Archive for the 'Random Stuff' Category

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Xbox 360 on “The Daily Show”

Published on Thursday, December 15, 2005 in Gaming, Microsoft, Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

As I live in the UK I don’t watch any daily US shows. But this one I saw on digg and is a sort of parody of the Xbox 360. It is hilarious.

This sketch was on last night’s The Daily Show (Comedy Central), and I just had to share. So what exactly is this years hot holiday item? I think you can guess, but Demetri will take you on a look at why the Xbox 360 is so hot.

Demetri (cool name!) makes fun of the 360, and he also pops into Best Buy to talk a few of their staff about the 360. He asks one of the staff “Do you ever check ID on older games? Like dude, your 40, it’s time to get a girlfriend.” Just watch it, it is guaranteed to make you chuckle. I can’t point directly to the file, so I will point you to the page which will give you the link as they want to save bandwidth. The video is in WMV format so if your Linux box doesn’t like it, or you don’t have Windows Media Player on your Mac then its time to get some programs as this is one file which won’t play in VLC (which is one of the best cross platform movie players available, and it’s free).

Build your own water powered fuel cell car

Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 in Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

This is one of those ‘must buy’ gadgets. Essentialy it is a kit that comes with all the parts and instructions on how to make your own car that runs on water. The final product is shown above, and though it is small and can’t go very fast, it is cool to see something run on water. It has two ‘tanks’ that will divide the hydrogen and the oxygen up. I saw something like this at school one day, but I didn’t see it run as the science technician was just taking it away . It only costs $80, so it can make a cool present. I checked the shipping price for the UK, it was $94.63!

GrowCube – Totally addicting game

Published on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 in Random Stuff. 8 Comments

This is so unbelievably addicting. The idea is you click on the different icons, and depeding on the order you click on them the cube will develop and the levels will increase. But it is really hard getting them in a logical order. Nijne, has managed to finish it all the way with everything at Lv.Max. So it is possible, but it is damn hard. The screenshot above is as far as I have gotten, I have tried it for a while but it is so hard that I have nearly given up. I’ll spend more time on it over the weekend and see how it progresses. You really could play this forever. Check out the other games on the site especially the ‘grow’ ones as they are similar and as addicting, but still fun!

Woman thinks that her computer ate her CD’s

Published on Friday, December 9, 2005 in PC, Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

This is actually on google video, but I thought it was so funny. A woman takes her computer into her local Best Buy and gives it to the ‘Geek Squad’ claiming that her computer is eating her CD’s. Well it turns out from the video (and the pic above) that what she was doing is sliding the CD’s into a gap between the drive and the computer case. So the CD’s were piling up in her computer! She didn’t know how to use the CD drive (which by the way was tray loading so you had to press a button to open the tray and not just slide it into a hole) on her computer. Just watch the video, it is so funny.

Home-made Ballistic gel

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2005 in Random Stuff. 12 Comments

You may have seen on some shows such as MythBusters and CSI (which both rule!!) that they use a special ballistic gel to stop the bullets and see how far they go into the gel. They use some special liquid which later sets, but of course this isn’t available to the public. So this guy made his own with instructions to help you. He says it also stops BB bullets propelled by BB guns. Cool.

Panorama image of a human head

Published on Wednesday, December 7, 2005 in Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

This is yet another cool camera thing.

Using an FX-1 psuedo HD Sony camera, (its 1440 pixels, which is Sony’s anamorphic short-hand for a 1920 16:9 image,) placed sideways, I filmed Yoshi as he rotated on a turntable in front of the camera. The bank-robber cap was his idea. This resulted in about 1200 frames of a 360 degree pass around the head.
I wrote a program to grab the middle row of pixels in each frame and add them to another image progressivly. Damn! The camera is interlaced, so using multiple pixel rows is not helpful. The end result is a 1200 X 1440 image of all sides of a head. Cool! Not an original idea, it is simply what we call in Maya or 3D Studio a “cylindrical projection texture map.” Nonetheless the results are promising.

The image created (seen above) looks wierd in a way, for some strange reason. But still it ceases to amaze me what type of things people can come up with!

CameraMail: Sending a disposable camera through USPS

Published on Wednesday, December 7, 2005 in Internet, Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

This is really cool. I’ve never seen anything of this sort. The idea is you glue a disposable camera to a sheet of cardboard and then write instructions on it. You also write a mailing address so that people who handle the camera at USPS (United States Parcel Service – Like Royal Mail for the US) will take photos of themselves and others who work there. The camera then arrives to your destination, preferably to your friend who lives a distance away so it has a better chance of succeding, with the photos taken. Your friend then takes the camera and develops it and scans it in and posts it on the internet. Pretty cool, the guy on the site has tried a couple of times and has a tips page helping you to succeed. I wonder if it would work here in the UK with Royal Mail. I don’t know how co-operative they would be.

Add colour to black and white photos

Published on Tuesday, December 6, 2005 in Random Stuff and Technology. Closed

This is a cool application that I spotted on digg. You just use a ‘pencil’ to select areas with the colour to you would like them to be, as in the image on the left above. It then works its magic to ‘colour’ it in, seen on the right above. Since it is for Windows I haven’t had time to try it out, but I will do. From the images above it seems to work well, but I will have to put it into practice and see for myself. Things like these hardly ever work like they are advertised

Cleaners vacuum money from solt machines

Published on Monday, November 28, 2005 in Random Stuff. Closed

I saw this on Engadget and I just had to laugh. All the cleaners at a Slovenian casino were fired because two of them used vacuum cleaners to steal around $500,000 from the slot machines.

Apparently the two ladies used industrial vacuums to steal the loot at night over several months, although casino officials cannot actually prove any of this, which would seem to indicate a dire need for security upgrades.

That casino really does need some extra security, or it needs some more committed cleaners!

18 Tricks to teach your body

Published on Sunday, November 27, 2005 in Random Stuff. Closed

Tech news is always a bit dry on the weekend so I found something a little off topic, but still interesting. These are not tricks, but rather things you can do…

If your throat tickles, scratch your ear
Clear your stuffed nose!
Cure your toothache without opening your mouth!
Breathe underwater!

(For an extra 10 seconds than you’re normally used to)

And more…