Monday, August 31, 2009

Pogo - Alohomora

About ten minutes ago I found out about an Australian artist named Pogo. He creates electronic and dreamy trip-hop beats to sound clips from popular movies. Which makes it all the more trippy... er.

He's thus far done Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Poppins, and the rest I haven't gotten to watching yet. Below is a track called Alohomora. If you like, follow the link to youtube and check out the rest of the videos from user "Faggotron" (yes, really.)

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Chat with an Afghan

Back from a week at the beach. Good stuff, very relaxing. Woot woot. Now I'm ready to confront the school year. Sure.

Anyways, you may remember a former post about a service called Omegle. Well, browsing upon that site, I met a very interesting man... who claimed to be Afghani. Now, I can't confirm his claims. But what he said, to me, was really, really cool. There's just something... weirdly interesting about talking about the daily life of someone who's customs and life is so radically different from yours.

The transcript of the conversation can be found here. Check it out.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

High Fives are Pretty Great

Done with my summer internship. No more commuting, yay! Still, I really will miss the people in the office. Nice, good people can be hard to find, and man, did I run into a lot of them.

In other news, high fives are pretty great. Epic street sign from New Haven, CT.

Also, Barney Frank is pretty badass. Well, not really - he kind of sounds like Droopy Dog from Looney Toons, really. Still, at a town hall meeting in Dartmouth, he told it like it was. When confronted with a woman holding a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache and comparing universal healthcare to a Nazi policy, Frank lashed out with an apt, "on what planet do you spend most of your time?", arguing that talking to her further would be "like trying to argue with a dining room table." Well done, Barney.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A Mathematical Guide for When Zombies Attack

How this actually got funding (yes, really) is beyond me. It's a mathematical model of what would happen in a theoretical mass zombie outbreak. The recommendation: "We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all."

Sunday, August 16, 2009

R.I.P. Benson (1984{ish}-2009)

On July 29th, Benson, the supposedly most beloved fish in England swam up to his watery maker. He was 25, ish, although I haven't the slightest idea how you measure a fish's age. Normally, this sort of heartbreaking story wouldn't really catch my eye and I'd be completely ignorant and oblivious to it. But this obituary is nothing short of bizarre, if not remarkable. This is a full one-page obituary in this week's The Economist, dedicated to a fish. Written in poetic style.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Hotel Survival with George Egg

It is impossible to eat in a hotel without being charged $600 bazillion. This is a fact. I mean, I read out the prices next to room service items for fun. Just to demonstrate the absurdity.

The video you are about to see is how to avoid the crazy charges on the road and still eat well, compliments of British comedian George Egg. It is funny in that it is completey absurd, but it actually seems like it could work. Keep this in the back of your mind the next time you visit the Holiday Inn.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Alive in Joburg

Today marks the opening of District 9 in box offices across America, and from what I've heard, it's getting rave reviews. We may even have a sci-fi classic on our hands. I really want to see it - it looks fantastic.

A little known fact about District 9 is that it all started out as a short film by director Neil Blomkamp in 2005 known as Alive in Joburg (or Johannesburg, whichever it was supposed to be.) It's a six-minute short about a peaceful group of aliens who land in South Africa around 1990, only to be met by xenophobia and intolerance (insert not-so-subtle apartheid reference here.) But this was the project from which the supposed gem that is District 9 stemmed. For all I know, it might even be sort of an extended trailer, four years in advance. Either way, it's a fun, interesting little short.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Google Maps Car = Badass

The Google Maps van is well known for driving around, well, every street in the United States (and elsewhere) with a giant pole protruding out of its roof with nine cameras simultaneously snapping shots of every road, everywhere. Still, I somewhat underestimated what kinds of roads Google considers to be snappable.

Enter Laguna Seca... a racetrack. Yes, those are Formula One racers. Behind which is the Google Maps van gunning it at some ungodly awesome speed. What an epic ride that must've been.

Monday, August 10, 2009

It's Gone Mainstream Legit. Run.

Well, it turns out the mainstream media has finally caught on to the ever-growing meme of FAIL. Even after keyboard cat's famous pwning of Stephen Colbert, a real analysis of the phenomenon that has been sweeping America's teens and internet-savvies has never really been published. Until... now.


I'll be quivering under my desk while mourning the death of my teenage years. Or at least the originality that came with them.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Halloa

Halloa, all. If you haven't heard, I've had to scour my blog to delete quite a few innappropriate and outright vulgar comments that my blog has been spammed with for the last couple of days. Not exactly sure who's behind it, but, oh well, no harm done. Either way, comments are now moderated; I need to approve them before they get through. Have no fear of Orwellian censorship; I'm just looking for obvious abuse. Pretty much all comments will be approved within a day of posting, barring unforseen circumstances.

Also, as I recently discovered on the train to and from NYC earlier today, there are like 60x more Spanish speakers traveling to NYC than away from it, or in anywhere else. Fun fact.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

This is the Last Birthday Present You'll Ever Need to Get Me


For your mind's enlightenment and your stomach's greatest yearning, I present...
The ChefStack Automatic Pancake Machine. Yes, you heard me correctly. This bad boy churns out delicious, 97% fat-free, all-natural, 4-inch diameter pancakes (only 82.5 calories per) at a rate of 200 flapjacks per hour. In the company's own words, "[It] is a revolution in the making." I couldn't agree more.

No, this is not cold fusion, nor is it the hovercar you've always wanted. But it's pretty damn close. Sure, you might have to pony up $3,500 for this commercial godsend, but... Pancakes! Automatic! Fast! Tasty!

I don't care what anyone says. This is, quite possibly, the greatest invention of the modern era. Or ever. Finally, my noms will be cured.

Monday, August 3, 2009

RNA-Break

Currently isolating RNA from seven samples of cells that were previously sploded to let their juices flow forth. Tasty stuff. But right now they need to incubate for 15 minutes, leaving me with ample time to do something productive (or unproductive, depending on how cool this blog is.)

So, I'm back from Boston. Tufts, Brandeis, and Harvard all looked really nice; Harvard is just kind of... Harvard, and Tufts had a really beautiful campus and great... well, everything. Brandeis was really nice too; a bit small, and their campus seemed a bit unkempt, but I still feel like I could fit in just fine. On a more realistic view, Brandeis is the only school that might offer me a scholarship. Food for thought, I suppose.

On a separate note; if any of you out there remember, I did a feature post on a site called Omegle a few weeks (months?) back. Random note: It seems to have been flooded with a lot of people looking for something other than innocent conversation. Innocent as their motives might be, the intended topics are not. So just keep in mind - if you plan to look around for the random conversations, you might need to pop into a few chats before you find a keeper. That, and the random Korean and Chinese people who can't speak English. Oh well!

Another random note, and a useful one: If you want to skip the ubiquitously annoying "To leave a voice message... blah blah blah" voicemail intro that takes up much of your valuable time, just press 1-*-# (one-star-pound). Different carriers have different keys to skip the message (little did we all know), and these three cover all major networks (Verizon, AT&T, T-mobile, Sprint). Who knows, you might save a few minutes over time.

Link of the day: First ever PhD in texting. Who knew?