muychingon

Diaper filled with Frogs

Oscar — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:15:25 +0000

I was cracking up when I saw this. 1 frog… 2 frogs… …

other stuff you may like...

Web Site Story

Oscar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:55:59 +0000

I won’t even try to describe this.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

other stuff you may like...

Robots that eat bugs to earn their keep!

Oscar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:22:42 +0000

Check these out! Two guys from the UK designed a series of robots that mimic some of the carnivorous plants in the wild. Well, kind of. These robots are functional, like a lamp that attracts bugs, and then “eats” them so it can continue to provide light. That’s cool. Or a mechanical art piece –I made the “art piece” part up, I think it would be a cool art piece actually– that steals flies from spiderwebs, then eats them to help out with the movement required to steal them in the first place. Neat huh? Check it out.

UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau believe that, if robots are ever to be welcomed into people’s homes, they’ll need to fit in with the rest of the furniture, and earn their keep. Their prototypes trap and digest pests like flies and mice to gain energy…. the full thing is right here Gallery – Carnivorous robots eager to eat your pests

other stuff you may like...

RIP Farrah Fawcett

Oscar — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:05:12 +0000

RIP Farrah Fawcett. Thanks for all the entertainment.

Fawcett, who was diagnosed with a rare anal cancer in 2006, died at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica at 9:28 a.m Thursday morning.

Three months after she was declared cancer-free in 2007, doctors at UCLA Medical Center told her the cancer had returned, spreading to her liver, and she repeatedly sought experimental treatment in Germany.

When tabloids quickly reported her cancer recurrence, Fawcett suspected that details of her medical care were being leaked. Her complaints led the UCLA center to dismiss an employee who had surreptitiously reviewed Fawcett’s medical records and those of more than 30 other high-profile patients…. more right here FARRAH FAWCETT: Farrah Fawcett dead — chicagotribune.com

other stuff you may like...

Your Tax dollars at work… in an Empty airport

Oscar — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:04:05 +0000

Check out this report about a teeny airport that gets Millions of dollars from OUR taxes for basically nothing! They sometimes average 20 passengers a day! Yet for each one of those, about $100.00 from your taxes pays for the running of the airlines to and from this airport. Unfreaking believable.

other stuff you may like...

Word of the Day – Anthropocentrism

Oscar — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:45:48 +0000

I learned a new word today. Anthropocentrism. I read it in this document, which talks about two groups of people. The nonconsumptive recreationists and the consumptive recreationists in the South Island of New Zealand. The difference between the two groups pivots on their view of how we should use the environment. For example, a nonconsumptive recreationist is one that does not take anything from nature, while the consumptive recreationist does. As with anything, I think there is a happy medium in between.

Anthropocentrism is the idea that we –as humans– are the supreme beings over everything else in this planet, basically that all things should be made to, or arranged to, developed or whatever you want for our own benefit. I don’t adhere to this 100%, I think we need to respect the other living organisms on this planet because they’re part of the entire ecosystem.

I love fishing, and so you might classify me into the consumptive group, but I also like other activities that would be classified as nonconsumptive, like kayaking, hiking, snorkeling and stuff. I think that the different activities that make you fall into either one of the groups aren’t mutually exclusive, for example, I could go out on a kayak and enjoy some whale watching, or even snorkeling, but what if at the same time, while I’m out there I decide to cast a line and fish a little. Is it wrong to eat the fish I catch? Of course not, but I think it would be not wrong, but actually despicable to fish or hunt just for thrill of it. If you’re not going to use it then leave it alone.

An extreme Anthropocentric person usually believes that we have the right to exert our dominance over every other species regardless of the repercussions. Like slaughtering buffaloes for their skin, rhinos for their horns, or butchering live sharks for their fins, that simply isn’t right. Anyway, hopefully now you know a new word. Peace out.

other stuff you may like...

Twitter used during surgery. twit by twit updates :)

Oscar — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:57:27 +0000

This is pretty cool, a few days ago I read about this.

According to hospital officials this will be the first time any hospital has twittered from a transplant surgery. This is also the first time the 483-bed hospital will use the social networking platform to inform the public about a surgery.

The center has had a Twitter account for some time says Jessica Newell, media relations manager at Children’s Medical Center, but only actively started using it last August. Staff members from the public relations departments at UT Southwestern and Children’s will be twittering live from both ORs. …[ Hospital prepares to tweet first transplant surgery | Healthcare IT News]

Updated information: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051809dnmettwittersurg.1517883a.html

other stuff you may like...

Even the WhiteHouse is going social.

Oscar — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:25:41 +0000

If this isn’t enough of a sign for you to consider your position on social media then I don’t know what could help you. Here is a prime example of how the social media is changing our world.

Government is always slow to adopt new things. They are so big that it must be extremely difficult, but it isn’t impossible. Someone needs to take charge and innovate. I found this great example put forth by the WhiteHouse.

They have their own flickr photostream. And here you thought that flickr was just for you and your family to share weekend pictures. Here’s the White House, showing you some of the “behind the scenes” and every day activity that goes on there. In a picture format, at your level, in your inbox and your RSS. Hopefully they update regularly. This shows me how Obama is delivering on change. The change to innovate and to keep up with useful and productive trends, technology and how our culture develops.

They did it, the largest and arguably the most powerful government in the World has a flickr page. That is just awesome, but where is your flickr page? the one that shows your products in a personal way. Where is for example a picture from your last engineering project?

other stuff you may like...

Great article for the unbeliever or reluctant social media initiate.

Oscar — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:17:20 +0000

I found this while looking through some archived delicious bookmarks. I was on the hunt for social related tags, specifically as it pertains to social media, social interaction online and how business can leverage this as marketing tools. It has been updated since I first read it.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252.htm

I love some of the quotes, mainly because they remind me that I know what I’m talking about when I suggest that you need an online presence, well above and beyond what a website gives you. Let me make it clear here in plain English. Make fun of, ridicule, let it be the butt of the joke, do whatever you wish about them, but you can’t keep turning your head away from the phenomenon that is social media (blogs, twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, youtube, and many others.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate… …blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite…

As it regards to the userbase that may or may not read your blog. Since the article was published a while ago, we’re also now talking about the Twitter account you don’t have. Yeah, the same one your competitor snagged up after they saw you on the news. We’re also talking about the facebook page you don’t have so you can’t be made a fan of anyone and so nobody that “facebooks” can connect with you. By the way, that’s the same facebook page, a potential partner looked up a few minutes ago just to visit, or to find out more about the company… and unfortunately DIDN’T find. So when you read “blog” on the article remember that its more like the whole social media bunddle of stuff –blogs, twitter, facebook–

Let’s assume that 99.9% are equally off point. What we didn’t see in early 2005 was the advent of the spam blog. These blogs, produced automatically, are designed to show up in search results and to attract Google advertisements known as Adsense. Sifry estimates that fully 99% of the blog posts reaching search engines are spam. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business

Yes, you must cater to your market and keep your customers happy, that is undeniable and irrefutable, but you are pulling your own plug if you don’t look to enter the new markets as they grow. Your customers are certainly adopting these new tools, why aren’t you? Where’s the facebook page your potential partner just missed? and how about the twitter page where you could get in touch 1 on 1 with one of your customers?

Hasn’t that one of the big obstacles of ALL businesses since the beginning of time? The cost to produce materials to tell people about your business? This used to be prohivitively expensive. Printing, publishing, distribution, all that stuff used to be the guarded market of the publishing companies. But now, we have the web, instant, global, and virtually free. Its a shame that it is still not a priority for some businesses.

Sure, most blogs are painfully primitive. That’s not the point. They represent power. Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted, but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art—like how to get other bloggers to link to them—they reach a huge audience.

Please read the article, you owe it to yourself. And you’ll thank me later. After you are done reading, start. TODAY, now and get a twitter account. a facebook account and just hang on to them. Learn to use them before you actually use them, look at other businesses and see how they do it. When ready, jump in, just stop putting it off. You’re missing out in valuable time.

And don’t worry, I’m putting my money where my mouth is. You’re going to see a bunch of changes around here. I’m taking a new direction in this blog and soon you’ll see some significant changes. I’ll also share some of the efforts I’m doing to promote my own little online adventures and experiments. I think I might even be moving to a new domain. I will also start showing you some of the things I do to make websites work. More on all that coming soon.

other stuff you may like...

Bummer. WordPress Codex Fail.

Oscar — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:20:33 +0000

Alert the codex police, we need it back up!

Err… ya, that’s a problem…

The site did load once but it wasn't working right.

other stuff you may like...

How concerned are you with privacy. Survey says… not so much.

Oscar — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:35:17 +0000

I read a very interesting article in the whole issue of privacy. Particularly as it pertains to disclosing personal information to “3rd parties.” If this is something of interest to you, I recommend you take a look.

when it comes to privacy, what people do and what they say don’t always correspond. It also shows that if the right design decisions are made and proper control and assurance given about personal data, that in fact, very few people would not be willing to disclose such information. (link)

So how much information are you willing to give out? I know I hate giving my stuff out to anyone, regardless of what kind of security they think they’ve put in place to protect my information. I know that there are certain entities that must have my personal data, but for the most part I think I don’t give out information willingly. The article also mentions a system much like Pandora or the Genius thing on iTunes. Do you realize that each of those applications we use, such as Pandora, have the ability to aggregate the data they have and create pretty accurate profiles of who we are?

Of course, we know this, its how they are able to give me one type of advertisement different from what they show other people. Great! you can say, that is their goal. But what happens when somebody like Google, for example buys a company like Pandora. Google is particularly different than every other company, but even though it is the exception of what I’m about to say, it is large enough that it deserves special mention.

A company like Google, that already knows you inside out pretty much –if they wanted to, goes out and buys Pandora, not only did they already have a very good understanding of who you are, what you like, what you don’t like, your habits, your schedule even! Now they know, within a super finite degree of accuracy which music you like. Not just the genre and style, but specifically which song, from which album. Aggregate that with say… the time of day’s when you clicked “I like that song” then add the geographical location when you clicked it, and now they know that at X-time, at X-location they should give you X-ad. Taking into account all your other habits and information they already know, it would be hard to show you the wrong ad. Do you see how Google makes money and will continue to do so!?

So you rate a song in Pandora here and there, you join a Facebook group over here, you “follow” certain people. You belong to insert your social network here, and after a while, really your privacy is nil. If you were to aggregate these little bits of information, you would have absolutely 0 privacy, imagine that the ability to aggregate all that information fell in the wrong hands –not just your public info, but the private information as well–, now that would be a scary day.

note: this is a couple of weeks old and I just got to release it. I’m also trying out the ScribeFire extension to do some blogging, we’ll see if this works.Technorati Tags: privacy, google, data aggregation

other stuff you may like...

Oh noes! snakes on a motherfu*…

Oscar — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:29:45 +0000

Oh noes! snakes on a motherfu**ing plane! http://tinyurl.com/dh7jhc where’s Sam L Jackson when you need him?

other stuff you may like...

As tweeted on 2009-04-15.

Oscar — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:57:00 +0000

I love it when Pandora gets 3 or more songs right! its just gets me in the groove to get shit done. no frowns round here. #

other stuff you may like...

As tweeted on 2009-04-11.

Oscar — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:57:00 +0000

@mzmehshell good luck, fight the man! in reply to mzmehshell #
Back to work… tweetya later. #
Isn’t it ironic! http://tinyurl.com/ddo6mb won’t you say? The Dalai Lama denied to a peace conference. WTF!!!? @zen365 #
RT @OCParks: 3,500lbs of catfish at six regional parks! Click for a list and a video of the stocking! http://ow.ly/2yx3 @davidslazyk #

other stuff you may like...

As tweeted on 2009-04-09.

Oscar — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:57:00 +0000

multiple twitter accounts on the iphone… tweetie or Twittelator pro. What are you using? or did I miss other options as well? #