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Category Archives: Humorous

That which tickles your funny bone

I apologize for not updating for the last week. Instead, I have been forced to devote my life to that ever-demanding dominatrix: grad school. So, after a long week of studying and testing on 16th Century arguments about predestination and sacraments, I have regained my freedom. I think Toothpaste For Dinner sums up the feeling rather well:

Graduate School

BUBO

I wish we had this kind of toy when I was a kid.

Bubo is a toy with “magic” powers that can cast spells and take control over innocent devices or other kids’ toys in its surroundings… Bubo takes control of home appliances by constantly sniffing for IR transmission, intercepting and learning infrared commands from remote controls to their devices and acquiring their functionalities.

I am not sure every parent wants to give their kid a universal remote that can control every device in the house. I am pretty sure, however, that every kid wants one.

Scientist Before Fermilab Scientist After Fermilab
Before and After Pictures

A seventh grade teacher did this wonderful experiment with her class. She had all the students describe and draw pictures of what they thought scientists were like before and after a field trip to Fermilab. I love how all the ‘after’ pictures have scientists in jeans.

Sparkler Bomb

Matt sent me this wonderful article from Dan’s Data on how to build a Sparkler Bomb. It is the perfect at home project for anyone looking to blow something up in a dangerous and awesome way.

From the site:

Here you will learn the essentials of making an improvised firework which, while spectacular, is also both as predictable and as safe as something that blasts a mighty shower of sparks 50 feet into the air can reasonably be expected to be. I have made many of these things. I have been quite close to them when they went off. I have never so much as lost any hair, which is more than I can say about the results of some of my other half-baked pyrotechnic experiments.

And here is the description of the event:

Now the standard sparkler bomb ignition sequence will occur:

1. The fuse will burn right down to the level of the sparklers.

2. Some turkey will say “It’s not going to go off!”

3. After a short delay determined by how well you packed the sparklers, it will go off, and a large number of sparklers that would each burn for a couple of minutes will be consumed by the very fires of Hell in about one and a half seconds.

4. One and a half seconds later, the crowd will emit various whoops and whistles.

Happy burning.

Cheney Hunting Guide

What Atrios has learned:

Every conservative on the internet is an avid hunter and they’ve all been shot multiple times.

Shotguns aren’t really guns, just toys. You can’t really hurt people with them, only animals.

It’s standard hunter etiquette to yell and scream at your fellow hunters as they’re stalking their prey.

The most dangerous place to be is behind the people with the guns.

And Dick Cheney was not drunk, so stop saying that.

(Image via NeedleNose)

Super Bowl XL Stadium

For all of you not willing or able to sit through the Super Bowl to catch the million dollar commercials, Google Video is hosting all of them. From Bud’s superfan to the Go Daddy commercials that were not allowed to air, you can see them all.

But check this out: one ad was reused from a different brand. This video is the Degree deodorant commercial “Stunt City” that aired during the Super Bowl. This video is the same “Stunt City” commercial that Leaving Only Footprints found last year. It is the exact same commercial but with a different deodorant, Rexona. If anyone knows more about this, let me know.

Stunt City Degree Stunt City Rexona
Deodorants in the two commercials

Super Balls

What do you get when you drop 250,000 bouncy balls down a San Francisco hill? A wicked awesome viral from Sony.

Today’s eye candy semi-weekly (whenever I feel like changing it) video is an amazing commercial Sony made for their BRAVIA. Over three days, they kept tossing hundreds of thousands of bouncy balls down a hill and capturing the event from dozens of angles. Check out the official site. If you cannot view QuickTime movies, you can watch the viral on Google video.

Then check out the making of the commercial on Google video. I love the riot gear they use to protect the camera man. Someone on site took lots of wonderful pictures you can see on Flickr.

Qing Vases

A few weeks ago, a regular visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge tripped on his shoelace and fell down a staircase, breaking three priceless Qing Dynasty vases in the process. Dating from the 17th or 18th Century, the 1948 donations to the museum were among its most well known artifacts. The museum’s assistant director, Margaret Greeves, said, “They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together.”

It turns out that the visitor was Nick Flynn and was luckily unharmed in the accident. Glad Flynn was uninjured and knowing he could never pay for the vases, the museum has asked that he not “visit the museum again in the near future.”

Listen to your mother. Always tie your shoelaces.

So, it seems as Leaving Only Footprints continues to get more and more popular, so does its images. Last month, I noticed that my visitor stats were kind of funky and discovered dozens of sites linking to just my pictures. This is called direct linking or hotlinking. Instead of hosting an image themselves, other websites and blogs simply link to the images on this site. This equates to stealing because hotlinkers use bandwidth paid for by other people. For example, in the previous month of January, I received thousands of direct links from MySpace.com sites. If the average image size used was 50KB, over 100MB of my bandwidth was stolen.

After doing a little research, I found this website that explains how to prevent other sites from hotlinking your images. Well, the good thing was that these other sites could no longer use my images. The bad news is that no one removed the now broken links to me on their sites so my stats are still getting messed up. Also, I noticed new people continue to hotlink to me even though the images are not showing up on their site. Not too bright.

So, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Switcheroo and Cockeyed.

Not only can I prevent my images from showing up on a hotlinker’s site, I can make any image I want show up on their site. With inspiration from Matt Kelley, J-Luv, and a poster inherited by Alicia, this is what I came up with:

Burt Reynolds Cosmo Holtinking

If they’re going to link to me, I might as well get some free advertisement with a little help from Burt Reynold’s and his famous Cosmo picture. Also, I hope that it encourages them to take down the links.

Check out what it looks like to this MySpace holtinker stealing my squirrel image before:

Hotlinking Example Before

After:

Hotlinking Example After

Check out these other sites. I took screen shots for a permanent memorial.

Spider-Man Official Forums: Before and After
MySpace Person 1: Before and After
MySpace Person 2: Before and After
MySpace Person 3: Before and After

AYDS

Diet pills from the 80’s. There’s nothing more I can say. Just watch.

AYDS: New Peanut Butter Flavor

AYDS: America