full page ad or sign up so another gaming site can spam me (I'm bitter, can you tell?).

Exploding CDs Take a CD, a dremel, accellerate CD to high speeds, and see what happens!

Thanks LIMOS!

Clean Jokes Skillin Clean Jokes... a collection of funny images and movies.

Real Life Transformers In a thread on fark about an upcoming live action transformers movie I found a link to this clip. I have no idea if it's a robot, CGI, or what, but damn, it's cool!

Multi Headed Gaming Multi-Head Gaming over at PlanetQuake. Hope that I can get this going for the next lan party :) 2x19" Quake3.... mmmm........

MS Messanger 6.0 Screenshots Ah, more windows stuff. Here are some Exclusive: MSN Messenger 6.0 Build 0250 Screenshots. Looks OK I guess, nothing revolutionary, just (maybe) evolutionary. Backgrounds, skins, a better file xfer dialog.... weee.... I still prefer Jabber for all my IM needs.

Animated Matrix Wallpaper This is for the windows folks out there I think (linux folks know about the -root option for xscreensaver hacks), ZMatrix is a matrix wallpaper/theme that is apparently animated and funky. Via Addicted to Digital Media.

A-List Bloggers A hilarious Guide to A-List Bloggers via benhammersley.com

Men and Directions A great contrib from my buddy LIMOS who send me this mpeg which clearly explains why, in this modern day and age, men don't ask for directions.

The Past and Future of NASA A really good article written by a former NASA member about The Failure of NASA And A Way Out. Be sure to read part 2 as well.

Signs for Dogs A great sign somewhere in N. Vancouver. Thanks to Boone for the find.

Star Trek Red Shirts An analysis of Red Shirt Deaths shows that there is a 47% mortality rate of red shirts! All the more reason to get a promotion from starfleet however.

Heidi and Jenna to Pose for Playboy Wow, who didn't see this coming? Apparently Playboy is accelerating their production process to get the "tasteful nudity" pictorial on the streets in less than 90 days from the photo session.

CubeSolver The Serious LEGO - CubeSolver, by JP Brown has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Take some lego mindstorms, vb, and some amazing ingenuity, and you get... a 3x3 rubik's cube solver built out of lego mindstorms and programmed in vb. Wow.

Thief 3 Interview Thief 3 interview with some good details via bluesnews.

Bush, War and Christianity on K5 While I don't hold the same religious views as the author of Turn The Other Cheek, George, it is an excellent article that definately bears reading, regardless of your personal views of religion or the war overseas. Some interesting ideas discussed, and some good points brought up in the comments.

Ars System Guide Ooooohhhh.... the Ars Technica system guide has been updated. Mmm...... God Box.....

Ah, the Joy of Trolling In the spirit of baiting.org comes i-mockery.com and some hilarious IM logs entitled INTERNET PERVERTS EXPOSED!

Acrobat Rant A nice rant on Acrobat Reader by Sven.

Yosemite Photos Tig threw me Three Days in Yosemite, by Charlie Morey - a selection of photos from of all places, Yosemite. What an amazing place, and some absolutely awsome photos.

The Parlor The Parlor is a hilarious file from the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. The gist of the film is group of people interacting in real life, but talking just like they were in an IRC chat session. Absolutely hilarious, well worth the watch. Free reg required of course. Very similar idea to BMW Films.

SCO vs Linux Simplified Tig passed on this simple explanation of the SCO vs Linux debate. Daisy Duke as Linux... yummy....

Firey Melons Wow, I don't think that this guy will ever be able to say "momma didn't raise no fool". Thanks stupid evil bastard.

Joel On Browsers Joel on software has a great writeup on IE, Mozilla, MozillaFirebird and the AOL/Microsoft deal. Much food for thought.

Considering that AOL spent $4.2 billion to buy Netscape, you'd think somebody would have noticed that they already have a browser component. Aha, but they don't. The Internet Explorer component is so much easier to embed in applications than Gecko that it probably comes down to the programmers on the AOL client team who just don't want to undergo the pain to embed Gecko. Now, if you're a programmer at AOL working on Mozilla, and you like your job, you might want to think about what it's going to take to make your happy little division actually useful to AOL so you aren't jettisonned. My highest priority would be to implement Mozilla as a COM control that supports the same embedding interfaces as IE, so that the AOL programmers can switch to Gecko. Oh, look! There is one Netscape employee, Adam Lock, working on this! And he says, �be advised that these ActiveX related projects are my own personal efforts and have absolutely nothing to do with my employer. I work on them when and if I have the time.� Yo, Netscape employees! This poor sod Adam Lock is working in his spare time to save all your jobs. Wake up.

Go read the full article over here.