Category: Uncategorized

Photo borrowed from Oy Bay!

I don’t have any — I’ve taken the gift bag route — but Teresa Nielsen Hayden, moderator of the Boing Boing comments section and blogger at the excellent Making Light has tips aplenty on how to wrap your gifts.

My favourite tip: “Be bold. Look like you mean it.”

I remember chortling at a remark in an old MAD magazine about hotels about the “sanitized for your protection” sash that they used to place across the toilet seat and the “sanitized for your protection” paper in which they wrapped the glasses. The article said that they were probably cleaned with the same cloth.

As the video below shows, that may not be far from the truth:

Click here to see the video on its original page.

Wendy, if you don’t want to hate travelling more than you already do, please don’t watch this.

[Found via Robin Yap’s Twitter feed.]

Here’s a quick reminder about TSOT’s upcoming Ruby/Rails night, which takes place on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008:

TSOT Ruby/Rails Night
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 (and the second Tuesday of every month)
@ TSOT’s office — 151 Bloor Street West (on the south side, just east of Avenue Road)
11th floor
Door open and food at 5:30 p.m.
Presentations start at 6-ish
FREE ADMISSION (but limited space)
To register, please email joey.devilla@tsotinc.com

For more details, see this entry or this page on Upcoming.org.

Here are the most recent entries in my tech blog, Global Nerdy:

• Windows Vista Annoyances: This book has a lot of pages.
• Etiquette Reminder: My blogs’ comments areas are like my living room — behave accordingly!
• Could it Really Be…Duke Nukem? and “Duke Nukem Forever” Teaser Trailer: The gaming world’s most infamous vaporware gets another trailer.
• eWeek’s “Most Important Products of 2007″: iWork ’08? Really?
• Can Social Networking Co-Exist with the Workplace? It’s on my “to-read” list.

The current issue of Esquire features a cool “What I’ve Learned” interview with Alex P. Keaton/Marty McFly himself, Michael J. Fox.

A couple of excerpts:

• People said, “Does it bother you that girls want to sleep with you because you’re famous?” “That’s a tough one. Lemme think about that. No.“
• My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
• The thing with Limbaugh was so interesting. I didn’t even have to say anything. People said to me, “Don’t ya hate the guy?” I was like, “I can’t get it up to hate the guy.” I know it’s a racket, I know it’s a job — it’s show business, and that’s fine. Let’s take it as show business.
• If you don’t have someone calling you on your shit, you’re lost.

I was always under the impression that whatever Bill Murray whispered into Scarlett Johansson’s ear at the end of Lost in Translation was not actual dialogue, but something for the view to fill in with his or her own imagination.

Vid22.com, the creators of the video below, don’t believe that to be true. Using digital sound processing, they enhanced the whisper so that you can make out the words. If you’re curious as to what those words are, watch the video below. If you’d rather go with your imagination, don’t watch it!

Click here to see the video on its YouTube page.
Found via Squandrous.

View it before FOX’s copyright cops take it down — it’s the “Homer’s life flashing before his eyes” sequence from last night’s episode of The Simpsons:

Update: The YouTube video got taken down, but you can watch the video at JibJab.com.

Click here to see the video on JibJab.com.

Watching that sequence, a couple of things came to mind:

• It’s a nice homage to the YouTube video Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years.
• The YouTube ending to the video shows just how mainstream YouTube is.
• 39 years? Good God, I’m older than Homer Simpson!