Archive for the ‘Amusing’ Category


Getting my Alaska fix

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

I have a really good friend who did something even more crazy than my relocation to Vancouver. Paul one upped me and trekked to Alaska last fall, just as winter was setting in. The one thing he constantly says is how incredibly beautiful it is there, and I think that says a lot for him to say that without experiencing summer yet.

He seems to have a good gig up there, helping coordinate things at the Alaska Teen Media Institute. Paul took his radio producing talents and shares his creative expertise with the kids he works with. That might make some of you worry, but I think he’s got a handle on things.

This piece by one of his students nabbing an interview with the band OK Go is pretty good. I always wonder what it’s like to grow up in the great white north, especially where it’s much more north and whiter than Vancouver. Yes, I know that usually implies Canada, but Alaska seems more like another world to me than Canada ever has. Still, it’s on my lists of places in the world that I want to visit for the simple sake of saying I’ve been there, and I’d consider living there if they keep giving land away as if it’s the 1800′s.

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Filed under: Amusing, Friends

Calling shenanigans

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

The premise of this post is this. I scan a lot of RSS feeds, and today is April Fools’ Day[wiki]. So my plan is to spot things, list them here if I think they are a load of crap, and we’ll let the cards fall as they may. Feel free to post comments to give the rest of us heads up or give us a ruling as to if it’s true or total bunk.

Why might I do this? Because it’s just as fun to try and solve the equation as it is to play the prank. Also, I got completely hosed by Father Roderick last year with his prank, and he’s a priest! A clever Dutchman, but I’m doing my best to not get nailed this year. Still, I appreciate a good joke, but his was a tad too much on the pulling at heart strings end of the stick.

So here we go, a total roll of the dice. Check back for updates on this little experiment.

» Google is pulling their usual stunt. Rebecca has it posted on her site, but it’s pretty comical. Oh the geeky humor. Status: shenanigans

Google April Fool’s JokeGoogle TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines. [google]

» John Chow made a post on March 31st detailing his last blog post ever, mainly because he apparently sold his company, is dirt rich, and now going to travel the world. If that be the case, then all the best with not catching ebola, bird flu, or Montezuma revenge in whatever portion of the world that your travels take you. And I say that lovingly. Status: shenanigans

Starting tomorrow, I will be on permanent vacation. I have sold my company, TTZ Media Inc., to a Toronto based Internet Venture Company. The sale closed yesterday. I cannot disclose the sale price but it is enough that the interest on the money alone would put me in the top 1% income bracket. [johnchow]

» Maybe Robert Scoble is a natural at randomly finding people using interesting gadgets at random areas of the SF area, but this post from today seems all too fishy to me. It makes sense, but holy crap is it a long post about some new Apple gadget that is supposed to make reading RSS feeds as hip as walking down the street with white ear buds crammed in your ears. However, if true, then I guess that’s neat. Status: shenanigans

Back to what I saw: today we were eating at Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay when I saw someone down on the beach using a device I didn’t recognize. Being a geek I quickly ran down to the beach to see what it was. Turns out he was an Apple executive (he asked me not to name him) and tried to hide the device when I came near, but I eventually talked him into showing it off to me. [scobleizer]

Leave a comment if you see something else worth calling shenanigans on.

(more…)

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Filed under: Amusing, Hilarious

Blog: Ikea Hacker

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Ikea HackerI showed this to Rebecca this morning before she left for work, and she asked me where I had discovered Ikea Hacker. For the life of me, I cannot remember. I’ve been reading it for the past few months, enjoying the neat creations that people have cobbled together to make there own breed of Swedish furniture. It’s something I am really curious about doing myself, but even I scare myself with the possible monstrosities I could create.

It was this recent post that came through to me this morning that really peaked my love for this blog. Take an Ikea desk, computers, throw some cable management at it, and holy crap is my mind full of ideas now. That’s the brilliance of this site. My courage is getting stronger to try something crazy myself.

True that some of the posts are nothing spectacular, but I can always use some sources of inspiration to get me going again. The desktop PC of Rebecca’s sits on this little Ikea workstation that we got from some of our good friends. They were pretty impressed when I mounted our network router underneath the bottom shelf with some twist-ties. Now I have all sorts of ideas. Just need more ties.

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Filed under: Amusing, Blogs

Lessons in quick thinking

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

The cheese fell between the counter and the fridge.

Hanger Hand Sweeper Thing
This is what you do so you don’t hurt your back or pinch your fingers while trying to get the cheese you sent flying across the counter and into that tight space between said place. Don’t ask me to explain how. The cheese grater just slipped.

Doing stuff like this always takes me back to the days of KRUI where this type of rigging was far too common, if not being too far from an exact replica. We called it “ghetto engineering”. This is a testament to those quick thinking skills that still exist today.

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Filed under: Amusing, Ghetto Engineering

1,000 Photos on Flickr

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

1,000 Photos on Flickr
Amazing what tickles your pickle when you’ve had a long day, not drank enough water, and had only one beer with fish and chips. 1,000 pictures, right on the money. Even after uploading everything I have today, what’s the chances of that happening? Neat.

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Filed under: Amusing, Flickr

Not exactly Mordor

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Vancouver Webcam - Feb. 11, 2007
An incredibly geeky thing to say, but what an ominous photo. It’s not quite the eye of Sauron, but the Vancouver Webcam does produce some nice shots, don’t you think?

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Filed under: Amusing, Internet, Vancouver

Max Headroom: TV pirate

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Max Headroom TV PirateA story that I caught over on BoingBoing has me fascinated. The basic low down is that one night in November of 1987, a couple of TV stations in the Chicago area were hijacked of their signals. This means that someone had the right knowledge and equipment to pull off this amazing stunt. For a brief period of time, people were treated to a guy in a Max Headroom[wiki] mask with a moving background and garbled audio.

You can see the event transpire on WTTW[wiki] as it actually aired during an episode of Doctor Who[wiki] via this YouTube link. I know that if I would have caught this in 1987, when I was nine, I would have been creeped out. Below is a CBS news report detailing the event[wiki].

The fine for a prank like this from the FCC isn’t cheap, and the “masked man” was never found. Getting onto WGN[wiki] is what really blows my mind. Even though that attempt didn’t last very long, you’d have to be close by to get it to work. However, you think someone would notice a bunch of people hauling large pieces of broadcasting equipment around. Also, you can see in both of these video examples that there was at least another person who helped pull this off. Curious that after nearly twenty years, the secret has remained safe.

The BoingBoing post goes on to point to other links that further the background of this story, and I’ll post them here as well because they are nothing short of incredible pieces of underground history. Damn Interesting has an article about the event itself, especially a closer look at the audio from the signal hijack of WTTW. Signaltonoise offers further background on the incident involving Captain Midnight’s hijacking of HBO in the year prior[wiki], which the CBS report mentions above.

I instantly sent this to my former chief engineer at WSUI because he eats up this stuff just like I do. Jim has some experience dealing with the realm of TV as well as radio, and we both worked in tandem with a bunch of TV guys. Of course, he still does.

X on CheneyAs much as TV is changing to a more IP delivered system, you know that this will inspire someone to try something just as daunting. They go to great lengths to keep those systems closed, but nothing is ever secure enough to someone who really wants to stir something up. Just look at what happened during an airing of a press conference with Dick Cheney on CNN in November of 2005. A producer exercised their feelings about him by slapping a big “X” graphic on his face during the live feed, and CNN dropped the producer when it was discovered to not be an accident or technical error.

The human will is a marvelous thing, and this is the most incredible element in all of this. Fines and security won’t stop someone who really wants to stir things up. I would bet that this got a lot harder to do, especially after 1987.

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Filed under: Amusing, Hack, Television, YouTube

Climbing ice silos in Iowa

Sunday, January 21st, 2007
DSCN1931
Photo credit: khockett on Flickr

I am hardly an authority on the topic of climbing, especially when it comes to doing it on ice. All I know is that you’d need metal, spiky things and some rope, not to mention a lacking fear of heights. And actually, heights and me don’t get along all too well, but I’m working on getting better at that as I get older.

When Rebecca’s cousin came back from a recent trip to Las Vegas, he brought me back a copy of the L.A. Times with an interesting article on the front of it. Turns out, some dude in Iowa has a real knack for ice climbing. Snow and ice is very common this time of year, but mountains and cliffs are not as abundant, all year round. So what does he do? Staring at an abandoned grain silo one day, he has the idea to cover it in ice and climb it.

When I read the first few lines, I knew that this had to be the idea of some college professor looking for a quick fix for a lack of good places to climb in the prairies that make up most of the state, and my hunch was spot on. Don’t ask me why, but I spent enough time around like minded folks to just make an educated guess. Combine the expertise in DIY engineering that only comes from the minds of farmers from the midwest, and this is what happens. Granted that he is a physical education instructor at UNI, but this sense of “craziness” has the ability to rub off on you.

Weekend America did a piece on the story, and you can check out the rest of these pictures that I found on Flickr. Not sure that I’d try to do this, but the site would be neat to see. I’d also like to be there when all the ice melted and came crashing to the ground.

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Filed under: Amusing, Iowa, News Item

A golden ticket to punk rock

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

This is cool and clever all at the same time. I also have a bit of fondness for MxPx.

In a recent promotion of “Bremerton Blend”, a coffee endorsed by MxPx, the band has randomly inserted “golden tickets” in 2 of the 200 bags of the product.

We will be putting in ONE ‘Golden Ticket’ naming the lucky recipient as the winner of the signed guitar! We’re also putting in a single “golden ticket” in a second 1 pound bag for a 50 dollar shopping spree at the MxPx Merch Arsenal.

To check out the coffee or the promotion,head over to this link. [punknews]

Pushing products in the name of your fans and the rock. I can dig that. Wonder if the coffee’s any good.

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Filed under: Amusing, News Item, Rock & Roll

I almost called it

Monday, January 8th, 2007

No big secret that I’m not the biggest football fan in the world, but I do enjoy catching games from time to time. The Chiefs got eliminated, so the season is really over for a part-time fan like me. It’s tough to not be a Seattle fan in Vancouver though. And to tell you the complete truth, I’m with Rebecca on this one. We both like the color scheme on their uniforms, and that’s the main reason we dig the Seahawks. Other than that, couldn’t tell you much about the team.

Their playoff game against Dallas was on while she was cooking the other night. Late in the 4th quarter, Dallas was down by one point and setting up for a field goal attempt. Easy three points for the lead with just over a minute left to play in the game. I pretty much said that the season was over for Seattle. A bummer for sure, but just before the snap, I looked over at Rebecca and said, “it would be outstanding if they blocked the kick.” I didn’t expect this.

They played the botched snap over and over again, showing the guy who screwed the pooch, Romo, sitting there with his head down. Yeah, great for Seattle, but I’m surprised that Romo wasn’t crying somewhere in a corner. We both felt so horrible for him. You could just feel his pain.

I know I’m late to the post here, but the replay of that gets me every time. True pain might come next week for Seattle. Chicago’s next up, and the game is in the windy city. Odds are, my brother will say that the Bears will whoop the Seahawks.

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Filed under: Amusing, Football, YouTube
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