Wii Hacks

I'm a little bit behind on Wii news.... To be honest, I haven't really played the Wii in a while. Earlier today I saw this interesting article on some Wii hacks. It's actually a channel you install that allows you to play DVDs and some other custom games. The link has a link to a previous article about how to set all of this up. You need a Twilight Princess game and an SD card and then follow the instructions. I'm always skeptical about doing stuff like this, but if you do it, feel free to comment and let me know how it turns out.

10 Movies to Help Raise A Geek

Nowadays being a geek is cool. You want your kids to be cool, right? Well, it's about time to build that geek base and here's 10 movies that'll help you build a geek movie base. Most of these movies are my personal favorites... Star Wars, Harry Potter, Back to the Future, Goonies, Dark Crystal, it's hard not to love them. This is a pretty well done article... now you have some movies to be renting/buying.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

I thought it had been a while since I had posted a "Classic" blog entry, so I thought the perfect option would be this "Boom Goes the Dynamite" video. This is a little uncomfortable for me to watch still, because he does such a bad job and I feel bad for him, but watching the birth of the catch phrase makes it worth it. I did do a little bit of research on this, and the reporter is Brian Collins and came up with the "boom goes the dynamite" phrase while playing his friends in a Mario Cart tournament. You've probably seen this before, but if not, you're in for a treat... Enjoy!

It's Like Swatting Flies

If you've lived in the South, I'm sure you've spent a summer afternoon or two chasing that one fly down trying to kill him. Why is it so hard? It's because fly's are pretty quick on their feet (or wings) says scientists. This is another one of those studies that make me say... "Really? They spent their resources on that?", but it is quite interesting. Reading this made me want to kill flies less, however, at the end of the article, they do offer advice for expert fly swatting. My advice.... use a flame thrower, it works every time.

Moon Ownage

I've not really thought about it, but this MSN article brings up the question "Who Owns the Moon?". I'm a little odd in my thinking, but I always thought it'd be handled just like the discovery of the Americas. Who owns it, whomever plants their flag and claims it. Yea, it's a little old fashion and the wrong way to do it, but in the back of my mind that's how it was gonna work (as mentioned, I hadn't given much thought to it). The article comes to the conclusion, and rightfully so, that no one owns the moon, nor should they. And to shoot my silly notion down, it'd seem silly for a government to own it, there's no one to tax.

Real Life LandSpeeder Model

Really, how could I not blog an article about a guy who made his own landspeeder. It doesn't float over land like the original is supposed to, but it does run on batteries, which is cool. The photo of it shows it parked beside a Delorian, which is also really neat. Check out the guy's slideshow of the landspeeder and some R2D2 action.

Bonus Star Wars Item: Didn't want to put this in it's own blog link, but here is a link to a Han frozen in Carbonite cake.

Lightning McQueen Anatomy

I've not put much thought into it, but if a lot of our favorite animated cartoons were real, they'd be anatomically really strange. Here is an article from a guy who drew out what Lightning McQueen's anatomy may look like. An interesting concept once you think about it... now we know what makes him tick.

Cat Wings

Here is yet another story for my "If it's on the Internet, it must be True" category. Here is a story (with pictures might I add), of a group of cats that are growing wings. They claim the cat grew wings when being harassed by female cats looking for a mate (as opposed to turning green and growing muscles). Scientists believe it could be due to genetics, poor grooming, or a skin condition. Personally, I'm not a cat fan, but if I owned one, it'd want it to have wings.

Thought I'd share this video, it's quite odd. Hope you had your Raisin Brahms this morning. I guess it'd be easy to tell, you'd get the "Power of the Art".

Cube Craft

For all my crafty readers out there, this post is for you. Here is a site called Cube E Craft where you can go, download your favorite popular person (sports, comics, movies, whatever), cut them out and make a bobbleheadish figure with a cube head. I guess the clicking on the link would explain it more, but it seems like fun to me. It would probably keep your kids busy for a few minutes while giving them something cool as a reward.

Mike Tyson's Punchout -- The Movie

I kind of get tired of these movies based on things from my childhood, it seems like none of them really do justice to the memory. It's surprising that no one has done a Mike Tyson's Punchout movie yet, but here is a link doing the cast if they ever decided to do so. Some of these are really well done, while others could be better. Hopefully this won't be coming soon to a theater near you, but if so, it'd have to be better than the old Mario Bros. movie.

Arrested for Not Returning Books

I'm willing to bet that most people have been late returning a library book a time or two. Whether you forgot, or maybe just needed it a little longer, sometimes it'll happen. Here is a case where a woman got arrested for not returning her books. I'm thinking she was booked on not showing up for court, but not returning the books is what started it. I imagine when she got to the jail, the people asked what she was in for, when she said "Not returning my books to the library" everyone moves to the other side of the holding area and cringes in fear.

What's Up??

You probably noticed that my blogging has slowed down over the past 2 days... thought I'd let you in on what I've been doing just in case you haven't been checking my plurk or twitter. Since I was a kid I've wanted to go to New York City. I found out in January that my wife would be taking a test in Philadelphia so we planned a road trip to Philadelphia (about 8 hours away) and decided to spend the weekend in New York City. Yesterday we took on all we could do in one day. We went to the Empire State Building, walked to Brooklyn via Brooklyn bridge where we had some NY style pizza. We then proceeded to the World Trade Center site, took a subway to Grand Central Station, walked up to Rockafeller Plaza, and went to Times Square (AMAZING). After this we walked to pier 83 where we caught a boat to a 3 hour tour (which took us by Yankee Stadium). To finish the night off, we walked back to Times Square and had some supper followed by a NY cheesecake for desert. This morning we woke up and headed to Ellis Island and then to the Statue of Liberty. Currently I'm in Harrisburg, PA and just got back from Hershey Chocolate World and plan to head home in the morning. It's kind of slowed me down blogging over the past few days, but I'll be back in full speed starting Monday.

LOLCatz Spy

This article itself is not really all that entertaining, but it's an interesting concept to think that secrets from the Department of Justice could be smuggled in an LOLCatz picture. The article tells about how stuff was smuggled out of the DoJ and goes into details about how images can be used to do this. I guess when you smuggle you have to be as clever as possible... like having a false floor in your Millennium Falcon.

Story of Hanako

It's hard to believe some animals live these long lives, but here is a story of a fish named Hanako that is around 215 years old. The story talks about how this family pet fish responds to calls and interacts with humans. I guess after living 200 years they get pretty smart. He must be swimming in the fountain of fish youth.

Legolympics

Yesterday I came across this article of a really well done rendition of the Olympics done in Legos. I may have mentioned it, but I've really been caught up in the Olympics this year. I've even changed my bed time due to it. It's great to see two great things come together... the Olympics and Legos, now if they could just make Lego building an Olympic event.

BYOC

It's always fun as you travel to look at out your window and see what the cows are doing. For some reason, they're just funny animals to watch. I ran across this article the other day talking about the advantages of buying your own cow (BYOC if you will). I know what you're thinking... "Yea, I don't have the room", but with a dexter cow you may have plenty of room. According to the article, the cow is about the size of a german shepherd and doesn't require much care. The advantages are, you have milk, a lawn mower, and you have a cow, and who doesn't want one ... it's a cow.

Best Atari Game Ever

I'm not sure what this game would be about, it'd probably be quite boring, but since it's my game, I declare it the best ever. I made this to show you that you too can be on the cover of a fake Atari game. Thought this was pretty funny and maybe enjoyable.

Crazy Wiring

Cable management is a beast in IT (and many other businesses) that must be tackled during planning and revisited often. Earlier today I saw this article that shows some very scary wiring situations. If you like it, there are four more pages of it, although this seems to be the best. The wiring where I work isn't the best, but it's much better than when I first got here. I am attaching a photo of one of our wiring closets taken around when I started.... pretty scary stuff.

Getaway Fail

I'm a sucker for dumb crook news. It's just fun stuff to read, and there's a feeling that the crook gets what's coming to them. Here is a story of a guy who tried to get away after a robbery, but locked his keys in his car. I guess it could happen to anyone, but he picked a bad time, and it actually cost him a gun shot wound. I'm thinking at that point, you bust out the window, but if the cops were already as close as it sounded, he probably didn't have much of a chance at a getaway anyway.

Best 404 Ever

I'm willing to bet that if you go back through some of my older posts, you'll find many links I've posted to no longer exist. When you click on them, you get the 404, page not found error. Here is a link to one of the better 404 page errors I've ever seen. On web servers, the webmaster can program whatever 404 page they want, but most leave it as the default. This one is a little more entertaining.

Guinea Pig Olympics

Right now the World is caught up in the Olympics. This not only includes us humans, but the guinea pigs as well. Here is a link to some images of the Guinea Pig Olympics. It takes lots of time and effort on the rodent's part to prepare, but these are the best guinea pigs in the world competing for their country.

Storm Trooper Bad Day

I probably don't do enough of these, but here is a pic of the day. Sometimes you just have one of those days.

PacMan The Movie

It seems like the rest of my childhood has been redone as TV shows/movies (Knight Rider, Transformers, soon to be GI Joe, etc.), so why not throw in a game movie. Actually, this movie is really well done, so I'll allow it and not group it with the rest of the remakes they've done lately.

Toaster Case Mod

Actually I mis-titled this entry a little bit. This toaster in a PC is not really a mod, but a regular 5.25 inch drive (just as a DVD rom drive). It appears to be a legitimate item to purchase, but I'm still kind of dubious about it, but the price is right. This would be a tremendous gain in both bragging rights and nerd points for you. Other than crumbs in your keyboard, what could possibly be bad about this.

Sir Squaks Alot

This may be one of the better stories I've ran across lately.... We all like stories of knights, but who would imagine a penguin to receive knighthood. Yep, it's just as it sounds. What started out as a royal mascot, eventually got promoted, and is now expecting promotion to knight. The story is very neat. I love the picture here, you can see he's dressed up for the occasion.

The Michael Phelps Diet

I have been crazy caught up in the Olympics this year. I've been staying up late each night to catch the games. Other shows I've watched are being put aside so I can watch the competitions. One interesting thing I've heard is the diet of this swimming machine we call Michael Phelps. I love to eat as much as the next guy, but I don't really think I could begin to eat some of this stuff. I wonder how he's going to adjust to not having to work out so hardcore in a few years when he retires. I know this is kind of old news by now, but this is the first I've seen of an article with this info.

Beer Goggles Are Valid

Scientists have discovered what many bar hoppers have discovered years ago. Here is an article showing proof that drinking makes people more attractive. The Beer Goggles effect is apparently now science fact. Personally I'm not a drinker, but I can see how this could occur. One things for certain, people do get more social when they've downed a few.
Special thanks to James T. for this link.

Madden 09 Cover

I'm way behind in the Madden 09 news. Last year I knew fairly soon who would be the recipient of the Madden curse, but I just found out two days ago who was on the cover. As I was walking through Walmart I saw the advertisement of none other than Farve in a Packers uniform was staring at me. I had to look twice and then chuckled at the entire situation. First of all, why didn't I know this; secondly, what if he would've retired; thridly, he's in a Packers uniform. Anyway, EA has remedied this and has provided a link to download and print your new cover of Farve as a Jet (no kidding). They didn't have a download link for a Wii cover, but they did photoshop out Farve's cane.

Use Your Wii to Train for the Olympics

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a fan of Nintendo (have been since the NES). Here is an article that shows that it's not only good for entertainment, but can be used for Olympic training. In the article they link to the guy who was using the Wii as a weight loss plan (which is the first I'd heard of the results). Pretty interesting stuff... any gamer can tell you, even if you're not good at a sport, you can learn a whole lot about the strategy of the sport through gaming. I would say "Those who can't do, game", but apparently so do those who win gold medals.

Follow Up on Drive 55

A few months ago I posted an entry about how driving 55 mph will save you gas. Before this, I would drive well over 55 mph to work each day and get around 32 MPG. Since I've posted this, on my commute to work, I have driven 55 mph everyday (32 miles each way) to see how it goes.
Before I give you my results, I'll tell you a little about my car. I drive a 2002 Nissan Sentra with a 1.8 liter engine and an automatic transmission. The motor has 155,000 miles, so it is nowhere close to be new. All this considered, it is a pretty economic car on gas no matter how you drive it. According to fueleconomy.gov, my car should get around 31 MPG highway and some other research I found said it had a maximum fuel economy of around 33 MPG when new.
The results have been much better than I originally expected. Now I have been getting anywhere between 35 - 37 MPG consistently. I've not made any other modifications other than to the speed I drive. As far as the amount of time it takes me to get to work and home each day, it takes me about 5 minutes more each way. I haven't bothered to calculate how much money lowering my speed has saved me, but I'm guessing with the price of gas and the mileage I've driven lately, it's probably been well over $100. I was a skeptic, I thought it may only get me 1 MPG or less when I switched speeds, but I was wrong. Try it for yourself and see how well it works.
As for my fear of getting ran off the road by large trucks and other drivers, it hasn't been too bad. I do get passed a lot more often, but no one has gotten too mad at me yet.

Darth Thriller

The other day I linked to a video of Yoda doing a dance. People seemed to like it, so here's another installment of a Star Wars character dancing. Personally, I like this one better, but judge for yourself. Most things dancing to the Thriller song are funny. Earlier today I saw a guy dressed as a Quizno's cup dancing to Thriller, I should've taken video.

Wake N' Bacon

One thing special (to me at least) in my house is the breakfast my wife cooks on Saturday mornings. Most weekdays I have cereal, but Saturday we have some kind of homemade breakfast. Most of the time it will include bacon. Seems like almost everyone loves the smell of bacon cooking, it's just good stuff. Here is an alarm clock that wakes you up to the smell of bacon. It's not actually mass produced, but that doesn't mean you can't still want one. As cool as it is, it seems kind of odd. I would want to eat the bacon, but it's been setting out all night. Sure you wake up, but after you eat the bacon, you also get E.Coli.

50 Most Famous Cars

Yesterday I saw this article about the 50 Most Famous Cars of all time. The author doesn't put them in any order, which would be very difficult. I thought this was a pretty good overview of popular cars. As I was going through the pages of the list I'd think, wait a second, I have seen (insert a popular car), yet, but it appears like they got most of them I could think of.

Tribute to Face Palm

Tomorrow is Monday... after a weekend of rest, getting back into the game can be difficult and sometimes you may mess up. That is why I present you with the tribute to face palm. We've all been disgusted with ourselves when we mess up, or when things mess up, so here's the tribute video for the occasion.

The Yoda Dance

Some may find this a little lame, but admittedly, it wouldn't be the first lame thing I've put on my blog. The Yoda dance is OK, but what I really like are the homeboy Storm Troopers.

Debunking the 9/11 Conspiracies

If you know me, you may know that I'm really not a fan of conspiracies. I believe that Oswald acted alone, we walked on the moon, etc (and that Han shot first). Some may call me gullible (which in many cases I am), but it seems like the most reasonable explanation for something is many times the actual explanation, or at least really close. The conspiracy theories that make me the most angry, are the ones that surround the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Here is a link to a well written article explaining away several of these theories. I will say that you may find some language (not too much) in this article that will usually cause me to not link to something, but I feel it is important to be able to discuss this topic intelligently, and not be convinced that these theories are true.

Office to Bathroom Prank

My boss and a co-worker were both out of the office today. This would have been an excellent prank to play if I were mean and didn't want to keep my job. I must say, these guys went through a lot of trouble for this prank, but they did a great job. It kind of looks like everyone in the office had a part in this one.

Fake Engine Noises

I heard a few months ago (I may have even blogged it) about how there was a problem with hybrid cars being too quite. Here is a link to an article about Lotus making fake engine noises to alert the blind, or those not paying attention. As the guy mentions in the linked article, this seems like it could be fake. If this is real, I wonder if they could put in custom noises. I would have mine sound something like this.

Zombie Rhymes

Earlier today I wondered across this article about Zombie Rhymes. Not too much to say about it other than, it has the word zombie in it, so it's automatically +10 cool points. I guess this is just something this guy made up, I did a search for it and all the links I could find link back to that guy's blog. It's neat how something this simple has become somewhat popular on the Internet.

Animals Squashed Against Glass

I'm not sure why I found this site of Animals Squashed Against Glass so entertaining, but I thought if I did, someone else would too. There are 50 of them here, actually a few more since sometimes they have multiple animals in a picture. This is one of those lists that I'm not too sure why they thought to group these things together. After watching this, I've decided glass must be delicious.

1500th Post

I noticed that this would be my 1500th blog post and tried to think of something clever to put up here, but instead thought I'd just draw attention to the occasion. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog as much as I have writing it. Here's to 1500 more (and then some). I have created this special 1500th blog edition jpg for this milestone.

Neat Coke 0 Commercial

Last night my wife sent me this link to this really neat Coke Zero commercial collection. I don't think I've tried Coke Zero, but they sure had good commercials. I never saw any of these.

Reasons To Date a Unicorn

A few weeks ago I posted an entry of 9 reasons not to date a T-Rex. From the ones who brought you that sit here is "10 Reasons to Date a Unicorn". These are a little silly, but pretty funny at the same time. I guess the whole point of these two articles put together is dump your dinosaur boyfriend/girlfriend for a unicorn girlfriend/boyfriend.

Sci-Fi Wood Sculptures

I checked out the Wired RSS feed this morning and found this collection of Wooden Sci-Fi Sculptures. After looking at the first few, I didn't deem it blog-worthy, but they kept getting better. Some pretty neat/geeky stuff.

No Badgers Welcome

I have a rule of thumb... when you go to buy a vehicle, you're probably gonna get ripped off. I have a friend who has been looking at cars recently, and most likely he's been badgered. As you watch these, you can see this car company did a great job at imitating many of the sales people you come across (cars or not).

Periodic Table of Awesomeness

There are several elements of awesomeness that make up this world. When you put them all together, you get "The Periodic Table of Awesomeness". I don't believe these are in the order of awesomeness as you may think, but ordered in how they relate to each other.

Phone Concerto

When I was a kid and a huge band geek, my friend and I would try to figure out how to play songs on the phone. We never got anything very complex, but it was kind of neat. I wish I could break loose with one of these sweet concertos like this guy in this video does. After this, he had a huge phone bill.

Not Only 7 Degrees From Kevin Bacon

Here is a news story showing that the world is connected in less than 7 steps. Or at least the "connected" world anyway. A study was done to see how many steps it would take to get from one person to another, and it turns out to be around 6.6 degrees of separation on average. I find the "on average" part to be a little disappointing, the rules of the game require 7 to be the max, not the average, but it's still a cool story. Now we can connect, not only Kevin Bacon, but ourselves to anyone in around 7 steps.

Dilbert Engineer

Sometimes your career decides you, not you decide your career. Here is a Dilbert cartoon showing just how such a thing happens. I had similar experiences as a child ... my brother and I took apart a go cart motor and put it back together when I was 3 (my Mom has told me several stories similar to this). I ended up a Network Engineer.... close enough.

Cow Abductions

One of the biggest problems we have with the dairy farms around the world is cow abduction by aliens. This is a pretty neat website that tells all about the abductions, has witnesses and even some pictures. I'm not going to bother explaining further, this is where I stand aside and issue my "if it's on the Internet, it must be true" rule of thumb.

August 08 Question

For the Month of July I posed the question about high gas prices and how you've adjusted. Fortunately "W" listened to me and has lowered gas prices a little bit today. Here are the results of July's poll. Fortunately not many people are trading in their vehicles, we're just driving less which is good for the environment anyway :).

Now on to August's question of the month. Here in Eastern Kentucky, it has been very hot. So, I'm asking, "How do you cool off from the Summer Heat?" The options are as follows:
Jump in the poolStay Inside
Ice Cream/Lemonade
Travel someplace cooler
Why would I want to do that?

Thought it be nice to ask a summer question and since you've had your chance to deal with the heat already, you should have an answer readily available. Thanks in advance for your vote and thanks to the 32 who voted last month.