Category: Miscellaneous

No, I’m not talking about the computer store that I used to work at. I’m talking about the annual U.S. Memory Championship, held in New York on Saturday. I wish my memory was half as good as these guys. (Wired News Link).

The three-day international event pits mnemonic experts from around the globe in competitions that include memorizing a previously unpublished and non-rhyming lengthy poem in 15 minutes, and writing it down complete with proper spelling and punctuation; memorizing a list of 400 random words and reciting them back in order; and the dreaded “binary competition,” in which competitors have a half hour to memorize a random string of thousands of 1s and 0s.

I was browsing Blogger’s 10 most recently updated blogs this afternoon and I came across some random post that made me want to comment. At first I thought well, this person doesn’t really have anyone else commenting, and I don’t even know them. Also I’d be the only one commenting and just feel like I was throwing myself into their world uninvited. I also started thinking about whether I would want to leave my name there, or just post anonymously.

As you can tell, I haven’t put too much thought into this but I considered the fact that since I put up the comments two days ago I’ve only had 1 person leave a comment and he left that anonymously. His post wasn’t exactly astute, but did I mind? No absolutely not in fact I wish more people would post comments – assuming the comments are related to the post anyway. So here it is, an open invitation for metacomments – that is to say comments about comments. (Alternatively you can comment about the new word I just made up, “metacomment”.) Enough rambling. Please comment. Really.

If you haven’t seen this commercial yet, don’t waste anymore time, it’s GReeeAAATE!

When you’re done checking that one out, you might want to flip the next button because there are a plethora of gems on this site.

Update: Turnpike films no longer offers their videos for free general public consumption.

You have to check this multiplayer Cowboy game out. I am really impressed.

It might be redundant to say this, considering everything looks different, but I’ve been working on a site redesign – which I think is coming along nicely. I’ll have comments up soon, as well I’m still going to update the flash part at the top. Please let me know what you think.

Update: Comments are up, but the archives are a mess.
Another Update: Everything seems to be working great. Please feel free to comment if you think otherwise.

It’s a good thing I finally finished the Internet because it’s almost midnight and I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately anyway. I’ve been working on it pretty hard, you know, visiting at least 1 or 2 new sites everyday, and trying not to spend too much time on the same old sites.

Malware writers are releasing competing variants of current worms, each containing taunts deriding the coding skills of the others.

“And now the authors of MyDoom.G, spreading today, have included comments in the worm’s code insulting Netsky.

A similar message was found in Bagel J, also discovered today, which ended: “Don’t ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war?”

Netsky’s authors responded with the following message in Netsky.F: “Skynet AntiVirus – Bagle – you are a looser!!!”

“We have three different groups fighting here,” said Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research for F-Secure.”

I don’t know (or care) who’s going to win, but what I do know is that not one of these guys knows how to spell.

L-O-S-E-R (s).

The Mars Rover Opportunity is the first of the two twin robots to discover strong evidence that water once flowed on mars. “That does not mean life was there. We don’t know that, but this was a habitable place on Mars at one point in time,” said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres who works as the principal investigator for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rover missions. But as Squyres explains, “This was the kind of place that would have been suitable for life.”

Every morning on Rock 106’s morning show Fraser and Rosie reenact a scene from a movie and the listeners call in and guess the movie. This week they are doing all Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson movies. This was the scene they acted out:

FRASER
Can I ask you something?
ROSIE
(pause)
OK.
FRASER
Are you trying to steal my woman?
ROSIE
(pause)
I beg your pardon?
FRASER
You heard me, Coltrane.
ROSIE
(long pause)
Coltrane?
FRASER
What?
ROSIE
Did you just call me Coltrane?
FRASER
No.
ROSIE
You didn’t?
FRASER
No.

Since I thought this was a totally obvious movie I didn’t even bother to phone in. Too easy I thought. I got up and walked into the kitchen. I still hear the radio coming from my room. “Is it Zoolander?” asked one oblivious caller after another. “Sorry, it’s not Zoolander”. “Is it Zoolander?” “No.” “Is it Zoolander” “NO!” “Can I have a hint?” “Sure, this one has lots of big actors in it, Gene Hackman was in it” “Uh… I don’t know, are you sure it’s not Zoolander?”

At this point I was like trying to remember the number to call in because apparently nobody in Lethbridge can appreciate a quality stylized film. It’s one of my favorite movie. Luckily I have the number programmed into my cell phone and doubly lucky was the fact that I had charged it overnight. Rosie picked up and as Iawkwardlyy asked if they had an answer yet, I could hear my voice being broadcast live. “It’s The Royal Tenenbaums,” I stated.

So my prize for getting the movie right is two tickets to see Starsky and Hutch this Friday. With Anna-Maria in Edmonton, who will I take?

I am excited to get some sleep – but since it is 2:46AM and I wanted to celebrate my “being done”, I can’t exactly phone Anna-Maria and tell her the news, so I decided to post to the blog. Good night – I hope your paper writing experiences are better than mine.