Compu Junkie

We are Back!

2008-10-18T10:49:00.001-07:00

Well at least I sure am! After a long time I have finally decided to come back and do some blogging.
But this time it's not going to be full blown posts just little snippets of what I find on the various blogs that I am subscribed to like: Lifehacker, Lifehack, Gizmodo, Makeuseof, Didn't You Hear, zen-habits, and other ones I have. So please Subscribe and I will try harder to keep up with the blog.

-Adam

High Res Image of the Future

2008-04-12T16:28:00.001-07:00

I warn you this image is very High Res. Very detailed and very awesome! It shows a futuristic city on one island and a farm village on the next all with incredible detail.

This one is only the small version click the link at the bottom to see the Gigantic size!

Futuristic High Res!!!

Strongbad is Coming to Wii

2008-04-12T09:57:00.001-07:00

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is coming to the Wii in June 2008!

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People

NWSS Lockdown 14 year old arrested

2008-04-11T22:27:00.001-07:00

"VANCOUVER (CBC) - A 14-year-old boy was arrested, then released, Friday in connection with Thursday's lockdown at a high school in New Westminster, B.C.

The boy was picked up by police at a mall in Burnaby, then brought back to New Westminster, where they recommended a charge of uttering threats.

New Westminster police told CBC News, however, that the Crown said there was insufficient evidence to press charges. The boy was released on the condition he stay away from all schools in New Westminster.

"Our special project team members found the 14-year-old male that we're looking for in the Metrotown mall area with a group of friends," said Ivan Chu, the media relations officer for the New Westminster police.

"They were able to make an arrest without incident."

Friday's classes at New Westminster Secondary School were cancelled, and police searched for the person they believe entered the school with a gun the previous afternoon at around 1:30 p.m.

Students were told to stay quiet in their classrooms with the lights off for more than two hours, while their anxious parents waited nearby at a senior's home.

The school was evacuated Thursday starting at 4 p.m. under police protection, and was closed all day Friday. New Westminster Secondary is expected to reopen Monday." Yahoo News

Unscrew America

2008-04-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Unscrew America is a nifty little site that has a BIG message. It spreads the word about energy efficient L.E.D and CFL bulbs. Unlike Incandescent bulbs they use way less electricity and reduce your environmental footprint by a lot. The basic goal is to rid every american household of those old environmentally damaging light bulbs and switch them with new energy efficient bulbs. That's pretty easy right? Well with an awesome site like this it just might be.

The site is filled with colorful graphics and tons of click able objects that effectively show the benefits of better light bulbs that are energy efficient.

Save Money
Reduce your environmental footprint
SAVE THE WORLD!!!!!

The Music is very very catchy! I warn you! If you want to be humming this song all day then I suggest you turn your speakers off!

Unscrew America

NWSS Lockdown More Info

2008-04-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

I talked about my own story in the lockdown HERE

But now I would like to talk about what I know and the concluding facts. This article is from cbc.ca
It is not my original work and I did not write it. If you need more information this is were you will get it. And I have posted links to other new websites with more info about the lockdown at NWSS

"The decision to keep students locked inside their classrooms was prompted by the alleged sighting of an armed student on the grounds of New Westminster Secondary School at around 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

It stranded hundreds of students in darkened classroom as anxious parents waited for news.

"We had to be quiet in case anyone came around,'' said Grade 11 student Rachel Vasey.

As she waited silently in the company of her teacher, Vasey said students didn't take the lockdown order seriously, at least not initially.

But as time went by without any news, the mood began to change.

"After about half an hour, everyone was beginning to get a little bit scared,'' she said.

That sentiment was shared by waiting parents like Tim Davidson, whose son, a grade 10 student, was also locked inside his classroom.

"It's very upsetting,'' he said. "The first thing that goes through my mind is, "Is my son safe?"

Vasey said some students were able to use their cellphones to keep in touch with relatives by sending and receiving text messages.

By around 4:00 p.m., police began an evacuation of the school, telling students to report to their parents immediately. Parents had gathered at a nearby senior citizens home to await updates from authorities.

Police are now searching for a suspect described as a possible student, thought to be 14 years old, and wearing baggy pants and a bandana.

No guns have been found and no one has been hurt.

The school is expected to remain closed on Friday." cbc news

CBC news report

News 1130

BC Local News ( Most Informing)

New Westminster Secondary School Lockdown.

2008-04-10T17:37:00.000-07:00

It was 1:45 pm at NWSS (New Westminster secondary school). I was in Math class getting ready to go to English class. All of a sudden our principal comes on the P.A and tells us there's a lock down situation.

Everyone ran to the sides of the walls and under the desks. We waited....and waited.....and waited some more.

Two hours later my friend gets a text message from his mom saying that there was a 14 year old with a gun and that everything will be fine.

Two hours and 45 minutes later the principal came on the P.A again. Finally!

Now she said that tomorrow there is no school and that the SWAT team (yes i said SWAT team) would knock on our classroom doors and escort us out.

5 minutes passed and we heard a knock. We opened the door and this awesome SWAT guy was standing in the hall. He was carrying an MP5. Sweet!

So we were escorted out of the school and luckily no one got hurt and the gun was not found on anyone.

Find Free Wireless Hotspots with Jiwire

2008-04-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

The Wi-Fi Hotspot webapp finds free wireless access points on a map. Just type in your city, street, or address to find hotspots near you.

Jiwire

Stream Itunes Library to iphone or ipod touch

2008-04-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

Freeware application Simplify Media lets you stream your itunes music from your library to your iphone or ipod touch. To use it install Simplify media on your desktop and then install the ipod app on your ipod.

Simplify Media

Runners High

2008-04-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

THE runner’s high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.

"Some who said they had experienced a runner’s high said it was uncommon. They might feel relaxed or at peace after exercising, but only occasionally did they feel euphoric. Was the calmness itself a runner’s high?"

Via: New York Times

The Benefits of a Straight Razor

2008-04-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons to switch to a straight razor.

Improve your health
Get smoother skin
Save money
Reduce your environmental impact

And best of all it's fun! So here is a further guide on the benefits of straight razor shaving and another guide on how to filled with tutorials.

Sweeney Todd knows what he's doing.

The Zen of Shaving

Learn how to Shave with a Straight Razor

Ten Thousand cents is only $100

2008-04-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

Two artists set out on a journey to raise awareness of crowd sourcing, virtual economies, and digital reproduction. And this is what they made.

A $100 dollar bill made out of 10,000 small drawings. The idea was to hire 10,000 people and get each of them to draw a part of the bill. They were paid 1 cent each. Costing the two main artists, Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima, $100.

It all took 5 months to make and the result is very accurate.

Ten Thousand Cents

via: Didn't you Hear?

Sync songs directly between Ipods

2008-04-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

Flashback – it's the 1980s, and you just made a mix tape. You dubbed some tunes and gave them to a friend. You'd think it would be that easy to share tunes with your friends today – just plug two iPods into your Mac and have them intermingle. But it's not. iPods are normally locked down, and you would have to selectively sync and delete and re-sync to get where you want to be; what a pain.

Misu Screenshot 2Enter Misu. Misu is for people who want to discover a whole new world of music. Just connect two or more iPods to your Mac, and watch as Misu fuses their music libraries into one. And Misu is smart; only the songs that the receiving iPod doesn't have already will be copied. The slick interface lets you do all of this with ease and pleasure. Within a try or two, you'll know you need to give Misu a home in your apps folder (or on your iPod – Misu is mobile!). So give Misu a try – get a taste of what the Mac is missing.

Misu

Happy with sadness?

2008-04-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

This is guaranteed to make you cry. Well maybe.

Dodge Quest

2008-04-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Dodge Quest is an RPG that puts you in charge of a man named Coronet as you try and make him happy.

Not knowing how to reject the proposal, Lucy blabbers out “I’m only interested in guys that drive a DODGE”.

As gullible as he may be, Coronet believes her words, and goes on many missions in pursuit of the DODGE.

Upon attaining the DODGE, will he also find happiness…?

The rules are simple:

The game requires players to complete one mission a day and earn money.
There is no raise in levels, but purely a matter of gaining money.
After completing one mission, the hero must sleep for 8 hours in real time.
After 8 hours, the game can be continued, and a new mission will begin.

The music is fantastically 8-bit, the graphics are the same, and the story seems compelling, so I think that Dodge might have a winner on their hands with this one.

Are you ready to help Coronet save the day?

Dodge Quest

Via: Didn't You Hear

Blogs #1 Lifehacker

2008-04-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

This is for everyone to be open to new useful blogs so lets start with:

Lifehacker This big blog is updated more than five times a day. It is about a medley of things.

Life of course
Hacks for all sorts of little things
Computers and software
Your general tech stuff

So if you want small useful posts that upgrade your life, you gotta try Lifehacker.

Make animated Gifs From Videos

2008-04-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the net and I stumbled upon this guide on how to make your own animated gifs in four steps. Here they are.

MPlayer is a pretty powerful tool for processing video files. It has a built-in command line option that will export specified movie frames to a GIF. Such a feature seems like it would make the guide I'm presenting here obsolete, but the problem with the feature is that the resultant GIF looks terrible: too few colors. As far as I've seen, the best way to get good quality animated GIFs using only free software involves using a combination of MPlayer's command line tools and a little bit of elbow grease in The GIMP. We will export the desired segment of video to a series of JPEG files, then use The GIMP to combine those files into a nicely animating GIF that should look nearly as good as the original video. I believe that it is possible to get MPlayer and The GIMP together in a script that will allow the end user to simply point the script to the desired movie file and the desired segment and the script will do all the "dirty work" and create the GIF. This is my end goal, but I have not taken the time necessary to learn any of GIMP's scripting language. If there is a pre-existing solution that allows one to do what I am trying to show here, I'd love to know about it, so please let me know.

Step 1 (for Debian or Ubuntu users):

sudo apt-get install gimp mplayer

Step 2:

mplayer -ao null -loop 0 -ss 0:11:22 -endpos 5 file.avi

This command will display the segment of file.avi on your screen that runs from 11:22 to five seconds later (11:27). It will loop infinitely until you close the window or send a ctrl+c to the terminal window. This command is useful for figuring out what your GIF will look like before you make it. The audio output will not be heard (is set to null)

Step 3:

mplayer -ao null -ss 0:11:22 -endpos 5 file.avi -vo jpeg:outdir=moviedirectory

This command actually creates the jpeg files you will need to make your animated gif. It is similar to the other command, but nothing is displayed on screen, and the command will not loop forever. The command will output the segment to a series of jpeg files in a directory called "moviedirectory".

Step 4:

Now that we have our directory full of jpegs, we should open the first of these files in The GIMP. Then, open the remainder of the images in the directory as layers (File -> Open As Layers). Every image in that directory should now be a layer. Now save the file as a .gif and choose to "save as animation" as opposed to "flatten image." Click export. Lastly, it is important to make sure "loop forever" is checked if you want a GIF that loops forever. The other options here can drastically change the effect of your gif because they change the speed that the gif is displayed at. A relatively fast gif will have a 15 millisecond delay between frames. The default delay of 100 ms is a bit slow in my opinion. Under frame disposal where unspecified I select "one frame per layer." I check "Use delay entered above for all frames" and "Use disposal entered above for all frames."

Via: blog.ahfr.org

Save the Earth right from your Desktop!

2008-04-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

Now to Kick things off I'd like to present Local Cooling!

PC power consumption: does it really matter?

More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we aren’t using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent, in energy terms, to the gas consumption of one car. Learn more about PC power consumption...

LocalCooling is a 100% FREE power management tool, from Uniblue Research Labs, that allows users to optimize their energy savings in minutes and as a result reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What does LocalCooling do?

Download the 100% FREE LocalCooling application and to automatically optimize your PC’s power consumption by using a more effective power save mode. You will be able to see your savings in real-time translated to more environmental terms such as how many trees and gallons of oil you have saved.

LocalCooling will:

* Cut your energy bills
* Reduce the amount of greenhouse gas CO2 emissions as a
result of your reduced PC power consumption
* Give you full control over your power mode settings
* Improve your overall efficiency and computing experience
* Show you, in detail, how much you have saved since installing the software

Learn more about how LocalCooling will help you save energy!

Local Cooling

We are Back!!

2008-04-05T19:17:00.001-07:00

After long consideration we have finally decided to go back on track! We are only starting out again so don't expect more than one post a day. We are trying our best to get back on track and to start writing more posts.

After we become more popular we will be posting more and more.

We need subscribers to keep us going! Please subscribe! it will make 2 smart teenagers very happy.

2007-11-20T21:31:00.001-08:00

OMG SO SO SO SO SORRY!!!!!! Sorry we haven't posted for about a week now but ive been having second thoughts about this blog but guess what? I'm happy with the results of the new visitors that are coming to the site!! I'm blown away! When I started this blog I thought: Hey why am I doing this? I probably will only get like maximum of 20 people ever!! But now look at this!! (well you can't really look at it until your click the link for my counter in the sidebar) I mean now if I post something new and ping it I get at least 10 new visitors a day! Now 10 new visitors a day might now be the best but it's freaking sweet for me! So I thank all the people that stayed subscribed for the whole time we didn't post. From now on I will try to post at least 5 times a week so please bare with me as my promise of posting everyday wasn't kept and I realize it is very hard when your 14 and you try to update your blog everyday. So tomorrow will be my next post!! make way for Moola.

Silk Road

2007-11-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

Ive been playing this game for a long time. It is a MMORPG based on the Chinese silk road where you can be either a trader(trades things and gets lots of money), thief(steals from trader) or a hunter(kills thief)at lvl 20 in the game. The lvl cap is 80 and they are trying to make 90 soon. In the game you attack mobs(monster) to gain lvls and get new weapons, armors and new skills. There are 2 types of races European and Chinese which you can pick when you start. The download is free and it takes about 1 hour to download but its a whole lot of fun.

Silk Road

Worst video game ever

2007-11-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

In 1991 some mentally challenged people started making their own video game. Many levels froze, didn't work, or totally sucked ass. The retailers had a soft spot for retards back then so they sold the game to the public for $200. Yes $200. That is how the game Action 52 was created. Here is the first video of the trilogy that takes you into the game and shows you what a pathetic piece of crap this game really is...

Twitter

2007-11-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

Twitter is like an online chat room but there is a difference. You don't talk willy nilly you go on everyday and you can write down how your feeling or if theres something new in your life. Your friends can see what you wrote and they can do the same thing. You can follow other people in twitter and see whats happening to them.

Twitter

Will Wright's Spore

2007-11-11T16:28:00.000-08:00

The creator of all the Sims games has yet another game that has to do with the real world. Spore is a game of evolution. You start out as a one celled organism trying to survive by eating things smaller than you. Then there the creature phase were you struggle to survive and discover new things. Then theres a tribal phase, a civilization phase and a space phase. You get to build your own creature in the creature phase with many possibilities. Spore comes out on March 3rd 2008. There's way more info about spore on their website.

Spore

Vectorize any image

2007-11-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

Vector magic is a website which turns your old bitmap images into vector images instantly. You get to pick the quality low, medium, or high and then wait for it to load and you got a vector. You can also vectorize yourself in a photograph. After you have your vector image you can save it to your computer as a png. Vector is a format that doesn't use separate colored pixels like jpeg. Instead a vector image contains colors in the patterns very similar to your picture that you put in so your picture looks like it was painted or drawn on paper.

Vector Magic

What is Vector?