Apestry

What's inside your cellphone?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:08:00 +0000

Ever wonder what demonic creature is unleashed when you stick your cellphone into a microwave oven?

Watch:

Weirdest f**king thing I've seen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:24:00 +0000

And why I love the Japanese.

Comedian inside a giant blue balloon on stilts attempts to reach a glazed donut.

Skip the Prius, get a used car instead.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:33:00 +0000

From this blog post on Wired, which suggests that you can really pump up your green enviro-cred not by buying a new Toyota Prius, but by buying a used fuel-efficient car instead.

Toyota Prius get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make one. Since there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a carbon debt - one you won't pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so.

Maybe you'd be best off if you could find a used Prius, but I think from a dollars-to-mpg ratio, a used Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla might be a better option. You get almost as good fuel efficiency as a hybrid, for a fraction of the cost of owning one. Unless you buy a total lemon that needs to spend time in the shop every month. Also don't forget that a new car will almost certainly cost more to insure than an older jalopy.

Makes me feel justified for hanging on to my 96 VW Golf (28 mpg, 135,000 miles), that's for sure.

[Image from Wagonized]

Right wing talk show host shows his ignorance on Hardball

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:07:00 +0000

On Hardball with Chris Matthews, ~~blowhard~~ radio talk show host Kevin James sought to attach the "appeaser" label to Barack Obama. Trouble is, he doesn't know what the term meant.

This just confirms and puts to rest what a lot of people have known for a long time about these conservative attack-dog talk show hosts. By using tactics that include hysterics and excessive decibel levels, not permitting the other side any time to respond, they distract from their ignorance of the subject matter at hand. Even if the other side does somehow get a chance to defend themselves, their arguments are tossed aside and any attempt to bring it back to the table is drowned out with an even louder and abrasive repetition of their slogans. Eventually their opponent gives up out of disgust.

That's not an open debate. It's a deplorable practice, they shouldn't be able to get away with it for as long as they have been. It's good that once in a while someone calls their bluff and puts their idiocy to shame.

Freestyle Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:58:00 +0000

What is it about the French that makes them do crazy (albeit in a spectacular kind of way) stuff like this? From the people that developed freerunning or Parkour, Freestyle Trial is what you get when you combine Parkour with a motorbike.

This guy Julien Dupont is freaking awesome.

Here is Jean-Yves Blondeau, another crazy Frenchman with his awesome body roller suit.

Via Fresh Creation

Audiosurfing the classics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:05:00 +0000

This ad promoting the Zurich Chamber Orchestra transforms the lines of sheet music into the rails of a roller coaster:

This so reminds me of the awesome indie game Audiosurf, where you turn your MP3 songs into a playable, gem-collecting obstacle course. Well worth the $10 purchase price, in my opinion. Here's a clip of a guy playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor in Audiosurf:

7382 used chopsticks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:17:00 +0000

That's how many chopsticks were used to make this canoe.

City hall worker Shuhei Ogawara spent two years collecting spent chopsticks from the cafeteria. Perfectly good wood that would otherwise have gone to waste, instead were glued into strips to form the canoe shell.

Kwytza Kraft has also found uses for recycled chopsticks.

Asahi via Pink Tentacle

IKEA Train

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:53:00 +0000

I want to ride this train.

To promote the opening of their new store, IKEA has decorated the seats and curtains of this Portliner Monorail in Kobe, Japan.

via Pink Tentacle

Very good documentary on ape intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:54:00 +0000

Ape Genius, a documentary from PBS Nova. 52 minutes.

Hey, that's my 'hood!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:48:00 +0000

I just found out that my neighborhood of Westwood, near UCLA, is home to the Stupidest Bike Lane in America (all 275 feet of it), according to Slate:

I walk through there many times, and didn't even know we had any bike lanes (or bikers).

via LAist

Let the gays have their buttsecks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:32:00 +0000

You were told that gay marriage is immoral:

So in 2000 and 2004, you voted for the party of "family values":

Which elected this guy not once, but twice:

Who then started a useless war, killing thousands of troops
and hundreds of thousands of civilians:

Pissing off the very people we were trying to help,
fueling even more extremism:

Not only that, the cost of the war
grossly exceeded its $50-60B estimate:

Pushing up our budget deficit and partly to blame for
collapsing the value of the US dollar:

Which makes buying oil a lot more expensive:

Thus higher energy costs also means
higher prices for everything else:

Q: So in the end, what are some lessons to be learned?

A: Don't let the fear of the gays having their buttsecks
cause you to bend over for your government and take it up your own ass.

Think about that when the anti-gay
hysteria starts up again in 2008.

(Very) Unlikely to get me to a Carl's Jr.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:58:00 +0000

I don't know what the marketing people at Carl's Jr are thinking. These minds thought up arguably the most unappetizing fast food slogan (If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face.) Their ads typically feature some hot skinny girl stuffing her face with a giant burger that's dripping sauce and ketchup all over their clothes. Message to me: You should never eat a Carl's Jr without a clean change of clothes and a mop and bucket ready.

Here's how their new Super Bowl 2008 commercial opens. The scene opens to a shot of the bleachers of some college basketball court, where a good-looking guy and his hot blonde girlfriend are having takeout lunch from Carl's Jr. Someone off-screen is dribbling a basketball. Who is their target audience, I wonder? Hmmm.

They're talking about a party or something that they are going to later that night.

Guy: So I actually have to wear a black tie to this thing tonight?

Girl: It's just an expression.

The guy takes a huge chomp of his burger and mumbles with his mouth full of food.

Guy: So I (muffled) colored tie or what?

Here's my first objection to this ad. Just take a good look at the size of that burger he's cramming into his face. By itself it's just about as big as his own face. It could probably keep alive a starving family from Darfur for a week.

Girl: I think its--oh babe, you got something right here (points to her own chin)

Guy: Right here?

She slurps from a giant beverage cup, as the guy brushes his cheek with his fingers.

I know I have this peeve regarding the portion sizes here in the US. I mean, just how big is that drink? Extra large? I could never finish a drink of that size in one sitting, even if it were only filled with water. Even if it were Diet Coke, there's no way for that girl to gulp that down and still keep up her hotness. She'd balloon up to twice her size before too long.

The guy chomps on his burger some more, as the girl points to an area on her face.

Girl: No, it's sorta more.... over here.

Guy: What, over here?

Here's a closeup of what the girl has been stuffing into her own face.

How many calories does she have right there in the palms of her hand? That tub of fries is bigger than her entire hand. Size notwithstanding, just what is that clumpy, goopy mess anyway? It strongly reminds me of a photo from this blog posting of the worst food in America. Coincidentally Carl's Jr is also on this list for the worst burger in America.

Girl: No, it's sorta more... in this area.

Guy (swabs his chin): Did I get it? Am I good?

He's got chili smeared all over his face! Ha ha. What are we, 6 years old? Why don't you have the guy open his mouth and let us see the chewed-up burger inside, why don't you. (You want seafood? See food.) What was disgusting even back then, is still disgusting now.

Who was the advertising genius who thought that seeing yucky, sticky, mashed-up chili on this dude's face is ever going to get hungry hordes of people stampeding over to their local Carl's Jr? How about getting a bucket so he could barf his lunch out for us to see? In fact, why don't you give me the bucket. I'm feeling like I want to throw up just watching this ad.

Here's a thought: maybe that's the brilliance behind the ad. Imagine if you will, the collective retching of the masses after watching this ad. What better way to refill their purged stomachs than with a huge, oversized meal from Carl's Jr?

The ad closes with the annoying, lackadaisical announcer. I hate this guy's nasally slacker voice. Who is this guy? If you happen to know him, smack him around a few times for me.

Announcer: Chili Cheeseburgers. Back at Carl's Jr.

I'll let someone else from the lard-assed masses buy your disgusting burgers. I'll have none of it, thanks.

PS: I did a YouTube search of other Carl's Jr ads and found this clip. It's a great parody of their typical adverts (complete with slacker announcer), and pretty much sums up how I feel after I watch their ads:

From $25 to $5000

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:49:00 +0000

Saw this great story today on the Christian Science Monitor, where for an experiment this guy left his parents' home, to find out for himself how far he can make it with only $25 in his pocket.

A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charleston, S.C.

He stayed at a homeless shelter for the first couple of months, taking advantage of government food stamps, then started working as day laborer, eventually getting a job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

This kid didn't give himself any luxuries like eating out, nor did he have a cell phone. Probably didn't have a TV either. Cell phone bills and cable bills really eat into your income. Nothing but a strong back and the will to work, he was well on his way out of poverty.

Bank of America goes pink

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:11:00 +0000

Here's why basic color theory is important. I've been seeing some changes at some of my local Bank of America branches lately. The corporate banners have changed, from the old high-visibility blue text on white background:

to this godawful clashing, eye-searing blue text on a red background:

The letters are now very difficult to read, because of the dissonant combination of colors. Moreover you can't even see the American flag anymore, now that it's drowning in that sea of red.

The banner went from being that which is fitting for a respectable commercial institution to that of... I dunno... my first thought was along the lines of... "Where did my bank go? Did it get replaced by a gaudy gay sex shop?"

Who approved this design? Did they have even the faintest grasp of color theory? The color red, when you stand next to blue like that of the "Bank of America" text, will appear to be pink. PINK!

While pink is a fun color for little girls' birthday parties, it is not a color you want to be associated with an institution that's going to safeguard your life savings.

If you were to open a new savings account and you saw the two following banks next to each other, which one would you entrust with your hard-earned cash?

This Bank

That Bank

If you were most people, you'd probably avert your eyes from the one on the left , and once you finish your epileptic vomiting, head for the one on the right (sporting the color scheme of Washington Mutual btw).

Poor Bank of America. I wonder if BofA are now going to give out free hot pink dildos to new customers when they open a new savings account.

Dude(tte), get a grip.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:36:00 +0000

This is what happens when you've lost yourself to the cult worship of a personality. All the nasty reviews of Britney's trainwreck of a performance at the 2007 MTV VMA awards is too much for this Britney fanboy (or fangirl?).

I just can't think of anything to say on this, except that this guy urgently needs help.

RIP Alex the Parrot, 31

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:55:00 +0000

Alex the African Gray Parrot, a subject for study at Brandeis University, has died at the age of 31, seemingly of natural causes.

This particularly intelligent gray parrot has been trained when presented with several objects to identify, distinguish and speak the object's color, shape, and material. He can also correctly tell which object is bigger or smaller than the other. Moreover he's been able to count items up to 6, and what's even more remarkable, may have some notions of the concept of zero.

As an aside, I love hearing stories about animals that display signs of the capability for reasoning. I like to think that mankind's role on this planet is like that of a caretaker, more like a gentle big brother and less like a domineering overlord. My thinking is that some people may feel justified in treating them as mere objects for consumption or exploitation, if all creatures were dumb or unthinking brutes. However, if some species show some evidence of logical reason, I would hope that we humans may feel more of a kinship towards them, and perhaps in the future we may become better guardians of their fate (and ours). Wouldn't that be nice?

Back to Alex. It is true, that being called a birdbrain has never been a compliment on one's intellect. However the person who came up with that epithet presumably has never met Alex the parrot.

Link: NYTimes

Great advert for Epuron.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 07:03:00 +0000

This has been out for a while but I came across this commercial only recently.

At first I thought this guy was a total jerk and felt very little sympathy towards his situation if at all. However the ad reveals his true identity in the last 10 seconds, and at that time I instantly and completely understood his character. It's a brilliant ad.

2 minutes is a long running time for an advert, but I don't think you could have sufficiently told the story and built up the emotional volume in less time.

Pointless, but cool nonetheless.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:07:00 +0000

What has this got to do with Cadbury's milk chocolate?

I don't really care. All I need to know is that there's a gorilla hitting the drum solo from one of my all-time favorite songs.

Really good CG, I must say.

Still not gonna get me to buy Cadbury's chocolate bar though. I don't like milk chocolate.

Rant: No Bacn!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:33:00 +0000

It's brand new, but already I hate bacn. Just as much as I hate leetspeak. I hope this newly-coined term goes the way of the "nybble" before too long, but unfortunately somehow I doubt it. Not while it's enjoying the kind of coverage it's getting in the major blogs, though it appears that like me, many of them think the term is kind of silly.

Unlike spam, the kind of email you don't want, bacn is defined as "email you want, but not right now". Email alerts such as Twitter updates, Facebook notifications, stock alerts, etc.

I get it. It's not quite spam, it's bacon. But why the hell did they foist upon us this annoying argot?

Maybe they thought that we'd confuse our email alerts with the cured strips of pork belly? Let's think back to spam for a moment. I don't know about you, but I can surely tell when you're talking about junk email as opposed to luncheon meat.

Or maybe they sought to prevent carpal tunnel in our wrists by saving us from typing in that extra "o" in the middle of the word?

Still, I can't begrudge them too much: It's a clever idea, giving us a new term for what I've been awkwardly referring to as my "necessary spam". But please, don't get too cute.

Spell it B-A-C-O-N.

Rant: Definately. NOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:35:00 +0000

Misspellings. One of my pet peeves. I don't even know why it bothers me so much, especially since English wasn't even my first language. I mean, if I can use and spell these properly, why can't youse?

Definately: I want to claw my eyeballs out whenever I see someone misspell this word. There's no A in "definitely". Just like there's no A in "moron".

Aggravate: It means "to make things worse". People confuse this word with "irritate", which means "to annoy". Use it properly, or you'll aggravate my irritation.

Accept/Except: Simple rule. Only use accept when you're receiving something.

Desert/Dessert: Just like sand, a desert has one S. Sweets, like dessert, have two.

Its/Your/Their: Used to indicate ownership. Its toy. Your book. Their car. Don't confuse these with the It's/You're/They're contraction. It is toy? You are book? They are car? Makes no sense.

It's/You're/They're: It's not that hard to use these. They're contractions of "It is", "You are", and "They are" respectively. If you're still confused, just stop using them.

That's enough for now.

Mr Men coming to TV!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:39:00 +0000

Wow, I remember these characters from when I was a kid! They're soon to have their own show on the Cartoon Network. For some reason, probably because of their simple geometric shapes I thought there could not have been more than about ten characters altogether, until I went to their Wikipedia page. I hadn't even heard of most of them.

Will Mr Strong be making an appearance on the TV show? That kindly egg-gulping red square was my favorite. Maybe the Egg Board should adopt him as a mascot.

Monkey Moment: Hairy Houdini

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:28:00 +0000

Ouch. Ok, sorry for the pun.

After escaping from his cage at the Mississississippi Zoo the first time in July, Oliver the capuchin monkey busted out again, even after his handler had installed a new $300 lock.

It was unclear if Oliver had shown himself to be a capuchin Houdini or if he had a human accomplice

Oh, don't say that. Please tell me the monkey did it all on his own.

I want to believe!

Link and photos from the NYTimes

How my PSP kicks ass.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:24:00 +0000

I knew when I finally bought the PlayStation Portable that it was a great handheld gaming system, but that wasn't why I had bought it. Face it, there are a few great games for it, but most of them are mediocre. I didn't buy it solely to play games. Here are the most useful functions of the PSP, as far as I'm concerned:

Catching up on my TV programs.
A 4-gig MS can store almost a full day's worth of TV shows. I record all my shows using GB-PVR (free) on my home computer, then transcode them (substituting a version of ffmpeg that I grabbed from pspvideo9) into a video format that's compatible with the PSP. Each morning I copy a few episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report onto my memory stick to watch later that afternoon. I usually watch news shows, documentaries and other programs that doesn't require me to actually watch the screen full time, since I usually work while I watch. Subtitled anime for example, would be really bad for my "productivity".

Listening to music.
I load up my memory stick with some MP3's from my home collection for listening at work or in the car. The PSP doesn't really support playlists, so I have to organize my music into various folders. For example I have a folder with slower tunes for chilling out at work, and another folder with more upbeat songs for when I'm driving. I have to say though, using the PSP buttons for controlling your music really sucks. Why didn't they use the analog joypad for scrubbing forward/backward through each song?

Downloading audio podcasts.
Probably my favorite feature of the PSP, the one that puts it far above the iPod. If you use an iPod, you've got to use iTunes to download your podcasts onto your computer, then finally sync it to your iPod. With my PSP, if I want to listen to last week's broadcast of This American Life, I just go find myself a hotspot, and use the RSS browser to stream the audio over the net, or save a copy of it onto my memory stick. I wish I could do this with video podcasts too, but the PSP can't readily play video content meant for the iPod.

Surf the web. Kind of.
The connection speed is pretty slow so you have to wait a while for pages to load, and when it finally comes up more often than not the layout won't look quite right. Something screwy with the page rendering algorithm that the PSP uses. I limit myself to checking the front pages of news sites like the BBC or Google News, doing simple tasks like checking in for my flight, and checking my email. That's checking, not writing email. Writing a novel on your mobile phone would be a walk in the park compared to composing a sentence using the PSP's input system. Lastly, I also use my browser to read my RSS feeds using the mobile version of Google Reader.

Annoy my friends with my vacation photos.
"Hey, how was your trip?" They'd ask, to which I would reply while firing up my PSP slideshow, "It was great! Here, I got a few hundred photos for you to look at!"

Read a book.
There's a pretty good text/pdf reader called Bookr, that I've used a few times to read some books like Grimm's Fairy Tales that I downloaded from Project Gutenberg. The display is crisp and very sharp, and you can choose to read the text using the default landscape orientation, or rotate it 90 degrees the way I like it.

Play games.
Oh yeah, I use the PSP to play games, too! I installed the open edition firmware version 3.40 OE-A, which allows me to use several homebrew emulators on my PSP. gpSP lets me play GameBoy Advance games like Super Mario World. Firmware 3.40 OE-A also includes classic PlayStation 1 emulation, so now I could also relive the days when I was playing Gran Turismo 2. There's also Daedalus, which emulates the Nintendo 64 on the PSP. As far as the native PSP games go, of the few games that I have bought, the only UMD that sits in the drive bay of my PSP these days is still Lumines.

Now. Cool gizmo that it is, there are a few things that would make the PSP better still:

A decent input system. Come on, I can type my emails into a mobile phone faster than using this.
Scrub through a song using the joypad. It's no click wheel, but it's the best control device we have on the PSP.
Support iPod video content. Pretty much all the video podcasts out there are made for the iPod. Nobody's making content just for the PSP. Not even Sony. So don't make us jump through multiple hoops to transcode our videos for the PSP.
Better podcast fetching. Right now I'm able to fetch a given number of episodes (up to 5) for each RSS channel that I select, and it always overwrites what I have already downloaded. For example, if today is August 14th, and I grab the 3 latest episodes of a daily news podcast, I would get the shows from the 14th, 13th, and the 12th. Tomorrow, when my automatic fetch fires up again, it would grab the shows from the 15th, PLUS the 14th and 13th again. Inefficient use of time and bandwidth!

Ok, I better sign off so that I can finish watching last night's episode of Mad Men.

Uniqlock

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:20:00 +0000

I love Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo's fun new clock, featuring music by Fantastic Plastic Machine. I could keep it running on my web browser all day.

Ooh, I just noticed you could download it as a 33-MB screensaver.

If I weren't an ape, I'd be (such) a pig. :)

Via Notcot

Virgin America's in-flight system

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:43:00 +0000

Engadget has a LOT of photos and a pretty thorough writeup on Red, which is Virgin America's in-flight entertainment system. My thoughts on some of the features:

9-inch touchscreen. Nice, but will I need to bring my own alcohol screen wipes to clean snotty finger trails from the kid who had previously been in my seat?
Plane-wide chat system. Each TV channel also has its own chatroom, so you can make snarky comments about Keanu's acting. Or see if the cute blonde in seat 14C is lurking in another chatroom.
Order food and drinks (and SkyMall, soon) and pay using your credit card. The system also keeps tabs on inventory, so it will tell you when the galley has run out of salmon.
Streaming MP3 playback. I like this, and I'll probably be getting a lot of use out of it. I don't suppose they'll have any of the music that I like, though?
Streaming pay-per-view movies. At $6-8 per movie it's almost as expensive as going to see it on the big screen, but at least you have a choice if you'd rather not watch Happy Feet for the barf-teenth time.
Play other games, including Doom. Speaking of barf. Is playing a motion-sickness-inducing FPS (or racing games for that matter) on an airplane a good idea? Better make sure you have your airsick bag ready.

They'll be starting their LA-DC route in a couple of months! I can use visiting my friends as an excuse to fly VA. :)

Link