If you can read this, turn me over

I did, now what?

[Via]

Where do we go to bang Sue?

Bang Sue (Thai: บางซื่อ) is one of the 50 districts (Khet) of Bangkok, Thailand.

If browsers were women

IE, She's also the first woman I tried =)

[Via]

Culi Cafe, Hanoi, Vietnam

FYI, 100,000 Vietnamese dong = 5.7 U.S. dollars = 21.2 Malaysian ringgits

[Via]

Signs

A simple short film about love and communication in the cold, harsh world that is the life of a single, friendless office geek.

[Via]

Skeeter's Annoying Ringtone in Bedtime Stories

Watching the Bedtime Stories movie you almost have to stop and listen to this god awful noise. Once you figure it out, it's the cell phone ringtone. This is the most annoying ringtone with a twist of laughter.

You can download the mp3 ringtone here (326KB)

When Superpowers Go Wrong

The hulk having to buy pants and shoes. Its his credit card bill.


Iron man should have installed a zipper/shitter outlet in his suit.

[Via]

ToysRUs pays $5m for toys.com

Toy retailer ToysRUs has paid $5.1m (£3.6m) for the Toys.com domain name.

The amount has surprised onlookers and hints at a deeper commitment to online retailing for the toy giant.

It is believed to be the biggest payout for a domain this year but has some way to go to beat the $14m paid for sex.com in 2007 or the $9.5m paid for porn.com.

[Via]

My favourite file splitting utility

WinSplit is a free utility that splits even 2GB files and more into e-mail or floppy-friendly bites, and re-joins the data into a single file at its destination. Three splitting options let you split the file by size, number of pieces, and at every instance of a particular word (when breaking up text files). There is also a feature that checks to ensure that all of the file pieces are an exact copy of the original.

Convert DVD to Avi and Mpeg for free

bitRipper is FREE DVD to AVI software that allows you to back-up your DVD's as AVI files on the hard drive. It can be used for one-click ripping as good as for advanced modes. You are free to choose whether to use default configuration values or to set them manually. There are all necessary settings available:

* Video and audio codecs configuration
* Video resolution and aspect ratio
* Sound track language and sound value normalization
* Variety of actions to be performed after the copying process is completed
* Includes 3rd party decryption module for CSS protected DVDs

bitRipper does not require gigabytes of space to copy all DVD content to the hard drive before converting to AVI. It converts video on-the-fly, copying data and writing it to AVI file at the same time.

Virtual Eyeglass Try-On

At Frame Finder, you can virtually try out various spectacle frames and sun glasses online by uploading your own photo taken without glasses on. Frame Finder provides model numbers of all branded frames like Ray Ban, Giorgio Armani, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Guess, etc. so you can easily locate the same spectacle frame at the local store.

Crazy asshole talking to me

This is the problem with Bluetooth headsets. What's your story?

15,000 Sony employees in Malaysia keep their jobs

Sony Corp in Tokyo, hard hit by the global crunch, has decided to downsize and move part of its operations here to save costs.

Japanese Ambassador to Malaysia Masahiko Horie said that with this development, up to 15,000 Sony employees in the company’s four plants in Malaysia could keep their jobs.

The envoy said Sony EMCS (M) Sdn Bhd managing director Satoshi Okawa relayed the good news to him at a recent briefing.

“Besides cutting costs, Sony Japan’s shift here is also in recognition of the excellent infrastructure and facilities available in Malaysia."

“Sony Malaysia is one of Sony Corp’s top branches in the world in terms of human resource development, on-the-job training and also product variety and quality,” Horie told The Star.

The Sony plants here make 1,500 products, including the cutting-edge Bravia LCD TVs and laptop computers, with an annual output of 35 million units.

[Via]

Alphabetizer online tool

Found this useful online tool today. The Alphabetizer puts just about any list in alphabetical order. It also can be used to remove duplicates, reverse list, capitalize first word, make all lowercase, strip HTML, randomize etc. Apart from that, I like this function the most, where it can add custom word to the beginning/the end of each term.

If Valentine's Day Cards Told The Truth

What Valentine's Day Cards would look like if they were actually honest

[Via]

World's Shortest Escalator

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the escalator you see above, located at the Kawasaki More's department store in Japan, is the world's shortest, measuring just 834mm tall. It was in 1989 and will still retain the record if someone has not built a small and useless automatic staircase in the two decades.

[Via]

Font Based on Obama's Handwriting

"44th President" is based on the handwriting of President Barack Obama. A number of sources were studied and the font produced from those references. Barack Obama is the 8th left-handed American president. His left-handed stroke is quite obvious. As seen in recent legislation signing ceremonies, President Obama uses the “hooked” style of left-handed writing where the paper is held horizontally and the pen is “pulled” diagonally over the writing surface, and his signature is bold and elegant. The script flows swiftly with a clear and fluid motion, and includes a complete standard character set and Central European, Baltic, Romanian and Western European character sets. "44th President" is available for immediate download for $15.95, and 20% of all profits will be given to charity. This OpenType font can be used on Macintosh and PCs in all word processing programs. An Acrobat sample of the font in action can be viewed here.

[Via]

If you work for LEGO

That's how your business card going to be, they even try to match the look of the minifig (gender, hair, glasses) to the person.

[Via]

Sell Second Hand Cars?

At least they managed to spell "we", "used" and "cars" correctly.

British people find 'accommodation' the most difficult word to spell

Accommodation is the word that British people find the most difficult to spell.

Internet search engine Ask.com looked at which words received the most queries requesting a correct spelling.

Top of the list was accommodation, which was often misspelled as acommodation, accomodation and accomadation.

Accessory, opportunity and guarantee were also high on the list of words we find most difficult to grasp.

Spellers also commonly thought that embarrass was written as embarass, embarras and embaress.

Hundreds of people are also confused by the letter order of eighth and the silent "p" in receipt.

The word restaurant, which is of French origin, also tripped up many British people.

[Via]

World’s first electronic ABS motorcycle

Honda’s new CBR600RR is a 599cc, water-cooled four-cylinder bike that features computer-controlled anti-lock braking for the first time ever, while a 999cc version called the CBR1000RR will also be available from next week.

The company says the bikes, which start at ¥1.1 million ($12,200) allow for more solid and better braking control and are, therefore, safer than standard models in some conditions.

[Via]

Pensioner drinks nothing but Coke for 40 years

A Croatian man claims he has drunk nothing but Coca-Cola for the past 40 years – because he promised his mother he would not touch alcohol.

Pero Ajtman, 71, said he promised his mother he would stop drinking alcoholic beverages four decades ago.

"My mum didn't like me drinking when I was a young man as she was very religious," he explained to the Croatian tabloid 24 Sata.

"She made me promise never to drink again and Coca-Cola was the only thing that tasted as good as wine so I started drinking that.

"Now I have a glass in the morning, before and after lunch, with my dinner and then before I go to bed. I never drink anything else."

[Via]

The Credit Crisis Visualized

If you are not from a finance background but still like to understand the whole credit crisis, just watch this video that explains the entire story of the Credit Crisis in Plain English.

[Via]

Oops: "Obama bin Laden" Error Hits Yahoo's Homepage

It's not just angry rightwingers who mix up "Obama" and "Osama." Yahoo News has joined CNN and the Associated Press in confusing the most powerful man in the world with his terrorist enemy.

Here's the latest goof:



[Via]

Feeling frazzled? 8 ways to decrease stress

Here are eight surprising ways to invoke it — and in some cases, cut your cortisol levels almost in half.

Cut cortisol 20 percent
Say "Om." Subjects who practiced Buddhist meditation significantly decreased both cortisol and blood pressure in a six-week Thai study. Similarly, participants who meditated daily for four months decreased the hormone by an average of 20 percent in a study at Maharishi University, while levels in the nonmeditating control group actually went up slightly.

Cut cortisol elevation 66 percent
Make a great iPod mix. Music can have a calming effect on the brain, especially while you're facing down a major stressor. When doctors at Japan's Osaka Medical Center played tunes for a group of patients undergoing colonoscopies, the patients' cortisol levels rose less than those of others who underwent the same procedure in a quiet room.

Cut cortisol 50 percent
Hit the sack early — or take a nap. The recommended eight hours of nightly shut-eye allows your body enough time to recover from the day's stresses, study found. When you fall short of the mark, take a nap the next day — Pennsylvania State University researchers found that a midday snooze cut cortisol levels in subjects who'd lost sleep the previous night.

Cut cortisol 47 percent
Sip some black tea. When volunteers at University College London were given a stressful task, the cortisol levels of those who were regular black-tea drinkers fell by 47 percent within an hour of completing the assignment, while others who drank fake tea experienced only a 27 percent drop.

Cut cortisol 39 percent
Hang out with a funny friend. The pal who keeps you in stitches can do more than distract you from your problems — her very presence may help temper your hormonal stress response. Simply anticipating laughter is enough to reduce cortisol levels by nearly half, according to researchers at Loma Linda University.

Cut cortisol 31 percent
Schedule a massage. A little pampering can rub your stress levels the right way. After several weeks of massage therapy, subjects' cortisol levels decreased by nearly one-third, on average, according to studies at the University of Miami School of Medicine and elsewhere.

Cut cortisol 25 percent
Do something spiritual. Religious ritual fortifies many people against everyday pressures, and it can also lower cortisol secretion, report University of Mississippi researchers. Churchgoing study subjects had lower levels of the stress hormone, on average, than those who did not attend services at all.

Cut cortisol 12 percent to 16 percent
Chew a piece of gum. Next time you feel frazzled, try popping a stick of gum into your mouth to instantly defuse tension, suggest new findings from Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. While under moderate stress, gum chewers had salivary cortisol levels
that were 12 percent lower than nonchewers and also reported greater alertness than their gum-deprived counterparts.

[Via]

The hilarious examples of mangled English

Mr Friendly: A cheery warning to just stay away, ok?


Honest: A worrying warning at this Chinese supermarket


Take the plunge: A step-by-step guide to drowning - how handy


Don't feed the cleaners: Every precaution is taken to keep the window cleaners safe... and hungry

[Via]

Japan's Pioneer to cut 10,000 jobs globally

Japanese electronics company Pioneer Corp. will cut 10,000 jobs globally to cope with sinking sales of car audio equipment and flat-screen TVs. It will also withdraw from its money-losing plasma display business.

The massive job cuts, announced Thursday, are the latest from Japanese corporate giants, which are slashing their payrolls worldwide, reducing production and forecasting annual losses amid a global economic slump. Sony Corp. is shedding 8,000 workers while Nissan Motor Co. and NEC Corp. are each cutting 20,000.

Hit by the collapse in demand for car audio equipment and plasma TVs, Pioneer said its net loss in the current fiscal year to March will swell to 130 billion yen ($1.4 billion) from its previous estimate of a 78 billion yen net loss. It would be the fifth straight annual net loss for Pioneer.

[Via]

The Mom Song

I feel sorry for her children!

Thanks to Joyce!

Heart-shaped island spotted by Google Earth

The 130,000 square yard islet of Galesnjak came to prominence after its unusual shape was highlighted on Google Earth.

Even the owner of the uninhabited island - now known as Lovers' Island - didn't realise how perfectly heart-shaped the island off the Croatian coast was until he was swamped with requests from couples to stay there.

It seems many lovers from around the world consider it the ideal spot for a romantic Valentine's Day break.

Vlado Juresko said: "It has been incredible. We think it is the most perfect heart-shaped island in the world. Nobody lives there so if lovers really do want to spend time alone it's the perfect desert island.

"We always thought it looked a bit like a heart but since it's been on Google Earth everyone else has seen it too and the whole world seems to want to stay here."

The island is located in Zadarski Kanal between Zadar and the Island of Pasman.

Croatia is ranked as the 18th most popular tourism destination in the world, proving especially busy during the summer months.

[Via]

"Viva la Vida" wins Grammy for song of the year

The Coldplay tune "Viva la Vida" won the Grammy for song of the year on Sunday.

The prize goes to the songwriters, in this case the members of Coldplay.

The other nominated songs were "American Boy," performed and co-written by Estelle and Kanye West; "Chasing Pavements," performed and co-written by Adele; "I'm Yours," performed and written by Jason Mraz; and "Love Song," performed and written by Sara Bareilles.

The 51st annual Grammy Awards, the music industry's top honors, were handed out at the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles.

[Via]

Nissan to slash 20,000 jobs, sees annual loss

Nissan is slashing 20,000 jobs, or 8.5 percent of its global work force, to cope with what Japan's third-largest automaker expects will be its first annual loss in nine years.

"The global auto industry is in turmoil, and Nissan is no exception," Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told reporters Monday in Tokyo.

Nissan Motor Co. now expects a 265 billion yen ($2.9 billion) net loss for the fiscal year through March — joining a raft of other Japanese corporate giants, including Toyota, Toshiba and Sony, in slashing jobs and projecting annual losses.

[Via]

French fighter planes grounded by computer virus

French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus, an intelligence magazine claims.

The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand.

Microsoft had warned that the "Conficker" virus, transmitted through Windows, was attacking computer systems in October last year, but according to reports the French military ignored the warning and failed to install the necessary security measures.

The French newspaper Ouest France said the virus had hit the internal computer network at the French Navy.

Jérome Erulin, French navy spokesman told the paper: "It affected exchanges of information but no information was lost. It was a security problem we had already simulated. We cut the communication links that could have transmitted the virus and 99 per cent of the network is safe."

However, the French navy admitted that during the time it took to eradicate the virus, it had to return to more traditional forms of communication: telephone, fax and post.

[Via]