Dysfunctional Playground

Bear McCreary with Katee Sackhoff - "All Along The Watchtower"

2009-07-13T15:28:00.004-04:00

Wonderful concert overall but this is great, it features Katee Sackhoff aka Starbuck sitting in the beginning.

From Youtube

Note from Bear McCreary "Kara Thrace herself, Katee Sackhoff, joined me on stage at the grand piano to play Kara Remembers I played the left hand part, and she plucked out the Final Four Theme, just as she did in the climax of Someone to Watch Over Me. Once we had the Final Four Theme going on the piano, the band snuck in, building to Heeding the Call and finally All Along the Watchtower"

Click the button to the right of the volume for full screen!

Firefox 3.5 is out!

2009-07-01T02:21:00.007-04:00

New Firefox version 3.5 released technically yesterday since I am posting this really late at night.

After running it now for about the last 4 hours I am extremely impressed so far. My only gripe is my favorite theme didn't work with it yet, but hopefully should be an update for that in next day or so. So temporarily found another theme that I like for now.

There is a very nice video by the Mozilla folks showcasing some of the new features available in Firefox 3.5 which are really great. My biggest impression so far has been the wonderful speed increases. This thing so far is blazing fast. I really am enjoying it.

You can see a small summary of new updates as well as download the new version for firefox by going to:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5/releasenotes/

and a nice link to showing off new html5 features in Firefox 3.5 that supports built in video
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/connecting-html5-video/

So far a huge improvement.

Jimi Hendrix - Live at Woodstock (1969)

2009-06-21T16:39:00.003-04:00

August 18, 1969

All night the crowd has waited. Jimi Hendrix was to close the festival but there was endless delays. At last, as the sun rises on this spectacle of biblical proportions, Jimi takes the stage. But instead of the British Power Trio, it is The Gypsy Sun & Rainbows Band, making it's experimental debut. For those who stayed and for those who see this film, this will be his most celebrated performance.

One amazing show, if you have never seen this and for the younger generation that wasn't around for this, this is a must see! The Guitar God himself.

Click button next to volume for full screen

Possible Cure for Cancer?

2009-06-07T19:17:00.007-04:00

Quite a bold sentence don't you think?

'A cure for cancer' is a phrase the entire world would love to see come true. Are we there yet? And if so why is the following report from New Scientist not being reported on every news channel across the world?

This does seem like a major breakthrough in cancer treatment and a possible cure itself.

(Click thumbnail for full image)

This report is from:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

Read full article HERE

This does seem very amazing, but what's amazing is the very little coverage this seems to be receiving at the moment. Hopefully this may be the key to wiping out cancer once and for all.

Movieplex - Movies and more forum

2009-05-20T02:14:00.008-04:00

Movieplex forums

A wonderful forum based site to discuss and find your favorite movies, tv episodes, documentaries, etc. The admins make sure to keep the junk away from their users best they can such as malware, spyware, popups, etc. Great place to hangout and discuss your favorite shows or if you're looking for that hard to find movie.

http://www.movieplex.org

Very organized and well layed out forum making things easy to find. So stop by and get to know everyone, say hello in the [Introduce yourself] section. I go by the name Cito on that forum so feel free to private message me there if you wish.

Edit- Site is back up now. Enjoy!

4 Non Blondes - What's Up

2009-04-30T23:28:00.003-04:00

4 Non Blondes hit single 'What's Up' From their 1992 album 'Bigger, Better, Faster, More!'

4 non blondes - whats up

Listening to Sirius 101 and Howard Stern

2009-04-13T21:22:00.010-04:00

Not many people can see paying monthly to listen to satellite radio which compared to internet radio is a bit subpar in quality and any large cloud cover/weather/etc can block and shut off your satellite radio much easier and quicker than a good internet connection.

Therefore don't worry, for most people that are aware shoutcast offers thousands of streaming music stations that can be played in most any mp3 player such as winamp or play from their website itself.

http://www.shoutcast.com

To listen to Sirius channel 101 live you can listen to it by clicking here or plugging this into your favorite mp3 player such as winamp or for mobile use I recommend Pocket Tunes for palm / windows mobile and Iphone.

Winamp/mp3 player stream :Howard 101 Live broadcast: http://174.36.235.131:10666/listen.pls

Or to listen to Howard 101 Live via Web Player: http://mypirateserver.com/howard101/sonic128/

Schedule is approximate:

9am - 1pm eastern = Howard Stern show
1pm - 3pm eastern = Wrapup Show
3pm - 7pm eastern = Bubba the Love Sponge Show

Of course schedule isn't perfect, shows may run over, weekend is different.

Enjoy!!!

New game that I'm trying out.

2009-04-06T02:50:00.004-04:00

I'm still playing Eve Online, but I was bored one night and was reading a couple mmorpg websites such as mmorpg.com and massively.com and came across a free to play mmo called Runes of Magic.

At first it looks just like a World of Warcraft clone, the graphics do indeed give you that feeling. But luckily I never played warcraft, I came from Dark age of Camelot and then Eve Online. So looking into this Runes of Magic it looked really interesting.

It's a really polished game, although the download links could be spruced up a bit and the main installer client does need some work, but once installed it's a pretty fun game. The main company, Frogster, makes money by offering an item shop that uses "Diamonds" as a form of currency, although items in the diamond shop are optional they do help make things easier and of course the diamonds are purchasable by real life cash. The average cost is $10 per 200 diamonds, with discounts for higher amounts and occasional sales on diamonds.

Although they are certainly not required to enjoy the game, getting your hands on a permanent mount which allows for faster travel is a big help which can be purchased with diamonds. But there are timed rental mounts for those that do not wish to spend real life money.

So far it's a fun game, I've enjoyed playing is casually and it does have a really in depth crafting system which is pretty cool.

The game is totally free to play and if you'd like to check it out feel free to visit http://us.runesofmagic.com/index.html

6 Underground

2009-03-28T00:17:00.002-04:00

Great chill song by the Sneaker Pimps. One of their old ones of course, from Becoming X off their 1996 album.

My First Wormhole

2009-03-14T00:54:00.003-04:00

As the title suggests I made my first discovery of a wormhole! Except this wormhole is from the new expansion pack for Eve Online titled Apocrypha. This new expansion brings wormholes, new ships, missions, and several interesting new things and definitely some new headaches as well.

For those unaware you can try out Eve Online by going to their website and downloading the free trial.

Here is a small screenshot of my first wormhole found.

Metisse - Boom Boom Ba

2009-03-01T01:34:00.002-05:00

I had heard this song several times in the HBO series 'Dead Like Me'. This is a great song.

Metisse - Boom Boom Ba

Enjoy!

The big Cash4Gold Scam

2009-02-10T18:50:00.008-05:00

As many people have seen the tv commercial and/or the radio commercials time and time again promising to "cut out the middle man" and "offer top dollar" for your unwanted gold or precious metals. But the many investigations have pretty much turned up that this is just a major scam to be avoided at all costs.

Here are some news footage from News Channel 5 WPTZ

WPTZ News Investigates Cash4Gold Part 1

WPTZ News Investigates Cash4Gold Part 2

Also a previous employee of Cash4Gold speaks out about the shady practices, lies, and how the overall scam is done.

Excert from http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/cash4gold-c117648.html

If you accept the offer, the deal is done, and you are told that the call is recorded (which most of the time, the record button does not work, or the box if full.)It’s just a way to make your feel binded by a verbal contract. IF you do not accept the deal, you have to return your check, and it takes sometimes up to a month to receive your items back after we receive the check.

For those who do get in touch with us within the allotted time frame, we already know what you are calling about. Customers want their items returned, because there
check amount is so insultingly LOW. The first thing a Rep will
ask you is "HOW MUCH WERE YOU EXPECTING TO GET BACK?" This way we can know how much to "BONUS" you.

You can read the entire article by a former employee of Cash4Gold again at:
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/cash4gold-c117648.html

The website cockeyed.com also wrote an article exposes the fraud that is cash4gold, You can find the original article here: http://cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/cheat.shtml

The interesting part, is cash4gold then contacted the writer of the article on cockeyed.com in hopes to have him retract his article. Here is what happened since the author also wrote a followup article after being contacted by cash4gold:
http://cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/reputation.shtml

So you can see they are scurrying around trying to preserve their reputation and to prolong this scam as long as they can especially taking advantage of the poor in this economic downturn we have taken.

But use common sense, when gold is going for over $700 per ounce, and even pawn shops pay more than these guys, be smart and don't waste your gold and items by mailing them to this major scam company. And hopefully they won't be around long to keep preying on people.

Playing around with Second Life

2009-02-02T23:18:00.003-05:00

I posted several posts back about trying out second life (Second Life's homepage). That topic was working with sculpted primitives using a program called Wings3d which is free you can pick that up at http://www.wings3d.com.

Lately I've mainly been scripting, which is all I really do in second life when I am not playing Eve Online. I really enjoy programming, and scripting in second life gives me that feel again of scripting for a "game" so to speak.

So anyhow I've currently been working on what I call a "Clockwork Spider". I guess first of all I should show you my inspiration that caused me to try and build one.

Here is the image I found just surfing the web.

This is titled

Clockwork Arachnid by Cazouillette
You can find more of his work on Deviantart by going
to this site: http://cazouillette.deviantart.com/
Awesome clockwork/steampunk inspired stuff.

So anyhow I got my inspiration from that image and inside of Second Life have started on my own Clockwork Spider inspired by Cazouillette's version. Not an exact replica of course, but based on the above image. And this is what I have so far, this is still a work in progress though and will be added more detail as time allows.

Anyhow that's it for this week, hopefully I'll get it finished and we'll see what project I move onto next to keep myself busy.

White Phosphorus in Falllujah

2009-01-16T00:47:00.003-05:00

Warning some scenes may be graphic to some. But this is a 27 minute documentary regarind the U.S. battle in Fallujah and the use of white phosphorus aka napalm.

I found this interesting as most of the media here in the U.S. never really covered our involvement in Fallujah. Very disturbing documentary.

Titled: Fallujah The Hidden Massacre - U.S. use of White Phosphorus

CIA using Viagra as bait?

2008-12-29T02:41:00.003-05:00

Surfing the web I came across this odd bit of news. The CIA using Viagra to entice Afghan warlords into giving up information. A bit twisted in my opinion but a quote from the article.

In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more.

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people," the Post quoted one agent as saying.

"Whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra."

You can read the full article here at the BBC.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-26T02:22:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone, although I'm a bit late posting, according to clock here it's 2:23 am which means officially it's over. But better late than never I guess. One of my usual sleepless nights, so I find myself browsing the web while waiting on drowsiness to kick in. I really do enjoy that stumble plugin for firefox. Makes random surfing much nicer.

Anyhow Happy Holidays!

7 Pounds

2008-12-19T13:36:00.004-05:00

I just recently watched the movie 7 pounds starring Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. I am usually not a big fan of dramas, but this movie was great. The title is an allusion to the Shakespeare play Merchant of Venice, and this movie is about redemption. There is a little twist to the plot I won't reveal here, I'll just say it is definitely a must see. Below is the trailer for the movie. Be warned you may need tissue when seeing this one, it's a real tear jerker.

Starring: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Michael Ealy, Barry Pepper, Woody Harrelson

This had to hurt!

2008-12-09T00:13:00.003-05:00

Surfing around the net and of course we all come across the odd story or some bizarre sites or images.
Anyhow I came across this newspaper clipping that is not only funny but certainly makes ya cringe.

Amazing what ya find surfing the web.

Macy's Parade Rickrolled

2008-11-29T02:34:00.004-05:00

Very surprising to see, but during the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade in the middle of a float dedicated to a kids cartoon the crowd and television audience was hit with "rickroll" the old standby internet "meme". But what made this one different is the man himself was there to sing it.

Rick Astley Rickrolls Macy Parade

haha good stuff

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T15:43:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Thought I'd drop a post in here on good ol' "turkey day".

Music from Eve Online

2008-11-24T20:20:00.003-05:00

The music in Eve Online is wonderful, a lot is done by Jon Halkur. Below is a great example of music from Eve. You can download quite a bit of music from Eve at http://www.eve-online.com/download/music/.

Hope you enjoy!

Starting to sell items in Second Life

2008-11-13T23:50:00.005-05:00

Hello everyone, been a few days since I made a post. Thought
I'd post an update... As I've posted in past I play Eve Online but I have been 'dabbling' in Second Life. Mainly due to having fun building and writing scripts for objects there which is really fun.
Well I finally started an "online store" of my second life items through a service called Xstreet SL. Xstreet SL allows players to put their creations in a 'box' or vendor they provide which uploads the information about the object to their website. Which can then be edited with more info and screenshots uploaded about the item and people can browse and purchase these items on the website and they then get automatically delivered to the person's character inside second life.

Anyhow it's fairly new for me setting this up and getting some inventory to attempt to sell. But so far so good. It's a great service and makes things very easy and super cheap especially for those not able or wanting to purchase or rent a store front inside second life.

To see the items I have for sale in second life you can visit my webstore Here at XstreetSL.

To visit XstreetSL's main website you can go to http://www.xstreetsl.com.

I plan to try and keep adding new items weekly or bi-weekly as best I can. So for those that are in second life keep checking often. And for those interested in trying out Second Life you can totally free at http://secondlife.com/

Hiromi Uehara - Return of Kung-Fu World Champion

2008-11-04T02:18:00.001-05:00

Great song by Hiromi Uehara titled Return of Kung-Fu World Champion, her skills on piano totally amaze me.

Enjoy!

3d Sculptie and Photoshop texturing with Second Life

2008-10-27T19:02:00.004-04:00

Recently started messing around with 'sculpties' in Second Life. I downloaded a program called Wings 3D, and used it to make a 3d sculpture map which I can then upload the sculpture map into Second Life and apply textures. As I'm very new at playing around with 3d sculpture software my following examples are what I would call "newbie" level at the moment.

Hopefully the more experience the better and more detailed these will become. But for example below is couple examples of 3d sculpted objects created in Wings3d.

Rocket created in Wings3d

And a rook chess piece in Wings3d

Once uploaded into Second Life I took some screenshots of the 3d model with a texture and without a texture. Photoshop used for the texture.

Sculpted rook chess piece textured and without a texture inside second life.

Sculpted rocket textured and without a texture inside second life.

Sculpted mushroom textured and without a texture inside second life.

Well that's it so far in my jump into experimenting with 3d sculpties and texturing using a mixture of Photoshop, Wings3D in Second Life. There are many tutorials to getting started with sculpties within second life so to get people started visit this link and it gives a rundown of using Wings3d for your Second Life sculpties and using Photoshop for texturing them.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wings_3D

Smart Apes: Starts fire, Writes, Plays Pacman

2008-10-20T03:01:00.004-04:00

Came across this very wild video, it's 17 minutes long but is a video explaining Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology -- and how much by cultural exposure.

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has made startling breakthroughs in her lifelong work with chimpanzees and bonobos, showing the animals to be adept in picking up language and other "intelligent" behaviors

Full bio and more links

Very amazing video