Computer Tan

Last night I came across this site for computer tanning.... the concept is simple. You go to the site, and it uses your monitor as tanning lights. I'm guessing the results vary with monitors, but it's simple enough. There is a free trial, so go there and check it out, or at least check out the explanation video.

Dual Guitar Mario

As a fan of gaming and guitar, I really enjoy this dual guitar Mario Bros. theme. This is simply amazing.

Forget Carrots, Try Gaming

I've always heard that eating carrots helps your eyesight. Now, here's a less nutritious, more fun way to improve your vision.... playing games. This study, shows that gaming helps something called "contrast sensitivity" which helps your reaction time. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. I remember as a kid, my mother jokingly told me if I sat in front of the TV too long, my eyes would turn square (I used to make her check for roundness occasionally), but turns out as long as you're gaming, you're fine.

*The picture isn't really relevant to the article, but I found it and thought I'd share it.

Gaming Age

Earlier today I came across this great article posing the question "How Young is too Young to Game". Honestly I hadn't really put too much thought into this one before. I'm not a parent, so I can't really make a firm decision on something like this, but gaming time (as with TV and Internet times) should be limited. Personally, I was 7 when I got my first official gaming system (Christmas of 1987, the NES), but I had some limited exposure to the Atari and other systems earlier. Seven years old didn't seem too early for a gaming system to me, I don't think I was warped too badly, but who knows how messed up I'd be if I had started a year earlier. I'd be interested to know what some experienced parents think about this situation.

Creating a Band

Earlier today I came across something someone posted on Facebook about creating a band and album cover and some songs. Here is the original link they got this from. It's actually pretty clever. Here are the steps copy and pasted from the article :

1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “Random Article”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop/MS Paint or similar to put it all together.

5- Post it in the comments! (Using Imageshack or any photo hoster)

I've actually created mine and included it above.

Tripping Over Your Dog

You may not think about it, but animals are tripping hazards. Here is a USAToday article with some interesting statistics about people tripping over their animals. Apparently dogs are particularly hazardous. Not mentioned here, statistics on people tripping over their pet goldfish.

Jonathan Coulton on His Payday

The other day I was checking out jonathancoulton.com and read his blog talking about how his income works. If you're not immediately familiar with his name, you may recognize him from some of his songs such as "Code Monkey", "RE:Your Brains", or the credits song from the game Portal called "Still Alive". If you haven't heard these, look them up on YouTube, they're quite funny/entertaining.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is his really great analogy of how he sales his songs, and although people steal them, everything works out. He compares it to a "genetically engineered cow who eats music and poops money". It's a long article, and if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, check out the first and last paragraph and you'll get the idea.

Simple Tricks to Make You Look Smart

This link I came across is titled "Simple Tricks that Make You Look Smart", but in this case, let's take it one level higher and say wise. Simple solutions like these are wisdom and cleverness, not intelligence. Home remedies are always really handy things to know. The link comes from "Woman's Day", but they're also helpful to men as well. Men are not immune to cooking, cleaning and, sewing (even if some of us are very poor at it). I enjoyed these tips, now you can look smarter and wiser.

Crazy Driver Stories

As you drive down the road, it doesn't take too long to find someone doing something stupid or just plain out not paying attention. Here is an article I read this morning about some horrible driving stories. Some of these would be flat out humorous, if they weren't true. Seriously, someone thought it a good idea to eat a bowl of cereal while driving? Hopefully, these people aren't on the same road as me.

Classic Jon Stewart interviews Conan

Early this morning I came across this video from 1994 where Jon Stewart was interviewing Conan O'Brien on MTV (back when MTV was good). I've been a Conan fan for since practically the beginning of his show, so this brought back some memories.

Re-Interpreted Little Red Riding Hood

This is an odd little video that goes into a lot of analytical details of Little Red Riding Hoods adventure. You've probably not thought of it this way before. I love the nutritional facts on Grandma.

Twitter Job Loss

There's a lot of talk about Twitter lately, it's growing by leaps and bounds. It seems like nowadays just about everyone has an account, and it's payed much more attention to by employers. Here is a story about someone who twittered about their job opportunity and lost it because of their tweet. Someone from the company they got applied at was listening and didn't like what they said about the job offer. Personally when it comes to social networking, I try to stay away from talking about anything that could effect me professionally (either positive or negative). We all have moments when we just need to keep our mouths and tweets shut and with social networking, it makes it easier to have to chew crow.

Evolution of the Batman Logo

Earlier today a friend sent me this video showing how the Batman logo has evolved over the years. Batman has been around a long time, and has not only changed his logo, but his look and personality over the year.... No matter the emblem, he's one of the best superheros out there. If you have problems viewing the video, click here to go to the page directly.

Saving Your Exploit for a Rainy Day

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Pwn2Own contest and how great of an idea it was to allow hackers to hack away at their favorite apps. Turns out a guy was able to PWN the Apple browser "Safari" in only a few seconds. He had been storing up his exploit to use in just such a case. Here is an interview with the PWNer. I found this article on Friday but had forgotten about it... it's actually a very good read.

Star Wars Money

It may not be legal tender here, but I'd take these Galactic Credits as payment. I guess the major sale is that they're signed not by the treasurer, but by Emperor Palpetine. I wonder if Boba Fett's face is on the 5.

The Square Watermelon

Earlier today I came across this story from 2001 about square watermelons. I hate to blog about really old news stories, but since Spring is here and they're coming into season soon, it's kind of appropriate. If that's not enough, or you just want your own square watermelon, here is an instructional guide on growing your own square watermelon.

Space Bat Tribute

When I heard the story of the space bat, I was really saddened (read link before watching the video if you haven't already). A few moments ago I came across this embedded video and for some reason it makes things better. Poor little guy.

BSG at the UN

Tomorrow night is going to be a pretty sad night for many Sci Fi fans. It is the last night for Battlestar Galactica. A few of my friends have been sending me articles of Adama (the admiral) going to the UN for peace talks. Above is the very powerful speech given by our favorite admiral. SO SAY WE ALL!!!

I came across this image a few moments ago and had to share it. When someone who works in the computer industry has to explain what they do, it's best to just say "I work with computers" and leave it at that... It doesn't really matter. Here is the link where I found this great graph.

Extreme Shepherding

Yep, that's right, two words that don't go together, extreme and shepherding. I actually felt kind of baaad for these fellows, not only because they were being "sheeped" rigorously, but because of stragglers that had no idea what to do.

Bunny vs. Snake

The snake thought it was an ordinary bunny... but then "Runaway, Runaway".

This is Why It's Fun To Program

I'm not too sure how many of my readers are programmers or even computer geeks, but if you are you'll like this article I found of "Actual C Compiler Errors". If you're not programmers, I'm sure you can still find the humor in this, just maybe not appreciate it as much. I've seen some cryptic error messages out of compilers before, so some of these may actually be welcome.

Dirty Cellphones

From time to time I can be a bit of a germiphobe. I don't really go overboard, but it's something I think about. One thing I don't really consider is how dirty my cellphone is. Here is an article claiming that your cellphone can be as dirty as a toilet. From the link there is a great article showing some of the bacteria cultures taken from phones. It's really kind of scary to think about. It particularly mentions hospitals, and although I do work in a hospital I have little to no patient contact, so I'm probably safe from that, but I'll avoid borrowing other people's phones.

Time Facts

One of the popular articles I came across yesterday was this article from Discover Magazine called "20 Thing You Didn't know about Time". There's a lot of interesting random facts here, many of them I truly did not know. It's an overall good history lesson, if anything else.

Movie Countdown

I just came across this movie countdown called "100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers", that I really enjoyed. Some of the scenes brought back some good memories of movies I've seen, but forgotten. I found myself thinking "That's a good one". It's a 9 minute clip, but worth watching (especially if you're bored).

National Pi Day

Today, once again, is Pi Day (3/14). On Wednesday, Pi day was made a national holiday, giving school teaches opportunity to teach their students about it on this day. Score one for the math geeks! To top it all off, this month has had both square root day and pi day in it. This leads us to the only obvious conclusion.... Math is fun.

Our Geek Habits Annoy our Spouse

Here is an article that hits a little close to home. It's titled "10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse". Fortunately for me, my wife is a geek as well, so we kind of split this list down the middle, and she understands my geeky habits. Everyone else just thinks we're really weird. There are some of these both of us go overboard on (especially #8, it's kind of ridiculous). My wife and I actually spent time going through this list determining who this list more applied to. We then agreed that we lived in harmony with our geekdom.

Forest Gump in One Minute

It's been a long time since I've seen Forest Gump, but it has to be one of my favorite movies of all times. It contains just about anything. For those of you who may not have three hours to watch the whole thing, this video kind of sums it up in one minute.

Funk Mashup

This video is a mashup of a lot of armature musician's YouTube video, to make one really sweet song. Not sure what else to say about it, but I enjoyed the results.

Periodic Table of Video Games

Something that has been fairly popular online today is the "Periodic Table of Video Games". (Click the picture in the link for a bigger view) Some of these you'll recognize pretty quick, but some are pretty obscure. I'm not that big on console gaming anymore, so some of the newer characters I don't recognize, but as you can see it's something that took a lot of thought and effort.

Veggie Art

I've featured some vegetable art on here before, but it's been a while and this one is a little different. This site features some really creative characters. Just another example of someone doing a great job at playing with their food. I wonder what the inspiration for some of these are... who thinks "Hey, lets make these scallions into a very accurate representation of a praying mantis", but I'm glad they do.

Pimp this Bum

I just came across this interesting site called Pimp this Bum. I'm still not sure if I completely understand it, but the site picked a homeless man named "Tim" and are taking donations to help him. He holds up a sign advertising pimpthisbum, and at the site you can donate money to help him. Tim actually seems like a really nice guy They've so far helped him by not only monetary gain, but also through alcohol rehab and shared housing. Apparently he makes a minimum of $100 per day. Interesting concept, check out the site for details.

Childhood Then & Now

I like to sit and reminisce with my family and friends of my (our) childhood. As a kid, I had many fun times. Unfortunately, since then, being a kid has changed, and changed dramatically. I came across this article discussing "Childhood then and now". The author makes some really great points. I must warn you, there is some minor bad language in it, but it's a very good and well written article. This really takes me back, I remember that shouting "CAR!" was the official timeout, and signal for everyone to go to the ditchline (which of course doubled as out of bounds in street football). You just don't see kids playing outside as much anymore, but then again, it's a different world we live in.

Modern Day Fossils

It's a strange thought, but I've wondered what kind of fossils alien explorers may find someday if humans suddenly disappeared from Earth. Yea, I know it's an odd thought, but I'm sure you've had it too. Here is a link where an artist has made some modern day fossils that show examples of what someone may find.

Old Glory Robot Insurance

A coworker and I were talking about SNL Old Glory Robot Insurance commercial the other day and I felt it'd be a good thing to blog about. This was on SNL more than 10 years ago, but is still funny nonetheless. You never know when they may attack.

If you have problems with the video, go here.

Star Wars as Classic Art

If like art and Star Wars, you're in for a treat with this "Star Wars as Classic Art" photoshop collection. All of these are very well done. I was surprised at how well some of these turned out. Turns out that Star Wars characters are just timeless.

The Saddest Bear of All

This probably isn't something that would usually make it onto my blog, but for some reason it caught my attention. It's the "Saddest Bear of All". It's a little bit hokey, but I kind of like it.

Cops for Kids

The show "Cops" is fairly entertaining to some, but it's probably not for kids other than to say "don't let this happen to you". I saw this "Cops for Kids" video yesterday evening and although it's kind of silly, I thought I would share it with you. I love the carrot superimposed over the gun.... kinda like the walkie talkie replacement for the guns in ET.

80's Synth

I just found this video and really enjoyed watching and listening to it. Of course growing up in the 80's era, I'm an 80's music fan (they bring back memories). You just gotta love the synthesizers and the keytar.

Pluto Gets Recognized as a Planet in One State at Least

Many people have been upset since Pluto was declared to not be a planet. How many of our favorite acronyms have been completely messed up due to this? Now, when Pluto passes over the skies above the state of Illinois, it will be deemed a planet. It's sad that it had to come to government officials to make this decision instead of science, but welcome back Pluto.

Look into the Crystal Ball

I saw this video earlier and was really amazed at how the ball seems to float. I'll probably find out it's a hoax of some sort, but if it is real, this guy is truly amazing.

12 Dead Technologies

In my short lifetime I've seen many great an innovative technologies fade out. Here is a list of 12 dead technology advertisements that'll take you down memory lane. Some I said "Oh yea, I remember that" while others I said "I wish I didn't remember that". Who knows what will be the next technology to go the way of the laser disc (satellite radio perhaps?).

Angry Camels in a Car

I'm not sure why these camels are angry or why their in a car (perhaps that's the reason), but I don't think I want to mess with them. I'm gonna guess that even where camels are prominent, this isn't something you see everyday. (Be careful, they spit)

Playing By the Rules

I really love stories like this when parents do the right thing to teach their kids a lesson. A kid was wanting to play the game "Call of Duty", his parents felt it was too violent, so they gave him permission if he'd follow the Geneva Conventions. The kid was excited about gaming, and actually looked them up and agreed to the rules. In a lot of video games it'd be hard to completely follow rules like this, but gaming has come a long way and offers the gamers many choices. The parents probably did the kid a favor and added more strategy to the game, making it more enjoyable. I agree that some games are inappropriate for kids of certain ages, but ultimately, as with movies, a parent should get involved in the investigation to make the decision.

Happy Square Root Day

For all you geeks and mathematicians out there, happy square root day. It's the holiday that happens less and less often (until the turn of the century). Today is 3-3-09 and for the math impaired, the square root of nine is 3. The last time this holiday occurred, of course was, Ground Hog's day of 2004 (02-02-04), and the next time isn't until 4-4-16. Anyway, put up your square rooted tree and make sure you wish your favorite mathematician a happy sqrt(day).

Desinger Babies

One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies of all times is Gattaca. Around Christmas Hulu was showing it and I made my wife watch it with me (she enjoyed it as well). The concept of the movie was desinger babies. In the movie, genetic defects were removed from the babies and the approximate time of (natural) death was know at the moment the baby was born. Of course all Sci-Fi, right? Well, here is an article about such designer babies that is kind of scary, Gattaca may not be too far off. Customizable babies, just submit your order to the stork and wait the alotted 9 months.

March 09 Question of the Month

Last month's question was asked you about your favorite caffeinated beverage. Soda won out by quite a margin, but everyone seemed to like caffeine at least some. Here are the results. Thanks everyone for voting last month

In this month's question I ask how much time do you spend online daily. If you're here, you at least spend some time online. I'm aiming at "active" time spent online. Some people, myself included, spend way too much time online, but it's part of who I am I guess. To me, it makes life much easier. Anyway, thanks in advance for voting.

Six Word Sci-Fi Stories

If you're like many Americans, you probably don't have time to read. I found this link the other day with a collection of Six Word Sci-Fi Stories. Who needs plot and character development, when you can be efficient and fit it all into six words. Now you can read several stories in the time it took you to read this rambling of a blog entry.