I Was Raised on Animal Cruelty
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Milo and Otis was a popular flick int he late 80’s that starred a puppy and a kitten as the film’s main characters. They go on a series of adventures that include fording rivers, jumping off cliffs and falling into death pits. Unlike the computer animated films of today, Milo and Otis was filmed using all real animals. And I emphasize the “s” at the end of animals. Rumors have it that the filmmakers may have gone through as many as 27 tabby kittens and several pug dogs. The movie was originally created in Japan by director Masanori Hata and it wasn’t until later that it was released in the Unites Stats. Because there was no such thing as laws forbidding Animal Cruelty in Japan during the 80s the film became a huge hit without much controversy.
As you can see from this extremely poor quality YouTube video, that cat was lucky to survive. Unfortunately, many of its predecessors on the set were not so lucky. This excerpt was taken from the more censored American version; in the original the scene is extended to show the cat trying to climb up onto the rocks after falling from the cliff while getting pounded by waves.
Because of the lack of special effects technology at that time during the 1980s, there is no way these scenes can be fake.
Now I understand that times have changed and with them our views on animal cruelty, and I’m not pointing any fingers here or saying that anyone who likes the movie is an evil kitten killer (but you are). I simply find it an interesting study in the history of film making.
Welcome to Boring, Oregon
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f you thought your town was boring, imagine living in a town where EVERYTHING is boring!
Boring Oregon has a pretty dull road sign.
I thought it was implied that offices were boring?
Who would want to go to this tavern?
Here is the local fire dept:
I used to think my school was bad…
Everyone hop on the exciting bus to Boring, Oregon!
I hope you enjoyed these images! I found them in a photography book by Martin Purr published by Phaidon Press Lmt. Ny, Ny.
Cool Jail Wall Graffiti
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Imagine yourself in a jail cell. You don’t have much to do except stare at the gray walls and maybe read a book for days on end. So why not decorate the place a little? Thats what some of these inmates have done. Most jail cell graffiti is nonsense gang symbols and “Jesus Saves” messages but every once and while someone comes up with something creative. Just hope you never have to see them personally.
So here is your typical jail cell with graffiti written all over it:
This chilling piece gives us some advice:
This writing was possible done by the jailer, to give his inmates hope.
Must have been the gamblin type:
Some incredible artistry:
And of course, you have the guys that are just so happy to be getting out:
Roman?
Even in the most oppressive of places, creativity manages to display itself on these jail house walls.
Classic AOL You've Got Mail .wav
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I was wandering around on the internet, and decided it would be fun to try and get a really old version of AOL running on my new Vista laptop. Well I never got one of those old version to work, but I did manage install one and all the wav files that came along with it. The one that brings back so many memories, GOTMAIL.WAV, well I had to keep that one. I now use it as my new mail notification sounds in Mozilla Thunderbird. Brings me joy every time I get a new piece of mail. Thanks AOL! You can download the .wav file Here
4chan Owned by the Lulz
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Thought I would stop by 4chan this fine Friday night to see if I could discover something new and disgusting, but instead of the front page, this is what I found: Welcome To Did It For The Lulz! Looks like 4chand has become a victim of the of the Lulz it is so famous for. I have to admit the sight did give me lulz, which made the 4chanless night all worth it.
Update: 12/14/07 Looks like 4chan is still gone, but there is a new page in place: Suspeneded Page. It appears that 4chan’s servers were not compromisd, but the site was a victim of domain name hijacking. Its surprising how such a huge site is still unacessable after so long a time. Maybe the admin, Moot, just doesn’t care and would like the weekend off anyways.
Update: 12/15/07 Suspended page has been updated again, with the text at the bottom reading: Glexia is in constant contact with Moot and other 4chan executives and we are working both with them and the FBI to resolve this situation as soon as possible. (Last Edit: 15/12/2007 @ 1:48 PM Eastern) I went onto Lulz’s IRC channel (irc.diditforthelulz.com) to see what the whole “FBI” deal was about. Anyways, 4chan.org still points to the suspended page, but you can access the site by going to the ip address. God I love the internet.
Issac Asimov's MultiVax
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Hey all, just wanted to share an awesome story written by one of my alltime favorite authors, Isaac Asimov. Its called multiVAX Here is was Mr. Asimov had to say about it:
“This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written. After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won’t tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you. It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything – and I’m satisfied that it should.” –Isaac Asimov
Take the time to read it, you won’t regret it.
Mount Ashland Freeride Final
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Here is the final update on the video I’ve been working on. Hope you like it.
Cool Prank
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Here on Forest floor 1, we like to take our pranks seriously. We are in a constant state of war. Everyone is on their toes, everyone is watching their backs. We are warriors.
This weekend the battle turned in favor of Mike, Alex and I.
The method was simple. We bought 4 packs of poppers that contained 4 bags of poppers each. We then removed the rocks from all of them, and separated them into piles - undoing what the unfortunate child labourers in China did to make them. I then wrapped these piles in pieces of a plastic bag and closed them up with scotch tape. These were our bombs. The biggest one, MOAB, was placed inconspicuously in the hall and watched. Soon enough, Kainoa came by and picked it up, it promptly exploded in his face. The noise of 2 1/2 packs of poppers was deadening. We were hysterical. But we had better plans for the next 3, I took them into the bathroom and placed them very carefully under each toilet seat. An intense 45min passed while nobody had to use the bathroom. Eventually Shane, the guy with the ridiculously loud speakers went into the toilet to relieve himself. We listened, and sure enough there came a huge “BAM!” followed by “WHAT THE FUCK???” We were absolutely in stitches. It worked perfectly. Shane came out holding his ears. The next to victims were Myles and Trevor.
We also had some fun that night setting up tripwires with confetti poppers.
DIY Yeti Costume
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All materials were purchased at the local dollar store: 7x Packets of shredded white paper. 5x Bottles generic Elmer’s Glue. 1x Black face paint. Preparation was a mess, I had a few people douse me in glue and then stick the paper on my upper body and legs. Bathroom looked like a sheep had been sheared in it. One guy got 2 blow driers to help speed up the drying process. Once the paper was stuck, I applied the black facepaint to make the unibrow. The costume was unique and looked pretty cool, but it had some obvious downsides. First of all, it was an absolute fucking mess, with paper and glue all over the bathroom, plus I was shedding for the rest of the night, leaving a trail of shredded paper wherever I went. In fact this turned out to be a safety measure. As I walked downtown sober, I left a perfect trail of white paper for about a half mile. When I walked back quite inebriated, I had absolutely no trouble retracing my steps back to the dorms. Another downside was that it was pretty darn cold, being outside and not moving wasn’t the greatest time. Yet another downside, either nobody knows what a Yeti is or it just doesn’t look like one, which turned out to be alright because I met a few people just trying to explain what my costume was supposed to be. Surprisingly it was not itchy or uncomfortable to wear. Happy Halloween all!
Linux Webcam Recording Script for Dell Latitude 1720
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Since the Latitude 1720’s webcam is only supported by a handful of applications (see the Linux UVC homepage) and none of them are for recording vidoes with sound, I decided to come up with a quick workaround. I wrote a tiny shell script called record.sh which just runs two commands at the same time, ffmpeg and sound-record so that they are synced up. It goes like this:
!#/bin/sh ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -i /dev/video0 -f avi out.avi & sound-recorder -c 2 -b 16 -P recording.wav
This should outpit out.avi and recording.wav in the current directory, and then you can put the two together using your viedo editor of choice. I use Pitivi and walla, you have a video ready for youtube or whatnot. Now my laptop is, I think, fully functional.