MoreCooler.com: It's more cooler with the thing

http://www.japander.com/

As you may know, it's pretty common for US or GB stars to do TV spots for Japanese TV (though they avoid Western ads for fear of appearing to "sell out"). Japander.com has a pretty good collection; some of these are hilarious.

http://homestarrunner.com/legal.html

I never noticed the "legal stuff" link at the bottom - might be new. Anyway, let it sit for a minute.

At Christmas dinner, we (okay, it was mostly me) were bashing how stupid "Hulk" looked, and I stumbled upon an improvement.

Imagine Bruce Banner getting angry. "You won't like me when I'm angry," he says. He starts growing and turning green. Suddenly, he turns into... The Jolly Green Giant. "Eat your brussel sprouts!" That'd be way better. I don't know why I didn't go into screenwriting as a profession.

I've never posted this link anywhere, but some folks might find it useful, so I'm sticking it here so Google will pick it up. Hate to think I wrote this thing and only got a single use out of it (Webber's class project).

Flash SWF FLA Alphabet Block Message Creator

I hope all of you have a great holiday... er... festivities. I would hate to offend anyone.

So, here I am in the "South," land of wooly Republicans, buck-toothed rednecks, and harsh climates... Or so one would think. In the past week:

* I just had some of the best Japanese food of my life in a great little place down the road called "Wujari". It was run by actual Japanese people, and it's not even the only one in this area; Raleigh beats out SLO for per-capita Japanese restaurants.

* Last night I was up until 2 AM (after having shifted my schedule to something more normal) because it was SO FREAKIN' HOT. NC is supposed to have the seasons that CA lacks, but last night we had all the windows open and fans going full steam. Where's my white Christmas!?

* Nobody has a southern accent! Well, I shouldn't say nobody; I hear them here and there, but they're intermittent exceptions to the rule. I heard about as many in SLO. Apparently, with the economy so bad elsewhere, and with Raleigh bordering "Research Triangle Park" ("the new Silicon Valley"), the city has so many immigrants that the accent has gone the way of the dodo unless you head for cabins in the woods.

Invader Zim BitTorrent

"I love this shooow."

There's like five people online right now, and ShoutBox is gone. Wuthappened?

Can anyone suggest a good packet sniffer? Matt, Sean, Brian? More than just suggest, can anyone point me at one or 'thingy' it for me?

Thanks!

So I've had the new Nav disc for my car for about a month now, and I usually drive in local areas with the voice off (it just interrupts the music). So while running some errands in the Bay Area just before my flight, I turned the voice on so I wouldn't miss any turns. Imagine my shock and horror when an entirely unfamiliar voice, in a sultry and thoroughly unsettling female baritone, instructs me to turn left!

Apparently, enough people complained about the anime-style "kawaii" voice that they've switched it to a Standard English older-woman voice. Bleah. I want Navi back. :-(

I've debated what to name the new one, but I think since I don't like her, she can remain nameless. Bitch.

I wonder if Navi went to the Matrix or back to the source? ^_^

Well, I'm in North Carolina as I type this. I'll probably be here 'till next month sometime. My cellphone isn't currently on a national plan, so you can't reach me by phone - er, I guess that's not a huge difference.

I'll post my new # when I get a new phone.

Firefly came in the mail two days ago. I started watching from beginning to end, then back to the beginning to watch it all over again. It is that fun. So what are you doing reading this post? Get your own copy today.

http://www.j-walk.com/other/wifispray/
WiFi Spray!

Well, let me just start off saying this game is awesome. I had a real ball with it -- for one evening. Very fun, very short. “Good pacing” is the friendly way to say it, which basically means “thanks for not boring me.”

But here’s the rub. The X-Box version of this game comes with a whole host of extras: Prince of Persia 1, 2 & 3D, making of movies, interviews and some remade level of PoP1 in the new engine. So that’s what they put on the console, guess what they put as extras on the PC? Nothing, zip, nadda. I read someone’s justification for this, it was that the PC version costs $10 cheaper than the X-Box one, but that means you are ‘buying” the original PoP’s, which is wrong.

And one more thing: Beyond Good and Evil is what Zelda: Windwaker was supposed to be. It has the boat, the “sword” and the camera. Only this boat has rocket boosters. There, I said it, flame away.

I've never been more disgusted to be associated with a group of people than I am to be associated with the fans on the Cowboy Mouth board. When I created the boards, I put in an off-topic board for everything non-Cowboy Mouth. In the last few months, it has basically become a playground for Adam (who happens to be a friend of Griff's), where he creates a handful of usernames, and has conversations with himself and his group of followers. At first, it was cute (in the same way that it's cute when a 4 year old has an imaginary friend). After a while, it became a bit stale. Eventually, it just became ridiculous. Then the fun started.

He created a username for a character called Jitterbug Jackson. This character was nothing more than a black stereotype straight out of a minstrel show. He did it in the form of an advice column, and featured such gems as "dat b a tough question. How do you know this fella is acturrly your broyfriend? . . . Until a fella gives you a ring and spends a substainiaill amounts o money on you he may just be playin wit your lurve." Apparently this was supposed to be witty humor of some sort.

Inevitably, people got offended. When these people voiced their opinions, they were insulted. Eventually, Adam created a new name who was offended by everything, and he and a group of others proceeded to make fun of the people who "couldn't take a joke." I ended up calling management, and we pulled the entire board for a day, then reinstated it with some rules. It's so sad that we need to have rules to tell people not to make racist comments, but we do. Based on a post to the board that has been made since, someone (the poster didn't identify himself) sent a person to the board in an attempt to impress them, and because of this thread, he had to major damage control. Only now are the people involved getting the clue that their actions on the Cowboy Mouth board reflect upon everyone involved with the band (myself included). Now they've moved the little game to the major Cowboy Mouth fan site. So far, the voice of reason on the fan site is a 14 year old (oh, did I mention that Adam is 36?). I love the Internet.

MusicBrainz

A large, growing database of "fingerprints" with which to recognize OGG or MP3 files by their contents. It can organize and re-tag entire collections of music automatically.

Haven't used it yet, but it sounds very cool, and I've read that the database has gotten quite usable in the last few months. Anybody tried it before?

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1997-06-05/fea...

It's an old article, but it's fascinating and more then a little unsettling. I remember trying to summon Bloody Mary in the bathroom when I was a kid in MO.

Garfield: The Movie

Has a movie that ended with ": The Movie" ever been good? And who the #@%@#$% thought a LIVE ACTION Garfield movie would be good!?

Now I understand why they had so much trouble Finding Nemo

One of the many devices that won't be coming here any time soon. :(
http://www.idg.com.sg/idgwww.nsf/unidlookup/7D09C9...

t.A.T.u PARAGATE

Yes, it appears to be real. No, I don't know if it will be in Japanese or Russian; Matt votes "both." ^_^

Did you guys know that the GRE has a computer adaptive test?Whether you get a question right or not determines the difficulty of the next one, with more difficult questions being weighed more. This means that the questions in the first third of the math and verbal test largely determines the final score. So, if you get the first few wrong, the difficulty level drops (as will the score) and, even if you get all the rest correct, the score will never fully return to the higher level. It's like losing your 4.0 GPA once you don't get an A.
Knowing the subject matter is not as important as knowing HOW to take the test. No wonder there's a mint to be made in test preparation classes.

new box style works in all the plugins.. still needs to be on some of these inner pages (*ahem* bryce :)

also, i added a cheesy little shoutbox at the bottom of the menu. it doesn't like working in my IE (v6) but it works fine in Firebird. will figure it out later. :)

Soooo, folks. What's topping your Christmas lists this year? No crap about world peace, please. ^_^

My pie-in-the-sky wish:
Canon "Wordtank" IDF-4600 - Watching anime lately, I'm starting to surprise myself with how much Japanese I can pick up. Going to start learning again on my own.

Yeah, yeah, I'm weird. But here's one I'd wager most of us can agree on:
Firefly - The Complete Series DVD - Yes, it includes the never-before-seen three episodes that were never broadcast. Remember, DVD sales for Family Guy brought it back, and Whedon is on record as wanting to continue the series in some format...

So how am I going to celebrate? Get a long overdue haircut. Feel free to throw in suggestions. I currently have an impossible mane more than halfway down my back. Would love to get highlights but don't want to spend $200 right now. Can you believe googling "hot haircuts" returns porn? Uhhh. I would like non-porn suggestions from friends.

First prize goes to the first person to find some way to get us into E3 this year. I'm thinking I might try a pay stub from when I used to work at ibuyline, but that might be too old.

Got my custom license plates today. It took about 2.5 months for them to finish. A couple of weeks ago I called to ask about where they are (I leave SLO this weekend, and was afraid they wouldn't be done). The lady told me that yes, it usually took the full 8 weeks and that it was because their staff worked 3 times a week for half a day each time. I started to ask why when she reminded me: they're prisoners. Ooops. ^_^

Pic is inside, for the curious.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne...

As Bryce said, "Nothing says 'Son of God' like a bobblehead!"

Neighborhood Hazard (or: Why the Cops Won’t Patrol Brice Street)
Oh. My. God. ROFLMAO.

In case the URL breaks, I've mirrored the text in my first response.

(Note: Read from the original link unless it's broken; some of the formatting is lost in my cut-n-paste job)

Star Wars Christmas Special

Wow. I want to see this, if only to laugh at Harrison Ford before his whole "career" thing.

Instead of posting a link to a file in the file thingy, just say the file name... Direct URLs into there are publicly accessible (I really should put in place some better system), but for now, do not post full URLs to the file thingy files. Been having a hell of a time trying to figure out why this server is doing about 4Mb/s over what it normally does and I think I tracked it down to the moSMB3.wmv file (its URL is on several random sites and its been downloaded 16,000 times already..), so its been renamed and I've replaced it with a smaller file to make people go away. :)

Btw- if anyone has a funny WMV file that's smaller than 200k, lemme know and I'll put it up there. I like saving bandwidth, but I also like screwing with people when they click on the link to the file. :)

Warren Zevon has been posthumously nominated for 5 Grammys for his final album, The Wind (Full list of nominees). In part, I'm happy that such a great album got some serious nominations. On the other hand, it's a shame that this attention only started when he announced he was terminally ill (not to mention the increase after he died). Still, I hope he does win something. "Keep Me In Your Heart" is up for both song and vocal performance, and that's an amazing tune. Even Howard Stern spent ten minutes talking about the album and how that song choked him up.

Hey all!

I thought I'd mention I got Budokai 2 and I'm back to playing a fighter on the PS2. I'm still playing SWG as well, and given the amount of time SWG takes, I can sometimes play both at the same time! =). Anyhow, what games are all of you playing right now? Just thought I'd share and ask.

Later.

"Translation is like a woman, if she is beautiful, she is not faithful; if she is faithful, she is not beautiful."

Taken from a rather lengthy but interesting article on translation.

It IS quiet in here. So, here's the things I've found interesting lately:

a) In Monday's mustang daily, the subheading for an article on the main page (the smaller title under the title) proclaimed in bold text: "subheading goes here, left justified and not a complete sentence" (paraphrased, don't have it in front of me). It took me about thirty seconds to realize it wasn't some bizarrely worded comment on the article to which it was attached. ^_^

b) The same issue included a wire article about a group of college students on another campus who haved started a club called "tengo pantalones." It's all about people who like to wear pants. They have 40+ members, at last count. I'd link the article, but mustang daily's site is down; here's one from another source.

c) The meter maid cars they use on campus are painted, for the most part, just like the regular patrol cars for the campus. This results in the following tremendously amusing juxtoposition: "Parking Enforcement" directly above, in the same font, "Protecting Your Future". I guess maybe if I couldn't find parking 'cause people without permits took all the spots, and so I missed class, and so I flunked out, and so I couldn't get a job, and so I died cold and hungry, then yes, indeed, they would have protected my future.

d) Monkey.

e) Any suggestions on a good phone (both the device and the plan) for me? I want voice mail (finally!) and nationwide coverage. And is internet access via phone any good?

f) As God is my witness, I thought alabaster was white. The BOX for the venetian blinds was white, that's for sure. I had to replace my blinds 'cause they broke, but I've replaced them with the yellowish white they call "alabaster." Bastards with their $10 color words; I hope my landlord doesn't notice.