This comment on TheDailyWTF.Com forums made me laugh. It’s either too early in the morning or I’m a geek. Or, I suspect, both.

Greetings! It’s time again for the semi-regular Friday link-o-rama - Adderall edition! Lets see what I’ve read this week, shall we!

How to catch a Netflix thief - Filing a few to many lost DVD forms over at Netflix, making you a tad suspicious? Brian Krische did, and he caught the portly thief red (envelope) handed!

Greatest use of an LED, ever - This slightly-NSFW (Bikini models) YouTube video shows us what decades of technological improvements have brought us - behold it’s blinking wonder!

Not that kind of party - On the local front, it seems like local internet hottie and bacon aficionado Alie has a problem with being green during the ride tide. It’s good for the environment, damn it!

Remember your computer roots - Sure, you might look suave with that ultra hip, ultra-slim Mac Air under you’re arm, but this 1983 photo of an Atari users desk reminds us of what it used to be like.

The next logical step? - Introducing Clitter, a service for clits to communicate and keep in touch. It’s about time, eh ladies?

How background people ruin your photos (NSFW) - A decidedly NSFW PSA for looking at the whole scene before you press the shutter button - you might be surprised what ends up in the shot!

Map #1 - The first map I’d like to show you is an interactive one. It’s from the Federal Reserve and shows the current sub prime loan conditions across the US. We’re not doing so bad.

Map #2 - The second map I’m sending you to is a singles map, showing you the number of available singles in US. MN looks like it’s ladies choice.

Is it a lipstick, or is it a vibrator? - Can you tell if the following items are sex toys or household objects? You might be surprised.

and finally….

Always clear your download history - While I thought it was common knowledge, apparently I was wrong. Folks, if you’re going to be interviewed on TV, please try to remember to delete your download history lest your perversions become known to the world!

And that’s it for this week folks! This weekend is supposed to be cloudy, but the temperatures will be spot-on, so dust off those grills and go outside! I’ll man the fort back here - it’s my sacrifice to you, gentle reader.

So it’s Good Friday, Jesus died today, and in a few days he’ll be back doing Jager Bombs with Keith Richards. In the meantime, here’s some links he may or may not have visited.

Awesome Angle - Here’s a reason why I love photography, so I can hang with my fellow (wo)man and.. ahem.. check out their shooting styles.

Tetris Mirror - If you miss your old Game Boy, here’s a little something you can get to pay homage to the greatest game for it.

You weren’t meant to have a boss - Paul Graham, noted programmer, makes a strong argument on working for yourself vs working for someone else.

A synth for your DS - If you love your Nintendo DS as much as I do, and happen to dig synths, then you’ll love this. The Korg DS-10 is coming to the US!

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip - Do I seriously need to add any more flavor text then this?

Tune Up That Bike (A guide for beginners) - Well now, spring has sprung and if you aren’t crazy like JACC¹, it’s about time to make sure that bike is still in tip top shape. DIY Life gives us the run down.

I hope I never see this - I’m marrying another geek, so I think I’m pretty safe, but I still fear seeing this some day²

and finally…

Insomnia and Productivity - Coder Chad Perrin talks about how hackers who stay up until the wee hours of the morning are a lot more productive then their “early to bed, early to rise” brethren and from experience I’d have to say I agree. There is something almost magical about hitting that zen-like state called “Hack Mode“. It’s been awhile for me, maybe I won’t take the sleep meds tonight and get some serious code pounding done.

1. JACC rides his bike all year. I know [↩]
2. I have a really nice keyboard and would hate to have to replace it [↩]

Hello kiddies, here’s some links I’ve come across this week and thought you might like:

How Porn Ruined Sex (Semi NSFW) - The second half of the title is “How about you don’t ask to come on my face on the first date”. It’s a little diatribe on how the younger guys these days (25 and under I’m assuming) were raised on internet porn, watching it since they were 9. And as such, they don’t think of regular sex as being ‘fun’ sex. Suckers.

Scrabble Tile Coasters - Now this is definitely cool! Take the letter tiles from scrabble, arrange them to coaster size, apply a cork backing and BAM, your tables are safe once more! Then I started looking around, and Hasbro will be more then happy to sell you spare parts - 100 letter tiles, 4 racks and a tile bag will set you back $6.50, shipping and handling included. I’m fighting the very very strong urge to buy 12 sets.¹ What would I do with 1200 scrabble letter tiles? I don’t know, and that’s the greatest thing about it.

A new position - Didn’t get the chance to get your rocks off yesterday? Wanna give it a go tonight? Bring your laptop to bed with you and let Style.Com’s Hotlist of sexual positions teach you something new. Complete with reader ratings²³ and wooden doll examples, it’s SFW!

Extreme Plastic Surgeries - In the 21st century, we have the luxury of making many of our dreams come true - at least ones that involve plastic surgery. Whether your dream is to be a cat, a lizard, Barbie, Ken, Klingon or have super large tits, it’s all possible.

Got Cats? FURminator is for you - Cool Tools reviews a cat brush that has a tag line of “Intense Feline Grooming”, so you know it has to be good.  Available from Amazon⁴ for $28, Debbie says “The FURminator is the only really functional cat-grooming tool I’ve ever found.” and “It does a tremendous job of removing loose fur.”. I’m sold.

How We Spend Our Money - The New York Times shows us how we spend our money, in all it’s charted goodness. I <3 charts. Spoiler: Upper class spend more then middle class, middle class spends more then lower class. Lower class does better then homeless - but only marginally.

Cheap Ways To Say I Love You⁵ -  Get Rich Slowly has an article on more frugal ways to show your love. Although written for Valentine’s Day, these tips work the rest of the year as well - with the bonus of not being expected, it will be even more meaningful. Trent over at The Simple Dollar has 9 more ways for love on the cheap, while the folks at Zen Habits raise the bar and show you 50 ways to be romantic.

My Kind of Savior -  Ajinbayo Akinsiku writes manga novels. He’s also a Christian and aspires to become an Anglican priest. He also wrote “The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation”. Mr. Akinsiku says his Son of God is “a samurai stranger who’s come to town, in silhouette,” here to shake things up in a new, much-abridged version of the Bible rooted in manga, the Japanese form of graphic novels. Like how that sounds? You can buy it from Amazon for a shade over $10. Now that’s a good price for salvation!

That’s it for this week, my friends. There’s plenty more I’d love to share, but there’s only so much commentary I can make about it. If you’d like, feel free to bookmark my public Google Reader page, or even subscribe to the RSS feed.

Tonight I’ll be at Hennepin Stages to see the musical “Don’t Hug Me” with some friends, and this weekend is quite hectic as well. If I don’t see you all, have a great weekend and happy holiday⁶!

1. I’m seriously fighting the urge. But the wedding, she will be pricey, so I must conserve [↩]
2. The winner: Doggy style - and by a long shot.  Though cowgirl is second. [↩]
3. Reverse cowgirl is better imho [↩]
4. Amazon.Com link uses the referrer tag from CoolTools, I don’t want credit for someone else’s work [↩]
5. From the Better-late-then-never department [↩]
6. If you get President’s Day off, like I do. Yay for banker’s hours [↩]

A smattering of links for you, the people who mean the world to me!

Wait until you see the closet! - Real estate agent shows a home to a prospective buyer, only to find the current owner dead in the walk-in closet. Hung himself with his belt, Tim Gunn must have been pretty hard on him.

Mario ’staches - The many mustaches of Mario

Playable Paper Super Mario - No, not super paper mario, Super Mario made of paper. You’ll love it.

Time travel, Russia has it - YouTube link of a Russia Today piece, two Russian scientists are about to re-create the Big Bang on a slightly smaller scale - may lead the way to real time travel. No plutonium required, but a 27km long atom smasher is.

Pavleck.NET - I finally opened up Pavleck.net. You don’t really care, cause you can’t see anything.

Ordering a Pizza in 2020 - The ACLU shows you just how it might end up looking when you order a pizza 12 years from now if our privacy laws keep getting decimated. Not so much devastating as funny.

Send $5.01 to Obama - February 12th is Lincoln’s birthday, celebrate by sending Barack Obama $5.01¹

You never know! - Tom Jones has insured his chest hair with Lloyds of London for 7 million dollars.

That’s it for now, because I doubt I can top Tom Jones!

1. Lincoln is featured both on the $5 bill and the penny [↩]

 Best Of Adobe Flash Tutorials - Get the most out of your flash

HD DVD on the cheap - Yes, we all know that HD DVD is dying and BLU RAY will reign supreme, but at $129 for a Toshiba HD DVD player and 5 HD DVD movies from Amazon, this has got to be the cheapest way to break into the new school of DVDs.

CNC Woodcarving - The beauty of wood with the modern advances of technology, here’s a wood carving machine that can make some incredibly detailed pieces as easy as a mouse click.¹

Robots! - You can use them to tell time, fling flaming bowling balls or, if you have to, assemble cars.

10 Incredibly Old Computer Ads - I love these old ads for computers, imagine 300 megabytes for under $20,000! A bargain!

Cheap Skillet Dinners - The Simply Dollar has a way of saving a ton of cash from those $10 frozen skillet dinners you’ll find in the grocery store. Just as simple, insanely cheaper.

 Connectors Demystified - You probably don’t care, but here’s a list of some of the most popular microcontroller hardware connectors available. A lot of the suppliers list things by name, expecting you to know what they will look like - so here are some pictures to go along with it.

1. Check out the video [↩]

The notorious Jon Lajoie has written an additional Everyday Normal Guy rap, and this one is even better then the first. The best part? He has some lyrical skills. I love the fire truck bit, listen starting around 1:40.

I must admit, I’m not taken in by well written missives pining for the past, but this one over at Wired really spoke to me.

Lore Sjoberg of Wired’s Alt Text column writes a wonderful article about the noises our computers made back in the day - to quote:

In particular, I miss the warm, grumpy sounds of the floppy drive. I remember sneaking into my grandparents’ computer room — that’s right, my grandfather got me into computers; he is an awesome man — at 6 in the morning, unable to wait until everyone’s awake for another round of greenish videogaming. I extract a floppy, an actual floppy that flops, from the treasure-trove of pirated games and slide one into the drive. I switch it on and I’m greeted with a startled beep and a clatter from the hard drive, followed by a series of mechanical grunts as the machine wearily rummages for data.

I think I might just have to subscribe to the Alt Geek Podcast and learn about what else I’ve been missing!

HDR How To - HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range” and is the process of combining multiple photos of the same image, but with different exposure settings, to create a final result that more accurately resembles what we see with the eye. $8 for the PDF, and well worth it.

PointUI - If you have a Windows smart phone, you need to check this out¹. It’s an entirely new interface, and makes your phone very fluid and iphone-like. Toss that stylus, as this gorgeous UI is setup for your fat fingers! I’ve been using it for a couple days now and once I figure it all out I’m sure I’ll love it.

Another cheap light tent - A friend asked for a few hints on capturing shots without all the glare, and I found this link to send to him. It’s an inexpensive light tent - made with some paper and a cardboard box.

Cop Tasers Himself - I’d include a link, but embedding the actual video is better:

How To Wake Up Early - Tired of hitting that snooze alarm? Here’s a site full of tips and tricks to help you get your ass out of bed early. Try it and let me know what you think, I still have 9 more minutes of sleep².

Zen and the Art of Item Replacement - The Simple Dollar tackles the old problem of when to upgrade. Needing it vs wanting it. As usual, another excellent post of tips for us trying to save up cash³

7 Habits of Bad Digital Photographers⁴- This is turning into a photography link-o-rama, but people take more photos around the holidays, so I end up with a lot more links about it. Regardless, here’s a short list of helpful things to keep in mind the next time you dust off that dSLR.⁵

And I end this Friday’s link-o-rama with a comic from the greatest stick-figure webcomic ever, Randal Munroe’s XKCD.

1. View a YouTube vid of it in operation here. [↩]
2. Speaking of 9 minutes, here’s why all clocks are like that - now you know. [↩]
3. Even though we just bought a 46″ LCD HDTV. But c’mon, have you ever tried to play the XBOX or Wii on a small TV? It’s hell. [↩]
4. I hate the ‘Photographer’ vs ‘Digital Photographer’ - the end is the same. It’s just ‘photographer’, damn it! [↩]
5. I’m guilty of them all. [↩]

Various things, in no particular order¹.

1. I’ve been reading a lot of Bukowski² lately. I always knew about and liked his poems, and just learned about the stories. Mishka’s father taught a class on him, and he gave me a book - a reader - about Bukowski. It’s arranged chronologically, and includes both his poems as well as excerpts from his semi-autobiographical books. It’s absolutely fascinating, and I find myself really identifying with the anticulture hero’s “Fuck it all” attitude. There’s a lot of “The road not traveled” as I read it. We both had similar key decisions to make in our lives, and around the same time. He zigged, I zagged.

2. Maybe I don’t have ADHD. The science of sleep is a young one, and there are a lot of problems that get blamed on other things that might actually be sleep related - ADHD is one of them. I take ritalin³ for my ADHD. It’s a stimulant, and it helps people concentrate. They don’t know why. My sleep doctor tells me that it’s very possible I’ve been severely sleep deprived for decades, and the ritalin - as it’s a stimulant - keeps me awake and removes the sleep deprivation stuff such as poor concentration. I go in for another sleep study on the 17th⁴, I’ve gained about 40 pounds in the past year and he fears my slight apnea might have become full blown. We’ll see.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. I have a million tiny stories, but I don’t feel like writing anything of importance lately [↩]
2. Right now it’s a Bukowski reader called “Run with the hunted“. I’ll be buying Ham on Rye soon though! [↩]
3. Well, I usually take the much superior adderall, but at $350/month I don’t want to spend all that and my current insurance blows, so back I go to the cheap stuff [↩]
4. Sleep study is called a polysomnograph [↩]