I went to see the Conan O’Brien Tour tonight and it rocked! We got Triumph, Andy, the self-pleasuring panda, and the Walker Texas Ranger Lever (now renamed the Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle). We also got a surprise one night only musical appearance from Eddie Vedder. I don’t know how Conan got him, because I know he doesn’t go out much. I really don’t think there will be a better show on the tour than what I just saw. And THEN on his encore performance, Conan decided to run out into the audience while playing guitar. He happened to pick the seat in front of me to stand on! Now I know no one would believe me, so lucky for me my phone takes video! Here you go, enjoy and be jealous:
If you don’t know anything about Harry Potter, don’t bother reading the rest of this, because it won’t make any sense.
I was thinking back about the Potter series and I had a startling realization about the plot of the Goblet of Fire. Remember how Voldermort orchestrated an amazingly complex scheme to make sure that Harry won the contest so he’d touch the cup and be transported to the cemetery. Well here’s the plot problem I have: Why would Voldermort go to all that trouble and risk the fact that Harry might not win the contest? He already had a man on the inside, so why not just tell Moody to hand Harry a freaking portkey?
We know the answer in reality: because then the book would only be 100 pages and not nearly as interesting. But I’m surprised at such a plot hole, and equally surprised that I’ve never noticed it before.
Check out the iPhone app that makes you into a Terminator. It’s called TerminateMe, and it’s free, as it advertises the new movie (that looks really cool by the way).
Apr
2009 19
2009 19
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the plant Synsepalum dulcificum or Miracle Fruit, but it’s basically a berry that, after you eat it, it dulls your sour sensing taste buds, thereby making many things taste very different. So today I had a little “Flavor Tripping Party” and had a few friends over to try odd foods after eating a dried tablet form of the fruit. It was pretty interesting! Here’s a picture of the spread I put together:
We tried:
Sour candy
Grapefruit
Lemon
Lime
Guinness beer
It was pretty weird; the Guinness lost a lot of its bitterness and I really liked the new taste (other friends who didn’t like Guinness to start with still didn’t like the taste). The lemon and grapefruit lost all of their sourness! The Lime didn’t change though and it was still pretty powerful. I really dislike grapefruit normally, but with this little berry first, I found it quite delicious. It was an interesting experiment indeed. If you want to try it, you can pick up the dried pill form from Thinkgeek.
I can’t believe I haven’t posted about this. The geek inside me is shocked I took this long. Two weeks ago, I broke down my resolve and joined the iPhone crowd. I had been holding out this long due to some important features that I needed. However I was finally able to work around those issues. It did necessitate hacking the crap out of it to get those missing features, but if it works it works.
Here are some of my favorite features:
The biggest plus goes it it’s web browser. It’s as close to browsing on a real computer as you can get. Obviously it’s lack of Flash support is annoying, but other than that it’s great. By the way the lack of Flash is because of Apple’s SDK rules, NOT Adobe’s fault.
I also love the programs other people have created for it. Here’s a VNC app, that allows me to control my main machine from the little screen no matter where I am:
Another great little program is air hockey. You can even play two players over a network!
Some other great features: I found that I can type pretty darn fast, because I’ve learned to trust the phone to correct all the mis-typings. So as long as the letters are in the general area of where I typed, it will usually figure out what I meant to say. Also it connected to all my email accounts with almost no work on my part. I didn’t have to know all the stupid server settings or anything.I also love the Shazam app, that lets you hold the phone up to anything playing music, and it listens to the song and tells youwhat it is. 10 years ago, people would equate that stuff to witchcraft!
I don’t like: I would really like to tether my phone to my computer so I can use the phone’s network connection for Internet access. I also miss some of the more PDA-type functions of my old phone, like the ability to snooze event reminders and set more meeting details and privacy settings.
All in all, a great little pocket computer!
Take a look below at my nifty new laptop. Shout out to Jimmy for showing his to me, because I really liked it. It’s a regular laptop, but it has a touch screen, and you can rotate the screen around and close the lid, and then abra-cadabra, it turns into a tablet PC. It also comes with a little stylus pen for more accurate clicks then your finger. I’ll enjoy it on planes especially, because I’ll be able to leave the keyboard closed and still watch movies. The only down-side I have found so far is how quickly it drains batteries. Luckily I bought two batteries, so they should last me for even the longest flights, as long as I’m not going trans-continental or anything.
I got Spore this morning and have had some fun with it today. Don’t think I spent the whole beautiful day playing it though. I actually had more people over than have ever been here at one time, I think hitting 14 people. We all went out to the park near my house and played laser tag. Geeky? Probably. Fun? Definitely. Then we had some pizza and an all around good time. I digress, back to Spore. I created a race of sentient beings and called them the Telgans. They presently live on the planet Crimsonia. They started out as little life forms and I made changes to them as time moved on. Here’s their evolution process. Special thanks to Joshua for helping me with the evolutionary choices. 
And here is a screenshot of the little tribe they live in and the nice tribal attire I’ve dressed them up in:
Their next project? They’ll be gearing up for all-out war with the neighboring tribe, as they are mean to my people, and they killed off pretty much all of the little Telgans in our last skirmish. Don’t worry I have a plan this time. First I’ll give them a nice big food bowl of poisoned fruit. Then after that kills of their numbers, my guys will be hiding in the trees ready to come in and raid them, and now they can do so from a distance thanks to the throwing spears so kindly provided by another neighboring tribe that I are their new allies.
Am I getting too involved in this? Well I think deep involvement is the whole point of this game.
Check out http://fantasticcontraption.com. It is a very addicting physics based game where you create little machines to accomplish a task. Oddly it makes me yearn to play Spore. After all, you do get to revel in your creation coming to life. Here are some of my creations:
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=963566
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=964475
http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=964735
My most creative:
Today I went to an amusement park called Silverwood in Idaho. It was a lot of fun. Definitely a lot of driving though. While there we saw a magic show that was way too good for the venue (inside a pizza place). I was expecting to know how all the tricks were done, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the tricks. I especially can’t figure out how the floating table trick worked.
I also went on a roller coaster that is my new favorite. It’s called Aftershock. It’s one of those ones where you hang from below After you are loaded in, you are pulled backward up a completely vertical tower so you are facing directly to the ground. Then it lets you go and you are propelled right through the loading area and around twists and turns and then up a second tower of equal height. You’re then pulled up that tower too, and it lets you go, this time to go through the entire course again, but this time backwards! It was freaking crazy, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
One other note: Thank goodness for SPF 30.
I finished reading Steven Colbert’s book “I am America…” I have to say, I wasn’t impressed. For those of you that don’t know him, Colbert pretends to be a racist ultra-right-wing Republican, both on his show and in the book. One might call his character an intellectual white-collar Archie Bunker, exposing our stereotypes and worst thoughts in hopes that people realize just how silly they are. The premise seems great. Here are some theories as to why I didn’t like it:
- After 200 pages of pure satire (or even 50 pages), it’s not funny anymore. It’s like sugar: you like it but you’re not going to enjoy eating a bowl of it.
- It’s too real. It’s sort of depressing reading the pages and knowing there are actually people out there that do think that the greatest threat to America right now is illegal immigration or same-sex marriage.
- I only laughed about 6 times…I went in expecting be at least smirking every few sentences. I do however love the section on Religion when he’s ripping into each non-Catholic faith but when he gets to Islam, fear gets the best of him and he says that “[it’s] a great and true religion revealed in the Holy Koran…”
With this post, I am officially adding a “Category” to my journal called “Reviews.” Now you can click on that category and see every post where I review (read: complain about) something. How very exciting for you all!