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Happy birthday to dimithubbub and katnboots!

Happy birthday to barondiego!

Discovered via seankreynolds

A friend of mine passed away today. Most of my LJ friends don't know him, but they would have liked him the moment they met him. He was very much the epitome of Sharc.

Happy birthday ianraven!!!1!eleven!

Dear Nikon: Your new S60 touch screen point and shoot camera sucks. The menu is hard to navigate, the touch screen doesn't work that well, the flash is hot (ie, overly bright), and the picture quality is embarrassing.

I'm glad we got our money back, so we could give it to Canon instead.

From National Geographic

It looks like a fantasy painting - a portal into another dimension. It's now my wallpaper on my pc

Playing too much LEGO Batman, followed by too much Left 4 Dead will induce very weird dreams.

It clocks in at 1.4Gigapixels.

You can zoom in amazingly well, and look clearly at just about any face in the crowd.

See if you can find Clarence Thomas sleeping through Obama's speech. =)

Gigapan.org

dimityhubbub's brother and his wife woke up at 3am this morning to find that they had been paid a visit by the Coatesville arsonist.

For those not in the Philadelphia area, the Coatesville arsonist has been setting fires in the town of Coatesville (northwest of Philly by 20 miles or so) for the past 12 months. 2 people were arrested in December, but the fires continue.

They heard noise, and found their trashcan moved onto their side porch, and set on fire (this is the M.O. of the arsonist). They sustained minor damage to the side of the house, and to the porch door, and maybe a little bit of damage in the laundry room, but they were lucky.

The article in the link is from this morning. Apparently, the arsonist hit 4 houses overnight, one sustaining a lot of damage.

We're glad that they're ok, and no one got hurt.

Chronicle Books Review: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.

Edited to add two quick things:

1) Name one book that can't be improved by the addition of zombies. I can't think of one.

2) I was quite surprised and amused to discover I already had a 'zombie' tag.

Her LJ name is dimityhubbub

We had a fun weekend.

Jan and some friends rented a house in the Poconos for the weekend, and all went up to do artsy/craftsy type things. The house was set up with that specific niche in mind, with a well lit work area, lots of table space, tv/stereo setup for entertainment, and so on. The owner does scrap booking, and even had scrap book supplies available for purchase. Apparently, this was the first time non-scrapbook arts & crafters rented the house, and the owner is now looking for more general business as a result. Still, it sounds like the owner is doing pretty well, since she's booked up for the next few months.

That left Dane and me to fend for ourselves, and we had a pretty good time doing it, too.

We played a lot of LEGO Batman, which is now Dane's most favoritest game EVAR. Last weekend, we took all of our old game systems (original XBox, Gamecube, PSP), controllers, and games we don't use anymore, and traded them in at the local GameStop. Total credit received? A whopping $187.00! I'm still a bit stunned. It could have been another $30 or $50 more, but the battery on the PSP wouldn't retain the charge, so we got dinged on that one. We were at the GameStop for over an hour while the guy tried out all of the systems and controllers, and checked every game and so on. We wound up playing NBA 2009, very badly. I committed fouls that I didn't know even existed. In any case, Dane was so good that I allowed him to get LEGO Batman with some of the money.

In the past week we're roughly halfway done with the game - having completed 15 out of 30 missions. His favorite character is Nightwing (Robin as a grown-up superhero). I'm sorry...his all time favoritest superhero EVAR.

On Saturday, we went and saw the movie Inkheart. It was good, but not great, but it was a lot of fun, and a good way to spend 2 hours on a cold January afternoon. It had a lot of names: Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent, Paul Bettany, and my favorite, Andy Serkis as the bad guy. There was one point which I was afraid might be too scary for Dane, but he seemed good with it. Would I want to own it on dvd? No. Would I watch it if it was on cable? Sure.

On Sunday, we went to the open swim at the YMCA, which is something we'd been talking about doing for ages. Finally, we did it, and had a blast. At it's most crowded, there were maybe 10 other families in the pool at the same time, without any boisterous behavior from obnoxious kids. We will definitely go back several times between now and Memorial Day, when the neighborhood swim club opens up.

In following with others who have done the recent book meme, here are the books I've read from the list. Looks like I've read 36/100.

( Read More )

We accidentally stumbled across the movie Flyboys a mostly true depiction of Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of volunteer American flyers in World War 1, before the U.S. entered the war.

The five minute review: horrible movie, but great aerial combat sequences. In some cases, you could tell it was CGI, but it was still a lot of fun. If you stumble across it, endure a non-combat scene until you can get to one of the combat ones, enjoy that, and then flip the channel.

Oh, and for wizardru, Tyler Labine, who plays Sock on Reaper was in the film. It was hard to recognize him with a clean-shaven face, and wearing a pressed uniform. =)

Today is the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition.

Drink up!

How cool is this?

Guardian (UK)

Farmers in Mexico have been given another reason to grow agave, the cactus-like plant used to produce the country's most potent export. In the bar room equivalent of alchemy, scientists have turned shots of tequila into diamonds.

The surprise use for the national tipple emerged when researchers at the National Autonomous University experimented with making ultra-thin films of diamond from organic solutions, such as acetone and ethanol. The mix that worked best, 40% alcohol and 60% water, was similar to the proportions used in tequila.

Diamond films are extremely durable and heat resistant and can be used to coat cutting tools. By carefully adding impurities to the films, it is also possible to make diamond semiconductors for use in electronic circuits.

Luis Miguel Apátiga, a member of the team, brought a bottle of cheap tequila into the lab to see if it could be turned into diamond. When he heated a shot to 800C it vaporised and broke down into its atomic constituents, producing a fine layer of carbon on nearby metal trays.

Close examination of the films at high magnification revealed that the carbon had formed into crystal structures identical to diamond. Each was around one thousandth of a millimetre across.

"It's true that the fact it's tequila has a certain charm. It's a Mexican product and Mexican researchers developed the project, but a businessman can say to me: 'Great, how pretty! But how can I use it?'," Apátiga said. "It would be very difficult to obtain diamonds for a ring."

The researchers plan to make tequila-based diamonds on an industrial scale from 2011, a move that could see agave growing expand beyond the tequila market.

We voted this morning, arriving at the polls 15 minutes before they opened. When they did open, 70 people were in line. Typically there are 10-15 at that time in a presidential election.

Voting this time felt great. It should feel this way everytime.

I have to say that the Necklace of Fireballs has to be the stupidest magic item ever.

"Hey! I have a great idea...let's take 8 hand grenades and make a necklace out of it. What could possibly go wrong?"