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UtterlyBoring.com

• February 01, 2012
• 17:14

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Ladies: Having a hard time figuring out your clothing size? This little web app will help.
  • Fun with math: Dividing one by 99801 yields surprising result.
  • Fun Android toy: Wreak havoc on (and RickRoll) unsuspecting Wi-Fi users with the click of a button using Network Spoofer. Might as well just install Linux on your phone while you're at it.
  • Redbox puts the kibosh on WB's 56-day waiting period.
  • Monty Python troupe to reunite for film Absolutely Anything.
  • Tom Green (not that one) vs Tom Green (that one) and who has the rights to @tomgreen (Tom Green the comedian and his fans are idiots, basically).
  • How can a free conference call be free? Here's how.
  • Using Wireshark to capture, filter, and inspect packets.
  • In 24-hours, Reddit saves an orphanage (read more).
  • SOPA Protest Day: the largest digital protest ever. Now we just need to get rid of ACTA.
  • HTML5: Use the new and shiny responsibly. Look up HTML5, CSS3, etc features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them.
  • Looking for a car on craigslist? Carsabi will make that process a lot easier.
  • Ever wanted to grab the dominant color or palette from an image? This tool will help (get the code from github).
  • You knew the day had to come: A Fleshlight-holding iPad case (link safe for work, can't guarantee that anything past that is).
  • One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second -- and YouTube is helping you visualize that.
  • 45 Incredibly useful web design checklists and questionnaires.
  • Getting e-mail notification overload from all the social networks you're a part of? Use this site to tame things.
  • Bellbot is a simple little bit of code you can put on your site that will play a noise (bell, applause, etc...) whenever somebody buys something or does something on your site that triggers the code.
  • ThemeSquirrel is a great collection of Wordpress themes.
  • Google Public Alerts is Google’s new platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and everyday alerts such as storm warnings.

  
  

  
• January 31, 2012
• 17:02

  I Need To Go To Germany

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  For two reasons: One, so I can see my wife's birthplace, and two, so I can see this amazing model railway:

  Model railroads have always fascinated me, especially well-done ones. The East Cascades Railroad HO-Scale is impressive and is the largest and most detailed that I've seen in person (that I can remember), but they have nothing on this thing.

  
  

  
• January 30, 2012
• 17:09

  Most Commented Entries

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Site Info   [edit]

  It's been years since I've done this, but it's time to check on the most-commented-on entries for this site over the years. Most of these were from way back in the day but are still indexed well in Google. The top two still get comments nearly every day for silly, totally un-related stuff. It's an always-entertaining trip down memory lane, back to the glory days of this site -- back when far fewer people had blogs and far more people commented on the blog itself instead of via Facebook or the like. I also had more time to dedicate to the site, which I don't have nearly as much now. This blog had some serious Google Juice back in the day, hence the high number of comments on some of these.

  Because some of these really dated entries are listed so well on Google, I was able to get a few sponsored text links on the pages, which is always a bonus.

  So without further ado, the 30 most commented-on entries on this site:
  2255 comments: We All Hate Work (04/22/04)
  1266 comments: Have a small penis? (09/30/03)
  540 comments: Do Not Call List -- Red Hot, Big Loopholes (07/06/03)
  403 comments: Another Great Gmail Hack (09/06/04)
  402 comments: Panties Just For Men (01/13/05)
  398 comments: Extreme Dodgeball (04/18/04)
  390 comments: Do You Have Bright Green Poop? (11/24/03)
  317 comments: Yet another reason to hate PETA (12/29/03)
  302 comments: Only a band geek will appreciate this (03/13/03)
  281 comments: Help pay for a girl's boob job (01/09/03)
  258 comments: How to cancel an AOL account in 3 minutes (06/13/03)
  146 comments: Are hyphenated Yahoo names that rare? (03/16/04)
  142 comments: BendBroadband is Giving You More Speed... (03/21/08)
  138 comments: Sick and Politically Incorrect Jokes (09/19/04)
  119 comments: Sciatic nerve pinches hurt like hell - Update: It's more than just a nerve (07/09/03)
  115 comments: Kurt Kobain a better guitarist than Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana? Not bloody likely! (09/08/03)
  115 comments: Man gets jail for licking woman's feet in grocery store (08/27/03)
  103 comments: Learn to throw cards like a ninja (07/01/03)
  101 comments: That's One Killer Christmas Light Display (11/22/05)
  99 comments: Smack the Penguin (03/10/04)
  94 comments: Fun "Monkey Kick Off" Flash Game (03/18/07)
  90 comments: Michael Jackson has never had plastic surgery (02/03/03)
  89 comments: Another Reason to Hate AOL (06/24/04)
  89 comments: Anybody Actually Using Clearwire? (12/14/05)
  89 comments: Dateline to focus on Michael Jackson's face (01/19/03)
  88 comments: What comes after trillion? (09/10/03)
  76 comments: Man doubts his "World's Smartest Person" title (02/03/03)
  73 comments: A 2,200 Acre Mushroom in Eastern Oregon (07/07/04)
  62 comments: DHTML Lemmings (08/17/03)
  58 comments: Why not drug test teachers? (04/18/03)
  

  
  

  
• January 29, 2012
• 16:22

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Some great videos to kill off some copious amounts of time (and bandwidth). Enjoy!

  
  

  
• January 24, 2012
• 15:55

  Have A Couple Hours To Kill? Rewatch Star Wars, Episode IV

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  But this time, things are going to look a bit...
  
  This is the completed project from Star Wars Uncut (which I know I've linked to before, but can't seem to find). Star Wars Uncut was a crowd-sourced project where thousands of folks out there on the Interwebs remade "Star Wars: A New Hope" (aka Episode IV) 15 seconds at a time. It's hilariously brilliant. I haven't watched the whole thing, but did download it (YousableTubeFix is awesome) for future watching.

  
  

  
• January 22, 2012
• 16:47

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • This photograph is not free. This photograph is free.
  • Speaking of photos, here are 60 completely unusable stock photos.
  • Hope this blog keeps up: 1000 Tiny Thing I Hate.
  • When you have a need for a 55 gallon jug of lube, Amazon has you covered (be sure to read the reviews).
  • Just because: the Cat GIF Page.
  • Google is no longer going to maintain Sky Maps, instead making it open source.
  • Have a load of ads on your site? Google's going to penalize you in search results.
  • For those of you who don't know a thing about F-stops, ISO ratings, exposure times and the like when it comes to photography, this handy-dandy image will help you out.
  • Prepare to ace your job interview with this interview one-sheeter.
  • Appifier allows you to create a native iOS app for your Wordpress site in minutes.
  • Olly Moss has some great movie poster re-dos.
  • Morbid thoughts: This Is How You Die.
  • Simple guide for getting started on git.
  • For my reference, the Movable Type reblog plugin is over on github. Now if I could just find a way to get everything that's currently on BendBlogs.com into that pluging, I'd be all set.
  • Google Music Importer will allow your offline Google Music to be played in any player on your phone, as well as the ability to move the files off your phone as well.
  • Marble Arena 2 looks like a pretty sweet game that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

  
  

  
• January 19, 2012
• 22:49

  Learn Something New Everyday

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Weird   [edit]

  Nothing says Christmas like a nativity scene with a figurine dropping a load. This is tradition in some parts of the world, and folks have even created 20-foot tall versions of the Caganer.

  Via the ever interesting Now I Know.

  
  

  
• January 17, 2012
• 16:16

  Web Archive, Reddit, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Wordpress, etc... to Go Black Tomorrow in SOPA/PIPA Protest

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  In an anti-SOPA protest, Reddit, the Web Archive, Wordpress, Wikipedia and many, many others are going to go black tomorrow. Google is going to protest on their home page and OpenDNS is going to censor some results. I've considering blacking out my site, but am stupid busy at the moment (and have been for weeks) and would need to do some tweaks for things to not break. But you can easily black out your site by putting some JavaScript on your site from SOPA Strike or use the index.html file here or this Wordpress plugin.

  If you're wondering what the fight is all about, from a technical standpoint, this is a great write-up that I'm hoping stays up tomorrow. If you need a simple explanation of why SOPA/PIPA is bad, here's a good one:

  Sopa is all encompassing enough to include almost any site capable of hosting user content, from Reddit to Dropbox. This means that the government can and will enforce the law very selectively, which is the entire danger of the bill: it's a blank check.

  They could remove wikileaks because some article they link to has copyrighted material, or take down the site of some political watchdog group because one of their videos has music playing in the background.

  The lack of due process also allows the possibility that if a site hosts something the government doesn't agree with, all it would take is an intern uploading a random mp3 to said site to shut it down.

  Very dangerous s**t here.

  
  

  
• 15:57

  This Game Needs To Come To A Home Console. Now.

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  I linked to Super Mario Crossover a long while back, and it looks like version 2.0 is going to be awesome:

  When it's released, you'll be able to play it here. But since I can't stand playing games like this with a keyboard, I'd love to play it on my Wii with my classic controller.

  
  

  
• January 12, 2012
• 21:36

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  So I'm over my head cold (mostly) but now my wife caught it and is cussing me. Can't say that I blame her, as I felt pretty cruddy for a few days there. These were able to give us some enjoyment at least...

  
  

  
• January 09, 2012
• 22:51

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Geekdom   [edit]

  Plugged up with a bit of a head cold, but wanted to get these off my desktop (videos coming...uh...whenever...)

  • Look at this street view. Now move the camera up.
  • 35 Incredibly Useful Android Apps for 2011 (be sure to follow the links there for links to games as well).
  • Teardown of the nifty Nest thermostat.
  • Relive the reboot experience for a bunch of classic OSes.
  • In case you hadn't already seen this story last week, PayPal made somebody destroy an expensive violin to get their money back.
  • Speaking of violins, could you pick the Strad?
  • Planning ahead on major purchases this year? Here's the best time to buy anything.
  • Simple an easy way to record an MP3 on your computer.
  • Automakers have made great strides in fuel efficiency in recent decades, but the mileage numbers of individual vehicles have barely increased. An MIT economist explains the conundrum.
  • Professor seeds the web with trojan horse essay, just to see where it ends up. Somebody handed it in.
  • 2011's Best Posts on MetaFilter (don't know if this post regarding the music from O Brother Where Art Thou? is included, but it shoiuld be).
  • From the creator of ClockwordMod created a root-less tether.
  • Easily clean up your permissions on a bunch of social media sites at once.
  • If you use fon, be aware your password is being stored in plain-text.
  • Subway fare and pizza prices go hand-in-hand.
  • Abbey Road has a web cam with people regularly recreating a certain album cover.
  • News networks are ignoring SOPA legislation.
  • Mac Classic II vs. Macbook Air: Which boots faster?
  • Great list of well-done hacker-journalism in 2011.
  • Second Crack is a very simple static-file Markdown blogging engine. It's totally unnecessary and unsuitable for most people (which the author even admits), but it's still kind of interesting to me.
  • Looking for sheet music? There's a large collection of public domain music at IMSLP.
  • Make a resolution to learn to code.
  • visitor.js is a handy little script to personalize your web site based on a ton of variables about the visitor.
  • What's behind that short link? Found out with unFurlr, created by the awesome folks at Mailchimp.
  • I really wish I had the hardware to play with VMWare more as its high availability features look awesome. Anybody have some old servers they want to get rid off so I can learn a thing or two as I'd really like to gain some more useful experience in this stuff.

  
  

  
• January 06, 2012
• 23:03

  Kids Are Awesome

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Every parent has had this conversation with their kids (or something like it). And every time, it usually ends up something like this...

  
  

  
• January 04, 2012
• 21:52

  SOPA Wouldn't Save A Single Job

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Obvious   [edit]

  No matter what the MPAA tells you.

  
  

  
• January 02, 2012
• 22:49

  Flat Out Crazy/Stupid/etc...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Coat yourself in wheels, fly down a hill, pass a few cars ... all in a day's work:

  
  

  
• January 01, 2012
• 17:08

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • The best indie games of 2011.
  • The 20 best Android games for 2011 from the Android Market.
  • Top YouTube videos for 2011, straight from Google.
  • While a lot of these I knew (and use frequently), many I didn't: Environment variables in XP and Vista/7.
  • 30 Best Sources for Linux/*BSD documentation.
  • It's time to end the war on drugs.
  • Study links winning football and declining grades (done by economists at the University of Oregon, which is an appopriate place for that study).
  • Why (and how) we've switched away from Google Maps. If I could convince one of these map providers to use the home-numbering data that I helped put together for a local Sunriver map, getting guests to units would be a lot easier, as the numbering scheme is a bit weird on some of the streets.
  • Six writers, four producers, and the lyrics still suck.
  • Death to .DS_Store.
  • 10 More Common Misconceptions Dispelled.
  • Great idea, might do this for the geek keys I have at the office: RJ-45 key chain and rack.
  • Scheduled sending and email reminders in Gmail.
  • The Hassle-Free Guide to Ripping Your Blu-Ray Collection. I have a Blu-Ray player now, just need a Blu-Ray drive for my HTPC to rip some of these things on.
  • How NES Games (specifically, Super Mario Bros. 3) are made, in Japanese picture-book form.
  • Tens of millions of HP LaserJet printers vulnerable to remote hacking.I can't seem to find a list anywhere of the printers that are actually vulnerable, so I have no idea of the old HP 4100s I have here at the office need upgrades. I don't have any of them attached to the internet, so I'm not too worried, but if anybody has a list, please share.
  • Disney females brought to life (original artist is here).
  • Using computer science to solve Where's Waldo ("Where's Wally" if you're outside the US).
  • Great list of online learning centers (my oldest daughter has been playing on Khan Academy now and again, but the list here is good for everybody).
  • Automate your Dropbox with Dropbox Automator. Now that I have nearly 20GB of space on my Dropbox account (using my COCC.edu e-mail address, the ol' Dropbox/Adwords referral game, the getting started tab, the Dropbox 2011 Quest, plus the social-media freebies) I might have to start using it more often for larger files and collections.

  
  

  
• December 29, 2011
• 21:11

  This Kid's A Genius

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  This little girl would be fun to sit down and have a conversation with.

  
  

  
• December 27, 2011
• 22:14

  I Want A Piano Desk

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Everything's better when it's musical...

  
  

  
• 16:35

  Dec. 29th is Move Your Domain Day, and other SOPA Rants and Thoughts

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  While GoDaddy reversed their SOPA stance because of public outcry from fairly big names (and smaller single entities), you should still probably look at other options because SOPA is just such an ugly thing. It would mean the end of major sites with small teams. Naturally, groups like the RIAA are behind SOPA -- the same RIAA who pirated $9 million worth of TV shows.

  Seriously, if you don't know anything about SOPA, read up here, here, here (linked to before), here and here. Oregon's own Ron Wyden is trying to propose alternatives to SOPA.

  Many folks (except maybe this guy) are trying to move their business away from SOPA-supporting companies, me being one of them. I manage 60+ domains personally as well as for a few companies I work for, and am slowly moving them away from GoDaddy.com to NameCheap (affiliate link -- use that to transfer/buy, and I get a few pennies) for this along with a few other reasons. While GoDaddy.com is cheap, so is NameCheap, and their support/service has been better (and good lord, GoDaddy is always trying to upsell me a boat load of crap I don't need/want every time I try to renew something there). NameCheap is joining in on the call for a move your domain day on December 29th with $7 transfers, and they'll donate $1 to EFF for each domain transferred. While I can't afford to move all my personal domains at once, I will be moving them when renewal time comes up (I've already moved several of the company-managed domains I deal with). There's an easy step-by-step guide to move your domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap.

  Why do poorly-written laws like this even see the light of day? Seriously, Congress, it's not OK to not know how the Internet works (similarly, it's not OK to not know how Congress works).

  </rant>

  
  

  
• December 22, 2011
• 17:01

  Time Killer For The Weekend

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  I'm taking a three day weekend, starting tomorrow, so everybody behave until I get back. Here's hoping you and yours have a very merry (and safe) Christmas, and that you get or are able to give all the gifts you desire.

  Meanwhile, here is Coins, a very Zen-like game that is quite simple, but quite entertaining.

  
  

  
• 15:40

  That's What You Get For Teasing The Frog

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  
  

  
• December 19, 2011
• 15:47

  Help bojack.org Raise $10,000 For Charity

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Buck-a-hit day is tomorrow on bojack.org, where Jack will be giving a dollar to charity (up to $5000) for every visitor his site gets tomorrow. His goal for the day is to raise $10,250 overall through donations from visitors of the site (the previous record was $10,115).

  It's for a good cause, and a great bunch of charities, so be sure to click on over tomorrow.

  
  

  
• 14:14

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Some great videos to kill off your afternoon...

  
  

  
• December 18, 2011
• 15:56

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • The pr0n index "is a very silly web application that tells you what percentage of the internet for some given search phrase appears to be about porn" (safe for work, don't worry).
  • While I'm not a LAN-Party type of guy, you have to admire the effort this guy put into his house. Here's the back-story and the technical FAQ.
  • Hacking Google for fun and profit.
  • Are you the guy that always makes an idiot out of himself at the office holiday party? Let Office Party Rescue make your moronic behavior look tame.
  • Rain makes everything better.
  • What started as a personal project, quickly became an obsession for New York photographer Jamie Livingston, who managed to take a Polaroid picture every day for 18 years. You can see the photos here.
  • Horses**t: One man's rebuttal to iOS fanboys.
  • What if you did Twitter by mail?
  • From zero to Go: launching on the Google homepage in 24 hours.
  • Interesting project: Web hosting for your DropBox (comments that might better explain this).
  • The single-lane Super Highway is mesmerizing to watch thousands of user-created cars drive by.
  • Future Drama is taking another look at yesterday's future.
  • I'm thinking about trying out Geckoboard for giggles to get a bit of a real-time status board at an office I work at (if it could tie in with the Navis stuff, it'd be even better).

  
  

  
• December 16, 2011
• 18:03

  How To Lose $2400 in 24 Seconds

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Sad   [edit]

  On the Oregon Coast, no less...

  
  

  
• December 13, 2011
• 12:31

  Sci-Fi Has A New Common Enemy

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  We'll let George Takei explain...

  Side note: Carrie Fischer hasn't aged nearly as well as The Shat has.

  
  

  
• December 12, 2011
• 22:29

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  In Coleo, you're a gravity-defying bug that's pretty adept at climbing walls and make big jumps. Use that power to get through each level.

  
  

  
• December 11, 2011
• 16:51

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Please donate to the Internet Archive.
  • What really happened aboard Air France 447.
  • Who says computers can't be beautiful? This one blew me away.
  • Xeni Jardin has breast cancer.
  • Here is a great review of Twilight: Breaking Dawn.
  • Animated GIFs of cats, set to music. What could be better?
  • Are you a torrent user? What have you downloaded?
  • I was helping a friend redirect her old blog to her old blog to her new one, and these articles were immensely helpful in making sure I got the redirects setup properly.
  • Creepy genetic portraits.
  • Mythbusters stunt gone wrong damages home. What I want to know: Was the myth confirmed or busted?
  • A very expensive car crash involving eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini.
  • Nintendo's Miyamoto Stepping Down, Working on Smaller Games. This man's impact on gaming is legendary.
  • It's the little things that instructions easier to follow. Like on the Dropbox download page.
  • 'Investigative blogger' doesn't get journalist's protection, Portland judge rules.
  • BootMed's main goal is to help the average Windows user to recover a computer that will not boot. It's a live CD that most provides easy-to-use fixes.
  • Gow is a lightweight alternative to Cygwin.
  • I had been using PHDL for better looking (and more useful) directory listings, but h5ai is a really nicely done Apache index that beats the pants off PHPDL. See the demo here. Now I just need to go through and make this the default on my server...
  • What's on your learning list?
  • This is a good look as to how SOPA would be abused: ICE releases popular hip-hop blog's domain after year of deception.
  • F**k Passwords (great rant, but obviously a naughty language warning here).
  • Videos to come over the next day or two. I have a bunch of those to share.

  
  

  
• December 08, 2011
• 12:57

  You'd Never See This In America

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Scary   [edit]

  Only in India...
  

  
  

  
• December 05, 2011
• 17:27

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Kon-Boot is another handy way to bypass a Windows password prompt.
  • Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda (Slashdot founder) interviewed by Matt Haughey.
  • The US Government's $200,000 Useless Android Application.
  • The Federal Social Media Index is a great way to see how federal agencies are engaging with their audiences through twitter (Andy's introduction).
  • Need an image? Just type any_keyword.jpg.to in your browser. Like apple.jpg.to (Hacker News comments).
  • The footage the NFL won't show you -- the All-22 shot.
  • This Indiana Jones looks so much better than that Crystall Skull crap that was actually released.
  • Something for my reference: Deplying Windows XP Pro with all Post-SP3 updates and drivers (I didn't know DriverPacks existed).
  • fPrivacy Chrome Extension allows you to opt-out of those annoying Facebook application privileges (RequestPolicy will give you similar protection on Firefox).
  • Dwolla looks like an interesting service for microtransactions, now that everything under $10 is free.
  • Image ad blending works really, really well.
  • It's amazing what folks will do with Photoshop. Check out these before and after pictures.
  • Great list of Linux commands that I wish I knew about (there are some real gems in there).
  • It's lonely in the modern world...
  • Look, you moron, my name is... (naughty language warning).
  • Fine examples of idiots who can't park a car.
  • Twilight, reimagined as a tragedy.
  • Religious user freaking out about the FreeBSD logo.
  • PATRIOT Act Gives Foreigners Good Reason to Avoid US Clouds.

  
  

  
• December 03, 2011
• 23:07

  Congrats MVHS Football!

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Congrats to the Mountain View High School Cougars on bringing home the first football state title to Bend in 71 years (more in-depth story on OregonLive). We were getting scoring updates during our dress rehearsal for our concert tomorrow. As someone who was captain of a state championship team at Mountain View (1995 Cross Country), let me be the first to say you will never forget this day. I will never forget holding that Oregon championship blue trophy in my hands, presenting it to the school and the student body at an assembly, and I know you will not, either. No matter where all your lives go after this, there will always be this day, and you will always share this moment. Congratulations to all of you!

  
  

  
• 10:17

  Arnold Schwarzenegger at his Finest

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  If you remove all the DVD commentary from Total Recall but Arnold Schwarzenegger's, what's left is absolutely brilliant story telling.

  
  

  
• December 02, 2011
• 9:52

  Why The Sudden Fascination and Uproar With Smart Phone Rootkits?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  rants   [edit]

  In case you hadn't heard the news (if you follow tech news at all, it'd be hard to miss), pretty much all the major providers use Carrier IQ software on their smart phones (it's even a part of iOS on the iPhones, just slightly less sinister and easier to turn off). What is Carrier IQ? It has the potential to track and monitor everything to do on your phone and send it to a third party. Class-action lawsuits are being threatened, and it's starting to really creep everybody out. There's an Android Market App to see if you have it on your phone and ways to disable it.

  What I find hilarious about all this? Carrier IQ was discovered and disabled by Android hackers at least nine months ago. I know the ACS Syndicate folks released a Samsung Epic 4G ROM back in March with it removed and opened up their tools so others could use them. So obviously this is old news -- why the sudden uproar about it now? I've been rocking Carrier IQ-free (with SyndicateROM Frozen 1.2) for nearly a year now, and if you've been running CyanogenMod, so have you.

  Moral of the story here? Root your phone. It's easy, and your phone will run happier because of it.

  
  

  
• November 30, 2011
• 22:44

  I Was Just Cutting Onions, I Swear...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  This is the saddest/happiest video I've seen in a long time. As a dad to two daughters, I'm wouldn't be able to hold it together:

  
  

  
• November 29, 2011
• 13:01

  Upcoming Free Entertainment: Cascade Winds In Concert

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  I plug this event all the time (since I'm in it), and I haven't the foggiest idea if it helps or not, but here you go anyway.

  The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band presents their first concert of the 2011-2012 season Sunday, December 4, 2:00 p.m., at the Summit High School auditorium, 2855 NW Clearwater Drive, Northwest Crossing, Bend. This concert is free and appropriate for all ages.

  The concert will feature sacred selections. Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire, Brahms' Blessed Are They and Jean Sibelius' Finlandia will be included as well as works by American composers Alfred Reed, Elliot del Borgo, Frank Ticheli and David R. Holsinger. Full program notes can be found here.

  Come support our local arts community while treating yourself to an afternoon of superior music. For more information on the Cascade Winds Symphonic Band visit www.cascadewinds.org or call 541-593-1635.

  You can also see the event on Facebook and harass invite your friends.

  Hope to see you there!

  
  

  
• November 24, 2011
• 23:27

  Happy Thanksgiving

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Enjoy it with a little math lesson:

  
  

  
• November 23, 2011
• 16:08

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving. I will not be getting up at the crack of dawn for Black Friday, as sleeping in is a far more valuable use of my time than waiting in line for deals. Yes, there are good deals, but I don't have money to spend anyway, so what's the point?

  Meanwhile, here some links to occupy you for a bit:

  • A CPU-burner, but Escape The Map is kind of a cool promotional gimick.
  • Forward this to the folks in your family who aren't as Internet savvy: How SOPA would affect you.
  • Back to the Future (and its sequel) have nothing to do with the movies. They're well-done photographs of the same people in the same setting in the past and present-day (warning: couple NSFW).
  • Something to put on my Christmas list: Space Invaders (original reddit post is here).
  • Wondering if Sprint is upgrading their towers? Their new site will tell you (and it looks like they have upgraded some of them locally).
  • In his own words, why Jim Romensko left Poynter.
  • Mounting a hard drive as a folder on your Windows PC.
  • If you're the geek in the family, and you're heading out of town for the holiday, you know that your family's going to want you to look at their computer. Set it up so that you don't have to make the trip in the future.
  • The future, according to films.
  • Didn't know Remote Desktop had this functionality: Forward local drives to remote machines.
  • Great office project: RFID-powered beer machine (read more from the folks who created it on this reddit AMA).
  • Need some help writing those 500 word essays? How about some positive reinforcement with kitties?
  • Everybody's got a talent in life. This man's is being able to scream the 300 baud carrier signal.
  • While runas is a handy tool, RunAsDate is really handy to trick the program into thinking it's different date.
  • Bookmarking this for future use: System Restore Explorer.
  • While I've always used Process Explorer, What's Running looks pretty slick as well.
  • The Font-Bot Project, battling for the future of type supremacy with type-based robots.
  • Great list of single-purpose web sites.
  • Monitor the web sites your PC is connecting to.
  • Another one of the bookmarks: moment.js is a lightweight javascript date library for parsing, manipulating, and formatting dates.
  • How to access your machines using DNS names with dd-wrt (another one for the bookmarks that I need to setup my house).

  
  

  
• November 21, 2011
• 16:31

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  You needed something to watch, right? Enjoy.

  
  

  
• November 17, 2011
• 22:35

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  You just need to make Three Slices, that's all.

  
  

  
• November 15, 2011
• 15:03

  That's A Lot of Jelly Beans

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  I'm not a huge fan of the music (it's good, just not what I was in the mood for today, I guess), but the video is pretty creative, as it used a metric ton of jelly beans:
  

  Be sure to watch how it was made.

  
  

  
• November 13, 2011
• 17:15

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Need to get a bunch of links off my plate here...

  • Two new Fed GPS trackers found on SUV.
  • In defence of the Google chef...
  • I have no idea what these people do, but their "About Us" page is pretty fun.
  • parallel-flickr is a work-in-progress that mirrors Flickr photos, retaining permissions and URLs.
  • Speaking of Flickr (and the killing of a crapload of trees), 24 Hours of Flickr is an art project featuring print-outs of all the images uploaded to Flickr in a 24-hour period.
  • Apparently Commodore USA still makes computers.
  • The folks at Sesame Street are trying to figure out who their original Gordon was 42 years ago (the actor was only on the test pilot, replaced afterwards). Can you help them?
  • Windows 95 was distributed on 13 floppy disks and I probably still have nearly all of them somewhere.
  • One dude's rant as to why you shouldn't use MongoDB, though there are Hacker News comments to the contrary so take it all with a grain of salt.
  • If you do any e-mail marketing at all, be sure to checkout Emailology, the science of looking good in the inbox.
  • Finally some clarification for us Yanks as to the difference between Great Britain, UK, British Islands and British Isles.
  • Cards Against Humanity is like Apples To Apples for jerks (which, really, is how I like playing Apples to Apples anyway).
  • If you're trying to keep up with of all the Occupy (insert city here) news that's coming through social media, Occupationalist gives you a nice little dashboard to easily keep track of it all.
  • See, there's a scientific reason I like working in the dark.
  • Cardio does have to be boring if you have an iPad.
  • I've seen some of these creative applications of music notation, but I had no idea somebody actually tried playing "Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz". You can see the performance here.
  • Oldie but a goody(ie?): One man's quest to find the origins of Windows' "Autumn" wallpaper.
  • How to calibrate your HDTV and boost your video quality in 30 minutes or less.
  • Hadn't heard this story: Homeland security wants Mozilla to pull "Domain Seizure" add-on. The add-on in question can be downloaded here.
  • Steve Jobs's Real Genius.
  • Need CSS docs? InstaCSS will help.
  • It's still better than Comic Sans: A typface made with leg hair.
  • Channel.me allows you go beyond link or screen sharing and lets you navigate through the same website with folks.
  • Freelancer? Work from home? Feel like you need encouragement from bosses and/or co-workers? Here you go.
  • Schema.org is something I came across recently in homes to get Google to index some of the content on a site I work on slightly better (primarily user-reviews, in my case).

  
  

  
• November 11, 2011
• 21:33

  Online Checkout in Real Life

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Leave it to Google to make light of the online checkout process:

  
  

  
• November 10, 2011
• 12:46

  Time Killers For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Couple to knock off the rest of the afternoon...

  • Poleriders, from the same guy that created QWOP, so that should tell you something.
  • For the typography nerds, Shape Type requires you to get the characters to match the typeface properly (I got 68 out of 100).
  • Focus is a fun, unique, and exceedingly frustrating action game. If you want to get really miffed, try it on Insane mode.

  
  

  
• November 09, 2011
• 16:31

  Scary Stat For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Scary   [edit]

  AOL still has 3.5 million dialup subscribers.

  (I'll get some more links posted as the week goes on. I'm still recovering from several days of concerts and rehearsals, and actually want to see my family one of these evenings.)

  
  

  
• November 03, 2011
• 15:30

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Need to get these off my plate before I begin a couple nights of rehearsals before this weekend's concerts with 3 Leg Torso.

  • Is the link you think is really cool actually really dated? Find out.
  • Openfiler looks like a pretty cool SAN/NAS solution.
  • While Google will now tell your your IP address, you can also have somebody Groan Your IP.
  • If you could redesign a £50 note, what would it look like? Here are a few ideas.
  • That just looks...uh...awkward.
  • You get some weirdo replies if you're looking for sex on craigslist.
  • Angry that Redbox is hiking DVD prices? Blame congress.
  • Guide to sniffing passwords and cookies (and how to proctect yourself from it).
  • This apps going to get installed on my phone shortly: WiFiKill allows you to disable the Internet connection for a device on the same network. Meaning you could go to Starbucks with this installed on your phone and cause some havoc.
  • Stupid trick for the day: Make Google do a Barrel Roll.
  • Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice.
  • An analysis of Steve Jobs tribute messages displayed by Apple.
  • Famous logos done entirely in CSS.
  • The Superest: Who is the superest hero of them all?
  • My wife and I like British TV, and will be searching through this thread to see if we can find some other good shows.
  • I was doing some research on upgrading a computer for Revit use, and this forum thread needed to be bookmarked.
  • When I do this, I imagine I'm doing this.
  • Mapping an FTP server as a local disk drive (handy for old DOS-based programs if you want them to back up to a certain drive). Align the same lines, FTP Drive works as well, though I don't know about its command line capabilities.
  • Supercut is a great collection of "every _____ in _____" videos. Like every "Yeah" from Fargo.

  
  

  
• October 31, 2011
• 10:58

  Happy Halloween

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  OK, so we all know that I'm kind of "meh" about the whole Halloween thing (see my canned veggies labels or my concrete filled pumpkin ideas), but my family and kids all enjoys the day immensely, so I do my best to not be a party pooper. So with that in mind, here are a few so-bad-they're-funny Halloween jokes from Barney (share your favorites in the comments):
  

  What's a monster's favorite play?
  Romeo and Ghouliet

  What do you get when you cross Bambi with a ghost?
  Bamboo

  What's do you call a haunted chicken?
  A poultry-geist

  Why do mummies make excellent spies?
  They're good at keeping things under wraps

  What kind of monster is safe to put in the washing machine?
  A wash and wear wolf

  What do you get when you divide the diameter of a jack-o-lantern by its
  circumference?
  Pumpkin Pi

  Why do ghouls and demons hang out together?
  Because demons are a ghoul's best friend!

  What happened to the guy who couldn't keep up payments to his exorcist?
  He was repossessed.

  A family member just go a job at Starbucks (after paying the paychecks of at least a few of their employees with her coffee habit), and decided to celebrate by carving her pumpkin appropriately:

  

  Speaking of pumpkins, the largest pumpkin of the year received an amazing carving job.

  
  

  
• October 27, 2011
• 17:54

  I Had Nearly Forgotten About Apple's Rainbow Logo

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  But this Apple gift catalog from 1983 shows the rainbow Apple was on everything from coffee mugs, t-shirts, race cars, carpeted wall-hangings, and kites.

  
  

  
• October 25, 2011
• 12:01

  Time Killer For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Been a while since I've posted a good little time killer. It took me 893 clicks to get through One Button Arthur. How'd you do?

  
  

  
• October 23, 2011
• 17:39

  Reading Material (and some videos thrown in for fun)

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Have has just chaotic the last couple months, and work is just draining me. Here are some fun links and videos to make up for it.

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses.
  • Not that anybody was really paying a huge amount of attention to QR Codes, but now you have one more reason to ignore them.
  • Maxing out your dropbox referrals.
  • Rate everything on Jotly, where everything about your life is exciting to everyone (hilarious parody site).
  • For the popular music buffs: The Billboard Wayback Machine.
  • A reddit discussion asked whether you could destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if you traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion? Great discussion ensued, and now it's getting a movie deal.
  • The Argos Catalogue from 1976 is a fascinating look back.
  • If you're wondering what the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about, these infographics and data will help you sort it out.
  • People are notoriously quiet on the London tube. Here is one man's quest to strike up some conversations.
  • If anybody's looking to buy me a gift this holiday season, this camera would be acceptable (the body is $6800 -- seriously, if somebody's going to blow that kind of money on me, I've got some debt that I'd rather have disappear first).
  • Siri is a neat little toy, but she says some random stuff.
  • Fun story on data overload in MS Exchange (speaking of data overload, ever heard of a Zip bomb?)
  • 20 Useful Windows Registry Hacks.
  • The YouTube Insult Generator (might be handy for some of the videos below).
  • The Lifehacker Workout: Exercise for Normal People.
  • Playing Day Of Defeat as a photographer can bring out some interesting photos.
  • Take the Lollipop -- I dare you.
  • If you're looking to calibrate your fancy HDTV, this may help.

  Keep reading for videos...

  
  

  
• October 17, 2011
• 23:14

  I'm Going Straight To Hell For Laughing At This

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Michael J. Fox News, completely unfair, and definitely unbalanced.

  
  

  
• October 16, 2011
• 14:09

  You didn't want to get anything done today, right?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  I didn't think so. It's video dump time. Enjoy...

  
  

  
• October 12, 2011
• 23:52

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • A world without mosquitoes wouldn't necessarily be a bad place.
  • Leave it to some nerd to analyze the mathmatics on the blackboards of porn movies (safe for work, don't worry).
  • Time-zone database gets taken down thanks to threat of lawuit, but thankfully gets rebooted.
  • Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An A**hole).
  • May have linked to this before, but it bears mentioning again: fascinating map of submarine cables.
  • MS Paint is actually more powerful than you think.
  • An amazing way to celebrate a birthday, by collecting decades of memories.
  • The birds and the bees, Dr. Suess-style: Now That You're Big.
  • Handy little tutorial to view mobile web sites in your Windows system tray.
  • If I ever get an Android tablet, this is the first keyboard I'm installing: the Hacker's Keyboard.
  • The Wadsworth Constant (which become famous quick) should be the default on every YouTube video. Basically, a guy on reddit always opens YouTube videos and immediately punches the slider about 30% forward. That skips the crap in 99% of the videos out there and save a ton of time. An engineer at YouTube liked the idea so much, they implemented it. Just append "&wadsworth=1" to any YouTube URL, like so.

  
  

  
• October 10, 2011
• 10:15

  Qwikster Not Going To Happen: DVDs will be staying at Netflix.com

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Netflix CEO does an about-face, realizes that it was a really bad idea, ditches the Qwikster idea.

  Any bets on how long until their CEO is out of a job? This was one of the biggest business screw-ups I've seen in a long time.

  
  

  
• October 05, 2011
• 19:00

  RIP Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Sad   [edit]

  Say what you want about Apple, but the world of technology and business (and the world of movies, for that matter) would not have been the same without Steve Jobs, who passed away today. Apple's announcement is here (and they did the right thing and took down their iPhone 4S promo on the front page of the site). To quote the man himself:

  No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

  Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

  Cancer sucks. It took my uncle last week, and took Steve Jobs this week.

  
  

  
• 14:11

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Just wanted to get these out of my way before I head out of town this weekend.

  • Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists.
  • DIY Portable Wedding Photo Booth (looking at this for another project, non-wedding related).
  • Ken Jennings is awesome, and you can help him write his new book.
  • Frozen solid, but this hard drive still works.
  • Why You Should Not Go To Medical School.
  • What good developers should know about sending e-mail.
  • Some ways you can earn money in your sleep.
  • Inside the World's Largest Embassy (here's a hint: It's in Iraq).
  • An amazing nine-year journey of a rookie artist.
  • Google and SolarCity work to make Solar Power Affordable.
  • Zach Braff answers your questions.
  • Woot CEO Matt Rutledge starts a new business, Netflix/Qwikster-style.
  • If you do mobile development at all, this table of HTML5 support in mobile browsers will need to be bookmarked.
  • Looking to make an Android phone a little more "old blind grandma"-friendly? BIG Launcher might be just the ticket.
  • This is a really handy script to automate a lot of computer repair and clean-up tasks.
  • Need map icons? Here you go.
  • Use the Internet to investigate your next date, coworker, or friend, without being creepy.
  • Seven-year-olds say the darndest things.
  • Is anybody else see the same type of things in the most popular infographics.
  • The 21 Greatest SEO Myths of the Modern World.
  • Create a state of chaos in your town.
  • Updated list of Microsoft's Best Free Downloads (lots of good tools on there).
  • Need to inventory all your DVDs and such? This app might help, allowing yuo to scan everything with your phone to a separate program.
  • Everything is better when it's said in llama.
  • Google Wallet, hacked to run on more phones.
  • 10 Ways to Turn Your Retired Gadgets into something useful.
  • ColorBox is another lightbox plugin for jQuery, but this one is really lightweight compared to others out there (which is why I'm going to use it on some projects).
  • Did you know you could hyphenate in Firefox and Safari? Me neither. Here's a way to do it on other browsers.
  • Interesting discussion on using font-embedded icons instead of sprites.
  • Tabpress looks like a simple way to create custom tabs on your Facebook page. Will be trying it out on my day-job pages.
  • Worried about somebody stealing your PS3? Setup a dummy PS3 with a GPS tracker.
  • I've been going through all my ripped DVDs and trying to remove duplicate audio tracks (as I mistakenly had a stereo track plus an AC3/multi-channel track). MKVToolnix (specifically, the mkvmerge program) and Yamb have been able to simple take care of my MKV and MP4 files (respectively) and knock some bits of space off the sizes of those files.

  
  

  
• October 04, 2011
• 12:51

  Meanwhile in Russia...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Sorry about the lack of posting lately. Family stuff and now an illness has been kicking my butt.

  
  

  
• September 30, 2011
• 20:19

  Anybody in Portland-area have a place my family and I can crash next Thursday night?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  If any friends or family in the Portland/Beaverton/etc... area would like the pleasure (or displeasure, depending on how you look at it) of our family's company the night of Thursday, October 6th, and has room for all four of us (my wife and I and two daughters) to crash there for the night, send me an email or note or something (jake {at} orty {dot} com). I will be attending a funeral on Friday morning (the 7th) in Forest Grove and I can't say that I really want to drive from Bend at the crack of dawn if I can avoid it (that's time I'd rather spend with my family up there). I'd ask the family I have in Forest Grove, but I have a feeling that they're already going to be full up (as there are people coming in from all over for this funeral).

  
  

  
• September 29, 2011
• 11:19

  I'm Such A Nerd

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  But I'm sure I'm not the only one that recognizes that Imperial March being played by two floppy drives is pretty dang impressive:
  
  Here's a write up on how the guy did it.

  
  

  
• September 28, 2011
• 23:01

  Craigslist Sues Man, Wins $1.2 Million Default Judgement, All Without Him Knowing

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Stupid   [edit]

  Does anybody else find craiglist's tactics a little psychotic here?

  The guy started a reddit thread that discusses this whole idiotic mess as well, but craigslist is basically trying to destroy the life of a man who created software (which he's since pulled) that made posting to craigslist easier.

  
  

  
• September 26, 2011
• 22:23

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Enjoy!

  
  

  
• September 25, 2011
• 23:43

  Need Some Decor For Your Office?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  How about some do-it-yourself paper people?

  
  

  
• 23:36

  Everything's Better With A Little Facial Hair

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Especially when it's facial hair that's as awesome as Tom Selleck's moustache:

  
  

  
• September 22, 2011
• 16:07

  Why Netflix Is Splitting Itself In Two

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Leave it to The Oatmeal to explain this stupidity perfectly.

  
  

  
• September 21, 2011
• 23:50

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Comcast's low-income $10-per-month internet service goes live. It's for families who have children enrolled in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which, I think means I would qualify, since my kids get reduced lunches at the schools. Wish they offered something like that here.
  • Super Smash Land is an epic demake of the Smash Bros series to make it look like it's being played on an old Game Boy.
  • The Boston Globe's new design takes fluid design to a whole new level. It's brilliantly done. A designer in that was part of the project wrote up his experiences here and Hacker News has some good comments.
  • Something for my project list: How to Automatically Cool Your Entertainment Center When It Gets Too Hot.
  • Teen with no vagina becomes pregnant from stab wound.
  • The Monks that participate in Kaihogyo are nuts, running thousands of miles over a three year span. Read more on everybody's favorite source.
  • Bear Grylls fan? He's answered some fan questions.
  • Writing a web application is not just LAMP any more. There's more to it.
  • Fix for VLC (my media player of choice) Skipping and Lagging on High Def videos.
  • Like Synergy, Mouse Without Borders allows you to share a mouse and keyboard among multiple computers. It only works for Windows 7 (while Synergy works on multiple OSes), but it's really slick and easy to setup.
  • Sick of ads playing in Flash videos? AdBlockVideo for Firefox might help (haven't tried it yet personally).
  • This man is such a rebel.

  
  

  
• September 20, 2011
• 0:21

  Does Anybody Else See This As A Really Bad Move For Netflix?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  You can read the official word from Netflix here, but it just seems that their plan to spin off their DVD-by-mail service into a new entity (Qwikster) is going to kill their hard-earned brand. Nevermind the other hassles that come along with maintaining two similar, but different, accounts on two different sites (I'm sure somebody will create a browser extension or Greasmonkey script to make things easier by pulling content into one or the other).

  Personally, this comment is probably the best explanation of all this I've seen:

  This is great news! My dentist just did the same thing. It's so much better. Now when I have cavities on my top row of teeth I go to one dentist, and when I have cavities on the bottom row, I go to the other dentist across town. Sure it's frustrating that sometimes they can't access my dental records that used to all be in one place, and yes I admit that it seems strange that they now charge me almost twice as much for the exact same dental care I received six months ago...but they are innovators! Besides, what choice do I have? They're the only two dentists around. Well done Netflix! If it ain't broke then don't fix it. Simply hike the price, alienate your customer base and complicate your user interface under the guise of "progress". Kudos.

  That all being said, if it gets me incredible streaming service, I'll drop my DVD-by-mail service in a heartbeat. If they had their entire DVD library digitized, then I wouldn't even have to worry about this whole mess. But Netflix's recommendation engine has found me some cool shows, and I hate to lose that when I have to maintain two separate queues and rating systems that won't communicate with each other.

  
  

  
• September 18, 2011
• 15:02

  Idaho Has Some Nice Areas...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  ...but with the slowest Internet in the country, you better believe I wouldn't move there. Sorry, even in the middle of nowhere, I need good 'net access that isn't affected by bears rubbing against towers.

  
  

  
• 13:43

  I Need One Of These At My House

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  This fountain can do some amazing things:

  No, it's not just light flashing on the water, the water is actually shaped like that.

  
  

  
• September 15, 2011
• 16:16

  Time Killer For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Red is a simple Missle-Command-style game that's easy to play, tough as nails to master, but a lot of fun. I surived 403 seconds on my first attempt. How'd you do?

  
  

  
• September 14, 2011
• 0:03

  Will Ferrell Is Funnier When He's Making Stuff Up

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  While his scripted stuff is hilarious, the bloppers from those movies of his are even better:

  
  

  
• September 12, 2011
• 17:09

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  As promised, a bunch of videos that needed to be shared. Watch them all after the jump...

  
  

  
• 16:55

  Link Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Sorry about the lack of regular post frequency the last few weeks. My personal and professional life have been a been chaotic lately for reasons I won't go into here. That being said, I have a metric crapload of links and videos I need to share (videos will come later). Enjoy!

  • Apparently there's a site where you can review and rate prostitutes. Shouting at Cows has gone through the archives and found some real gems.
  • For obvious reasons, I didn't post many of these links yesterday...The Decade of 9/11: war without end.
  • Ten Years On, Sick Ground Zero Workers Still Without Proper Care.
  • Wasn't The PATRIOT Act Supposed To Be About Stopping Terrorism? It hasn't been used as such.
  • Homeland Security: The Decade's Biggest Scam.
  • On 9/11, I will....
  • The True Cost of 9/11: Trillions and trillions wasted on wars, a fiscal catastrophe, a weaker America.
  • Why does Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Hate America?
  • Speaking of Fox News, what is it really like to work behind the scenes there? Read on.
  • Why Wal-Mart's veggies are so crappy (taken from this AMA with a Wal-Mart Store Manager).
  • Speaking of Wal-Mart, it's fun to play with their phone system and screw with employees.
  • Great list of insightful and thought-provoking websites.
  • Wall-E may be a PC, and Eve a Mac, but who really is better?
  • Wikileaks posts all cables unredacted.
  • Librarian: Very useful libraries manager for Windows 7.
  • Why it's really nice to have a Samsung Galaxy phone: They're really hard to brick.
  • Rick Perry has a BIG Porn Problem.
  • Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda resigns from Slashdot.
  • Get a full body workout with nothing but your body.
  • Jewel Staite has a food blog that's quite entertaining: Happy Opu.
  • I could watch this for days.
  • From Montior to Mobile: Optimizing e-mail newsletters with CSS.
  • spin.js is an easy way to create one of those loading spinners without any images.
  • Requests: is HTTP library, written in Python, for humans.
  • Superior alternatives to crappy Windows software (most of these alternatives I have on my system).
  • The Star-Wars films are coming to Blu-Ray, and they're getting changed again.
  • History's Biggest Mindf**ks.
  • Why Amazon can't make a Kindle in the USA.
  • A Faster Internet.
  • Amazing paper sculptures.
  • 10 Repair Projects you Should Never Pay For.
  • Web server optimizatin at its finest: 9 million hits/day with 120 megs RAM.
  • I really need to get some "Game Of Thrones", as the visual effects look stunning. Here are a couple of amazing special effects reels.
  • The New Apple Advantage.
  • When you're drinking, your recollection of things that happened is usually quite a ways off.
  • After 17 year ban, you can finally buy Doom in Germany.
  • The east-coast earth quake last month was felt on twitter before it was felt in real life, as XKCD predicted.
  • How to back up printer drivers and restore them on another computer (had to use this the other day when I needed printer drivers but the site to get them was down).
  • What's powering that favorite website of yours? Find out with Under The Site.
  • Congress-Man: Worst. Superhero. Ever.
  • Redesigning the browser window.
  • Microsoft's idea of a streamlined and optimized UI for Windows Explorer is anything but.
  • Great minimal business card idea (similar). Then just get it printed up on MOO MiniCards for the full minimalistic approach).
  • 15 Inspiring HTML5 experiments.
  • The Redditor, The Number One (and only) Unofficial Reddit Magazine.
  • Edit: One more....Before/after photos of the Japan Earthquake, six months later

  Videos coming later...

  
  

  
• September 09, 2011
• 0:21

  Need A Smile?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  The description of this video says it all:

  An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano. They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year. Check out this impromptu performance. We are only as old as we feel, it's all attitude. Enjoy! They certainly do

  
  

  
• September 07, 2011
• 18:12

  I've Always Hated The Just-After-Race TV Interview

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  I've a track-and-field fan, always have been, but I never quite understood the rationale for interviewing people immediately after they've won a race. I understand why it's done -- to get that immediate emotional response -- but 99% of the time they're utterly exhausted so they can't talk. Sometimes their brains are fried from what they've just accomplished, like is the case here, where this woman's still in shock as to what just happened:

  
  

  
• 18:07

  9/11: The Photographers' Stories

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Well worth the read: A four-part expanded oral history of September 11, 2001, told by the photographers who documented it .

  
  

  
• September 05, 2011
• 23:47

  Whatever Happened To Steve From Blue's Clues?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  He grew up. Anybody who has kids will recognize this guy.

  
  

  
• September 04, 2011
• 20:01

  Why I Don't Play Online Multiplayer Games

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Because I'm a grown-up and have better things to do (naughty language alert).

  
  

  
• September 01, 2011
• 18:13

  This Is How I Feel About Planking

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Seriously, what kind of person finds planking entertaining? Stocking is far more entertaining.

  
  

  
• August 31, 2011
• 22:18

  "I am not a robot, I am a unicorn"

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  What happens when you let two chatbots talk to each other? Comedy gold:

  
  

  
• 22:11

  Hong Kong Might Be Out Of Child-Bearing Women By The Year 2798

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  Never really thought about this, but with women in richer parts of Asia going on a "marriage strike," there could be a point where several countries run out of women

  
  

  
• August 30, 2011
• 23:44

  I Know What I'm Going To Do With My Wii

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Load time is always an issues with Wii games, it seems. Our kids play the Wii extensively and it's always fun for parties at the Ortman house, but sometimes it's a buzzkill when you're waiting for the next song to load in Just Dance 2. It'd sure be nice if it could load off the hard drive.

  There have been ways to hack the Wii before to play games off a hard drive, but they usually involved an ugly exploit or game hack to get it to work. Lifehacker shares a quick five-minute process to hack your Wii. Then you can run games off a hard drive, which will be really handy so the kids don't keep scratching up my their disks.

  Now if I can just convince the wife and kids to let me tinker...

  
  

  
• 23:27

  I'd Hire This Guy

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  When I ever get a chance to put up a good online resume (instead of my basic PDF version that really needs to be re-written and updated), I need to create something as frickin' awesome as this.

  
  

  
• 18:29

  It's Super Mario Bros. with a Portal Gun

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Mari0 would be a lot of fun to play:

  Yes, it is under development.

  
  

  
• August 28, 2011
• 17:46

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  You're a penguin. You want to fly. Go for it in Learn to Fly 2

  I can't honestly remember playing Learn to Fly, the original, but here it is should you want to try that first.

  
  

  
• August 25, 2011
• 13:16

  Apparently People Are Still Looking For Google Plus Invites

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  If you are, I have 149 here. Knock yourself out.

  
  

  
• August 23, 2011
• 23:48

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Need to get these out of my stash...enjoy!

  
  

  
• August 22, 2011
• 23:56

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Safety Instructions will put your typing skills to the test. You screw up, you kill the airplane passengers. So don't screw up.

  
  

  
• 23:54

  Been On A Bad Date?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Could you sum it up in 140 characters?

  
  

  
• 23:50

  Only In Portland...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  ...would you find a bagpipe-playing unicycler -- aka, the Unipiper:

  His neighbors must love him.

  
  

  
• August 18, 2011
• 16:48

  Time Killer For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Wonderputt is a mini-golf game not quite like any I've played before. I've seen putt games like this before, but none were this creative, nor did they cram 18 holes into the screen.

  I scored 69,477 on my first try after 18 holes (finished five-under). Probably would do better a second time around now that I know how to complete some holes (and you get "Wonder" points a second time through). How'd you do?

  Update: I need to quit playing this now. Second time through I was 31 under par, got 60000 wonder points, did it in 5:45, for a grand total of 144,655 points that time around. Was kind of miffed I didn't fill the rainbow, though.

  OK, I need to walk away.

  
  

  
• August 17, 2011
• 0:01

  More Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Following up on last night's dump, here is a bit more...

  • World War II, the homefront, in color.
  • Have a rooted Android phone and want to watch videos via the Google Videos app? You can't, unless you have this hack.
  • Fark Gets Patent Troll To Settle For Nothing. Read Drew's post here.
  • Heello is Twitter for Pretenders.
  • openbook is a search engine for public Facebook updates (whether they were meant to be or not).
  • Life on the Command Line.
  • The Secret Ingredient In Your Orange Juice.
  • Creepy iPhone case of the day: A child's hand.
  • Old folks with great AMAs on Reddit: 94 years old, shooting for 100 and an 82 year-old-man on the Internet for the first time.
  • The Art of the Menu showcases some really unique restaurant menus.
  • Red Robin's have a People's Burger competition, and I created one that you can vote for. Anybody's who's eaten a burger at the Westside Cafe will recognize it.
  • passphra.se allows you to generate long passwords that are easy to remember, inspired by this xkcd comic.
  • 360° Panoramic Views of Hiroshima after the Atomic Bomb.
  • My response to the Chain World mutation (read the links in the post for links to what the whole Chain World thing is).
  • Good jQuery and Javascript tutorials and training.
  • May have linked to this before, maybe not: Nesfun allows you to play old NES games in your browser.
  • I've been using MailChimp at work for a few months and am loving it. They recently created a Wordpress plugin called Social that allows your blog posts to seamless integrate with Facebook and twitter. I'm seriously considering moving this blog to Wordpress, but need to learn more about its templating language first.
  • If you need a joke that has a really long setup for a pretty cheesy punchline, this is the one.
  • Proxino is a cool tool to optimize and monitor your javascript.
  • May have linked to this before, too, or at least something that has similar functions, but html5media enables <video> and <audio> tags in all major browsers.
  • A good references for Facebook's various social plugins.
  • AeroFS is Filesync without servers. It's basically a peer-to-peer filesystem.
  • Techcrunch Defending Android looks into why it thinks Google bought up Motorola Mobility.
  • Shortmail is like twitter for e-mail, limited messages for less than 500 characters.

  
  

  
• August 16, 2011
• 0:03

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Great move for Google and for Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility.
  • I agree with Warren Buffett: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.
  • How to put your logo in a QR code.
  • Ken Jennings has a great blog (that I've linked to before), but now he's also writing for Woot's blog (which is having a Woot Off today).
  • According to the US Treasury, S&P downgraded the US credit rating by ignoring a couple trillion bucks.
  • Despite the downgrade, our credit is still better than most of the planet.
  • Apple Does Not Have More Cash Than The US Gov't; Stop Saying That It Does.
  • We knew the deficit would rise, because Obama didn't actually lie about the numbers like Bush did. Quoting the story from 2009: "For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller."
  • Use Jonathan's Card (which may or may not be fake) to buy yourself an iPad..
  • One man's quest to build a perfect SNES emulator (and the processor power involved to do it).
  • What would happen if major brands swapped logos?
  • Wow, there are some bad ones here: What's the most enraging thing a computer illiterate person has said to you when you were just trying to help? I'm going to use this analogy on a fairly regular basis, I have a feeling.
  • It may look like a "hosts" file, but it's not.
  • If you run a DHCP server, this might be worth reading: Rapid DHCP: Or, how do Macs get on the network so fast? Now I just need to figure out how to make these tweaks on a pfsense and/or dd-wrt routers.
  • You're mad about something on the Internet. What do you do?
  • It's over a year old, but it's new to me. Something to be proud of, just the same: Oregon is number two in nation in penis size
  • I've gotten addicted to the Now I Know daily newsletter, which has had some great tidbits. The Spirit of Butts Farm and The Old Man Of The (Crater) Lake where both interesting. Yes, I know I probably should have known about the The Old Man Of The Lake, being from Oregon and all, but sadly, I did not.
  • How do you seem good at everything: Stop doing stupid s**t.

  More tomorrow, I need some sleep.

  
  

  
• August 12, 2011
• 21:33

  Anybody have an old GSM (T-Mobile) phone they want to get rid of?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  My mom-in-law needs a new cell phone for her T-Mobile plan. Anybody have an old phone that will take a SIM card that's stupidly basic and simple that is collecting dust? No fancy features, just a flip phone that will make calls and has easy-to-read buttons (mom-in-law friendly). I have a pile of carrier-locked CDMA phones, but no GSM phones (AT&T, T-Mobile, etc...).

  E-mail me if you have one that I can take off your hands.

  
  

  
• August 11, 2011
• 18:24

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Notebook Drift is a fun little game where you guide a car around by dropping magnets to control its drift. Gets tough fast, but still quite fun once you get the hang of it.

  
  

  
• August 10, 2011
• 23:22

  Any Remember "Saved By The Bell"?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Well, this is nothing like it. Really.

  OK, it's sort of like. Maybe. From Waxy's descriptions, it's an stupidly-violent Saved By The Bell parody with the cast of Final Destination 5. And ultra voilent it is.
  

  
  

  
• August 09, 2011
• 23:45

  Got A Smartphone? Want Free Coffee?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  Jonathan Stark is trying out a little social experiment. He's posted his Starbucks card image online and you can use it, free of charge. But he's also made it so people can pay it forward, and add value to the card so somebody else can get a coffee. The live balance twitter feed shows fluctuations of the balance, when the card goes empty (which is often), etc... . It's actually amazing to see people adding value back to it and how fast it goes away. This guy added $100 to the card, and it was gone in about 60 seconds.

  
  

  
• 21:46

  How Big Of A TV Should I Buy?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  No, not for me, as my TV (which, because it's old, has apparently made it really expensive) is fine. But if you're shopping for a TV, this handy tool will allow you to upload a picture of your room and see how large of a screen you should get.

  
  

  
• August 08, 2011
• 18:16

  Telling It Like It Is: WTF Central Oregon

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  WTF Central Oregon is, as the creator puts it, "an uncensored view on Central Oregon life, news, and events." Which means rants and rave with some naughty language thrown in, but his videos are still quite an entertaining look at Central Oregon. Here is his latest video (naughty language warning):

  He's right: Why should we waste tax payer money on the drunkards that float the river?

  
  

  
• August 06, 2011
• 0:44

  Building A Newsroom Time Machine

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  This sounds fun for an ol' newsgeek like me. The FAU's inagural All On Paper Project forces college journalists (and some seasoned pros) to get their hands dirty and produce a newspaper the old fashion way. Here's how it went.

  
  

  
• August 05, 2011
• 10:59

  This Is What Happens When Grown Men Play With Children's Toys

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  They make sweet stop-motion videos:

  
  

  
• August 03, 2011
• 23:19

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Not To Scale didn't seem like something I'd like at first, but it started to grow on me, then I had completed all the levels. The object of the game: Complete the picture in each level by swapping around the image fragments. However, to complicate things, some of the pieces are not to scale.

  
  

  
• 18:32

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  As promised, a few videos to kill off some bandwidth...

  
  

  
• August 02, 2011
• 23:32

  Holy Cow, That's A Load Of Links

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Finally getting around to a post-vacation link dump -- hang on for the ride...

  • Why John Mayer quit twitter.
  • There's an abundance of stock art if you're doing stories about hackers.
  • If you want to browse reddit at work, run this full screen (more details).
  • Speaking of reddit, metareddit is all about reddit and why AskReddit is far more useful than Yahoo! answers.
  • Spock is not impressed.
  • This is just sad: Our security auditor is an idiot.
  • How to make photos looks like pencil drawings quickly and easily.
  • Yet another reason I will keep voting for Ron Wyden: Bill Would Force Intel Chief to Renounce 'Secret Patriot Act'.
  • A note to Google recruiters (and on Google hiring practices).
  • While I like Amazon's Free App of The Day, I can see where developers would hate it: Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core.
  • Somebody has far too much time on their hands -- and far too many dead flies.
  • Just the Swearing: "The films and telly programs you like, but with the boring, non-sweary bits cut out." (obviously a naughty language site)
  • Has the Code of The Zodiac Killer Been Cracked? Possibly.
  • D. B. Cooper is might be getting closer to being identified (NPR has a good story and follow up updates).
  • I'm building my next server case out of Legos -- just like this guy.
  • It's official: IE users are dumb as bag of hammers (Update: Or not -- thanks Barney).
  • If you're designing sites or books for folks that have dyslexia, this font might be of use.
  • John Gruber: On Succeeding Steve Jobs.
  • How to configure your router for network-wide URL logging.
  • Maximum PC's guide to being online anywhere.
  • The Oatmeal's Summer State of The Web.
  • You. Yes, you. You are not a photographer.
  • What It's Like to Interview a Celebrity: A GIF Story.
  • Every city should be designed with more slides.
  • Don't Fear The Internet: Basic HTML & CSS for non-web designers.
  • The 50 Things every creative should know (I need to forward that on to my designer sister-in-law).
  • Little CSS Stuff Newcomers Get Confused About.
  • Build your own 135 Terabyte Storage Server for $7300-ish.
  • The advanced system recovery toolkit for times when you need to repair a buggered, locked, or virus-ridden system.
  • Chosen is a great little plugin that makes select boxes more user-friendly.
  • Did you know that you could have your loved one's ashes put into bullets? Now you do.
  • Did you know there's an Opera house that's built right on top of the border between Canada and the US and has a dividing line (that's enforced) running through it? Now you do.
  • Only in Japan: Clone yourself into what looks like an action figure.

  My "pile o' shortcuts" folder looks much better now. Video links coming tomorrow.

  
  

  
• July 31, 2011
• 17:13

  Back To Reality

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  Back at the office today after the trip (good time was had by all, though I could use another week or 12 off). I'm still going through all the email I've received, and will try to post a pile of links in the next couple days or so.

  Did I miss anything fun?

  
  

  
• July 21, 2011
• 16:59

  Reading and Watching Material (and Bye For A Bit)

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  I'm about to head out of town on a much-needed week or so off where I will have limited cell phone access and nearly no Internet access, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. Everybody be good, converse among yourselves, enjoy some other local blogs and take in the following links and videos in the meanwhile (videos after the jump):

  • The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors.
  • Somebody has far too much time on their hands: A Minecraft Cruise Ship.
  • How to Detect Counterfiet Money.
  • I've mentioned this guy's site before, but it's worth mentioning again as it's still going: Running From Camera.
  • I'm going to be using most of these circles on my Google+ account.
  • A Tour of the World's Worst Photoshop Propaganda.
  • 10 Greatest Unintentionally Hilarious Lines from Science Fiction and Fantasy.
  • If I ever build a house, I'm bulding in slides.
  • The first domain linked to on MetaFilter is now a place to share stories about the site's history.
  • Why the Wealthiest Americans Are the Real 'Job-Killers' (though they do keep one industry in business).
  • Meet the 'Keyzer Soze' of Global Phone-Tracking.
  • Are you listening, Steve Jobs? There are a bunch of fake Apple Stores in China, and the employees actually think they're employed by you.
  • So you think you can build a website? Follow this handy flowchart to see if you've got what it takes to make it big.
  • One of these days I'm going to make a Hackintosh, and I need to make sure I have this site bookmarked.
  • How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History.
  • Windows 7's no-reformat, nondestructive reintall.
  • Plain Text Offenders, which chronicles sites that store passwords in plain text.
  • Questions about 64-bit Firefox for Windows 64-bit users (you could always try Waterfox, which is a 64-bit build of Firefox). I'm not running a 64 bit OS, so I haven't tried it, but report back if it works better.
  • Photo Swipe is a nice image gallery for mobile and touch devices.

  OK, video time -- watch below...

  
  

  
• July 19, 2011
• 11:57

  If You're Looking For Something For My Wish List...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  ..these 20+ geeky posters should definitely be on there.

  
  

  
• July 18, 2011
• 21:47

  Nathan Fillion Has An Important Announcement

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  It's an important issue affecting gamers worldwide (slight naughty language warning)...

  
  

  
• July 17, 2011
• 18:36

  I'm Obviously Not A Movie Buff

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  Can you name these movies based their final image? I only got about half of them (at most). I've seen most of them, but don't remember the final image in many of them. How'd you do?

  
  

  
• 18:30

  Super Mario Bros. Bad Guys Reimagined

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Scary   [edit]

  If I would've seen these things during my game-play, I would have ran away crying.

  The artist's web site is here where he has more.

  
  

  
• July 13, 2011
• 22:39

  Somebody Has Far Too Much Time On Their Hands

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  But this is pretty dang sweet:

  Read about the whole setup at Melvin The Machine.

  
  

  
• 22:33

  Don't Know How To Do Anything On Google+?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  I don't either, but this Google+ Cheat Sheet should help. If you're looking to migrate from Facebook to Google+, this guide might help, as will the Move2Picasa tool.

  
  

  
• 17:40

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Impasse is a minimalist puzzle game. Discover the rules as you go and make your way to the goal of each level. And it's a pain in the butt, but fun.

  
  

  
• July 12, 2011
• 18:14

  Hilarious 404 Page

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  It's also really awkward.

  
  

  
• 0:11

  Looks Like I Need To Update My Bathroom Reading

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  From Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader comes The Adventures of Eggplant, the fascinating story of Nasubi, the naked man who had to live off sweepstakes winnings while TV audiences watched.

  
  

  
• July 07, 2011
• 23:30

  Finally, I Might Start Using Twitter

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  Might be the operative word, thanks to Shuu.sh. According to the site:

  It's a web-based Twitter reader that displays the updates of the people you follow in relation to the frequency of their tweets. It aims to amplify the people that don't usually get heard, and scale back those with frequent updates.

  That's been my biggest problem is that there are some people who don't post much that I'd want to hear, and folks who post a ton that I could use a little less of (kind of like Facebook, really, which is why I have so many people on my "ignore" list).

  (Yes, I know technically use twitter in that this site and Bend Blogs have feeds, but it's all automated -- I never go on there and read anybody else's stuff, and will probably never update my personal feed.)

  
  

  
• 17:04

  Bill Bailey Has A Message For Metallica

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  First off, if you have never seen Bill Bailey, you need to. The guy is a riot. Black Books is on Hulu (discs are available on Netflix as well), and he's absolutely hilarious in the show (as is the rest of the cast). Apparently Metallica is playing at a UK rock festival and Mr. Bailey wanted the boys at Metallica to know that if they had to bail, he's ready to go:

  
  

  
• July 06, 2011
• 22:18

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Geekdom   [edit]

  • Turn Google+ Into Facebook.
  • Speaking of Google+, I'm on there so feel free to add me, and I might get around to doing something on there. Maybe. Or not.
  • This would have been an incredible music festival. It's fake, but would have been awesome.
  • Cable boxes use more power than the fridge.
  • Andy Baio got Kind Of Screwed (seriously, that just shows how messed up our copyright and fair-use laws are).
  • Modern-world problems pale in comparison to ancient world problems.
  • Looking for a sweet little geek gift? These pins on etsy are frickin' hilarious.
  • World War II: Before the War is an incredible collection of photos that is part of a larger In Focus World War II in Photos collection.
  • I think I've linked to this before, but I will again as it bears repeating for anybody that does any sort of e-mail marketing (like me): Guide to CSS Support in e-mail clients. Personally, I've found better luck with in-line or hard-coded styles and variables on tables for layout than I have with many CSS elements.
  • You think your smart phone home screen looks pretty pimp? You have nothing on these guys (most of which are Android).
  • Google to retire Blogger and Picasa Brands.
  • The Data Liberation Front Delivers Google Take Out. Try it out here. Google Takeout allows you to download a copy of your data stored within Google products..
  • More Google news...Google dumps all 11+ million *.co.cc from its results (most of which were spam and phishing sites).
  • Sprite Cow is yet another tool to help you create CSS sprites (something I need to try sometime).
  • Paper.js is an open-source vector graphics framework using HTML5 Canvas.
  • LauncherPro dev launches new "UberMusic" music player. It's pretty dang slick.
  • Book of Speed The business, psychology and technology of high-performance web apps.
  • rep.licants.org is a web service allowing users to install an artificial intelligence (bot) on their Facebook and/or Twitter account.
  • We need more adult-size playgrounds. Which means we need more places like this.
  • One more...Import your Facebook friends into Google+, going through Yahoo! first.

  Updated to fix a few typos...

  
  

  
• July 05, 2011
• 23:28

  What Do You Do When Your Street Is Flooded?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Well, I think this is a pretty good solution, even if it's not entirely useful:

  
  

  
• 16:12

  Anybody have hotel connections in the Salem area?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  I'm heading out of town later this month for my annual coast excursion, and am looking at the possibility of going over a day early and spending the night in Salem on the way over. The thing is, I can barely afford the vacation in general, and certainly don't think I can afford another hotel night for the whole family.

  But I rarely get an extended bit of time off from work, and I want to take advantage of it.

  Anybody have any connection for any hotels in the Salem area, or even in the Silverton area, that can get me a deal (as we're looking at possibly going to the Oregon Garden)? I know all about the Oregon Garden Resort but out of my price range (unless somebody reading this site works there). Contact me privately: jake {at} utterlyboring {dot} com.

  
  

  
• July 04, 2011
• 11:42

  Be Safe Tonight, and Please Don't Set Fire To My House

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Local   [edit]

  I won't go into my feelings and thoughts on the holiday today, as I'm pretty sure I've covered that pretty well over the years.

  While today's not my watering day, I'll be turning on my sprinklers later for a bit, as I always wake up on the 5th of July to find a bunch of bottle rockets and other flaming projectile scraps in my yard. Oh the joys of living near Pilot Butte.

  Be safe, don't do anything stupid (meaning don't get stupidly-drunk), and please don't set my house on fire (I'm looking at you, neighborhood morons who were blasting off the gigantic mortars until 1AM this morning). Go read an old document or something.

  
  

  
• July 03, 2011
• 10:50

  How the KKK Got Beat By A Single Black Guy

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Johnny Lee Clary recounts a story from his KKK days. Good stuff...
  

  
  

  
• July 02, 2011
• 11:07

  My Daughter's Famous

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Thanks to all the folks who called me to say there was a nice picture of my daughter and I in the paper. We were out trying to get her to ride without training wheels, and that picture was taken right before I let go and she rode fine on her own and we celebrated. Thankfully the Bulletin photographer didn't take a picture of her riding into the dirt, nearly hitting a concrete post (stopping is always the tricky part -- we'll work on that next time).

  Anybody know anybody at the Bulletin that can get me a good digital version of that photo or one of the other photos the photog took for our scrapbook? I know I can buy reprints, but I'd rather have a digital version.

  I also apologize for exposing everybody to my ghostly-white legs.

  
  

  
• July 01, 2011
• 23:56

  I'd Hire The Guy

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  I need to re-do my resume to look like this.

  
  

  
• June 29, 2011
• 18:18

  Need Something To Read?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  How about the 100 longest entries on Wikipedia?

  
  

  
• June 28, 2011
• 23:57

  Resurgence of the Animated GIF

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  It's amazing in this world of highly interactive video media that the animated GIF is still so dang popular. I've mentioned From Me To You and If we don't, remember me before, which is the cream of the crop. For a more bit more humor, however, Animals Being Jerks and this huge collection on reddit of classics should be bookmarked.

  
  

  
• June 26, 2011
• 17:18

  Time Killer For The Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Quadran has no directions as to what to do, and is a very minimalist puzzler, but it's addicting and fun as heck.

  
  

  
• June 23, 2011
• 17:15

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Personally, I'm watching the USA Track and Field Championships stream, but if you're not a track guy like me, here are some other videos to kill off the rest of the week (click below to view).

  
  

  
• June 22, 2011
• 14:31

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  My desktop is getting over run with shortcuts. Time to dump some of these...

  • Man trolls dating sites by drawing pictures of the girls.
  • Part of my reasoning for avoiding Wordpress development was (for me at least) the templating was a bit more confusing than MovableType's. Bones should help.
  • Honestly, I wished forced steralizations were legal in more states as there are some folks that really should never have kids. Ever.
  • WorklogCreator makes it quick and easy to post project work logs on forums.
  • Keanu Reeves confirms that 'Bill And Ted 3' is on the way. Excellent!
  • Similar to Garfield Minus Garfield comes Realfield where the cat's a bit more realistic.
  • First Month on the Android Market looks at one dev's experiences with ads versus paying for the app.
  • Famous opening lines updated for the modern age (my favorite: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an internet startup to call his own.").
  • This commit could have done some serious damage. It inspired some folks to share their big screw ups.
  • Have a URL for a file and need to save it quickly to your Dropbox? URL Droplet might help.
  • Have you ever been reading your favourite online news site, stumbled across a headline with seven syllables, and followed it in your head with doo-dah, doo-dah, in the style of Camptown Races? No? Really? Well, this guy has and created a Greasemonkey script to add "doo-dah, doo-dah" to seven-syllable breaking news headlines.
  • Dear Photograph is a great tumblr blog that show folks taking a picture from the past into the present.
  • In many cultures, there are more than two genders.
  • Playable Archeology: An Interview with Telehack's Anonymous Creator.
  • Need to make a diagram with ASCII? ASCII Flow might help.
  • Be productive during Photoshop progress bars by reading your RSS feeds automatically.
  • Myth busted! A break down of what happens on screen during a typical hour of an episode of Mythbusters.
  • Make your secondary Google Voice number permanent.
  • Coming to a receipt printer near you: Receipt Racer.
  • New and improved rage/troll faces.
  • You have to be a Zelda geek to appreciate the humor in this.
  • 12 Common Mistakes Designers Make and How to Avoid Them.
  • If you're looking for computer hardware in the Portland area, there are some good places to find it here (mostly bookmarking it for my reference as I have non-tech-savvy friends up there that are always calling me asking me that sort of thing).
  • Hire to Hire Developers (if you're interested in a profanity-laden version, you can find that here.
  • The $113 Billion Hole: Ten Things America Gave Up This Year To Pay For The War In Afghanistan.
  • I knew about some of these, but not others: 5 Fake Sounds designed to help humans.
  • Android SMS Pop-up will soon get installed on my phone as it's just so stupid simple and better than the default.
  • One more...Goodbye TinEye: Google Images now lets you search by image.

  OK, that's enough for now. Enjoy!

  
  

  
• 11:16

  What The Heck Is That Thing?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Weird   [edit]

  I was editing a craigslist posting and got this in my confirmation captcha:
  
  How am I supposed to type that? My keyboard doesn't have the "Creepy Face" button. Must be a Mac thing...

  (Yes, I know that craigslist uses the great reCAPTCHA service and really only needs me to recognize the second word, before anybody starts railing on me for that.)

  Update: I'm an idiot. I didn't even look at it at an angle as Burton pointed out -- it's just an inverse letter "a" plopped on its side.

  
  

  
• June 20, 2011
• 15:30

  This Is Why Little Kids Have Teddy Bears

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  
  
  sweet halloween dreams by begemott

  Seriously, I just love this illustration.

  
  

  
• 15:26

  Does Anybody Else Feel Like They're Being Hypnotized?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  I know I sure did...

  
  

  
• June 15, 2011
• 17:46

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Regrebluli is a "survive as long as you can" type of game where you need to block the lines from getting across the board. Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is -- at first.

  
  

  
• 0:22

  This, A Kid's Bedroom? Screw That

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  I want this as my bedroom office.

  
  

  
• June 14, 2011
• 17:01

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Have a bunch of videos that have to be shared. Enjoy!

  
  

  
• June 13, 2011
• 23:57

  You Must Stay In The Bike Lane

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  It's the law!
  

  
  

  
• 16:48

  All Roads Lead To Philosophy

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  The ALT text for xkcd comics are always entertaining, but the ALT text for this comic caught my attention:

  Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

  And they're absolutely right. I clicked around on several random articles, and everything eventually leads back to "philosophy."

  
  

  
• June 12, 2011
• 13:51

  Michael Buble's Reaction Is Priceless

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  There's a bit of naughty language in this, but it's worth it:
  

  The kid has a YouTube channel and a lot of potential (and he's now going to be famous -- for at least 15 minutes -- for this clip).

  
  

  
• June 09, 2011
• 23:43

  Reading And Watching Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  • Apparently there's a dating site made for Apple fans (down at the moment).
  • TicketMaster sucks.
  • Your new favorite email tool since the spam filter: Inbox Influence is a new tool from the Sunlight Foundation that allows you to see the political contributions of the people and organizations that are mentioned in emails you receive.
  • Maybe one of these days I'll install a twitter client (since I rarely go to their site) so I can remember to read folks like this guy.
  • Why Windows 8 is fundamentally flawed as a response to the iPad.
  • Looking for gift ideas? Shut up and take my money can help.
  • What do you wish customer's knew?
  • Teen's dad spends school year waving at bus, wearing different costumes daily, embarrassing son. Naturally, blogs his daily costume changes.
  • If I ever got a cover letter like this, I'd hire the guy on the spot.
  • Google apps could soon stop working in your browser.

  Some videos after the jump...

  
  

  
• 16:22

  Preach It, Brother

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  This man's a genius:

  'The Kardashians' have now been on the air twice as long as 'Arrested Development.' THIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, AMERICA.

  Truer words have never been spoken.

  And you can tell how little of a rip I give: When I was reading this to a co-worker, I mis-pronounced Kardashians. I've never seen their show, never will, not losing sleep over it. But I'm still miffed that Arrested Development wasn't given the treatment it deserved.

  
  

  
• June 08, 2011
• 22:11

  It's Korea's Susan Boyle

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Wow. Just wow...this dude can sing.

  
  

  
• 13:49

  Grasshopper.com's Services Are Down -- Anybody Have Alternatives?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  So Grasshopper, the toll-free number service that I use here at Sunray as well as at Sunriver Vacations, is in the middle of a serious outage (going on the second day now). They've been updating as well on their Facebook page and twitter feed. Basically, from what I can tell (and since their communication has sucked during this whole thing, I don't know 100% what's happening), it sounds like something at their main data center kicked the bucket, and then they kicked into disaster recovery mode, and their backup plans failed, too.

  Anyway, while the set-up for Sunriver Vacations is a bit complicated (low call volume, but equally rotated between a few companies, along with a few "press 1 to speak to blah-blah" type of options), the setup for Sunray is fairly simple. We basically have our main 800 number ported over to them, and have it forward to a phone number here. After closing time, it will play a message where folks can leave a voicemail or press a number to be forward to after-hours staff. Nothing really exciting, but their per-minute rate was much cheaper than what we were paying for 800 number service before, and the free voice studio stuff was a nice feature.

  That being said, being down for over 24 hours is a huge problem, and is costing the companies I work for some good money. I've managed to setup a temporary toll-free number thanks to a local vendor/partner company and published it on our Web site, but a lot of people and web sites have that main toll-free number published.

  While I don't know if I'll move to another service (just depends on how Grasshopper responds to all this, once they're back up and running), I would like to have some options. What's everybody out there using for small business 800-number service?

  Lesson learned here? Test your disaster recovery plans. This can't be emphasized enough, and reminds me that I need to do the same (it's been a while).

  
  

  
• June 07, 2011
• 17:58

  Revenge Is Sweet

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Family has home wrongfully foreclosed upon, so family fights back, wins, forecloses on bank.

  
  

  
• June 02, 2011
• 23:38

  Where's The Mute Button?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  The Improv Everywhere folks found it.

  Full back story over on their site.

  
  

  
• June 01, 2011
• 23:46

  It's A Sad Day: PBS Will Have Commercial Breaks

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Sad   [edit]

  This will more than annoy the heck out of my in-laws, who have PBS running pretty much non-stop all day long (minus the evening local news). Instead of the sponsor messages between the shows, they're going to start running commercials during shows, starting this fall. Here's a graph on how a typical hour-long show might be broken up.

  
  

  
• 16:53

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  I don't know exactly what to think about Soviet Rocket Giraffe, other than it's a bit weird, but fun.

  
  

  
• May 30, 2011
• 17:23

  Need Something To Do This Weekend?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  In case you didn't know already, I'm in The Band and The Band is having a concert this weekend.

  Sunday, June 5, 2:00 p.m. FREE
  The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band presents Space!, the final concert of their 2010-2011 season, under the baton of music director Dan Judd, June 5, 2:00 p.m. at Summit High School auditorium. This concert is free of charge, although donations are gratefully accepted, open to the public and suitable for all ages. Pieces to be preformed include Star Wars, Star Trek, The Planets: Mars & Jupiter, Sundance and Sky is Waiting. For more information visit www.cascadewinds.org or call 541-593-1635. Summit High School is located at 2855 NW Clearwater Drive, Northwest Crossing, Bend. No tickets required.

  As I say every time, it'll be a great show, and I'd love to see some of you there (and it's a great, free, way to spend a Sunday afternoon).

  
  

  
• 11:25

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Had this all ready to post yesterday, and got to my desk this morning, realized I neglected to hit submit. Whoops...
  

  • Cuteness alert: Animals with stuffed animals.
  • Blind horse is helped around by seeing-eye goat and sheep.
  • 21 Fantastic Games under 5MB.
  • TermKit combines Webkit with terminal on the Mac to create one cool looking terminal.
  • I think I may have linked to this before, but An International Comparison of Cell Phone Plans and Prices basically shows how expensive our cell phone service is here in the US.
  • Six unusual city maps: Locals vs. Tourists.
  • Amazing long exposure airport photography.
  • If you're an Android developer, this might be useful: Test your app on the most popular devices.
  • Apparently people are getting Oprah and Opera confused. Tells a lot about Oprah's fans.
  • Hacked Canonical Tags: Coming Soon To A Website Near You?
  • Is that movie at the theater a little dark? I could be because they forgot to take the 2D lens off.
  • Are you a stock market whiz? Kapitall makes a game out of it.
  • Only tumblr posts with 10,000 notes or more need apply.
  • ifttt (if this then that) looks like an interesting service that basically will automate tasks in your social media and real world.
  • If you're a web designer trying to get information across to a client in better ways, WeeNudge will help with useful articles on spec work, white space, content, feedback, etc... .
  • Decades before the Web, Newspaper Row in Boston was where people got the news updated in real time.
  • A visual representation of 11 million player deaths in Just Cause 2.

  
  

  
• May 26, 2011
• 23:51

  People Is Dumb

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  The Onion is one of the web's oldest satire sites out there (and easily the funniest), and people still think it's real news.

  
  

  
• May 25, 2011
• 23:59

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Interlocked is a 3D puzzler where you just have to disconnect the parts. Sounds simple, but it's not.

  
  

  
• 17:27

  Web Developers: Want To Be A Complete Jerk and Scare Visitors Away?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Make sure you implement annonying.js to anger as many people as possible. Be sure to read the comments for more obnoxious code, and throw in screwed.js while you're at it.

  
  

  
• May 24, 2011
• 15:30

  You Didn't Need To Do Anything Today, Right?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  In that case, here are some videos to kill off the rest of the afternoon...

  
  

  
• May 23, 2011
• 15:16

  I Don't Know What This Sport Is, But It's Awesome

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  I haven't the foggiest idea how this game works, but I can guarantee you won't see it in the US. It takes a bit to get going, but it's worth it for just flat-out weirdness...

  
  

  
• May 21, 2011
• 0:45

  I'm Old. Dang it. Get Off My Lawn

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  Seriously, I just mowed the thing. Stupid kids.

  The ol' mortality meter that's always been on the left-column of this site has been jacked up by another year. I figured I'd probably better do so, since I'm getting zillions of emails from all the forums I have accounts on, telling me it's my birthday today (it's actually in about 15 minutes, but close enough).

  My cousin and I share the same birthday (I'm 12 hours or so older), and he sent me wishes at the crack of dawn this morning. It wasn't until later that I realized why: he's stationed in Japan, and it was after midnight over there.

  So what do I plan on doing for my palindromic birthday? Not a thing. I'm going to sleep in (or at least attempt to), loaf around, play with my kids, and not do anything (and most of all, avoid the chaos at the Old Mill). And I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.

  
  

  
• May 19, 2011
• 23:52

  Michael Meets Mozart

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  Another video showing my love for the cello remixes:

  Seriously, what is it with cello players and Michael Jackson?

  
  

  
• May 18, 2011
• 16:57

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Mentioned a couple times how I've been utterly slammed the last week or so. But I really need to get rid of these links, so here's a nice little dump...

  • Multi-platform/network IM clientTrillian 5 is free everywhere.
  • Five running apps for Android (wish I could be running -- body's not letting me).
  • Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.
  • Cool trick to position an animated GIF over a JPEG.
  • "I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world." Full story.
  • I'm 37 and haven't aged in 17 years.
  • Why do so many web sites fail to use print stylesheets? (I'm as guilty as anybody, and really need to rectify that on sites that I work on).
  • Tych Panel is a great way to create a photo grid in Photoshop.
  • Need to create a site for mobile use? 320 and Up provides a good starting point.
  • Which SciFi series should you watch?
  • OMGIMG.US is a fun little site whose goal is to cultivate conversations that are built from images alone.
  • Villagers in a remote part of China may have descended from Roman soldiers.
  • 55 T-Shirts Made Just for Designers.
  • I could've used this one recently: How to get sign-off for your designs.
  • Great trip down memory lane: Growing up in Arcades.
  • Samoa to jump forward a day.
  • Kotaku shows its lack of journalistic integrity.
  • Comic Sans Criminal: Helping people like you learn to use Comic Sans appropriately.
  • Apparently in '97 on April Fools day, Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek hosted each other's game shows. Alex hosting Wheel is here and Pat hosting Jeopardy is here.
  • 50+ Tools to Automate Your SEO Link Building.
  • Need dead-simple video chat for up to four people? AIM AV looks pretty slick.
  • Somebody needs to actually sell these Casualties of War little army men toys.
  • I've said it 100 times, I'll say it again: When it comes to HDMI cables, brands don't matter.
  • Trolling Tumblr.
  • Go The F**k To Sleep is a book every new parent is going to want. Excerpt here and it's managed to become a best-seller on Amazon, despite not being released yet.
  • Looking for a music app for your Android phone? This comparison will help you choose.
  • PSA: AIM and Google Talk users can now talk to each other.
  • 21 New Rules For Technology -- A Maximum manefesto.

  
  

  
• May 17, 2011
• 18:01

  Quick Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Still have one more night of rehearsal after concerts the last three nights (did anybody out there make it?). Meanwhile, here's a quick time killer for the evening: Cat Gets 100 Stars. See if you can get all 100 stars (took me about three minutes, but still a fun little game).

  
  

  
• May 10, 2011
• 18:15

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Probably going to be a very light blogging week, as tomorrow night is the only night I don't sprint off to rehearsals or concerts immediately after work (this weekend's concert is going to be awesome -- hope to see you there!). Meanwhile, here's Edmus a single button multiplayer online game that changes daily, is so stupidly simple, but addicting as crack.

  
  

  
• May 08, 2011
• 17:28

  Lose Your Digital Camera?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Interesting   [edit]

  This site might be able to help you find it.

  
  

  
• 13:27

  Happy Mother's Day

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  I want to wish all moms out there a happy mother's day, and while it may not be the most difficult job in the world (censored naughty language warning)...

  ...it's certainly the most important job in the world.

  (It's a joke people, relax...Happy Mother's Day everyone.)

  
  

  
• 10:48

  The Best Michael Bolton Song Ever

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Warning, some naughty language, but this is the best I've ever seen Michael Bolton:

  
  

  
• May 05, 2011
• 23:40

  Random Bin Laden Links

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  While you don't have to look too hard to find Bin Laden news lately, I thought these few links were interesting.

  • This photo from the White House photostream really tells a great story about what our country's leaders were going through when the attack was going down.
  • If you want the best unbiased news about this whole thing, Aljazeera's the best source, and their round-up of reaction from world leaders (on both sides) was really interesting.
  • An interesting graphical look at New York Times readers' reaction.
  • Two popular quotations that have come out of these events that have been attributed to Mark Twain and Martin Luther King Jr. are both being mis-attributed.
  • This actually came before Bin Laden's death, but since there are stories now that there might be cuts in the military, this story from last week was an interesting foreshadow.

  
  

  
• 16:01

  Little Time Killer For The Afternoon

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Spike - A Love Story is a funny little single-button game that dives into the world of being a lovelorn spike trap.

  
  

  
• May 03, 2011
• 23:58

  Think You Could Build A Toaster? From Scratch?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  This guy's trying.

  I'm Thomas Thwaites and I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch - beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99. A toaster.

  A very interesting and well-presented project.

  
  

  
• May 01, 2011
• 23:52

  Good Question

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  So now that Bin Laden is toast, can we bring a bottle of shampoo on the plane?

  Seriously, though, does anybody thing anything will change? Really, he probably hasn't been involved in anything for over a decade, and this will probably just anger his followers and security will be tighter and basic constitutional rights will still be limited. Ideally, the Patriot Act would go away, but I seriously doubt it.

  For a quick clip of the President's speech, head here.

  
  

  
• 23:35

  The Power Of Words

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  It's amazing what some good marketing and well-written copy will do:

  
  

  
• 23:25

  Time Killer For The Night

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  You get hammer, shovels, and/or ladders, and you have to get all the keys and open the door. Sounds simple, but Pick and Dig is a load of fun.

  
  

  
• April 28, 2011
• 12:28

  Sony Screws Up Big Time

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Sad   [edit]

  Does anybody else find it hilarious that a company that spends so much time and money on copy protection and DRM for Blu-rays spent so little effort on protecting paying customer's personal information? They had a huge security breach on their Playstation Network last week, revealing the information (possibly including credit card numbers). Whoops. Sony's spin on it (a week after it happened, mind you) is here and Motherboard.tv has a good write up of the whole mess.

  
  

  
• April 27, 2011
• 18:16

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Jelly Cannon is another one of those obnoxious physics-based games that start off cute and easy but get harder and harder but you still can't stop playing. Have fun.

  
  

  
• April 26, 2011
• 15:26

  Video Dump

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  As promised yesterday (and a bit late, I know), a bunch of videos that have been sitting here waiting to be posted.

  
  

  
• April 25, 2011
• 17:36

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  Got a bunch o' stuff that I need to get off my desktop before I start another couple nights of rehearsals and a crazy-busy week of projects and other stuff. I was finally going to try and make it to a COWPU meeting after not having been to one for a helluva long time, but it looks like it's not going to happen this time.

  On to the dump (video dump coming later today)...

  • Tom Hanks is a Lot of Animals.
  • If I could buy some art, I'd buy some of these.
  • I'm building a point-to-point wireless bridge, and I'm seriously considering the Pringle-can antenna, but I don't think the bosses would like the look of that.
  • I need multiple monitors (and a permanent desk, but that's another story entirely), and when I have do, here's a good software chart to best take advantage of it all.
  • Google April Fools' Joke (Gmail Motion) becomes reality.
  • Solarized is a sixteen color palette (eight monotones, eight accent colors) designed for use with terminal and gui applications.
  • Only Little People Pay Taxes.
  • Just mash the buttons on your keyboard, just like they do in the movies, and you too can look like a hacker.
  • Speaking of movie-based computer interfaces, here's a collection of screenshots of computer GUIs in Hollywood.
  • Looking for an alternative to istockphoto? Here's a few good ones.
  • I've used PublicIP for at hotspot before, but HotSpotSystem looks pretty slick and works well with dd-wrt, which is also a bonus.
  • Need to quickly create a grid of guides in Photoshop? GuideGuide will help.
  • From Me To You: More subtle animated GIFs, very similar to the previously-linked to If We Don't, Remember Me.
  • Please let this GIF be real.
  • Six hilarious ways that game designers are screwing with pirates.
  • Amazon's $23 million book about flies.
  • General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010. Really, though, they didn't do anything illegal, so in my ignorant opinion, I blame our tax laws more than anything.
  • Three website exploits -- are you protected?
  • The Wilderness Downtown is a great interactive film, built in HTML 5.
  • I think I've accomplished most of these help-desk achievements.
  • 40 names of bands before they were famous.
  • People ask the dumbest questions.
  • Practical guide to subversion on Windows with TortoiseSVN.

  Videos coming later...

  
  

  
• April 24, 2011
• 11:43

  Even If You're As Cool As Spike Lee...

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  ...you still look ridiculous taking a picture with an iPad.

  
  

  
• April 22, 2011
• 0:02

  Cats vs. The Treadmill

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  I generally only link to cat videos when cats are getting annoyed (like this one), and the treadmill appears to be driving these cats nuts:

  Cats are a lot more like people than we think. Their solution to things they don't understand? They just smack them -- just like I've seen a lot of people do when they're trying to fix something.

  
  

  
• April 20, 2011
• 23:57

  Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  Blockgineer is a simple game, in theory. You just have to get the ball to the box. But as you get more into the game, it gets more complicated and a load of fun.

  
  

  
• 12:17

  Was This A Cow Suicide Mission?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Local   [edit]

  Was the cow out there fighting back, or was this just an accident? You be the judge:

  MADRAS, Ore. -- A truck hauling frozen beef struck and killed a cow on Highway 97 north of Madras Tuesday night, triggering a fiery crash that caused no injuries but destroyed the rig, damaged the trailer, sideswiped another truck and shut the road for four hours, Oregon State Police reported.

  The cow's mission wasn't accomplished, as the frozen beef was moved to another trailer.

  
  

  
• April 19, 2011
• 18:02

  Cellos Are Awesome, Exhibit B

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  You can find Exhibit A here. Here I present, Exhibit B (though the dude's beatboxing skills are as important as the instrument he's playing):

  Sorry about the lack of posts the last few days. I've been in rehearsals for the symphony and/or band the last few days (including tonight), and haven't even turned on my computer after getting home at 10. Will try to catch up on my collected links tomorrow.
  

  
  

  
• April 17, 2011
• 12:00

  Time Killer For The Week

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  Seriously, this could kill off more than a week. It could easily kill off the rest of the year. It's the World's Biggest Pac-Man, and it has over 7300 mazes, all inter-connected, for Pac-Man to complete.

  
  

  
• April 15, 2011
• 0:21

  How Do You Catch A Software Pirate?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  You do what Garry Newman -- creator of Garry's Mod -- did and create a built-in error on pirated versions that lets everybody know you stole it.

  
  

  
• April 14, 2011
• 16:00

  Where'd The Japanese Girls Go?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  They turned into old men...

  
  

  
• 0:02

  Need To Make Sure Something's Dead Before You RMA It?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Geekdom   [edit]

  Build yourself a few of these bad boys, and when you send something back for repair, you can be assured that you sent it there dead.

  
  

  
• April 13, 2011
• 20:30

  Anybody Need A Graphics Designer?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Jake   [edit]

  I just put the finishing touches on my sis-in-law's Web site. She's a stupidly-talented illustrator and graphics designer (she designed the site, I coded it, for better or for worse). She's graduating from George Fox in a couple weeks, plans on coming back to Bend (can't stand the Valley), and is looking for work. She has a pretty varied portfolio, and is one of the most efficient workers I've seen. She'd prefer full-time work, but I'm sure she's open to some individual projects.

  If you want to get in touch with her, or want a personal recommendation, let me know.
  </cheap plug>

  
  

  
• 12:49

  We Cancelled Our Cable Because Of Crap Like This

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  This is what's happening to TLC (and many other channels, for that matter):

  From kottke, Fake shows from the video: 12 Wives, 12 Problems; Dwarf Hoarders; Uterus Cannon; and Hasty Home Surgery. Real TLC shows: 19 Kids and Counting; Strange Sex; Extreme Couponing; and I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant.

  
  

  
• April 11, 2011
• 17:13

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Converted cement factory is a pretty sweet home (a little too industrial for my taste, but still pretty nice).
  • Need help speeding up your site or testing speed? Google Page Speed Online can help.
  • Want to increase the speed of your SD card on your Android phone? This is a pretty sweet trick. From this XDA thread, there's an app for that.
  • This sprinkler is pretty sweet. Just make sure you look at the customer images for it's full product glory.
  • Firefox starting up slow? One of these extensions could be the cause (I have Firebug installed, which I do use whenever I'm doing development work, so I'm not about to remove it).
  • Trying to understand the rules of Cricket? To protect your pies, you have a bat.
  • Facebook opened up their data center and server designs as part of the Open Compute project. The local data center is one of the first centers to use all these ideas, and it's making me wish I could see the interior of the place more and more (somebody want to give me a tour sometime?).
  • It's prostitution, but not. I guess. WhatsYourPrice.com matches people willing to pay for dates with beautiful women with beautiful women who are willing to take money to go on dates.
  • Looking for music to match your running speed? Jog.fm will help.
  • Creepiest blog I've seen in a while: Chicks With Steve Buscemeyes.
  • For someting completely different, Sad Stuff on Street.
  • DIY iPod Car Mount. Or you could always try the binder clip method.
  • Keep track of your daily accomplishments and tasks via e-mail with iDoneThis.
  • creepy is a geolocation information aggregator so you can track folks down on a map by the geo tags on their social media posts.
  • I wish I hard the hardware to do this well: Paravirtualization With Xen 4.0 On Debian Squeeze (AMD64). I'd really love to virtualize the entire server infrastructure here (about 10 servers, total), but don't have the hardware to run 10 virtualized Windows servers with any sort of decent speed (and I have a feeling converting live systems easily to images with minimal downtime would be a pain in the butt as well).
  • If you're wondering how they create large crowds in movies, they just inflate them (site's getting hammered, so it may take a couple whacks to load it).

  
  

  
• April 07, 2011
• 17:14

  I Could See Something Like This At My Brother's House

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  My brother is an avid rock climber, and could totally see him bouldering around his house:

  
  

  
• 16:45

  Whoops -- Woman Knocks Out Entire Country's Internet

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  <sexist remark>Leave it to a woman to kill off an entire country's internet access...</sexist remark>

  An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday.

  The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.

  She also managed to kill off some of the Internet in large parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan as well. Full story.

  
  

  
• April 05, 2011
• 13:37

  Android Screen Customization Is A Great Feature

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  But sometimes folks can go overboard and it can get really ugly.

  
  

  
• 10:49

  The Pick 'em Is Over!

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Pick 'em   [edit]

  First off, sorry I didn't get this posted last night. I was drained after a long day of work and rehearsals, I missed the game, and didn't even know who won until this morning. Sounds like I didn't miss much of a game anyway.

  As mentioned last week, the 2011 Pick 'em wouldn't be fully decided until the final day. Thanks to UConn's underwhelming win (Butler shot under 19% shooting, UConn was under 35% shooting), bojack got knocked down to third place, "TeamTopflite" has won the tournament with "windy wandle" getting second place, and bojack taking third. The final scores have been posted.

  I'll be getting in touch with all the winners this week. Per the rules, you have two weeks to get back to me, other wise the prizes go to the next person on the list. Make sure your email address it visible on the tournament member page otherwise I have no idea how to verify you are who you say you are.

  A big thanks again to our prize providers, for which this tournament wouldn't exist without them:
  Mug Revolution
  SUPERAntiSpyware
  Home Improvement Services
  Jake's Diner
  Paizano's Pizza
  and Tyler (who didn't have a web site to link to)

  Click over, check out the sponsors, and support them for supporting us!

  Thanks again everybody for participating, and we'll see you next year!

  
  

  
• April 04, 2011
• 17:06

  "Professional" Wrestling Is Hilariously Stupid

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  But this wrestling video is just downright ridiculous:

  Thanks Robert for the tip.

  
  

  
• 16:54

  Where Am I?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Ever seen a pictures online and wonder "Where is that?" Despite the profanity, Where The F**k Is This might be able to help.

  
  

  
• April 02, 2011
• 21:52

  The Final Four Is Over, The But Pick 'em is Not

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  Usually by this point in the Pick 'em, we already have the top spots all figured out. But as I mentioned last week, since Connecticut won today, the top three spots won't be completely finalized until after Monday's game (read last week's post for how it can all shake out).

  Today's game didn't change the standings for the bulk majority of the folks, as not too many people had any of these teams in their Final Four, but "Casebeer" (Case) and "Canadian Invaders" (Andrew) shot up to fourth and fifth, respectively. The only two folks who have points still to score are "TeamTopflite" and "windy wandle", who will get first and second if UConn wins. The full spreadsheet is here.

  
  

  
• April 01, 2011
• 10:59

  April Fools 2011

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  It's April Fools 2011, and as usual, the Internet is full of stupidity and jackassery. Among funny ones that I've seen today:

  • Hulu's partying like it's 1990.
  • Mentioned this last night, but Woot's Crapshoot to get a bag of crap was entertaining.
  • Have a web cam? Control your Gmail with Motion.
  • YouTube has added a "1911" button to most of their videos, making the video appear to be old silent movies (with piano soundtrack and everything). Click through some of the videos on yesterday's dump and click the 1911 button.
  • Give your fingers and exercise with Chromercise.
  • As usual, Thinkgeek comes up with April Fools products that need to become a reality.
  • In an effort to save money, WestJet is filling their planes' cabins with helium.
  • Search for Comic Sans on Google. Watch the typeface as Google's switching to Comic Sans.

  Feel free to share your favorites in the comments below. If I get motivated ('tis my day off, and there are "Honey-Dos" to be done) I'll post more later today.

  Update: A few more my wife spotted:

  • Kodak unveils a system to automatically purge an unwanted person from photos.
  • 3D Movies make you sick? De-3D them.
  • The Anti-Social Media blog suddenly loves social media.

  
  

  
• 0:18

  Time Killers For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  • From the creator of the basically impossible QWOP comes stupidly-impossible GIRP.
  • In Dung, you're a dung beetle, looking for dung, avoiding bugs. Sounds silly, but it's a fun little time killer.
  • If you want to get a random bag of crap from Woot, now's your chance, but you have to play a flash game to get it.
  • No Time To Explain -- can you save the future?

  
  

  
• March 31, 2011
• 17:55

  Bandwidth Suck Time

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  It's video dump time. Check them all out after the jump...
  

  
  

  
• March 30, 2011
• 17:55

  What if Peanuts Didn't Have a Punchline?

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:    [edit]

  It's quite depressing, actually.

  (Reminds me of another similar favorite of mine.)

  
  

  
• 11:19

  Expect To See This On ESPN X-Games Really Soon

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Funny   [edit]

  Dogboarding is the the latest extreme sport sweeping the nation. Check out this video:

  Video created by these guys.

  
  

  
• March 28, 2011
• 16:56

  Reading Material

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Randomness   [edit]

  • Why we don't hire .NET programmers.
  • Great wallpaper resource: InterfaceLIFT.
  • How to beat the salad bar (be sure to look at the useful graphic).
  • The Future Shock, a three-year cross country adventure to save the world.
  • Sprint makes switching to Google Voice very easy. Sign up here..
  • The world's best designed newspaper is in Portugal.
  • How to remotely control your PC, even if it crashes (too bad none of the computers in my office support this feature).
  • WebWrapper a simple wrapper for HTML 5 based web applications on Android devices (similar: PhantomJS is a full web stack, in JavaScript, no browser required)
  • 12-year-old genius studying at IUPUI.
  • Use Wordpress to run your church site. Or Typo3, if you'd rather (I use the latter on a site I manage, but it's entirely overkill and difficult to manage for simple stuff, so I might be moving it to something else).
  • Pick a number from 1 to 10 ... for science!
  • Barack Obama's top-secret tent.
  • Have you ever thought about how you’d stay in touch with your loved ones if your city experienced a natural disaster or other emergency? Make a Safety Map.

  
  

  
• 14:33

  Inspirational Video

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  video   [edit]

  Even if you don't enjoy soccer/football, this is a story that could easily inspire you in many other areas of life:

  Apparently this video was filmed here.

  
  

  
• March 27, 2011
• 18:04

  The Final Four Has Been Set

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Pick 'em   [edit]

  The Final Four has been set for the 2011 Pick 'em, and today's big upset plus yesterday's slighty-less-big upset screwed up the brackets for everybody. Only a few folks can still score points next weekend, and unless I'm reading the thing wrong (correct me if I am, as I can't get the group scenario generator to load), "TeamTopflite" (Nancy) cannot lose and has first place wrapped up. Second and third places are still up in the air, as it depends on whether Connecticut goes on to win the whole thing or not. If they lose in the Final Four or in the championship game, the standings will stay the same with "bojack" in second place, and "windy wandle" taking third. However if Connecticut goes on to win the whole thing (which "TeamTopflite" and "windy wandle" both predicted"), then "bojack" will be knocked down to third place (all three of them picked UConn and Kansas to make it to the championship game, but "bojack" picked Kansas to win the whole thing).

  A couple other folks will move around a bit depending on how things play out next weekend, but the folks in the top three should stay in the top three.

  At least that's how I think it looks like. Again, correct me if I'm wrong. Just the same, the scoring spreadsheet has been updated.

  
  

  
• 15:09

  Maddening Time Killer For The Evening

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  games   [edit]

  I died nearly 1000 times before I finished the simply devilish Space Is Key.

  
  

  
• March 26, 2011
• 0:19

  Only Eight Teams Are Left

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Pick 'em   [edit]

  The sweet sixteen is over, and like I thought might happen yesterday, bojack has jumped up to first place in the pick 'em. He's in a three-way tie for first with "Jen's a Loser" (Jen F of a certain local blog) and "The Madness of March" (HeatherH). There are three folks tied for fourth place at the moment, only a single point behind the leaders, with "TeamTopFlite" and "windy wandle" in that mix a loads of potential points on the table. The current scores are here. I can't get the scenario generator to finish loading so I haven't the foggiest idea how this will all play out. All I know is that Ohio State losing screwed up a lot of brackets (mine included).

  The games over the next two days are worth five points each, and I'll post a scoring round-up on Sunday when the Final Four has been set. Good luck!

  
  

  
• March 24, 2011
• 23:52

  Day One Of The Sweet 16 Is Over

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Pick 'em   [edit]

  The first day of the Sweet 16 games is over, and while the top two spots in the 2011 Pick 'em haven't changed, I have a feeling they're going to fairly soon. Looking at the scores, "The Madness of March" (HeatherH), "The Dren Said So" (mike) and monkeyinabox.net (wackycat2) still hold the top three spots, but bojack made a pretty good jump in the standings. The real key here, too, is that all of bojack's Final Four teams are still alive, which can't be said about any of the folks above him. He still has the potential to score the most points, but things may change this weekend, as "TeamTopFlite" and "windy wandle" also have all four of their Final Four teams still alive, but they're slightly different than bojack.

  Things are going to get really interested as the weekend plays on. Good luck!

  
  

  
• 13:56

  First Person Mario

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  What if Super Mario Bros. was a first-person shooter? Might look something like this:

  On a completely un-related note, Pick 'em games are starting up again tonight in a few hours. There are four tonight, four tomorrow (worth three points each), and then two each on Saturday/Sunday (worth five points each). Good luck!

  
  

  
• 0:02

  Heroes In Japan Earthquake

   » ‎ UtterlyBoring.com

  Tags:  Cool   [edit]

  Looking for some good news from Japan? Look no further than Hideaki Akaiwa, who decided not to wait for rescue workers, instead deciding to take on the flooded streets himself.