Classic Games

Get ready for a walk down memory lane...

Neave games let you play 9 classic video games like Pacman, Frogger, Tetris, and even an online version of Simon.



Although these aren't the original versions of the games they are very similar to what we used to play.



And the best part: you don't even need any quarters :)

Fax Toy

I was sure that fax machines are pretty much gone from this world (or at least I would like to hope so) but Fax Toy proves me wrong.



The front page of Fax Toy displays about 50 images of pages that people have faxed them. You can fax something interesting to 1-510-545-0990 (your boss will never notice... maybe) and it should appear there within a couple of minutes.



Interesting idea...

Tunatic

This one is really cool:



You ever hear a song and don't know what song it is?
Tunatic is a small (free) program that you install on your computer (PC and Mac) that can listen to a song and identify what song it is.



Tunatic has a very simple interface and all you need to use it is a microphone and an Internet connection. Tunatic hears some music and quickly identifies what song it is.


Very nice!

Fake Glass

Let me let you in a little secret: you know how in the movies you see people jumping through a glass window or breaking a glass bottle on somebody's head? Well it turns out that those wusses in Hollywood don't use real glass!

(I also have a feeling that the blood isn't real too but I don't have any proof of that yet...)



This site explains how to make sugar glass that you too can smash on your loved ones (without going to jail afterwards).



If you decide to make your own sugar glass let me know how it comes out...(just don't try to eat it).



BTW: there are a few other useful resources on independent movie making over at stormforcepictures.com.

Magazine Cover

This site takes you through the changes that are made to a girl on a magazine cover.



The demo shows you different parts of the girl's photo, how they looked originally, how they look on the final magazine cover, and why they changed them.



The number of changes and their quality is quite amazing.



Nature sucks, ah?

Moo.fx

Moo.fx is a tiny JavaScript library that weighs only 3KB of code (sorry for totally geeking out here :).

The guy who wrote it describes it as "easy to use, fast, cross-browser, standards compliant, that provides controls to modify height, width and opacity".



Check out the demos page and the tutorial on "how to create a custom effect".

1984: Introducing the Mac

Check out this video from 1984 of Steve Jobs introducing the Mac.



Unreal ah?

Homes Of The Billionaires

Forbes has an article about the homes of the billionaires.



The most interesting are the homes of multi-billionaires like Warren Buffett who is worth $44 billion but for nearly 50 years he's been living in the same Omaha house he bought for $31,500.

Same for Ingvar Kamprad, founder and former chief executive of home furnishings giant IKEA, who drives a second-hand Volvo!



But don't worry, as expected, you can also see the "modest" houses of people like Bill Gates (who's house is worth $140 million, and this year's local tax bill came to $1.1 million), Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Steven Spielberg.



Eat your heart out...

Zuma

I ran across another cool online game that I just had to share with you guys: Zuma is the name and shooting balls out of the frog's mouth is the game.



In this game you shoot colored balls at a winding line of balls. Once you line up 3 balls of the same color they disappear (surprising ah?) and the line shortens.

You need to clear up all the balls before they reach golden skull at the end of the line in order to advance to the next level.



Give it a whirl but I gotta warn you that it's pretty addictive so make some time in your calendar for this one...

How to Ship Anything

Joel Spolsky wrote up an[other] great article on his blog.

This time it's about how to ship anything.



The whole thing started when the guys at Fog Creek needed to ship a few thousand copies of their new movie "Aardvark'D: 12 Weeks With Geeks" (excellent flick by the way) and they discovered that packing and shipping so many DVDs is much harder than they had expected (since there are many small manual tasks in order to get the package on its way).


So what does a geek like Joel do when he runs into a manual process that is long and frustrating? He builds a system to do it better, of course (and names it FogShip) .



His article describes how he setup FogShip and the different components that it contains.



This thing really makes me wish that I had lots of things to ship just so I would have an excuse to set one of these babies up (I'm sure the Fog Creekers really love shipping things now).

Falldown

Time for another online game!



Falldown is a very simple game where you control a ball that is constantly falling and you need to move it so that it doesn't hit obstacles in its way and can continue falling.

Very simple concept but fun nonetheless.



I actually played Falldown one time and my score was 52,920.

If you play it then let me know if that's a good score or if I just plain suck.

Konfabulator 3.0

I've been using Konfabulator since it came out for Windows and now, after Yahoo! bought them a while ago, they have come out with version 3.0.



The big deal about version 3.0 is that the popular widgets like the stock ticker actually work properly (weird "new" feature, ah?).

Another big change is that as of this version it's called Yahoo! Widgets and has Yahoo's brand all over it. But hey at least it's free now and works properly (and still looks very cool).



Currently my favorite widgets are:

• Stock Ticker


• Picture Frame (for displaying either random Flickr photos or photos from my Flickr account)


• Weather (probably the most useful widget)


• Joy Of Tech Latest Cartoon

I also have Wifi Signal, 8-Ball, and Yahoo! Mail Checker installed but don't really use them so I'll probably get rid of them soon.

Aquarium Sink

What goes better with your Aquariass than an aquarium sink?



Just $5,500 and it's yours.

Calm/Angry

If you look at this image from your seat in front of the computer, Mr.Angry is on the left, and Mrs.Calm is on the right.


Get up from your seat, move back 12 feet, and PRESTO, they switch places!

I believe this illusion was created by Phillippe
G.Schyns and Aude Oliva of the Univ. of Glasgow.

Rsstroom Reader

A crazy new product out of Taiwan seems to be aimed at those of us who can't take a break from the real world, not even to go to the bathroom.

The 'rsstroom reader' is a bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto your TOILET PAPER!

The best part is the "biometrics" toilet seat that'll figure out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want - not your roommate's tabloid garbage.


Ok ok, this isn't real it's just a concept design, but you can be pretty sure that you'll soon be able to get news while you're on the crapper.

Stand in line Ballmer

"The Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet. I'm in the same boat as many of you," said Microsoft Corp.'s Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "Thanks to the wonders of Sarbanes-Oxley, management does not get a free Xbox 360," he quipped at a meeting of technology industry executives.



Under financial disclosure rules, Microsoft would have to classify a free game console as income for Ballmer.



And who said there's no justice in the world? :)

Pandora

The Music Genome Project have developed technology that can define music by it's traits (similar to how DNA defines traits in humans).

What good does that do you ask?

Well, they recently released Pandora which is an online radio player that lets you rate songs and artists that you like and then recommends songs with similar traits that you will probably also like.



You start off by entering the name of a song or artist that you like and immediately you start hearing a song with similar traits.

You can give a thumbs up or thumbs down for every song that Pandora throws at you so that the system learns what kind of music you like and becomes more and more tailored to your taste.



Pandora is an excellent way to discover new artists since the songs that you get are not necessarily from bands that you already know (although it will give you some songs from bands that you've said that you like).


The interface is pretty sleek and fun to play around with (it's basically a flash website so you don't even need to install anything) and any song that you hear in Pandora you can buy directly on iTunes or by its entire album on Amazon.

Pirate Maps

All the popular online map systems (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) offer ways for software developers (aka geeks) to integrate their map system into other applications (they encourage these kind of uses).

Well, this one guy (or girl?) took Yahoo maps and created a pirate style map of the United States (mainly as an exercise).



The result is quite impressive (especially the telescope for zooming in and out).

10 By 10

If a picture is worth 1000 words then 10 By 10 is worth, um, 100,000?



Anyway, 10 x 10 shows you 100 pictures of things that are going on now.

"Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time."



To see their current 10x10 picture then just click on "This is Now".



You can also choose a date and browse through the history of previous 10 x 10 images.

Aquariass

For just $1100 you can get yourself the Aquariass, an aquarium/toilet.


Don't worry the toilet has a separate tank from the aquarium so you don't have to worry about releasing Nemo every time you flush.

New Navigation

Well, I couldn't hold back after my redesign and leave the sidebar navigation the way it was, so I pulled an all-nighter (ok it was just a few hours) and updated the entire left sidebar (navigation, search, random quote...).



The update was not as simple as it seems since the other parts of the site still use the old design and since I didn't want to duplicate any code I had to resort to some PHP tricks.



Eventually I got it working the way I want (for now at least :) so I can go to sleep in peace...

Paint.net

I know lots of people who use Windows Paint for many, um, painting tasks (the virtual kind at least).

Although Paint gets the job done it has remained more or less the same since Windows 95 (wow 95 was more than 10 years ago!) and is missing quite a few basic features.


Paint.net is an excellent free replacement for the default MS Paint image editing application.



It gives you the basic features that you are used to from Paint but adds many useful features (like layers and magic wand for example) that are only available in commercial photo editors like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.



The interface is pretty cool and it's not nearly as "heavy" as Photoshop.

And since it's free you have nothing to lose by checking it out (it's even open source code so you can be sure that there's nothing bad going on there).

New Blog Design

Hey it's been over a year since my previous redesign of the site (July 2004) so I guess it's time for some change around here.



This time the change is only in Guy's World and I tried to clean up some of the mess here and go for a more minimal look.



The biggest change is the post borders (that you've probably noticed by now unless you're reading this via RSS) that are a simple rounded border instead of the previous bulky frame.

I also reduced some of the colors on the page and tried to stick with the blue/orange theme.


The ads have also changed a bit mainly to match the color theme and the ads at the top are in a new format that seems much more useful.

They are now links to ad categories instead of actual ads so you get more relevant results although it takes two clicks by a user for me to get paid (one click on the ad category and a second click on the ad itself).

Hopefully the increased usefulness of the ads will make up for the extra clicks that it takes.



I'm still not fully satisfied with the way it looks (I never really am :) especially since the old navigation links at the left look like the old design but it may take me a while to update those too.



Enjoy the new look (until next time...).

Chitika eMiniMalls

You may have noticed the new "eMiniMalls" on the main page of guymal.com.



I'm trying it out and it seems pretty cool.

The eMiniMall displays information about a product, according to criterions that I've determined (so a gardening site for example will show gardening products), and shows you best deals to get that product if you're interested.

If you click on one of the deals then, of course, I get a few pennies, very similar to the AdSense ads that you see all over the web now (and on my site :).



Here's an example of what an eMiniMall looks like:





Nice ah?



So far the AdSense ads on this site have pretty much paid the bill for hosting it and I'm hoping that this new addition will increase that, while providing a useful service for you guys.


If you want to sign up for an eMiniMall for your own site then follow this link (hey this also helps pay the bills :) :









Let me know what you think of this...

iDump

One of the biggest problems with the iPod is that officially you can't get your songs off it (amazing ah?).

There are a few ways to get around this limitation but one of the easiest is iDump.


Forget this program's awful name (actually it's pretty cool :).

It allows you to easily transfer your songs off your iPod to a PC.

All you do is connect your iPod and run iDump and you'll have access to all your songs and even your playlists.

Just select the songs you want to transfer (you can even use your playlists to select songs) then pick a destination directory and how you would like your songs to be named. And then sit back and transfer all the selected songs to the PC.



Dump away...

Holiday Lights

This guy (girl?) totally got carried away with the holiday lights on his house.

Talk about having the coolest Christmas lights on your block!

(that video is a bit long and you kinda get the point after a minute)



[via Engadget.com]

Origami Boulder

Who doesn't like Origami? Everybody loves the ancient Chinese art of paper folding.
Now for just $10 you can buy a very impressive Origami Boulder

Britney's Guide

Ok, you can admit that you don't know much about semiconductor physics, right?



Now, thanks to everyone's favorite pop idol, you can stop being ashamed that you're semiconductor illiterate and become an expert in semiconductor physics!

That's right, Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about semiconductor physics and were afraid to ask.

It is a little known fact, that Britney is an expert in semiconductor physics and now she's sharing her knowledge with the world.



Thank you Britney!

Scamming the Scammers

You know those Nigerian scam emails?

This guy got one asking him for $2000 in order to open an offshore account and get access to a fortune of 30 million dollars. He decided to reply and drive the sender nuts.


For 9 months he kept going back and forth, telling the Nigerians that he wants to help them, send them money, have them come live with him in his Florida estate... He even tried to scam some money out of the Nigerian (and almost succeeded!).



You can read the entire email correspondence (including a few voice mail messages) on the site. Although it may be a bit long, it is totally hilarious.




Eventually he created a two person "multi-media" comedy show about the correspondence that is apparently quite successful.

Xbox 360 vs. Sega Dreamcast

This article shows 23 eerie parallels between the Xbox 360 and the Sega Dreamcast.

(in short bullet points so it's not hard to read :)


It also continues to explain (again in bullet points) why the Xbox 360 will succeed while the Dreamcast failed.

Using Gmail to...

If you're interested in finding out some interesting uses of Gmail then check out this article.



It'll show you how to use Gmail as a to-do list (together with filters), search through your favorite RSS feeds, use Gmail to find torrent files, use Gmail as a Notepad (actually now it can even be more like Word since they have rich-text editing capabilities), use Gmail as a spam filter, and use Gmail as storage for a photo gallery.



Nice stuff!

Save My Ass

Guess what Save My Ass is about?

Survival techniques?

What to do if a bear attacks you or if you are stranded on a deserted island after falling off a cruise ship?


Guess again...

Save My Ass is a personal assistant that helps you make your girlfriend or wife happy by sending her flowers on your behalf, on a regular but semi-random basis.



You can schedule flowers for all obligatory dates she expects and you'll score major points by making deliveries she doesn't expect.



Don't you just love the Internet?

2600 Link

I just discovered that Edward Stoever from the database-expert.com wrote an article in 2600 Magazine about Hacking Encrypted HTML (warning: pdf link, here's Google's HTML cache of it).



What does that have to do with me?

Well, I'll quote from the article:

My personal favorite way of encrypting text strings can be found here:
http://www.guymal.com/nospam_email_link.php

Guymal's utility is easy to use, quick and free.

Another rung in the ladder towards being the king of all media... :o)

Cool Kids Talk

Thanks to Microsoft I can finally be like all the cool kids (oops I mean l33t |<1D5).

You can too, just read their parent's primer to computer slang!



Finally I can rock with all the kewl d00dz.

Webdeveloper FF Extensions

Here's a list of some excellent Firefox extensions for web developers.



I discovered a few extensions there that seem invaluable (I haven't checked them all yet): View Rendered Source, View Formatted Source, MeasureIt, and of course the must-have Web Developer Toolbar (that's I've been using for quite a while now).

Automatic Door

Some Japanese guys developed a new sliding door that automatically opens according to the shape of the person who is passing through it (in order to minimize the size of the door opening).

I guess the idea is to keep out dust and save on air-conditioning.



Check out this video of it.

Free DivX Create Bundle

Just like Opera offered their browser for free for a few hours on their 10th anniversary (and since then have changed their model to make it free for everybody), today you can get DivX Create Bundle for free (it's their 5th anniversary).



The offer lasts for only a few more hours so jump on over there now (if you're into that kind of thing).



(you can see some details about DivX Create Bundle here)

Nintendo Revolution Controller

You really can call it a revolution all right!

For those who don't know, Revolution is the name of the next generation Nintendo game console (that competes with the PS3 and the XBox 360) and Nintendo keeps claiming that Revolution will not be following the traditional path of a new console.

This week they at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed the new Nintendo Revolution controller.

It's a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire.

It looks kinda awkward to me but according to the reviews by the people who got a chance to play around with it, it's pretty good.



Can't wait to see what else they have up their sleeve...

Losing It

Check out this CNN weather man who loses his cool on air.



[via WhippetGood.com]

Fog Creek Copilot

I just tested out the new service from Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek, Copilot.com.

Here's what it is:

The Fog Creek Copilot service allows people to help their friends, relatives, and customers fix their computer problems by connecting to their computers via the Internet.
Unlike other remote assistance services, Fog Creek Copilot is secure, easy to use, works through any home or office firewall , and requires no installation or configuration.

In one word: amazingly simple (ok, that's two words, sue me :).



In about just two minutes and 4 clicks (two for the helper and two for the helpee) you can control the other person's PC, without any configurations or them having to have any technical knowledge.

You just enter the email of the person you want to help and run a small program that you download from copilot.

The person who is being helped gets the email, clicks on the link to download a small program and that's it, you're controlling their computer!



You can try Copilot out for a two minute session for free but if you want to use it for longer you need to buy a day pass (that costs $10). I know, that's pretty expensive but they say they'll be coming out with other pricing schemes soon.



BTW: Copilot was created entirely by 4 summer interns at Fog Creek and version 1.0 took them 10 weeks to get out the door. Great job guys!

Rate My What?

Warning: do not go to ratemypoo.com unless you are ready to loose your lunch...



You've been warned.

Le-Building

Le-Building is a short online movie.

Just watch it.

Google Maps Logic

Here's a weird one: search for Hitler in Google maps and then zoom in on the result.



Strange ah?

Did You Know?

Did you know that:

• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.


• David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.


• The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.


• Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of bigger clouds are called scuds.


• The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.


• The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.


• Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.


• The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living under one roof'.


• Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.


• Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.


• U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.


• The tune for the "A-B-C" song is the same as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."


• Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.


• A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.


• The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'

??


I didn't know that stuff either :)



There are a LOT more things on that site that I bet you didn't know...

Google Maps Game

Playing the Google Maps Game is pretty simple.

Load up the site and you see a map of the United States (using Google Maps technology, duh) and the name of a random landmark.

Your goal is to find the landmark on the map as fast as you can.


For the geographically challenged (like yours truly) you can turn the hints on which then basically makes it a game of hotter colder.

You start clicking on the map in various places and the site tells you whether you are getting hotter or colder.


Fun idea but can get frustrating at times.

Spaced Penguin

Guess what Spaced Penguin is...



No, it's not the next NASA experiment in Antarctica but another online flash game.



In this one you have to fling Kevin the space penguin using the GPS (Giant Penguin Slingshot) so that Kevin lands in the space ship.



There are various objects in the screen that make this increasingly difficult (or sometimes helpful).



Fling away...

:-)

Just another day in the life of a software developer...

PSP Where?

Check out where this dude mounted his Sony PSP.

Talk about cool!

There's nothing like playing Grand Theft Auto while you're riding a motorcycle...


[Via Engadget.com]

TShirt Hell

I really have a funny tshirt fetish.

Tshirt Hell offers lots of funny and crazy t-shirts (they have over 200 designs).


Here are some of my favorites:

• You can't have manslaughter without laughter


• (Front) there's a fuckin' asshole looking at me (Back) ...still looking at me


• The funniest thing about this shirt is that by the time you realize it doesn't say anything it's too late for you to stop reading it you dumb fuck


• I'm what Willis was talkin' 'bout


• I only support gay marriage if both chicks are hot


• I may have alzheimer's but at least I don't have alzheimer's


• 1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d


• Yes, I have plenty of change you homeless piece of shit. Thanks for asking.


• I fucked the Olsen twins before they were famous


• I'm pretty smooth with the ugly chicks


• (Front) Please turn me over so i don't choke on my own vomit (Back) thank you


• I'm ugly on the inside too


• To: women - from: God


• Plain Clothes Cop

Thanks to Or for this one.

Color Perception

This site demonstrates how much our perception of color is influenced by surrounding colors.



Like the sites states, illusion 3 is absolutely amazing!

Aardvark

I just ran across another cool extension for Firefox called Aardvark.

(if you aren't a web developer you can skip this one, it probably won't interest you...)

Aardvark will let you move your mouse over different elements of a web page and it will show you information about the element.

You can expand and contract the selection that you are currently viewing (if, for example, you have selected a table cell, pressing W will select the table row...), remove elements from the page, isolate an element, colorize elements (this one could be pretty useful), view the source of your selection, and more...



Very cool!

Kiss This Guy

You know the scene: you're driving along with your friends and TLC's "Waterfalls" comes on the radio.

So when it gets to the chorus you start singing along: "Go, Go, Jason... water calls" ...screech, what did he say???

You'll never hear the end of it...



KissThisGuy.com is a site filled with archives of misheard song lyrics.

People basically submit their stories of misheard lyrics and their embarrassing moment of revelation.



Just to quote from the famous Deep Purple song: "Slow, cousin Walter"...



BTW: the name of the site is after the famous misheard line by Jimi Hendrix from Purple Haze: "Excuse me while I kiss the sky"

Guess Who

Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character is a game where you choose a dictator or sitcom character and the computer asks you a bunch of yes/no questions while it tries to guess who you are thinking of (very similar to 20 questions).


Some of the results are actually quite impressing, it almost always guessed who I was thinking of, sometimes quite fast. It gave up on me just two times (and I then contributed a question of my own to help it guess the next time).

PairOn

The PairOn is THE chair to have for eXtreme Programming :)
(for those who are familiar with eXtreme Programming: one of its concepts is that you always program in pairs)



* orders taken only on April 1

Google Earth

Google launched another amazing hit: Google Earth.

It's basically Keyhole 3 (a company that they bought a while ago) except they dropped the subscription rate so now it's totally free (there is a pro version that you can buy if you really feel like it).

The concept is very similar to NASA's World Wind but the user interface and speed are MUCH better.

And the download is only 10MB (vs. a couple hundred for NASA's program).


This totally cool program lets you zoom around a 3D representation of Earth that is constructed out of satellite photos.

It lets you fly around the globe and zoom in to just about any spot in the world. Many areas have high resolution images so that you can even see cars on the streets.



In addition to viewing 3D images of your favorites spots in the world you can also overlay different information on the map like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, restaurants, gas stations, atm machines....



It will also let you pick two spots and it'll show you the driving directions between them.



Totally amazing!

Bowline

The Bowline (bo-lin) is considered an excellent knot that is perfect for tying a loop in a string or rope.

The bowline's benefits are that its loop will not slip once drawn tight (which makes it ideal for dog leashes) and in its ability to be untied easily no matter how tight you've pulled it.



This site shows you an animation of how to tie a bowline.

Gotta Know

Here's a cool list of 100 things every guy must know.



These are some of the highlights:

• How to win more coin tosses: Always call tails. On U.S. coins, the heads side, with its big, solid portrait, weighs infinitesimally more: In the course of 10,000 tosses, the lighter tails side will come up an extra 50 or so times.


• To ward off diseases, wear gloves, not a face mask. Handshakes transmit viruses seven times more effectively than sneezes do.
• Chocolate screws up dogs’ hearts. It can be lethal to our canine pals—one Hershey’s bar is more than enough to kill a puppy.


• You flip a steak one time-and one time only.


• If you hurt yourself in the wild, clean your wounds with your urine When it leaves the body, it’s sterile, which is more than you can say of any water you’re likely to find.


• How to pick a ripe watermelon: Color’s the key. Look for a melon whose dark bands are wider than its light bands. The higher the ratio of dark to light outside, the darker the color (and the sweeter the meat) inside.


• How to gauge the doneness of a steak without slicing into it: Press your forefinger into it lightly, as if picking up ink from a fingerprint pad, then touch your head and compare their firmness. A well-done steak should feel as firm as your forehead; a medium steak, as firm as your chin; and a rare steak, as firm as the end of your nose.

Now we really know everything :)

5 Years

Today guymal.com is 5 years old!



We've come a long way baby (that's a cached version of guymal.com from May 2001, almost one year old).

Abandonia

Abandonia.com is heaven for old school gamers.

It offers information about tons of abandonware but mainly old games (abandonware is software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder).

You can see the year that games were released, screen shots of different levels, and the best part (get this): you can download the old games!



I went over some of the categories and ran across LOTS of games that I spent hours playing.

The list of familiar games (games that I played for at least several hours each) was so long that looking back makes me feel like I spent too much time on the PC (and I can remember at least 10 more games that I used to play but didn't find there).



Check out this list of games that I used to play back in the day (and I found there):


Aladdin
Alley Cat
Altered Beast
Arkanoid
Blues Brothers
Bubble Bobble
Bumpys Arcade Fantasy
Cd Man
Dangerous Dave
Golden Axe
Mortal Kombat
Operation Wolf
Paperboy
Prehistorik 1
Prehistorik 2
The Simpsons - Bart vs the Space Mutants
Ugh
Zool


A Nightmare On Elm Street
Airborne Ranger
Castle Wolfenstein
Double Dragon
Flashback
Ghostbusters 2
Prince Of Persia
Prince of Persia 2
Wings of Fury
Wolfenstein 3d

Lemmings
Simcity Classic
Michael Jordan in Flight
California Games II
Budokan
The Incredible Machine
Ski or Die
Summer Challenge
Skate Or Die
Bouncing Babies
Rampage

Hitman

Hitman offers a variety of assassination services and contract killing options.

They are the industry leader in innovative killing techniques and manage a network of freelance assassins on five continents, available on short notice, around the clock.



Their tagline is "Permanent Solutions to Common Problems!"


And don't worry, Hitman is a cruelty-free organization. None of their services have been tested on animals.


Check out their site, they have testimonials, a page where you can donate organs, and they even have gift certificates!

Age Project

Wanna know how old people think that you are?

Just submit your photo to the ageproject and people will be able to say how old they think that you look in the picture.



You can, obviously, rate random pictures of people who've submitted pictures of themselves (anybody can rate other people's pictures, you don't need to sign up for it).

Deathclock

I'm sorry to inform you but I'm dying.

Well, actually we all are, the only question is when is it going to happen.



Hop on over to Deathclock, enter some details about yourself, and your lifestyle, and the death clock will tell you when you are going to die (and how many more seconds you have left to live).



My personal day of death is Sunday, September 4, 2050.

That leaves me with about 1,426,230,327 seconds left to live.



Nice knowing ya'...

iGuy

I don't own an iPod (at least not yet :) but if I did then the iGuy would be for me.



I don't really care what it does, it just looks cool.

Burn Baby Burn

Remember when you were a kid how much fun it was to burn ants with a magnifying glass?
(ok, at least the boys remember)

Now you can take it up a notch and play god with a magnifying glass.



This game gives you a view of a city from above and all you need to do is focus your magnifying glass on people and cars and burn them.



Heh heh, fire...

Attack Of The Wasps

Take a look at my home page.

Wasps have taken over!

Curveball

Time for another online flash game.

Curveball is a remake on the old classic Pong only in 3D (well sort of).



It's very simple and a lot of fun: you and the computer take turns hitting the ball back and forth each time trying to put a spin on it so that the opponent misses.

There's also a speed element so that you get more points the faster you win your opponent.



Give it a run.

I made it to level 7 with 23,670 points.

Speedtest

The Internet speed test does just that: it tests the speed of you Internet connection.



Not something that you'd visit daily but could come in useful every once in a while to make sure that you're getting good download speeds.

Ear Wax Candy

Ear wax candy is a plastic ear filled with yummy candy ear wax.

The wax looks totally real but it's really fruit-flavored gel.

And you scoop up the ear wax with a lollipop "Q-Tip".


Looks tastey ah?

RAD Video Tools

Since my Olympus digital camera only outputs video in mov format I was looking for a way to easily convert mov files to a better format.

And along came RAD Video Tools.



RAD Video Tools does exactly that: choose a mov file, click on "Convert a file", choose the output type (I use avi, which is also the default), and click "Convert".



The one small annoyance is that it installs something called "Bink and Smacker" that you don't really know what to do with and seems confusing.

If mov converting is what you want then just ignore it, use the "Convert" function, and you'll be fine.



Oh yea, RAD Video Tools is absolutely free so you can't go wrong.

Knives

Is it just me or is the designer of this thing a bit psychotic?

Free Fonts

If you're the type of person who can never have enough fonts (you guys know who you are) then I'll do my duty and feed your addiction with searchfreefonts.com.



As the name suggests, searchfreefonts.com gives you access to tons of free fonts (and some commercial ones that I didn't even bother checking out). According to their claim the site contains over 7,000 free fonts and over 12,000 commercial fonts.



You never know when you might need a Gothic font so bookmark this one...

Sudoku

A Sudoku is a number puzzle that is currently taking over the world (at least my neck of the world).


Websudoku lets you play tons of sudokus (sudokais, sudoks?) online, at three different game levels.



The rules of a sudoku are pretty simple: you have a grid of 9x9 and you need to place each digit from 1 to 9 into the grid so that every column, every row, and every 3x3 square must contain one of each of the nine digits.



Totally addicting...

Squares

Squares is one of the simplest online flash games that I've run across.

But that doesn't make it any less fun.



The game rules are simple: using your mouse catch the black squares without touching the red ones.



That's it, game on...

Scooba

Those cool folks at iRobot, the company that brought us the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, now have a new robot to help us decrease fights with our spouses: the Scooba.

While the Roomba would buzz around our floors and vacuum up all the dirt, it's new younger brother, Scooba, skids around and vacuums, washes and dries in a single pass!

It even leaves a dry floor after it.



Check out that link for a short clip of the Scooba in action.




Who ever knew that cleaning could be so cool?

The Sith Sense

The Sith Sense is a fun site that was created by Burger King as part of their Star Wars promotion.


They basically took the old 20 Questions online game and created it so that Darth Vader is reading your mind.


For those who aren't familiar with 20 Questions, you need to think of any object and Darth Vader will start asking you questions about it.

Darth Vader can ask you 20 questions and at the end he (usually) can know the object that you were thinking of.


The game is quite impressive since it's a learning machine, which means that the more people play it the smarter it becomes and the more accurate its guesses are.



Don't forget to turn up the sound.

Don't Click It

dontclick.it is an interesting experiment in user interface.

Throughout the entire web site you won't find any buttons or other items that you'll need to click on. Instead you navigate using several different methods of moving your mouse over interface elements.



Once you play around there a bit you start to get the hang of it and learn more about the different concepts that are demonstrated there.



BTW: so you forget that you aren't supposed to click then every time you accidentally do click on something you get a "subtle" reminder that you shouldn't.

Something's Starting

If you haven't noticed, the major search engines have constantly been looking for new and innovating ideas to increase their usefulness (and stickiness).


Just a few weeks ago Google announced that you can now customize the main Google page (very similar to what all the traditional search engines did a few years ago when they became "Portals").

Yahoo has, of course, had this for a while with their My Yahoo!.



Well now, you guess it, MSN is coming out with something similar.



It's basically an online RSS reader and you can access it (the beta version for now) at: http://www.start.com/3/.



It seems that everybody's working hard on adding drag 'n drop to organize the layout of your custom page (very nice interfaces BTW).

Nerds Make Better Lovers

This one has been posted all over the net (cuz we all know who controls the net) but I still couldn't resist: The New York Daily News has an article claiming that Nerds Make Better Lovers!


And to quote from the article:

"A nerd is an excellent provider and a guy who puts you first...","He'll turn out to be a great father and a great husband."

633|<z r|_|l3!



[Via Slashdot]

Yahoo! Mindset

Yahoo introduced a new twist to searching called Yahoo! Mindset.


The idea is that after you search for something you can view the results according to your mindset: whether you are looking for something more commercial or more informational.

They let you choose your mindset by a slider that dynamically changes the search results according to the position of the slider (very cool and intuitive).



This thing is not available on the regular Yahoo site, it is still in Beta and is part of the Yahoo Research Lab.

Nintendo DS Ad

Check out this cool Nintendo DS ad that was spotted on a Japanese subway car.



[Via Portagame]

Dry or Die

This hair dryer is for all those cheery folks (you know who you are) who feel like killing themselves every day.
BTW: that's a real hair dryer

Just point and click...

[Via Engadget]

Joel On Wall Street

It turns out that Joel (on software) can insightfully write not only about software but also about Wall Street.



In his latest post Joel Spolsky explains about a clever scam Wall Street uses to rip off retail bond investors.

And, as usual, he does it in a way that even dumb asses like me can understand.



Here's the gist of the "scam":

You $100,000 to invest and have 3 bonds to choose from:

Bond A pays 4.15%. If you buy this bond, you'll get a check for $4150 in interest at the end of every year for 10 years. With your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.



Bond B pays 4.5%. You'll get a check for $4500 at the end of every year for 30 years, then with your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.



Bond C pays even more! It's 4.75%, w00t. You will get $4750 at the end of every year for 10 years, then get your original investment back, unless the government decides they want to keep your money for a little longer, in which case you'll get another 20 years of $4750 before you get your money back.



Bond C is a little more complicated so let me explain. On the tenth anniversary, the government gets to decide whether to pay you your $100K back and owe you nothing, or keep your $100K for another twenty years and keep paying you the interest. The point being, the choice is up to the government.



But either way, with Bond C, you're getting MORE interest every year, whether they decide to keep your money for 10 years or 30.



So, it's stupid to buy bonds A or B, right? Bond C is obviously the better choice.



Right?

Wrong!

I won't go into the explanation here but Joel does it splendidly in his article (it has to do with the changes in interest rates).

Backup Trauma

Backup Trauma is another excellent example of an advertiser that knows how to successfully capture the power of the Internet (like Honda and American Express did).


These guys created a funny segment starring John Cleese that is basically a commercial for their information backup service.



Check it out and whatever you do: don't click on the third button...

Tricycle?

Remember how you learned to ride a bike?

You would start around with training wheels then after a while you removed them (or removed only one) and somebody would run after you holding the bike till you could stabilize yourself.

Those days may be over thanks to this new invention by three Purdue University industrial designers.



The bicycle/tricycle, called SHIFT, slowly transforms from a tricycle to a bicycle as the rider pedals faster.

When the rider slows down the bike transforms back to a tricycle.






Very impressive!

Image Quiz

The Image Quiz is a quick online game that shows you several images that are the result of searching Google images for a specific term and you have to guess what the search term was.



So if, for example, you see lots of different clown images you guess that the search was for "clown" (pretty simple concept ah?).



You have 3 guesses (after each guess you see different result images) and after that you are shown the correct search term.



Great just what I need, another way to waste time...

Pixar Headquarters

This lucky guy had a chance to take a tour of the Pixar headquarters.



He wrote up a piece about what he experienced there including a few cool pictures from the inside.



If you don't feel like reading everything that he wrote then at least scroll down and look at the pictures of the offices there.

It turns out that the animators can do whatever they want with their spaces and a lot of them didn't want cubicles so instead Pixar found little cottages that they bought for them.


Talk about a dream job...

Netfirms Hosting

If you're interested in knowing what web host I've been using for guymal.com (for the past 5 years) it's: Netfirms.



They've been pretty much flawless throughout the years and their support has been good in the few times that I've needed it.



I've tried out quite a few web hosts over the years and totally recommend Netfirms for their great web hosting plan (at a reasonable price).

Save Toby

For those who didn't run into SaveToby.com yet: the guy who created the site found this cute bunny that was attacked and injured by a cat. He nursed Toby the bunny to health but unfortunately Toby will die on June 30th, 2005.

He's threatening to eat Toby unless visitors donate $50,000 to him!


The site has several bunny recipes (with some pretty graphic images), has a "Save Toby" online store, and accepts donations via PayPal.


He's currently raised $20,375.18!!


And just to balance things out (how typical for the Internet) there's even a Kill Toby site made by a group who wanna see the little bunny die.



You gotta love the Internet!


[via EdAdkins.com]

Cool Contraption

These guys were inspired by the Honda Cog ad and created their own cool contraption.



You can download the video clips of the contraption in action from here.



They could improve their video skills a bit but the machine they built is quite impressive.

Snooze This

Here's an invention that I could use:

Scientists at MIT have invented an alarm clock called Clocky that helps people who have problems waking up since they repeatedly hit the snooze button.


The way it works is that after the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room.

That way the next time the alarm sounds you're going to have a hard time just finding Clocky in order to hit the snooze button again.



How come it took them so long to come up with something like this?

Plastic Balls

It's been a while since we've had an online game so here's the time waster du' jour: plastic balls.



This game is a variation on the classic Breakout, aka Araknoid, aka Popcorn....only here the playing "board" is a round arena where your paddle is in the center of the screen and you need to guard your ball from falling into a hole in the middle of it.


Like its predecessors you get special bonuses (like a larger paddle, double paddles, several balls...) when you hit some of the bricks and catch the power ups that drop from them.



Just don't let your boss catch you :o)

New Site Feed

Site Update:

I've changed all the RSS feed links on the site to use FeedBurner.



FeedBurner does several things (for both you the reader and me the publisher).

First of all it simplifies subscribing to the RSS feed (via various supported RSS readers) so that people who want to read the feed can do it easily (whether they use FeedDemon, MyYahoo!, Bloglines, or any other reader).

Second it gives me stats on how many people are subscribing to my RSS feed (so that I can get a feel if this is even worth my while :).



In addition it enhances the content of the feed by incorporating any feeds that I have into one feed. That way you can see any pictures that I post in addition to regular posts that I make to Guy's World.

And finally, it also saves you the trouble of having to understand the difference between different versions of RSS and Atom, there's just one link that supports all formats!



So if you want to subscribe to the new and updated feed here you have it:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/GuysWorld
and here's the icon that you can find around the site:




(if you're already subscribed to the old version I recommend that you switch over to this one instead)

World Wind

I run across quite a few programs and very few of them actually make me go "wow" when I check them out.

Even less make me go "yeee haaaa, wadda wadda wooooooo!"



World Wind not only did that but made me play around with it for more than 3 hours straight (till I forced myself to go to sleep since the sun was about to rise soon and this thing called "my job" would be bugging me soon).



World Wind was recently released by NASA (that's right, the same dudes who create those cool astronaut costumes) and gives you a 3D mapping system of earth.

It lets you spin the globe around, select a spot, and zoom in and see satellite photos of any spot on earth (similar to Google's Keyhole, but much better and free).



It also uses elevation data to show you the landscape in 3D and displays place names and borders!



Although it does weigh ~170MB it's totally worth it.



After you install it you can use these link to view some cool spots:

• Bill Gate's House


• Golden Gate


• Alcatraz


• some other hot spots...

Transformers

Ever wanted a costume that would win first place in a costume contest?

I think that dude has found the secret formula to always win with his amazing Transformer costumes.



These are full size, working, costumes of different Transformer robots.

Yup, you got that: these costumes actually transform from car/dinosaur/plane...to robot!



It takes this guy an average of about 6 months to create each costume and you can order them from him (starting at $1500).



Certainly "more than meets the eye"!

Nice Mellons

Check'em out

You gotta appreciate those...

Star Wars Kid Tony Hawk

If we're already on the topic of the Star Wars Kid (again) then check out what I found: the Star Wars Kid made an appearance in the Tony Hawk game!



Talk about becoming famous...

Super Bowl Ads

I'm not a big sports fan (to say the least) but the one sporting events that I do look forward to is the Super Bowl because of the awesome commercials.

Click on that link in order to see all the commercials from Super Bowl XXXIX including the ads that they banned from broadcasting.



As usual, the Bud ads are great but there are some other very funny ones (like the Ameriquest ads).

Winter Post

This year winter is SOOO damn cold so here's a wintery site to go along with the cold harsh weather: hi resolution pictures of snowflakes.

Quite amazing how intricate and symmetrical these things are.

Beautiful...

Next Star Wars Kid...

The Internet loves "heroes" (like the Star Wars Kid) and now it's this hilarious dude's turn.


Don't forget to crank up the volume before you click on that link...

Face Morpher

The Face Morpher lets you upload a passport-style image of yourself and then lets you change your age, race or sex.

It also lets you transform your picture to the style of a famous artist, to make an exaggerated caricature or even make an ape of yourself.


It does take some playing around in order to get good results but it's a lot of fun.

Here's what I look like as

an older adult	a West Asian
an Afro-Caribbean	an East Asian

[Via EdAdkins.com]

Artsy Tanks

Artistic Tanks is not about the kind of tanks that kill people but about those butt ugly propane,oil, and water tanks that can be found all over the country.



Instead of keeping them the standard gray color, people have painted these tanks to look a bit more amusing.

Some of the tanks just have smiley faces painted on them while others have done more elaborate work and painted their tanks like a Pepsi can, a watermelon, and even a pig.

Polo Ad

Volkswagen said it was outraged by the spoof commercial featuring a Palestinian suicide bomber in a Polo car.


The clip had been shot on 35mm film, not something an amateur would usually do, and cost £40,000, not a sum an amateur could afford.


The maker of the film refused to say who funded it but, due to all the publicity that it is getting, I have a feeling that VW is behind it...



See the ad

How Tall Are You

This site lets you compare your height to the height of various celebrities.



Not very useful but an amusing way to waste a few minutes.



Who knew that I'm the same height as Brooke Shields!

Shoes News

How many pairs of shoes do you have?

3,4...10,15...20?



How about this dude: he has 2100 pairs of Nike shoes!


He doesn't wear most of them (he usually wears the same beat-up pair of New Balances) so most of the shoes in his Nike collection are in perfect condition sitting around in those orange Nike boxes.




And people say that I'm nuts...

Teen Bill

Check out these pictures of your favorite teen hunk...



These were taken in 1983 for Teen Beat magazine.


Hubba Hubba!


[Via Slashdot]

Pooh Toast

Who Am I?

Get this: a 54-year-old man from Wisconsin who was missing for more than three months, discovered his identity on the Internet.


The man who has amnesia and had been wandering around for 3 and a half months found out his identity after he logged on to the Internet and saw a "missing" picture of himself.

He had left his wallet at home so he had no clue of his true identity. With the help of a psychiatrist and a priest, he logged onto the internet and went searching for information on himself, only to discover that he had been missing for months.


How the hell did we live before Google?


[Via TechDirt]

Monster Delorean

Ever since Back To the Future 1 I've had a crush on the Delorean.

Now somebody created a monster Delorean that looks like a combination between a Delorean and a Hummer.



Let's see if that thing can hit 88 miles per hour...

Ignore This!

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

SD Card with USB

SanDisk has come out with an SD card that comes with a built in USB adaptor


It's basically a standard size SD card that folds in half to reveal a USB plug that you can just plugin to your computer (click that link for some pictures that demonstrate it).



Very cool that you can transfer data from your digital camera or PDA without having to mess around with adaptors and cables.


I just hope that it's sturdy enough because according to those pictures it seems like it could break easily.



[Via Engadget]

Mnemonicizer

The Mnemonicizer, the Mnemonic Device Device (that's what its called) is a site that will help you remember stuff by creating mnemonic devices for what you need to remember.

A mnemonic device is a sentence that helps us to memorize a string of words. For example, music students use "Every Good Boy Does Fine" to remember the order of notes on the treble clef. (E, G, B, D, F). Math students use "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" to remember the order of arithmetic operations (Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract.).



So if you have a list of items that you need to remember the Mnemonicizer will help you create a sentence that is easy to remember.



The idea is cool but the user interface needs some work.

It's quite confusing how to use the Mnemonicizer (and it's mostly manual).

Vroom Vroommm

I just happened to run across these cool looking cars so I decided that I'd share them with y'all.



Hmmm shiny...



And if you're looking for something a bit more modern and with some more power then check out the Renault Radiance truck.