Alrighty. Before you watch the the below video(s), I ask you to skip this entry if you take your Christianity seriously enough that you can’t appreciate a little humor. It’ll probably offend you as much as the previous statement did, so it’s better that you stop reading my entries altogether.. because I appreciate humor.
This is a funny animated video which has the nativity scene being visited by some LARPers. You’ll appreciate it if you are a gamer, or know any, or like to make fun of nerds, or are one, or ever uttered the phrase “We should’ve wandered around outside and leveled up!” etc…
IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR
After it was posted, there are the typical YouTube Responses. What’s funny is that several of them are email responses the designers received, animated as if they were replying. The replies are just as funny as the video. It makes you wonder if they are true responses, or just made up ones to make it even funnier.
Response #1
Response #2
Now Playing: Paul Thurrott with Leo Laporte – Windows Weekly December 2007 – Windows Weekly 45: Windows Server 2008
We’re smack dab in the middle of the ‘holidays’. Next week we’ll be looking at the beginning of 2008.
I don’t normally get a chance to read blogs or post when I’m home from work, as I’ve got everything setup here. Needless to say, I’m a little behind in my browsing – and more important my commentary. So I’ve got several items queued up for our enjoyment.
First off, sometimes you read two non-related items and make them related.
This first item goes out to you, Wil, and your awesome ascii horns. I laughed as I imagined you sitting there head banging and ignoring your cat.
So, when I came across the site The Jingler, a website which takes a song and adds bells to it for holiday cheer, my first thought was “How would Wil rock to that?”
So, I give you “Hallowed Be Thy Name” — jingled….
If the embedded link doesn’t work, here it is directly.
Been singing it to myself for the last two weeks. Tried earworming Ian at practice Wednesday, but didn’t have any luck.. figured I’d try it here instead.
Time to start cleaning out my news bin of stuff that interests me and I want to blog about later.
First off, one of the newer ones. I’ve only had this since the end of November. I first read about it over at Lifehacker, and it’s a Visual Dictionary.
The site is sort of like a reverse 20 questions (because you don’t know the answer), starting at one of 15 visual themes and narrowing down your search image by image to find the name of exactly what you’re looking for.
That’s exactly the problem with a standard dictionary. It’s great if you know the word you are looking for, but when you get that “You know, that thing on the end of the bar that looks like a frog” kinda questions, trying to find it in a regular dictionary is a quest of futility.
I know Steve will like this, just for the fact of learning the names of whatsits that he can wiggle into conversations…
Now Playing: Steve Gibson with Leo Laporte – Security Now December 2007 – Security Now 121: Is Privacy Dead?
The geek portion of my brain was catching up from some blog entries over the weekend and on Friday when I was out sick. In doing so, I came across an entry at Coding Horror which, in addition to discussing hash tables, discusses the Birthday Paradox.
Now, I’d never heard of it before. But sure enough, when presented with the problem of “In a room of 23 people, what are the chances that any two would have the same birthday?” my mind took the exact same intuitive decision making steps that most folks would.
( space left blank intentionally)
The answer is 50%.
After reading another math explanation on why that’s true, I know that I understand it now. Sure, I might not be able to repeat (or fully understand) the math equations which generate the percentage, but I can identify the bottom line of understanding — when written in POE (plain ol’ English):
The actual birthday problem asks whether any of the 23 people have a matching birthday with any of the others — not one in particular. That means, you aren’t just taking any two people and comparing their birthdays, but simultaneously comparing all possible pairings of the group.
It’s not the intuitive way to think of the problem. Your brain wants to tackle the problem it’s given of comparing two things, rather than the mathematical way which says “what are the chances that 23 people don’t share the same birthday”.
Now Playing: Steve Gibson with Leo Laporte – Security Now December 2007 – Security Now 121: Is Privacy Dead?
Last night at fencing practice, we got to talking about Blade Runner (Director’s Cut) and about certain choices that were made on the original theatrical release versus the Director’s Cut. This led to a recommendation to read (and compare it) against the original short novel on which it was based Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (By Philip K. Dick).
During the course of the conversation, the topic of the Turing test came up, and several people didn’t know what it was, most notably Lissa. I gave her some homework to read up on it, but figured I would make it a bit easier for her and put it here.
More specifically (although I couldn’t remember the name at the time), I told her about the Loebner Prize – the competition to determine the most humanlike Chatterbot. I haven’t checked in on the last few years winners, but I did know that some implementations of them were online to ‘talk’ to, and I encouraged her to check them out (specifically Jabberwacky [Chat With - Wikipedia]).
Oh, and in regards to my ‘unicorn’ comments regarding Blade Runner, let me give you this small quote from the Wikipedia article. Consider this a spoiler, if you will, but for a film marking its 25th anniversary, you should have seen it by now.
The question of whether Deckard is intended to be a human or a replicant has been an ongoing controversy since the film’s release. Ridley Scott, after remaining coy for twenty years, stated in 2000 that Deckard is a replicant, and has reinserted a unicorn sequence into the Director’s Cut indicating Deckard has false memories like Rachael. Both Hampton Fancher and Harrison Ford have stated that Deckard is human. The rough consensus of the debate is that in the original theatrical release of the film Deckard is probably human, whereas the Director’s Cut hints that he may be a replicant.
Now Playing: Nerdcore Rising – MC Frontalot – Pr0n S0ng
So here’s a geek morality question for you. This past weekend I helped Lissa and Berrick move. Lissa was pining over the fact that they wouldn’t have Internet access for another day. Since they were living in an apartment complex, I fired up the wireless network browser on their laptop and went looking for unsecured wireless networks.
Sure enough, i found 6 networks within range, 3 of which were unsecured. I started with the best connection on the list, and bammo. straight in.. nothing needed at all.
So here’s your choices:
a) Do nothing at all
b) Use their network overnight, and then start using yours tomorrow
c) Use their network until it stops working, and cancel your own service. Assume that if they are stupid enough to leave it unsecured, you have a right to use it.
d) Use their network until it stops working, and cancel your own service. Assume that if they are kind enough to leave it unsecured, they have done it on purpose and are a good samaritan
e) Change the name of their network to "ASKAPARTMENT100FORHELP", add a password, wait for them to come knocking and teach them about wireless security
f) Change the name of their network to "UGOTHAXORED4BEINGSTUPID", add a password that only you know, and force them to go pay tech support somewhere to reset their router to factory defaults so you can do it again in 3 weeks.
These guys are giving away a pair of iPhones to celebrate the launch of their new app called Pair! Check it out! http://t.co/zSSTNDaC #pair2012-03-28
@sarahlane's lip smacking on The Social Hour is getting really bad. I know it's tough, but it's part of being a voice professional to fix it 2011-11-17
#Microsoft #Xbox In 2011, their customer service department doesn't have the ability to call another department and speak to a real person 2011-11-06
#Microsoft #XBOX has the worst customer service I have dealt with. 60+ days to resolve stolen account and they cannot fix it. 2011-11-06
Is wondering if customer service at @PC_Gamer will ever answer my email regarding stolen Caitlyn codes in its latest magazine. 2011-10-12
accomplished
Hey, I don’t need no advice from a pinball machine. I’ll have you know, I wrote the book on love.
