Double Trouble

I opened my browser this afternoon and saw this.

So wrong, yet so funny.

New iTunes Available

Head over to iTunes.com and grab iTunes 4.5. A number of new features are included:

-Party Shuffle mode
-WAM (Convert WMA --> AAC)
-Ability to publish playlists to the iTunes Music Store to share and have it rated
-Jewel case printing
-Apple Lossless Codec
-Movie trailers, music videos now at the iTMS
-Radio Charts - Playlists of stations around the U.S.

All in all good update. Party Shuffle is cool to listen to a bunch of random songs with the ability to be selective about which of those you want to listen to.

@$&@(#*

Go figure the day after I turn off the heater, Pittsburgh decides to go and freeze over..

bah.

Picture Day

Hello Ladies

Amusing item of the evening:

There's just something about the phrase "Ultimate Manilow" that makes me chuckle.

Artistic Tomato

During my semi-monthly trip to the grocery store, I ran into something I found pretty neat. Below are some "limited edition" tomato soup cans Campbell's has put out featuring the work of Andy Warhol.

I don't know if this is targeted only at Pittsburgh (the Warhol museum is here -- and rocks) or if this is a nationwide thing. All in all...cool stuff. The only downside is I now have 4 cans of tomato soup I'll never be able to bring myself to eat. Though, they will make good shelf material..

Advertising

Whether you play video games or not, you should check out the new Nintendo tv-spot promoting the Gameboy Advance. It's got some pretty cool effects going on.

Check it out here.

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bird

I was awoken this morning by a bird. I snapped this pic right before it flew away:

It made that fun sound...like..."glualglagualguauglagl--hurmmm"

Steel Battalion II

Here's the promised video of the startup sequence when you first get in your VT (Vertical Tank). Pretty lights.

Startup Sequence

Steel Battalion I

I picked up Steel Battalion today for Xbox in an exercise of ultimate geekdom. It normally retails for $199, but I picked it up on sale for $99 at MediaPlay. Why so expensive? Because this is what it comes with:

It's hard to tell how big it actually is in this picture, but I'd say the controller is about 3 feet long. I think all together it weighs about 20 lbs. Anyways...I intend on putting a video up of it in action sometime tomorrow (Ethan borrowed my camera). Had I known how fun this game was I would have picked it up long ago -- even for $199.

E3 Stuff

Floorplans for E3 are up here.

You may now begin assigning distances between company booths and running A* to find your optimum path.

Back on Track

Back to stuff that matters..

Like this link!

BZZZZZZT

God forbid I try to have a mature discussion about a controversial topic. The topic is deleted and comments are disabled until further notice.

Congratulations.

X ~ N(80,8^2)

Anyone out there that can point me to a good (intuitive) tutorial on Gaussians (single & multi-variant)? Also, I'm looking for something more aimed at AI than purely statistical applications.

Just leave a URL in comments if you can help..

Here, have a completely unrelated picture:

Legendary

The Japanese get much cooler box-art. :(

Thanks to john tv for the scan.

Map

Don't ask why I made this. Instead, Imagine I am going on an exciting adventure in a far off land.

Hamtaro

rawr.

Hotel

4 nights -- $364.80...ouch.

It'll make E3 that much better though. Staying in town will be much better than being 30 minutes outside. Means I can go to the company parties! ;)

Mario Wallpaper

Some art for Paper Mario 2 came out yesterday. Here's a quick wallpaper I made...something to do while I was watching Sweet November. Tear jerker -- eek.

It's 1280x854, btw...so you better own a PowerBook if you want to use it.

Thought.

I know. You'll turn on the TV.
Get bored. Turn on your computer.
Check out your work. Get bored.
Surf the net. Get bored.

(softly)
And then think of me.

GMail

First, an introduction. GMail is an e-mail service currently under test by everyone's favorite search-engine -- Google. The idea is this: Google gives you an address and an assload of space for email (1GB) for free. Keep in mind the *free* part and the fact that it's FREE.

Now, I've read about 3 articles today bitching about GMail on CNet and Drudge Report. GMail intends to pay for itself (so it's free to you) by advertising on the pages where you receive email (Much like the ads you get when you search for something). Now, both of these articles are up in arms about google planning to base the ads you see off of the content of your email.

What this amounts to is some parser looking for keywords in an email. When it finds one, it recommends that you see that kind of ad on the webpage you check your email at. That's it.

Now, for some people, this is a problem. If you frequently read Slashdot, your probably going "OMG PRIVACY INVASION OMG OMG OGG VORBIS R0X!!" Even if you don't read Slashdot, and don't have a privacy complex, you may still feel uneasy about it.

My point is this: it's optional and it's free. If you are uncomfortable with a computer reading your email, go use your 2MB of email storage on hotmail that gets filled with spam from Microsoft faster than you can delete it.

I'm pissed that people are writing articles bitching about a *free* service. Even if it wasn't free, it's certainly still optional. This isn't like the USPS deciding it's going to read your mail if you want it delivered. I think that's a point some people are missing.