Fun Stuff

Baby Smash

/ Shane / Leave a comment

First off, happy Labor Day!

This post is for all you readers out there with young children. I know when Evie was younger, she would see us on the computer all the time, and want to participate. She spent a lot of time smashing on the keyboard and doing all sorts of interesting things I never even knew you could do with key shortcuts (in other words, she taught me a thing or two about computers).

It’s not that I minded her playing with the computer, it’s that I was worried about her messing things up on the computer. Enter BabySmash, a program for “baby proof computer fun”. Basically, it locks out the keyboard so that all those extra keystrokes don’t accidentally change your password or something. Instead, they bring up fun animations and sounds. So put it on and let them smash to their heart’s content. You can see a couple of demo videos on the website. Did I mention it’s free?

Oh ThinkGeek, what will you think of next?

/ Shane / 4 Comments

I make no attempt to hide my love of ThinkGeek here on the blog. Every time I get the newsletter, there is always something cool to report. This month was no exception, giving us the amazing Tac Bac – Tactical Canned Bacon. This is amazing, you can stockpile it up and it will last for 10 years. Well, it won’t last for 10 years, because you’ll eat it, but maybe in your hunger to get at the bacon you accidentally knock a can back behind the shelf or something and find it 9 years later…it’s still good! Why would you need to stockpile bacon? Well, for tactical purposes obviously (if you read the webpage closely, you’ll notice that they specifically mention the zombie apocalypse…I’m just saying)

But wait, there’s more! Special bonus ThinkGeek product, the Force Trainer. This thing blew my mind, basically you can train your Jedi skills in the use for the Force, like, for realz. You clamp this headgear on, which measures your brainwaves. Depending on how hard you’re concentrating, the ball will go up or down in the tube. I think this is probably as close as we are ever going to come to actual Force usage.

Yay ThinkGeek!

Now that’s what I call sushi

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I like sushi, but a lot of people don’t. I think the main objection to it isn’t the taste or texture, it’s more the idea that you are eating something raw. So something that would probably help a lot of people get over the idea, would be some stunning, amazing bento boxes that would take your mind off what you were eating. Enter Anna the Red’s Bento Factory.

These are pictures of the bento (lunch) boxes that she makes for her child and I can’t tell you enough how awesome they are. The cool thing is, she includes complete instructions so you could technically do the same (well, maybe you could, I certainly couldn’t). The site is really amazing and well worth a look, but I will give you a couple of examples to wet your appetite (literally and also to check out the page):

Farm Bento

Nintendo Characters

Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

(Hint, you can check out her flickr set and click on the cool ones, which link to her blog)

And you thought those buttons just changed the stoplight

/ Shane / Leave a comment

And, in additional to having supreme power, they also provide helpful, instructional messages:


Pictures via Urban Prankster.

I like my zombies backed by research

/ Shane / Leave a comment

For those of you who ever doubted the zombie menace, then I give you irrefutable proof of the danger, as performed by actual scholars. Who said Canada never contributed anything on the world stage? I believe this officially makes the University of Ottawa the world’s leading research center on zombies. And what was the brilliant conclusion of their study?

In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.

Well, erm…yeah, I guess that was sort of obvious. But look, they used charts and equations and Matlab and stuff! Let me just give you a taste:

It follows that the characteristic equation always has a root with positive real part. Hence, the disease-free equilibrium is always unstable. Since all eigenvalues of the doomsday equilibrium are negative, it is asymptotically stable.

That’s some heavy stuff. And how can you doubt it with excellent, scholarly references like Simon Pegg, Danny Boyle and Zach Snyder?

I would like to call your attention to one other part of the paper. One of the authors is named Robert Smith?. Yes, that question mark is legally part of his name. According to his profile, he changed his name so that he would be distinguishable from the Robert Smith that is the lead singer of the Cure. Too bad though, I think I might believe this paper even more if it WERE written by the guy from the Cure, who may or may not actually be a zombie himself.