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About

It's a blog where I can post about whatever the hell I want. This usually consists of Beer, Movie, and Video Game reviews with a hint of Politics and a splash of Alton Brown.

Recent

I just got back from a business trip to New Hampshire where I was being trained on a product that I most likely will not be touching for the next 6 months. The best part: I am not going to pay a dime for the whole excursion.

Archives

Thursday, September 25, 2008

TED|

What do you get when you gather the smartest people in the world across all disciplines and invite them to share their ideas?


TED was apparently a secret gathering of the intelligentsia (lol, big word) founded in 1984 and started "The Gathering" in 1990. Only about 1000 people were invited and the talks were not recorded until 2002.

Then in 2007 they started posting the talks online.

Fast forward to today and I saw this thread on Gen[M]ay.

After watching 10 talks, I have come to the conclusion that these people are actually the smartest people on earth.

From how normal good people turn evil, to how fungus could save the world, these talks are not to be missed.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Beer + Wisdom|

I picked up a six-pack of a beer called "Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale" by the Stone Brewing Company.

It has a rather unique flavor. Very malty and has a taste eerily like whiskey.

Anyway, the back of the beer has a rather intriguing bit of wisdom on the back of it that I would like to share with my massive 5 person readership. :-P

"Too many strive towards complacency as a goal. They stop their urge and desire for discovery somewhere between youth and adulthood. And when they find their complacency threatened, they do everything to recover the warm, fuzzy feeling of that lost complacency as quickly as possible. Throughout every culture, every country, and every way of thought you will find it. We grow up thinking that the ability to become complacent is the equivalence of success in life. The Arrogant Bastards know that this could not be further from the truth. The real beauty, richness and depth in life can be found if the journey through life itself is looked up on as a constant chance to learn, live and find life's passion. Passion threatens the complacent, and fills them with fear. Fear of the new, the deep and the different. We on the other hand, seek it out. Endlessly, joyously... and aggressively. To this end we bring you the "Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale". Another reward for those seeking new sources of passion, and another point of dissention for those are not."

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Zombies + Romance|

This is possibly the most romantic thing ever created



(click the thumbnail to see the whole thing)

In case you don't know what this is from, it is a cover from the series "The Walking Dead" by Tony Moore. Someone simply took this cover and made it into possibly the best greeting card idea ever.

He is a relatively unknown comic book illustrator who currently works on Fear Agent (from Image Comics) and The Exterminators (from DC).

His previous works include Brit and the most metal name for a comic ever: Battle Pope.




Rock on Tony... rock on.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Bitpop|

I was going through my inter-routine this morning at work which inevitably took me to ThreePanelSoul. Ian's latest rant referenced a site called 8BitPeoples. They make Bitpop.

Contained within this site is a staggering 73 albums freely available for download. Their catalog has serial numbers for 87 albums, but several are very early CD-only releases that are not available.

I have downloaded only 11 of these albums so far but, long story short, this shit be off the hook.

Anyone with a name called NullSleep or Tangible making albums called "Click Bleep Click" or "LOL", you know it has to be good.

Plus album art is awesome:



I have definitely found my new favorite music to listen to while at work. Trance/Electronica always seems to help me concentrate. :-)

Sunday, September 07, 2008

100 Pushups|

It's over. I did it.



Fucking hell my arms hurt...

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Chrome|


The fastest browser ever.

Google Chrome is so fast, that if you are on a broadband connection, 90% of the time you won't see web pages render. 

They will just be.  

I would venture to guess that Chrome is about 3-5 times faster than every other browser out there.

How did they pull off such a ridiculous feat? As you can see in the screenshot above, Chrome takes the best parts from Safari (WebKit) and Firefox (bits of the UI) and did everything else from scratch.

I am not going to sit here and lay out all the innards of Chrome and why it is so great (that's what this comic is for), but I will give you my favorite bits:
  • Every tab in Chrome has it's own process. 
No more crashes when one site takes up too much memory or gets stuck in an infinite loop. That tab can be killed and Chrome lives on.
  • Pop-ups are finally put to bed. Forever. 
Chrome does not allow any pop-ups to manifest without your permission. This is not done on a site by site basis, but a pop-up by pop-up basis. No more sites getting you to allow all pop-ups from them just so you can get the one good one that you want.
  • An inspired, simple, minimalistic design. 
Auto-Complete, Search, Suggestion, History, and URL all in one bar. Brilliant.

This browser is not without it's shortcomings, however. 

The browser is quick to render, but has issues with animated gifs. Especially when many are loaded at the same time. It doesn't have the best feature of Firefox 3: complete page scaling. Plus, there are a host of bugs to work out.

But let's get real here. This is a Beta is designated as Version 0.2. For such an early build, it is amazingly fast (easily the fastest browser ever), surprisingly stable (you simply cannot crash this thing), and feature complete.

But I don't see it taking over the Internet quite yet. Firefox is sure to be around simply because it has an army of extensions available to customize it. IE is will be around for a long time simply because many users just don't know any better. Safari is on Apple platforms. Apple users like Apple software. 

However, a year from now... I wouldn't be surprised if people are talking about Chrome as the best browser out there.