Morning glory

I took this picture this morning after a fresh snowfall. I was lucky to get a clear shot because shortly after, it started snowing again. I like the colours (or lack there of) and the shadows in this picture.

The toothbrush that makes you a loud mouth

Hasbro Tooth Tunes toothbrush makes you a loud mouth



Any parent will tell you that getting kids to groom their pearly whites is all too often like, well, pulling teeth. Some Hasbro executive had the brilliant idea of keeping kids entertained while scrubbing those molars: enter “Tooth Tunes,” a toothbrush that plays a two minute riff to span the ideal amount of brush time recommended by dentists. The clip, stored on a microchip “no bigger than a dot atop the letter i,” (that’s rich) is triggered by a button on the brush. A minicomputer uses bone conduction to send sound waves first through the front teeth, then to the jawbone and into the inner ear (not unlike the Jawbone, SwiMP3, etc., incidentally). Hasbro is currently chatting up several pop stars for the rights to their songs, but will any of them bite?

Source: Engadget

Macro iRiver

I took this pic a few days ago. It's nothing special but the reason why I'm posting it is because I particularly like the focus effect of it. I like taking macro shots, but the only problem is theres not much things to take macro shots of in this house. I'll think of something...

Unbelievable...

LONDON (Reuters) - A blind man has been arrested in Scotland after witnesses reported he sank his teeth into his guide dog and kicked her across the road, police said on Thursday.

The incident allegedly occurred outside a busy shopping center in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

David Todd, 34, is expected to face charges of cruelty to animals and breach of the peace.

A police spokeswoman said the 8-year old dog had been handed over to a charity dedicated to guide dogs.

"When we took her into custody, she had no apparent injuries," she added.

Todd is due to appear in court at a later date.

Source: Reuters

Raffaele Iannello Knife Block

You can't buy this Knife Block, designed by Raffaele Iannello, from Vice Versa—they aren't the buying sort of catalog—but you can lust after it all the same. The best meat is murder, after all.

I laughed because its made by... Raffaele .. you know... the name that most people like to pretend is my real name? Riiiiight, that one.



Source: Gizmodo

Weird site of the year

Alright so it may be a dutch site, but thats besides the point. This site is for those who want to find ways of dumping their boyfriend or girlfriend. If I could read dutch, I'd be taking notes. ;) Besides, the intro music is catchy and the animations you can click on in the site are hilariously stupid.

Have fun! Click here to go to site.

Great week so far

So this week has gone off to a great start. I was able to drop Physics and pick up Drama instead, and the english teacher wasnt here today but the supply teacher didnt show up until the second half of class after lunch. So today was such a smooth sailing day its not even funny.

I got my laptop back from repairs, and the computer science test was simple. I got 100% on my research paper as well =) I've never seen so many 4+++'s in my life. =D

With the recent heavy snowfall overnight, I thought there would be some good picture taking oppourtunities, but nope... Nothing special. Just dark, cloudy, and a bunch of snow. Come on nature, get artistic a bit, eh?

Another pic I just took a few minutes ago. This time around, theres no moon and no date either. I cant wait till I get a break from school so I can take more pictures outside.

Daily Dose of Imagery

A little picture from Sam, a well respected Toronto photographer, whos site you can reach here: http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/
I really like this pic, and the original picture is very very very huge (this is a very toned down image) Anyways, this pic was taken a couple of weeks back during those crazy sunsets in Toronto.

Constantine Kicks Ass... Period.

Theres nothing else to it. If you like one of the following, go see this movie:

• Action
• Suspense
• Religion (Heaven and Hell)
  
• Keanu Reeves (hah)
• Demons
• Messed up unethical plot =P

What a friggin kick ass movie. lol

Midnight Delight?

I took this shot at around midnight last night, it was very very very dark outside but I managed to tweak the exposure a bit to come out with this shot. No photoshop once again. Tell me what you think. =)

Sunset...

Here is a very old picture from my archives, I wish the moon was a bit more clear but hey what can ya do... I like the natural gradient and the outline of the houses. Once again no photoshop. I'm growing impatient to begin taking pictures of downtown when I begin to work again.

Zombie Raffi? Apparently so...

I was playing around with a few camera techniques and I got quite a bit of interesting pictures. No photoshop used in any of them, but I decided to post this one as it seems to be the most popular in terms of being "scary". Click for full size.

A few weeks ago while walking around in the "mini-forest" nearby, I took this picture. I think its pretty cool, though I wish I had thought to take the date off before taking the pic. Blogger resized the pic for the net, click the thumbnail for a slightly bigger size. If you want the full thing, leave a comment. (its 1024x768)

Ice day leads to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes spree!

So I wake up this morning and I head on over to school. Little do I know, that it has rained some freezing rain over night so my driveway is like a sheet of ice. *slip* hah when I got to school I realize no one is there. Eventually people started arriving but as soon as they got there, they called their parents to pick them back up because the busses were cancelled so no school!

Me and a few of my friends left for my house, and ended up playing Metroid Prime 2: Echoes until our eyes bled. Most of the time we were screaming "holy crap where the freaking hell is this god forsaken save point?!?!?!?!" and as a result we just couldnt stop playing until we found a save point. Little did we know, that was a looooong way off. Soooo when we finally did get to the save point, it was 2:30pm and we've been playing since about 8:30am. *wipes forehead* Alright so after all that we're only done 14% of the game. Meanwhile, we got so hypnotised by the game that we thought we had to jump from "light orb" to "light orb" to keep from losing health.... Oh god you know you've played too long when....

So the moral of todays story is, buy Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. =P

Loud music can be addictive

Well I just heard on Edge that loud music can be as addictive as drugs. So I decided to do some research on that topic and I found a bit... Well first off some more info from Edge: Turns out scientists in the UK put kids in three groups of different music genres to test if Mozart and classical music actually does improve your IQ (the mozart effect). So one group listened to classical music, another listened to talk radio, and the last group listened to rock music (oasis, etc) and the results were that the kids that were listening to rock ended up with a 4% higher IQ than the other two groups.. hmm.

So back to the addictive as drugs idea... I found an article from the Ottawa Citizen that states:
"Whether you prefer to blast Mozart, left, or James Hetfield of Metallica, the effects are equally troubling. Loud music addicts can experience hearing loss and symptoms of withdrawal like mood swings, lethargy and depression."

Appearently it does not matter what kind of music it is, as long as its loud. You get so used to listening to loud music that it becomes the "normal" level of volume for you, while for others it can be deafening volume. And then if someone were to completely take that loud music away from you, you'd experience signs of withdrawl. The name of this symptom is called "maladaptive music listening" (MML) and its catagorized under the same catagory of drug abuse.

Also, which type of musician do you think would lose their hearing first? Classical or rock? Turns out the classical musician will go deaf before a rock musician because of the high levels of music that goes on around them for hours on end.

Eeeenteresting, no?

New MSN 7 Beta!

MSN Messenger 7 Build 7.0.0604 was leaked earlier today and I happened to get my hands on it. Very nice improvements, however the bad thing is that with these new features comes some bugs. No mouse-over to see full nickname in contact window, offline status in chat window doesnt work, etc.

Some improvements are:

• The ability to see the display picture next to their name in the contact list window (small or large icons)
• The ability to "share" search results. Hard to explain, but cool nonetheless.
• The ability to have a "personal message" next to your nick name (instead of adding things like "sleeping" in your nick name, you can add it to this instead... sort of more formal.
• The addition of the "My Spaces" button to complement the new Spaces service from MSN.
• The ability to add "now playing" to your nick name, which shows others on your list what you are listening to (only available for Windows Media Player right now)
• A new emoticon called (nah) which is another type of (bah)
  
  
• New features that are not yet activated:
• Offline messaging, like the one ICQ has. Allows you to send messages to offline contacts, and the person will get that message the next time they sign in.
  

A note though... the search results, personal message, and now listening features only work with other people using the same version.

Stay tuned for the public beta release in the coming days. Until then it would be wiser to stay with your current MSN 6.2 or 7 beta release due to some of these minor bugs that need to be fixed.

Homosexual Penguins + Comment system updated

Just when you'd least expect it.... The most idiotic article I have read in months...

A German zoo wants to run tests on a group of penguins suspected to be homosexual. But that’s not sitting well with gay and lesbian groups. They’re afraid officials could push the creatures into turning straight. “All sorts of gay and lesbian associations have been e-mailing and calling in to protest,” said a spokesman for the zoo in the northwestern city of Bremerhaven. The zoo originally thought the animals might be gay after the males attempted to mate with each other, and hatch offspring from rocks. Then there were stories that Swedish penguins would be flown in to see if it was true. When that news broke, the phone calls started. “Nobody here is trying to break-up same sex pairs by force,” the zoo's director Heike Kueck told public broadcaster NDR. “We don't know if the three male pairs are really gay or just got together because of a lack of females.”

--

In other news, Blogger has updated the comment system to make it more easy for people who do not have a Blogger account to make a comment. (There ya go merz, no more confusion for you)

You girls are dangerous...

LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.

She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Monti, of Birkenhead, near Liverpool, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing.

Source: Yahoo! News

Tactics if you are stuck in the same room as Dave...

Date from Hell: Rescue!

CANBERRA (Reuters) - It's every single person's nightmare: You're on a date, it's a disaster but there's no way out.

With Valentine's Day (news - web sites) looming, a mobile phone company in Australia has come to the rescue with a service offering an escape from the date from hell.

All you have to do is discreetly dial three numbers and then hang up without saying a word.

"Virgin Mobile will call them back a minute later with a perfect excuse to get them out of there. We'll even talk them through what to say," the company, a joint venture of the Virgin Group and Optus, said in a statement.

A survey of 402 people by Virgin Mobile found that 53 percent arrange in advance to have a friend call them mid-date to check they are all right or if they need an excuse to get out.

The results showed women were twice as likely as men to use the tactic.

Source: Yahoo! News

Due to popular demand...

I've been hearing from some people that the articles I post on here arnt really that great, and that they'd rather see more "bloggish" kind of posts (aka personal) rather than generic "odd news". And sure thats fine... That I can do.

Honestly if you guys have any comments, opinions, feedback... Feel free to leave a message in the comment section.

Anyways, half way into the first week of Semester 2 and I'm in a hot debate on whether or not I should drop Physics class... Ugh so difficult to make up my mind. Speaking of which I should be doing my Physics homework right now... Oh well. I want to upgrade my laptop somehow... Add more RAM, buy a new battery... Or just get the whole thing replaced in general.

Damnit its 10:25, I better go and finish this work. More updates to come.

Hurray for msn!

Alright well now that we all know that MSN is being a complete crackhead... I say we all finally make the switch to Yahoo! Messenger.

Honestly, Yahoo is so much cooler, I dont see why everyone is so stubborn on staying with a service that has more outages in a span of 2 weeks than a freaking 70 year old fuse box.

Everyone, please for the love of god... Click the following link and leave a comment with your Yahoo username so I can add you... And you and I will both be free from MSN and its retarded servers. And thus, here is the "following link".

This kid is my hero

4-Year-Old Mich. Boy Drives Mother's Car

Tue Feb 8, 9:33 AM ET

SAND LAKE, Mich. - A boy drove his mother's car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said — and he's all of 4 years old.

Even though he was unable to reach the accelerator, the boy managed to put the car in gear and the idling engine provided enough power to take him slowly to the store, a quarter-mile from his home, about 1:30 a.m. Friday, Police Chief Doug Heugel said. Finding the store closed, the youngster began a slow trip home.

Weaving and with its headlights off, the car got the attention of police Sgt. Jay Osga, who initially thought he was following a driverless car that had taken off after being left running at a gas pump.

The car turned into the boy's apartment complex and struck two parked cars, then backed up and struck Osga's police car.

That's when Osga discovered the boy inside.

"He knew how to go from forward to reverse," Osga said Monday. "The mother said she taught him how to drive by letting him sit on her lap and steer."

No charges will be filed against the boy or his mother, Heugel said.

"He's 4 years old. His mom didn't even know he was up," Heugel told The Grand Rapids Press. "I don't think he even realizes what he did."

Source: Yah... bah you probably already know by now

Well, at Least He Won't Be Fathering More Fans...

LONDON (Reuters) - A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday.

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, "If Wales win I'll cut my balls off," the paper said.

Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking.

But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done.

Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in serious condition, the paper said.

Wales's 11-9 victory over England at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was their first home win over England in 12 years.

Source: Yahoooo!

And so it begins...

Well school has officially started... Semester Two to be exact. So far so bad. Math, physics, english, computer science. The first three are proving to take the longest freaking time to complete the homework and its only the first day. Sorry about the lack of updates these past few days folks, I've just been really busy, but I'll get back on the daily updates asap!

Stay tuned...

RIAA sues dead woman

Dead Woman, Who Didn't Have Computer, Sued For Music Trading

POSTED: 7:47 am EST February 4, 2005

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The recording industry sued Gertrude Walton, accusing her of illegally trading music over the Internet as "smittenedkitten."

But the lawsuit was filed more than a month after the 83-year-old woman died in December, and her daughter says Walton hated computers, anyway.

A group of record companies named Walton as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 songs available for free on the Internet.

Walton's daughter, Robin Chianumba, lived with her mother for the last 17 years and said her mother objected to having a computer in the house.

"My mother wouldn't know how to turn on a computer," Chianumba said.

She said she faxed a copy of her mother's death certificate to record company officials several days before the lawsuit was filed, in response to a letter from the company regarding the upcoming legal filing.

"I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park (where she is buried) to attend the hearing," Chianumba said.

A Recording Industry Association of America spokesman said Thursday that Walton was likely not the smittenedkitten it's searching for.

"Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. "We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case."

Source: WFTV

My computer gave me a birthday present!

Well my computer was nice enough to give me a present, though its not exactly the nicest thing someone can give... A broken Hard Drive.

After endless tests and diagnostics, the guys at Neowin and I probed my computer until we can find what was wrong with it, and now I know for sure that it is a hard drive problem.

If anyone has a spare HDD I can borrow to dump my files onto before this baby officially dies and goes to hard drive heaven, that would be awsome (though it has to be assuming you are one of those people I usually see at school and such).

Creativity at its finest

Train crash survivor wrote message in blood

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Los Angeles man, whose blood-scrawled love message to his wife and family became the most haunting image of a fatal train crash last week, has choked back tears as he thanked his rescuers.

Trapped, injured, and fearing for his life in the wreckage of the suburban Los Angeles commuter train collision, John Phipps, 44, used the blood seeping from his injured head and legs to write "I (heart symbol) Leslie" and "I (heart symbol) my kids" on a nearby train seat.

Eleven people were killed and almost 200 injured in the January 26 crash which was triggered by a car left on rail tracks by a suicidal man who changed his mind. The driver has been charged with murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Phipps was cut out of the wreckage by fire fighters, who were touched by his scrawled message and asked news photographers to take a picture of it for his family.

The photo was widely used in newspapers and on the Internet but Phipps had shied away from publicity until coming forward on Thursday to meet reporters and thank fire fighters. More than 700 people had called the Fire Department wanting to wish the mystery writer well.

"I am here today because these guys deserve the credit. All I did was just lay there," Phipps said, choking back tears.

"I don't know whether I did it because I thought I would not make it out alive or because I was just being a maudlin dope," Phipps said, walking on crutches and wearing a Los Angeles Fire Department cap and shirt.

Fire fighter Bob Rosario, who helped cut Phipps out of the wreckage, said the message was one of the most touching things he had seen in 25 years on the job.

"It is pretty moving that someone in that situation could have the forethought of doing something like that," Rosario said.

Source: Yahoooooo hoo...

Signed Hitler photo for auction? wow... just.. just wow.

Complaints Force Hitler Photo from Auction

LONDON (Reuters) - A signed photo of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was withdrawn from an auction in Britain after complaints of insensitivity from a Jewish group, the auctioneer said Wednesday.

The local Jewish group objected to the timing of the sale, coming only days after world leaders had gathered at Auschwitz on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp to remember the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

"It's very much an exception withdrawing them. These documents are important historical records," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, historical documents expert at the auctioneers Mullock Madeley in Shropshire, western England.

"I'm not a Nazi sympathizer. Quite the opposite, like many others my father fought against the Nazis," he told Reuters.

The 1940s postcard portrait of Hitler and a signed biography, entitled "Adolf Hitler: His Life so Far" and written in 1932, will still be available for sale privately, Westwood-Brookes added.

He valued the items at between 650 and 1,000 pounds each. ($1,230 to $1,850).

Source: As usual, Yahoo! News

Happy Birthday to me

Yeah... My birthday is today. Yippie. *dozes off* I asked for a frapachino wheres my fucking frapachino?

random i know... and thus, what happens when your brain is fried from exams is clearly displayed above...

No but seriously, its my birthday.. =S

Mission Complete

Alright so exams are finally FIN. History was a easy exam, while Religion was brutal as hell. I had studied all weekend but then I put too much focus on History and I completely forgot most of the things for religion, soooo the only part I did good on was the multiple choice and the matching. *sigh* Whatever. That piece of crap was longer than the History exam and we had 30 minutes less to do it.

Anyways, so this means we go back to our regular programming of odd and interesting news... Till then, *blasts some Children of Bodom* \m/