Category: Cool

It took him a while (just about a year), but he did it — he traded a single paper clip through a series of trades for a house.

Despite all the hype about RFID, it hasn’t really caught on in anything other than specialized uses — like this one, for example:

On a busy Saturday night, a good bartender makes a lot of money for the bar’s owner, but an overly generous bartender—or one fond of pouring free drinks for friends—can cost the owner even more.

A Miami-based 7-year-old beverage-monitoring software company is drinking from the keg of RFID and is selling a tilt switch that attaches to bottles and updates an Internet database every time the bottle is poured. Hilton, Hyatt, Outback Steakhouse, TGI Fridays and others are reportedly testing the system.

It’s not merely recording how many times the bottle is poured, but it factors in the tilt of the bottle, the duration of the pour and the bartender’s pouring style to calculate how much liquid is leaving the bottle.

Thanks Barn for the link.

Creative Bits has some screen shots of the original Photoshop version 1.0.7, running on a Mac. For those of us who do a lot of work in Photoshop’s modern incarnations, it’s great to look back to see how far we’ve come. I think I remember using this version on an old Mac when I was in high school. It was a Mac in the chemistry lab that was mostly used for some chem calculations, but it actually did have Photoshop installed on it, if I remember correctly.

If you ever plan on uploading a video of you and your homies lip-syncing to some Top 40 hit to one of those video sharing sites, this cheat sheet will come in very handy.

Apparently this is old news, but I just heard about it recently.

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and yes, see Han Solo shoot first.

I’m just happy to see it with the Ewok celebration theme (which is far superior to the final theme of Return of the Jedi) as well as that obnoxious animated character singing in Jabba The Huts lair. Otherwise, I don’t mind anything else they added/changed/edited, but am annoyed by that stuff.

I am a bit miffed, however, that they aren’t selling it separately, as I already own the re-released trilogy on DVD — I don’t want to have to buy it again to get the classic theatrical version.

Thanks Greg for the link.

Don’t start playing Zwok at work, otherwise you won’t stop. Don’t ask why I know this. Thanks Susan for the link.

Update: This game is a bit of a system hog, and runs pretty slow on some systems. I’d recommend turning off the music and sound effects (clicking on the little icons in the upper left) and/or using this bookmarklet (drag it to your browser toolbar and click on it while the game is running) to set the flash quality to “Low Quality”. It runs much faster that way (hat tip to Jesse for that tip).