The Fake Stat

Cute Robot Needs Help in NYC

I retweeted this on Twitter (I'm @PennBarryVP and half of @pigandpeacock), but it's so cute that I had to put it here too.

Amazing LED Sheep Video

I love this video. I've never seen extreme herding before. It's amazing and hilarious!

Timeline of Internet Memes

Do you remember when you first heard Hampsterdance? Do you know what LOLcat is? This timeline takes you through internet memes - units of thinking that spread through the population.

My Soul is Worth $137,070

I took the How Much is Your Soul Worth? test tonight. I'm not sure if that's good or bad because I don't have anything to compare it to, but I'm pretty sure that I would want more than $137,070 to sell my soul.

$137,070 Soul Dollars
Quiz brought to you by money.co.uk

The Fake Stat's Going Green

If you look to the right of the page, you will see the CO2Stats app. The CO2Stats app adds up the time visitors spend at The Fake Stat and then estimates how much carbon dioxide is expended in powering the personal PCs and servers involved. It then offsets the carbon emissions created by the total electricity usage of your computer while you're on The Fake Stat.

Based upon visitor traffic, the ticker will count the carbons and then pay the equivalent in offsets to Sustainable Travel International, a nonprofit that funds renewable energy and development in the developing world, as well as to green power projects in North America.

How cool is that! Now reading The Fake Stat saves the environment...

Blu-Ray Wins

Toshiba announced that it is killing HD-DVD this morning. I saw it coming. Here is time line as I see it:

• June 16, 2007 - I commit to Blu-Ray by buying the new Sony Blu-Ray player
• June 18, 2007 - Blockbuster announces that it will carry only Blu-Ray (obviously following my lead)
• January 4, 2008 - Warner Brothers goes exclusive with Blu-Ray
• February 11, 2008 - Netflix goes Blu-Ray exclusive, BestBuy announces promotion of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD
• February 15, 2008 - Walmart goes Blu-Ray exclusive

The Wall Street Journal article is here. For some reason, they fail to mention how my selection of Blu-Ray started it all.

CES 2008 - Tech Geek Heaven

I just got back from CES 2008. THE electronics show. It was a tech geek's heaven!

I only made it 20 feet in the door before I made a purchase. It's a really cool little camcorder. It's for doing training podcasts for work, but I'm tempted to keep it myself. You can actually take 12 megapixel pictures while recording video. Very cool.

There were 108" HDTVs (I know, it was there last year, but it's very cool in person). I missed the 150" Panasonic plasma, but I can only imagine how cool that was. I watched a 3-D DLP HDTV movie. I'm not sure I could wear the glasses for a whole movie, but it was very cool.

I got to watch CNET Live, live, in person. I'm even in several of the audience shots. Hi Mom! You can watch it here.

I learned that Canon and Nikon are supposed to be releasing new versions of the DSLRs that I want mid-year. This is kind of a bummer because I'm going to Italy in April and wanted to get the camera before the trip. Now I'm torn - have the camera for the trip, knowing that it will be "old" in a couple months (and I therefore probably paid too much) or I wait to see the new ones (and possibly get the current one for a better price), but I don't have it for the trip. Bummer...

My favorite thing had to be Bumble Bee from the Transformers.

   

Selected for Schmap!! WooHoo!

My Glasgow Cathedral picture on Flickr has been selected for Schmap. Check it out!

Do You Know Your Scooby Doo?

I just took Mental_Floss's Scooby Doo quiz. It tests you knowledge of Scooby Doo episodes vs. real life news stories. I scored a 80%.

Stumbling Upon Stumble Upon

I thought I had signed up with Stumble Upon before, but apparently not. But I'm glad I did today because my first stumble was Musicovery.

The page starts out simple, just a remote for you to select the type of music you want to listen to. When you select a genre, you click on what type of mood you want the music to have - Dark, Energetic, Positive, Calm, or a combination of these. It opens up these cool linked bubbles with the songs that it will play.

I also stumbled on Cooking By Numbers. You just click the foods you have in your fridge and pantry and it gives you recipes that you can make with those ingredients. It turns out that there is a lot more I can do with the ham, eggs, cheese, bread, rice, pasta, and spices I have right now than make a sandwich. This will come in handy.

And then there's the dancing pipe cleaner. You type, he dances.