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I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but today makes two years I've been blogging. It's my second Blogthday. Although the topics I blog about vary greatly, I think so far I've stuck to the basic theme of blogging things I find interesting online. Most nights I've tried to put up a few posts and really enjoy blogging. It keeps me up on current events and builds my mind's database of useless knowledge. So, you ask, "What can you get Brian Green's Blog for it's second Blogthday?" (OK, maybe you didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway). Just keep coming back, and tell your friends. Oh, another thing, feel free to comment when you have something to say, I say stupid things on here, feel free to do the same (as long as it's family friendly). Anyway, thanks for reading, and remember the poll which fits this theme perfectly, although you only have a few hours left if you haven't answered it.

Odd Gilligan's Island Theory

The other day I was sent this odd Gilligan's Island theory comparing the Island to Hell. The writer makes good arguments, and I hadn't really thought of it this way before. The guy probably read a little too far into the show, but I got a kick out of the article.

Gamers Are Fit

You don't have to look too far to find an article criticizing gamers for one reason or another. It is, however, a good day when you find studies showing gaming to be beneficial. Here is an article showing that gamers are surprisingly fit. When I read a lot of these, I think "Yea, I knew that", but this one caught me off guard as well (hence the surprisingly). I'm glad they didn't use another example of World of Warcraft, but took a study of Everquest II, which I played for a year or so.

Opposite Helium

Alot of the stuff Mythbusters do is just plain interesting... During some of they episodes they take a few seconds to explain how some things work. Here is one such video explaining about helium. The sulfur hexafloride is some pretty mean sounding stuff. If it's safe to inhale, it'd make for some really cool calls to your friends.

If You Ever Wanted to Know

This is a little bit late, but it's still very funny. If you're ever interested in finding out if the Large Hadron Collider destoryed us, here is the perfect site to check. Too bad it can't text you when the page changes and doesn't have an RSS feed.

The Plane and the Conveyor Belt

The other day I was catching up on my XKCD web comics and saw mention of the case of a Plane vs. the Conveyor Belt. Here is the situation "Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?" (copied and pasted from a website that I can't remember).

Think about it for a second and then, here is a link to a really good article with excellent comments about it. This is good nerdtiastic thinking. Mythbusters did an episode on it, although I haven't seen it. The conclusion... the plane will take off.

Gorillas Run For Charity

In the world of bad news it's always good to hear people turning out for charitable events. It's also good when people get together dressed as gorillas. When you put the two together, you get the annual Great Gorilla Run. The run is a little over 4 miles which must be very difficult in an ape suit... that's what I call monkey'n around.

Here is the official site.

HundredPushups.com

Looking to build arm strength, and are you cheap? If so, here's a site for you called hundredpushups.com. Forget going to the gym or getting a personal trainer, this site will walk you through a 6 week program to enable you to do 100 pushups. I've started it, but I doubt I'll finish, but I can tell a little difference after 3 days (granted not much).

Google Beta + Happy Bday Google

Today is the 10th birthday of Google. I must admit, I'm a huge fan; I use Gmail, Google Calendar, Blogger, their search, their homepage, and occasionally Chrome. The other day Slashdot ran an article linking to an article calling out Google for almost half their products still being in beta. I do have a few hesitations toward them and collecting our data, but someone's gotta do it, may as well be Google.

Light Bot - A Programming Game

For all my programmers (or future programmers) out there, here is a great little game called Light Bot for you. You give the robot commands and he follows them. It's a lot of fun and very programming oriented. It includes the use of functions and you can watch the robot systematically follow what you tell him to do.

Special Thanks to Marcus for this link.

RedNeck Kung-Fu

At my workplace we have a Web-filtering software. If something is blocked and someone feels it is work related they can submit a request. This video was requested for viewing earlier today and I got a good laugh out of it. One of my favorite parts is the guy stays in character and never really cracks a smile. I really dig the cape!

Guide to Emergency Landing a Plane

When flying in a plane, I've often wondered how difficult it is to pilot one of these huge birds. If something ever happened to the pilots (for some reason or another), could you land it? If not, here is a guide on landing a plane in case of emergency. It's kind of self explanatory... make sure you're not gonna die in the next 3 or 4 minutes if you don't do something, then make a radio call, and then it can pretty much land itself.

NFL Players Dontate Their Brains To Science

If you're a sports fan, one of your favorite players has probably gone on the injure reserve or disabled list at one time or another. NFL is especially harsh on player's bodies. When you get hit, you get hit hard! One of the major problem My wife sent me this article about how a few NFL players have volunteered to donate their brains in order to help studies of concussions. Concussions are nothing to take lightly, but sometimes players still play with them. Hopefully these studies will help to eventually make football a little safer.

Some More Mega Man 9 Stuff

I was watching this Mega Man 9 review a few minutes ago and it reminded me of something I've stated many times. In games graphics is only about 15-20% of what makes a great game. I'm not saying all games should be pong, but in my opinion way too much time and effort is dedicated to the graphic development of a game and not enough time in game play and story line (more so game play). I'm not against graphic intensive games, but game developers should not lose sight, gaming is about playability (or at least it is to me).

Cat w/Piano Sequel

It may be because I'm bored and couldn't find anything else to blog about, but this sequel to the cat playing the piano was odd. I'm not sure I call it as entertaining as I would disturbing. Now it appears the cat has it's own piano and the owner plays with it. I didn't care enough to do the research to find out if it's the same cat that we saw in the infamous "cat playing piano" video, but I think it could be. Anyway, enjoy, and then enjoy their shameless plug for cat playing piano merch at the end.

Girl Breaks Snail Record

When I see some of these odd world records, it makes me ask "where did someone come up with and idea for this record at". Here is a news article about a girl who broke a record for most snails on her face. This is for sure very odd. I don't mean to discredit the record, but someone older who may have a bigger face, could probably take her thrown fairly easily.

Debunking Food Myths

Earlier today I saw this article about some common food myths. Usually I'm up on the "this is a bunch of bologna" myths, but this one had some surprises on it. I must say though, I've not heard the rumor that bananas are fattening.

Slow Motion Video

It's amazing how much more enjoyable things can be when they're in slow motion. This video was really well done. Things blowing up are really cool, but to see what really happens time lapsed, it's even better.

Interesting Riddles

Throughout the week this week, the Housekeeping supervisor would send out brainteaser questions and give out prizes to the person who go the appropriate answers first. I ended up winning a UK stadium cushion for answering one fairly quickly. This evening fitting to this week's theme, my wife sent me this link with a series of interesting riddles. Most of these were pretty good, although, I'm not really that good at riddles.

Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008

If ye haven't been keepin' track an' put 't on yer calendar, today be Talk like a Pirate Day. Ever' Septembree 19th, ye get yer chance t' talk like a Swashbuckler. Today when ye go t' work, talk t' yer shipmates like a pirate an' spread th' word. `Tis fun, an' this voyage 'tis on a Fridee.

If ye want some quick words t' say, use this English t' Buccanneer Translator.

Ernie Davis Statue in Nikes

This past weekend I went and watched "Burn After Reading". Before the movie they had a preview for the upcoming movie based on a true story called "The Express" that is about Ernie Davis' life. I'm kind of a sucker for sports movies, so I thought it looked pretty good. Anyway, with all the attention from the movie, Syracuse unveiled a statue of Davis, with one small problem. He's wearing Nike shoes. Since Nike shoes didn't release until the late 70's, he would have never had a chance to wear them. It's a minor mistake, but some sports fanatics are making a huge deal out of it... it kind of reminds me of the Snickers commercial where the guy finishes painting an inzone for the Chiefs and some guy says "Looks great, but who are the Chefs".

Fade to Bluegrass

Even though one of my favorite bands is bluegrassish (Old Crow Medicine Show), I'm not a huge fan of bluegrass music. Earlier today a friend from plurk posted that he was listening to a "Fade to Bluegrass" album, which features many bluegrass covers of Metallica songs. They actually do a really great job. I've seen a few covers done in complete opposite music genre's (Paul Anka actually does some rock songs in swing, that are really good). It goes to show that when you have a good song, it can transfer across genres almost seemlessly.

Special thanks to my plurk friend Jason Wert for sharing this.

Mega Man Classic Cartridge

As a kid I spent hours playing the Mega Man games. I imagine playing them today would be a little less fun, except maybe for memory sake. The other day a friend was telling me about the new Megaman game being released for the Wii in a classic cartridge case. Early today, the same guy sent me this article pointing to more details. Unfortunately, it looks like most people will have to purchase the game via download instead of getting the cool cartridge casing. It's still a really retro idea that would make me more likely to purchase the game if I got the case (yes I know it's silly).

Link through the Ages

If you're a Nintendo fan from the 80's chances are, like me, you've grown up with Link and Mario. I saw this link to the evolution of Link on Digg and thought it was pretty neat. It got me to thinking, I bet an evolution of Mario would be good to find to, so as a bonus... here ya go.

You can click on each image to see a larger version.

Chained to a Bed with a Raptor

I could survive for 1 minute, 22 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor
Sometimes in life you are faced with really drastic situations that test your limits. One that you may not think of is How well would you fair if you were chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor. This is pretty silly, but it's on my blog, what do you expect.

How Not to Use Powerpoint

Find more Digital art videos at 5min.com

It's hard to escape a meeting/presentation without seeing a powerpoint slideshow. It's not that it doesn't help, it's that many people (myself included) can't make very helpful presentations using it. This guy says it best... I think this one is a little old, but it's still pretty good.

Ninja Cat

A co-worker sent me this video earlier today that he saw on Digg. At first, I thought... OK, that's edited, but as the cat gets closer, you can tell it's been training as a ninja for quite some time now. But when danger rears it's ugly head he bravely turned his tail and fled.

Tattooing Pigs

I've mentioned before that I'm not much of a fan of clothing and weird hair designs on animals. I don't really feel it's necessarily cruel to the animal, just more humiliating. Tattooing pigs ranks in the same area as this. After thinking about this, it may not be bad practice to start upcoming Tattoo artists out on pigs, or some kind of animal skin (I don't know what they use to practice now, hopefully not people though). Although morbid, I thought the photo of the dead pig skin looked pretty neat. Something is just weird about this whole thing.

FitBit

Earlier today on my commute back home, I was listening to TWIT and they mentioned an upcoming device called FitBit. It's a device you clip to you somewhere, then hook it to your computer and sync your fit data to see how many calories you've burnt. It then allows you to share your activity with your friends. It's personal fitness meets social networking. This hits at the perfect time, nowadays, not only is being geeky cool, but so is working out. It will be a one time charge of $99 for the device and you can then use their website for free. Pretty good idea if you ask me.

Pic of the Day: Straight Into Mordor

I've been watching a Man vs. Wild marathon. I really enjoy watching Bear, he's pretty hardcore. Sure he has a support team where Survivorman does not, but I have confidence that he can do all this stuff w/o worry if he needed to. Perhaps even just walk into Mordor. I really enjoyed this picture.

Funny NFL Logos

Last night I was checking out Digg and came across these modernized NFL Logos that reflect how the current team is doing. I didn't see my favorite team The Saints logo included, but their true potential is yet to be seen. Anyway, thought it was something cool to represent the teams after the first week.

Busy Weekends

If you've noticed, lately on the weekends my blogging has slowed down a lot. I've been traveling some. For the next few months my wife will be out of town doing some of her medical school rotations. During this time, I'll be traveling to where she is on the weekends to visit when possible. I'm currently in Columbus, OH visiting. Tomorrow I must trek up to Lansing, MI to watch my older brother graduate from law school, so that makes the weekend even busier. For anyone who has not been following my twitter/facebook/plurk updates, that's a little why my weekends have slowed down on blogging. Continue checking and I may have something, but I should still be almost normal during the week.

Oh, btw, if you want to send me stuff that you've came across that looks like something that I'd put up here, feel free to send it to me briangreensblog@gmail.com. If I don't put it up here, I'm sure I'll at least get a kick out of it, just make sure it's something family friendly.

Great Hand Paintings

When there's a projector around it's always tempting to make hand puppets. Here's some people that have taken it a little too far with their entire hand paintings. These are really well done. I'm not too sure how people thought of some of these.

How the LHC Works

Some news of the nerd that straights may want to know about is the Large Hadron Collider. What is it, well, if you're not a physics expert (and I'm nowhere close) it's hard to explain, but it makes particles go really fast and then makes them hit each other to prove theories. The big news about it is that it could possibly create a black hole and destroy the Earth, but it's not too big of a deal. It went up for testing yesterday, but they didn't collide particles, just made them go fast. Embedded is a great video showing how the process works. I love the colorful collision at the end. This whole process makes me think "When these things collide, nothing good can come out of this", but we'll see.

Animatus

Here is an odd art thingy called Animatus. It's a lot of skeletons of animated characters. It's kind of morbid, but really neat at the same time. These are very well done and clever.

Nintoaster

A few weeks ago I posted something here about a toaster slot for your PC. You know what's cooler (and more useful) than that? A toaster that plays NES games... a Nintoaster if you will. Just because your old Nintendo was too retro looking. Caution... in the video here, I wouldn't recommend following this guys instructions step by step, you may want to derive your own method.

Creative Waterfall

Here is a link to a nice piece of water fall art. The video is a little long, but they do some really cool stuff with the water here. The coolest part is where they do the subtractive water art (I call it that, I'm not sure what else to call it, you'll know what I mean), but it's kind of near the end. I'm wondering if something like this is either done really simply with computers or really complexly with some kind of physics and weird timing algorithm. I couldn't find the embed code, so hopefully the link will do.

What Do you Call Your Beverage

Some people call it Coke, some call it Pop, and some call it soda. I saw this article earlier today about what people call their beverage. In the US, when you travel around, and order a soft drink, you can get strange looks based on what you order. When I lived in South TX, most people called it Coke, however, people from Eastern KY call it Pop. If you go to South TX and ask them what kind of pop they have, they'll just look at you funny. On the other hand, if you come here and asked what kind of Coke they have, you'll hear "Regular or Diet" or "We have Pepsi". Personally, I guess I got mixed up in between somewhere and call it soda. The other options sound kind of strange to me, however, I must admit, when I order a drink a lot of times it is a Coca-Cola, so I can say Coke if I want to. Interesting communication problem we have here in the US, perhaps we can make a political issue out of it.

Beholding and Becoming

I'm always happy to promote a friend's blog when I find out they have one. Recently I've been talking with a college suitemate of mine online whom I found had a blog. Mr. Fugate, the author of this blog, and I have known each other since college, but I've actually known his wife since kindergarden. I used to know him as a big strapping boxing guy, but now he's a pastor at a church not far from here. Anyway here is a link to his blog called Beholding and Becoming(it's actually a group effort, but he is a contributor), which I've enjoyed reading lately. I've also placed it on my links section. If you like it, subscribe and put it in your RSS feed.

Mean PaperClip Weapon

I debated on whether to put this on my blog or not due to it's dangerousness, but it's something I looked at online that's cool and that's what the blog is about in the first place. With that introduction, here is one of the most dangerous paper clip weapons I've seen. I remember a scene from Gremlins 2 where the main good Gremlin made a bow and arrow out of a paper clip. If only he had one of these, the evil gremlins would not stand a chance. Office weapons, of course, aren't anything new. In my internship at college the guy working with me made a gun out of compressed air and thumb tacks (less impressive than it sounds). Anyway, if your office is ever under siege and you need to take down a terrorist, this may annoy them some, I'm kinda doubting it's power.

Image of the Day -- Darkside of the Moon

I saw this image online earlier today and got a good chuckle. It's called "I'll never join the Dark Side of the Moon". Here is a link to the designer James Lillis' other designs.

Lame Super Villains

In the world of comics, you don't have to look very far for very lame Super Heros and Super Villains. Here is a really good article featuring 11 lame super villains. My only problem with this article is I don't know which super villain is the worst.

Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld Commercial

If you saw the NFL opening game last night you probably saw this commercial. It's one of those commercials that makes you want to watch commercials. It's an instant classic. Very funny stuff. I'm a fan of Seinfeld and a fan of Bill Gates (not to be mistaken for a fan of M$). They're both funny in their own way.

Clock of 9's

Last night my wife sent me this nerdtastic link to a clock with only 9's on it. This one is for all my math geeks out there. They could've done a little more abstract math in some cases. For example the 9/9 is used a little to much for the +-1. I guess there's only so much stuff you can do with 9's.

Technology Makes Cheaters Get Caught

Nowadays it's really easy to find a lost friend, or even to have a long distance relationship. Communication has never been easier, but most things you say can be captured and logged and probably is. Here is an article telling how technology is an enemy of those who may cheat or their spouse. A few years ago it seemed like divorce rates were up due to people running off with their Internet friends, but I guess that is now declining, or maybe it's just easier to find out. Soon it won't be too difficult to look up where your spouse's car is at thanks to their built in GPS... things will not get simpler to the cheaters.

The Way Not to Fight

I've never been much of a fighter... it doesn't seem to solve much. I know some fundamentals of fighting such as... if you're gonna fight, don't show off before hand. I couldn't find an embed link for this video, but it's worth watching. This guy may have learned his lesson after this match.... the hard way.

Strange things on Google Maps

Last night a friend of mine sent me this link to a picture of a missile on Google maps. When you get to looking, it's amazing at some of the weird stuff you can find on there. Earlier I saw this link of the Top 17 Bizarre Sites on Google Earth. This doesn't show some of the odd things you see on street view, but really anything can happen there. It seems like I once saw a Google map image of a fly that had been embedded on a picture, it kind of looked like a giant fly attacking. Or was it just Jeff Goldblum

Parachuting into the Wrong Stadium

When you go to a sporting event, there's usually several bits of entertainment that go on before and during the game. When it's the first game of the season you can usually expect something even more special, like perhaps a parachuting guy.... but what if he just shows up unexpected. I heard about this story this morning on Mike & Mike in the Morning as I was making my morning commute. The guys parachute to a stadium 8 miles away from their intended target in order to deliver a game ball, unfortunately, they ended up on the rivals field. Good thing the game hadn't started yet.

Mona Lisa Painted by Myth Busters

I saw a link to this video the other day, got busy and didn't get a chance to watch it. A bit ago a friend sent it to me and I remembered and wanted to watch it. Pretty cool stuff, especially when they do the slow motion at the end.

Remote Pet Your Chicken

This is one of the stranger inventions I've seen in a while.... it's a device that allows you to take care of your chicken remotely. Since you just can't get enough of your fowl, and your favorite poultry can get lonely, it's a very sensible invention. In actually reminds me of the voodoo doll from Temple of Doom.... The guy does something to the doll, and Indiana feels it. The same concept stands here, you pet the fake chicken doll, and your real chicken feels it.

Tigh / Roslin 08

I blogged a few months ago about how much Colonel Tigh from Battle Star Galactica looks like John McCain. Well, now that McCain has selected a VP, it's even better that she looks kind of like Laura Roslin from BSG as well. Someone has dedicated a site to this. This is probably the funniest thing all day. I haven't really gone through all the details of the site yet, I just saw it and said, "Wow, this has my blog written all over it". Strangely enough, Tigh and Roslin may be some of the better choices we have this year.

Neat Fighter Jet Video

Since I've been a kid I've found jets to be fascinating. On this labor day, I feel this is an appropriate video. It's kind of relaxing, yet exciting... you have speed, the desert, and Johnny Cash, what else could you want. I actually watched it twice. I'm not sure where this is at, it looks kind of like the Rockies, but I could've swore I saw a camel toward the beginning of the video. Either way, it looks like a lot of fun.

Question for September

Last Month's Question was "How Do You Cool Off From the Summer Heat?". The turn out wasn't as much as I'd hope, and it turns out that more people stay inside to avoid the heat. This is a wise choice. Turns out some people just love the heat though. Personally, I like to grab some ice cream or a cold beverage to cool off. I'm a much bigger fan of the heat than the cold, so I still try to get out some of the evenings during the summer. Here are the results.

This month's question is one I've been meaning to ask for quite some time. "How did you find this blog?". I listed some of the more likely reasons you may have found this, but if you have an interesting story, feel free to comment on this post (or any other actually) and let me know. I know about how many visitors I get each day, but I have no clue at all how anyone finds it. I've told a few people, and I advertise it through facebook, plurk, twitter, and MSN messenger, but people from all over the world come here. Thanks for stopping by and I'm really curious as to how this poll will turn out. Thanks in advance for voting.