Monthly Archives: July 2005

links

Wiki Maps link via

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros from a woman after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them link

Bible warning link via

drummachine link via

Hackers unlock weapons on 5 million account for an online game link via

Virtual sweatshops link via

iPod Flea link via

Shopdropping link via

Cell phones can predict the future link via

100 Million buys a trip around the moon link via

Hello Kitty Chess link via

100,000 bouncy balls down a San Fransisco street link via

I, for one, welcome our Japanese female android masters link via

Condensation due to the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity link1 link2 via

The war on terror as told by magic: the gathering cards link via

Livio de Marchi has created wooden replicas of his favorite cars so that he can move around in the water canals of Venice link via

How to Screen Print a Poster link via

Building a Linux keg dispensor link via

Statistics and the globe link via

Interesting movies

I saw a couple of interesting movies lately. They were:


Battle Royale

This film is about a time when students are out of control. So the government passes an act. A class of students is taken to a remote island and forced to fight their classmates. They have an explosive collar placed around their neck, are given some supplies, and are given a random weapon (sometimes good like a gun or sometimes useless like a pair of binoculars). They are told that the last person standing will be rescued from the island.


Kontroll

This movie is about the Budapest subway system and the workers who check for train tickets. It has good music, a cute furry chick, and a strange killer.


Primer

This is a science fiction story about a group of inventors who discover that the machine that they created can allow them to travel back in time. It is a story about trust and how that is affected when a friend can essentially change history. What was interesting about this movie was the fact that it was filmed for a very cheap amount ($7,000). And yet the movie doesn’t seem to suffer for it. The director acted in the movie, produced the movie, did the music, and also edited the movie. It was filmed mostly in the director’s parent’s garage. And this philosophy is also carried into the movie. The scientists take copper tubing and freon from a refrigerator and palladium from a catalytic converter. Another unusual thing about this film was that each take was filmed once.

As far as the story goes, there is a detailed timeline here, an interview here, and the movie’s website here (with a bulliten board).

Zaireeka

Zaireeka #1

I went to Alamo Drafthouse’s road show of Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips. It was pretty cool. I went with Jeff Shaevel and Mike. It was located pretty close to my house in Old Settlers’ Park. There were four huge inflatible movie screens and speakers that were on the outside of the viewing area in the middle.

Zaireeka #2

While we waited, Mike tried playing Go with Jeff.

Zaireeka #3

Once the sun had set, we listened to a couple of groups. The first group was the Austin Theremonic Orchestra. After them, Pong played for us. I liked them. They sounded like the B-52s.

And then, of course, the main show started. 4 CDs, 4 sound systems, 4 movie screens. People got up from their chairs and moved into the middle. You could only watch one screen at a time and keep track of the two in your peripheral vision. So, you had to rotate occasionally to see what the screen behind you was up to.

links

Vertex game link via

Building a marble shooting airgun link via

Within 24 hours, pirates have produced an e-book of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince link via

Making ham and cheese sandwiches link via

Death star subwoofer link via

Tech companies are compared to nations link via

Pee Goal link via

Dual view LCD link via

Clock that only display the time if it is prime (7661 times a day) link via

We describe an experiment in which a Giant African Snail, acting as a data transfer agent, exceeded all known “lastmile” communications technologies in terms of bit-per-second performance link via

Chess960, a game variant invented by fugitive chess genius Bobby Fischer link via

Toby Emmerich, head of production at New Line Cinema, had a choice between seeing a film in a theater or watching it in a screening room at Jim Carrey’s house, with a private chef handling the culinary options. Despite this seemingly loaded deck, Emmerich opted for a real theater and was shocked link via

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor link via

How to poach an egg link via

Can a Bayesian Spam filter play chess? link via

Condensing personal finance books link via

Hooter shooter link via

Game Day 07/21/2005

Game #1

Can’t Stop

Jon didn’t arrive early enough so we played this quick filler. My dice luck was bad tonight. It was a sign of my foreboding future.

Game #2

Evo

It has been a while since we played this game. I started off between Mike and Jon. Unfortunately, the climate was not kind to my Brontosaurus and evolution did not see fit to give them more than one leg to use. So, only one animal could escape the freezing or baking temperatures. Sadly the rest died.

Another mistake I made was to spend too much victory points on horns. I figured that I would have to fight for my survival. However, my neighbor Mike had the same number of horns as myself. And Jon was too far away to attack.

Game #3

Andromeda

Another classic game that we don’t play anymore because we buy too many new games. In this game, it all boiled down to luck. For my final turns I had two chances to establish a station. If I would have gotten either of them, it would have given me the win. Unfortunately, the puck was not with me. Another thing that I should have done was to keep more joker cards. Mike kept quite a number of them which gave him second place.

links

Costco versus Walmart link via

Waiter rants link via

RAID water coolers link via

Dear lazy web link via

Akihabara becomes geek sex paradise link

Mario teaches physics link via

Hollywood denies request to use short clips to make a personal home movie link via

Jet powered Toyota MR2 link via

OS/2 R.I.P. age 20 link via

Each key on the keyboard is a screen showing chararcter (or action) it activates link via

A programmer outsources his own job to India link via

Early bomb detection can backfire because of the grisly fact that human beings act as human shields link via

Better looking signs than baseball link

Accident

So here I am sitting on McNeil and waiting for the light at Parmer to change. I am deep in my own little world; so much so, that I am not even looking at the red light and waiting for it to change into green. Then I hear a dull bang and I look up to see two cars spinning out of control.

The first thing that I do is get my phone out and start to dial 911. But as I am about to hit send, I look up and see many people outside of their cars and on cell phones. I figure the odds are good that one of them is already handling it. So I turn off the engine and go out side. One vehicle has flipped over and is on Parmer south of McNeil. The other has actually driven up a guy wire for a telephone pole and is dangling on it. I go to that vehicle to see if I can help but there are already people there. Two people are in the vehicle and both are unconscious and leaning on the dashboard. The police arrive immediately (in less than a minute).

I am not in the mood to stand and gawk and I didn’t see the start of the accident so I get back in my truck and carefully drive through the glass and car parts.

This was obviously a T-bone collision where one car was at least travelling 55 MPH (people normally drive at least 65).

This just screams out to the mortality of life, how instantaneously it can end, and how freaking unsafe my vehicle can be…

I hope everyone was alright. Thank god for helpful bystanders.

Game Day 07/16/2005

Game #1

Ars Mysteriorum

This is a return on investment game with a bunch of blind bidding. A lot of it! And therefore you can get hosed a lot in this game. Especially if you are towards the end of the turn order since that is one tie breaker. This game also has a lot of special cards that gives you power and these are played a lot. Which brings us to another hosage factor. At the beginning of the game you can buy one spell (all spells generate income based on a row/column/stack factor). Unfortunately, the two spells that I could choose from were both too expensive and I think that I suffered because it (other people did buy one).

It was an interesting game by, Alan Ernstein, the maker of Tahuantinsuyu. I would give it another chance.

Game #2

McMulti

Ahh… another game of McMulti… with Adam. This time we played with a different house rule that helped even out the market swings. But those random number generating dice still were able to hose the entire group. Four double ones were rolled (3 back to back) early and this led to four news events happening. And all of them were horrible taxes. After selling off almost all of our equipment to pay for them, we were ready to start on the road to recovery. Adam was lucky and he was able to build up six gas stations and start selling gas for lots of money. Unfortunately, he was 10 dollars away from calling the end of the game. And my luck increased enough to give me the win (1487 to 1345)!

Game #3

Call My Bluff

Gah! Dice are flawed. With three stars showing and Tim saying that there were ten of them out there, I had to call. Much to my regret since there were more and I was out of the game. At least Tim won the game by rolling three stars again and knocked out the remaining two players.

Real people eat meat

Real People Eat Meat

So I watched 30 Days yesterday. This is a new series by, Morgan Spurlock, creator of SuperSize Me. It was about people living outside their comfort zones. In this show, two people spend 30 days off the power-grid at Dancing Rabbit. One of the people was a man and DR only served a Vegan or Vegetarian menu. He was Jonesing for meat real bad. Bad enough to go rabbit hunting. Bad enough to drive into town and try to buy meat. Bad enough, after being repeatedly sabotaged by the DR folks and being mocked by the other person of this show, to continue attempting to buying meat.

The other show was a P.B.S. series about living the frontier life. And there was one man who needed meat. Bad enough to talk to the local Indian tribe and get them to shoot a deer for him.

I think that I would be one of those folks. I am an omnivore and I am trying to eat more veggies. But I would miss meat…

I’d prefer to leave it to professionals to kill the cow, but if it were
a condition for eating burgers that I kill a cow every now and agin,
I guess I’d borrow a nice sharp shinken and practise full shomen cuts
with somewhat more of a focus than I do now.

  — Graham Wills