Holy crap, I've seen some pics of the freeway collapse in Oakland, but this is the first video of it I've seen.
Wh00t! New Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer Trailer.
Here's a funny analysis of stock photography called 9 things I learned about the world from anonymous stock photo models.. Very amusing
5. The amount of forced enthusiasm you have for a commercial product is directly proportional to how big of an asshole you are.
Photogs, especially ones who appreciate those nice long white lenses, will probably cringe at this.... click the link a few posts down for a picture of the results (may only work if you click it from the first link though). That's an expensive foul ball!
So I saw today that Microsoft Silverlight CTP (public demo) was released. I downloaded and installed it, then watched the video using the new technology. Other than the video not having the standard controls, I'm not exactly sure exactly what this is. The video was typical marketting, showing flashy graphics (lots of images of skateboards) and throwing slogans around ("Light up the web"), but there is absolutely zero content! I suppose this is typical for big companies though, MS in particular. About the only thing you can gleam from the video is a short bit in which you see people with a buddy list or something like that.
Digging into the site a bit it seems this is a new plugin (yay) under 2mb (so what), for rich interactive applications on the web (isn't that already there with flash/quicktime/wmp?), vector graphics and overlays (isn't flash vector based?), enhancing existing standards/AJAX based applications (extending and embracing?).
All in all I'll wait till something either comes out or there's something more exciting out there.
Original post was via the vista experience blog btw.
Well, satire site BBSpot has come out with a pretty conclusive Operating System Showdown: Ubuntu Vs. Vista. Hard to argue with comparisons like these!
The Story of Mel is a long ago story in the geek community, it's featured in the hackers dictionary and has floated all around. Well worth the repost!
More great stories are in the same directory. If you've never read some of these in the hackers dictionary / jargon file, please do so, now, and you'll be able to talk about a scratch monkey and not worry you don't know what you're talking about :)
Pretty simple, The Most Excruciatingly Painful, Yet Typical, Customer Service Call Ever. I'm not even on the phone and I want to strangle the guy on the other end of the phone!
Decluttering, now with more detail and lots of pictures as you are shown how to control your desktop crap (or clutter as it were) a bit better. The before and after pics at the bottom of the page are impressive.
Hows that for a disjointed entry? :)
Kerneltrap reports on the Linux 2.6.21 Kernel Release. Ticklessness (wtf?) is the flavor of the day.
Nice article on IBMs DeveloperWorks on the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine.
Ars Technica has a very nice review of Adobe Photoshop CS3 complete with lots of screeshots and example movies.
Wow, check it out as this Bad ass takes on 5 guys! Definately someone you want with you in a dark alley. Having "Eye of the Tiger" playing as the background music is a nice touch as well :)
I sort of ignored this when it first came out a couple of weeks ago, finally listened to it today. I really like it! The sound of the song anyway, the actual lyrics are kinda meh. I definitely prefer my fellow canuck's interpretation over the original. Alanis's whimsical sound makes the song sound far less pretentious or something...
Anyway, here's a story about the results from that video.
I have no idea if this is real or not, but man it made me LOL today.
(Note, first shot at embedding youtube on UFies...)
Some more info as Bay updates us on Transformers:
The unreleased ad (Prime speaks) that was posted on youtube was a test that European were making with the ads. The clip where OP was "speaking," lets just say that it wasn't OP or Cullen speaking. It was something the European studios added on their own. In fact, it was a test shot.
They are referring to the infamous youtube clip that all the hardcore nerds (you know who you are) got their panties in a knot about how Optimus Prime had lips :)
OMG, CuteOverload is the best, especially when they bring you yawning cuteness. This is exactly how I feel every morning before work, and how I look too, but without being so adorable and cuddly... same amount of hair though.
Worse Than Failure announced the Olympiad of MisGuided Geeks contest, or OMGWTF. Basically you download skeleton code and fill in the TODOs to simple functions and are judged on ugly, buggy, or clever code.
I wish I could enter an ex-girlfriend of mine in this, a drama major who took a level 100 programming class to fill out her electives. I tried to explain stepping through simple programming constructs like loops or if statements, and well, lets just say the way that drama majors and computer geeks brains work is way different :)
"So if the loop starts and i is 0, and in the loop it increments i by 1, what's i when it gets back to the start of the loop?"
"more"
"How much more?"
"Uhmm...."
"OK, so when it starts, how much is i?"
"Huh?"
*shoots self and runs away*
(OK, maybe it wasn't quite that bad..... I didn't shoot myself, just stabbed my foot with a fork.)
Yay! A distant planet judged possibly habitable was found by astronomers. Now when you want them to stop the planet to let you get off you know where to go!
Another new trailer for the latest Harry Potter trailer. Only youtube size, but still good. It'll be showing in front of Spiderman 3 in May.
BF players rejoice, the Battlefield 2142 1.25 Patch is out. Doesn't sound like there's much exciting in it though.... I'd love a few simple fixes to stupid things like being able to save my weapon choices between games or hell, between rounds or the punkbuster errors where I'm randomly dumped out of a game for no reason.... you know, things like that. They have however fixed a bunch of exploits and tweaked weapons settings. read the full log for more.
Excellent article entitled Why I’m not a Sysadmin anymore.
My experience is that working as a sysadmin is, to me, interesting and fulfilling on a technical level, but ultimately disappointing and frustrating on a career and personal level.
As a sysadmin I can definately see where this guy is coming from.
Superniftycool is that there is new stuff on Google Earth from the AIA which is a bunch of new buildings. To enable it just load up google earth and check the red 'A' icon under featured content.
Heroes is finally coming back tonight after a long delay. Cultural Learnings shows us where we Last Left Our 'Heroes' with a wrap up of where everyone was and what they were doing.
The only big disappointment is I've gotten into both 24 and Drive, which conflict greatly with Heroes, meaning that I have to tape something and not be able to miss the other thing that's on at the same time. Fingers crossed that my MythTV box doesn't blow up :)
Darren pointed me to 50 Reasons Why Star Wars Is Better Than Star Trek:
Sure, Bones is a fine physician. But this conversation can't start until he puts a torpedo in a two-meter wide exhaust vent with his eyes closed.
Great stuff, love #8: "Pockets" :)
Title says it all.... THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM on Yahoo! Movies.
Best line in the trailer: "... trying to kill him and failing.... just pisses him off." :)
Wow, Firestorm looks mucho cool. Well integrated bittorrent support in Firefox. Doesn't appear to be released yet though :(
ISEB has some new Spider-Man 3 Film Clips. Great stuff, but some spoilers in a way, so if you want to go into spidey 3 totally blank, keep away :)
As an added bonus a new trailer is up, with lots of new goodies in there.
Shacknews has a First Look at the Transformers game. Can't say I'm impressed with the look of the actual transformers, but the graphics look good. Could be fun to kick ass by throwing cars around though :)
The hardest mario level video has been around for a few days and at 23 minutes long I really thought it was really a bit long.... however, when the swearing angry ranty commentary is added, it gets soooo much better :)
Hot and stupid both at the same time. What do you think?
Very interesting video from Joel Meyerowitz on Street Photography. Basically a howto, but more of a way of how to look for images, and how to get people to not notice you, also how to get over your fear of taking strangers pictures. Hint: Looks like no one really notices if you take their picture :) Linked from this thread in the DPReview forums.
Hayden Gallery. For you perves who watch heroes just for the cheerleader :)
Great story on how Paris Hilton was pwned over on wwttd:
Last September, the story broke that guerilla graffiti artist Banksy had smuggled 500 doctored copies of Paris Hilton's debut album into stores throughout the UK, where they sold without anyone knowing they were fake.
Details include that the CDs were put out with fake linernotes, cover, and even faked music.
I cry for the children of today and the crappy music they have....
Super-awesomeness cannot describe Nazi Robot Attack, a short animation made by Marco Spitoni.
... and on a a mission from God....
Hilarious story / joke. No idea if it's a true story or not, but it's v.funny (you have to stick with it though :)
Ubuntu 7.04 is out in the wild now, after lots of testing. The Ubuntu Linux home page has gone on a diet for the release, with only links to the upgrade and release notes as well as of course, all the mirrors.
Highlights for this release are the latest everything (gnome, kernel, OO.o, etc etc), sexy hardware accelerated graphics with Beryl/Compiz, new codec download manager, new 'restricted driver' (read: non-free) manager, windows migration tool and other stuff. More an incremental release than anything, still nice to see.
Now to see if the bug with installing root on a raid partition is fixed :)
Update: Yup, looks like it is. Now I'm safe to play with it at home to see if it should replace my Gentoo Linux desktop :)
I have no idea what to say about this Fox News story asking the question of if the Virginia Tech killer was possessed by the devil.
Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil? Could that explain the massacre at Virginia Tech?
Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, shouts an unequivocal “Yes!”
“Based on what I’ve seen in the news," Roberts said in an interview, "there’s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin."
Excuse me? This story is on the pages of the website of a supposedly reputable news organization? I'm all for bitching about Fox and their (supposed) right wing, Bush loving bias, and I can understand Dr. Richard Roberts buying into it as he is a Christian....
Maybe I'm the crazy one, but doesn't it seem wrong for this "reporter" to even entertain the notion on a public webpage for a news organization? Or is this how far into the religious right that news media has fallen?
In the words of the fabulous Chris Rock, "whatever happened to 'crazy'"?
Whohooo! mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 relased. Yay for open source mailers!
Interesting article on Room Color and How it Affects your Mood.
Crimson can make some people feel irritable. With red invoking feels of rage and hostility is a color that should be avoided as the main color of a room. Sitting for long periods of time in a room this color will likely breakdown any peace and harmony you are striving to create in your home. Ancient cultures used the color red to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.
Here's yet another Crysis Movie from Shacknews, this time showing actual footage from the game (not the tech demo like last time) as well as new footage from the game (new aliens, etc). Not sure if I'm hot on the new mod system (selecting super-fast, super-strength, mods on the weapon, etc), but I'll reserve judgment until it's in my hot and sweaty hands, making my PC beg for mercy :)
Oneiros finds yet another great '300' reference in comic form.
Wonder when Illiad will chime in?
Interesting blog on losing weight, dedicated to the '300' workout and the exercises that the actors from 300 did.
Update:the page for the guy who did the 300 workout. Impressive pictures....
The 300 workout btw, is:
25x Pull-up +
50x Deadlift @ 135# +
50x Push-up +
50x Box Jump @ 24” box +
50x Floor Wiper @ 135# (one-count) +
50x KB Clean and Press @ 36# (KB must touch floor between reps) +
25x Pull-up
300 reps total
My response to that list? "Fuckin' hell." :)
Thanks dude, time to hit the gym again....
If you're interested in the latest release of photoshop, you'll probably find this a pdf of what's new from Martin Evening enlightening. It's 21 pages with lots of screenshots and images with lots of great info.
Funny vid of a boxing match entitled Never Kiss A Guy During A Staredown!
Personally I thought it would have been obvious....
Boing Boing has a cool link to Stacking Obelisk chairs. Very cool, definately a space saver, nice to have for that family room that you don't have people over all the time, but don't want to dig extra chairs out of storage when people do come over. The integrated coffee table is a great touch as well. Definitely falls into the cool geek furniture category.
According to PopPhoto Photoshop CS3 Now Available.
Adobe has shipped the new regular and Extended versions of its Photoshop CS3 image-editing software.
Very cool download for Win, Linux and Mac is Packet Garden, which captures your network traffic and then grows a virtual world based on that. Wonder what your world looks like after visiting alt.binaries.hot.naked.sheep.pics? Hmm...
Forgetfoo has a 7 Minute Peek of Spiderman 3. This has been posted before, but what the heck, Spidey rocks!
Cool image of the timeline of progression of Linux distributions. Cool to see where everything came from (and for some, when they ended.... bye bye united linux, we hardly knew ya'.
Nice analysis and strategy guide for rock, paper, scissors.
So who wants to play :)
Via Reddit comes a collection of great Geek Culture images.
A great and interesting article by David Wheeler is Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FOSS, or FLOSS)? Look at the Numbers!
Basically he enumerates a lot of studies and addresses a lot of issues such as the various Microsoft funded TCO studies with a barrage of articles and writings regarding why a company or person should choose Free / Open Source software.
Not much to say about this, other than OMG OMG OMG OMG!
:)
I'm not sure exactly how much tongue in cheek or plain old linux zelotry (is that a word?) is involved in the latest "ask Microsoft to open source windows" letter, but I took a look through Dear Mr. Gates: save Vista, open-source it and found it ..... interesting.
Most of my comments amount to "not going to happen." Even if they did give it away, how long would it take to do anything on it? Remember mozilla and the problems they had when they open sourced just the browser? How long would it take for people to get in and know enough of the windows guts to do anything useful.
Sure, maybe a couple of minor itches could be scratched, things like stripping out the deluge of DRM processes taking up memory or maybe changing the logout button to separate icons or something (that's already done with tweak VI BTW), but addressing some of the real issues that are (IMHO) plaguing Vista like security, the UAC PITA, compatibility and performance? And doing it so that nothing else breaks, and that people trust it afterwards? I remember hearing that windows 2000 or 2003 or XP took 24 hours to do a full build. I really don't think that hobby hackers have quite that amount of patience.
What could come from it though, would be to take some of the core win32 code and use that in the Wine Project and in OS/X to give compatibility between the apps and whatever OS the user wants to run them on. The OS really doesn't matter as much these days, because people are really just running apps (or in extreme cases not even that in a web-based world). Wouldn't it be wonderful to have your sexy OS/X desktop and run [insert needed windows app here]? Or have the ease and convenience of GNOME (or KDE you freaks) and run [other needed windows app here] alongside [needed / loved Linux app here]? Heck, in a perfect world you'd be able to run OS/X apps on all three major platforms as well!
Or hey, port over the windows shell to run on top of Linux... Mac did it with OS/X didn't they?
Anyway, end rant. Short story is if you need/want windows and don't like Vista or don't want it, don't use it, use XP (at least until 2008). Ubuntu is very close to their next version and if you want super-sexy hardware, just get yourself a mac.
I love the Daily WTF Worse Than Failure, and while a WTF code example I posted a while back fell flat, I hope that this one regarding concatentation truly attracts more attention. An amazing example of doing things the long way at the least, a cruel joke if not. The commenters are great as well, especially this one... though they seem split as to if this is a true example of code found in the wild or just a cruel joke on either the posters part of the coder in question.
The Summarize your sex life with a Star Wars quote thread. Muahahahahah....
"Is it a hit?" "Negative, just impacted on the surface" -- Wally
... <continues lmao>
Post on a PS3 board about HDMI and an answer to the question of the difference between a $10 HDMI cable and a $150 HDMI cable. This post from someone who claims to "live and breath digital and analog signals every day" to help people understand HDMI cables.
That answer is, "No, an expensive HDMI cable will make NO difference in the quality of your picture OR sound"
I'm sure the audiophiles will be up in arms about it, but that is probably just because they feel silly for paying $150 for cables and their $20 diamond studded connectors :)
An online eye test from Men's Health. Very effective :) Via Forgetfoo.
Oneiros pointed me to the Stardust trailer a week or two ago, looks like it's finally up on apple's site. YAMFACBOGN (Yet Another Movie From A Comic Book Or Graphic Novel) that looks pretty damn awesome. The HD version is here.
The Battlestar Galactica podcast commentary for the season finale, "Crossroads Part 2" (0320) is finally online. Kudos to Ronald D. Moore for doing these by the way, fascinating to listen to what goes on behind the scenes of TV's best series.
How long till season 4 again?
Another reason why we should always believe statistics... Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend has numbers that are irrefutable as far as why you will never find a girlfriend.
A video from the John Safran series (whom I first heard about from an ex-university classmate living in Australia) is Door to Door Atheists, more of a rant against people knocking on your door first thing in the morning than your religious beliefs. Very amusing in a Borat type of way.
I particularly enjoyed the offer to read from the 1980's literature supporting their cause.
I posted about the Trojan suit a while back, but I think that was just pictures. Now there's a full video of the creator showing off the suit and all it's goodies.
You will remember the inventor from the grizzly bear suit, and the fire resistant paste.
Bit-Tech.net has a nice review of some of the stuff in linux gaming that you may or may not know about. From FPSs to Flight Sims (wow, Flight Gear has come a long way since the last time I saw it).
Hehehehe, check out some Star Trek IV Bloopers on youtube.
A bit of political humor this morning in the form of a bumper sticker.
Man, english cats are dedicated! I wish my cats would get jobs too. Course, we don't live on a bus route, so that's probably the main reason why they are so lazy. Slackers.
Interesting article on consumerist about How Much Does It Cost To Lose 30 lbs? The answers will surprise you, as they compare five of the most popular weight loss systems (think Jenny Craig). Course, there's also that silly "eat less, exercise more" method, but that's actual hard work! :) [Personal Note: especially when your fiance is a really good cook! -- arc]
Note: you may want to check out another way of losing weight the wii geek way!
Great youtube clip from Russia of a unique use of a backhoe.
Couple of big things this weekend..... first of all, Gaim has been renamed to "Pidgin" due to a legal war with AOL over the "AIM" part of the name. Stupid stupid stupid IMHO. Sadly I'm not a big fan of the new name, "pidgin" is harder to pronounce and spell than "gaim" in my opinion, but what do I know. At least now it's over they can start releasing new versions of the software. Wh00t.
Speaking of "wh00t", Debian 4.0 has been released. 4.0, or "Etch" was twenty-odd months in the making and is released for 11 different platforms. Highlights include:
"This release includes a number of updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.5a (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.14, the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment, the GNUstep desktop 5.2, X.Org 7.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4a, GIMP 2.2.13, Iceweasel (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.3), Icedove (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5), Iceape (an unbranded version of Mozilla Seamonkey 1.0.8), PostgreSQL 8.1.8, MySQL 5.0.32, GNU Compiler Collection 4.1.1, Linux kernel version 2.6.18, Apache 2.2.3, Samba 3.0.24, Python 2.4.4 and 2.5, Perl 5.8.8, PHP 4.4.4 and 5.2.0, Asterisk 1.2.13, and more than 18,000 other ready to use software packages."
Sadly a lot of the desktop apps are still lagging behind the current stable releases (GNOME 2.14 vs 2.18 is 2 stable releases, openoffice 2.0 vs 2.2), though a lot seem to be right on the money. I suppose those who use debian for the desktop are either using Ubuntu or are using unstable. I'm still lovin' debian as far as the server side though, and they have a great reputation for super-stable releases. Good on ya' Debian!
Lifehacker found a neat site that allows you to Quickly embed an image without hotlinking. Basically to be polite and not link directly to an image on someone else's server when posting it on your blog or in a forum or something, prepend http://imgred.com/ to the start of the full URL. Nifty stuff, wonder how long it'll last though.
This service of course, is not loved by the professional photographers out there.
Not always what you think....
:)
Ugh, Forever Geek found a Species Quattro Trailer... won't they ever learn? The good news is that there's some info from Kevin Smith on his new horror movie entitled Red State. Can't wait for the latter, can't wait to completely miss the former :)
Very cool little hack for OS/X, Sticky Windows allows you to (go figure) stick your windows to the sides of the screen for easy access. Not 100% sure why this is easier / better than using the dock, but hey, it's a neat idea for sure.
A bit of a writeup about the new Grand Canyon Skywalk. As always, it seems a bit of a letdown as they are up to making their own money from it, so you're charged $75 to walk (includes busride and a couple of other extras), and don't get to take cameras, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of it IMHO. Read the article for more info though.
Nice ScobleShow with a talk from Kris Krug at PhotoCamp.
There are some really weird things out there! Someone tell me where I can get "Sack II" condoms please.
Great article by Jeremy Allison on what he's learned as a computer programmer.
Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies. That is all.
Just up on yahoo movies is the LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD trailer. Looks like an unrelenting series of amazing car, chopper, plane, jet, truck, and bridge stunts, each wilder and less believable than the next.
I can't wait! :)
The Inbox Of Nardo Pace, The Empire's Worst Engineer:
I ask you this: Why is there a chasm in my room? Was it really necessary? What purpose does it serve? Nothing useful has ever come of it. In fact, sometimes when I awake in the middle of the night and stumble in the darkness while making my way to the Imperial Restroom, I mistakenly wobble along the shaft's edge. I also bump my knee on the Imperial Coffee Table, but that is another matter.
Very funny. Read now.
O'Reilly Digital Media blog has a good look at Photoshop Bridge in CS3 from dekebytes. Wait a minute, I didn't think that CS3 had been released yet? What's going on?
Coding Horror has a funny overview of Software Licenses. For example, the GPL:
The archetypal bearded, sandal-clad free software license. Your code can never be used in any proprietary program, ever! Take that, capitalism!
Ouch, retroactive and socially irrelevant burn on Illiad in todays's Real Life Comics! JD - you going to let this punk get away with that? :)
(On a side note.... ohhh! First piece of actual "UFie" news in ages!)
Some tips on extremetech on how to Speed Up Windows Vista. I'll check these out tonight.... hopefully something addresses the default 600-900mb of memory that it seems to use just booting up and running no apps.
Found via a scoble show are the labs at thirteen23, which have some cool .net 3.0 and/or Vista apps which do various interesting things.
Coding horror has good info on Mouse DPI and USB Polling Rate and how to change them.
A pic from today on CuteOverload has mittens, a cat with opposable thumbs. Freaky man, just freaky. How long before they evolve enough that they don't need people (as their slaves of course, I have no illusions that they "need" us right now for anything more than their amusement)?
Too Cool! Beyond the Red Line has released a demo of the game. It is open source and utilizes the Freespace2 game engine. The site appears to be dugg right now, still very exciting news... we can get our BSG fixes while waiting for Season 4!
Download / Torrent links in the Digg.com comments link BTW.
Title says it all, Shacknews has a preview of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Man I can't wait for this to be out (release date is still "when it's done").
Great business card design in a Business card for personal trainer. Almost as good as the lockpick set unique metal design that I saw a while ago :)
Dana mentioned Urban Terror, the mod for quake 3, and indeedUrban Terror 4.0 was released April 1. Website is a little lax on any info other than download links. Anyone know anything about the new release?
From Digg.... the Most exciting roller coaster. Uhm... wow, I'd have to say "no" if I got the chance to ride that, that's just a bit too crazy for me.
Speaking of Transformers, here's a couple of new TV spots. Oneiros emailed me these the other day, but I forgot to post them. Here they are in flash format anyway :)
Some cool pics from the transformers movie of Transformers actually fighting!
Every time I see more from this movie I can't wait for it to be here and so hope it doesn't suck.
Wow, the video is a bit long, but the payoff to view these Quake 3 trick jumpers is worth it. Just ignore the long intro....
Make me want to install Q3 again and head out to play some q3ctf again....
Postfix 2.4.0 stable release released. Features include:
Scott Adams points to an offer from the X Foundation for $10m for someone who can design a commercially viable car that gets 100mpg. He notes though:
[...] something tells me that the winning car will weigh six pounds and seat one anorexic dwarf. If you put a grape in the trunk, the front wheels will come off the ground.
That boy certainly has a way with words :)
