This is pretty freakin' cool:




A long thin plastic strip, about 60cm long. It doesn't look like much, but it talks! Along the length of the strip is a pattern of fine ridges or lines. Run your thumb nail along the ridges, and the tape speaks. However the sound needs to be magnified, so that you can hear it. One method is to hold one end of the strip between your teeth. Then, when you run your nail along the strip you hear it talk, but no-one else does. Or you can stick one end of the strip to an inflated balloon or a paper cup using sticky tape. The balloon or cup acts as an amplifier, and you can then demonstrate it to anyone nearby. Never heard a balloon talk? You have now!

What do the tapes say? One says 'Happy Birthday' others say 'Congratulations' or 'Have a Nice Day'. We have 5 different messages, and we supply 4 tapes of each message, making a pack of 20 Talking Tapes.


Price: £9.99 / $19.58 (Excluding VAT at 17.5%)

Tags: giggles, nifty, silly

Tags: booze, nifty

tongodeon , can you please try to get me one of these while you are in Tokyo? Thank you.

Tags: gadgets, giggles, nifty

While discussing the chicken fried bacon I wanted to point out that the Ukrainians really take the Lard Cake:

They not only have a lard festival, but they also eat chocolate covered lard as candy.



It is worth noting that the candy bar looks the same either exiting or entering your body, it appears.

Tags: food, gross, nifty

In case you didn't notice it in the video of my previous post, I included a screen shot of a portion of the film you may have missed:

Tags: giggles, nifty

Only in America can such gluttony thrive as shown in the video matrushkaka  just sent me:


Yea, bacon dipped in batter, then fried in grease and served with white gravy. Mixed in between scenes of bacon frying in grease and people smoking with one hand and scooping white gravy with a bacon shovel into mouth are some classic quotes. Among them, a woman who is apparently tasting the masterpiece of greased gastronomy says, "This is good, it just needs more salt". Yes. More salt. Of course. She then puts on what looks like about half the salt cellar.

Some other gems:

"Some guys come in here and order two orders and that's there meal."

"Well, it is good for ya. Your own body can tell ya what is good for ya," says the owner in closing. No, he is not joking. He looks healthy.

Tags: cooking, nifty, videos

I happened to have The Polar Express on in the background tonight and paused a moment to look at it. That movie is fucking creepy. I thought the people in it looked like some acid version of Disneyland animatronics, but then realized it was nagging at something else in the back of my mind. Then it hit me:



All they did was disguise Johnny Cab with a flimsy disguise of glasses and a mustache! Just watch a clip from Polar Express and a clip from Total Recall and you'll see what I mean. Here are some Johnny Cab clips from Total Recall (which, BTW, is a movie I actually like a lot):

Tags: nifty, videos

This is a good Apple style commercial rip off for a PS3 vs. Wii. I think that the two systems are in different leagues, but I think the Xbox will win against the PS3 in the "serious gamer" league. I think Sony has been shooting themselves in the foot a whole lot with the PS3, and I'm happy about it. The Xbox is the only thing Microsoft I will endorse. I liked the first Xbox much more than the PS2 (I only got a PS2 to play Katamari Damacy and SOCOM), and the 360 so far is pretty slick. The little interaction I had with the PS3 was lackluster, at best. Their price point is ridiculous, the lack of vibration in the controllers is a huge step back, the added motion control is a silly vie at the Wii market, the graphics I have seen haven't been any better than the 360 (worse in some cases), the 5.1 surround sound was very buggy (this was prelaunch, so it's probably fixed now, but Xbox has had in game 5.1 supported since the first version!), and Sony's reliance on the emergence of a new media format, in this case Blu-Ray, is asinine. All I gotta say on my last point is BETA Max. Oh, and MiniDisc. Oh yea, and UMD.

Update: Apprently if a video is flagged for adult content you can't post it into LiveJournal. Mind you, this video is flagged because it has a woman clad in a skimpy bikini type outfit and slaps her own ass. Seems a bit ridiculous, but here is the URL so you can view it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrmEFeMHDO4

Tags: giggles, nifty, video games, videos

While reading a post by rwx I was reminded that my mother made a short appearance in the Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon. Figure I'd share the passage:


"...These sheets were typed up by a Mrs. Tenney, an aged vicar’s wife who works at Bletchley Park. Mrs. Tenney has a peculiar job which consists of the following: she takes two sheets of onionskin paper and puts a sheet of carbon paper between them and rolls them into a typewriter. She types a serial number at the top. Then she turns the crank on a device used in bingo parlors, consisting of a spherical cage containing twenty-five wooden balls, each with a letter printed on it (the letter J is not used). After spinning the cage the exact number of times specified in the procedure manual, she closes her eyes, reaches through a hatch in the cage, and removes a ball at random. She reads the letter off the ball and types it, then replaces the ball, closes the hatch, and repeats the process. From time to time, serious-looking men come into the room, exchange pleasantries with her, and take away the sheets that she has produced. These sheets end up in the possession of men like Waterhouse, and men in infinitely more desperate and dangerous circumstances, all over the world. They are called one-time pads..."


Yes, he based the character (or at least name) on my mom.

Text stolen from here.

Tags: family, nifty