Ugo Cei’s Weblog
I didn’t know it, but apparently today is Towel Day:
Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, and since then has been extended to an annual event. On this day, fans carry a towel with them throughout the day.
Better look out for any Vogons out there.
Technorati Tags: towel day, douglas adams, h2g2.
Here’s a phishing attempt that wasn’t caught by my spam filters:
Dear PayPal Member ($to),
Your account has been detected for a suspicious activity, our system detected that your PayPal email changed to be santaalbert@yahoo.com and also your billing address from ip address: 128.114.63.15 (CA, Santa Cruz).We are sure that the changed is a part of fraudlent. For safeguarding your privacy information, we deactived your account. If you want retrieve your PayPal account, You are required click the link below:
Active Your PayPal Now
It’s so pathetic that I’m tempted to open a fake PayPal account, load it with a couple of bucks and let them have it 
…and be interviewed on the BBC:
On May 8th 2006 BBC News 24’s Karen Bowerman interviewed Guy Kewney, a respected IT expert, re. Apple Computer vs. Apple Music. Only it wasn’t Guy Kewney. They interviewed his taxi driver live on air instead! His expression when he realises their mistake is priceless!
Actually the man wasn’t a cab driver, but an IT consultant looking for a job. Anyway I concur, his expression is indeed priceless.
The long wait is finally over. After having been in development since 1997, we finally have a demo version of Duke Nukem Forever. Not being much of a gamer, I’m not that excited, but being a web developer I finally feel vindicated: According to Ars Technica, Duke Nukem Forever is a Ruby on Rails application, runs in a browser and uses Ajax:
From the ReadMe.txt file, I also found out why we’ve been waiting so long for Duke Nukem Forever. Wanting Duke Nukem Forever to run on all platforms, but not wanting to bust a nut writing three different versions (not to mention having to come up with both PowerPC and x86 binaries for Mac OS X), the developers came up with a clever solution. Duke Nukem Forever has been rewritten as an Ajax application written using the Ruby on Rails framework. What it means is that Duke Nukem Forever has skipped a generation and is the first true Web 3.0 application, and it runs entirely in your web browser. Any web browser, on any platform… well almost.
This clearly demonstrates that the Web is the platform for everything, including high-end, 3D games with plenty of sex and gore. Go Rails!
If you like juggling, you’ll love this.
(Via Jason Rosenhouse).
Technorati Tags: juggling, video, chris bliss.
Here’s an amazing video of real people playing the Simpson’s intro. I wonder how much work went into making it.
You asked for it, and now you’ve got it! At “Evil or Not?” it’s now possible to cast your votes not just regarding Google’s evilness, but also Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s.
Now it will really be possible to compare the big three’s respective degrees of evilness. But for this comparison to be meaningful, we need many more votes. As soon as we have some data, I plan to put up a couple of zeitgeist pages with interesting statistics. So, please, visit “Evil or Not?” and vote!
We also need more feeds with fresh news about Microsoft and Yahoo. If you know of some good blogs or news sites with content on these two companies, besides the obvious ones like Scobleizer and Zawodny, please leave a comment.
A great tutorial on creating a video podcast … the French way. Might not be appropriate for a work environment, but then again who would want to work in a place where this is not appropriate?
(Via Melablog.)
I don’t usually link to blonde jokes. But this one is too good to pass on. Possibly the best blonde joke ever.
I guess you won’t be able to watch any Discovery Institute produced DVDs on this player.
(Via Gizmodo)
Don’t even try to understand this if you’re not Italian and know about recent events concerning Mr. Lapo Elkann, but this is just too fun. If you search on Google for “lapo” you’ll get the following ad:
We all know Apple products have the best design in all of the consumer electronics and computer industry. But yesterday’s event introducing the video iPod and the new iMacs left us shocked and very disappointed.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): “Look at the picture to the right. Steve is not wearing blue jeans! Those are pants, for the love of Pete…and they’re brown!”
You mean: Brown pants with a black turtleneck? Did Steve wake up yesterday morning and, without even opening his eyes, put on the first two things that he could find in his drawers? What will be next? A pink iPod with a red clickwheel? Someone please give the the guy a lesson on dress color matching.
Google unveils new erotica search engine: “MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — September 15, 2005 — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today its plans to enter the lucrative adult content market with a new search engine that will be kept separate from its main line of search services.
Called Grotica, the new service uses sophisticated image processing tools to automatically categorize still photos and movies according to subject matter and degree of explicitness. Google’s powerful keyword search functions have been further enhanced for this application with over 3000 synonyms for anatomical terms and erotic activities.
When users visit Grotica.com they will be able to specify a plain language description of the material they are searching for, or point the search engine to an existing image containing similar content. Grotica will then use a proprietary ranking algorithm to return the most relevant hits.”
It would be cool if it were true ;). Unfortunately, it’s a fake.
(Via Steve Rubel.)
Know what? If I had The Daily Show here, I would probably still be watching television. Segments like this one are just too funny.
(Via Jason Calacanis).
I never thought math could be so romantic (WMV file).
(Via John Paczkowski.)
Grant Robinson: “After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google’s image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it’s surprisingly addictive.”
Nice game, but after having played it three times, a fair number of already seen montages start to come up again, making the game a little too easy. Anyway, my best score so far is 287.
(Via Ben Hyde.)
Descartes and Heisenberg walk into a bar and order drinks. After they empty their glasses, the bartender comes over and asks them if they would like another round. Descartes ponders this for a moment and replies 'I think not' — then POOF! disappears.
The bartender, obviously shocked, turns to Heisenberg and says 'Did you see that???'
Heisenberg pauses to consider, then replies 'I'm uncertain.'
[Via Kevin Schofield.]
