Archive for the 'Humourous' Category

The RIAA and others use ridiculous headlines such as mine, to try and explain their economic troubles. Piracy is always to blame. Strange that 2009 saw the biggest holiday records broken once again, despite the “rampant” piracy.

Here’s a great and humurous perspective on the matter.

Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself…

…From what we’ve been able to piece together, the book “lending” takes place in “libraries”.

I don’t remember when I first started using the phrase “Johnny on the spot”, but it’s one of my favourite sayings. I use it sparingly, and try to use it appropriately.

The grammatical genesis of ‘Johnny on the spot’ cannot be traced very clearly, but the phrase certainly originated from the longer and less expressive one, ‘Johnny is always on the spot when wanted.’ … The expression is to some extent a variation or rather a continuation of that other phrase, ‘He gets there.’” Johnny here must be a general name for any young male and doesn’t refer to a real person.

Source.

Maija subscribed us to a number of pregnancy emails regarding the development of our baby. We get a couple of emails each week, updating us with how big the baby may be, and providing advice and various pieces of information. It’s all quite good and informative, except for the sometimes strange choice of fruits or vegetables used to describe the size of the fetus (or foetus, if you prefer). They range from recognizable, common fruit (which gives us a good idea the size of the baby), to ambiguous and mysterious food items, which surely isn’t helpful in letting us know much of anything.

I present to you a list of the ways our baby’s size has been described, over the last 16 weeks. Italicized, are those I find amusing.

• a head of cauliflower
• an English hothouse cucumber
• an average rutabaga
• an ear of corn
• a large mango
• a spaghetti squash
• a carrot
• a large heirloom tomato
• a bell pepper
• a turnip
• an avocado
• an apple
• a lemon
• a medium shrimp
• a lime
• a fig
• a grape

I’m sure kumquat was listed one week, but I can’t find it now.

It seriously does. I provide the following as evidence. This was taken when I had 10 or so tabs open, usual stuff, Gmail, and some other generally light browsing.

Insane.

One of things I’m most looking forward to about having a baby is the unavoidable Lego, once the baby levels-up to child.

Gizmodo have yet another exclusive Lego video. I don’t recall if I posted the last one… I can’t find it here when I search. Here’s the links. Anyway, the new video is a demo of the minifig assembly process. Quite impressive.

First, the raw plastic material is put into the molds to create all the parts: the head, the torso, the minuscule hands, the hips, and the left and right arms and legs, plus any minifig complements, like helmets or tools.

• The head and torsos are always decorated. This is a complicated process that makes the minifig the most expensive part of any Lego set. This is why sets like the Death Star diorama are among the most expensive. The stamping of the colors is usually made in several passes. In older times, the faces always had the same designs. Today, however, they have different features that require different layers (personally, I like the classic ones more than the ones with different faces).

• Once they are decorated, the torsos are put into the body assembly machine, where the left and right arms are put into them mechanically. The same machine then places the hands inside the arms with absolute precision at lightning speed.

• The torsos are then taken to the packaging production line, where they are put together in the bags along with the head, hair/helmet/hat, and legs with hips. Before, the machines also connected the heads and legs, so the Lego aficionado would find the minifig complete inside the box. Now, however, this is left for the player except for the vintage minifig set, which comes with the minifigs completely built.

Do you ever actually read the terms of service you agree to, when you sign up for things online? Facebook, Google apps, whatever… You really should. I can’t claim that I do either, but I should.

For your enjoyment, via Slashdot.

According to these five terms of service and EULA, Google owns any content you create using its Chrome browser and can filter your Gmail messages if it likes. Facebook says it can sell its users’ uploaded images as stock photography. YouTube can keep footage of your kids forever, even after you’ve deleted it from the site. And AOL can ban you for using vulgar language on AIM. Funny, right? That’s why Valleywag calls them ‘The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net.‘

Note that Google have since updated the EULA for Chrome so that they DON’T own anything you create. Thank the lords of Kobol.

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I’ve decided there are too many fan pages for people I think it’s silly to declare yourself a fan of. The catalyst for me has been Christian leaders and teachers. These are good people we assume, maybe I would be even be a supporter of them. But I’m not a FAN of anyone of them anymore than I am a fan of my wife, or many of my friends. In fact, there are many who I agree with theologically but am NOT a fan of at all!

So I did the only thing I could do under the circumstance and created fan pages for a number of my friends. Normal people. I am truly fans of them. I encourage you to do the same.

Just don’t do it as fast as I did, cause Facebook will shut down your operation (see above).