TypeRacer is a typing speed comparison site. It lets you race against peers who are online either as a registered user or a guest. It presents you with gibberish of some text which you need to type, using the right single quotes and capitalizing the I's. If your preferred method of typing is a Word document with automatic spelling correction, you are in for a tough time. But hey, I managed it, so it may not be so difficult after all. Here is a screengrab from one of my races
I also typed quotes from the Matrix and the Namesake by Mira Nair, in other races, so it'll be interesting to see what other literary treasure is hidden when racing again, wink wink. If you do sign up, invite me, and we'll have a race.
Go! TypeRacer! Go! - the new olympic sport...
taking newspapers to the next level...
TimeSculpture - interesting visual effects
Toshiba is promoting its UpScaling product with this advertisement
Stunning, isnt it? and here is their behind the scenes video of the making
yes, its mindblowing... I wont say anything more
twins are taking over the world...
Improv Everywhere has this nice post about a bunch of twins doing a human mirror imitation on a train in New York... watch the video and the read the article here
They had also done a All-Freeze in Grand Central earlier and the site lists other unique and hilarious missions... the frozen grand central video is below...
amazing street art animation
apparently some folks just have too much time on their hands... just watch the video
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from Vimeo.
Office Wars IV - Friday Strikes Back
Seriously, one of the best office war videos I have seen in a while... and I felt like I saw every war movie ever made in 10 minutes :)
http://view.break.com/521743 - Watch more free videos
How to productively procrastinate...
Only recently, I had written about a good flowchart to decide about procrastinating right away and hot on its heels, I came across this audio guide about being a productive procrastinator. Seriously, don't think of doing this later, just click here and click the Listen Now option and become a structured procrastinator right away. So what is my take on it? I will get around to listening to it first, and then comment about it :-) [via]
My dreams... fade away... so quickly...
Best pecimen for a Turing Test
The Daily WTF is a website dedicated to giving a daily dose of what not to do in the IT field and life, in general... and though most of the posts are intriguing, this one simply takes the cake... A conversation between a HR lady at a company and a newly hired guy who was self employed before...
HR Lady: Can I have the phone number of the consulting company where you worked for the past 6 years?
New Hire Guy: I was self employed. I am the owner and sole employee of the consulting company and I would be happy to answer any questions you have.
HR Lady: No, I need to call to verify!
New Hire Guy: ...But you'll just be calling me.
HR Lady: I have to call — what's the number?
New Hire Guy: The number of the office is [my cell number].
(note: I'm standing 2 feet directly in front of her. She dials the phone and I answer.)
HR Lady: Hello — this is Paula from Initrode Global, calling in reference to Snoofle's employment.
New Hire Guy: (both into the cell phone and to her): I know, I'm standing right in front of you.
Her (into the phone): Could you please verify the dates of Snoofle's employment at VirtuDyne, Intelligenuity and Initech?
New Hire Guy: (reading from my résumé that is laying on her desk in front of her): VirtuDyne: a1 to b1, Intelligenuity: a2 to b2, and Initech: a3 to b3.
HR Lady: Great, thank you! *click*
New Hire Guy: (directly to her): ...Did you not notice that you were talking to me right here in front of you?
HR Lady: I know, but I have to call to check these things.
Sometimes you wish delusions last forever...
We all have been deluded one time or other, and being a single nerd takes it to a whole new level... I had once discussed the concept of dating a girl to provide her tech support (though it actually never happened to me in life) and was not at all surprised when such a sequence appeared in the Dilbert strips recently... here they are for your viewing pleasure...
eh dandanakka... eh danakunakka...
I am pretty sure you would have come across this Wikipedia entry for dappan kuthu but the current version has undergone significant revisions from what it used to be sometime (eons in internet time) ago... so I decided to dig in the history of the article and pulled up the How To which was there available in this edit...
The following steps may be taken as a basic dance pattern for beginners. Dappaankuthu is essentially freeform, and each dancer makes of it what he or she will.and just for the heck of it, couple of videos
1. Take one step with your foot.
2. If you just brought your left foot forward, point your left fist to the sky and your right fist directly ahead, otherwise do the opposite.
3. If you bring your left fist skyward, look straight ahead or slightly upwards, otherwise look down at your feet.
4. The above three steps must be done simultaneously.
5. Bob your torso up and down once.
6. Repeat with the other foot.
7. Maintain a pace of one step every second, with a bob equidistant between every two steps.
and my all time favorite from 12B
The iPhone version 2 mash up...
The phone is rumored to come out in june but Giz invited a photoshop contest from its readers... there are 100's of pictures available here but thought i'll post a few i found interesting...
I must say that this one is the best... it combines the best of one world with the lifesaver inadvertently given in the other much darker world.. its geek-speak
this is a possibility...
and only last week, I was talking to a friend about this very specific idea of integrating keyboard and mouse by using the iphone like a mac...
Tuffers: truth was never this funny (NSFW)
I know the English have a sense of humour but never thought the truth spoken loud can be this funny... here is Phil Tuffnel, an England spin bowler from a bygone era ridiculing himself in a comedy show...
Via
A call center prank... this time a good one...
Being on the calling end of a telephone for the past 4 years, I have often wondered what it would be like to actually sit and answer calls all day long and trying to fix things by simply asking the user to unplug and plug back in whatever gadget they complain is not working... (there was a brief period in my life I was providing support for something but lets not talk about that time) This video here made sure I dont have to experience it personally... sit back and enjoy it for yourself...
* (star) horses ...
If you spot a sea horse in the distant sky, do you call it a star horse? That is what I was wondering when I stumbled across this amazing picture in NASA's web space
Proof in the Pudding
I woke up today with a light headache and though it persists as I blog, I felt it relieved a little after looking at this comic...
In other news, the defendant's counsel argued that the defendant's husband actually had chocolate cake for dessert and the prosecution is twisting facts...
The story of Hey-SOOS
A series of six comics that illustrate a modern story of an [extra-ordinary] employee coming back to save other colleagues after being downsized...
A Moral Story
Got this through a forwarded email...
The best relation ever is between two eyes: "they blink together, move together, cry together, see together and sleep together", yet they never see each other directly. But when they do see a pretty girl, one will blink and the other will not.Wink wink...
Moral of the story: A girl can break any kinds of relationships....
Flying high...
Found this cool flash game at lufthansa's site (linky).. comment me if you beat my score...
Procrastination
I'll do this tomorrow! Bye!!!
That was my first thought when I saw this interesting flowchart but then I will forget about it, and I thought about the other more important work I had to do and decided I can procrastinate this way too... :)
Via Swiss Miss via Accordian Guy
too much encryption...
I wrote a program to encrypt my code comments; Trouble was, they wanted me to encrypt the comments I wrote in the encryption program too!!!
the process of reading a research paper...
I know that every grad student goes through this process of reading a paper, which is very similar to working with a Windows 95 machine (it has only marginally improved from then)... You will begin doing something important when you suddenly get the BSoD (u know, the blue screen of death) and you will reboot! Now that would get stuck in the BIOS loading and you will do a cold-boot by pressing the restart button for 5 seconds! Finally, bliss!!! You are up and running your favorite windows although you have forgotten what you were working on :)
PhD Comics by Jorge Cham is all about the life and adventures (or the lack thereof) of grad students and recently published 4 comics summarizing the process of reading a research paper and I could only think of the first time I tried reading a paper that involved using statistical functions to analyze the characteristics of EEG signals only to realize my brain activity came to a grinding halt!!! here are the stages that appeared in the comic (in the same order)
1) BSoD
2) Ctrl+Alt+Del
3) Cold-boot
4) so, what's it about?
The subscriber cannot be reached at the moment...
... because the balloon drifted away!?! A report from Wall Street Journal that an Arizona based company, Space Data is able to send cell-phone trans-receivers into the stratosphere using weather balloons. And Google is talked about as being interested in a partnership or a total buy-out of the company for the same reason. Considering Google is actively involved in the US 700MHz spectrum auction, it makes a lot of sense... watch the report here
Via WSJ
Open Source is good, but...
Does it pay like a regular job? The irony is expressed in this new comic strip called Mandatory Fun Day from the folks at The Daily WTF (Worse Than Failure). So here is today's (3rd) strip of the series
I did go through this situation once in my life. After graduation, I was searching for a job and about the same time, downloaded the source code for Firefox and started working on an idea for a extension. By then, I got a job and the idea never fructified. But I have made a small contribution to the open source community by doing bug fixes in a couple of tools that I had to use for my project, so at least I am a guilt free... are you?
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