Amusing animation about your desktop after hours. I loved the ending.
Monthly Archives: April 2007
Weng Weng: Kung Fu, Rocketpacks, & Mini Motorcycles
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eqh5O9LbjhY
A Crackteam agent sent me this link from YouTube and I HAD to share it for a good laugh.
It’s a rap video montage of clips from the movies of Weng Weng [from IMDb], and music stylings from The Chuds [from MySpace]. The collaboration was edited and produced by John R. of the R Room. It’s taken a couple views to really appreciate it since my attention during the first round went to the visuals and camera tricks. But the lyrics to the soundtrack song, “Weng Weng Overture,” are equally entertaining. They can be read at The Chuds MySpace page.
I’m a little late to the phenomenon of Weng Weng [from WikiPedia], but of all the Kung Fu and spy spoofs I’ve seen his look to be the most entertaining. Films credits include “For Y’ur Height Only” and “The Impossible Kid”, which received 8/10 stars on IMDb from 50 dedicated voters. There’s even a drink named after him, called the Weng Weng. Well, that may be a false claim but it should be true.
Mmmm… PI
I’ve recently been building a new computer system and one of the things I have been trying to work out is the overclocking of the system.� In my search for benchmarks and stress tests I came across a popular benchmark in the overclocking community that I thought was pretty neat.� Ever wonder what the 21,865,285th digit of PI was?
Super PI is a program that will calculate PI to various numbers of digits (up to 32M).� The standard benchmark is to run it for 1M digits and compare your time to other computers.� My current CPU (Intel E6600�@ ~2.9GHz) did it in a little over 17 seconds, and my 64-bit workstation at work (Intel Xeon 5150 @ 2.66GHz)�does it in 19.781 seconds.� I’ll add a comment to this once with my final�1M time once I finish overclocking my system and�verify its stability.
There is also a wikipedia entry on the program here.
Track All Your Wasted Time
For a while now, I’ve wanted a super-simple time tracking facility to track the various ways I throw my life away. Something where I can just add tasks, then hit a button to start and stop a timer, adding a comment when finished. A very short search unearthed Time Tracker, which provides exactly that. It’s also great if you’re doing consulting, working on different projects for different clients. And you can export your work log in XML or Excel (CSV). I hoping it will really motivate me, seeing just how little time I spend on the important things, like disco dancing, archery, and rape.
Be interesting or be quiet.
If you are in your 40s, male, wear a fanny pack, and have a corded earpiece for your cell phone stuck in your ear while eating dinner, please consider the possibility that you are a massive tool, and regardless of how enthralled with your inane conversation the tardfest you are eating with is, the rest of us really don’t want to hear your opinions, factoids, or ponderings. Talk in a quiet, indoor voice, not the one intended for sporting events. As a bonus, it may make your flock seem more interested in your verbal diarrhea, as they lean in closer to hear what you are saying. Even better, the rest of us will only know you are an idiot by your attire.
Operation: Dr. Tran!
This is hilarious, and Dr. Tran has 3 syllables, making it Crack Team approved. It’s not safe for work, of course. Thanks to Masterchief for bringing this to our attention. And there’s more at Lone Sausage Productions.
Heck, here’s great followup. I can’t wait to hit that thrill park! Seriously, these guys are genius.
Apple TV: crap in a lacquer box.
The rollout of the Apple TV Appliance reminds me of a story I heard when I was a kid. It involved a man from ancient Segovia buying a donkey for his farm in Spain. He bought this highly adorned donkey for an exorbitant amount and was proudly walking it home. When he started taking off the embroidered tackle, he found the unpleasant truth: the beautiful epaulets and head-dress were hiding sightless eyes, the elaborate tassels that reached to the floor were hiding the infection in the rear legs, and the lacquered and shiny saddle was hiding a lame back on the animal.
In the same way, I hope people are not deceived by the beautiful Apple design and ergonomic, logical menus. I hope that they get to examine the crappy video image before they buy. This device succeeds in *downgrading* all image sources to make them easily available anywhere in your house. Wow.
If it’s too late and you’ve already been screwed, go ahead and use the amazing human ability to justify our mistakes. We are really good at this, gauging from the various studies that�show that our satisfaction with a crappy product decreases markedly at first and then actually increases after purchase. I think it’s our attempt to justify our mistakes and say to the world “it’s not really all that bad if you consider……” Same behavior applies to poorly conceived marriages. Be aware; beware. ��
Rampant Stupidity
Here in Los Angeles we have a time honored tradition called traffic. The traffic is almost always bad on certain roads regardless of the time of the day. I am convinced that some people in this city never actually go home, they just ride the freeways for no reason at all hours of the day�like people ride the subways in New York. I have learned to deal with�the traffic�and generally don’t complain about it anymore after commuting for about 4 years now. Most people just roll their eyes when you mention the word and there is a look of understanding between those who battle the craziness each day.
The United States as a whole has a time honored tradition called Rush Hour. The average individual understands that when you combine Rush Hour with the previously mentioned Traffic, it’s just a mess. As far as I know, Rush Hour happens in every city twice a day, 5+ days a week, 52 weeks a year.
So why the hell does some idiot at CalTrans decide that Rush Hour is a great time to try to street sweep the carpool lane on�one of the most congested freeways in the entire state!!??� I have a decent imagination but I can’t even begin to imagine the thought process involved in what is so�obviously a bad idea. It is almost as if someone went out of their way to be an asshat this morning.
I fear we are not that far from living in the movie Idiocracy.