The Stolen Geosquid plate makes an appearance on the net.

Ok, I took this pic about two years ago. Why is that important now? Cause it's one of two pictures on the Internet featuring the GEOSQUID license plate. Mine's the one not posted by a stupid person(although a few of you might disagree).

A year and a half ago someone nicked Geosquid's ultra cool custom license plate, which read of course, his geocaching moniker: "geosquid". I remember when it got stolen because he sent an email to a local geocaching list about it at the time. A few months before I had seen it for the first time at a geocaching event and thought, "Hey that is Cool!" (That's Tripper lying on the ground pretending to be a hit and run victim, not that I was trying to get anyone in trouble or anything)

Now what kinda freaks would steal a guy's license plate? Especially one that memorable ? Well, stupid people that's who. (One of them's a cute stupid person, but still..uhh, not bright)..

So I cracked my morning paper open this Sunday, and there on page three, is Geosquid, in his Nissan, with his GEOSQUID plate. I had heard he got a new one, that it had cost $100, but why is he in the paper? As his blog would also state, he was checking out his blog's hit stats and followed a track-back to a search engine, that pointed back to some blog, which had a picture from the time of the theft of three 19-20 somethings holding his license plate with a stupid caption like, "Duh, dis is some plate we done stole.. hehehehe".. It was some Carleton U scavenger hunt (Carleton U, where the K stands for quality!)

Well that's cool! Newsworthy too! A pseudo geocaching story, woohoo!

You don't see the pic hoster in the photo, I guess since she posted it, she was taking it, which is too bad because she's right cute(see profile pic below)! Still, we're talking $100 bucks here, and lost time, and at least one police pull-over once he got the plate replaced and it was still showing as stolen.



What's a geocacher to do?

The story generated a ton of traffic to Geosquid's blog, and the suspect's blog(which has shut-down, gee-I-didn't-see that-coming-not-for-one-minute, Oops, too bad I kinda archived it first). I'll agree it's a cool plate. I liked it the first time I saw it but at least I didn't grab a screwdriver and pry it off the front of the car while my Friends snapped pictures!

Moral of the story. Don't steal a geocacher's license plate (even if you're cute!) He'll most likely know where to find you if you're stupid enough to post a pic online. God that made me laugh. I'm laughing now. I guess it's hard to know the guy you're stealing the plate from is a computer security professional. Luck of the draw I guess.

Hehehehehe.

Read about it at Geosquid's blog.

P.S. Hey, I just checked and GS copied her blog to a PDF before it got taken down, check it out!. Not bad, good reading!

P.S.S Ack, she took her profile pic down, I had to go use the waybackmachine to get it. Man, don't people know that once you put something on the net, it's forever!

Iguana suffers ereptile dysfunction

BRUSSELS -- Mozart, an iguana stuck with a permanent erection six days after a mating session at a zoo, may have to have his penis amputated if the condition does not improve.
Even if an amputation is deemed necessary, Mozart will still be able to reproduce because male iguanas have two penises, noted Enid Balemans, of the Aquatopia Zoo in Antwerp.
She said Mozart was not showing obvious signs of distress, but added: "I imagine that if you are a man and you look at Mozart, it hurts."

The R2-D2 DVD Projector

Screw the batmobile. What I need is this thing. The R2D2 DVD projector. It's a bit undersized, but hey!

I've always wanted a damned full size R2D2, and one day I'll have onel!!!! Heck, I may build one (people who know me will actually take my word that I'm serious about that statement and it will cause them great fits of laughter, but hey, we're talking your very own DROID here! There are tons of freaks like me on the net with scematics and detailed draft drawings of plans, and advice on the best washing machine motors to use for the wheel system! I own a copy of the robot builder's handbook people!!!)

So this thing... It throws your DVD up on a wall, plays your Ipod tunes and a couple of other cool things! Only $2000! Plus you can drive it around your living room! They make a smaller version with a Skype phone hookup and webcam, so you can call it and move it around your house to see what's going on when you're not there. I can think of all kinds of trouble you can get into with this thing. Deleted scenes from American Pie come to mind. Check out this live footage!

I need $150,000!

One of the old Batmobile's is up for auction! (thanks for the tip Tripper!)

On another note, did you know there is a whole fan site dedicated to the original 1966 car? Freaky! I saw one of them at an Ottawa car shows when I was 11. R2D2 was there too, but he was all (*&^(^&^ up. His front console was basically 4 blinking traffic lights, not at all like the original.

Speaking or Artoo... (see next post)

Best song title contest on cbc radio 3

I was digging around on the net looking for a clip of Don Ross, my favorite acoustic guitar player, playing something on CBC radio on the 'first Nation' guitar and came across the 'Bucky awards'.

Some of these are pretty damned funny. Sad thing is, they're real! (Personally I like "He Poos clouds" but it didn't win).

BEST SONG TITLE
This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life
Born Ruffians
He Poos Clouds
Final Fantasy
The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Is That They Die)
Pony Up
Your Shitty Record Won't Mix Itself
Shout Out Out Out Out


BEST LYRIC
"My bedroom's worse than the Catholic Church/I'll let anyone in"
The Dudes, Do the Right Thing
"Let's get wrecked on Rolling Rock and stroll down to the sea"
Joel Plaskett Emergency, A Million Dollars
"Did I mention I wouldn't eat meat then/listened to the Smiths too much in Grade 10"
McEnroe, Cereal for Dinner
"You said your girl looked like Drew Barrymore/I met her. She looks like Drew Carey more"
The Wordburglar, Word Owner

The Xbox 360 and Gears of War

I got a line on an X-box 360 the other day. A guy was selling it at cost more or less(there was a boxing week sale last month and many people bought them at $150 off and sold them for retail price without tax, Doh! I hate boxing day!), but he was selling it at 5:00pm on Monday to the first person who showed up at his door with the cash(first come first served). That has to be me I thought.. But my wife started a new job that same day, so there's no way she can come home early on her first day and pick up the kids. So.. I brought the little tykes with me! I loaded the car up with snacks and drove all the way out to the West end to wait for this guy in his driveway. He was late! But I got my X-box 360!!!

I didn't even get out of the car. Just handed him the money out of the window, and popped the box open inside the car to make sure it wasn't full of something non-X-boxish. It came with two game titles, headphones, wireless controller. It's real cool, but I went and got the game I've been hearing so much about. Gears of War.

This game scored a 9.6 at Gamespot, and that's a rare thing. It's all well deserved. When you play this game, sometimes it's like your a crazy CNN camera-guy in Iraq running crouched down in a war zone trying to to get perforated. 5th gen game systems are very impressive indeed. The graphics are ....well. That still you see up on the top. The guy looks like that all the time... With this thing, gone are the days when the cinematic cut scenes look great but the in-game code that chucks polygon around would suck.. They are the same now - and they both don't suck!


Check it out if you get the chance. Take a peek at this game footage I found on Youtube!

Fun with the Ipod wearing only your underwear and a cheetah bathrobe

The other day I tried to load up some songs on my 30GB Ipod, and it said it was FULL. Again... Damn Itunes software doesn't show how much room your checked songs take up (checked songs are the ones that get transferred in my case). So I do what I always do. I delete a pile, hoping to get it under the wire. So Paul McCartney was the first to go. Then some Mozart. Finally some old guitar instructional video audio I had listened too already. Still full? Goodbye Civil War lectures from TTC.
Still Full!! Ok, something was up. I decided it was time to format this sucker and reset. It was 12:30am.. I had work(ok, french class )the next day. This was not a good idea.
at 1:00am the Ipod told me the format and reset was almost done, but it wanted to be plugged into a wall socket when it flipped the firmware around.

Wall socket plug? I haven't seen that thing for two years! I recharge it in my car and on my PC! You gotta be kidding! But there it was, a little graphic on the front LCD of a wall socket and a Little flashing arrow. A search for the wall charger was fruitless, but then I thought, maybe I can trick it into thinking my Monster car charger/FM transmitter is a wall socket. Time to go outside.

Clad only in my FOTL's I grabbed my wife's over sized bathrobe from a pile of laundry near the stairs. It fit! Outside I went, into the car (it was slightly freezing but no snow) and lo and behold, it started to load the new firmware... WOOHOO! But as I was sitting there in the car at 1:12am shivering in my wife's Cheetah bathrobe, the next door neighbor's porch light went on.. And he stepped outside.

I do believe he thought I was a no-gooder stealing my piece of crap 1993 Honda crap-bucket.. But alas, it was just me.. I waved, and he pretended to look in his mailbox and went back in very quickly (we have communal super mailboxes. Maybe he was expecting an important flyer like that Quiznos one that I got last week, yum!).

The update finished, and back in the warm house I went. I have to learn not to start stuff like this after midnight. It always seems to take hours!

I did find a cool way to see the size of the 'checked' files in itunes though. I made a smart playlist, and there was an option to include everything, with a "checked files only" option. And when you give this playlist it's own window, it adds up all the disk space. 27.85GB just about fits..


Ok.. I can go back to liking I-tunes again..

Sea Monkeys! They're real! (sorta)

Auntie Louise gave my kids one of these Sea Monkey kits for Christmas. I think I was more excited then my 6 year old was. I hearken back to the mid-70's when I started to read comic books and I recall seeing full page ads for these little frickin' guys all the time. They always showed a family and in the background was a little undersea kingdom and all that. The head SeaMonkey was always holding a trident to overcompensate for the fact that he had no genitalia.

So my kid is a bit disappointed that a bunch of hairy aquatic undersea monkeys didn't hatch out of the freeze-dried container, and start building a crystal city underwater.. But they are still cool! They look like the Aliens from The Abyss. Pretty freaky that they can live in a packet of dust for 2 or 3 years and just pop out when you add water. If there's ever a total nuclear war, Sea Monkeys will inherit the earth!! (along with cockroaches.

To the left here is a little animated GIF of an actual Sea Monkey. Cool eh?

There is a neat disclaimer on the package. If you manage to somehow kill them all, if you drain the water out and wait 5 days, then add water again. The hatching's come back to life.. Mother Nature can be freaky sometimes!

Paul Bernardo - why don't we encourage suicide

I was talking to someone about Paul Bernardo (that waste of oxygen) the other day and it occurred to me that they have a few particular prison policies that I simply don't understand.

#1 Most Prisoners aren't permitted to have shoelaces to prevent them from "trying to hang themselves".

Hello? If the person is a convicted murderer with video evidence that he kidnapped and raped women whose body parts turn up later in a lake encased in several different pieces of concrete, then the guy should be encouraged to kill himself.

Save us some money... Paul there, as you can see in the photo appears to sit there and watch TV for the better part of the day.

If I was a prison guard, I'd be walking by his cage every day saying to him "Hey Paul, I got an idea. Why don't you ^%$#*&^ kill yourself today?"

I say give him as many shoelaces as he wants... What's he gonna do, make a rope and escape? Garrote a guard? Him AND his ex-wife (who is just a big a psycho as he is) should not be using up our oxygen.

And Policy #2 Convicted rapists/murderers and or pedophiles are not housed in general prison population.

Screw that! He needs a big roommate named Phil who will strangle him in his sleep or kill him in the shower with a spoon.

Just my two cents...

School House Rock

The other day I was digging through my DVD collection trying to find something for the kids to watch while we were home over the holidays (besides Lord of the Rings or something equally inappropriate for a 6 and 2 year old - don't laugh, I know a guy who's pre-schooler took Hannible and LOTR to grandma's to watch one day while Dad wasn't paying attention) and I looked way in the back of the TV shelving unit and came across my School House Rock DVD. Wikipedia says that SHR is often viewed with nostaligia by generation X'ers. NO SHIT!!!! I swear all of this content got me through all phases of schooling, AND put me onto music and melodic hookery in a big way. In listening to some of my favorites like "The great american Melting pot", "Naughty Number Nine" "Ready or Not Here I come", "Sufferin' Til Suffrage", "Interplanet Janet", etc... I quickly realized that sometime in the 80's I re-digested some of these songs into licks and riffs and re-used them in songs I wrote with my freinds in various garage bands and the like(grin).

It's hillarious where your subconcious inspiration comes from. That and that really cool song from Seasame Street with the pinball bouncing all over the place with the hot jazz sax breaks.

Combining grammer and science and multiplication with music was a great idea. They should air all of this stuff again. The animation was excellent as well!

Everyone remember?

A noun is a person place or thing!