September 29, 2006
Web 2.0 Drinking Game

Title should say it all.... The Web 2.0 Drinking Game.


Flickr
Take a drink for every 10 photos you have uploaded.
Take a drink for every embarrassing photo of yourself you wish you could remove from your friends' pages.

Posted by Arcterex at 05:11 PM
September 28, 2006
A Letter From Son to Father

This joke was passed on to me from my buddy Rob F. Probably an old one, still funny though. Hit the read more link to see it....

Letter To A Dad

A father passing by his son's bedroom, was astonished to see the bed was nicely made, and everything was picked up. Then, he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow. It was addressed, "Dad."
With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope and read the letter, with trembling hands.

"Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend, because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you. I've been finding real passion with Stacy, and she is so nice, but I knew you
would not approve of her, because of all her piercing's, tattoos, her tight Motorcycle clothes, and because she is so much older than I am. But it's not only the passion.

Dad she's pregnant. Stacy said that we will be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods, and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children. Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't, really hurt anyone.

We'll be growing it for ourselves, and trading it with the other people in the commune, for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want. In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS, so Stacy can get better. She sure deserves it!! Don't worry Dad, I'm 15, and I know how to take care of myself. Someday, I'm sure we'll be back to visit, so you can get to know your grandchildren.

Love, your son,
John.

P.S. Dad, None of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that's in my center desk drawer. I love you! Call when it is safe for me to come home."

Posted by Arcterex at 01:32 PM
Top 10 Wierd Al Videos

Links to videos of someone's list of the Top 10 Weird Al Videos.

Posted by Arcterex at 11:23 AM
Songbird 0.02

This is kinda cool, the Songbird Media Player, an XUL/Firefox based itunes/windows media player/rhythmbox/everything clone has released version 0.02. This version actually runs and doesn't crash as soon as it starts! Nice interface as far as integrating web other web services. Only used it quickly, but will play with it more tonight.

I wonder if this is possibly the new open source, cross platform media player to compete with everything else...

Posted by Arcterex at 11:20 AM
Painting with Liquid

This is pretty cool, "sculptures" done in liquid. Check it out.

Posted by Arcterex at 11:09 AM
Mac Fan on Vista

Hands on: A Mac fan takes on Vista... vista via bootcamp from a Mac. No surprise which one comes out on top of course, though the way that I read it it wasn't due to a glaring bias towards mac, the article seems relatively fair and balanced to me. Some of the critisism can also be boiled down to familiarity. If you're used to hitting a key combo to get your widgets up then not having that will seem like a bad thing. If you've never had key-combos, you won't miss it (as an example).
Course, if you're a Vista fan I'm sure you'll disagree with some of the assertations.... feel free to discuss here of course!

Posted by Arcterex at 10:27 AM
Two Guys Get an Ass-Whoopin'

Holy ass-whoopin' batman! Great video of a guy whoopin' two guys asses after one of them smacks his girlfriend. Wowza. Reason #1,854 to not randomly hit women with their boyfriends..... :)

Posted by Arcterex at 08:51 AM
September 27, 2006
Signs You're a Grown-Up

This is funny and scary.... actually, hugely depressing. Don't read about how Sadly, You've Grown Up.

Posted by Arcterex at 01:59 PM
September 26, 2006
Amazing Bike Handling Video

Uhmm.... "wow". Check the video of a dude on a mountain bike. Filmed in vancouver too!

Posted by Arcterex at 02:13 PM
September 22, 2006
300 - Trailer

So my buddy Dave has sent this link in various forms to me 3 times now, probably about time I actually posted it. Hopefully this time it won't get taken down again.

The trailer for 300, a movie based on a graphic novel of some sort. This is the first I've heard of it, but it sounds like it's pretty exciting. Something about spartans or something like that. It looks like they got the comic book feel down nicely in the movie, styalistically anyway. I'm not sure about the look though, it's almost like a really well done CGI movie in places, not a live action one. Could be just the flash movie though. Anyway, thanks for the link(s) dude.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:59 AM
September 18, 2006
New Wierd Al Song - "White and Nerdy"

Friggin' hilarious, Dana pointed me to Wierd Al's latest song - White And Nerdy (video on youtube).

Posted by Arcterex at 08:28 AM
September 15, 2006
Great Animation

A fantastically funny animation entitled In the rough.

Posted by Arcterex at 12:34 PM
September 13, 2006
64Bit Linux Pros and Cons

Saw this headline on my MythTV box this morning while browsing the latest news using it's built in RSS reader. What you should (and shouldn't) expect from 64-bit Linux. Unfortunately I had to wait until I got to work to read it, as the MythTV RSS reader reads the articles with Konqueror, which pops up an 'accept cookies' box that I can't answer with the remote, and I don't have a mouse hooked up to the box to deal with it, so I have to read around this stupid box in the middle of the screen. No worries, MythTV just had a new release (.20) which looks exciting. The big question of course is do I upgrade and potentially have to re-do my nicely setup for everything but RSS system :)

Oh right, the article. Pros and cons of 64bit Linux, nice for people looking at jumping into the 64bit world. As a note, this server, UFies.org, runs Gentoo compiled under the AMD64 profile (even though it's got intel CPUS), meaning it's all running 64bit. Nice and up to date, and one of the few (IIRC) distros that fully supports current software in 64bit.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:55 AM
KDE/GNOME/XFCE/WMaker Desktop Memory

Some interesting memory benchmarks comparing the major Linux desktop memory usage. From the conclusion:


Ok, that's it. I tried quite hard to get these numbers and make sure they're usable. I however cannot rule any possible mistake and I'm obviously biased, so while I tried to be fair, I probably quite wasn't (however, since I myself was curious about the results, what would be the point of cheating?). So, in case you don't believe me or these numbers, you're free to redo this yourself, as long as you do your benchmarks somewhat correctly (it's really simple to do them incorrectly, trust me). In fact, since this is actually several months old, it would be nice if somebody tried with GNOME 2.16 and saved me the work.

Of course as everyone knows, memory doesn't tell the whole story. Apps, look and feel, usefulness and comfort are going to be far more deciding factors than memory usage. Also, memory these days is cheap, and when a standard (IMHO) box is a 1G system, the difference of 100 or 200 megs is relatively trivial. Wel at least over here. For projects like One Laptop Per Child and a push for free software in developing countries (where a brand new amd64 with a Gig of RAM isn't as easy to come by) it is a factor.

On the other hand, it's nice to see that developers are taking more pains to reduce memory usage, or at least in the dev lists I watch for GNOME (2.14 and 2.16 had major focus on reducing memory use). Just because memory is cheap doesn't give you the right to use it up with poor programming.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:49 AM
Backing up Your Music with iTunes 7

One of the nice new features of yesterday's released iTunes is the ability to backup your music to CD/DVD. The Unofficial Apple Weblog has the detail. Nice it just backs up the directory structure too, not some funky apple-format.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:18 AM
September 12, 2006
Photoshop Elements 5.0 Announced

Adobe announced today Adobe - Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. Some funky new stuff, wonder if this has some stuff in prelude to Photoshop CS3?

Posted by Arcterex at 03:11 PM
What The Duck Site

Yay! The photographer-targeted online comic strip What The Duck now has it's own site at WhattheDuck.net. Whohooo!

Posted by Arcterex at 01:59 PM
September 09, 2006
122 Changes to Star Wars Episode IV

A nicely done comparison of the 1977 and 2004 versions of Star Wars, and the 122 changes on starwars.com. Via Paul Thurrott.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:36 AM
September 08, 2006
Thurrott on Vista RC1

Paul Thurrott has his thoughts on the newly released Vista RC1 in an article called The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1. Some interesting finds and opinions in there as always. Anyone tried out RC1 yet? Any opinions?

Posted by Arcterex at 12:20 PM
Casino Royale Trailer

Ooohhh! A James Bond 'Casino Royale' Trailer Online. Looks good, and I have to say just based on the trailer of course, I like the new Bond (Daniel Craig). Awesome car flip towards the end of the trailer too.

And it's out on my birthday, what a great present!

Posted by Arcterex at 12:12 PM
September 07, 2006
Austin Mini + Ski Slope + Crazy Brits = Fun!

Top Gear does the mini ski jump. Pretty funny, I may have to start watching that show more.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:43 AM
September 06, 2006
Pogo Stick Stunts

Funny, I thought pogo sticks were something that went out of fashion long long ago. This video on youtube seems to indicate that they are coming back as an extreme sport. Or something like that. Crazy flips!

Posted by Arcterex at 09:42 AM
No WGA? No Problem!

Interesting article telling you how to download files from Microsoft without Windows Genuine Advantage. Useful for pirtates or folks who don't like Big Brother Bill snooping in on them. Not sure if there's a difference between that and pirates though...

Posted by Arcterex at 09:10 AM
GNOME 2.16 First Look

Ars has a nice first look at GNOME 2.16 with lots of screenshots and good writing as always.

Posted by Arcterex at 08:18 AM
September 01, 2006
"The Talk" With Your Son

Funny as hell talk on Masturbation Etiquette. You need to sign in to watch as it's not for underage eyes and ears (nothing nasty visually... just a lot of innuendo though :)

Posted by Arcterex at 04:41 PM
Bryce 5 Free

Any potential 3D modellers can download Bryce 5.0 for free until Sept 6. They are getting ready to release a new version I believe, so you just need to sign up for a free account to get a serial number. Pretty cool stuff.

Posted by Arcterex at 09:51 AM