Tuesday, September 19, 2006

FSM Be Praised - Talk Like A Pirate Day

Today is 'Talk Like A Pirate Day,' one of the more holy days in the Pastafarian religion. So everyone who has been touched by the Flying Spagetthi Monster's noodly appendage, let's show these landlubbers what it means to be true pirates!

And for those of you who are new, some pointers.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Greatest 'Kids In The Hall' sketches

Office Trappers


Killer Monkeys


Sausages

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Wii Set For Launch Nov. 19

November 19 is the date that the Wii is going to be launched for $250 with 'Wii Sports', and up to 25 games by the end of the year.

I think this calls for a sexy party!

Linkage

Video Roundup 2

YAY!

Chappelle's Show: If The Internet Was Real
Skit from the Dave Chappelle Show where he shows what it would be like if we were able to go into the internet. Almost as accurate as when Futurama did the same thing.

RC Car Jumps House...and Lives!
This is just cool. Car jumps over a house, and still runs after it lands.

El Nino
Old SNL skit where Chris Farley plays 'El Nino' on The Weather Channel.

Guy Falls Asleep Playing Halo
This is why you don't fall asleep playing online games.

How Star Wars Should Have Ended
Pretty funny.

Return of the Numa Numa
Not anywhere near as good as the original.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Playing World of Warcraft (or, How I Learned To Play A Bull)

So I picked up PCGamer, and inside the DVD this month was a 14 day trial for World of Warcraft. I hate paying for monthly games and didn't want to shell out $40 for WoW and turn around and not like it, so I gave it a shot.

6gigs of used space and the next morning, I was able to play! This was due to a 500meg update that took over 6 hours to download, and it was already 11pm when the base install finished. I played a few minutes this morning, and then for about two hours tonight.

The only other real MMORPG I've played for any length of time was Final Fantasy XI, and at least up until this point (level 6) I haven't found a whole lot of difference. These first quests are all 'Get X number of and bring them too me,' which is all fine and dandy. I'm low level, so it'll be a bit of grinding before I start getting into the good stuff.

The graphics are very, very nice. The game is more colorful than FFXI, but Warcraft itself is more colorful. It didn't take long to create a character, and the different choices for creating the look of your character are more varied than FFXI. The cities aren't anywhere near as expansive as FFXI's are, but I haven't been to any of the main cities yet. I do like how there are smaller cities interspersed between the larger ones, and can't wait until I get the chance to visit the bigger ones.

If you have a character on 'The Venture Co', or I know you and you're on a different server, lemme know and I'll try and get over to play.

Character Stats
Coranth, 6th level Tauren Warrior
Bloodhoof in Mulgore
The Venture Co. server

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

'White and Nerdy' - New Weird Al Song

This is going to be a great CD.

Linkage

Chuck Norris vs Mr. T

Here is the second match where Chuck Norris is pitted against Mr. T!

Linkage

Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman

I ran across this gem of a web-comic on digg.com a few days ago, and have finished reading it up to the newest installment. For lovers of HL or other FPS games, this is a good read. It has thusly been added to the side panel along side my other recommended comics.

http://www.hlcomic.com/

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Awful Truth About Guacamolẽ

It is my sad news to bring this to everyone, but I have learned how real guacamolẽ is made, and it is very, very tragic. This secret has been kept for many years, and needs to be let out.

It seems that Guacamolẽ is actually made not from avacados as most cooking shows on TV would lead you to believe, but from the smashes and liquified bodies of young guacamoles (gwak-a-mole (like the animal), pictured here. Guacamolẽ chefs hunt in the wilds of Mexico to find guacamoles younger than one year, as they are not only smaller and fit in the food processor, but are also much more tender. Chefs capture them ten or so at a time, and even in larger numbers if the menu calls for a lot of Guacamolẽ.

The young guacamoles are then smashed into a paste, with other spices added for taste. The accent at the end of the dish's name comes from the cries of the young animals as they are smashed. They give off a distress call that sounds erielly like 'olly!'.





Once the dip is done, it is served.

Please, next time you eat Guacamolẽ, remember the poor animals that were actually killed, and not that crappy plant that everyone thinks is used.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Congratulations Ryan and Beth

I just wanted to congratulate Ryan and Beth on their new marriage. It was a wonderful ceremony, and I hope you guys have a great life together.

Polaroid i532

So our old Nikon Coolpix digital camera was not living up to its former glory after a hard life, and with a wedding this weekend we decided to get another camera. I had a few tips to go off of for new cameras, but the one that I had my eye on (a nice low-end Canon model), but we couldn't wait for shipping.

We eventually ended up at Wal-Mart which had a pretty good selection of cameras. We had a price and some general features that we wanted, like it had to be SD so that our old card worked, and the more optic zoom the better. It was down to two cameras, the Nikon that was the newer model of the one we had, and the Polaroid. The screen was bigger, so we went with it.

It started out good as we played around with it. Good amount of features, came with everything that we needed right in the box, and the screen was excellent. Since we had a wedding to go to, it was going to get a good workout in a real-world situation.

We first took it to the Cincinnati Museum Terminal. It didn't last long before the batteries died in the first museum we were in, or so I thought. I decided to try the camera again about a third of the way through the exhibit, and the camera showed full battery! To be safe I grabbed more batteries as we went from one section of the museum to the next, but the 'dead' batteries lasted quite a bit longer.

I also started to dislike the fact that the camera has no eye-viewer, and that you had to always use the screen. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to save the screen. The screen never shuts off, and therefore wastes battery. Not a good sign.

Next was the wedding and the reception, the true test.

During the ceremony itself, the camera was OK. It really bugged me that the power-save feature just turned the entire camera off instead of just the screen. Our older Nikon just went to sleep, but the Polaroid had to go through the entire process if you left it alone to long.

At the reception, the batteries died, again. I also found out that when the batteries start to die, the shutter button starts to get sluggish. I'd hit the button, and it would take almost 5 seconds to snap the picture. This was with the shot already focused, so I know that it wasn't the auto-focus. There were also a few shots I missed because the camera 'took' the picture, but apparently never wrote it to the SD card.

We changed the batteries again, and the next problem that creeped up was the flash. Unless something is close to the flash, it won't work. Now, I don't mean I tried to take a picture across an empty room and was wondering why the little flash didn't work - if a person was within five feet of me (like someone's head in the way), I could take a picture across the room with the flash. If there wasn't anything there the picture was dark and crap.

By the end of the night I was sick of the camera. Wal-Mart has a 30 day return policy, and this camera is going back Monday after work.

Thanks for making me take some crappy pictures at my cousin's wedding Polaroid!

Friday, September 08, 2006

Thursday, September 07, 2006

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

I found this webcomic (or rather a collection or drawings and musings) via Digg last week I think. I finally made it through reading all of them, and enjoyed myself heartily. You should too. I even added it to the list over on the right!

http://xkcd.com/

Video Roundup

Here's another set of videos for you poor bored people to watch:

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager
This is the story of Chad Vader, the brother of Darth Vader, and his never-ending duty to manage a super market.

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

Conan O'Brien and 'Walker: Texas Ranger'
This is when Conan had the lever that played Walker: Texas Ranger clips, and he saved this one for a special showing.

SNL Skits
Bathroom Monkey
Old Glory Insurance

World of Warcraft: LEEROY JENKINS!
One of the few reasons that MMORPGs are hilarious sometimes.

Burger King Outsources Order Taking
I could honestly see this happening...

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Chuck Norris Facts

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Chuck Norris. My favorite:

"Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs."

Linkage

And as a special treat, the first in the series in which Chuck Norris fights other greats of our time. Today he fights...Steven Segal!

Even More Linkage

Monday, September 04, 2006

The Bargain Bin - Medieval: Total War

I found this at Wal-Mart for $9.95, and it looks like Amazon has it for as cheap as $8.99. This is the second installment of the Total Wars series which started with Shogun: Total War. The best thing about these games are they that are two games in one; Total War allows you to either play a turn-based strategy game without doing any actual fighting of your troops (the computer will determine the winner of battles based on various factors much like a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game) or actually command your troops in real time.

Medieval: Total War is also a godsend for older machines, as even with a ton of troops on the map most machines will be able to still play with very little slowdown, if any at all.

I highly recommend the game.

IPCop - The Bad Packets Stop Here

This weekend I set up an IPCop Linux router for home to replace my Belkin router (in addition to a lot of other network and computer changes). My old web server is now my router, complete with intrusion detection systems via snort. Hell, it's already noticed a few MS-SQL Worm propagation attempts and stopped those (not that I have anything that I know of running MSSQL or the ports open).

All it takes is a computer with at least two NICs installed. It found my Realtek and Netgear using the Tulip drivers and I haven't had any issues with it thus far. I also went and installed Guardian which will automatiicaly watch the IDS logs to block IPs and drop their traffic, Cutblock which allows me to terminate connections as well as block them, and a QoS shaper. All of those addons are provided by Markus Hoffman.

I also set up the ZERINA OpenVPN server, so now I can drop my use of Hamachi for my machines.

All in all it's a really nice firewall, and if you have an extra machine lying around and have wanted something a lot more powerful than those $100 Netgear and D-Link routers, this makes it easy to get into a powerful router.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

SimCity DS Screenshots

I will definately be buying this game.

Linkage

Friday, September 01, 2006

RIAA shoots themselves in the foot again

You gotta love the RIAA. In a current case, the defendant wanted to hire a neutral party to check her hard drive. Completely reasonable, as the RIAA should have a list of things that they found on the defendant's computer which warranted the case, and the neutral party should find the same thing.

The RIAA said that they would not go for a neutral party, but would rather have one of their own people do it.

Riiiiiiiiight.

Linkage