lol

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays

Innovation

Everyone has experienced some new feature from Google's seemingly endless ideas, but they seem to be losing focus of the marketability of various ideas. That's not necessarily bad for us, the consumer, but it does mean that the Good Giant is pumping lots of money into endeavours that I can't see them making their money back on. Sure, with enough time, any investment, funded by ads will pay for itself but I'm too ineloquent this morning to continue the diatribe. I'm sure you get the point: basically, what's the point of Google Maps Street View?As reported by Penny Arcade.

A few more links

I believe in Harvey Dent campaign webpage which recently linked to this image of Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Al Gore's crazy multi-monitor office space here.

A trailer for a new film, another trading on Marky Mark's awesome cop-acting called We Own the Night.

And, a 3D fabrication machine that makes objects out of pure sugar here.

Which Chess piece are you?

Your Score: A Black Rook

You scored 3 Power-Finesse, 1 Leader-Follower, 2 Unique-Ordinary, and 2 Offense-Defense!

You don't have to worry about fancy plans, or sophisticated schemes. You are just on the board to kick some ass and smash some white pieces. You stand by your leaders, and they get worried when you are removed from play. You work best with your buddy, the other black rook, and when you don't have him watching your six, you tend to be somewhat innefective.

Link: The What Chess Piece Are You Test written by Gundark27 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

It's movies season again

As I'm sure most of you are aware, there's a whole bunch of cool films coming out this 'Summer'. With the rounding out of 8 trilogies (with Spiderman 3 already out, Pirates: At World's End out on Thursday, Shrek the Third, Ocean's Thirteen, Rush Hour 3 and Bourne Ultimatum) combined with the first film entry of The Simpsons, the most expensive comedy ever in Evan Almighty and every 80s boy's wet dream in Michael Bay directing Transformers, there should be plenty of fun to go around...and plenty of return on the studios investments in crappier films.

The reason I'm making this post however (as well as a reference point for myself) is as an excuse to show you Yahoo! Movies' primary reason you should see the film Bruce Willis called his most fun job in a while: Live Free or Die Hard

"Pick any two methods of transportation. Chances are you'll get to see them crash and/or explode into each other in this movie"

It seems like Len Wiseman has taken a page out of Bay's book. Anywho, check out the Yahoo! page, it's a fun way to spend 15 minutes.

Mildly amusing

If a door is closed, karate chop it open.




It's been done before, but I actually chuckled aloud at a couple of these.

The importance of correct camera technique

Terrorist Quiz

Ever wondered if you're a terrorist? Well here's your chance to find out. A bit old-hat, but still disturbing seeing as the flag that they mention is now flown on most U.S. Navy ships (and I don't think they've got the prison-space to hold half their military)

xkcd

A cool new comic site I found. Some of my favourites:
The requisite geek one:
And a huge map of the social-networking world:

The power of Photoshop

Why Photoshop is clearly one of the most influential software packages ever:

Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Business cards

A nice collection of business card designs reside here. One of my favourites:

L&P

I love L&P! I recommend you go to their site to listen to their radio ads. There isn't much else to this post so here's one of their TV ads.

Why couldn't the Collins Class be like this?

longshort: New British sub, apparently looks like an alien, construction crew loves their job:
"We needed help over Easter," says Nigel Ward, "and over 300 men volunteered to work, even though the weather forecast was good."

Awesome furniture

This site has pictures of some awesome ideas for furniture such as a tree-chair, a floating bed and a room-in-a-wheel!

More educational flashness

How to mummify someone:

Educational!

Cool black-hole flash thingy

It's too big here, but most of you get this through a reader anyways right?

Is it talent or skill?

I can't be bothered downloading it & putting it on YouTube. It's still crazy though.

Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings won 74 consecutive Jeopardy shows and has quite a personality and sense of humour (is one required for the other?) and as such is one of my favourite trivia buffs. I got given his book last Xmas and, as a bit of a trivia fan, I found it a really enjoyable read. The point of this post however is just to provide a link to a video of him with a cool answer.

There's also this which is just cool for us 1337 h4x0r5.

I feel left out

I haven't yet been approached by anyone representing legal authorities at all. I didn't download Metallica at school; I bought pirated software before DMCA...etc

So here's my (very) little bit of badass:

The HD-DVD encryption number: 0x 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

May the legal letters roll in

Savior

Since I'm in a bit of a movie review mood, I thought I'd include this film which I've been intending to post about for ages.

Long-short: Dennis Quaid, before he was famous, playing an American officer who joins the French Foreign Legion after killing the terrorists who killed his family.He turns mercenary for the Serbian forces during the recent conflict where he struggles to rescue a pregnant Serb and her baby.

I've only seen this film once, I was in the mood for an action film and Dennis Quaid (The Day After Tomorrow) and the Foreign Legion (Legionnaire) seemed to make a good combination. What I watched, however, blew my mind and has haunted me almost every day since I saw it morer than a year ago.

I've never seen real war, but without spoiling the film, it's clear why so many soldiers have trouble letting go. I honestly recommend that each and every one of you finds this film and watches it, but do so knowing that'll it might very well screw you up.

300

There's been just a wee bit of hype surrounding 300 lately. With the success of Sin City, everyone was scambling to be able to claim 'I liked Frank Miller before it was cool!' and, with the current wars, 300 must have been the natural next choice. As far as I can tell, it's fairly close to the comic (the terms 'comic' and 'graphic novel' are equal in my book...get over it) but that doesn't redeem it much. I know I may be surrendering my wang, but 300 just wasn't as good as it should've been.

Whatever reason you could have for watching 300, there is a better film out there.
If there's actually anyone who saw it because they really wanted to see realitic-ish Ancient-Greek fighting, I reckon Troy was heaps better, or even apparently the original The 300 Spartans.

If you just wanted a rousing battelcry of a film, one that makes you want to go and take a swing at the tall poppies or the state as soon as you leave the cinema, The Last Samurai, V for Vendetta, and Tears of the Sun (or practically any Bruce Willis film...that has a gun, ghosts don't count)

I imagine there were quite a few fans of the comic-book style of Sin City, who were expecting a similar film, just set about 2500 years prior. But even then, while it did have a unique (read 'fake') feel to it, it still fell short with V For Vendetta and The Crow and, of course Batman Begins leading the charge (I'd even include Road To Perdition in there despite a significantly realistic wash, it still flowed with more of the feel of a comic).

I presume, however, that the main reason people saw it was for the gore, which as you can tell by the logo was meant to be a pretty important character itself.

But even then, there are so many films that have surpassed it; I'm thinking the Blade series, A History of Violence and, of course, Josie and the Pussycats.

There's also amazing inaccuracies, presumably taken from the comic such as African elephants, huge rhinoceroses, giants, Immortals who look very ninja-like, guys with swords for arms and black-African Persians! I figure it was a pretty ferocious army before CGI was invented didn't really need enhancement.

My final gripe, was contained in the climax, don't worry it's not a spoiler, we all know they all die, but the whole film, they've put up this heroic fight, allowing time for all the armies of Greece to move to engage the Persians, they all expose themselves only to die in a shower of arrows, despite, seconds before, being adequately protected in a formation we've already seen was impenetrable. They could've at least taken a few with them.

As far as pros, Gerard Butler was great, as were each of the 300 Spartans (with David Wenham narrating really well and Vincent Regan in his second Greek-captain role) and it showed the immensity of Xerxes' army that appeared on Greece's doorstep.

For some fun, have a look through the film's keyword list from IMDb.