Asus -- A Safe View

I suspect that this demonstration is a bit severe, but if anyone out there is afraid of crossbows, this is the monitor for him. Hopefully, office life will never get to be quite that exciting outside of the "Crimson Permanent Assurance" building. On another note, I would like to know what that name tag says, but my Russian is only just a bit better than my Klingon.

Wii - Hold on Tight! 2 - The Wrath of Nunchuk

It strikes again!

Wii - Hold on Tight!

Here's a witty animations that shows just how much fun imagination and a little bit of destruction can be.

Over a Barrel in Crysis

The good -- if sometimes bizarre -- folks over at Kotaku have stumbled across an interesting video showing the versatility of the physics engine in Crysis and the length to which some people will go once an idea gets in their heads -- not to mention how much spare time some of these people must have.

Of Shrubs and Gardners

Here Comes Another Bubble

Ok, so two posts in a row from YouTube, excessive, I know.... However, this is a hilarious and frightening parody of "We Didn't Start the Fire" that I think is a must-see for anyone who say we don't have a new tech bubble to burst.

Chocolate Rains Again

Everyone online has heard "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday by now. It seems he's cashing in on his fame with Dr. Pepper commercial of sorts... If this can be called a commercial. I, personally, found it to be truly bizarre and more than just a wee-bit disturbing.

Lessons from a language learner

A friend just sent me this article from the Four Hour Work Week blog. Having tried to learn more than a few languages in my life, I think this offers some really good advice.

Wal-Mart

I just got home from Wal-Mart, and I'm more bothered with what they have become than I have been in quite some time. If Mr. Sam Walton were aware of what's going on in his stores these days, he would be spinning in his grave! He always valued customer service and the quality of the work environment above all else, believing that if he took care of those two things, the profits would take care of themselves. (If you don't believe me, go and read Made In America: My Story by Sam Walton with John Huey.) I've had many reasons to be upset with Wal-Mart before, but this is a new low in customer service. My mother and I were out late because she needs a wheelchair since her stroke a few years ago. (The Wal-Marts here always seem to be out of even manual wheelchairs throughout the day.) She wanted to buy a new pair of shoes -- not something I really wanted to be helping with, so I was off in the garden center to check out the demo units for Rock Band and Super Mario Galaxy. The Rock Band unit had been assaulted, so I spent quite a bit of time playing with the Wii demo station there. All the while, my mother was trying to find shoes that fit her properly -- something that has not been easy since her stroke. She called me to say that she had dropped her Bluetooth headset somewhere in the shoe department. By the time I arrived, she had already talked with the girl working in electronics -- the nearest one she could find! -- and had just flagged-down a woman pushing a pallet truck into the back. She was trying to find someone helpful to whom she could give her contact information so if it turned-up, she could be called. The woman called a manager more out of a desire to get rid of us than a genuine desire to help. Judging from the side of the conversation I could her, I'm convinced that her manager didn't care any more than the floor workers seemed to. Were things still as they were when Sam Walton were alive, the employees would have been genuinely concerned about the loss of something as expensive by a disabled woman, or they would at least have tried to face concern. As is, when passing through electronics on the way out and interacting with the girl there again, the she seemed to have moved just past apathetic to annoyed. When my mother was having trouble getting her wheelchair through stock debris, she suggested she would just walk and leave it. At that point, the worker was genuinely rude in the was she handled the return of the chair to the front. I'm growing to resent Wal-Mart more and more. If it weren't the only 24-hour grocery store in the Cleveland, Tennessee area, I would gladly go elsewhere.

Leathal Legumes!

The following video is from "Killer Bean Forever," an independent, feature-length film in the works for the past four years. I certainly hope it succeeds; that would bring hope to independent filmmakers everywhere.



Killer Bean Forever - Official Trailer - video powered by Metacafe

Karazhan chess event

I found this interesting video on WoW Insider. It's what happens when the new Brewfest event meets end-game content. However, having not made it to 70 yet, I'm wondering just what is going on in this video.

The Wallflower!

Ok, this one I'm not sure I can explain. It seem to be a parody of anime cliches and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

Sometimes I wonder about the nature of what it really is to be human. I just finished "Foundation and Earth."

Countdown to Leopard

Well, it's now officially less than a week until Mac OS X v1.5 - Leopard is released. It's at times like this that I really wish I had one of the new Intel MacBook Pros. You can either wait until it's out or pre-order from Apple or Amazon. Although, I'm still getting quite a bit of use out of my three-year-old PowerBook.

Fast food?

I recently stumbled upon this video on YouTube! that features ingredients from a common "food" found in many American kitchens. However, after watching the video, you'll realize why I opted to put food in "Nixon Quotes." (For those of you wondering about my choice of expression, I intended to reference some nice Wikipedia article; I couldn't.)

MeTube!

I couldn't sleep -- not unusual, and I was reading through my backlog of RSS feeds -- also quite common, and I came across this post on the Google Operating System blog discussing the availability of new video units with AdSense on YouTube!. After poking around through the links in the post, I came across an older one that mentioned the ability to link Google accounts with YouTube! accounts -- something I had wanted to be able to do for some time now, and I found myself poking around in my YouTube! account setting. I discovered I can upload a video from my cell phone, and it even works correctly with Sprint's mangled support for MMS that keeps it from working properly with almost any sort of web service targeted at getting images and video from one's cell phone to the Interweb. Well, enough digression... What resulted is this:



While I've still don't know if having videos automatically show up as a blog post is possible, I bet someone has already solved this problem. I can at least put the nifty player below on my blog somewhere on my blog and have it display videos as I post them.



Admittedly, I should apoligise for subjecting unsuspecting internet users to my ugly mug, but hey... it could be worse; at least I'm not ranting about gay sex or something much, much more bizarre -- WARNING! -- NSFW -- or for sanity for that matter.

Don't Download This Song

I just discovered this video thanks to Amber Mac's blog post here.



Also, for those of you who would prefer a more direct message, try this video:

I'm just back from Waffle-House. It seems strange that it's non-smoking now. I'll post pictures of the last cigarettes later.

Halo Nights

I've already posted a video about Halo taking over the world, but now I've stumbled across this interesting parody of traditional rap and Halo addiction.

Plaxo and XFN

Ever since I discovered Plaxo, I've been poking at it from time to time. Recently, the ClaimID Blog mentioned a new Thingy™ at Plaxo to to demonstrate the use of XFN in ClaimID profiles. It didn't make a very interesting graph from my ClaimID because none of my sites -- other than the ClaimID itself -- used XFN. Well, I've gone and edited a post or two and the reference to my ClaimID in both of my blogs and where my blogs link to each other to use XFN. It still won't be all that interesting of a graph, but it should get better with this link to my profile on Plaxo Pulse. You can see the results as text here

Bad Vista and Broken Windows

In a continuation of what was covered in this ZD Net blog post in June, Microsoft is allowing down-grades from Vista to Windows XP. I know people have been complaining about the myriad problems in Vista, but this seems to be a greater admission of defeat than Microsoft is known for. For those of you who would prefer to avoid the Vista issue entirely, try the Bad Vista site. My Linux flavor of choice is Slackware, but for a desktop system, Ubuntu is hard to beet.

Halo and the end of the world as we know it.

Ok, here's a video in the style of Eπic 2014 and Epic 2015, except this future offers no redeeming pros. Let's just hope that Halo doesn't make it quite this big. While you're at it: save the world; buy a Wii -- or at least the Tii-shirt.

I'm not sure which is better, this or Twitter. Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/smartyhall

Internet People

Listening to net@nite episode 34 recently, this video was mentioned. I can place most of the people and events in it, but post a comment to let me know how well you fare.

Formating errors...

Hm... Embedding the video in that last post hasn't seemed to work so well. It screws-up my sidebar. At least it will pass as the video works its way down my page. Also, while the video is playing, it manages to display correctly, but in case you want to view it properly, just click on the link.

Plugging friends

A good friend of mine recently started a gaming blog. So far, he's only posted a teaser video. However, I've seen more of the content in the works, and I think it's very promising. He's also developed a rather nifty-looking logo that can be had on a variety fine products available in his Cafepress store. For your convenience, I've both embeded the video here and linked to it on Revver.

Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero has been a very successful franchise. I'm looking forward to Guitar Hero finally coming to the Wii with Guitar Hero III.

Leopard Pre-order

This is a tempting time to get a new Intel-based Mac from Apple. I know that if I had one already, I would definitely be pre-ordering OS X Leopard.

Posting

Ok, so the Digg integration doesn't seem to do anything as far as I can tell, but I might just not be doing something right. :-/ I did, however, find this nifty new piece of software called Journler that supports posting to blogs.

Ok, so I started this as a sort of vanity blog in the VERY early days of blogging. I have since attempted to make blogging a regular activity in one way or another and have yet to truly succeed. All along, I've had this URL -- and blog -- sitting here, inactive, awaiting a sort of techno-resurrection. Now I think I may have one: Digg.com. It seems the wonderful news service offers the ability to automatically post story information to a blog. In many ways, this will mark a return to what Web-logs were all about in the beginning: a simple collection of interesting links. However, I'm hoping to editorialize while I'm at it. :-) Now, I just need to change the awful! template I had at the time I stopped using this -- orange never really was my favorite color, include AdSense ads, and add some links between my other blogs, including my stuttering book review, Cave ab homine unius libri!.