UtterlyBoring.com - Page 6 - Surfing The Web So You Don’t Have To

Reading Material

Still looking for prize donations for the pick ’em.
Colin Mochrie does a hilarious AMA.
The optical illusions on this site are amazing.
Dear Boss: For a programmer, 10 minutes = 3 hours.
Tens of thousands of websites’ SSL offers effectively no security.
I really need to do this: Lifehacker’s Start-to-finish guide to whip your music’s metadata into shape.
Download/Convert YouTube videos in one step with Downverter.
Why does that QR Code go to justinsomnia.org?
TIL: In 1995, New Mexico voted on a bill requiring psychologists to dress as wizards.
Roger Boisjoly dies at 73; he was one of the engineers that tried to halt Challenger launch.
This came in handy today, as our copier couldn’t use SSL for SMTP e-mail through our Gmail (for domains) account. But Gmail does have a non-SSL SMTP implementation as well which works great for those types of devices.
How to create a bootable Windows 7 USB Flash Drive.
Because breast cancer is not a pink ribbon (NSFW gallery).
Averia, the average font.
Speaking of fonts, Exo is a great geometric sans serif font, free to use, created from a kickstarter project.
Jeff Atwood says goodbye to Stack Exchange.
Pimp your Facebook timeline with a cool timeline banner.
If they’re going to force SOPA on us, let’s force folks in Hollywood to use Hollywood Editions of our products.
So how well has the OLPC project done?
How to promote yourself without being sleazy.
The designer’ list: Great resources and websites for designers.
Didn’t know this existed: Cloudshark plugin for Wireshark.
Use Firefox’s About:Config settings to speed up web browsing.
Firefox to receive an enterprise-friendly version that won’t have the rapid updates.
iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they’re getting it

Update: Fixed missing “h” in “http:” on the SOPA link. Thanks Josh for letting me know.

February 15, 2012

Time Killers For The Day

All That Matters is a great little puzzle-platform game where you control different family members, each with their own abilities, to solve problems.
Are you a color wizard? Try your hand at Color where you need to quickly find certain types of colors that match certain attributes. I managed to play through the whole thing getting “Very Good” or “Perfect” on the entire thing.

February 12, 2012

It’s All About The Facial Hair

The guy apparently shaved his beard for the first time in several years and decided to make this:

This beats the original video by a country mile.

February 9, 2012

Looking for Prize Donations for the 2012 UtterlyBoring.com NCAA Pick ’em

It’s almost that time again for our annual March Madness NCAA Tournament Pick ’em. I’m trying to get things organized a bit for this year’s annual (our seventh year doing this — see some past events here, here, here, here, and here) and am working on collecting prizes for the winners. Does anybody have anything would like to contribute or know anybody (or a business) who would like to donate a prize?

As usual, all prize submitters will get text link on the tourny page (which will be available at utterlyboring.com/pickem). I’ll also be rotating 125×125 pixel ad banners for your company or blog or whatever during the duration of the tournament on utterlyboring,com, bendblogs.com, and hopefully on hackbend.com as well (we did last year, but still need to confirm with Jon), giving your business or site a good chunk of online exposure.

Anything can be submitted for a prize, as I’m pretty casual, as are the folks who participate in the tournament. If you have anything fun, weird, stupid, interesting, cool, whatever you want to throw into the prize pot, by all means let me know (comment here with your email address so I can contact you or e-mail me at utterlyboring {at} gmail {dot} com).

February 8, 2012

The Doritos Commercial You Didn’t See

It’s too bad, as it’s pretty good:

The guys created several of them for the Crash The Super Bowl contest, and they’re all pretty good.

February 6, 2012

Time Killer For The Evening

You’ll need to clean your screen for this one: Where’s the pixel?

February 5, 2012

Reading Material

Ladies: Having a hard time figuring out your clothing size? This little web app will help.
Fun with math: Dividing one by 998001 yields surprising result.
Fun Android toy: Wreak havoc on (and RickRoll) unsuspecting Wi-Fi users with the click of a button using Network Spoofer. Might as well just install Linux on your phone while you’re at it.
Redbox puts the kibosh on WB’s 56-day waiting period.
Monty Python troupe to reunite for film Absolutely Anything.
Tom Green (not that one) vs Tom Green (that one) and who has the rights to @tomgreen (Tom Green the comedian and his fans are idiots, basically).
How can a free conference call be free? Here’s how.
Using Wireshark to capture, filter, and inspect packets.
In 24-hours, Reddit saves an orphanage (read more).
SOPA Protest Day: the largest digital protest ever. Now we just need to get rid of ACTA.
HTML5: Use the new and shiny responsibly. Look up HTML5, CSS3, etc features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them.
Looking for a car on craigslist? Carsabi will make that process a lot easier.
Ever wanted to grab the dominant color or palette from an image? This tool will help (get the code from github).
You knew the day had to come: A Fleshlight-holding iPad case (link safe for work, can’t guarantee that anything past that is).
One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second — and YouTube is helping you visualize that.
45 Incredibly useful web design checklists and questionnaires.
Getting e-mail notification overload from all the social networks you’re a part of? Use this site to tame things.
Bellbot is a simple little bit of code you can put on your site that will play a noise (bell, applause, etc…) whenever somebody buys something or does something on your site that triggers the code.
ThemeSquirrel is a great collection of WordPress themes.
Google Public Alerts is Google’s new platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and everyday alerts such as storm warnings.

February 1, 2012

I Need To Go To Germany

For two reasons: One, so I can see my wife’s birthplace, and two, so I can see this amazing model railway:

Model railroads have always fascinated me, especially well-done ones. The East Cascades Railroad HO-Scale is impressive and is the largest and most detailed that I’ve seen in person (that I can remember), but they have nothing on this thing.

January 31, 2012

Most Commented Entries

It’s been years since I’ve done this, but it’s time to check on the most-commented-on entries for this site over the years. Most of these were from way back in the day but are still indexed well in Google. The top two still get comments nearly every day for silly, totally un-related stuff. It’s an always-entertaining trip down memory lane, back to the glory days of this site — back when far fewer people had blogs and far more people commented on the blog itself instead of via Facebook or the like. I also had more time to dedicate to the site, which I don’t have nearly as much now. This blog had some serious Google Juice back in the day, hence the high number of comments on some of these.

Because some of these really dated entries are listed so well on Google, I was able to get a few sponsored text links on the pages, which is always a bonus.

So without further ado, the 30 most commented-on entries on this site:

2255 comments: We All Hate Work (04/22/04)

1266 comments: Have a small penis? (09/30/03)

540 comments: Do Not Call List — Red Hot, Big Loopholes (07/06/03)

403 comments: Another Great Gmail Hack (09/06/04)

402 comments: Panties Just For Men (01/13/05)

398 comments: Extreme Dodgeball (04/18/04)

390 comments: Do You Have Bright Green Poop? (11/24/03)

317 comments: Yet another reason to hate PETA (12/29/03)

302 comments: Only a band geek will appreciate this (03/13/03)

281 comments: Help pay for a girl’s boob job (01/09/03)

258 comments: How to cancel an AOL account in 3 minutes (06/13/03)