Category: Cool

Weird Al Is Awesome

I’ve always thought Weird Al’s songs were hilarious, and that he was quite the talent, but seeing him perform live at the Deschutes County Fair tonight just made me appreciate him that much more. I had a smile on my face the entire time, and haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time. Thanks for coming to Central Oregon again, Mr. Yankovic.

Anybody else make the show?

July 31, 2010

Time Killer For The Weekend

This game will drive you nuts in its chaos. It’s a pixel-level breakout game, but the pixels you hit become other “balls” you can bounce. It gets nutty really fast. Quoting this guy: “It’s like playing Missile Command against the Aurora Borealis.” See if you can get rid of all the pixels.

July 23, 2010

Post Vacation Reading Material

Since getting back, I’ve been trying to catch up on all the email and news that has been sent my way (you’re always welcome to send more using the contact form on this site or e-mail utterlyboring at gmail dot com). Here are some of the headlines I found waiting for me when I got back (some newer, some older):

An interesting look into how Xbox’s achievement system was designed and why it was done that way.
Despite Apple’s antenna research, they’ve admitted they have a problem and are giving free cases to every iPhone4 user. Steve Jobs pointed out that other companies have similar issues with their phones to which RIM, Nokia, and HTC didn’t take to kindly to. If you’d rather jump from the iPhone to an Android device, this will help.
Online retailer PlayOutdoors opened their first brick-and-morter store here in Bend.
Those hilarious Old Spice commercials that are taking the web by storm have a great back story and many good parodies.
Poor BP: They were deeply affected by the coffee spill parody.
Common products from 2010 if they were designed in 1977.
One mapping feature Bing maps that Google maps doesn’t: Napkin-sketch view.
Several different ways to give your photos a vintage look.
Science finally solves the greatest mystery mankind has ever faced: The chicken came first.
Need to learn how to train yourself reverse code engineering, buffer overflows, shellcode development, web exploitation, and SQL injection so you can fix them in your code? Damn Vulnerable Linux makes it easy.
If you’re an Apple product user, and need some friends to talk Mac with, Apple has created a Friend Bar.
Because you never know when this will come in handy: Make a paper clone of yourself.
Amazing photography of trees shot in infrared.
Common optical illusions illusions.
For future reference: Don’t argue with an ibex.
Reddit illistrates why you should never trust “experts” when it comes to traffic estimates.
The most objective and unbiased video game review I’ve ever read.
I knew I was on to something: Not making your bed may keep you healthy.
HideMyAss has a great list of free proxy servers.
Great list of free security tools for your PC which hopefully won’t bug you like this.
Top Secret America is a great Washington Post investigation that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
If you’re like me and enjoy Top Gear, this fan site is a good place to get your fix.
I think I’ve seen these before, but what if Steve Jobs was part of the Calvin and Hobbes strip?
100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time (naughty language warning).
Because some people have too much time on their hands: Mr. Steam Potato Punk Head and a ton of My Little Pony modifications.

July 19, 2010

Woot To Be Bought By Amazon

My favorite deal-of-the-day site Woot is getting bought up by Amazon, but will remain an independent subsidiary, like Zappos and Audible. Hilarious words from the CEO are here, and they produced a video for the occassion (that you need to be a Woot fan to really appreciate):

June 30, 2010

Reading Material

Retro and new on one package: One side is vinyl, one side is a CD.
How to cheat on video encoder comparisons.
Fabrice Bellard is one smart dude.
Worst Chart I’ve Seen All Day (or: Why you should never trust scary charts you see on Fox News, or any other cable news show for that matter).
Even if you change the file’s extension, it doesn’t change the contents.
Credit Card Number Generator for if you need to test submission forms on your site with credit card numbers that are in valid format.
Like s**tmydadsays, s**t my girlfriend says (inspired by this Reddit thread).
Building a distance finder with the Google Maps API.
Why are tabs on the top in Firefox 4? Because it makes sense (but I’m sure there will an extension written to make it go back the other way).
How to use photos to sell more online.
50 Time-Savers for Web Geeks (primarily geared towards developers, but there is some useful stuff here for everybody).
One site from the above I’ve already found handy: Placehold.it is great when you just need a dummy image placeholder.
Cheezburger Network is going after the Whitman campaign.
The Patriot Act is a moronic law, and I’m glad this librarian fought it.
A blog that has sucked up too much of my time today: A “Best Of” collection from the Young Me/Now Me site.
iPhone vs. HTC Evo and HTV Evo vs iPhone (NSFW Language).
Hulu is launching Hulu Plus. If they could just get it to work with my WDTV Live Plus HD box without using an external PlayOn server (though there’s a deal for WDTV users), I’d probably cut my cable (as Netflix works a helluva lot better on it than on my stand-alone media center).
London’s twitter traffic mapped as a countoured landscape.
Any geek should appreciate this .Net vs. Java movie trailer for Java4Ever.
Something you don’t see everyday (for good reason): a public service announcement featuring a nearly-naked dancing man wearing a horse mask cooking wild mushrooms.

June 29, 2010

Reading Material

IBM’s Watson could kick your butt at Jeopardy!.
This is just mesmorizing to watch: Live train map for London Underground.
What it’s like to own an Apple product.
Amazing invention: insulin that doesn’t need a fridge or a needle.
10 Facts You Didn’t Know About Google.
Speaking of Google, they have a command line interface that does some pretty cool stuff.
Want a high-definition Google streetview photo? Here’s a way to get it.
How Xerox Helped Win The Cold War: Interesting story about sneaking cameras into copy machines.
Soluto is Anti-Frustration Software for your PC.
NYC (and the east coast in general) is full of all sorts of cool historical buildings and tidbits. Like this collection.
Thinkgeek gets a cease-and-desist letter for Unicorn meat, which is obviously a fake product.
If you’re a LOST guy (I’m not, but I’m looking at you, Jon), you might appreciate this island map.
Six organizations that you didn’t know were secretely badass.
Exploring the software behind Facebook.
Better security whenever possible: HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extensions forces HTTPS requests on some major sites.
Sexy tooltips with CSS.
Create PDF files with JavaScript.
A bunch of really good HTML5 and CSS3 frameworks.
Related: CSS3 techniques you can start using today.

June 21, 2010

I’ve Had Dreams Like This

I was about eight years old, but I’ve had video game dreams before. But they were nothing like this one.

June 18, 2010

Time Killer For The Day

Put in a couple twitter usernames, and have your avatars battle it out. Wasn’t even remotely what I expected and different skills are given depending on the colors of your avatar. The twitter avator for this blog’s feed does pretty well at random encounters, but I’d bet that not too many folks are going to be able to beat HackBend’s avatar as it creamed me and most of what I threw at it. The BendBlogs avatar just kind of sat there and did nothing, but held on pretty well in a defensive role.

June 16, 2010

Reading Material

While I’m still probably going to get an Android phone when my contract is up, Windows Mobile still can be hacked to bits quite easily thanks to XDA_UC, which you can dump your settings and custom files and such that will install automagically after the ROM flash. the ROM I enjoy supports it quite easily and in a user-friendly way. Now that Task29 is supported on my phone, I’m less likely to have flashing trouble (though I rarely did — as I always just did the Flash Dance, just in case).
Five Ridiculous Gun Myths Everybody Believes, Thanks To Hollywood.
How can I get into this line of work? Chinese companies are looking to rent white guys as fake businessmen.
Speaking of white things, one designer’s problem with white space.
Here’s an interesting commentary about the outsourcing low-cost lie.
How much surface area would it take to power the world with solar power? Not much, though it doesn’t obviously take into account the transport of said electricity, which doesn’t work well over the stupidly long distances they’re talking about.
Want to permanently delete your account on popular websites? Some make it easier than others (and it’s just impossible on a few).
Want to write a citizen’s traffic ticket? It’s legal in many states. Here’s a step-by-step (with pretty pictures) on how to do it in Oregon.
Great little basic programming lessons that cam from a great SubReddit.
A 14-year-old tries to help a three-year-old find her mom, and now faces felony abduction charges.
You know your hex color codes? Do you?
Need to bulk download Flickr photos? Here ya go: Use Bulkr.
Hassle-free guide to ripping your Blu-Ray collection.
Oldie, and I may have linked to it before, but here are some great free typographic XHMTL/CSS layouts.
Huge list of jQuery calandar plugins (mostly booking marking that for my reference).
Comic Sans, the font that everybody loves to hates, is the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes f—–g Gutenberg.

June 15, 2010

I don’t mean a thing…

…if it ain’t got that swing.

The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half.

Listening to Metallica and Guns and Roses tunes with a swing feel is frickin’ awesome.

June 10, 2010

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