Posted by steve …

Feb 22
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By steve
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Best Cinemagrams

Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg cinemagraph
I absolutely love these things. For starters, they’re pretty creepy, which is almost always a good thing… unless it’s the combover / shirt-pocket full of lollipops type of creepy. I think what really enchants me about them though, is how they break some sort of reality barrier in my mind. I get the feeling like these are real people trapped in photos… and I can’t stop staring.

I found out this art-form is actually called a cinemagraph, but there’s an iphone app called cinemagram, which is why I was searching to begin with. I was tipped off to the app by a tweet from Zadi Diaz, who used to be the host of my favorite web show, Epic Fu, before they just mysteriously stopped creating new content without offering any warning or explanation. I’m not bitter.

There are plenty of people making cinemagraphs, but not many doing it well. When I did this search I found dozens of best-of lists, but they all had the same pictures… almost all ripped from the same website. The site belongs to Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. They were actually the ones to coin the term cinemagraph when they started trapping people’s souls inside photographs in 2011.

CategoryCulture, Images Tagged , , , , , ,
Feb 20
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What’s In Chicken McNuggets

“See if you can handle the 20 piece nugget,” I suggest to my coworker Troy as he tries to decide what to get from McDonalds. But he tells me he can’t eat them anymore after seeing a picture online of what they are made from. He says if I can find the picture he saw, I’d never touch them again either.

It wasn’t hard to find, and let’s admit, yes, that looks heinously disgusting… but if that goop tastes half as good as the finished product, give me a straw and some honey mustard. Those nuggets are too delicious to boycott on account of being made from some chemical-laden animal by-pudding. So keep squirting that crap into your 4-shape mold, Ronald. I’m partial to the one that looks like a boot.

CategoryFood, Images Tagged , , ,
Feb 18
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When Does Netflix Lose Starz?

WHA! The Twenty-Ninth?
But that’s half my Instant Queue!
Movie Marathon.
Huge list of movies Netflix will lose on February 29th

Stuff I Haiku-gle:
A series where heart-warming poetry describes the results of a search.
Feb 16
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Why Did Mark Wahlberg Go To Jail?

Marky Mark was on Anderson Cooper’s talk show recently for a special on gang violence. He talked in few details about his tumultuous past and involvement in gang activity as a kid. He now involves himself in youth outreach programs to help prevent others from making the same mistakes.

As I was watching The Fighter this weekend, I was reminded of the interview, and decided to find out what it was that he did, and perhaps get some insight into why he is such a bad-ass.

I didn’t have to go any further than Wikipedia for this one, so I won’t rehash all the details here, but he was in a gang and participated in several racial hate crimes; one so bad as to be ruled attempted murder. Pretty heavy stuff. Fortunately, through his faith, and involvement in the Catholic Church he was able to turn his life around… but I still wouldn’t want to piss him off.

CategoryPeople Tagged , , ,
Feb 15
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By steve
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Last Minute Valentine Gifts

Portable Bath Tub Fail

I do this search practically every year, because unlike Christmas, the commercials don’t give me the three month ramp up time I need to start thinking about what to get. There was actually one year I didn’t need to do this search. That was the year I told Melissa I thought Valentines day was silly. Mmm… Not her favorite “gift.”

Unfortunately, searching for ideas rarely returns any useful results. The recommendations are either too generic or the writers have a very different idea of what I mean by “last-minute.” However, sometimes you can take the generic ideas and use them as inspiration for more personal ones:

  1. Generic Idea: Chocolates… Better Idea: Instead of just picking up a box of Russell Stover’s, buy several boxes until you can fill one of them with just the chocolates that taste like toothpaste (assuming that’s her favorite).
  2. Generic Idea: Movie Night… Better Idea: Instead of going out, try to recreate the theater at home. Pick up some sour patch kids and huge Cokes from the gas station; break out the lawn chairs with the cupholders; pop some popcorn; and turn the volume up unreasonably loud.
  3. Generic Idea: Spa Day… Better Idea: A gift certificate is nice, but what if your house was the spa! Don’t have a bathtub? No problem. Run to Target and pick up a kiddy pool. What? They don’t have a bathtub sized one? Get the one that holds 12 people. Oh, it needs 220 gallons of water? No problem, that’s only 44 trips with a bucket. Hot water heater can’t handle it? That’s what the tea kettle is for. You’re worried the floor might cave in? Don’t be. You’re all set!
CategoryLiving Tagged , , ,
Feb 13
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By steve
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Your Mom Joke History

“Your mom.”

Though it has probably been several years for you, I hear it at least twice a day at work. It became the go to joke around the office about six months ago with the arrival of our traffic manager Eliza. Ever since, I’ve learned things about my mom I’d never thought possible, such as: she’s what’s wrong with the printer; and she’s what got caught in my spam filter.

I was curious where this joke originated, so I did some research. I found that the official term for a “your mom joke” is a “maternal insult,” and that Shakespeare is often credited with the first zing. I would contest though, that “son of a bitch” is the first mom joke, and Wikipedia says that phrase dates back to 1330. The joke as we know it however, was popularized in the 90’s by the show “In Living Color,” and today lives on through a small office in Midtown Atlanta.

CategoryCulture Tagged , ,
Feb 10
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Slang GTA

On my way home from work, an old neon green Impala with enormous wheels catches my eye. “I wonder if that’s a six-fo'” says my brain. And then the song comes. It’s an acoustic cover of NWA’s Boyz in the Hood. It’s a song that I haven’t listened to since high-school, but it came back as if Seacrest had just announced it on American Top 40.

As I belt the tune out at the top of my lungs, in my most exaggerated country accent – because my ’97 Civic is completely soundproof, and surely nobody outside the car can hear me – I’m fascinated by how effortlessly the lyrics flow from my mouth; yet trying to recall seven words of high school Spanish still comes as a fun challenge.

I get to the part where the dude pulls up in a fresh El Camino and says, “It’s all about makin’ that GTA,” and I realize I don’t know what that means. For anyone that’s a Grand Theft Auto fan, you already know the answer, but I haven’t played since college, and I guess it didn’t make as lasting an impression as this song. And for those of you that aren’t Grand Theft Auto fans, it means Grand Theft Auto.

CategoryWhat it Means Tagged , , ,
Feb 09
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Golf Ninja

Golf Ninja
When I happened across this puppy, I was tempted to just post a long string of repeating lol’s and let the photo speak for itself. It surely could. I mean, how could I really add any value to such an exquisite gem? But I couldn’t stand not knowing more about the man who thinks squatting like spiderman is acceptable golf etiquette, and I thought you might be curious too.

As a quick backstory, I was searching “Golf Ninja” because we have a client who’s logo is a ninja with golf clubs. Funny logo, way funnier reality, way detrimental to my productivity.
Now, I’m no sports junkie, so excuse my ignorance if you unaffectedly watch this goof hover-plank 18 holes a day on ESPN7… but I was tickled and mystified by this act of contortionism, and my curiosity would not go unquenched.

My CyberStalk:
All I had to go off of was the “cob…” on his visor, so I type “golf cob” and google immediately suggests Cobra. Progress! I then search for golfers sponsored by Cobra and get a fairly long list:

Rickie Fowler? Too young.

Jason Gore? Too fat.

Johan Edfors? Too scruffy

Blair o’Neal? Too hot!

Jonas Blixt? Too pale

Diego Valasquez? wtf

Ian Poulter? Hmm… pink pants. Maybe? Nah.

Camilo Villegas… BINGO!!!

The pride I feel for having found him is duly amplified by the plethora of spidey pics google has served up. And when viewed in succession, it seems obvious that he spends the entire game just slinking around on his face salamander-style.

Why is the golf community not trumpeting this guy’s name? You don’t have to like golf to enjoy a man acting-a-fool on the golf course. Did we learn nothing from Happy Gilmore?

Camilo, though I have never seen you play, know very little about you, and have absolutely no authority to do so, I hearby deem you The People’s Golfer.

First Planking, then Tebowing. Lord, please let “Camiloing” be next.

CategorySports Tagged , , , ,
Feb 08
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Losing Tons of Hair

Melissa your hair!
OMGRUOK?
Postpartum hair loss.

Stuff I Haiku-gle:
A series where heart-warming poetry describes the results of a search.
Feb 07
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Best Time to Tweet

I just started “Stuff I Google” two weeks ago, but in this age of instant gratification, I want 5,000 hits per day, and I want it now. So, I’ve been trying to leverage my thousands dozens of Twitter followers to spread the word. To optimize the effectiveness of my tweets, I searched for some advice. I found this super helpful infographic from Dan Zarrella. Click on it to view the full thing.

In summary, the best time of day to tweet is 2pm, and weekends seem to be most effective as well. There are some other interesting statistics on there too, so don’t miss out.

He also created a tool called TweetWhen which generates a graph showing what time of day you personally get retweeted the most. Unsurprisingly, as someone who hasn’t historically spent much time on Twitter, I had too little data to generate a graph, but I’m hoping to change that in the coming months.

CategoryLiving Tagged , ,
Feb 06
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Why Do Peppermints Get Holes

This brand of peppermints had smaller holes than most.

I’ve always wondered why peppermints get all holey when you suck on them. No other candy does that. “Maybe there’s an ingredient that dissolves faster than the rest,” I predicted. Nope, the answer is more obvious / boring than that. Air Pockets.

Someone in this forum decided to dissect one to see if he could see evidence of air bubbles. I did the same, and found that they aren’t so much bubbles, but more like long tubes of air that seem to be the result of stretching the candy before it’s sliced.

CategoryHow it Works Tagged , ,
Feb 03
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By steve
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“I Before E Except After C” Extended

We all know the old adage “I before E, except after C.” We also know that it should be selectively obeyed because it’s not always so simple. I remember having heard a longer version of the rule as a kid, and my friend Parker had heard a different one. Thus, the quest to find the most comprehensive rendition of the poem began.

What I found is that it’s the worst “rule” ever. There are so many exceptions, it’s almost a disservice to teach it to children. I found two versions of the poem that included an extra verse to help cover a few exceptions, but nothing that adequately exposed the small subset of words this law actually applies to. So I took the verses I found, combined them, and added some of my own. This is what I ended up with:

I before E except after C, and when sounding like A as in neighbor or weigh.

Either, neither, leisure, and seize, are exceptions if you please.

Weird is weird, and it makes this rule bunk, and whoever spelled Budweiser the first time was drunk.

…And as if in one final act of defiance, come I-after-C words like conscience and science.

Parker also reminded me of a similar rhyme we—with the help of our roommates—came up with back in college. It went something like this:

O before U except after Q, and when sounding like ‘you.’
…Or in fluoride, buoy, and duo.

We could never figure out how to make that last part rhyme, but even without it, the rule holds up as well as the “i before e” one.

Search Results I found Helpful:
Excerpt From: I before E (except after C): old-school ways to remember stuff

The Free Dictionary Language Forum

CategoryEnglish Tagged , ,
Feb 02
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By steve
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Stop Washer From Shaking

My mom won some kind of sweepstakes last month and got a whole new set of appliances: Water Heater; Fridge; Dishwasher; Washer/Dryer. They already had a new Washer and Dryer though, so they gave it to us for Christmas. I just got around to hooking it up this week. It’s not the first set I’ve installed, but it is the nicest… which is why I was surprised when the thing tried to self-destruct every time it ran the spin cycle. The first time it happened I was upstairs and the house started rumbling so inexplicably, that my first reaction was, “Rapture?” A moment later, it hit me, and I ran downstairs to find the washer slamming itself up against the cinderblock wall several feet and perpendicular from where it was installed.

The collective wisdom of the internet said that it just needed to be leveled, but after meticulously adjusting the feet for an hour, I took this video.

I only wish I’d taken a video before the leveling, because it dramatically improved the situation, and at least I wasn’t worried about it ripping the pipes out of the wall anymore. But obviously, something still wasn’t right. After I’d exhausted all of my ideas, I did something I rarely resort to, I read the instructions. “REMOVE SHIPPING BOLTS from back of machine before use.” Hmph. Why couldn’t you have told me that google?

CategoryFixes Tagged ,
Feb 01
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By steve
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How Much to Tip Pizza Guy

Much like a waiter,
many give fifteen percent.
Me? Two bucks a pie.

Stuff I Haiku-gle:
A series where heart-warming poetry describes the results of a search.
Jan 31
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Are Grapes Berries

I was eating some grape salad the other day, and suddenly found myself humming the tune to the Little Lad Starburst Commercial. Yeah, you know the one. “Berries and cream, berries and cream, I’m a little lad who loves berries and cream!” Amused by my own subconscious connection between some creamy grapes and a song about creamy berries, I realized my subconscious  had recalled a fact from Kindergarten that my rational self had long misplaced…that grapes are a berry…i think.

I mean, when I consider what they look like, and how they grow, it’s obvious. But nobody says, “We toured the Nappa Valley berry orchards last Spring,” or “Pick up some of those green berries when you go to the store.” And if I ever ordered a triple-berry cobbler, and out came a dessert comprised of three grape varietals, I’d be less than thrilled. So, I guess I just hadn’t thought about it. Just to make sure, I checked the web, which not only confirmed my theory, but also made me feel like an idiot, and reassured me that I’m not the biggest idiot, all at the same time. Thanks Internet!

CategorySubpar Intelligence Tagged , ,
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