Month: August 2010

Updating The Archives

You may or may not know, but when I first started blogging, I blogged on the jake.orty.com domain. I started this blog back in ’02 during a brief time of unemployment. Once I found work, I neglected the blog for several months, until I finally got around to posting again (was still at jake.orty.com back then — hadn’t moved to utterlyboring.com yet). When I got back to posting again, I had bulldozed the previous archives from the brief blip in May that I was posting here.

I finally got around to getting on the Web archive and getting my old archives, and now have May 2002 back in my archives. Most of the links in those old entries are long dead, but at least they’re back in the database.

Now I just need to get my dozens of old dailyemerald.com columns into this database, since they’re not accessible on the Web anywhere. I was an online columnist back before “blogging” was all the rage. I’ve been writing online since the 90s, you young whipper-snappers (get off my lawn) and it’d be nice to have that all in one place. But I figured I should probably ask the Emerald’s permission first. so that’s coming next.

August 18, 2010

Time Killer For The Day

It took me 22 throws (and a good majority of my lunch break) to save the peasants by catapulting one of them 50,000 feet. How long did it take you in Catapult Madness?

Update: So I played it again today on endless mode, and got up to 86465 feet. Somehow. No idea how, the fat king just kept bouncing.

August 18, 2010

A Proper Car Review

I love Top Gear. Offended by a fan having written in to complain that Top Gear doesn’t do proper car reviews anymore, Jeremy Clarkson takes the new Ford Fiesta on a ‘serious’ road test.

August 18, 2010

Reading Material

Is Wikileaks protected by shield laws?
The secret histories of those oddball computer symbols.
Yet another reason to ignore everything Rush Limbaugh says.
Infuriating wheelchair ramps (I don’t know how any both in a wheelchair could navigate these).
35 essential social media resources you may have missed.
Claws Mail is another simple e-mail client out there that looks pretty dang cool (as are some of its plugins).
Ned to convert a video, audio, image, ebook, or other document to another format? This might help.
What happened to Yahoo?
A man who only tweets when he poops (probably inspired by this comic that I linked to a while back).
If you’re buying a phone of eBay for Sprint, Boost, or Virgin Mobile, you might want to check the ESN/MEI to make sure it’s clean, otherwise it won’t activate.
God’s number (in relation to the Rubik’s Cube) has been proven to be 20.
Great list of free online apps and services.
Unicorns are such jerks.
Gorilla plays the Game Boy (full story).
For my reference, a few programs to get thumbnails for your movies on your WDTV box: WDTV Image Grabber, MetaX (edit: Fixed Link), and Thumbgen.
ITA is yet another flight search engine to try to find the best deals.
Turning terrible business jargon (like “bucketize”) into unsucky words (like “categorize”).
Be sure to print up these Journalism warning labels and stick them on your local newspapers.
Netflix is getting a bunch more movies on its streaming service (which is why I love my WDTV Live Plus and its Netflix support — if the thing had Hulu, I’d probably cancel my cable).
Five freeware apps for extreme file management. There are some good ones there for some handy (but usually very specific) purposes.
If you have guests staying at your house frequently, this guest information packet might be very handy (I could see this being re-worked for a vacation rental homeowner very easily).

Update: One More…

The Web Is Dead. Or not.

August 17, 2010

Time Killer For The Day

It’s a quick little game, and really simple controls, but Flabby Physics is quite fun. Play it after the jump, if you’d like.

(more…)

August 17, 2010

4Chan Founder Gives Palin Courtroom Lesson In Internet Slang

You have to love the lack of tech and Web knowledge shown in the modern day judicial system (I honestly don’t have a clue as to why some of these questions needed to be asked).

Q: And the term “rickroll” you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going to be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: He was some kind of singer?
A: Yes.
Q: It’s a joke?
A: Yes.

Full court document over at Smoking Gun.

August 16, 2010

Why The Subtitles?

Because the guy can’t speak English…

This was apparently from an Aussie sketch show called Comedy Inc..

August 15, 2010

Making Of Music With Cars

You may or may not have seen this fairly impressive video:

But what’s far more interesting is how they did it.

August 12, 2010

Congrats To Central Oregon’s Best Blogs

The Source’s “Best Of Central Oregon” is out, and congratulations go out to Jon at Hack Bend for winning (again) and my ol’ buddy Josh at Central Oregon Athlete for taking the honorable mention prize.

Congrats to both of you, and as soon as I can find the mention online, I’ll link to it (I just checked this in this morning’s print edition). Their “Best Of” URL still goes to the 2009 edition.

Update: Looking through the “Best Of”, there was mention of the “Best Bend Stereotyping” and I honestly had not seen this:

(more…)

August 12, 2010

The Building Is Possessed!

Can you imagine walking down the street and seeing something like this?

More over at wimp.

August 11, 2010

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