Mmmm stuffing

I like stuffing (no not that kind of stuffing, although that's also good), the kind of roast turkey or chicken stuffing that's filled with bread and garlic and all kinds of goodies. Well this super stuffing takes it one step further. Take one Turkey and stuff it with a duck which has been stuffed with a chicken. Sound appealing? I thought so, and the fact that your arteries will be filled with three different kinds of avian goodness it another reason to celebrate. I reckon you could fit a few more things in there. Why not stuff the chicken with some spatchcock which has been stuffed with quails which have been filled with caviar. Now your talking, plus you better add a layer of tacos in there, everything is better when stuffed with tacos.



Thanks Mykl!

Caffeinated donuts

Yes indeed, the legend is true. The reason there were no updates wasn't because I was away on leave it was because I had a couple of caffeinated donuts. These things were like concentrated red bull mixed with a quadruple espresso and a small amount of horse tranquilizer. I awoke a week later somewhere in Mexico and was amazed to find a pygmy tribe living in the pocket of my recently acquired cargo pants. I jumped on a flight home by hiding myself in a shipment of beef entrails and arrived safely back at home base without any recollection of the previous week's events.

Life for sale

So, bored with your own life and looking for a change? Rather be a hippy living in Wollongong? Well for the meagre price of $150,000 (current bid) you can take over a persons life. This is a social takeover not a formal legal change of name or anything. Its an interesting idea though, probably inspired by that bodgy new movie coming out about people swapping lives or something. The trailer made me want to puke because in true Hollywood style both people find exactly what they are looking for by swapping lives but of course in the real world all they'd find is a percodan addiction and a bunch of mouldy old clothes.

Anyway if you really want to buy a new life then you better get cracking. The auction only has 5 days left.

Thanks Ingi!!

Hold Your Wee for a Wii

Although this story has a tragic ending I can't believe that some genius came up with the idea for a competition called Hold Your Wee for a Wii. One of the contestants was able to hold on for a while but after a while (and being kicked out of the event) they complained of a headache and soon died. It just goes to show how dangerous consuming large amounts of anything, including water can be. My advice, is if you really want a wii than just wait a freaking month or two until supply becomes a bit less of a problem and buy one then.

Update! Thanks Mykl for the update that provides audio of the hold your wee for a wii contest

Update 2!! Now they have gone and fired 10 people who organised or were associated with the contest. Its probably fair enough, I mean its a dumb contest to begin with and despite the fact that they got people to sign waivers it was just a bad idea. More firings I say!

Bacon Bourbon

Well back to posting about random cr@p on the net. This time it contains two of my favourite ingredients bacon and bourbon together in bacon bourbon. Results are as expected I guess, there is definitely a hint of bacon and the taste is perhaps a little strange. My guess is that these two ingredients, although extremely tasty probably don't go well together. Salty, meaty whisky isn't exactly my idea of a good time and bacon is just so much better when eating in large quantities fried up on its own.

iRiver S10 Review

Well, rather than posting random cr@p off the net I thought I'd do something more constructive and review the iriver S10 player that appeared magically yesterday.

First impressions: This thing is tiny! Literally about the size of a stamp with a full colour screen that enables you to click a direction to select songs etc. (No bodgy ipod shuffle lack of interface where you can't do anything). The screen is easy to read and the unit is very responsive. Sound quality it excellent. The only gripes I had are the extremely short headphone cord length and the included software.

In a bit more detail
Connectivity:
I think one of the biggest pluses in any mp3 player is not to be forced to use some proprietary software. In iriver's case they have a tradition of allowing their players to be used as usb drives. This is one huge plus and enables you to just drag and drop any files, music, pictures and stuff you like directly onto the player. Put music directly into the music directory and the player will find it and be able to play it. This aspect of the S10 works extremely well. The mini usb connector/adapter is cool but probably would be a nightmare to replace if you lost it. Its also tiny so be careful.

User interface:
The player itself feels well made and the user interface is reasonably intuitive. I had a brief glimpse through the manual and was soon able to work out all the controls. There is a clock (with alarm), picture viewer and fm radio all of which are easily found. Settings for the s10 are easily understood and even a novice mp3 user should be able to get the thing fired up.

Sound quality:
Like other iriver players I have used the sound quality is excellent and reasonably customisable. There is a bunch of settings for controlling the SRSwow (random sound processing stuff) and additional bass etc can be quickly added in. This thing sounds good out of the box and a bit of customisation is enough to make anyone happy.

Software:
The included iriverPlus3 software is pretty poor. It took forever to scan the music that was on my external drive and crashed once before working. I tried playing an mp3 directly through the software and it got stuck halfway through so I think there are quite a few issues. I also tried updating the firmware of the player and it kept telling me the network was unavailable. I guess this is one of the reasons that I thought the direct windows explorer functionality was so important because proprietary software usually sucks. The software did manage to update itself and if you had a small amount of music it probably would work reasonably well.

Battery life:
It's always disappointing to have a proprietary battery in a player because when the battery dies there is no way to replace it. If you want to travel with the unit you'll either need to take a laptop to charge it or buy a universal usb charger. The claimed battery life of the S10 is around 8 hours and I haven't tested it fully yet. Charging takes 1.5 hours for a full charge and about an hour will get 80% charging. Seems pretty reasonable for the size of the unit.

Recording:
There is a microphone for recording and you can directly record fm radio. These are both semi-useful but not essential features. It appeared that when recording you can only record to WMA files but more fiddling will have to confirm this. There is no line in so you can't record directly from another source but in a player this size you wouldn't expect it.

Overall: 8/10
Ignore the inbuilt software and use explorer its really an excellent little player. Tiny size, good sound, colour screen and nifty user interface. A shiteload more features than a shuffle which appears to be the only real competition in the tiny, tiny mp3 market and up to 2gb storage make this a pretty useful music machine. Cool style, excellent screen and big sound are a huge bonus in this little postage stamp.

Minor gripe: Oh yeah, they expect you to use the headphones in a lanyard style with the unit hanging round your neck. All well and good if you want to do that but useless if you want to have the unit in your pocket or somewhere else the headphone cord is just too short. So you might have to use other headphones.

The internets will improve our driving

I've noticed a few of these sites popping up over the web in the last few months and here is the first one I've seen for Australia. The basic premise is that if someone does something bad, good, exciting (mostly bad) on the road you jump online and enter the details into rate the plate. Over time a history of individual drivers is built up and hopefully people will eventually go in and check the site and realise they have been driving like a prat.

It's a really good idea and should help people learn about their own driving habits without entering some road rage situations. Some of the comments on here are downright funny, but also quite scary. So from now on be alert because the internets are watching your driving!

Thanks Mykl!

Virtual Tennis

In about 1983 there was a commodore 64 game known as virtua tennis, it was actually quite fun. You got to play as one of three or four top players at the time and you had a selection of about three shots (forehand, backhand, and smash) that would work depending upon where you were standing in relation to the ball at the exact moment you pushed the joystick button.

Well enough reminiscing its only 2007 and now they are broadcasting the Australian Open in second life. This is probably more accurate virtua tennis because each shot is captured by the cameras and technology around melbourne park and rebroadcast into the online world. It all sounds kind of weird and you can in fact wander round the whole of melbourne park and buy merchandise (both real and virtual) etc all in the virtual world. Supposedly this is the web of the future whereby pages aren't really pages but are instead a complete virtual world that you can navigate. The only shame about this melbourne park thingee is that it's invitation only. So if you got any spare ones send me one over and I'll conduct a full review including tasting all the virtual beer available.

Thermobaric bombs

For all those eeediots out there that are unaware of the definition of thermobaric, it clearly pertains to both heat (thermo) and pressure (baric). Now what has this got to do with you. Well these are the next load of suckers that will be flying through your cosy bomb shelter to destroy yo ass. Of course they won't actually be using these weapons anytime soon because my evil robot monkey super army will crush anyone before they can even develop these weapons. Instead we will live in a benevolent dictatorship where we must all bow down and praise our duck overlords.

Thanks Mykl!

Ducks are way smarter than you

Rather than just rob a pharmacy next time you feel like a free feed of happy pills you should instead consider the duck approach whereby members of the community effectively communicate and barter to organise themselves. Sure what they are bargaining over is duck childcare but the bartering principle remains the same. Now, I for one welcome our duck overlords and would like to offer them free accommodation whenever they happen to stop by the neighborhood.

Guilty until proven innocent

Sure taking Condoms filled with a white powder onto a commercial airliner is asking for trouble but somehow the american justice system held her for 3 weeks without ever proving that the condoms contained drugs. Eventually when it was found that the condoms contained flour they let her out but thats a long time to spend in the slammer for doing something that although stupid isn't illegal. So in true american tradition she sued and won $180K out of the deal for some false imprisonment. Excellent.

iPhone - destined to annoy me

I never liked apples. Their computers were always twice as expensive and half as fast as PCs and just having a cool design never made up for their other failings. In more recent years their iPods have also annoyed me by having half the features of good mp3 players and being forced to use iTunes which is just a purely evil piece of software.

So now apple have announced the iPhone which looks good but will probably disappoint. Sure its got a super detailed touch screen and some funky user interface but all the cool dfeatures, like incorporated google maps and decent online browsing are going to suck hardcore over the bodgy GSM network. Why not just make it 3g and be done with it???? So rather than just panning the phone completely i'd give it my top 5 reasons why the iPhone will suck.

1. Using this thing as a pda/web browser will burn a hole in your wallet faster than eating Beluga caviar for a week.
2. Touch screen interface actually difficult to use as its way too small to get any decent sized fingers on it.
3. Its made by apple so lots of stupid people will buy it without realising there are better products available at half the price.
4. It will be difficult to use as a phone because all the fancy interface and extra crap will make it damned hard.
5. The only way to msg or enter text is through the touch screen keypad which is guaranteed to be a slow annoying process.

Oh yeah if you wanna see the press release/specs go for your life.

Update!! Yeah, well if you want to see someone strap off my 5 reasons why the iphone is gonna suck then go for it.

R2D2 LCD/DVD/MP3/L337/AFK

Hmm, well everyone always wanted their own R2D2. He was always way cooler than that sleazy C3PO. I mean all that guy ever wanted to do was go around hassling people for help. R2D2 just got out there and conquered. Well now your own R2D2 can be purchased and he's way cooler than the original. His projector/DVD plays mooofies and tv shows, can handle mp3s and as much leia pr0n as you can handle. Plus as an added bonus he comes with a millenium falcon remote, sweet. Or you could just get the bodgy skype webcam r2d2 but I don't think it'd be as much fun.

Parisienne Charm

Everyone knows that the feeble residents of Paris are the friendliest in the world. From their happy go lucky smiles to their helpful directions when you can't find the Eiffel Tower (no I don't want la tour eiffel whatever the hell that is a tour of I dunno) they have comprehensively proven throughout the ages that Paris is the place to visit. Well now some regional Frenchie tourist board is providing you with some examples of the extremely good natured gestures that the Frenchies often make in the presence of foreigners. So get to the site, then get to Paris and get gesturing.


I mean look at this friendly chap, I think he is saying "I want to drive your Peugeot into a small canal"

Invisibility cloak now 5 minutes from production

Ah hah, now all your Harry Potter fantasies can come true. No, not the ones about Hermoine and that flying car but all the ones about invisibility cloaks. Using magic material that bends light in the opposite direction it should now be a relatively easy step to make an invisibility cloak or pretty much an invisible anything. Wow, think of the possibilities, an invisible Barbara Striesand, no one would ever have to look at that nose again. Or an invisible English cricket team, oh wait we already had that, that's why they lost the ashes 5-0, hahahahahahah.

Magic Pen!

As a purveyor of fine pens and writing instruments I normally write with a solid ivory nib dipped in pure melted gold, but as a novelty I might be tempted to try out this pen which writes in some alloy. Kind of looks like a pencil on normal paper but cannot be erased or anything else. I'd be slightly concerned that it would need sharpening after a while of use but hey it'd be worth it.

Indiana Jones and the scouge of my @ss

So, they are out there and supposedly making another indiana jones mooofie. With Harrison Ford and George Lucas and the helm its guaranteed to be a cash cow, but will it actually be any good. I'd say no way, and here is my 5 reasons why...

1. They'll use way too much CGI, George Lucas loves that stuff and indiana jones will never look good with that type of crap going on.
2. They've spent 10 years working on the script with about 5000 people having a go so the plot will make no sense at all.
3. The current crop of movies just can't match the renegade 80's style of semi comic and semi action styling. Nothing has come close since the late 80s.
4. Harrison Ford, used to be good - now too old to be doing any funky stunts.
5. Not enough tanks, there is no way they will include enough tanks in the movie, that is all.

Line rider

So, first week back from the holidays and what to do. How about wasting a few hours at Line rider! The site that lets you build a little world for a fun little guy to ride his sled through. Doesn't sound that exciting really, well give it a go and after a few attempts I guarantee you'll be hooked. Can you make him jump tall buildings, spin madly or do all kinds of other tricks. One of the better flash games I've seen for a while and much more amusing than trying to poke your eyes out with that Hoff doll you got for christmas.

Update!! Oh yeah, the version that I put yesterday was fairly basic. I recommend using this official version which contains way more features including the much needed erase button.