Subscribers

Saturday, January 31, 2009

«Caturday: Dentists Adopted Tree»

I think more than just dentists would recommend that...

4 out of 5 dentists recommend not letting your cat do this.
Wat duz u meen that I r adoptud?
Naw... Me father wuz a tree

See the rest of “Caturday: Dentists Adopted Tree”»

Friday, January 30, 2009

«Blogger For Dummies»

Google Blogger for DummiesI'm actually surprised it hasn't already been made some time ago. I just read over at Blogger Buster that Google Blogger will be added to the "For Dummies" book series.

They have every other subject imaginable. I've already seen one in the bookstore about blogging in general. I've never actually bought or read one of those "For Dummies" books. I've always thought they're somewhat demeaning. I don't want to admit I'm a dummy, so why would I buy a book for one? I have one on Linux that was given to me, but I've never read it.

If I see this one in the bookstore I may look through it, but I'm pretty sure I already know enough about Blogger. I doubt I'd buy it.

See the rest of “Blogger For Dummies”»

Thursday, January 29, 2009

«Spore Sightings»

I was playing Spore, flying around a planet I just recently colonized when I found Him. My new planet is truly blessed. I have none other than the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my protector. Oh, what a glorious sight!
Epic Flying Spaghetti Monster in Spore.

Click image to view full

Yes, that's a Grox ship in my fleet. I've Danced With The Devil and became allies with the Grox. Actually, I purchased this system from them. The Grox are the main villains in the Space Stage of Spore. They control the entire center of the galaxy and usually serve as an obstacle for the player. They are very tough to ally.

On the other side of the scale, I was playing in creature stage with a new species of mine when I had a not-so-glorious visitor... A toilet spaceship.
Toilet space ship in Spore's creature stage.
Click image to view full

Ah, the wonders of randomly downloaded user content! You never know what you're going to see.

See the rest of “Spore Sightings”»

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

«Official Vatican YouTube Channel»

It works for Obama, so why not the Vatican? I present to you: the Pope's YouTube channel.

Obama's channel was ChangeDotGov until he was inaugurated. Now it's at the Whitehouse channel.

There was a time not too long ago that it was too "informal" to officially post on YouTube for such serious parties. It makes me wounder, who's next to jump on the bandwagon with an official YouTube channel?

See the rest of “Official Vatican YouTube Channel”»

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

«Satellite Images of the Inauguration»

You may or may not have seen this image already. It's Washington DC 41 minutes before Obama was officially sworn in. Ever wounder what 1.8 million people looks like from space?
Satellite image of Washington DC on the day of Obama's Inauguration

Click image for larger version. (Not quite full-sized, see below.)

They look like swarms of ants or bees. They're in groups like that because they are in front of the JumboTrons (very large TVs) spread down the National Mall.

You know what's amazing? There were at least 1.8 million people there, and no-one did anything stupid enough to get arrested. Just... Wow. I'm impressed.

The newly-launched (on September 6th, 2008) GeoEye-1 satellite was over DC January 20th. This satellite is owned by GeoEye, the same company that provides imagery for Google Maps and Google Earth.

Now, you might notice that I usually have the text "Click image to view full" under images I have sized-down for the blog. Well, this time if you click the image above you'll get medium-size (2560x2650 px), not full. The full-size is really big. But if you must see it, here it is:

Full Sized Satellite Image of Obama's Inauguration
Caution: the image is very large at 7816x8091 px, 51.5 MB in size. I recommend right-clicking the link and selecting "save as...", as well as a fast internet connection. (I'm putting my GoDaddy hosting to work now.)

For ground-view images, Boston.com has a great page: The Inauguration of President Barack Obama

See the rest of “Satellite Images of the Inauguration”»

Monday, January 26, 2009

«Motivational Monday: I'm Sorry, Obama is Awesome»

Somehow, I don't think Obama is going to be able to live up to the superhuman expectations of him. But he's did a pretty good job so far... This being not even a week into his presidency and all.

I'm Sorry / I couldn't hear you over the sound of how awesome Barack Obama is.

See the rest of “Motivational Monday: I'm Sorry, Obama is Awesome”»

Sunday, January 25, 2009

«Pon & Zi»

Pon and Zi. They seem to have that innocent, yet slightly passive aggressive tone to them. A little morbid, and a lot lonely. The yellow one is Pon, and the blue one is Zi.

If I promise not to kill you, can I have a hug?

My favorite thing about eating Gummy Bears is knowing that they can't fight back when you bite their heads off.
Awww... The sky is crying.
If I can't hear your heartbeat, you're too far away.
I went to pick you a flower, but it was a venus fly trap and it bit my head, so I killed it and got you this piece of grass instead.
Oh, look. It's beating for you.

See the rest of “Pon & Zi”»

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

«Update Web Feed Subscriptions»

I hope this somehow makes it to the old web feed subscribers, but things have changed with my webfeeds. The Feedburner address has been moved to a Google address, and as such they're making people move their web feeds to a new address.

I went a step further and moved mine over to my own domain. So my blog's web feed is now located at http://feeds.mastermarf.com/mastermarf rather than http://feeds.feedburner.com/mastermarf.

The same change has taken place for my Shared Stuff widget. You can find the updated web feed address at http://feeds.mastermarf.com/marfssharedstuff. Please update your subscriptions accordingly, thanks.

See the rest of “Update Web Feed Subscriptions”»

«Do You Want a Banana?»

Web address written on a banana

Click image to view full

I bruised my web address into a banana. Basically you take a pencil or anything with a dull point and write on the banana. You won't see much at first, but give it a few hours. And no, it didn't bruise the eatable part; only the peel.

Why is it that most things on the internet involving bananas is always weird crap?

Tally Hall - Bananaman

The term "going bananas" holds its meaning, I think.

See the rest of “Do You Want a Banana?”»

Thursday, January 22, 2009

«Another Blog Quiz Tag»

I suppose it's time for another one of these blog tags. I got this one from Bunc.

It's a list, so here's my answers:

  • What is your occupation? Unemployed.
  • What color are your socks right now? White.
  • What are you listening to right now? "Go Away" by The Cruxshadows.
  • Can you drive a stick shift? I don't drive at all.
  • Last person you spoke to on the phone? My dad.
  • Do you like the person who you stole this quiz from / tagged you? Eh, Bunc is a pretty cool guy. He's an atheist and doesn't afraid of anything. (Yes, I meant to type it that way.)
  • How old are you today? 22.
  • Favorite drink? Montain Dew.
  • Favorite sport to watch? I don't watch any sports.
  • Pets? Sea-monkeys.
  • Favorite food? Pizza.
  • What was the last movie you watched? I'm not sure.
  • What’s your favorite day of the week? Caturday.
  • How do you vent anger? I usually don't.
  • What was your favorite toy as a child? A stuffed Snoopy with beanbag paws.
  • What is your favorite season? Fall.
  • Hugs or kisses? Hugs.
  • Cherries or Blueberries? Cherries.
  • Do you want your friends to do this quiz? If they want to.
  • Who is the most likely to respond? Monique.
  • Living arrangements? Alternating between divorced parents.
  • When was the last time you cried? The last time I was unhappy enough to do so.
  • What is on the floor of your closet? Clothes.
  • Who is the friend you have had the longest that you hope takes this quiz? I don't care if anyone does.
  • What did you do last NIGHT? Played the Sims 2.
  • Favorite smells? Spearmint.
  • What inspires you? Writing code.
  • What are you afraid of? Myself.
  • Favorite dog breed? Short-haired dachshund, aka wiener dog.
  • How many states have you lived in? 1.
  • Favorite holiday? If I had to pick one I'd say Halloween.

See the rest of “Another Blog Quiz Tag”»

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

«First Blogoversary»

January 21st may not be a holiday for anyone else, but it's a personal holiday for me. 1 year ago I started this blog. That's right, I've been rambling on for a year now. Someone must care; across my 404 posts, I've accumulated 1,313 comments so far.

Across my entire site (not just the blog) I've had over 200,000 visits and 400,500 pageviews during this past year. Not too bad, I suppose.

My 10 personal favorite posts are (in order of date posted):

Well, here's to another year of blogging!

See the rest of “First Blogoversary”»

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

«Obama's Inauguration»

If you didn't vote for Obama'08 you're a racist.
Here we are, on the heels of Martin Luther King, Jr's Day. It's Inauguration Day here in the United States and we're putting an African American in the Presidential Office. I do believe we have realized another part of Martin Luther King, Jr's "dream".

That isn't to say there's a long way to go yet. There are still many prejudiced people out there. However, I feel sometimes it's gone too far the other way. Just because I'm white, it's wrong if I say "nigger". However, African Americans can use the term amongst themselves as a sign of camaraderie.

I imagine there were some people that voted for Obama just so they wouldn't feel racist. I wounder how many people will now make statements like "I'm not racist because I voted for Obama for president". In a lot of ways, one can try so hard to not be racist that they actually become raciest.

I don't know... Has anyone else felt that? The need to be overly "PC" when talking about race? A good example is the little disclaimer I felt the need to put in my Congratulations Obama post. Another example is over at Drek's blog.

See the rest of “Obama's Inauguration”»

Monday, January 19, 2009

«Motivational Monday: The iPhone»

My dad has an iPhone. Keeping in mind I have a bias against Apple products... Even I think the iPhone is friggin' awesome.

Delete “Google” Deleting “Google” will also delete all of its data. [Delete] [Cancel] / The iPhone / That powerful.

See the rest of “Motivational Monday: The iPhone”»

Sunday, January 18, 2009

«Suppressing Protests»

This video was put up 2 days ago. Scientology is trying a new method to stop protesters.

Scientology: Casting Stones

See the rest of “Suppressing Protests”»

Friday, January 16, 2009

«Traffic Returning»

My web traffic is returning, this last week wasn't too bad. Still hasn't returned to the normal weekly averages, though. You damn students need to go back to school after Winter break. Or visit my site and play the games from home.

Graph of traffic between December 15th and January 14th
Usually, my traffic peaks around 2,500 visits a day during the week, and the weekends drop off to about 500 visits a day. However, during the Winter break, my traffic flat-lined at around 250 visits a day, no matter what day of the week it was.

What's the post popular page? By far Pyro Sand 2, accounting for about 48% of my traffic. Sadly, the actual blog here only accounts for about 12% of my traffic.

See the rest of “Traffic Returning”»

Thursday, January 15, 2009

«Unusual Ads: Anal Douche»

The other day I ran across this little ad, proving that you can probably buy anything you can think of on Amazon.

Treat yourself! / Anal Douche / Make it sparkle! / Buy New $9.95 / Buy from Amazon.com
Remember, make it sparkle!

See the rest of “Unusual Ads: Anal Douche”»

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

«Embedded Comment Form»

Now instead of having to click "Post a Comment" and going through that page, you can type your comment right into the white box at the bottom of a post (it will be under any existing comments).

I've been meaning to do this for a while. I would have did it sooner, but last time I tried this I got some weird blogger error when I tried to update my template.

So yeah, try it out.

Also, there's a spiffy new email address you can contact me by. You can find it in the About section, under Contact. I'm not putting it directly in this post because spam bots can pick it up. I have a special anti-spam bot script I wrote and installed in the About page. If you've been to the page before, you may have to clear your browser's cache in order to update it. Hint: It's no longer an "@gmail.com" address.

EDIT: I had a report that the new comment box doesn't work with mobile devices. Probably has something to do with the inline frame it uses. I can't do it any other way, so until I find a work-around I'm rolling back to the old commenting method. Inline frames aren't supported in XHTML 1.0 strict anyway. Sorry about that!

2ND EDIT: It's back with a link to the old comment page. That way in the event the embedded one doesn't work you can fallback to the old one.

See the rest of “Embedded Comment Form”»

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

«The Subliminal Arrow»

It will haunt you for the rest of your life. I present to you, the FedEx logo:
FedEx Express Logo
Don't see it? I'll outline it and shade it in for you:
FedEx Express Logo with the arrow outlined
It's in the whitespace between the E and the x. It was intentional, the designer Mr. Lindon Leader even recreated the font so a perfect arrow would form there. I tell you what, my eye immediately goes to the arrow whenever I see the logo. It's almost distracting...

You can read the full interview about the logo here: The Man Behind the FedEx Logo

See the rest of “The Subliminal Arrow”»

Monday, January 12, 2009

«Motivational Monday: Lex Luthor»

Lex Luthor has got to be one of the lamest super villains around. He comes up with the most ridiculous and elaborate plans that cost him more money than he would ever get back from it.

I mean really, sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads was a better idea than most of Lex Luthor's plans.

Lex Luthor / You're like the richest man in Metropolis. Can't you just BUY some cakes?
And we can see how well the shark idea turned out...

Austin Powers - Sharks with lasers

See the rest of “Motivational Monday: Lex Luthor”»

Sunday, January 11, 2009

«The Gift of Proselytizing»

When I watched this video, I thought of Looney.

Penn Says: A Gift of a Bible


Yes, we have deep-rooted disagreements. But Looney, don't think that I see you as any less of a person because of it. I think I'm right about the non-existence of that truck; but feel free to tackle me anyway if you see fit. lol

See the rest of “The Gift of Proselytizing”»

Saturday, January 10, 2009

«Caturday: Xenu Funny iLOL»

In order to understand this first one, you'd have to know that John Travolta's son recently died. You'd also have to know that John Travolta is a Scientologist; and you'd have to know a little about Scientology. Bad taste? Perhaps, but I couldn't resist.

Where is your Xenu now?
That's not funny
iLOL

See the rest of “Caturday: Xenu Funny iLOL”»

Friday, January 9, 2009

«Colorful "g" Icon»

Well, Google's new icon is better... I'm getting a sense of déjà vu, it seems like I've already blogged about this topic before...

Old(ish) lower case "g".
Google Icon, June 2008 - January 2009
New, more colorful lower case "g".
Google Icon, January 2009
This time I caught the icon change the day it happened. In fact, some of the Google pages don't even have the new icon quite yet. I'm still inclined to say I like the old original capitol "G" icon the best.

See the rest of “Colorful "g" Icon”»

«Japanese Rube Goldberg Contest»

Yet another wounder of modern Japanese culture... A Rube Goldburg machine to prepare ramen for dinner.

Japanese Rube Goldberg Contest


Yes, it is overly complex to perform a simple task. That's what Rube Goldburg machines are. They are also prone to failures and are very tedious to build and set up. But they are also fun to watch.

Ok, I can't just point and laugh at Japan. We have Rube Goldberg Contests here in the United States as well. And what better American food product to prepare than a burger?

Burger-making skills put to test at Rube Goldberg contest

See the rest of “Japanese Rube Goldberg Contest”»

Thursday, January 8, 2009

«Sims 2 House Screenshots»

As promised, here's some screenshots of the Sims 2 house I've been re-modeling. I have the following expansions for the game: Nightlife, Open for Business, and Seasons. It was fall of the year in-game when I took the screenshots. That's why the trees are all yellowish.

As I've said before, the head of this family owns several businesses and money is no object. (Even without cheating!) Click an image to view full.

Here's the full house. Notice the curved roof and the sunken-in garage. Those are usually not possible in the game. It took some tricky use of the boolprop constrainfloorelevation false cheat.
Zenge family house overview
We'll work our way down the floors, so here's the 3rd floor.
Zenge family house 3rd floor
2nd floor...
Zenge family house 2nd floor
1st floor. This is the main floor where everything happens.
Zenge family house 1st floor
And the basement. Notice the car in the garage and the pool in the far corner.
Zenge family house basement
Here's my neighborhood. There's a few houses that didn't make it in the screenshot, but most can be seen. Yeah, it's a fairly heavily populated Sims 2 neighborhood.
Zenge family house basement

See the rest of “Sims 2 House Screenshots”»

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

«Image Search Fix»

A while back I started to notice a problem with my image hosting for my blog. It was taking longer and longer to get a directory listing of my pictures folder in FileZilla (an FTP program). The reason was the sheer number of images building up in the directory, and it was taking too long to download all the file names. I knew that it would only get worse as I put more images on my blog.

So I decided to break them out by year. I moved all my images from http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/ to http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/2008/. That way I can create a new folder for each year. For instance, now I'm uploading any new pictures to http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/2009/. It works great. A little slow getting the directory listing towards the end of the year, but manageable.

The only problem was that Google Image Search had already indexed many of the images at their old location. You'll notice when you do a Google image search you have the option to "See full size image". So now I had a lot of people getting a 404 not found error when they tried to view an image result from my page.

I finally fixed the 404 errors people were getting from the Google Image search results of my images that I moved into their 2008 folder. I wrote a short little PHP script and put it on the 404 error page for my pictures subdomain:

<?php
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
if (stripos($uri,"/08") == 5)
{
$uriImage = substr($uri,6);
// Permanent redirection
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://pictures.mastermarf.com/blog/2008/" . $uriImage);
exit();
}
?>

It's a 301 redirect to the new address for the images I moved. A 301 redirect basically says to the browser or search engine spider, "I have permanently moved to this new location." I had to tell the server to use PHP version 5 for the stripos() function. It didn't work when it tried to run in version 4.

What the script does is gets the web address that was requested and checks if "/08" is in the right position to be one of the images I moved. I did this because I only wanted to redirect the moved images. All the file names of the images I moved start with "08". I figured it was easier to do than have a long list of specific images to check for. Also, there is are no other file names that start with "08" in that directory, so it worked out.

The rest of the script is a pretty strait-forward 301 redirect. I pull just the file name out of the requested web address, and re-build the new web address right there inside the header() function.

I just hope it wasn't too late. I moved the images a while ago, so Google has had time to see the 404 Not Found error and remove the images from their index.

See the rest of “Image Search Fix”»

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

«It Rained»

The extra 2 feet of snow we were to get came down as rain instead, so I didn't need to go on the roof to shovel. Yes, the rain makes the snow heavier as it soaks into it. But we were worried about an additional 2 feet of snow then rain on top of that. So I didn't suffer a death by falling off the roof. We got the new hot water tank hooked up instead.

Other than that, I've started playing The Sims 2 again. I wasn't going to reinstall it. I was going to wait until The Sims 3 comes out sometime this year. However, after watching someone else play it, it made me want to as well.

I still have my old neighborhood, so it was easy to get back into it. I am yet again re-modeling the house pictured in this article. I'll put up another screenshot of it when I'm done.

See the rest of “It Rained”»

Monday, January 5, 2009

«Motivational Monday: Horses»

I have never liked horses. I don't trust them.

Horses / They'll fucking eat you.

See the rest of “Motivational Monday: Horses”»

Sunday, January 4, 2009

«Hot Water Tank Failure»

Over at my dad's house we've had a hot water tank failure and not the time to fix it. We have it disconnected so it doesn't keep leaking, and we now have a replacement tank. So, what could possibly be more important to do around the house than re-gaining hot water? (Taking a shower would be a bit... cold.)

Answer: Snow removal. Specifically from the roof. After all, if the roof caves in hot water isn't going to do us much good. Last week we had 2-3 feet of snow dumped on us, then we went into a bit of a cold and clear period. We figured it'd warm up and melt off. Well, it warmed up... And started to snow again. We're supposed to get up to another 2 feet. Crap.

It's a rather small house, however it is 2 floors tall. A slip and fall off the roof could very well be fatal. So that's what I'll be doing today. Shoveling snow I mean; I don't plan on the fatal part.

And no, this week's Motivational Monday won't be proof that I survived it. I've scheduled that post ahead of time already.

EDIT: After Monique's comment, I decided to make a little update here. I didn't have to shovel the roof, so I'm fine.

See the rest of “Hot Water Tank Failure”»

Saturday, January 3, 2009

«Caturday: Tough Gutter Stuck»

A lot happening, so it's a little late today.

don mess wif me / i has tuf.
im in ur gutter blockin ur drainage
Halp we r stuk togezar

See the rest of “Caturday: Tough Gutter Stuck”»

Friday, January 2, 2009

«From Obama to The Game»

It's the Wikipedia game. You click the random article link to go to a random article on Wikipedia. Only following links within Wikipedia articles starting with your randomly chosen article, you start jumping from page to page trying to get to a final, predetermined article. Also, you're not allowed to use the Categories links that are found at the bottom of some articles. Often times the predetermined objective is the article on Adolf Hitler.

That got too easy, because there's links to Germany scattered all around Wikipedia (and the article on Germany has a link to the article on Adolf Hitler). So A friend and I decided to try the article on The Game (mind game) as the objective (by the way, you just lost). Much more difficult... At least the first time through.

Basically, we found a link path through Barack Obama's Wikipedia page.

  1. Barack Obama
  2. Harvard Law School
  3. Harvard University
  4. The Game (Harvard-Yale)
  5. The Game (disambiguation)
  6. The Game (mind game)
After we found that, it became too easy again, because all you had to do was find the article on the United States and you could easily track back to Obama (and thus, The Game).

The problem is now, whenever I think of Obama I also think about The Game. I think I've just increased the frequency of my "The Game" losses...

I'm convinced that you can follow links from anything to anything in Wikipedia. Give it a try. It may take some creativity or outright random guesses, but it's possible. I forget what our random article was when we started, but clicking a link to Obama was just a random guess.

See the rest of “From Obama to The Game”»

Thursday, January 1, 2009

«New Year's Resolution»

Happy New Year everyone!

I hereby make the same New Year's resolution I make every year... My New Year's resolution is to not make a New Year's resolution.

And thus I've already failed it. Because... You know, it is a New Year's resolution in itself. Damnit... But I'll take some comfort in knowing that you just lost The Game. (Ha, ha... Point and laugh)

So, what's your New Year's resolution? I'd like to see a few of yours in the comments.

See the rest of “New Year's Resolution”»

Subscribe to: Posts (via reader)