Major Idiot Coming Through

So I’m playing some Halo 3 matchmaking and the little message pops up and reports that my router’s NAT is not very open, so I’ll get less matches. So what do I do? I decide to try to disable NAT on my router specs. Big mistake. Suddenly there’s no functionality on my Belkin router. It told me to go to a new IP (as opposed to the 192.168.2.1 it was before) but I couldn’t even access that. Fortunately I decided to hunt up fixes for it online, so I just plugged the laptop in straight to the LAN port straight from the modem. So Internet worked then. Looked it up with that search, found these two posts, which basically state I need to just hard reset the router itself. One suggestion recommended I try the “acrobatic reset”, meaning I had to do some marginally challenging two-handed maneuvers — pushing in the reset button with a pushpin on the back for 10 sec, pulling the power with the other hand while still holding in, and replugging and keeping the reset held for 10 sec. It worked, to say the least, and the factory defaults were back in order. All I did was reinstall the CD dealy, and I was on my way. If you’re in this predicament, hopefully this post could point you in the right direciton =D Now more messing with NAT stuff for me! I’ve decided to just hardwire the 360 directly to the modem when I need to, and no more NAT issues =P

Online Sweepstakes

So I posted a question on Ask Metafilter trying to find out if there is some master list of all of the Halo 3 promotions going around, so I could enter them all and possibly win at least something Halo 3 related. Well, one of the replies was for a site that lists pretty much all of the online promotions EVAR and now I’m hooked. And it is my goal to ensnare you forever as well. You will click here now I said.

Bose Active Suspension

Check out this vehicle suspension (as in, the mechanism that cushions the car’s chassis on dips/etc) comparing conventional suspension with a new Bose-made suspension. The first couple examples are pretty cool, but there’s a nice surprise at the end worth noting =)

Darth Vader Blues

This is almost too corny even for me to post.. It’s the SW:ROTJ scene where Luke takes off Vader’s helmet so Anakin can see his son with his own eyes. I always thought that mouthpiece looked prime for something like this. Very silly!

Darth Vader Blues

Over The Shoulder pass for Touchdown @ Kick

Here’s a nifty pass LSU made when up to kick for a field goal, the ball holder catches the ball like normal but the kicker runs off to the side and catches the ball as the holder tosses it over his shoulder, and has such a wide opening it’s absurd. Good job =D The best angles are at around 1:00 on the video time.

What a dope!

So much for that everyday posting, ya know?

Evolution of Sugar Bear!

Quite possibly one of my most favoritest cereal box characters, Sugar Bear, is shown in a vertical timeline form here from the earliest version to the newest. Great stuff!!

Car Art Gallery

Here is one of those “click to enter” facades for a website about Art Cars, or vehicles that people decorate in unusual ways. The flash fade in/out gallery has quite a number of interesting creations, might be worth a look.

Double Post: Insane Copyright Terms + Cute Baby

This kinda goes as a double post — There’s this website about a really really cute baby girl, which by now I guess would be considered a toddler. She has primordial dwarfism, and is as cute as can be. Her name is Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley, and the photo gallery really has me gawking (in a good way). Here is the site.

I was going to hotlink one of the pictures here, but the copyright notice is absolutely bizarre (and incorrect). The notice states, “Due to the potential for misuse we must remind you all photos on this website are copyrighted materials. Downloading, printing, publishing, posting to the web, broadcasting, sharing or using these images in ANY manner without the written permission of the photographer is prohibited and constitutes a violation of US and international copyright law.”

What’s crazy about that, is that viewing the site requires you to download the images. If you’re going for the letter of the law, a person cannot even view the site under these terms because the very act of browsing a web page means that your browser program downloads the images to your cache memory on your computer and saved so that you can view it. If this download does not occur, you can’t see images. You’re not actually looking at images on a website, you’re looking at images downloaded to your computer that are from a website and rendered locally through the browser. The process of hotlinking essentialy provides someone with a telescope of sorts — the image is still comes from the original source, just without the facade context of the site design. Plus, copyright law permits the use of quotation-form use of copyrighted works for free and without written permission, and hotlinking a single image from a site is precisely that quotation form.

If it weren’t for this dreadfully illogical and disgustingly ignorant clause, I would say it’s pretty good.

One in a Million – Discarded Bat Rests Aright

In a bizarre twist of insurmountable luck (ok, perhaps surmountable now), a baseball batter tosses his bat to the side as usual after a hit — and it lands on its TIP and balances there perfectly. Wow!

Cry Engine 2 Flash Demo

I was just floored (in the good way) by this amazing demonstration of rendering engines. Totally worth a look-see.

Beat My Score @ Throw Me

I got 15596 distance on this game called Throw Me. If you use a little whipping action, you’re good to go. Try and beat me =D

Okay scratch that. I managed to hit some kind of explosive device on the ground and catapulted myself into the air at TWENTY THOUSAND MILES PER HOUR. After I made this giant arc, for at least 7 minutes I was falling to the ground at an unwavering 500mph expecting the black to turn into atmosphere — but once it hit zero, it kept going back into the negatives. And didn’t seem to quit. I must have glitched into some kind of unpredictable distance or something. I new something was buggy when I hit that ball-breaker thing and the power meter went past the top of the flash window. I hit the button as soon as I realized, and soon after I was doing warp 60 kabillion. I wish there was a “max mph” meter, because it was very very literally 20,000 mph at least. It naturally wouldn’t stop so I could register my score, and when I tried to vote a “5” rating just below it, it changed the page and I lost the trajectory and score before I could clip it!!!!!! AAAAAAAARGH

I tried it again and managed to make in onto the high score records for the day (not the top, but plenty far) at around 113,000 something distance.

More scores.

New Ablestmage.com Advertising Strategy

This twisted piece of metal may not look like much, but it will play a key role in a new Ablestmage.com advertising strategy. I plan to suspend it from my ceiling with a few side anchor wires fore steadiness, and put my digital camera inside it as a hovering angle over my desk so I can make various and sundry how-to videos. I also plan to use my World Vision incentive pig, Pallu, as a mascot somehow. I’ll probably put him in the background of the various how-to videos, and then get someone to make a spiffy cel-animation version of him in Pshop or something so I can plaster him around, particularly on the header grfx of the site here. Yay!

Lords of Acid Promo Poster @ eBay

I’ve got a Lords of Acid promo poster for sale @ eBay, proceeds go to Project300k.com ..

Oh, the humanity!

Random: Cosby Star Trek

Imagetti Randometti