Federline Is Funny

[TV, Super Bowl, Federline]

I thought I would hate this but I laughed: http://13gb.com/media.php?

media_id=2421

Free Valentine's Day Cards from UFC

[free, eCard, Valentine]



Help yourself to some free St. Valentine's day eCards featuring some of your favourite characters from the funny pages.

Send them to the one you love and save a stamp (just kidding).

Fripp Start My Heart

[Microsoft, Vista, music]

Get used to this because you'll be hearing this everywhere come
tomorrow – the Windows Vista startup 'song:'

http://www.tennessean.com/assets/wav/DN59059126.WAV

King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp spent no less than two full days
in a Seattle-area recording studio laying down instrumental tracks to
pair with a 'brilliant but simple rhythm' conceived by former
Nashvillian and rising indie star Tucker Martine.

A Penryn Smaller Than Penryn

[Apple, Intel, Penryn, unobtanium]

Intel has taken the wraps off of a new 45 nanometer processor technology that could be a cure-all for performance and power roadblocks threatening to frustrate the personal computer industry over next few years – and a reality in shipping Macs by the end of 2007.

Known today only as "Penryn," the design uses a blend of hafnium and other rare metals in its transistors to keep the flow of electricity in check.

You can buy your own sample of Hafnium, but Unobtainium still appears to be out of stock.

'ello, I'm A Mac (UK)

[Apple]

Thanks to Engadget's hearty band of YouTube viewers and link-submitters, we here in the US can watch the Apple.co.uk version of the Mac vs. PC TV ads.

"Peep Show's Mitchell and Webb to do the honors as PC and Mac, respectively."

Pie Chart:

Skype to Freeloaders: Keep Dropping Dead

[Skype]

Just in case they thought I might think calls via Skype with the US and Canada were still free (they are not), I got this via eMail today:I would have thought me not using them after the 31st would have tipped them off, but thanks for the reminder – 27 days after the fact.

Bomb Hoax in Palo Alto

[CalTrain, commute]

Small chaos this morning on CalTrain's Palo Alto platform:

"A Santa Clara County bomb squad was studying two suspicious packages that closed part of the Palo Alto transit center this morning, two brick-sized packages are gift-wrapped like "birthday presents and there is a ticking sound coming from the area," said police Palo Alto Sgt. Sandra Brown. The packages were found on top of an electrical box behind the MacArthur Park Restaurant.

The report of the two boxes came in at 7:30 a.m. and by 8:10 a.m. police closed the transit center, the bus depot and the transit center were closed and Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority and Samtrans buses were being rerouted along El Camino Real.

CalTrain and Amtrak trains were rolling through the station and stopping about 200 yards down from the platform and passengers were being escorted away, Brown said."

Conductors on the train told us to 'not use the tunnel,' and that we would be arriving on the opposite (south-bound) platform. Problem was, nobody was sure how to cross the tracks without using one of the tunnels so after a moment of pondering, most of us proceeded to use the southern-most tunnel/ underpass.

A very helpful uniformed officer told us, "there are no busses here," and send us down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant toward El Camino. Frankly, the lack of busses was fairly obvious – the numerous squad cars and orange cones blocking traffic made it fairly clear that there would be none any time soon.

A Santa Clara County bomb squad determined two suspicious packages that closed part of the Palo Alto transit center today were gift-wrapped bricks, Palo Alto police Sgt. Sandra Brown said.

At 10:06 a.m., after the bomb squad took X-ray images of the packages, they determined them to be harmless bricks and re-opened the Palo Alto transit center, Brown reported.

The incident disrupted transit for more than two hours.

ABC 7 News (KGO) filed this video report: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=4970977

Gloom, Despair, and Agony...

[Kevin Federline, Yahoo!]

From Yahoo! News comes this nugget from the poster-child of winning by losing, Kevin Federline:

"A leading restaurant association has called for the cancellation of a TV commercial featuring Britney Spears' estranged husband, Kevin Federline, as a failed rap star working in a fast-food eatery.

In a 30-second ad for Nationwide Insurance, Federline is shown dreaming he is a rap star but then snaps out of it to face reality – he's working at a burger restaurant.

[...]
But the National Restaurant Association's Chief Executive Steven Anderson has written to Nationwide saying the ad leaves the impression that working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant and asking the commercial to be dumped."

Am I being cynical to think this is an attempt to get people to know there is such an entity as the "National Restaurant Association" or will soon even mosquitoes not want the blood of Mr. Federline?

Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

[Star Wars]

"If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot
that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the
light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded
by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced
is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent,
was R2-D2.

Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO's memory wiped
but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids
know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with
the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long
enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went.
However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is
far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine
and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is
useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other
people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight
face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees. "

read the rest: http://www.morningstar.nildram.co.uk/A_New_Sith.html

NYT: Hollywood Rethinks Its Ratings Process

[MPAA, movies]

Motion picture industry officials are vowing to make the movie ratings system more transparent to filmmakers and more accessible to parents.

Did IFC's "This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated," play a part?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/movies/18rati.html?ex=157680000&en=7186ac69290432e3&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Free MP3s from Zune

[MP3, free, Zune]



Free music from your friend Zune (Microsoft).

Bonus fun: rumour that most of the music was encoded via iTunes.

NeXXXt Generation DVD?

[Blu-ray, HD DVD, On The Media]

WNYC's "On The Media" this week has Technology writer Shane Buettner giving his take on the replacement for the DVD.

see previous post: Porn Industry Sides With HD DVD.

TUAW iPhone Review (or, how to get coffee on your screen first thing monday morning)

[humor, Apple, iPhone]



For anyone thinking the iPhone looked a tad familiar, TUAW has pictures and a link to the truth.

Fall In To the Gap

[Zits, humor]

The classic tale of father vs. son:


set to the tune of a very old Gap commercial jingle.

Go See / To Sea

[movies, poetry]

Last week-end we went to see Arthur & the Invisibles (I would see it again just for David Bowie!), so maybe that is why this poem featured on 'The Writer's Almanac' caught my 'ear.'

"The Jumblies"
by Edward Lear
I

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!"
They called aloud, "Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


II

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
"O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, "How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
IV

And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
"O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
V

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
VI

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, "How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, "If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve, —
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

DogCattle Mention at TUAW

[Clarus, DogCow]

Susan Kare, creator of good old Clarus the Dogcow gets a shout-out over at TUAW.

Wish I could have seen him myself back in the day but when I finally did make my way to the 'mothership,' he had been (in the words of the employee walking to his car we asked) "Steved." (No doubt along with that other Apple canine, CyberDog.

At least I got a DogCow kid's watch before the price went up!

Cylon Friday, continued

[BSG, humor, GWB]

Apologies to those who watched all 13 minutes of this already, but in honor of Cylon Friday, please enjoy this highlight from the BSG Season 3 gag reel.

Cylon Friday!

[BSG, Cylon, Roomba]

In honor of Battlestar Galactica moving away from Friday night (to Sunday starting January 21st) I declare today to be Cylon Friday!

Porn Industry Sides With HD DVD

[Blu-ray, HD DVD]

Aaron McKenna braves the AVN Expo in Las Vegas and files a report for TGDaily on how the adult film world sees the future of porn, and by extension the rest of the industry if history is any judge.

His conclusion, "It would seem that either Blu-ray has to do some catching up very quickly. But we got the strange feeling that HD DVD has won the format war already, at least in the porn industry."
_____

My only question: are there really THAT many Xbox 360s out there?

Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 Gag Reel

[BSG, humor]

For some reason Google Video can't link up to Blogger (not sure if Blogger ever got their link to YouTube reestablished either), but check out this Battlestar Galactica Season 3 gag reel.

13 min 1 sec

If you're having trouble watching the video, try copying the following URL into your browser:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6307683077762423268&pr=goog-sl&hl=en

Apple Improves on Another Sony Project

[Apple, iPhone]

Is this another case of Apple taking something left to languish by Sony and improving it or is this an application of Robert Heinlein's comment, "You can't railroad until it's time to railroad"?

What you are looking at is the Sony Pic-2000 from 1996(?) running Magic Cap 1.5 – note the line of icons down at the bottom & the dial pad. Look familiar?

To be fair, the original project started in 1990 within Apple, when Marc Porat convinced Apple's CEO John Sculley that the next generation of computing would require a partnership of computer, communications and consumer electronics companies to cooperate. Known as the Paradigm project, the project ran for some time within Apple, but management remained generally uninterested and the team struggled for resources. Eventually they approached Sculley with the idea of spinning off the group as a separate company, which occurred in May 1990.

Organizational Origami

[Macintosh]

Aaron Hillegass of the Big Nerd Ranch has rides to the rescue of the non-Palm/Treo/Moleskine set who want to remain organized with a great little Cocoa application he calls, PagePacker.

Now with any single-sided printer and a pair of scissors, a sheet of paper can become a tiny 8 page book.

Drop a PDF file onto it (or use one of the loads of really useful bundled template pages) and print, fold, snip, fold and off you go!

Star Wars, the silent version

[Star Wars]

This just makes me laugh today:

P.S., I Love You

[Palm Springs]



Photo on the left taken New Year's day, Joshua Tree National Park.

Having Fun With Google's Patent Search

[Google, patent]

No, not a method for putting boxes inside of other boxes, but close. For a huge hint, look at the year it was issued.

Stop! In the Name of Love!

[road sign]

From LAist, via Diane Duane:


click for larger size