May 2008 Archives

Inspired by China's ridiculously shoddy work, I give you An Evening of YouTube Crash Tests

Crash Testing a Bus. Not the best video, but kind of cool due to it's size.

For those of you who aren't familiar with our brothers across the pond, the Flag of St. George is the Official flag of the Kingdom of England. Though it was largely supplanted by the Union Flag following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the flag is still a strong symbol of England and one that has, as of late, has been re-adopted by England football and rugby fans.

National pride is something that has been waning around the first world lately and I think it needs to stop. That's why I'm so pissed that when young Ben Smith of Melksham, Wiltshire, decided to cover up the new speakers in the back of his Vauxhall Corsa with the Flag of St. George, he was threatened with a £30 fine. Not a fine for improperly displaying the Flag, that's something I'd support, but because according to the local Police Service, flying the Flag of St. George is racist. What the Hell?

Apparently flying the flag is offensive to immigrants, thought the constable failed to explain how. PC Dave Cooper of Melksham, when questioned, stated he could not confirm or deny the incident as Ben had been originally pulled over spot check and therefore not logged. He continued on to state, "It all depends on the context. If they are going past a lot of Polish people, for instance, and abusing them, then we possibly would ask them to take the flag down." Excuse me Dave, but if someone was going around abusing the Polish wouldn't the logical solution be to stop them from abusing the polish? How does the Flag even factor in to that hypothesis?

Now this is making music.

For three glorious weeks we rallied and found hard. Man against man, ball against paddle, light against shattering impact, but alas that time is over. Thanks to an "Anonymous" complaint from what we suspect is a certain insecure manager, Dellball is coming to an end. It was fun while it lasted (let's face rubber balls and ping pong paddles always are), hopefully we can find a new safe spot sometime in the future. If not I'm kicking out a roommate to make a Dellbakll field.

Today at 6 P.M. EDT, NASA will begin broadcasting Mars Pheonix Lander's final descent to the surface of the red planet. As of posting the Lander is still on target and due for touchdown at approximately 7:53 P.M. EDT. The first images it sends back will also be broadcast live.

Catch the live feed at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

or on Digital NASA Television via Satellite

In the continental United States, NASA Television's Public, Education and Media channels are carried by MPEG-2 digital C-band signal on AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, Transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. They're available in Alaska and Hawaii on an MPEG-2 digital C-band signal accessed via satellite AMC-7, transponder 18C, 137 degrees west longitude, 4060 MHz, vertical polarization. A Digital Video Broadcast compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder is required for reception. Analog NASA TV is no longer available.

For more information on the Pheonix Lander check out NASA's Offical Site.

The Catagories I had previously established offended me, so i cut them off. Here are the new, happier, more accuarate, less space wasting catagories. Cheers.

I've also added a new plugin that will publish my Tweets, on Njiska.com. If it ends up being useful i'll keep it.

Project currently on hold as I have NO money. Project will resume as soon as i have free cash or I'm laid off.

Donations well come. :)

Second video in the playlist.

Once more Trent Reznor does something amazing. Look for more details on this right here, tomorrow. Until then check out http://theslip.nin.com/

P.S. I got to be the guy who Dugg this. I expect to be front page in an hour, and with any luck mentioned on this weeks Diggnation

P.P.S I did make Diggnation. They just spelled Njiska instead of trying to pronounce it.

After a week of solid work i've released The Slip DVD-A.

Please Digg here

And download here

Those of you who know me well know that I love my car more than I love most people, so imagine how i reacted when i walked out into the parking lot and saw this:

Poor Jessica (Yes, I named my car Jessica). She didn't deserve this kind of abuse. Fortunately there was no damage to her and she succeeded in taking about bite out of the other car's bumper.

Since this happened at work I decided to take some time and tried to track down the guy responsible. One of my cohorts claimed to know a guy who had a matching car and claimed he was a really bad driver. Considering the Quebec plates I'd say we had a match.

Unfortunately for all the build up our actual confrontation was rather lackluster. He seemed frightened, intimidated by me. Considering we were talking about my Jessica I suppose he had every right to be. After all last week I was ready to deck one of the groundskeepers for using a leaf blower to blow rocks into cars. Fucking idiot.

There is one thing about this incident that kind of bothers me. If you back into someone, wouldn't you pull ahead? What kind of moron stays bumper to bumper?

Sunset:

Took this on a lonely Winter day.

Donna saying goodbye to Dell Hell:

So I was stumbling around the net last night, not really looking for anything in particular, when I stumbled upon this delightful Canadian web comic, a softer world. Many of the comics require a bit of thought to get and often they have a darker or slightly twisted humour. The one I posted above is one of my favourites, but there are many more like it. Definitely take the time to give it a look.

So my friend Donna (Pictured Right) has been doing pretty well for herself since last Autumn's great zombie outbreak. Though now reduced to a drooling, flesh hungry monster, apparently Donna still had enough stability to qualify for a a mortgage. So now she and her fiancée (also a zombie, but a different kind of zombie) have a new house and i must say it's not half bad. Well, once you get through the inch of nicotine, that is.

I haven't had a chance to see the house yet, only pictures, but so far it looks to be a decent sized place and with new floors, paint and the repairs of some safety hazards, it looks like it might actually be a decent home.

What really intrigues me though is a certain special feature of the basement. One that has me rather envious. So much so that i must now declare my bitter, seething hate towards her. I mean just look at what she has in her basement:

Great tits cope well with warming by the BBC.

I saw this on Digg and simply couldn't resist.

I'll keep this brief. I've spent the better part of 26 hours now working on converting the 24/96 Waves of The Slip into a DVD-Audio Disc. After many days fighting with programs and a lot of trial and error, I'm still only about half-way home. I've got the menus done, but now i have to go back and correct some mistakes, most notably buttons that are mushed together. I've also got to over come a bug in DiscWelder that prevents me from assigning left and right via menus, i have to drag and on a window that small it's a bitch.

If anyone knows how to remove flicker from still images, but keep the format the same, let me know, it's an issue. I also need a DTS 96/24 encoder, so if anyone has access to one let me know.

With any luck tomorrow i'll be able to get the DVD-A side complete and hopefully the DVD-V side as well. it's basically a carbon copy only in DTS.

Sigh. so little sleep. It's killing me.

This is so awesome. I owe it all to Trent Reznor. That's right, it's my Digg box on the NIN home page.

Remember, you can Digg it too, Digg Here

Sketch is an amussing new site that also users to draw a picture and swap it at random with another user. Sounds cool in theory, but as we all know there's an even greater theory that drives net kind. "Normal Person" + "Anonymity" + "Audience" = "Total Fuckwad". I decided to try swapping a few picts to see what i got back.

First Attempt - Complicated Math:

Result - Truth:

More attempts after the jump.

As of today Canada has finally come in line with Britian and raised our age of consent of consentual vaginal sex to 16. I beg the question of why this was needed as the community was more then willing to lynch perverts anyways, but oh well.

[edit] Canada
Since the recent amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code in March 2008, the current age of consent is 16.[1]

Although Canada is a federation, the criminal law (including the definition of the age of consent) is in the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government, so the age of consent is uniform throughout Canada. Section 151 of the Criminal Code of Canada makes it a crime to touch, for a sexual purpose, any person under the age of 16 years. Section 153 then goes on to prohibit the sexual touching of a person under 18 by a person in three circumstances: if he or she is in a "position of trust or authority" towards the youth, if the youth is in a "relationship of dependency" with him or her or if the relationship is "exploitative". The term "position of trust or authority" is not defined in the Code but the courts have ruled that parents, teachers and medical professionals hold a position of trust or authority towards youth they care for or teach. For determining whether or not a relationship is "exploitative" s. 153 (1.2) of the Code provides that a judge can consider how old the youth is, the difference in ages between the partners, how the relationship evolved and the degree of control or influence that the older partner has over the youth.