The Foo Logs The Foo Logs Blog about technology, gizmos, software, movies, food, cooking and just about everything else. Articles
The Foo Logs is hosting a Blog Carnival
2007-03-11 06:01:00 I’ll be hosting my first blog carnival on March 18th. It’s called The Personal Development Carnival . As I am always interested in improving myself, I think this carnival is a good fit for me. What is a blog carnival? It is where someone takes the time to find good blog posts on a given topic ... More About: Hosting , Blog , Blog Carnival , Host
The world?s tallest traffic bridge
2007-03-09 20:30:01 This goes into my book of great engineering and architectural feats: The world’s tallest traffic bridge. Designed by British Architect Norman Foster in collaboration with French bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux, the bridge is located in Millau, southwest of France. It helps traffic over the river Tarn within the Masif Central mountain range. Opened in 2004, the bridge has 4 lanes for traffic, stands at 270 meters (886 ft) above the ground and 2,460 metres (8,071 ft) in length. Just to put in perspective how tall it is, it is 23 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower (at its highest point) and 38 meters (125 ft) shorter than the Empire State building. The total structure weighs approximately 36,000 tonnes, took 3 years to make and cost approximately 394 euros ($524 million). More About: World , Traffic , Tall , The World , Ridge
Tandy 5000 anyone?
2007-03-09 08:29:01 Doesn’t this bring back memories. Can’t believe how much computers use to cost. This one’s a “lightning fast 20 mhz” and is dated 1989. More About: Andy , Anyone
JohnChow.com is Viral
2007-03-07 20:28:01 I happened to stumble upon a blog several months ago, it’s called John Chow .com. I had seen some of his innovative Google ads on some blogs I read daily and couldn’t help but click through to his site. Thought I’ll also grab the chance of reviewing his blog too. John Chow hails from Vancouver, Canada and is a self proclaimed “Dot Com Mogul”. His site talks mostly about how he makes money off his blog, tips to help one do it, ways to increase traffic and also miscellaneous stuff about cars, food and technology. He is an established internet entrepreneur owning the successful Tech Zone, a site that reviews, rates and compares computer products. At first glances I wasn’t too interested in the site until I started reading some of his compelling posts. Articles like “The Importance of Deep Linking”, “Better Anchor Text= Better Search results”, “10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid” are a few out of the many good articles t... More About: Viral
Morning doodles
2007-03-07 20:28:01 I wish could doodle like this. More About: Morning , Doodles , Doodle
At the Pet Store?
2007-03-07 20:28:01 My time at the pet store (yesterday) didn’t start too well, when I had to chase down a sales associate to ask for something I couldn’t find at the pet store. He was laughing and walking around the store entertaining his girlfriend. Me: Hi there, I can’t seem to find the litter locker refill cartridges. Sales Associate: Ummm, what exactly is a litter locker? I showed him the litter locker that was on display on shelf nearby. (Yes, I had to show a person working there where an item was) Sales Associate: Ummm, isn’t that what you are looking for? Me: No, that is the actual litter locker, I can’t seem to find the refill cartridges for them. Sales Associate: Oh, lets see whether I can find them. The guy proceeds to look around the same shelves that I had been looking at for in the last 15 minutes. He picks up a random item - happens to be a cat litter box filter. Duh! Sales associate: Is this it? Me: Maybe you might want to ask your manager where the... More About: Store , Stor
Cold showers
2007-03-06 02:25:12 Hope I didn’t yell, shout or scream too much. I was taking a nice long hot shower yesterday when the water turned ice cold half way through it. In my soapy and cold state, I put my robe on and walked out the bathroom angrily. It had seemed that my water heater had gone out on me. “Perfect timing! With freezing weather outside, in one of the worse weathers of the season, my water heater dies on me…” I mumbled. It has never happened to us in the past 6 years, so I was prepared for the worst. I ended up resetting my heater and by the end of the night, everything was back to normal again. Thank goodness! It just looked like Mr. Water Heater needed a little kick in the butt. Cold showers aren’t for the faint hearted. If you want to torture or get back at someone, have him or her have a nice shower and turn the heater off half way through (or flush the toilet if the water pipes are connected). You’ll hear the screams like it’s Halloween. More About: Show , Howe , Shower , Showers
Buffets are bad
2007-03-05 14:24:02 J and I tried a new restaurant for dinner yesterday. It was a buffet style “all you can eat” Chinese restaurant. They had an wide assortment of Chinese dishes, seafood and dessert to choose from. With over 80 different dishes, it’s probably one of the biggest buffets we have been to. Fried noodles, Coconut shrimp, Honey Chicken, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Beef with green peppers, Stir Fried green beans etc. .. they were De-Li-Cious! The steamed crab was one of the most popular dishes and the moment the cook brought it out and placed in inside the warming tray, you could just see the diners flock to it like vultures (with an almost riot-like pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line). It took just a couple of minutes from the time the cook came out, placed it on the warming tray, till it was gone. Those who didn’t get it, waited around the tray till the cook came out with his next batch and they were prepared to wait for a long time, selfishly pilling... More About: Buff , Buffet , Buffets
101 Dumb Moments in Business
2007-03-04 02:22:01 I was reading the Business 2.0 magazine today and was amused at their list of “101 Dumb est Moment s in Business: The year’s biggest boors, buffoons, and blunderers”. It was a pretty long list but nevertheless a good read. 4 stood out for me: TextTrust Typo Dam thatt spel-cheker, part too… TextTrust, a company that uses a combination of software and human editors to scour the Web for spelling errors, issues a press release on the most commonly misspelled words it has found “on the 16 million we pages it has spell-checked over the past year.” NTT Hackers. You are entering an easily hackable page. Would you like to continue? After NTT, Japan’s leading telephone company, introduces a system called Net Cash to protect customers from identity theft while shopping online, a hacker steals the ID numbers from more than 80,000 accounts. The information is used to spend $28,000 of NTT customers’ money. Tearing Picasso a new one… After strikin... More About: Men , Moments
Online backup and storage with IBackup
2007-03-03 02:21:01 IBack up is one of the leading online backup and storage provider in the market today. A subscription based online service, it allows you to backup Windows, MAC and Linux computers interactively or schedule regular online backups with their handy scheduling tools. Critical user data like Microsoft Outlook, My Documents, financial and other files can be backed up seamlessly with easy to use wizards. With IBackup, all backups are compressed and done incrementally, ensuring that network bandwidth is reduced. It also comes with Web Manager, the ability to organize your backed up files online and IDrive, a software that allows you to map your IBackup online storage account as a local drive on your computer. This allows you to drag-n-drop, open, edit and save files just as if it was on your local computer. If at any time you are disconnected, the file transfer resumption feature lets you continue where you left off when your internet connection is reestablished. Other features that come... More About: Storage , Online
The Biological Clock
2007-03-03 02:21:01 I have often wondered how the body works with having an internal clock, commonly known as The Biol ogical Clock . It is fascinating to think that my body can adjust itself to waking up within 5 minutes of setting my alarm clock every morning or if I am in a different time zone, my body reminds me that I have the same 24 hour biological clock as if I was at home (can be called jet lag) e.g. I will start getting tired at 6pm in London because it is actually 11pm in Ohio where my biological clock is used to. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, this 24 hour clock is known by scientists as circadian rhythms (derived from the latin words circa dies or ‘about one day’). Related research focusing on circadian rhythms found that it could be related to a part of the brain called hypothalamus, a man made pacemaker, and a protein called cryptochromes, located throughout the human body that detect change in light and resets the body’s clock. These circadian rh... More About: Logic , Lock , Logical
The Foo Logs Blast from the Past!
2007-03-03 02:21:01 Here is a blast from the past — digging up some old posts from the old dusty Foo Logs archives that were well received and ones that you may not have read yet. I saw this done of a few blogs and thought it was a good idea to revive some old worthy posts. Hope you enjoy them! The other side of socks Don’t Quit The power of three words The Science of Stupidity I Say Tomato, You Say Tomahto What is the meaning of Life? My first computer and computer game The Science of Hot Sauces Company names becoming (or have become) common household verbs and nouns More About: Last , Blast from the Past , Past , Blast
Life of Pi
2007-02-27 08:17:04 Pi, has always fascinated me. There are so many ways you can explain it, so many ways you can break it down and has a lot of history behind it. For those who need a memory refresh, Pi is a mathematical constant, an irrational real number. It is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter and is approximately equal to 3.14159. J asked me a trivia question (she had heard over the radio) about Pi on our trip back to her family this weekend. See whether you know the answer to it. What state in the USA has a law against rounding down the number of Pi to 3? (Move your mouse over the black blurb to reveal the answer) Kansas While I am at it, how many digits of Pi can you remember? I had a friend that could remember Pi to 50 decimal places. (Move your mouse over the black blurb to reveal Pi to 50 decimal places) 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 More About: Life , Life of Pi
If only this were true ?
2007-02-23 02:14:02 If only this were true, I’ll be a multi-millionaire, as I have get a couple of these emails daily i.e. of me winning the UK Lottery. I don’t know what the point is for someone sending this. There are no blatant advertisements, no URLs, no images etc. (not that I am asking for it). I can see email spam trying to push products and services down your throat but this is just pointless. Seriously, if I am to be informed of lottery winnings, it’ll have to be from something either than a free service like charter.net or yahoo.com email. These spammers are definitely lacking some intelligence and common sense. And don’t they know to spell check? … look at the words “noitfy” and “stelings” (in bold) in the email message. As Charlie Brown would say… “Good Grief!” —–Original Message—– From: UK INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY [mailto:afrogge@charter.net] Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 1:51 PM Subject: LUCK... More About: This , True , Only , Were
Shutdown Day is coming
2007-02-22 14:13:02 Can you shut down your computer and not touch it for 24 hours? Denis Bystrov and Michael Taylor has come up with an experiment to see how many people can do it. They are naming it The Shut down Day and it’ll “officially” be on March 24th. I’ll try, but it’ll be tough. Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com More About: Down , Ming , Shutdown
12 Step program for the email addict
2007-02-22 08:12:02 Wall Street Journal published a 12-step program for the email addict. I am definitely an addict, as the first thing I do everyday is check my email and I feel lost if I don’t. 1. During meals, do not check email. 2. Do not hide your email habits from family members. If you feel that someone would be upset to see you BlackBerrying, it’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t be. 3. Commit to stop emailing while driving (even at red lights), walking across the street or doing anything that requires careful attention. 4. Do not check email for the first hour of the day. In addition to giving you time to leisurely read the newspaper or spend time with your family, the practice will help you shake the tic-like checking ritual. 5. Endeavor to leave the mobile email device in the car or at home when attending any function taking place at your child’s school, or when picking up your child from school. 6. Decide on an email-free block of time. Parents should first assess... More About: Mail , Email , Prog , Program , Step
Life?s lessons (from Britney Spears)
2007-02-21 20:12:01 Britney is really going a stray… driving in the front seat with her baby without a seatbelt, pantiless, rehab, bald… the list just goes on. However, I think one can kind of learn a little from Miss Spears i.e. of how NOT to go about your life. 1. Be bold, unique and different but don’t go overboard Be yourself, and change is good but don’t go crazy with it. 2. Guilty by association Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton etc. Sometimes you have to keep good company to keep your life in line and be careful who you associate with. If you start hanging around with trash, you start acting like one too. 3. If you want respect, you have to respect yourself first If you want people to think positive and have a good opinion of you, earn it. It is not handed to you on a platter. No amount of money can buy respect. 4. Always try to better yourself, evolve and improve. Don’t go backwards and digress. At one time Britney and Christina were head to head… Britney has ... More About: Britney Spears , Life , Britney , Pear , Less
Say what you mean and mean what you say
2007-02-20 08:10:01 Blockbuster changed their strategy last year in a way that they don’t have due dates for movie rentals anymore. A 2 day movie rental has a 7 days grace to return it (essentially giving you about a week and a half from the time you borrow it), and a 7 day rental thus gives you 14 days. However if you keep it long enough, they have the authority to charge you for the purchase of the DVD. The poor checkout clerk probably has a hard time trying to explain how the setup works to customers. 2 days actually means 9 days, 7 days actually means 14 days. And didn’t they say there isn’t any due back date anymore? Sounds confusing just talking about it. In the another case, my father-in-law pointed this out to me about a $50 restaurant gift card he had. If you don’t spend it within 12 months, the card will depreciate after a 6 month grace period by the % of what is stated in the small print and expires after 5 years. So you’ll have 12 months which really means 18... More About: What , Hat
Hope as a voice
2007-02-18 14:07:02 I saw this book at Starbucks and am very tempted to buy it. Just wondering whether anyone has read it and will be interested to hear your thoughts. Ishmael Beah (whom book is based on) will be making his US nationwide book signing tour soon. More About: Voice , Hope , VOIC
I am a PC, and I am a Mac
2007-02-18 02:06:01 A parody of the “I am a PC, and I am a Mac ” commercial. Here is a hilarious animated take on Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs… with a happy ending.
The good and bad of Valentine?s
2007-02-17 20:05:02 This past Vale nti ne ’s has been a good and bad one. Good because, J’s school was canceled and we were snowed in, so we spent the day at home together. Bad because the next day, she came home with lots of Valentine’s gift from her students — nice and yummy chocolates. And the good kind too! If there is glaring weakness in me, it’s that I just can’t turn down chocolates. I think I can cross off February as the month to lose some weight. More About: The Good
Just when I thought?
2007-02-17 08:04:01 … I have seen almost every accessory for the iPod, a company called Suki comes up with a jaw dropper. Introducing the newest accessory for women who have iPods… the OhMyBod. It’s a portable vibrator that you can plug into your iPod, vibrates according to the rhythm of what you are playing and you can turn the vibes up with your volume. Great effort with the slogans too: “A whole new way to plug n’ play” “Turn in and turn on” “The ultimate Acsexcory” Cheezy but catchy! The last one there is a trademark by the way. And the accessories, what great toy doesn’t have the accessories. This one cracked me up, they actually have a Tips and Tricks section to help you get the most of your accessory. Here are some of the more amusing ones: “Q: Do certain songs work better than others? A: Yes. There are some songs that have long pauses or not much in terms of beat or rhythm?but it really depends on your taste in music and ... More About: Just , Thought , When
Not much activity at The Foo Logs
2007-02-16 08:03:01 Sorry… Things have been pretty dead here at The Foo Logs in the past week or so. The reason - I have been desperately trying to keep a deadline to finish my college work. The deadline to hand in my paper is today and there have been multiple late nighters, lots of coffee drinking and sleeping at 4am days leading up to this. Right now, I am almost zombie like, tired and cranky. It’s funny, years ago when I doing my bachelors, I would have the same late night and work till the early morning routine and would promise never to do it again. But here I am doing it all over again. Some habits die hard, especially the bad ones. Few things I can be sure off, I’ll be doing the happy dance later today when I hand in my coursework, get some sleep and The Foo Logs will be alive again. Oh yes, Ghost Rider comes out tomorrow and there is another happy dance for me to do. No Tags More About: Much
Talents at the Grammys
2007-02-13 08:02:02 I was floored by 3 musicians at the Gram my Awards yesterday. First off, 18 year old Robyn Troup, the “Grammy Moment” award winner that sang with Justin Timberlake — I don’t think I have heard a better live singer lately. In the Beyonce mold, she is a lock on to get a recording contract and may actually be a real challenger to Beyonce herself, both in looks and vocals. She definitely put everyone else to shame — even Red Hot Chilli Peppers. (Well, almost everyone if you count out Police) The other two were the teen pianist and violinist that did a short excerpt. Definitely envy their talent and wish I could play a musical instrument like that. I am wondering why they held it at the Staples Center (a basketball arena) instead of the bigger Kodak Theater. The echo that the singers made when they were singing were a little annoying. grammy awards More About: Talents , Talent , Tale
Cafe.com: An addictive online gaming community
2007-02-13 08:02:02 Cafe.com is a free social networking game community that allows you to chat, meet people and play games. There are hundreds of easy and fun individual/ multiplayer games to choose from e.g. Swordfish, a Tetris like strategy game in a deep sea fishing environment and Ironsides, a Pac Man maze like game with an 18th century naval warfare theme. Each player creates a 3D avatar, thus defining your online profile, appearance and persona of your character. Throughout the game, possessions can be accumulated by purchasing items to further enhance your gaming experience. These items may give you an advantage while playing with opponents. For example, some items may increase your gaming speed, some may obstruct their game play or freeze opponents. The virtual setting is such that each player that wants to play a game, needs to go into an individual room. These rooms are available for players to chat, launch multi player games and can contain up to 6 players. For those who want to have some g... More About: Gaming , Community , Muni , Online , Cafe
Better safe than sorry
2007-02-10 08:00:04 J received an email couple of days ago from AT&T (via her school district) about a phone scam going around. Thought I might want to share it with all of you. The basis of the email is that you should never dial a number with the area code 809. Con-artists will get you to call by leaving a message telling you that they have information about a family member who has been ill, to tell you someone has been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls. If you call from the US, you will apparently be charged $2425 per minute or, you’ll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you’ll often be charged more than $24,100. It turns out that the 809 code is located in the... More About: Better , Bett , Safe , Sorry
Anna Nicole Smith dies!
2007-02-10 08:00:04 Can’t believe it but I just saw on TV that Anna Nicole Smith died this afternoon at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, FL. They have yet to report the cause - it seems that she just collapsed and died. Looks like everyone is scrambling to read the news, every site that has the news (from CNN to USA Today) has been really slow. Pretty tragic as her son died suddenly too last year, just about the same time she gave birth. Read full report here. anna nicole smith More About: Cole
Google Spreadsheet gives Excel a run for its money
2007-02-06 13:57:01 Google has an online version of Microsoft’s Excel Spreads heet software to compliment their online word processor. Called Google Spreadsheets, it is an addition to their already released Google Docs (a converted tool from the company Writely they acquired last year). With Google Spreadsheets, you can now enjoy intuitive online navigation and editing, like any traditional document or spreadsheet from any computer having access to the internet. I am not sure when this was released to the public as it was on ‘limited beta’ in June last year. Spreadsheet documents can be saved online to your Google account or to your hard drive. Each spreadsheet can be up to 10,000 rows, 256 columns, 50,000 cells or up to 20 sheets whichever limit comes first. A user account has a limit of 100 spreadsheets and you can import/ convert xls, csv and odf file formats up to 1 Mb. Cell formulas and other Excel based functions work seamlessly and a frequent user of Microsoft Excel will find ... More About: Google , Money , Read , Sheet
The Foo?s pick for good and bad Superbowl ads
2007-02-05 19:55:02 Congrats to the Colts. Good game. Billy Joel didn’t sing a good National Anthem, a little off key at the beginning. Prince was awesome at halftime. Eccentric as he is, the guy can still sing and get the crowd going. Best Super bowl Half time show ever! Love the Prince symbol shaped guitar. If I am not mistaken, he threw it into the crowd at the end. It’ll probably turn up on eBay in the next couple of days. Best Superbowl Ad It came down to a tie. 1) Blockbuster.com The Blockbuster rabbit and gerbil are back, but they need a little help learning how to use a mouse. Funny and cute! 2) Doritos: Crash the Superbowl Very original. Nice play on the words! Hilarious ending. Honorable mentions: Budlight: Hitchhiker Budweiser: Fake Dalmation Coke Factory (This ad has been out for a couple of weeks now, but I still like it) Worst Ads: What were they thinking! Sierra Mist: Beard comb over Sierra Mist: Karate Class FedEX: Office in the Moon superbowl, superbowl ads, superb... More About: Pick , Bowl
The Who is getting around
More articles from this author:2007-02-05 07:54:02 Oh boy, The Who is really making money these days and not even touring constantly. They are already heard on the CSI TV series e.g. Who Are You? (CSI), We Don’t Get Fooled Again (CSI Miami) and Baba O’Riley (CSI New York). Now they played a Who song for the entrance of Indianapolis Colts at Superbowl 41. I love The Who, so I’m happy. Would have been happier if The Browns were in the Superbowl but I think the odds are better for me winning the lottery than them winning the Superbowl — sad but true. browns, csi tv series, superbowl More About: Round 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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