Almost Exciting!

I will do this. I will do this to someone. I will do this to someone, some day.

Cardboard office (prank).

It’s almost cool enough to do to myself, just to see what my coworkers would say when they showed up the next day and I pretended to work.

For example:

From the vast amount of things that I did not know were on the internet, especially since 1997, comes this seemingly innocent question:

Q: What do you think happens when you throw a slice of processed cheese (without removing the plastic wrapping) onto a lit barbeque?

The plastic melts giving off highly toxic fumes and you are left with a pretty grim cheese/plastic mess welded on to your BBQ, right?

WRONG!

Actually, it seems that the answer is very, very different. Enter Cheeseracing.

I can’t wait to try this.

I thought Spartan might get a kick out of this one in particular:

I know it’s already been on digg for awhile, but wanted to link up this page at Financial Hack for displaying a pretty cool list of dollar bill / money origami. Each one attributed/linked up - so that’s cool, too.

If you’re really interested in doing some of these yourself, as suggested by a commentator on digg, check out Clay’s site. He’s nice enough to include instructions (for this awesome shirt, for instance), and several links to more info if you’re interested.

Blue team, go!

I stumbled across foldschool completely by accident. I couldn’t resist linking it up. Check this out:

foldschool is a collection of free cardboard furniture for kids, handmade by you. The downloadable patterns can be printed out with any printer. Follow the instructions and assemble a stable piece of furniture.

Geeks and Nerds rejoice! A new Tolkien book, the first since 1977, is being published. Started by Tolkien himself and finished by his son, this will definitely be a must read.

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/childrenofhurin.htm

“The Associated Press reports that one of Tolkien’s earliest stories, written in 1917, Narn i Chîn Húrin, Sindarin for “The Lay of the Children of Húrin”, has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring. The book will include a new map by Christopher Tolkien and a jacket and color paintings by Alan Lee. “It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of the Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers,” Christopher Tolkien said in a statement, published in a Harper Collins and Houghton Mifflin press-release, since the new book will be published by them in England and the United States respectively.”

Apparently there’s a guy at a barber shop here in Memphis cutting people’s hair with fire. Stumbled on the link at BoingBoing, to a Flickr set with several pictures.

What shop is that at? I’ve got to look into this…

From the Article:

Lately, the RIAA has been on a high-profile campaign to get college students that the RIAA believes have been involved in illegal file trading to settle lawsuits against them at a “discount”. As part of this strategy, the company has tried to enlist universities to help them identify and turn over the names of offending students. But it’s heartening to see that some universities aren’t spinelessly acquiescing to the RIAA’s demands.

If there were any doubt that the university is really irritated by the RIAA’s requests, it has requested that the RIAA pay the university to reimburse its expenses from dealing with this…

Read the rest at TechDirt…

UPDATE:
I read over at Consumerist that the school is actually charging them $11 for each complaint received. Of course, the RIAA denied the request:

In response to NU’s request, the RIAA’s Engebretsen said, “It is neither practical nor appropriate for us to entertain a reimbursement request.”

Article over at Omaha.com has more.

Woohoo! Like it’s actually going to work with any motherboards on the market in the next 2 years, but check this out…

From the Article:

IBM Research says it will demonstrate a new prototype optical transceiver chipset that “is fast enough to reduce the download time for a typical high definition feature-length film to a single second compared to 30 minutes or more over the best available connectivity today.”

Read the rest on ZDNet.

Hard to believe it’s been so long since Melissa.

From Wikipedia:

“First found on March 26, 1999, Melissa shut down Internet mail systems that got clogged with infected e-mails propagating from the worm.

Melissa was first distributed in the Usenet discussion group alt.sex. The virus was inside a file called “List.DOC,” which contained passwords that allow access into 80 pornographic websites. The worm’s original form was sent via e-mail to many people.

Melissa was written by David L. Smith in Aberdeen Township, New Jersey, and named after a lap dancer he encountered in Florida.”

For more information about Melissa, check out the Wikipedia article for some good links.

Were you affected by Melissa?

Wikisource, like it’s sister Wikipedia, is a free library of public domain information.

Including, ‘but not limited to’, this 1877 translation of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Frederick Amadeus Malleson.

“This 1877 translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson is considered the most faithful, though it has some slight rewrites.”

Yes, you can read the entire Jules Verne book right there online. Nifty.

I haven’t explored it thoroughly, but I imagine there’s a lot of cool, open information there. Public domain is awesome.

For ages upon ages mankind have asked them selves one all important question: Ninjas or Pirates? Well I present to you a website that dares to ask a different question, Ninjas or Golfers? I think the answer is most definitely Ninja. There is a lot of funny stuff on this site as well as a lot of historic info on ninjas for any who are interested. It even shows you how to make your own ninja mask out of a T-Shirt! What more could you ask for? http://www.entertheninja.com/

You may have seen something like this before, but I’ve never gotten one quite so funny. This, after we had just completely stuffed ourselves.

Since I just posted about Shorpy, I couldn’t help but also throw in Ghost Cowboy.

Another amazing site, this one about actual events, news, adventure, and photographs from America’s “old west”. Or, as they put it:

Ghost Cowboy is about real tales from the 19th-century American frontier, when the Old West was young. Most of the posts here are actual news items from the 1800s and early 1900s.

Shorpy.com, known as the “100 year old photo blog” is an incredible site, devoted to displaying old photographs. So far, all of the pictures I’ve seen have been very high quality - some surprisingly high quality for their age - so this site is definitely worth checking out.

A snippet:

“Shorpy.com is a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating. We’re starting with a collection of photographs taken in the early 1900s…”

Today is World Day for Water, also known as World Water day. Wikipedia has some info and links, but is rather boring.

‘Coping with Water Scarcity’ is this years theme. The official site has more.

I thought I linked this up before, but couldn’t find it…

Energy Fiend has a couple cool tools:

The first one I found was Death by Caffeine, an awesome little online calculator that lets you figure out how much of your favorite drink it would take to kill you, based on body-weight to caffeine intake. Sweet!

Then, more recently, I came across The Caffeine Database (on the same site), which not only lists the caffeine content of most popular beverages, but also has a calculator to let you figure out your daily intake, based on drink/quantity. It’s pretty cool.

Go!

Laughing Squid posted this, about an Ad series that’s being run for Suplicy Cafes. Click through to their source for more pictures like this:

Using ground penetrating radar, NASA has discovered an ice deposit at Mars’ south pole so large that if melted, it would cover the entire planet under 30 feet of water.

(Via Kottke)

Is it not amazing - the detailed view we can get of other planets, but we still can’t predict earthquakes or weather here on Earth?

You’ve surely heard of the Darwin Awards, right?

Along the same lines, but not about entirely (or entirely about) stupid people, comes Neatorama’s 30 Strangest Deaths in History.

Including, but not limited to: Death by Cactus, Death by Beard, Death by Drowning at a party for Life Guards.

An article at Apple Gazzette mentioned their ultimate weapon: the Create Your Own Apple Rumor Chart.

From the article:

“You too can be an “inside source” with this amazing new handy dandy Apple Rumor creation tool.

You can use the chart to create top notch and completely trust worthy rumors…”

Enjoy! And if you hit the Digg front page, let us know!

If you don’t know what “TARDIS” or “MAME” is, you might want to start here. If you’re excited at the thought of *putting* one inside the other, go directly to the intsructions.

If you’re too confused to continue, read this:

TARDIS stands for “Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. ” Doctor Who (in the TV show of the same name) uses a TARDIS to travel anywhere in time or space. His looks like a 1950’s booth for calling the police.

MAME stands for “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.” It is an emulator that runs the exact code from arcade video games on a personal computer.

…an enterprising New Zealander named Simon Jansen has combined the two concepts into a very cool video-game apparatus. A TARDIS that runs MAME.

That’s right folks, for just $24.99 (USD), you too can own this USB Powered Desktop Tanning Center!

As if us geeks with farmers’ tans weren’t bad off enough already. Then again, I guess I could take my shirt off at work and get these aimed in a more general direction. I would love to see how that would go over!

Just saw this over at Hackzine: Hypermiling: Hack Your Mileage.

There are a couple links to places around, including one to:

“…a mileage hacker who’s able to get 59MPG in a stock Honda Accord.”

And, from the article:

“It’s incredible, really, to think that by changing your driving habits, you can get better mileage in a standard car than is typically advertised for a hybrid!”

Definitely worth a look.

Some pretty amazing photography from Michael Hughes. First saw these over here, but figured I’d link up the Flickr site due to some controversy. Some of them are so good they almost look fake - surely not, though, right?

UPDATE:
It’s worth a look at the comments.

I would pay for one of these! (Although I wouldn’t pay what Wal-Mart would ask for it):

A homemade, balancing, one-wheeled scooter / skateboard thingy. Pictures and video available via the link. Check it out!

Our apologies for the recent down time you may or may not have noticed. We’ve been moving to a new server and, in the process, some things went wrong. For instance: all of our categories were untied from their posts, so that will have to be fixed.

Not to mention how terribly busy we’ve been on other projects, our jobs, etc.

So just in case you’re reading this: we promise to have it all under control as soon as possible.

GoDaddy will apparently give your domain name away if your WhoIS info is not up-to-date. They only try to contact you by your email address and then if you do not respond after so many days, they make it available.

“Security Watch: Check Your E-Mail and Save Your Domain“

I’ve never shopped for food on Amazon before. I’m glad to see this classic “gourmet food” listed.

Have I been in the dark? I’ve always been a big fan of the changing Google logos, but for some reason I don’t recall ever visiting the Google Logos Collection. They claim to have all of them, as far back as 1998. Cool.

… according to a PC World article. I’m excited to see “Photo Matt” (Developer, WordPress) on the list. Check it out.

Just in case anyone with a WordPress blog stops by, you need to know that version 2.1.1 was officially declared Dangerous by WordPress developers. Head over to the official WordPress site for details, and a clean download to upgrade to a safe version.

You should do this right away if you’re running on version 2.1.1.

Just doing my part to help.

One of the web’s most popular links, in case you’ve never heard:

modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com

Surf around the site for awhile and you’ll find some very interesting information. Her husband will build you a wooden castle for your kids for pretty cheap, if you’re not interested in buying her modest cape-backed dresses or what-not.

A funny thing happened while I was looking for some absolutely gaudy websites for your viewing pleasure: I found the Destroy Websites toy. Just enter the website you want to trash, select your weapon or method of destruction, sound options, “click” and Go!

It’ll load a screen shot of the website of your choice, and (double) clicking will result in destruction. I tried the nuclear bomb, flamethrower, acid, and a few others, but there are tons. The site seemed pretty intense with the flash and loading and all that jazz, so those on slower computers might not get to fully enjoy the effects of destroying a site with “disco” - but it’s definitely worth a look.

I wonder if there are better implementations of this.

Anyway, now that I’ve given you the power, go find your own ugly websites to trash. Or trash ours. Whatever.

I love stuff like this.

I once read an article about the creator/creation of the FedEx logo. Very interesting. I’ll try to link it up soon.

This HTML tattoo is funny… But not awesome. I want to see more like this!

In other news: Some doofus tried to cash a check from God.

UPDATE:
Another HTML tat’ like the above.

Sure enough, there are places with image galleries of Geek Tattoos! Sweet. General Disclaimer: If you’ve never perused a tattoo site, be warned: some are edgy, and sometimes “revealing”. I didn’t check out this whole section, so browse at your own risk. (Unless of course you just don’t care).

In case you haven’t heard: This Saturday, March 3rd, we’ll be able to see our first total lunar eclipse in three years. Wikipedia has some interesting information, as usual.

Was this a waste of space? Where’s my usual weird-factor?

SearchMash.com is Google. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.

Apparently this is old news - but I knew nothing about it, so I thought I would share. In fact, I’ve never heard of “searchmash”. If you read what I read, you would have seen the following quotes:

“SearchMash is an experimental search site operated by Google. The goal of SearchMash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users.”

“The site does not include Google branding to help us gather more objective data about user response to new interfaces.”

I’m sure a quick query on Google (imagine that) would reveal several conversations of what other experiments Google is doing without us knowing… but really: I wonder what else they have out there in the wild, somewhere on the internet, posing as cool little “mashups”, web applications, and the like.

PS:
SearchMash.com is actually kinda cool. I definitely like the “infinite scroll” that you get when clicking for “more results”. I like it a lot.

In case this is news, I’ve finally enabled Trackbacks on this site.

One of the reasons for doing this was that we recently got a nice visit from someone after having sent one to them. I realized it wasn’t very fair of us to send them out with every post and not allow others to return the favor.

Therefore I’m praying that the good ol’ comment/trackback spam doesn’t start creeping up. If it does, I’m afraid we’ll just have to shut it back down.

And if your anonymous comments don’t show up: it’s Akismet’s fault. I’ll approve them as I see them.