majiksznak

The 10th Anniversary DVD of Toy Story is coming out September 6th.

10th Anniversary?! Holy crap. I am old.

Fish!

Also, I gassed up for 97.4 cents / L tonight. It said 101.4 on the sign. I did so because of a tip that gas would go up by 20 cents tomorrow... We shall see.

Um... of course you are.

Alan Cumming has his own fragrance. Guess what it's called.

Remember the robo-Captain-Pike-cat? The video is frightening... The cat looks like it is trying to spin itself hard enough to cause a stroke and end its horrible existence.

I'm selling my NEC MultiSync LCD 1850E for $400. It's an 18.1" monitor, D-SUB input (no DVI), and it looks really good. There's a dead pixel (blue) that shows up on grays (not black), but that even I don't notice, and you all know how anal retentive I am. At BCom, they have 19" LCD monitors for between $400 and $515. Again: I haven't seen a new LCD monitor that doesn't exhibit that stippling effect. My NEC doesn't do that. Any takers?

Check out the cufflinks on this website. Hourglasses, compasses, levels, scrabble tiles...

Awesome... Since Onion articles disappear pretty quickly, here's the full text:


Hey, You Got Something To Eat?

By A Goat

Say, I'd like to eat a little something. You got something? What you got? Any kind of food is good. I just want something to eat. You must got something. I ain't desperate or nothing like that. Don't think I'm begging. I'm just asking here. No pressure. I just want to eat something. Wondering if you had something maybe. No big deal.

You gotta have something. Please. What is that? A thing to eat? I think it might be.

I'm not that hungry. I just ate. I could take or leave it. Got a handful of hard seeds? I'll take them. Pour them on the ground or just hold them out. You kidding? That would be great. Sure would. Whatever you got, really. It don't even have to be seeds. I'll take anything. Don't worry about me. I'm easy. Hey, anything you got. I'll try it. I got a open mind.

You gonna eat that shoe? I'll eat that shoe if you're not gonna eat it.

Come on, what you got? I just want to know. I don't have to eat it. I'm just curious. In truth, there's a good possibility I'll eat it. But still. I want to know. If you got just a morsel of anything, I'd be obliged. If I knew you were good for a scrap once in a while, I'd probably come back to you for more food sometimes. You wouldn't mind that. Of course not. You're my buddy. The food-giver. That's what I'd call ya.

I bet you got a nice pant leg. Lemme chew a hole in it. I could chew it until you yanked it out of my mouth. If you don't mind. I'm telling you, I could use a little something to chomp on. I could wait, but what have you got? I don't care very much one way or the other. Come on, give me a break over here. I just want something to nibble on.

Hey! What's down there? A piece of bread? Let's see what we got. No... No, this is a rock. I'm not going to eat a rock. What do you think, I'm crazy?

You keeping a sandwich in your pocket for later? I'd be happy to eat it for you now. You don't even have to take it out of the bag. I'll eat the plastic and everything. Or tinfoil. Don't make no never mind to me. Do you got anything that I could put in my mouth for just a minute or two? Lemme know. I'll take it off your hands. No worries.

Do you have any trash? I'll eat trash. You were gonna throw it out anyway. Hey, lemme eat it. Lemme at least taste it. If it's no good to eat, I'll know. I hate to see it go to waste, is all.

Got a balled-up tissue? Some paper towels? Coffee filters? Grounds, perhaps? Some cardboard? Insulation? All that sounds good to me. Just about anything like that would hit the spot for me about now.

A piece of corn on the cob. That'd do me. You got that? Would you mind going and picking me a ear from the cornfield? I don't care if it is seed corn or sweet corn or feed corn. I don't care if it's too hard to chew. I'll just swallow it whole. Just swallow it down. Who cares? I don't. Seriously, go over and snatch me one of them ears of corn. I'll get you back. Maybe I could eat something else for you later, something maybe that you're not interested in eating. Or maybe something that you intend to only eat half of. I might be able to eat the rest of it for you.

I've tried about enough of the grass around here to last me a while. I'm sick of this grass. This damned same grass day in and day out, I could just about... I take that back. This grass is okay. I'll eat it. It's pretty good. It's great, actually. I mean, it's okay. Could you grab me a handful of weeds from the ditch? Don't bother shaking off the dirt! That's a waste of time! Just bring it over as is. Wave that near my mouth and it's going down the belly hatch. I am not joking. I'll eat weeds. Just watch me. You give me a rotten apple, and I will eat that whole thing, seeds and all. Tear off a piece of bark for me, and it's gone.

Hey. Come on. Don't be greedy. I said I'd like a little something to eat. Put something in my mouth now. Let me chew something, you fucker.

Oh shit, man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. That was uncalled for. There's no problem. I'm really sorry, friend. Food-giver. That's what you are. There's the stuff. Food-giver. You're my friend.

Hey, by the by... You got anything to eat? Don't go out of your way on my account. It's nothing, really?I don't need nothing. But if you got something, I'll eat it.

Bjork goes apeshit on a reporter.

Office supply moth.

A picture of some darts that I took and liked. I cranked up the contrast a bit...

Cool! This is the song that the Futurama theme song rips off. Apparently they couldn't get rights to it.

Oh dear, sweet Dell monitor. How I miss you while here at work. <snif>

Ha. The new Sony VAIO computers look like coffee machines.

Creationism in the news: link roundup!

• T-Rex, Adam, and Eve

  A "fossilized" pickle purports to show that dinosaur bones could have hardened quickly.

  "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

• University sued for not teaching creationism

  ... filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evolution.

• What is Intelligent Design?

  "Is 'intelligent design' a legitimate school of scientific thought?" asks Dennett? "Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn't such a hoax be impossible? No. Here's how it has been done."

I think it's unfortunate that certain religious people feel threatened by science. It seems like they feel that widespread acceptance of scientific theories like natural selection and evolution cause people to reject God. Therefore they try to discredit anything that might cause a poor thinker to reject faith.

I think that it's important to remember that they are doing it because they care. After all, they don't want people to go to Hell because they don't believe in Jesus. Those who wish to eliminate imaginary obstacles to faith are doing so in order to help the heathen savages such as myself.

That being said, I'd like to hear more Christians speak out and make it known that there isn't a single scientific theory that shakes their faith.

My 2005FPW arrived, and it's a thing of beauty. The display is actually half an inch shorter than that of my 4:3 18.1" LCD, but of course it is much wider. I didn't realize the thing was built to pivot 90 degrees, but hey: bonus! It's actually pretty cool for web pages. Either way, the gargantuan backgrounds I have on my site aren't big enough (oddly, the lava lamp background fits all the way to the edges on a 1680 pixel wide monitor. I apologize for the wasted bandwidth...)

I do have a few gripes...

First off, I use the D-SUB input (normal VGA connector) with my XBox, which displays at either 640x480 or 1280x720, and with my laptop, which is capable of 1280x768 resolution. The native resolution of this Dell monitor is 1680x1050, and it doesn't scale smoothly. It uses a linear interpolation which isn't so bad at lower resolutions because the native resolution is so high. My old NEC monitor scales up low resolutions very smoothly. You notice the resolution scaling most when plugging the laptop into the Dell monitor because 1280x768 is closer to the native resolution, which means that the apparently nearest-neighbour scaling looks gross. Fortunately, you don't really notice that much when playing a DVD (the only time I'd plug my laptop in). 720p, the resolution used by my XBox when playing movies, looks just fine, so that's ok.

Second: the picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture features, great as they are, can't be used to show the DVI and VGA connections side by side, as I had hoped.

Third: the image quality is quite nice, and the colours seem fine, but when something moves, you notice a stippled pattern on the screen, as with all LCD monitors that I have seen in recent years. My old NEC monitor looks perfectly smooth no matter what happens. Of course, the new Dell monitor is extremely crisp because I've got it plugged into the DVI connector. I can now use ClearType without turning text into mush.

Fourth: I don't know how to force my PlayStation 2 to assume the monitor is widescreen... Ok: that has nothing to do with Dell.

I'm torn. I should recover some money by selling the NEC, but I'm concerned that I won't find another monitor that matches its image quality for a long time. Plus, there's the fact that I paid something like $1200 for it originally. I'll decide soon enough and let you all know how much I hope to get for it. If it's too high, I'll sell it on eBay where a bidding war will hopefully push the buying price up to where I want it. :) If you want to shop around, it's an NEC MultiSync LCD 1850E, and it's the beige one (they also had a black model).

Movie trailer for a DOOM movie. If the quality weren't so good and if The Rock weren't clearly actually in the trailer, I'd think it was a joke.

Pictures from my trip to Jasper with Erin. We visited Athabasca Falls, which I've never been to. Had I had more than 7 minutes of picture-taking power left, I'd probably have a lot more pictures.

To the photographers who read this, what do you do when you want to get a good picture in conditions where you'd like to have adequate detail in the shadows and bright spots of an image? It was a sunny day and I was either overexposing the bright parts or underexposing the dark parts, as you can see in the images.

Beck's "Girl" (music video).

Jon Stewart says some smart things.

Dance Dance Immolation

"A-y a-y ai, I'm your little butterfl... AAAAAAAH! MY FACE!"

Free tickets

I have 2 tickets to Yuk Yuk's that are only good for tonight I thought I could use them until Wednesday, but there are no shows then, so I'll give these to whoever wants them and wants to pick them up before 4PM...

It's a long shot, but worth a shot.

More Lite Brite creations.

I saw this a while ago... If you liked the "crazy dance" video, you'll love this.

The Daily Show has a piece called "This Week in God" presented by Steven Colbert. This week featured a "Compari-Sin" on Masturbation, where he compares the punishments for various unholy acts in different religions.

Religion	Punishment
Catholicism	Say you're sorry
Islam	Masturbator's sister killed
First Church of Constant Masturbation	Not a sin

A list of awesome links:

• Don't mess with grandma
• A movie featuring a character named "Sgt. Shaved Balls"
• I want Charlize Theron's first movie as an action star to be cool (but I'm not holding my breath)
• Pat Robertson calls for assassination: full video with ads, Daily Show (click on "Iraq Strategy")
• An amazing dork
• A neat puzzle

Awesome dance. You cut a rug, weirdo child-molester-looking guy!

Gay merit badges.

Disco!


Also, I think this is the first time I've ever put a non-thumbnailed image straight into a post. You hit 1000 posts, and all Hell breaks loose.

Renovations in my basement are coming right along. Soon we'll have the carpet in. We took a bit of time to put up this kickass poster that my mom has had since around 1984: she bought it when we were living in the Netherlands. It looks great in the home theatre room.

Wow! Rob made some great Lite Brite images. I've created a Lite Brite image gallery where I will put all the Lite Brite images people send me (Shannon: I'll put the original version of the one you sent me shortly).

Nice work, Shannon!

Karate Master. (Better on a dark monitor). Thanks, John!

Yep. I still got it! DHTML Lite Brite. (Thanks, Nick)

Oh hey. I've broken 1000 posts. Roughly... Some have been deleted (if I screw up a post, I don't modify it, I delete and repost).

Whee!

Questionable URL, hilarious video. Atari game commercial for "Vanguard".

Oh, Luther, you big lug...

Sweet t-shirt: "I believe in the separation of church and hate".

Hahaha! Go USA!

The Dead City Serpents show rocked hard. The band that came afterward (Don't remember who they were) were not bad. Their guitar player was pretty amazing at the whole "psychobilly" guitar thing. I maintain that their stage presence was hampered by the bass player's particular brand of head-bobbing. Perhaps also his facial hair, but I'm not so sure.

This is the one good picture I got all night, and it's one that I botched. Go figure.

The Fringe
So, to my knowledge, there are definitely 2 shows you should go see at the Fringe this year. BLACKLISTED, and Boy Groove.

show times

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That is all.

I managed to take some pictures of the big fire on Friday as I was passing by. I had intended to go to the Superstore right near there, but when I realized how big the fire was and how close it was to where I wanted to be, I changed my mind about where I wanted to be...

My beautiful Dell monitor's estimated arrival date is this friday. The Dell web site, however, still puts my 2005FPW in the "in production" stage, still to undergo "delivery prep" then actual "shipping".

Grr.

I have this nightmare all the time. What if boxes took over the world?

You want weird crap involving cute kittens? you got it.

Everyone needs to see this. How can anyone hear "What is Love" without laughing?

Ok: I want to see one of these as an actual chromed metal piece: FSM bumper sticker.

You want weird music videos? I got weird music videos. Worth watching for the part where he picks up his cardboard cell phone alone...

You can do such neat things with proper PNG support in a browser (that link is only good for non-IE browsers, possibly only Firefox).

A very good, if very nerdy burn.

Creating artificial biological organisms.

One, two awesome retranslations of Revenge of the Sith. English -> Chinese -> English == fun!

Obi-Wan to Yoda: "This is what who fuck"

Ah, shucks. Someone got to my page by googling:

"the nicest asshole in the world"

I'm touched!

Hee hee. It's a highway. And it goes to the danger zone.

It's really not necessary to have the "real" submit button disappear after 2 seconds. In fact: I'm not sure this will help at all. I'm thinking that the comments page is parsed for a form and that information is posted. I'm curious, though, if this new spam comment countermeasure will have any sort of effect. If it doesn't, I'll do what I feel should work, but will require thought and effort (God forbid). Who knows? Maybe that bitch Mirella is a real person hoping to convince people to go to her site, and bot-busting anti-spam methods won't work...

MIREEEELLLAAAAA!

Neat. Rain on my window at work.

I may not be able to cook, but I can throw something onto a fire and pull it off in time to eat it.

Oh hey, score: it's a piece of cake to unlock my phone:

1. Connect the telephone using the cable usb
2. When ask the driver to put the of the folder driver1
3. Open the soft flash.exe and to give him to read phone with the phone on to verify that the driver function correctly, in the event that they do not function well to test with the driver2
4. Go flashing modulate to open the flash c33xunlock of the board of directors flash, to give him to search and despues to flash
5. Continuacion to go to the eyelash loger and to open the program passo
6. Light the phone with a card of another proevedor so that ask the codigo of unfreezing, press search in Passo and to wait for that leave the codigo of unfreezing in the passo

Sketchy...

So it has begun...

I got my first spam comment from a person named "mirela" who said, "Very nice blog. It is very helpful." and provided a link to some bullshit site. Kudos to the asshats making spam-bots for branching out. I'll be adding anti spam countermeasures shortly.

Screw you "mirela".

A very dated board game wherein you are a girl and get to explore your career path...

<singing>Someone's cookin' chicken and it smells like feet. Da doo run run run, da doo run run.</singing>

The Onion again: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory.

The Onion on the country of Nukehavistan.

Gorgeous 3D animation. Ah, floating point colour calculations, is there anything you can't do?

A new take on anti-piracy.

Cutting-edge new onomatopoeia from VG Cats.

FACE!

Hard game. Well, once you figure it out, it's easy. Then it gets hard again.

Stuff on my Cat: the website. Thanks, Rob!

Well, I've bollocksed things up. I didn't have my Visa bill with me the last time I had to pay, so I called Visa to get the value of my statement. They gave me the amount and pay date of my next statement, so I set up the transfer with my online banking service. The current statement went unpaid.

Hey, remember how we were talking about giving functionality-crippled net appliances to people to prevent them from abusing their usage agreements? Well, maybe that will never work. There seems to be the attitude that given any electronic device, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It hit me when I read this quote (on the linked article about running Windows on the PSP):

How much money do you think it cost Sony to supposedly make the PSP a closed platform?

This is a device I've been waiting for... A reasonably priced component to VGA converter that will work with any console. The next time I can afford a purchase (which I have decided will come after having built up an emergency fund), I'm getting this, a GameCube component cable, and a PS2 component cable. I will be pleased.

Also: I didn't even notice when I ordered it, but that Dell 20.1" LCD monitor has an S-Video input, which means I can use the monitor plugged into anything I have that spits out video. I am pleased.

Your chance to get a coveted Majik Sznak "oscar"... My coworker, Peggy, has been creating free verse 6 word poems (and now also Haikus, thanks to my nerdly influence) to serve as voicemail messages. Here is a sample:

Leave message
For
I am away

Absent, yet
I beep.
Recording you.

Unfortunate.
Absent,
You called me. Speak.

Away.
Leave message
While machine hears.

Voicemail hears you
Speaking.
It records.

You speak.
Absent,
I record you.


Away, away.
Your message is everything.

Speak.
Though absent,
I will reply.

Desolate!
Your call missed.
Please record.


Tell me.
Words recorded are immortal.


Record,
Then disconnect.
I will reply.

Sadness engulfs me.
Angry that I screened your call,
You left no message.

So: let's hear your best 6 word free verse poetry and Haikus. The best one today wins an "oscar".

Frightening! This cat reminds me of Captain Pike.

I made my coffee with very little milk. I was too lazy to open another jug. It consisted of less than an ounce of steamed 1% milk and a shot of espresso, no sugar. Itook a sip just now, and made the following sound:

"Ah-huh-huh... God."

<FUME>So I tried to buy a couch. I wanted to get a Bay card (new accounts get 10% off on the first purchase). My credit check was declined... I have a single credit card on which I've never had to pay interest. I called Equifax for my credit history, and they can't retrieve my info. I suspect this is because of the move, but I don't know who to skewer because of this.</FUME>

The tagline at the end of this trailer is gold.

DAMN! Damn and blast. I reprogrammed the "call record" button on my phone, which makes me so, so sad. You see, I'm on the phone with Fido and hoping to get them to change my call forwarding (my phone is dead and I can't find the charger, so obviously I can't do it myself). The support person I'm talking to is very friendly, but largely useless. I mean, she's trying to be helpful, but she's also trying to sound knowledgeable, and this is where the humour comes in.

I so wish I could record this, because it's pure gold. Just as an example, when I asked to change my settings, she asked me if I had my phone's manual... I think you can see where this is going, even if she didn't.

Me: "Well, I could have access to my manual, but it wouldn't do me any good: you see, I can't charge my phone to turn it on, which is why I'm asking you guys to do it."

She kept mixing things up. She started off fine, calling my phone the Danger Hiptop (manufacturer followed by model), but then switched to "Hiptop Danger". She also kept trying to throw big words into sentences without really understanding how to use them:

Her: "I was actually able to exceptionally do it..." <- my favourite...

Apparently, she did me this huge favour, because to change my call forwarding settings, I'm supposed to find another Fido phone and put my friggin' SIM card in it.

Her: "It was an exceptional circumstance."

Man. I've learned my lesson. Don't mess with the call record key...

Snap it up if you care about your soul.

Nothing Nice to Say is an occasionally funny webcomic.

What do you think of the word "womyn".

A funny Diesel Sweeties comic.

Ah, Something Awful... How thou hast entertained me. Here's a classic piece.

I call bullshit on Dell's order status web page... They don't have any work to do on my beautiful monitor: they just need to put it on the truck that will bring it to me.

I saw the most conceited vanity license plate I've ever seen on the way to work today:

4U2DZIR

AAAAAAAGH! From boingboing... Apparently, this is Anna Nicole Smith.

Quality rock-balancing video. You just have to force your head to accept that it's not backwards, otherwise it's mostly silly at the start.

New expression from here.

"So freakin goth he/she/it shits Live Journals"

I just don't think these kids deserve to be charged. They were supplied laptops to do school work and were probably made to sign documents saying they wouldn't do X, but it just seems wrong to me to hand someone a device with certain capabilities that have weakly been locked out and then punish those people for circumventing the protection.

I realize it's sort of hypocritical: I'm sure you could come up with a non-technological example where I'd go the other way.

The administrators had not, however, reckoned on the sheer determination and machiavellian cunning of the students. They quickly found the admin password allowing unrestricted internet access - not by a keystoke logging black op or extracting it from the IT manager at the point of a gun - but rather because it was taped to the back of every machine.

Your Mama.

Dan Savage has introduced me to a new word, and it's awesome: "heteroflexible".

If you've never checked out postsecret, you should. My suspicions are confirmed... A person with a "nonstandard" piercing writes, "Everyone thinks I do it to make people stare... but really, it's to keep them from looking too closely."

Omygodomygodomygod! I've never had to work so hard to make myself not buy something. It's giving me a headache, and I may break into a cold sweat. I mean really: $600 for a 20" widescreen LCD monitor (12ms response time). GAAAAH!

Yes! "Brick" from Anchorman is going to play Maxwell Smart in the Get Smart movie.

"Touched by his Noodly Appendage"

An Uncyclopedia entry on the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Holy dude jumping around.

RealPlayer sucks, but this clip of a shark being taken out by an octopus is pretty cool.

A music video for a band called 33Hz. It's sort of a fusion of 70s disco / funk and 80s pop. The video is cool.

Just what I needed: another offensive t-shirt site. Some of these are pure gold.

Rob Cordury rules. Go here then click on the "Bummer in the Hamptons" or "Bolton From the Blue" clip.

Perhaps you'd want the President to live in your worls. In your world, it takes millions of years for species to adapt. In the President's world? "Let there be gills! ... and lo, there were gills."

An awesome comic on Diesel Sweeties involving Star Trek.

I am so going to make it so.

Kooky! Hey: did you ever wonder what the deal is with Scientology? Tom Cruise is giving it some press these days. The Daily Show covered the idea of Scientology, and it was pretty funny, but more people should know what it's about. As a public service, let me sum it up for you:

Millions of years ago, there was a galactic confederation, and it was horribly overpopulated. One guy, Xenu, decided to fix this by blowing up a bunch of people in or around the volcanos of the planet Earth. Today, the ghosts of all these aliens inhabit the minds of human beings, which make it hard to think for yourself. Giving the Church of Scientology tons and tons of money and being "audited" is the only way to clear your mind of the alien ghosts. Isn't that beautiful? I'm not even kidding.

A few years before writing Dianetics (the Scientology handbook / bible), L. Ron Hubbard, author of sci-fi novels (hint, hint!) such as Battlefield Earth, was apparently quoted as saying, "If you want to make real money, invent a religion" (from memory: it's probably not verbatim). Hmmmmm.

Xenu.net tries to expose Scientology.

A much longer ID discussion on Slashdot.

The way of the exploding solo. (For the guitar nerds)

Yes!

Paid in full! Another year of Majik Sznak. Thanks, Foo.

Mesmerizing Flash game. Coloured beans flow through pipes and noise making devices...

I hope you haven't just eaten before you click on this link. Poaching eggs... Sort of.

Freee parking! Awful radio advertisement.

My Onion horoscope:

Aries: (March 21?April 19)
Your habit of falling out of trees, attempting to hide behind signposts, and following three feet behind people in broad daylight will force the government to adopt stricter ninja-certification standards.

ID in the news again. GWB is endorsing its teaching in schools.

I still haven't gotten some things straight. Isn't Intelligent Design simply a collection of arguments whose aim is to discredit the theory of evolution and thus open the door for the religious belief that some higher power was entirely responsible for the way life on Earth has progressed? Really, it's just a way of saying, "No: evolution is not possible, and therefore some intelligent forces must have been at work".

Is there more to it than that?

Ha ha ha! I find this funny because I'm not a skateboarder, and I've only ever seen skateboarders falling when trying to do grinds and various tricks, so this seems almost unnecessary.

Finally, a multi-button mouse from Apple.

Boycott IE7!

Pictures from DanceClub 2020 on July 30, 2005.

A Flash animation of the Beatles' Maxwell's Silver Hammer.