halloween for the young at heart

so you know you're too old to engage in all the halloween activities you engaged in when you were a kid but that doesn't mean there's no fun to be had... now, for your guilty pleasure carve your own pumpkin...

a not-so-unfair advantage

ever play chess against a computer?

ever win?

maybe it would be easier if you could get a glimpse into what the computer was thinking while you play...

Thinking Machine 4

cat's and zero gravity do not mix

'nuff said

i like lego

i've linked to a few lego creations here before so i guess it's not really a surprise that i am an 'adult fan of lego' (as this page puts it)...

i also happen to be a fan of puzzles, especially rubik's cube and similar puzzles... well, seems a guy named maarten has gone and put the two together...

shocking sex photos

Gizmodo : Circuits Discover... Each Other

there's an electrical engineer out there somewhere with too much free time (among other things, i'm sure) on his hands...

rise of the machines

imagine an attack helicopter that needs no pilot, can supposedly tell between friend and foe, combatant and non-combatant, and make it's own decisions... does it sound familiar to you? it certainly sounds like something out of a particular movie to me... i wonder what movie that could be... i wonder what the outcome was....
Telegraph | Connected | Mission possible day or night for the pilotless attack helicopter

i was once asked if i thought that the future portrayed in the terminator movie was a plausible outcome of AI development (with an eye on military applications, since they have the biggest budgets) - my answer was to the effect of 'how many advancements have come without unintended/undesirable consequences?'...

the sims: live

just how far can we take the reality tv concept? well in germany they're hoping to take it pretty far...

take one big brother production company, build a small town in which contestants are to live and be watched (truman-style), and hope that they'll fall in love, go to school, get married, etc. for years to come (or at least as long as they have an audience)...

watching all that sort of sounds like watching the sims, to me... only these folks are real live people instead of simulations on a computer screen... expect the cuteness factor of the sims to die horribly real soon now as a result of this...
we make money not art: Big Brother TV village

sim president

you get to decide what your president should look like with Build a better Bush

help us, obe wan kenobi, you're our only hope

and technology marches ever forward... some guy has finally made a projection system that can project an image or video into thin air - R2D2-style...

[object HTMLImageElement]

now i've heard of everything...

frankly, this doesn't even sound plausible as science fiction but there are actually people working on a way to make Spray-on spacesuits... i wonder where you're expected to put your tools and instruments...

i think i'll wait for them to come out with the deoderant stick version, roll-on space suits...

great game

Flash Game: Alien Hominid

it's violent, it's fast paced, it pits an alien reminicent of stitch (from lilo and stitch) against fbi agents and robots and things... if you can't get in touch with me for the next little while, this is probably the reason...

it's a bird! it's a plane!

it's something completely different... it's weird and wonderful and basically defies description... just follow the little red ball...

TREASURE BOX

the land of the free is no more

long story short - 3 teachers (who are pro-bush) get ejected from a bush rally and threatened with arrest for wearing t-shirts that read "protect our civil liberties"...

yes, that's right, bush apparently decided your civil liberties and various other things guaranteed by the US constitution were in opposition to his campaign's best interests and didn't inform you of that...

Bend.com - Press Release "Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster": News and information from Bend, Oregon

how on earth can there be any question that this man is bad for the US (and the global community)? inch by inch, the most powerful nation in the world is turning into a totalitarian regime with only the meager illusion of freedom and democracy, and if the bush administration decides they need to suspend the election (as they've been looking into) what do you suppose will be the party line on that? "september 11, 2001", "the terrorists are coming! the terrorists are coming!"...

it's been said that the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance - apparently that cost is too high, as americans are being called on to redeem their freedoms for (a false sense of) *so-called* homeland(TM) 'security'...

"Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security."

—Benjamin Franklin

USB the way it was meant to be - absurd

what, who, me? oh, i'm just sticking raw fish in the back of my computer... i guess it won't be raw for long, and with the fan going i'm sure we'll all smell it...

Gizmodo : Sushi USB Flash Drives

money grubbing weasels

i think i've mentioned before how amazing it is how far some people will go to make a buck... well, prepared to be amazed all over again... a company has done the unthinkable and registered "happy birthday" as a trademark... looks like bakeries everywhere will have to find some other birthday greeting to put on their cakes...

:: Xinhuanet - English ::

why haven't we ever heard of one of these before...

take the front wheel off a bicycle and attach one of those old-school manual lawn mowers in it's place and you get this..

Gizmodo : Homebrew Riding Mower

low tech innovation rides again... giddyup!

Bender, Bender, where for art thou Bender?

we make money not art: A robot predisposed to alcohol

i don't know about you, but the first thing to come to mind when i read about a robot that drinks beer was the animated character Bender from the show Futurama... only this robot begs for money to buy beer, whereas Bender would just as likely rob you for beer money... i'm sure once this self-interest-motivated robot gets a few upgrades it'll be rolling bums for booze or change too...

now if you don't mind, i have a spacious closet to furnish...

bad vibes

i knew there were places in the states that had rather puritanical views but this is just silly... in tennessee, a child's bath toy has been deemed an illegal sex toy simply because it vibrates...

Yahoo! News - Sponge Duck Toy Creates Buzz in Tennessee

logically the next on their chopping block should be electric toothbrushes and practically all modern cell phones... then they can move on to those vile automotive 'vibrators' that happen to also move people from point A to point B...

we won't mention to them what the molecules of any substance do when the substance's temperature is above absolute zero... it wouldn't do well to outlaw all matter...

blurring the lines of decency

i was never expecting to run across something that is either safe for boxes of children's cereal or isn't safe for work - but as is often the case the unexpected is what turns out to catch my interest...

so apparently kelloggs have started giving away electric toothbrushes in their cereal, the snap/crackle/pop totem pole version of which happens to look somewhat phallic in profile when you remove the bristles...

aidey_love: vibrator-fun for the whole family!

i expect there to be a greater than average number of adults eating cereal in the near future (because adults, unlike kids, can't bear to get a box of cereal exclusively for the prize inside)...

now there's something you don't see every day...

does this look familiar to you?
Infrared Zoo Gallery - Scorpion

sure it does... it looks like something out of the first predator movie... but wait, there's more... a lot more... lots and lots of animals as viewed in infrared... like this puppy or these elephants...

shock and awe

the phenomenon known as reality tv (you know, those totally artificial scenarios that studio exec's put complete nobody's in in order to cheap entertainment and kill off scripted drama) now has a body count...

a reality tv contestant has died, and what did the show do? put his corpse on display so that now he's more popular than any of the living contestants, and viewership of the show has doubled...

i always knew reality tv was low class, but this is a low i was not anticipating...

CNNNN: Reality show contestant more popular than ever after death

file this under 'envy'

Albino Blacksheep / Flash / Extreme Walking

envy? envy?!?!!? is there something wrong with me?

well, i guess there must be, 'cause that flash movie depicts all kinds of things i wish i'd done but haven't... was it a lack of opportunity? perhaps a big wide yellow stripe running down my back (or alternatively, one too many brain cells)?

or perhaps it was the realization, after being experimented on (unsuccessfully) for the purposes of behaviour modification, that the ideal of being oneself is a luxury not everyone can afford... at least, not in public...

thinking back to those carefree days of running and jumping and scaling the outside of buildings - good times...

what's a zoom quilt, you say?

i really have no idea where the term came from... nor can i, after seeing this example, say that i know what exactly it is... but it's neat, whatever it is... quite artfully rendered, too...

zoom quilt

wait, wait, wait... all we ever seem to do is wait...

don't you just hate grocery shopping? people are so slow!

i wonder if maybe i could get me one of these and speed things up a bit...

rocket powered shopping cart

ummm... what?

what have they done to spiderman?

spider ganesh

it's bad enough spiderman is part man, part spider, but apparently someone decided to throw in some elephant for good (religious) measure... elephants, as you well know, are notorious for climbing walls and dangling from . . . their trunks... i'm sure this can only improve on stan lee's creation...

i wonder what superman would look like with a trunk... maybe we should give wonder woman extra arms while we're at it...

google google google google google

are you like me, folks? do you like google? i mean really like google... do you have a nearly unhealthy (i'm on the edge man!) obsession with it such that you have to check out everything that they do and wish that one day you too could work for such a cool company?

if only you could prove yourself worthy... well, guess what... you can!

Google Blog

i snooze, i lose...

damn... someone beat me to the punch on another one of the ideas i had... it's a good thing i've got a deep well of ideas otherwise this sort of thing would really piss me off...

also, this one was sort of obvious so i'm really more pleased that such a product is finally available than i am upset about not being the one raking in the money...

Matias Wearable Half Keyboard