Animals Have A Danger Sense

With all the death from the tsunamis, it's surprising that none of the animals in Yala National Park perished even though employees and tourists died. It's speculated that the animals could feel that the tsunami was coming and was prepared for it.

The Warez Scene

Ever wanted to get the latest software without resorting to all the searching you need to do on p2p networks? Well then you have to get in the warez scene. The first step in doing that is to understand the lingo and the roles, which the Wired article on pirating neatly answers for you.

A Quick Look At Pixar

National Review has an interview with a Pixar employee that goes into how Pixar operates and how they make movies that are really enjoyable. It goes on to describe some of the technical challenges like fur in Monsters Inc and water in Finding Nemo.

Story of Apple's Graphing Calculator

The folks behind Apple's graphing calculator have written up a story about how it came to be. It wouldn't have been too interesting except that these guys' contract at Apple had finished and they were "volunteering" their time to finish the project on Apple's campus illegally. A little bit of social engineering is involved and a lot of help for Apple full time employees.

Video Game Industry Larger Than Hollywood?

Not really, although everyone constantly says that it is. Once the facts are broken, it's easy to see that the movie industry is larger than games. That should be common sense, since only guys in certain age groups play video games.

Why Is Suprnova Down?

As you may have noticed, Suprnova is now down and gone. If you're wondering why it happened? then check out the Suprnova closure FAQ. Long story short, MPAA pressures don't make hobbies as fun as they were.

The wheels on the house go round and round...

Imagine living in something like this?

Dizzying heights. Seriously, how would one hook up the power, water, etc? won't the pipes/lines get tangled up?

More Stores of Apple helping People's Sex Lives

It was previously mentioned on this blog that Apple Stores are the new place to hook up, now add more anecdotal evidence to iPod being the new trick to getting girls. College students have been emailing Apple and letting them know that the ability to share playlists in iTunes has improved their sex lives. How you ask? well random people can see what's on your playlist and know if you're cool or not.

CSS Guide

For those aspiring web geeks on the go, now there's a CSS reference for the iPod. That's right, you can read about your favorite style elements while on the subway.

How To Figure Out The Price of Retail Products

Why would you want to figure out the price that stores pay for retail products? No reason really but you get to figure out how much they stand to profit from your purchase. Too bad you can't haggle the price down. Anyways, apparently pharamcies use letter substitutions to denote prices. I wonder if they do that in Canada?

EA Secures Exclusive NFL License

For the next five years, only EA will be making football games with actual NFL teams and NFL players. They've secured an exclusive license which locks out other football game makers such as ESPN and SEGA. Probably not good news for those guys, but great news for EA.

Did You Know: Japan is Hardcore into Gaming.

As popular as games get in North America, I think the centre of console gaming is till in Japan. More evidence to support this is the fact that the game stores they have in Akihabara are enormous. They're more like the shops that sell stamps to stamp collectors then your local video game store.

Geeky Billboards Aren't All Good

Google and EA have been known to have geeky billboards posted around metropolitan areas to attract hotshot programmers to apply for jobs at their company. Well seeing how those ads have been popular and generate a lot of word of mouth, dice.com (who are these guys? I have no idea) decided to create their own programming ad. Unfortunately for them their geek ad was horrible written, with tons of syntactic errors. I guess they're trying to hire programmers out of kindergarden or something.

SGI Has Fanatics Too

Apple's not the only computer company with a cult following; SGI has a smaller but just as feverish following. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunate for their wallets), SGI has moved out of the workstation market and so these rabid fans are left to work on decades old technology, technology that's still comparable to current hardware. Someone should tell these people to give it up already, it's only a matter of time before SGI closes up shop (although the same has been said about Apple.

How Does Google Suggest Work?

You have undoubtedly heard and tried out Google Suggest, but the question to us web geeks is how does it work and how does it work so well? You've probably already seen something like that with the auto-complete of people's email in Gmail, but the size of your address book pales in comparison with every word in every language of the world. Well if you're interested, someone on Slashdot broke down the basics of Google Suggest.

The Comic Craze

Very interesting forum post by someone who used to sell cards and comics around the time when I was in high school. I remember a bit of the craze, and fortunately never had the money to dump into it like most people.

Rob Liefeld is a Bad Artist

Rob Liefeld, one of the founders of Image comics seems to lack creativity, which is unfortunate since he seems to write and draw a lot of comics. You can tell how much Rob Liefeld copies by visiting this page.

What To Do When Kids Don't Do Chores?

So your kids aren't doing any chores or helping around the house; so what do you as parents do? The first thing I would think of is to go on a parent strike. So I would camp out on the lawn so I wouldn't have to do any chores and let the kids fend for themselves right? Hrmm I don't know if any good conclusions can come out of this.

Why Does Japan Have The Cool Gadgets?

Why does Japan have the coolest gadgets in the world? Well because of disposible income, they like shopping where people know what they're talking about, and school girls.

My Imaginary Friend

Apparently, 65% of kids have an imaginary friend. I'm not sure if that's a high or a low number, but the question is which side are you on?

The Safest Roads

An article in Wired talks about a road without signs that is shared by cars, bicycles and pedestrians. It goes on to discuss how, without much direction, it is very safe to all who traverse through it. Personally, I think that it's only safe because people pay attention; if you have someone who doesn't drive defensively then it'll be just as dangerous. Also, it doesn't say how quickly you can get thru the intersection (not really a road) now does it?

All About The PSP

Here's a first look at the PSP which is coming out soon. Lots of pictures, and it seems to look nicer than the Nintendo DS; but I would rather get Nintendo's offering. (more pics and another review)

Making Mashups

Mashups are the cool thing to do now in mainstream music, and all you need are some mp3s and a home computer to do it. The only thing is that you gotta do it right, so read this tutorial on how to create mashups and get going.

Sleeping on Sushi

Sushi is yummy, but would you want to sleep on them? Of course you do, that's why this company has created sushi pillows. At least it doesn't get messy when you lie down on them.

How Not To Train Dogs

The French police train dogs to sniffy out plastique by hiding plastique in luggage. Not just any luggage mind you, but real luggage that real travellers are using. So the question is, what happens if the dogs don't find it? Well the planes fly with it! Not the best system in the world I would say.

Hospitals That Are Just Average?

The New Yorker takes a look at a question that I guess is in the back of everyone's mind but no one want so think about it. Hospitals are not all the same and some are better than others, but will people accept the mediocracy or averageness of some hospitals? Using Cystic Fibrosis treatment in the US as an example, the article investigates how different institutes around America are treating the disease and how the top ranked institutions are better than other ones. In the end, it does make you think; is the hospital you're going to average and are you willing to accept that?

World's Largest Mall

Perhaps signalling the shifting of the guard, the largest mall in the world no longer belongs to the USA's Mall of America in Minnesota, but rather the new Golden Resources Shopping Mall in China is the largest in the world. Also released along with this news it the mall with the lowest density of shoppers -- also the Golden Resources Shopping Mall. So what's their claim to fame?

Humans To Live 1000 Years

It is being speculated that within the next 20 years, aging will be cured. Once that hurdle has been overcome, it is estimated that humans will live until they are 1000 years old, and they'll be youthful like a teenager for the whole time!

NEWS FLASH: Laptops In Class Are Bad

So there was this study done to find out whether or not students who use laptops get as much out of a lecture as people who pay attention. Surprisingly, they found that people who pay attention remember more about the lecture than those IMing or social networking or what not. I'm not sure if I agree with their results because from some of my lectures; I think you get much more from playing on your laptop.

Pacific & Market Village To Close??

Well hope you didn't have your hopes on going to a Chinese mall on X-Mas cuz they might not be open. Apparently the mall at Kennedy & Denison is jealous so they asked the government if they could open on Sunday. Well the government can't pick sides so they figure they might just force all Chinese malls to close on X-Mas. Fat chance on that happening.

Shania Twain is a Bot

So, there are singers who should really be actresses (like say Ashlee Simpson) and there are some actresses who want to be singers (like say Lindsey Lohan). Then you have people who are passable at both (J-Lo or Madonna) then you have Shania Twain. She's a singer you say but she's also an actress playing a one-dimensional role -- a singer.

What's Next After Bit Torrent

Well BT is the popular piracy app of the year, so the question is what will replace BT after it's been sued to death? Why de-centralized BT of course. The people behind Suprnova are creating a new app called Exeem to distribute stuff through the use of de-centralized trackers. So Suprnova does have a business plan after all.

Man Arrested for taking PhoneCam Pics

I thought this was a very obvious application for a phone cam, and am not surprised that someone got arrested for it; but I don't think it's news. Anyways, a man in Australia was arrested for taking pictures of topless women on a beach in Australia.

Christmas (& other holiday) Wishlists

I've thought about posting an Amazon wishlist, but I've always thought it was such a hassle since you had to enter all your stuff on Amazon etc etc etc. Well now you can create a Froogle wishlist and best of all, integrate it with your Blogger profile. Wait, I already have a blogger profile; that means it's not that much of a pain to create a Froogle wishlist. Yay!

The Newest Big Brother

A researcher at USC has come up and patented a system to distinguish various sounds from the environment. For his first application, he's developing a system to monitor high crime areas in Los Angeles and Chicago for gunshots

ATM dispenses Canadian Money?

A story on CBC talks about a CIBC ATM which didn't dispense Canadian money, rather it gave out Canadian Tire money. Nevertheless the people using the ATM were not to impressed that they received Canadian Tire money instead of Canadian currency. So remember folks, check the bills that you receive from the ATM.

Coolest Calendar on the Block

Wanna be the kid with the coolest calendar on the block at work? Then check out this site with a printable template of 12 sided calendars amongst other oddly shaped calendar things.

wiPod

If you have an iPod and a wifi enabled laptop with ya on the go, you will definitely need wiPod. wiPod lets you download locations of free wifi access points in major metropolitan cities to your iPod, so you can check out where the closest wifi AP is without having to warwalk around.

NewYorkChanging

NewYorkChanging has neat pictures of well, New York changing. They have a collection of shots of New York from 1938 and then in 2000 took the same pictures from the same angle in black and white so that you can see what has changed in New York in the last 60 or so years. I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been more drastic changes in the several pics I looked at.