Another Month

So, another full month of daily posts. And since it is the end of the month, it's time for another cop-out post. ^_^ I won't even tell you what day it is I'm writing this, as it's pretty ridiculous, but I WILL say that forward-posting this far ahead has significant drawbacks. You can draw your own conclusions there.

But don't be surprised if there is no post tomorrow.

So that this post isn't a TOTAL waste, here's an image of a Phoenix. ^_^


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Busey on Business

Wow. Watch this and tell me if it blows your mind. Show/Hide


Business wisdom from Gary Busey, and there's a lot more where that came from.

The videos are to promote Grasshopper, which used to be called GotVMail. What is Grasshopper?

Well, it's a lot like GoogleVoice, except it costs $50 a month instead of being free. That's almost all you need to know, but I will point out one more thing: the site gears itself towards entreprenuers, right? Well, how good are the Grasshopper entreprenuers if they can't change the links from the videos‽ The name changed in MAY.

If this is their level of quality and attention to detail for their OWN business, I don't think I want their help.

Just sayin'.

The Busey videos are entertaining though.

Best Friends

Best Friends
Originally uploaded by sixkindsofblue

Thomas found this picture in the 'girls' & 'kissing' photostream, and I think it is excellent.

Translation Party

One morning, I had a good cup of hot coffee. At least, according to Translation Party, a site that takes an English phrase and translates it into Japanese, back into English, back into Japanese, etc, until it finds an identical phrase in both. That's referred to as finding equilibrium.

Sometimes that is impossible, like when you find a translation loop.

They used to let you see what other people were typing in as well, but that was apparently too resource intensive, so the feature was removed (as of this writing; it may be back later).

One thing I wished it had was a game where you are presented with an equilibrium phrase like "And good sex, you need a cup of coffee.", and you have to try and guess the originating phrase. Show/Hide
"The two people wanted to fuck but instead they decided to have a delicious cup of tea instead."

They also made Question Party (but it's not as fun).

Nostalgia

On the Happy site I saw this line: "let’s get nostalgic"

I immediately thought of something I wanted to put on a T-Shirt. I even did a Google search first and found NO hits. Jackpot!



Unrelated, I saw this Digg article. "Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies"

This is a Demetri Martin joke. Someone even found a video in which he makes this exact joke. Show/Hide



Unfortunately, one of the OTHER jokes he makes is:

"I remember when I used to really be into nostalgia."

DAMN. IT.

Weight Loss Week 77

After I stopped tracking my weight last year, I swelled up to a ridiculous 244 pounds (according to my December 12th weigh-in at the clinic; it's on official record).

At the next check-in, I had managed to drop 20 pounds or so, in four months. It's been about five months since then. How am I doing?

This morning, I weighed in under 205 (204.8, to be precise). So, another 20 or so pounds down. Yeah, I'm a superstar. ^_^

Actually, there's been a sudden rapid weight loss that is a little curious.



Up until a couple weeks ago, I was trapped in the 211-217 range, but I seem to have broken out of it and now the pounds are just melting away. I hope that's a good things. ^_^ Of course, the winter/holiday months are fast approaching, so the hardest road is still ahead.

My Milk Toof

When I was young, I placed my baby teeth under my pillow and when i woke up I'd find a shiny new quarter. But whatever happened to those little teeth? Where did they go? Would I ever see them again?

Many years later, a little tooth was standing at my door. It looked familiar. Its name was ickle. Welcome home, my milk toof!

So begins the story of My Milk Toof, a picture-blog about two teeth going on adventures. It's super cute. ^_^

The Magic Store

There aren't even really that many songs ABOUT rainbows, when you think about it. At least, I can't think of many.

Happy birthday, Jim.

Facemarks

In yesterday's post, I used two facemarks to represent smiling dogs. Facemarks are like Emoticons, but viewed normally instead of rotated 90 degrees. They also often use Cyrillic and Japanese kana or kanji (so, sorry if your system can't display them. ^_^)

There are two good sites I use to quickly look up a facemark.

Hiroette's classic site that has been around for years: Japanese Smilies

A new site that let's people rate facemarks: Evoticon

Witz

Reading the latest Witz Pickz... is he... is he saying that he joined the Mile High club with his sister? This is what I get for skimming the article.

Or, this is what I get for being traumatized by the video of the man dying the horrific death on the same page.

Either / or.

Pursuit of Happyness

I found this EXCELLENT tumblr recently that is all about Happy stuff. ^_^ I *HIGHLY APPROVE*

There are far too many awesome things there to link to them all, but I'll share some highlights.

Here's a cute stop-motion video: Show/Hide



The rest are links to pictures.

Falling Rocks

Yes We Can

I Love You

What I want to be

Happy Pills

Happy Existence Day

And suddenly...

▽^_^▽

Ｕ◕ฺܫฺ◕ฺＵ

Life is too short

And finally, here's one that isn't necessarily about being happy, but it did make me smile. ^_^ Here.

Enicycle

This guy built his own 1-axis-balancing (forward/backward) electric unicycle.
Show/Hide


(larger)

THIS is a cool toy, and I want one.

His website is here and has more videos.

Another guy has built a similar one and has all the specs available. The total cost for materials is about $1500. However, that one doesn't have foot-turning like the Enicycle (you turn it like you would a unicycle, eg, arm-flailing).

There's got to be a way to make one of these that is 2-axis-balancing...

What?

I was on Facebook today (must be a blue moon), and I was going through my friends list, and I came across someone I didn't recognize.

So I opened up their profile, and ... we have NO friends in common, we live in different parts of the country, we've never gone to the same school...

Who is this person?

This is what I get for logging on to Facebook four times a year.

Feed Me A Stray Cat

Do you like David Burne? I've been a big Talking Heads fan ever since the release of their 1983 album Speaking in Tongues. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual.

I think This Must Be The Place was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding four albums.

Show/Hide


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This Reminds Me

So, I saw this new exercise ... thingy. It reminds me of something, I just can't think of what.

Go to the site and watch the video. Does it remind YOU of anything?

It's brilliant marketing (like the Tiddy Bear); I'm showing it to you, you might show it to others, and boom goes the dynamite.

My Wena

I like Bowling For Soup, and have since their cover of 1985. And so, a little Soup for you (possibly NSFW): Show/Hide

Work Neato-ness

Cleaned out the ol' cubicle today. Felt like I was moving out of my apartment. I might have had too much stuff here.

Got all nostalgic, running across a bunch of keepsakes and reminders of the past two years. A lot of good times.

Right now, I'm done except for a backup of my work on this computer. Brought in my external, installed Terracopy (if you use Windows...), selected the required folders and let it run.

It says it will take about ... well, why don't I just show you?



Yes. 52 days, 22 hours 58 minutes 42 seconds remaining.

I may be here for quite some time.

UPDATE:



Neato.

UPDATE AGAIN:

Also I'm very hungry, and my painkillers are wearing off.

NEATO.

UPDATE AGAIN AGAIN:

I just realized that I still have the Linux partition to do after this.

NEAT. OH.

More Snow Leopard Coolness

Bluetooth is (at the moment) working again in 10.6.1 and I found a sort-of workaround for the previously mentioned remote control problems.

The workaround is to have Quicktime open somewhere. Not in use, just open. Because, hey, what's a little resource waster, eh? (The previous trick was to have iTunes open on a store page, but that takes even MORE resources)

Anyway, with the QT player open, the remote once again works with other programs like it SHOULD. (actually, it doesn't. updated below)

As biskitwheels said:

I believe there are a few issues stemming from one problem. One of many problems with Apple's growing desire to control your user experience.

The solution is to allow us to manage iTunes keyboard shortcuts. Turn them off, re-map the keyboard, whatever it is we happen to want to do, we should have the ability to do it, especially for a matter so trivial of a feature yet such an annoyance to us. Additionally, it is so obviously contrived to push their software on us it makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

Now we have such a egregious fail on Apple's part, this auto-launch with no turn off switch, it is getting bad enough that people are speaking out. I hope it opens up a discussion about users making our own decision to use itunes or not. Seems as if Apple thinks we need iTunes in order to breathe, which WE DO NOT.

Apple, don't just disappear your most recent error, stand up and correct it by allowing us the ability to shape our user experience, even in the most basic of ways.

And while you're at it, throw in FLAC for us, ok?

My reasons to stick with this OS are dwindling fast.

(His line about Apple disappearing their error is in reference to the threads in the Apple support forum that have been closed/deleted/marked-as-solved when the problem very much still exists)

Anyway, the New Coolness is that SMB sharing doesn't work with XP anymore. So, now that I have the remote working, I can watch all jack-squat because I can't connect to the file server because it's on XP.

DUMB.

Once again, something that worked FINE in Leopard that is BROKEN in Snow Leopard. Do I wait for a fix? Or do I reformat and reinstall EVERYTHING.

Note for future use: Time Machine is good for you, and you should use it. (If I had a Time Machine backup of my Leopard system, I could downgrade)

UPDATE:
SMB sharing still doesn't work when I try to connect via Finder, BUT it DOES work if I connect via Plex. BUT! The Quicktime and iTunes tricks for getting the remote working, which work for VLC, DON'T work for Plex!

Apple, why you so stoopid?

UPDATE AGAIN:
Alright, it might not be malicious douchebaggery on Apple's part. It may instead be an actual bug. But I notice that they didn't fix it in 10.6.1, so...

Misunderstanding Markup

Ran across this interesting explanation of what XHTML 2 is (and is not).



You can read the full comic here.

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Shoulder Awesomeness

OK, in my defense, it was a Honey Baked Ham store. (Or, was it? I can't find it on their store locator. But anyway...)

The point is, I was rightly excited, and so my vigorous pointing and gesturing and jumping up and down was well within the norms for a ham-loving man.

And so was the left rotator cuff injury. Ah, the rotator cuff, one of the MOST EASILY INJURED parts of our intelligently designed bodies.

This was Saturday night. It was awesome.

Sunday morning, I felt fine. That is, until I went to grab a coffee cup from the cupboard. WOW was that awesome! I almost dropped the cup, that's how awesome it was.

Went to the doctor Monday, even though my shoulder was feeling better. Well, he soon took care of that. :-( So much awesome...

He said take Tylenol for awesome and an NSAID for inflammation, put Voltaren gel (a topical NSAID) on it, hot/cold pads, and don't use it for 10 days. Fine.

Picked up the pills and hot/cold pads BUT couldn't find a shoulder immobilizer anywhere. Owls, Ben Franklin, Walmart, Bi-Mart, nothing. Walgreens supposedly has them, but there's no Walgreens in Cheney. :-/

But anyway. Had a real moment of awesome yesterday. I put the cold pack on my shoulder. Seemed fine. Then it slipped. I, instinctively, grabbed it. With my left (aka injured) arm.

It was blindingly awesome. o_O

I'm writing this on Tuesday night, three days after the injury. I'm still in a lot of awesome. Taking a shower is awesome. Doing the dishes is awesome. When enjoying Gentlemen's Entertainment, I usually delight sinisterly; that's now too awesome to be possible.

My point is, I'm having an awesome time.

Katamari Matrimony

Awesome Katamari Damacy themed wedding. Themed weddings are COOL.

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LOTS more pictures at this crappy slideshow (seriously, no back button? No speed adjustment? It's not 1997 anymore)

MARU!

SPEAKING of Capucha, it's thanks to her that I saw the recent Maru video.

Maru has always been a cute cat, but MAN, this is a new level: Show/Hide

Lose Control

I saw this Shake video on Capucha's blog. Show/Hide

Bikini Machine - Shake

Seems alright. Wait, wait, what's THIS?



AAHH! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Stop Smoking Now!

Quick! Before you kill us all! Show/Hide


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Horny? Make a run for the border!

Also found on the Idiocracy Index (same as Thursday's video), a little tale about a spicy group of people. Show/Hide


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Liberty

On this day, the anniversary of the fall of the twin towers, I share this:

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It seems we have lost so much since then.

Debt

Awesome. Continuing my awesome week, I got my credit card statement today, which informed me that somehow I MISSED AN ENTIRE MONTH. So all those notes in my apartment reminding me to pay my credit card bill on time? Already way too late.

How did I miss AUGUST? What was I doing last month that I forgot to pay my credit card bill? I can't even remember.

This is the first time I've missed a payment since ... man, I don't even know. :-( Also, apparently Capital One now has an automatic payment system (they didn't when I asked way back when I opened the account), so if I had signed up for that earlier, I wouldn't have missed anything.

Awesome. And I can't even really complain about this because it was entirely my fault. 100% preventable.

For me the pain that hurts the most is being disappointed in myself.

Cankiri Demolition

....gone WRONG! Show/Hide


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Kiku no Sekku

source
Today is September 9^th, or 9/9/9! Also Kiku no Sekku as it is known in Japan. Kiku no Sekku is Chrysanthemum Day!

The Chrysanthemum is the national flower of Japan. When I lived in Takefu, there was a beautiful Chrysanthemum park not too far away.

Anyway, before I went to Japan, I went to a Kiku Matsuri (I think) in Seattle. The pictures for which may still exist somewhere, but my copies were on the drive that died shortly before I returned to America :'-(

ANYway, Maurice and I helped carry around a Mikoshi (a portable Shinto shrine). Well... carry isn't the right term, because part of the job is hoisting it up the the air and screaming. I couldn't understand the chant, so I don't recall what it was. The guy behind me wasn't really lifting the shrine at all (did I mention it's big and metal and HEAVY?), and I ended up hurting my shoulder (and tearing the uniform they had me wearing) and had to drop out. Lame!

If I still had my pictures, there's one where it's CLEAR that the guy behind me is not carrying his weight. Darn it!

Always back up!

Snow Leopard

I recently updated my mac mini with Snow Leopard (which btw you can get from Amazon for $25).

So how is it?

It killed my mini.

Well, that's not quite true. SL is an improvement over Leopard in a number of small ways (size and speed for example), but it does introduce a couple of showstopper bugs.

1) The Apple Remote.
Previously, I used my mini (which is connected to my living room TV) as a media PC. All the software to that end (VLC, Plex, etc), I controlled with the standard Apple remote.

Well, Apple didn't like that one bit. NOW, no matter which program is active, the remote launches Front Row or iTunes. The mini is basically unusable as a media PC until this is fixed.

That's not the real showstopper.

2) Bluetooth is broken.
Bluetooth works fine until you restart your Mac after upgrading. By which I mean, you can upgrade, and run for DAYS and everything will be GREAT. And then if you restart, BAM, Bluetooth goes bye bye.

And I only have a Bluetooth keyboard.

Boy, let me tell you how frustrating THAT is!

The mouse has completely stopped working, but I recently switched to a trackball (RF, so still wireless, but not Bluetooth). The keyboard does work sometimes (maybe 1 out of 20 restarts). Somewhat random though.

Now, I originally thought this was a problem with Little Snitch (a 1-sided firewall), because it didn't show up until after I had to reboot after installing LS. But a trip to the Apple support forums tells the real story.

HUNDREDS (thousands?) of people are having the exact same problem I am. Install Snow Leopard, reboot, Bluetooth stops (and sometimes Airport, but if I can get the keyboard working that works too, so wtf?).

Crazy frustrating. BUT, if I didn't rely on a Bluetooth keyboard, would I even notice? NO! I'd be happy with the leaner, meaner Snow Leopard. Programs are snappier, the whole thing takes GIGABYTES less space on the hard drive, and there are a bunch of little UI improvements. If I didn't have that keyboard, SL would be a huge success.

I hope it gets resolved soon, as I am unable to work on my final school project on any other computer. In the meantime, I guess I'll look for a USB keyboard and a LOOONG extender cable.

Gameboy Girls

(via, with a few more pictures)

Actually, I didn't get why everyone was saying this was so cute, until I saw that one was moving while the other pressed the buttons.

TEAMWORK!

Back to the Future 1 and 2 Compared

In the years between Back to the Future and Back to the Future II, Michael J. Fox visibly aged and the actress playing his girlfriend was replaced by Elizabeth Shue. Thus, to show the closing scene from the first film as the opening of the second, it was necessary to completely reshoot it. Dig?

Anyway, as you can see above, someone has made a side-by-side comparison of the sequence so you can now needlessly critique how well Robert Zemeckis and crew recreated the scene. The audio is layered together as well, and for some reason hearing a duet of Docs saying, in unison, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads," is utterly hypnotizing: Show/Hide

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Doc Bottoms Aspray

What did I just watch? Show/Hide

Popcorn Sorter

Tired of unpopped kernels in your microwave popcorn? I know I am! Maybe this will help! Show/Hide


(source)

If you've seen me make popcorn, you know that I already do something akin to this.

I didn't own a spare bowl I could drill holes into. It's too bad that such a bowl-with-holes device doesn't already exist. I just have to make do with a colander.



And because I do not own any vibrating marital aids, I have to manually shake the bowl, with my hands, like a SAVAGE. On the upside, my popcorn doesn't taste so much like Astroglide.

Now, I'm not exactly sure how to take this. I mean, CLEARLY this is a joke. His channel is called Stupid Inventions, right? But he's just so sincere in his comments... surely that's just got to be more of the joke, yeah?

Birdy Nam Nam

This is a video by Steve Scott called "Birdy Nam Nam: The Parachute Ending". Show/Hide


Steve has a couple other odd ones as well.

Annual Manual

I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know, but if perhaps you haven't spotted it yet, the Inlander's 2009-2010 Annual Manual is out now. If you see one, pick it up (it's free).

Tumbleweed of DEATH

Driving to my brother's house today, going up Freya, I saw a HUGE tumbleweed in the other lane. It was practically blocking traffic, it was so big.

And because I was looking at it, I failed to notice that a car in my lane was turning left, and so, had stopped in the road.

I managed to not hit anyone, and also I learned how well my brakes work (VERY), but it was a bit of excitement (and embarrassment).

tl;dr:
Today I almost died because of a tumbleweed.

Good times.

Save Piko-riko!

So this image showed up on Digg recently. There was some debate on whether or not it was SFW:

It was decided that it was SFWTF.

It's actually a still from the movie Funky Forest; First contact. In fact, you can watch the scene that leads to this here: Show/Hide
Funky Forest, Go For A Drink?

"He asks her to pull him, she asks if she's on candid camera, he pulls, his friend claps, he asks if he clapped 16 times, wearing a childs t shirt, exposed undwear, worn out socks, etc, she asks what's going on, they say you wouldn't understand, it would take 3 hours, she says she has three hours, they explain it's to save the planet Piko-riko, she agrees to help them, she inserts the navel probe, the little man comes out then they say their a comedy act, sometimes people laugh, sometimes not..."


And if that's not enough, here's the trailer: Show/Hide



It's not a new movie either, it's from 2005. It's even notable enough for a Wikipedia page. So HOW, if it came out WHILE I LIVED IN JAPAN am I just hearing about this now?

Charlie Brooker

I've been watching Screenwipe recently. While the coverage of UK TV shows don't really interest me, I quite enjoy the behind-the-scenes bits where they talk about the process of making a TV show. Here's a clip from the first episode of series 2 (skip to around 5:30) Show/Hide


Easy as falling off a log!

Apparently, Brooker is working on a game-oriented show in a similar vein. Looking forward to it. ^_^

So Sue Me

HAHA! I'm writing this in July!

ALRIGHT, I just had to get one in, in case I'm too busy to post between now and the end of the month. ^_^

That's it.