10 facts about Einstein

Do you know that Einstein was a fat baby with a big head? Or do you know that when he died someone stole his brain pickled in a jar? If you want to learn more click the link below.

Link via Digg

There are intelligent Digg users

So I was browsing Digg, my favorite site, and found a screaming headline on the frontpage: Sony UK Boss Calls the US a Land of Cheap People to Justify PS3 Price. Now any gamer, sony hater or not, would love to check out this article, so I clicked on it. Based on some comments, I thought that Sony was being a jerk again until I read this comment below.

TortfeasorTO comments:

Please. Have a look at the original interview, without the silly headline. That's not what the guy meant at all. He meant that labor is cheaper in the US than in the UK, that's all. He was explaining why the PS3 is so much more expensive in the UK than in other places, including the US. He was not calling Americans cheapskates. Fun though it would be to misunderstand him that way.

Here's the original interview. This just proves that in any community, there may be sensationalist dumbasses and commenters but there's also your share of intelligent members who can get past exaggerated frontpage headlines.

There are A-list bloggers

This post is in relation to my Jason Calacanis post about A-list bloggers.

The fact is that many top bloggers had a huge head start in terms of industry connections and influence. The Last Podcast has a great post demonstrating the connections most A-listers had before getting started blogging. It’s a lot easier for a successful blog/media entrepreneur like Jason Calcanis to start a popular blog than it is for a stay at home mom, for example. For some reason, it is only the A-listers themselves who deny the existence of the list of blog buddies as key to success. This is not an issue of inborn personality- you literally become convinced(or lie to convince others) that your A-list presence is nothing more than a result of your hard work only when you are actually on the A-list.

So what do you think?

Link

Many in US have no interweb

And here I was bitching about my dial-up connection:

...a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months."

The top reason why they have no internet is that they think they don't need it.

Link

Alcohol almost as harmful as heroine

I don't know about this one but maybe it takes into consideration the dependence that a person acquires when drinking alcohol.  Anyway, alcohol is fifth on the rank of the most dangerous drugs just below ecstasy, lsd, and cannabis. 

Link

Chicken McNuggets has some bad juju

I can't believe that lighter fluid is in every McNuggets.  To learn more about the composition of McNuggets, just click the link below.

Link

What happened to my pics?

Oh dear, what happened to my pictures.  Looks like Cnet's Allyoucanpload is down.  I've tested out other pictures from Allyoucanupload and it seems like nothing works.  And still nothing works since 5pm this day.  I hope Cnet is working on this, goshdarnit!  The image displayed on the left is from Google image search, uploaded to Imageshack.  Come on Cnet, you're getting pwned by other image upload services.

Tim Kring - lessons from Heroes season 1

Tim Kring, creator of NBC's Heroes reveals the lessons he learned from season 1.

1. Don't be afraid to reveal secrets, even big ones, along the way.

2. More romance in the show: "I think we want to have some more romance, I think we're missing that. I'd like to have some more romance on the show."

3. More backstory for a single character or two.

Link

DBZ mmorpg in 2008

According to Japanator - Anime Manga Community a Dragon Ball MMORPG will launch in 2008. Now I don't know how true this rumor is, but I'm certainly excited to see a DBZ online game. I won't play it, but I'm excited to see it.

There are no A-list bloggers - Calacanis

Jason Calanis - the man, the myth, the legend. Friend or foe, Digg nemesis, Twitter addict. It doesn't matter what you think of him, all that matters is that you read his blog and you follow him on Twitter. Love him, hate him? It doesn't matter, the guy talks common sense about blogging. You know, blogging, that little thing that made him a millionaire.

There is no "A List" -- it's a myth.There are people who blog every day, have something intelligent to say, and who get linked to more than the folks that are some combination of a) new, b) have little to say, and c)are not hustling...

...I think there are a lot of folks who think because they re-blog a couple of stories a day for a couple of weeks, and they don't go anywhere in terms of traffic, that they are being "held back' by the A list. That's BS... those folks are basically the losers who think that their success in blogging is based on other people.

Link

Writing tips from George Orwell

I really like writing but I know for a fact that I'm not as good as someone who is born to write. I mean, someone who really knows his shit and is really good (like Tim). Though, I can proudly say that my writing may be mediocre but it's not atrocious. Anyway, here's some tips from George Orwell so you can at least avoid being an atrocious writer.

When writing a sentence you should always ask yourself these questions:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

When choosing words, follow these rules:

7. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
8. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
9. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
10. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
11. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
12. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Link

Filesharing, enemy of pirates

This is hilarious. Apparently P2P is killing off the business of media pirates (pirates who sell physical discs).

"Tony is very clear about why his rags to riches story has gone back to rags again. “File-sharing, P2P - call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn’t buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was ‘BitTorrent this, LimeWire that’. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don’t think those days are coming back.”

I'm pretty sure media pirates here in the Philippines will start losing business once broadband becomes as ubiquitous as television.

Link

DIY mini comics

Mini comics is not really mini.  Basically it's a self-publish type of comic drawn on a 8-1/2x11 paper.  Mini comics can be black and white or in color, either way just create your best if you want publishers to notice you.  The number one reason to do a mini comic is to pimp your talent to publishers or to self-publish and sell your own comics to people.

Click here to go to a tutorial site on how to make your own mini comics.

Stan Lee and Joe Q contemplate Cap's death

In relation to my last post about Captain America's death, here's a news item (interview) from MSNBC regarding Joe Quesada and Stan Lee's views of the comics icon's demise.

JOE QUESADA: The Marvel universe is always at its best when we are reflecting the world around ourselves. “Captain America” was created right around the time of World War II, he fought Adolph Hitler, he sold war bonds; then in the '60s when you look at the cold war and the fear that we had of the atom but also the promise of the atom, and you get characters like the Hulk, who comes out of a gamma-bomb explosion, and Spider-Man, who is bitten by an irradiated spider. Then there’s Vietnam, and Tony Stark is a guy who’s building weapons for the war in Asia and happens to get crippled there and become Iron Man--all these things really stem from comics being a product of their time. So when we were thinking of the story of “Civil War,” there was absolutely no resistance on our part to do it because we just knew it was one of those great ideas that we had to go forward with.

STAN LEE: I was a little bit shocked when I heard about it, as I think everybody else was. It’s really a shame. He was a great guy and certainly America could use a man like that right now.

Rootkit detection devices

This Cnet blog post by Robert Vamosi is about rootkit removal devices. If you suspect your system to contain any rootkits, just take a gander at all the free software listed in the article. Personally, I have tried Blacklight before and I found it to be easy and a fast rootkit detector. I must say that I did not detect any rootkit on my system, but if you are someone who happened to have bought a sony audio cd in the last couple of years, you might need these apps.

Captain America dead?

Marvel's sweeping Civil War has taken the life of a very significant character.  Captain America has seemingly died when he was afflicted with a mortal wound while going to his trial.  Joe Q has this to say about comic book death:  "There was period in comics where characters would just die and then be resurrected. And the death had very little meaning and the resurrection had very little meaning," he said. "All I ask of my writers is if you're going to kill a character off, please let that death have some meaning in the overall scope of things."

So, is Cap dead-dead, or will he be returning?   

Blogex 1.1.0 beta for Maxthon

So I've been giving Maxthon another shot to be my primary browser since it's as extendable and fast as Firefox (spare me the "it's just a shell for IE" comments, I know).  Since Firefox 2 has been giving me trouble since the first time I isntalled it, I needed to walk this path of slef-discovery and self-realization, while stumbling through high adventure and romance as I go along the way.

Here's my capsule review of Blogex:  Blogex is a plug-in for Maxthon that allows you to post to your blog from the browser.  In essence, it's just like Performancing for Firefox although it's for IE.  Much like Performancing, it's easy to use, but it's faster because it's Maxthon and it doesn't eat much of your RAM.  The only problem I encountered with Blogex is some formatting quirks here and there which were barely noticeable and I just can't seem to edit my previous postings.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong and I'll tell you if I'm able to in the future. 

In a nutshell - it's functional, fast, and free.  What more can you ask for? 

Edit: I was able to edit this post.

Information overload

Look at the mess I made with my Google Reader.  I'm literally inundated by hundreds of news in one sitting.  I love it.  Slacking off is like an art that I've mastered, and now, thanks to Google Reader - I can be informed and entertained at the same time. Word up.

Update: The screenshot I made is a dead link. I have to remove it, so sorry no context on the post.