Monday, March 26, 2007
Filed under: Gadgets, Japan — Malcolm Owen @ 11:25 am
The random browsing session last night yielded a strange, if fantastic, alarm clock. You see, it tells the time, it wakes you up, and the world continues to turn.
However.
This clock has what can only be described as a “Fun” way of forcing you to turn it off. It wakes you 3 minutes before it is due to go off, and then you must “cut” the right wire on the bomb interface, lest a large “Bang” will sound, waking everyone in your neighborhood. Failure constitutes running out of time (Dude, 3 minutes to pull apart 2 plugs…) or by pulling apart the wrong combination of wires (Ahh, so that’s what the lights on the side are for…).
Now, I advise not importing possibly the greatest alarm clock in history, because you will be labeled as a terrorist, despite it’s payload being a large noise. This may be awesome, but you don’t want months of interrogation just to get it…
[Via Japanator via Tokyo Mango]
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 11:41 pm
Echelon Software (The gaming one) is a new indie gaming studio. Great. However, they’re new, and they’re still making a game called “Black Powder Red Earth”, a game focused on contracted fighters on Mars. On a budget of thousands. Yes, really. And to add more pressure to the proceedings, the guys at Gamespot are filming it and putting it on the internet as “Indie Velopment“, every Wednesday.
3 episodes in, they’ve moved into some cheap office space, managed to get some cheap motion capture done (Sticking tape marks onto someone then making them go through the motions on camera), and scored the Unreal 3 Engine to make the whole thing.
At the end of the latest episode(That would be “3″), you have the guys at Epic (you know, Gears of War, the Unreal franchise…) watching a presentation about their game, and they don’t seem too impressed by it. But who cares, what do they know? Err…
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Monday, March 19, 2007
Filed under: Gaming, Internet — Malcolm Owen @ 11:27 pm
I know I posted in the past about the guys at Jellyvision kicking out a daily Dis or Dat, but now they’ve upped the ante a bit.
They’ve brought back Jack itself. Granted, it’s only a 7 question round (What do you expect for a weekly quiz), but the staple Dis or Dat and the legendary Jack Attack all appear as normal. The jazzy intro sequence and the question visualizations are fantastic, very modern. The final Attack is what I would consider to be their greatest incarnation yet, adding a hint of menace to the proceedings.
Sadly, the site’s being killed on Mondays. It appears that it gets attacked by the Digg users, all wanting to play the latest Jack release. If you’re willing to postphone until Tuesday, you’ll enjoy it just as much, except you’ll avoid the longer than normal loading times.
Everyone, Jack is back. Properly back. Everyone hug Cookie…
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
Filed under: Other — Malcolm Owen @ 11:33 pm
Some random linkage for the moment…
Rap-Cat - Originally, and still an advert, for a fast food chain in America. An odd idea, but at least it’s different to those McDonald’s ones. Heck, there’s even a song(?) to download too. Seriously weird.
Destructoid Turns One - Congratulations, you’ve made it past a year of life. Stupid amounts of traffic, a vast community, and a guy with a robotic head. You deserve any praise you get.
The Joel on Software Bionic Office - If ever Stick of Wrong Studios gets done properly, I want my offices just like these. But more green…
Ryan’s Public Diet - Every Wednesday over at Dethroner, there’s gonna be a post and photo (…ok…) showing where Ryan has got to on some MediFast diet system. The public nature will probably force him to stick with it more than most other fatties would. Like me. I’ll stick to my Paul Mckenna CD…
Normew service mew returrrrr tomorrow.
(Must stop listening to that song…)
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Filed under: Other, Tech — Justin Lee @ 1:42 am
The first idea of buying a portable in car GPS came to me after a few visits to Los Angeles for E3, with such a massive city I needed a GPS to navigate around. I would often pay about $5 USD to rent a GPS from Hertz; it just seemed like money wasted. So I waited for a GPS that got decent reviews to go on sale. Last week the Mio C310S (Called Mio C310sx in the United States) had the price slashed by $100 to $250 CAD.
I must admit, the Mio C310S was quite enjoyable for the first few random trips I entered into it; even though I knew where I was going I wanted to ensure it would: A) Give me accurate directions B) Ample warning of difficult highway circles C) Points of Interests and D) Easy to use interface. Unfortunately, it failed in all four points most of the time. (more…)
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Monday, March 12, 2007
Filed under: Japan, Other, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 11:09 pm
Everyone knows that the Japanese love weird, freaky stuff. That is a fact. Cue a video over at TV In Japan about someone putting a strange liquid into a speaker, and seeing it “Bubble” in a semi-paranormal way. If you remember that it’s inside a speaker and suffering a bombardment of vibrations, then you’ll see it’s a fairly normal effect that Non-Newtonian Liquids can do.
Non-Newtonian Liquids, to try and cut down the amount of text that Wikipedia gives you, is a liquid/solid that’s confused. If left alone, it will turn into a liquid, but if impacted in some way, it becomes more solid. For example, you can easily roll some into a ball using your hands, kneading constantly. once you stop, it turns runny and flows through your fingers quite easily. Heck, you can even run on it, since the sudden application of foot to liquid solidifies it enough to support your weight temporarily.
No, I don’t know how or why any of this works, but I figure you might want to see the freakiness you can do with Cornstarch and Water yourself, then dare to mess up your kitchen experimenting as well…
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Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Filed under: PC, Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 5:05 pm
Inspired by the John Chow Cable Folding Craziness, and prodded a bit by the BSOD and “Won’t Boot” scare from last night, I decided to tidy my own PC’s internals. I hadn’t done it in a while, and it gives me a chance to check all the connections to the drives, just in case moving the PC caused it.
So, I disconnected the monitors, peripherals and power leads, shifted the main PC box to my custom made kitchen-worktop desk, and prepared to work…
(more…)
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Filed under: Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 12:41 pm
Are you like me: A sad and lonely individual that has high computer temperatures and a mess of cables inside disrupting the airflow? Too cheap to buy round IDE cables to make things cooler?
Why not do what John Chow does with his own computers: Cable Folding.
He folds the cables like some sort of origami specialist around the sides of the case to minimize the amount of cables hanging in the air in the middle of the case, making some drives appear just to have a connector attached and no cable. It’s something I’m going to attempt to do today with mine (Damn BSOD appeared the night before last and gave me a scare).
Amazingly, John “Root of All Evil” Chow has actually posted this years ago on The Tech Zone, and with the same photos too! Recycling older content that remains timeless: Pure Evil. Commendable.
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Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Filed under: Apple, Lists, Tech — Malcolm Owen @ 10:51 am
As you already know, I’m a Mac User. I am still more of a PC gamer, so I have a foot in both OS camps. The PC’s for gaming and file storage, the Mac is for my work. Perfect.
However, like many new owners of a Mac, I had to go through a learning curve, and discovered that there’s a long list of things that happen when you get a Mac.
Like this list at Utilware. 22 things that happen or you notice if you change to a Mac. And it’s quite a comprehensive list too. I’m counting all of them as “Happened to Me” except for items 2 (Haven’t seen any Mac owners), 3 (See 2), 17 (Haven’t sold it) and 20 (Haven’t returned it so don’t know)
If you are even thinking about getting an Apple device in the future, I highly suggest you read the list.
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Filed under: Gaming, Video — Malcolm Owen @ 10:25 am
South Park (that cartoon with Kyle, Cartman, Stan, Kenny, Butters et al) have made a High Definition episode, and it’s going onto the Xbox Live Marketplace for download at no charge. Free. For 2 weeks only. You might like this.
Sadly, this wondrous episode (that parodies Japanese Animation among other things), isn’t available in all countries (Some have these “Laws” in place that stop things like South Park from appearing there), but the episode “Good Times With Weapons” will be uncensored for maximum pleasure, just like the newest episodes of series 11.
[Via Gametactics.com]
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