Blocking the ads

The most life changing action of mine for today (well, until this very moment) was to block the ads in my browser. They didn’t annoyed me that badly, but I wanted to check out how does it feel. The pages feel smaller and darker now, they’re like the Gulf of Mexico nowadays. By the way, if you know funny stuff about the BP oil spill thing, you can turn it into cash here. That’s all folks!

Okay, here’s an old joke for the end, ’cause this post felt kind of short: “I have the whole internet for sale. Ten thousand DVD-s. If you don’t want the porn, then it’s just two hundred.”

Sustainability

This posting something relevant every day habit starts to be difficult keep. But I don’t give up, and to prove that, here’s a thing about sustainability. An essay competition to be more exact. Some people are looking for the answer of the question: “Faced with increasing resource scarcity, how can young people contribute to the promotion of sustainable production and consumption?” They even give some prize for the best entry.

Yeah, it’s like this. The main reason why I’m telling you is that there are only three entries so far (my lazy ass will the fourth if I make it), so there might be an actual chance that someone will read your essay. What else, deadline 30^th of June, and your age should be under 30. None of those would be a problem, right?

If you wanna be on my side…

You’ll have to work hard. Really hard. But let’s take a test first:

Check out this hot girl turning around. (If it ain’t turning, you should update your browser, or at least reboot your computer.) The question is: which way? If it’s turning anti-clockwise, then your left brain is in charge, if not, then it’s your right one.

Now there is no such thing as one side is better than the other, because they have different things to worry about, plus they usually work together. However, according to the statistics, those who use their right brain are considerably less in number. So, by taking the example of the minerals’ prices based on their number of occurrence, I like to think that being a right one is better. You know, scarcity adds to the value of things.

And as the gym industry is based on weight challenged people, some guys thought about the masses who want to work on their right brain. I only read a few of them, but they look like nice stories to read, even if you’re not that into working out your creativity. Don’t get scared by scam looking advertising on the top, the PgDn key is there to help you. Have fun, and see you on the right side.

Lame post with cool video

One of the most uncool things is when you read on a blog something like “I don’t feel like writing today, so here’s an awesome video about cute puppies”. Well, this will be something like this, except a few important details.

First of all, this will be really a cool video. It’s about Budapest, the capital of Hungary (which is a country in Europe), and about the things that were invented there. You might get surprised which ones. Plus you might be the one millionth who will watch it. Plus it has a really cool background music. Ah, you’re not stupid, I don’t have to tell you the stars from the sky to make you watch a video. Just do it:

Actually this was more like a writing skills test. If you watched the video then it works, if not, then it sounded like a lame post with a video link in it. A cool one, of course.

Emoticon dialects

The other day I realized that I’m expressing emotions with the help of smileys in a special, let’s call it yahoo way. Probably because the first instant messenger I used was the Yahoo! one, and boy I used it a lot. And now, when I’m on another platform, my smileys (well, actually the codes I’m typing in) have different meanings, or no meaning at all.

Not even the basics are the same! The : ) ) is not laughing, just smiling with a parenthesis on his side, while the : D which should be a big grin is laughing back to me. And nothing about my favorite, the : – j which stands for “no one cares, just go on”.

By the way, did you knew that there exists now a thing called Emotion Markup Language to describe human feelings in a scientific way in order to be used by machines? They might even laugh at us when they take over the world.

(this : ) and this : P are the same almost everywhere)

Off-side

I was pretty sure about myself when it came to the rules of the football. (I know, I know, it’s lame that everybody is talking about the World Cup, but I’m not living in a cave, so…). It happens though, that I was kind of wrong about the off-side rule. Not that I would’ve fail a test of choosing the off-side moments from the not off-side ones, just that I would’ve used a wrong definition, and eventually I would’ve got it wrong…

I was always thinking that the line of the last defender is the thing that decides were the side actually is, and who isn’t on it (’cause it’s off). Well, it isn’t. It’s more like the line of the second last player of the other team. Yes, in more than 99% of the cases that guy is the last defender, since the goalkeeper is usually the last resort. But not always! Here’s the example which made me realize the whole thing (at 1:00) :

Cool, huh? Did you had the right definition? If not, who’s fault it is?

This might be the time to get some speed

I tend to use misleading titles in order to get more traffic, but before we go on, I would like to clarify that we will talk about velocity (actually about working hard). Drugs are bad, you should leave them to rock stars and rich people’s children.

The idea is, that our time (in the office, on the Planet) is finite, and we can make more of it we compare ourselves to others. For example: if your classmate calls sick for a day, you can get ahead of him by learning more that day. Matter of fact, you will do your average thing, but since he doesn’t, you get some extra points (only compared to him, so it’s not real, but since everybody thinks like this, it is).

Now, what to do if you’re thinking at a global scale? Biological weapons are bad too, try to think about the idea in the other example, not about the fact that the kid was sick. Yep, you got it, you have to work harder when others aren’t working at all.

Finally, the hint: in a few hours starts the 2010 FIFA World Cup. If you like football of course. Quick calculation, and from the 64 games (not counting the extra times and the eventual penalty shots) of 90 minutes each, you get exactly 4 days of pure playing time. During four days some people (half of the population?) will be like zombies. It might be the chance to get ahead them.

Solving the problem of Greece

It’s easier than you might think! You just have to look at the big picture (in this case the map of Europe) and you can see that the problems came from a misspelling issue, therefor I propose the following changes to solve the situation:

GRE –> GER

Now, just that you won’t say that I’m making fun of something which shouldn’t made fun of, here’s a little experiment:

Close your eyes and think of something positive you’ve heard about Greece in the last ten years.

…

..

.

If you didn’t lost your virginity on one of their islands in exactly that time interval, you probably remembered the EURO 2004, the only football event they had ever won. You don’t have to be a football fan to guess it: they had a German coach.

Utterly disappointed…

To reach the episode number 150 in the life of a tv show it is a special occasion. It’s not like the 1000th ( or 666th, or 1024th and so on, depending on culture) but still, it’s kind of a big deal. So how could you celebrate it? By making a really special episode where you give your best, or by doing a really special episode where you don’t use your trademarks which made you famous, rather you just rely on the plot and put some old musical numbers at the end the make the whole thing last for one hour. Ladies and gentleman, the honest review of Family Guy’s “Brian & Stewie“, the episode 17 from season 8.

What really grinds my gears is that usually Brian and Stewie are the characters who save whole episodes with just a few lines, and their “roadshows” are known to be a superior quality. This time, without using flashback jokes, they try the impossible. Take a look at this plot: they get trapped inside a vault, first they hate each other, then they get drunk and talk it out, and pretty much that’s it. The dead bird is funny, the poo-eating not really, the last call is pathetic and so is the scene with the energy bar, the getting drunk scene is overused worldwide, the ear-piercing is average, the talks about the meaning of life start out promising but they don’t deliver anything, and the ending is simply just nice.

Remember what Cartman had said: “When I make jokes they are inherent to a story! Deep situational and emotional jokes based on what is relevant and has a point, not just one random interchangeable joke after another!” Well, without those jokes, Family Guy just happened to position himself at the level of South Park: they have a plot, which is about the difficulties of eating poop. Congratulations! Seth MacFarlane, this is what you wanted?

Final conclusion: if you care about Family Guy and had any thoughts about watching the episode I’ve complained about above, you would be better off with watching the Road to Multiverse again, or basically any random episode. Actually the best for you would be to take a big walk and eat some fruits, but those things aren’t clickable…

Lego memories

I think we can all agree on the fact, that the invention of the Lego bricks made our world a better place. At least I didn’t met anyone yet, who would say that he wouldn’t liked to get a new package of Lego pieces for Christmas or so. Anyone in the audience? No? Just as I thought… Actually now that I think about it, I’m quite surprised, that making a “Lego-break” every now and then wasn’t in those “x number of ways to achieve a creative/happy/meaningful/whatever life” self-help articles I used to read when I was young. Hope it wasn’t because everybody knows…

To be honest, I didn’t think about writing a post about LEGO until I saw those guys at Brickshow making their reviews. You can see the glow of the little children’s happiness on their faces. I used to be as happy as they are, as far as I can remember. I had a caterpillar, a race car and pirate theme package, with a real shark figure in it. As you can see, my parents didn’t had any plan considering the story or so, and I usually ended up using the race-driver as a scuba diver in the pirate-themed afternoon, or the soldiers as guards wearing traditional clothes at a race event. You know, creativity…

But I have a problem, just that this whole post wouldn’t sound as a comercial: Aren’t the whole Lego packages a little bit overkilled with themes nowadays? Take this Atlantis theme Lego pack for example. It’s cool, has a story, let’s suppose you buy all of the episodes, and play with it for a few days. So far so good. But do you see yourself using it mixing with others, or you just buy a new theme? Maybe I’m old fashioned about the issue, I’m not an active user since around ten years. Either way, final question, in hope of a good conversation: should be the themes have more freedom to intersect, or is it just awesome as they are now?