Side Note:

Play, or used to play Diablo II?  Interested in some online gaming on Battle.net?  Curt is starting up a Diablo II campaign in the next week or so, and we're always looking for more people.  It's Lord of Destruction only, so people without the expansion are unfortunately SOL.  Currently we have two druids, one paladin, and an amazon.  Post here or there if you're interested.

With Tuppence For Paper And String

It's time for a gigantic link dump, courtesy of StumbleUpon, which has been giving me more mindless distractions than I need.

We'll start with the quest for an answer to a simple question:  What does a 16-patty cheeseburger look like, and what kind of idiot would try and eat one?  The answer is, of course, available on the Interent, but I think I just lost my appetite.

Next up, we'll allow the mounting nausea to commingle with a diminished sense of self-worth.  Of course, I'm refering to the interactive list of Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age.  If you've already written an internationally acclaimed piano concerto then you are, obviously, free to view it without any effect on your self-worth.  (But I still hate you.)

And not only have they done more, they're probably better artists than you too:  I may have already posted a link to one of these images before, but I feel the need to link to Katsuya Matsumura's custom PC cases.  The giant mecha fan in me drools over the 6'2" Gundam case.

Now there's a few things from the 'oddities' file.  There's a Flash "game" that I just don't understand the point of, and a bestiary of Flash and Java based creatures.  I'm personally a little partial to the March creature.  (There's also the doublecell bestiary, which is a little harder to navigate through.)

From the mind blowing, but in a completely different way, category:  Kite Aerial Photography.  Scott Haefner takes kites, mounts a camera in them, and uses them to take 360° panoramas.  I wish I could do that with my kite.

Finally, we'll end it all with a children's story written by American humourist James Thurber and dedicated "to Rosemary, in the wistful hope that her world will be better than mine".

One point for the title, and I promise you won't have to hear me sing.  Or attempt an English accent, for that matter.  (Damn you, Dick Van Dyke!  Damn you!)

I Can't Make This Stuff Up

If you've ever wondered just how embarrassingly bad band photo-shoots can be, then I suggest you look no further than Ruthless Reviews' Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time.  Guaranteed to make you think goths are well adjusted.

For those who are confused by this and want some background:  take a bunch of guys who can't quite figure out that Venom was all an elaborate joke, combine with liberal helpings of Ronnie James Dio's worst lyrics, and top off with makeup that would make even Kiss ashamed, and you've got a stereotypical black metal band.  For some reason Scandanavian countries, and Norway in particular, seem to be prone to taking it all a little to seriously.  ("But what of the music," you ask?  Trust me, you're better off having never heard it.)

Actually, I lie; Gene Simmons has no shame.

No points today, as I can't think of any quote anything cheesy enough to do this link justice.

Yeah, Too Quiet.

I know it's summer and all, but even the spammers seem to have gone on vacation.  MT-Blacklist hasn't even registered so much as a minor spam attack in almost a week.  So, having dredged through the Internet — capital I intact — for the most cliched of images, I now have one thing to say:

Make comments or the kitten gets it!

(Image removed due to too much hotlinking.)

Choco! Party! Good Good!

The Japanese have some seriously messed up television commercials.  However, there's something about this one that's just hypnotising.  I just wish I could figure out why.

Gentlemen, I Wouldn't Trust This Overgrown Pile Of Microchips Any Further Than I Can Throw It

For those who've never had the pleasure of being in Fredericton in the summer, the weather here has a habit of constantly being in a state that's best described as "hot and humid&; (with occassional interludes of "torrential downpour").  It was during one of these particular hot and humid streaks that I decided to use my TV tuner for the first time in months

It all started off well enough.  The video window came up, I had sound, and then I had a completely frozen system with sound continuing to come out of speakers.  Cursing profusely, I hit reset.  As it runs through the boot-up memory test, I suddenly realise what the problem could be and enter the BIOS.  A quick check of the hardware monitor screen confirms it:  the TV tuner, which gets rather hot, has combined with the ambient temperature to push my CPU up past the 70 degree auto-shutoff limit I had set.

Now, I couldn't add any more fans, since my case was designed to only hold two fans: one intake and one exhaust.  Buying an exahust fan that sat a card slot wasn't an option either, as the only slot that could be freed up is, due to the design of the motherboard, cluttered by audio-related cables that plug in right below the CNR slot.  So I took a trip down to Thriftking with Dmitrii, and looked at getting a new case that would allow me to add a fan or two.

Of the cases I looked at, most had to be rejected as they wouldn't fit under my desk, due largely to the decision to place a handle on the top of a wide variety of them.  Others were rejected due to issues with my motherboard, since a pair of capacitors are located such that two of the 5 1/4" drive bays in a standard tower case are unusable.  Out of the few that were left, several weren't in stock, and others were just a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay, especially since I didn't need a new power supply.  The end result is that I now have a new case, I finally got to throw out the mini-tower that was housing hermod, and I now have more USB ports than I could ever conceivably use.

And no, it doesn't have lights on the inside.

Two points.

Random News Entry

No real commentary here, except to say that I only just found out about this and I think it's fairly cool:

Waterspout cuts across Confederation Bridge

Edit:  I can't help but wonder what proximity to this would have caused my weather glass to do.

Tovarich Computer Reminds You To Have A Depressing Day

Sometime over the weekend, a person posted a message in response to my entry on Paranoia.  I have no idea who they are, but I wish to salute them for making me laugh.

That is all.

We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."  — George W. Bush, August 7, 2004

White House spokseman Scott McClellan's comment on the misstatement: "[T]he American people know this president speaks with clarity and conviction, and the terrorists know by his actions he means it."

Now, just reading that the first thing that pops into mind is: " I think Mr. McClellan needs to take another look at the definition of clarity."   Either that, or everyone should be very very afraid.

One point for the title.

Request

I upgraded parts of my system, and I think it may have messed up MovableType.  If you can get the comment script to load, please post a comment.