Pointless

Well I've been doing a lot of research and after several weeks of difficult work, I've managed to compile what I think are the 10 most pointless websites on the internet. Note that many of them have sound so make sure your speakers are on and many others of them require flash.

1. Zombo.com - You can do anything at zombo.com, except for well, anything. (Make sure you have your speakers on!)

2. ExtremeIroning.com - Got too much time on your hands? This site is for you.

3. Badger Badger Badger - This is a classic but the song just gets really stuck in your head.

4. EatFruit.com - Do you need to send an e-mail to a friend to remind them to eat more fruit but don't have the time? Well, now you do.

5. Nascar - And people say adults don't have any imagination. (again, speakers)

6. The Infinite Cat project - Do you like cats? Do you like cats looking at pictures of other cats? Do you like cats looking at pictures of other cats that are looking at pictures of other cats? Well you get the idea.

7. Don't click here - Actually a rather funny site but still very pointless.

8. Lost In Translation - Do you remember that game you played as a kid. Now you experience the same thing using language translation programs.

9. Grr... - Honda in the UK developed this game to celebrate the release of their new generator line. If anyone can explain to me what this flash game has to do with anything at all, especially generators, I'd really like to know. Note: This game takes quite a while to load.

10. Singing Horses - Do you ever fantasize about singing horses? Now you don't have to, just click on them.

So there you have it. Not that any of these sites are particularly bad or funny, they're just completely pointless. Speaking of pointless, please feel free to leave a comment if you drop by. Not much point in blogging if no one reads it.

Happy Nevada Day

Wow, I can't believe there exists a holiday that federal employees don't get off. I'll make sure to rally my government employee lobby about that. And to top it off, it was a Friday and I had to work. I'm not feeling the lazy government worker vibe I dreamt of in grad school. I'll do my best to keep the dream alive.

Today Popular Science presented in 3rd Annual Worst Jobs in Science list. There were the typical nauseating jobs such as Orangutan-Pee Collector but I was fairly surprised to find volcanologist at number 3. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it or are at least thoroughly disgusted.

The last week or so I've been teaching me a programming language for statistics (It's called R, which makes searching for any tips on google a truly pointless excercise). There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but you may be asking yourselves, why on earth are you learning a programming language just for statistics when I could just go buy a stats package and save yourself countless hours (I did set aside $1500 for software this year) and for that matter tax payer dollars. Well, here's the catch. My money doesn't show until sometime between February and April. I can buy a few trinkets here and there but I'm not allowed to make any big purchases until then. So either I can sit at my desk and twidle my thumbs for several months, or I can spent teaching myself R (which I need to point out, is free as in freedom and as in beer). Both of these things are fairly inefficient but I think you can see why I went with the latter. The whole upshot of it is that I'm getting pretty good at R to the point that I may not need to buy a $1000 pre-canned stats packge. But since I earmarked money for that, I need to spend it.... Anyway, I'm learning a lot about how the government deals with money.

In anycase, if you're looking for a way to waste a little time, you may want to check out this Egyptian-oriented flash game put out by the BBC.

Ask Dr. Merl

Dear Dr. Merl,
I've noticed that the FDA has recently updated their food pyramid. I'm a lonely bachelor and have little time for cooking. What do you recommend for healthy but simple bachelor food?
-Timmy

I've been a successful bachelor for many years now, Timmy, and I certainly have some expertise in the field of healthy eating. There are 3 primary staples for the bachelor to allow for a healthy life style: orange juice, quesadillas, and tequila. Any combination of at least of 2 of these items should get you by for a healthy meal. However there are some basic rules to follow. Quesadillas should be made with the following ingredients: 1 tortillas (bread group), several slices of cheese (dairy group), and some sriracha chili sauce (fruit/vegetable group & intestinal cleanser); nothing more and nothing less. Always serve the tequila (bread/vegetable group?) on the rocks. This will help you keep hydrated and tastes much better than plain water. In fact if you get thistier just keep drinking more and more tequila on the rocks. You'll feel much better (in a couple of days). Lastly, never ever mix the orange juice and the tequila together. That's just wrong. However, feel free to mix together the quesadilla with either the orange juice or the tequila; it makes a wonderful smoothy (shown in picture above).

Well there you have it Timmy. A simple guide to a successful life such as my own.

Keep those questions coming.

Day in Arlington

Today was another gray and rainy day but we took the metro into Arlington, Virginia and headed straight to the farmer's market. They had an amazing variety of vegetables and in particular mushrooms. We picked up some mint and basil with some homemade cookies for good measure. We also it made it down to Arlington National Cemetery, where I took the picture of JFK's tombstone. It was definitely good weather to be in a cemetery. We made it back to the house to do some cooking.

Yesterday we watched Shrek 2. I think this is one of the first American animated films that was more for adults than for kids. Anime has been around time and there are a lot these movies that are obviously made for adults (Golgo 13 comes to mind.) There has also been a rise in TV shows oriented towards adults such as the Simpsons, the Family Guy, and King of the Hill. Given the commerical success of Shrek 2 I wonder if we will start to see more animated films with adults being the primary audience. Hopefully I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Becky comes to visit

Today got off to a rough morning. Becky flew in to Dulles and I picked her up at about 6:20. This was despite the fact that her flight was not listed anywhere on the arrivals and the people at the America West gate refused to believe that her flight even existed. But she made it in one piece and managed to sleep most of the day while I went to work.

Today was the first time she got to see the apartment with any furniture in it but luckily she wasn't too upset about anything. Not sure about what to do tomorrow but I can guarantee some decent pics.

I brought cookies into the office today so I've definitely made some friends.

Nothing too interesting in the news out here but if you are looking for a decent flash game to play try the grow cube.

Good Eats

Uhh...I took seven (that's right, 7) on-line courses today. I managed to stay awake through the whole thing too.

Today for lunch I took some of this recipe, from cooking.com. Great recipe and fairly interesting. I must be one a few people who has fish sauce, fresh ginger, bean sprouts, and jalapenos just sitting around. I would definitely suggest it, especially as an appetizer.

The other thing I tried out today was my new analog pda, PocketMod. That's right folks, it a piece of paper that you fold up and carry it around with you. To be perfectly honest, I think it's just about perfect for what I need. But it has some great options and is totally customizable and costs you nada. Maybe one day I'll be important enough to need a digital PDA but in the mean time...

I also stumbled across Nanaca Crash. Basically the entire plot of the game is that you smack into a guy with your bike to see how far you can make him fly. I've played these rather pointless games before but this one takes the cake: awful graphics, confusing controls for a game that should have little to no controls, and completely insane game play/plot. My favorite part is the teleporting girl on a bicycle that appears when you click on the mouse when the "Aerial" sign lites up red or blue. Freakin' crazy.

If you're looking for a cute game to play with great graphics and music check out Monkey Slide, one of the many great games on the orisinal site.

Great Falls National Park

Saturday was a slow day. I had to wait around all day waiting for my new couches to arrive, but they did. Updated my linux computer with a new version of Kubuntu, and watched another Akira Kurosawa film, Rashomon. I'm a big fan of his films but I just wasn't too interested in this film.

Sunday. Well it's still only half over. I headed up to nearby Great Falls National Park, only about 25 minutes from where I live and found a great place to go hiking. I hope you enjoy the picture. I also hope to watch the other move I have, Blue. Blue, White, and Red were very popular films when I was in college but I never got around to seeing them. If you have any other movie suggestions, feel free to leave me a comment.

For my random link, I was noticing some in Arlington who had on like 3 or 4 or those rubber bracelets or varying colors. You know that yellow ones everyone wore for Lance Armstrong, then the red ones that people wore for the tsunami tragedy. Finally everyone under the sun was selling them for anything you can think of. Well now that they've become essentially meaningless so I thought that these might be appropriate. At least they're being honest.

My Office

Just in case anyone wanted to see how much I got upgraded from a grad student to a Mendenhall Fellow, here's a shot of my office. The office is actually about 2.5 times what you see but most of it is empty. But before you ogle too much with your eyes, remember that most of the furniture is older than I am. You'll also note my absolutely great view of a metal wall. Yeah! At least I don't have to share it (yet).

Holiday presents

Seeing as how it's after June, the department stores have already started peddling their crap for the holidays. I think on-line shopping is a good way to avoid dealing with the other degenerates who decided that 7 PM on Dec. 24th was a good time to do some shopping. To help out with this years shopping experience I've put together a list of items from one of my favorite on-line stores, thinkgeek.com.

iGuy -I don't own an iPod but I think this is the best iPod accessory I've ever seen.
Binary T-shirt -Either you think this shirt is hilarious or you'll have no idea what it means. Great gift for your mathematically-inclined friends.
Floating Duck/Fish Mouse -It's so stupid but I couldn't stop laughing. Great white elephant gift.
Pirate t-shirt -Have a friend who thinks International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19th, like it's not already highlighted on your 2006 calendar) is the crowning moment of the year? This shirt is for them. Everyone likes pirates.

Well, I hope this will taking some of the crunch out of your holiday shopping. They have plenty of other useless stuff there to check out.

And for my random link, here's an image of a 3-D set of letters of the English alphabet created by rotating the letters around the z-axis.

As for me, this is a day off so I hope to day a little hiking today, depending if the weather holds out.

Rain

I can't believe it but we'd have had something like 7" of rain here in the last week. That's about as much as we used to get in Reno in an entire year. The funny thing is that it doesn't really seem that wet out.

I feel like a true government employee. This is my second week of work and I only have a 3-day work week. I hope that's motivation for all of you in grad school.

As my my random link of the day, if you think I have free time you should definitely check out this guy. If only I had gotten a degree in Sociology.

Also if your looking for a great flash game to waste a few minutes, I highly recommend chasm. Time well wasted in my book.

Great ipod nano mod

I ran across this great gem on slashdot today. For those of you not in the know, the nano is Apple's latest and greatest digital music player with it's primary appeal being it's miniscule size. I have to say that this mod of the nano is one of the best mods I've ever seen. Check out the screen shots for yourself.

New Home

Looks like you found my new blog home. I'm having some problems adding and removing files from my previous site so I moved my blog here.

First off, the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced on October 6th. If you haven't heard of them, the Ig Nobel prizes are for "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced."

I personally find the award for Economics awarded to Gauri Nanda of MIT for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides the most useful. I wish alarm clock would do that. In fact, I overslept this morning.

We had an emergency drill today and work and everyone from the team had to gather together in our conference room for roughly 30 minutes. So what do you think when you stick 25 government employees in a room for 30 minutes with nothing to do? An impromptu meeting, of course.

P.S. The banana bread with mint turned out really well.

Test

I'm having problems with my my website so I've moved over here