Iceicles? More like Ice-suck-les.

Like posters? Cheese? Free junk? Hells yeah, me too. Eat Wisconsin Cheese via deals.woot.com is offering an awesome free poster with the following hype: *“Do you love cheese but you’re not familiar with a particular cheese variety? Do you like trying new cheeses? Refer to this handy guide for 33 popular cheese varieties from Wisconsin. Contains cheese descriptions, cheese storage guidelines, buying tips, handling and cooking guidelines and tips on serving a Wisconsin Cheese Course."*I love cheese, and am quite familiar with particular cheese varieties. Feta? Check. Brie? Check. Pepper Jack? Yep, know that shit, too. Have some in the ol’ ice box right now. I’ll take that poster though…it’ll look great in my cubicle.

Round two of the PS3 piece-meal review: First Person Shooters After horsing around with the PS3 for a few weeks, I think I can finally pen a review of the ‘game’ portion of the damn thing. I have two games at this point, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Uncharted, Drake’s Fortune. Both of these games were gen 1 drops on the PS3, and both have sequels, so to say, with both CoD5 and the new Uncharted receiving great reviews. For our purposes here, the 2nd /vs/ 1st generation doesn’t make a ton of difference. ~~~~~~~~my SmackBerry is in need of a replacement…photos are blurry, so I Van Gough-ed the shit out of that pic. The Gimp rules, but I’ve already spent a ton of time on that soapbox. ~~~~~~~~~ Anyhow, here is the deal. Dual analogue sticks are fucking retarded. I make no effort to hide the fact that I am a Wii fanboi to some extent. Re-learning the dual analogue control scheme using the PS3 controller is more than an issue of fighting up the colloquial learning curve, it is an antiquated means of engaging in gameplay. CoD, World at War for Wii soundly beats CoD4 on PS3 in terms of accuracy, speed, camera control, and whatever else by which one could gauge a FPS. Uncharted, too, feels awkward. Not only in the controls/camera, but the graphics render block-ily in some levels. I suppose the long and short of the deal is that even with it’s far superior graphics, the PS3 is still lagging behind the Wii as far as controller interface is concerned. For games (that I don’t care for) such as Madden or a traditional console fighter, dual analogue might be the bee’s knees. A well-designed Wii game, like Galaxy, Boom Blox, CoD, or Okami will smoke the shit out of anything on the PS3 to this point. With a new Zelda and the sequel to Super Mario Galaxy slated to drop in 2010, pretty sure I’m going to be plugging AAs in my Wii-motes for some time to come.

I hate toasters. Why this ill-conceived piece of shit has become a staple in the American kitchen and/or kitchenette is beyond me. Toasters render bread sharp and dangerous to the mouth. Tosters re-cook cooked bread. Toasters make bread taste stale. Toasters serve the same purpose as the oven broiler, but only for bread. Toasters serve the same purpose as a George Foreman grill, but only for bread. And lastly… Toasters look like Honda Elements. v

Well, since I’m on day fucking six of my gout attack, I figure I should post a painting I came across during my allopurinol research. A mediocre painter named James Gillray made this sucker in 1799, and titled it “The Gout.” I feel for the guy, as he managed to get sort of spot-on with this thing. Fire out the nose…big teeth…ect. Too bad he sucks at painting.

Gross, Jeffy.

The worst doctor in the world has concluded that a Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure has died of a stroke likely triggered by over-excitement from watching the blockbuster Avatar in 3D. Boy Howdy! According to this shitty website:

A 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure has died of a stroke likely triggered by over-excitement from watching the blockbuster Avatar in 3D, a doctor says. The man, identified only by his surname Kuo, started to feel unwell during the screening earlier this month in the northern city of Hsinchu and was taken to hospital. Mr Kuo, who suffered from hypertension, was unconscious when he arrived at the Nan Men General Hospital and a scan showed that his brain was haemorrhaging, emergency room doctor Peng Chin-chih said today. “It’s likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms,’’ the doctor said. Mr Kuo died 11 days later from the brain haemorrhage, and the China Times newspaper said it was the first death linked to watching James Cameron’s science-fiction epic Avatar.

Sounds perfectly logical.

Not sure how many physicists troll around craigslist, but if they do… Hands down, the best description on a craigslist item EVER FWIW, An oscilloscope measures two things: voltage and time. A charged beam of electrons “sweeps” the screen in a given time in the x-axis, and is deflected by a signal in the y-axis. The deflection from the standard signal in the trace can gauge the input signal’s voltage and duration/frequency. And yes, the poster was correct. O-scopes are great.

Attention all New Yorkers with late-model hatchbacks… Watch out for the Green Police! I just read about these guys…pretty interesting. New York City has twenty officers collectively known as the Green Police. The Department of Environmental conservation has tasked the Green Police with cracking down on those who are not following the city’s environmental (read: green) regulations. The two main groups that the squad focuses on are auto emisions violators (see above) and those in the food vending business. Auto emissions is pretty straight forward. There exists a maximum level of pollutants that a car can exhause…as set in law. If a Green Policeman pulls you over (they do have the authority, for what it is worth…different story there) with suspicion of being over the limit, they can gauge your emission level with a gauge. Over the limit? Fined. At that point, you have thirty days to reduce emissions to the acceptable level, to avoid paying the fine. This is desirable, since the fines are in the $700 range… and that covers the first time offence. If you choose not to take any action, the fine is raised to nearly double, at $1300. Sort of big time. I’m pretty sure that monetary incentive is enough to keep repeat offender incidences at a low level. That covers group one. The next focus is somewhat less black and white. How do food venders fit in to the Green Police’s mission? Well, there are a gang of food vendors in NYC and a gang of Federal regulations of food-stuffs. Take seafood for instance. Shellfish harvesting is tightly regulated…food venders can be asked to provide distributor info, in order to prove the validity of their yum-o food. Fish are not exempt, either. Protected species are required to be of certain predetermined sizes, lengths, ages, etc., and are most definitely under the magnifying glass of the Green Police. Long story short, interesting concept. I’d be pretty wary of messing with these guys…or the regulations they enforce. Or alternately, I’d get out of the fish business.

Testing the new uploads…I have made the 100% switch from bouncerblog…images might be jacked up, but the indexing appears to be working. webmastering ftw