Month: April 2006

Vampire slaying kit

(via boingboing)

Some things in life are just to critical to even consider being without them. Consider, for instance, your need to protect your family and property from vampires. Now normally, you’d have to spend time making a custom vampire slaying kit, build a box to keep in in, and then make sure it’s going to work for the kinds of vampires you have around your neighborhood. But if you had hop ped over to ebay earlier this week, you could have picked up a pre-made vampire slaying kit from Transylvania for a starting bid of $1000 (plus $90 shipping). And when you consider the peace of mind you’d get from having a good vampire slaying kit around, that’s really not too much of an investment to make.

The box weights 20.1 lbs., length 16.8 inches, width 17 inches, height 7.9 inches;made of linden tree with maroon velvet inside, six compartments. The items enclosed in the box are as followed: one wooden hammer (6.5 inches long), four stakes 6 inches-each) — the wooden hammer has applied a small holy cross, same as the stakes; the lower side containing: prayer book, crucifix, knife and eight bottles with Pamant (holy soil), Agheazma (holy water), Mir (anointing oil), Tamaie (holy incense), Usturoi (garlic), red serum, blue serum and secret potion. We believe a romanian monk from Transylvania has created this box during the period of 1870-1890 .

The old Prayer Book is old romanian language (chirilica), 19th century-hard covers. There is a mith saying whoever is able to read from this Book, he will be able to win the fight with the dark forces, demons, vampires and other demonic creatures .

The knife is 13.1 inches long with a metal handle. It’s made of heavy metal and can be easily thrown – it will always hit the target with the sharp tip. Has a gothic theme and detailing of fangs.

More details can be found in the auction.  Never underestimate the value of a vampire slaying kit.  You never know when you’ll be attacked by a vampire, and wouldn’t you rather be prepared?  For those of us that missed the auction, we’ll just have to build our own kit.  Be sure to post directions on the web if you do, as I can’t find a guide right now.
[tags]Vampire hunting, Vampires, Vampire slaying kit[/tags]

PBS’ History of Gaming

In case you forgot or haven’t picked up on it from other postings on the site, I’m a gamer.  Currently, I’m hooked on City of Heroes, but I veer off on other paths on occasion, and like to try plenty of other genres.  I especially like the whole retro scene.  I still like playing a lot of those old games – thank heaven for MAME.  With that in mind, this PBS history of gaming site caught my eye.  I’m still working through reading it, but it’s pretty neat.

Over the past 30 years, video games have become an integral part of our culture, and the video game industry has become a multi-billion dollar behemoth. Follow the journey of video games from university laboratories to our living rooms.

The site has an interactive timeline of gaming, a retro corner for downloads (wallpapers and other miscellany), and a listing of some of the best and worst games of all times.
[tags]PBS, History of gaming, retro gaming[/tags]

Print your own flashcards

(via Lifehacker)
Tons of downloadable/printable flashcards for all kinds of things you need or want to learn. Personally, I’m considering it these for the work on my older son’s reading skills. But I can also see some usable categories for my own study. Just look at some of the high-level categories with printable cards:

  • Early Eduction
  • Elementary School
  • Science
  • Information Technology
  • Medicine

There are a few more areas of study in addition to those above.  I do think they need to fix that spelling error in the first category though. 🙂

[tags]Flash Cards, Study helpers[/tags]

Build your own kite

(via Lifehacker)

Get out and build a kite for fun project. This is the kind of thing I need to work on with my children. They’d love having a kite, especially one they got to make themselves. Yes, I’m turning my children into geek/DIY-ers.

[tags]DIY, kite[/tags]

A history of corrupting children

(via Joystiq)

Wired magazine has a fun and funny article about some of the things in history which were considered a corrupting influence on children before adults had videogames to blame.  Of course, we all know before videogames, it was Rock and Roll corrupting children, but did you know that the telephone, the waltz, and novels were also considered bad for children?

The Waltz
“The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced … at the English Court on Friday last … It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous inter­twining of the limbs, and close com­pressure of the bodies … to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was con­fined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is … forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
– The Times of London, 1816

The Telephone
“Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?”
– Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926

Some of the major bad-things of the past are covered in the full article.

[tags]Corrupting influences, Think of the children[/tags]

An inefficient way to track time?

(via MyVogonPoetry)

This is one of many such clocks – watch a clock, updated by the second, tracking time.  Why is this one worth my mentioning?  Because it’s updated via blocks.  That is, every second, a stack of blocks is added to, until the stack has 9 blocks.  Then, that stack is knocked over, the next column gets another block added, and the seconds blocks start stacking again.  Easy to watch, and somehow mesmerizing.

[tags]Clock, animated time[/tags]

ReadyMade magazine food selections

Following are a few recent food items from the ReadyMade magazine blog. All of these caught my eye for various reasons. Let me just say now that I plan on making the last one with my kids some time (as in, I plan on getting my kids to help me make them, not I plan on using my kids as the ingredients necessary to make them).

  1. Vegan Twinkies – vegan_twinkies.jpg This selection comes to ReadyMade from the Vegan Lunch Box blog. Perfect for all you ingredient conscious twinkie consumers.
  2. DIY Girl Scout cookies – The ReadyMade folks link to a knock-off of the well-known Girl Scout Thin Mints. These are my wife’s favorites. I figure I should make some for her.
  3. Spicy Hot Cinnamon Marshmallows – cinnamon_marshmallows.jpg This is the one I need to make for my kids. Of course, since I work nights, my wife might not appreciate me making some on the week-end with the boys and then leaving her to hold the children off the marshmallows during the week. And I am certain they don’t need more sugar in their systems after she gets home from school with them.

Now you can Blue Screen a Mac

bsodimac.jpgSince every techie site in the web-o-verse is covering this, I’ll just pick one and let you dig for more info from there. With the announcement of Apple’s Boot Camp, you can now easily load Windows XP on your X86 Mac.  Some sites are reporting the the Vista install and Debian install processes start up, but those same people have been a little gun-shy trying the full install. No word, therefore, on whether you can actually get other operating systems running, but it looks promising.

[tags]Mac, Blue Screen, XP on Mac X86[/tags]

Portable media players are finally getting close to affordable

Samsung-yp.jpgWell, at least close to what I consider affordable. You can now pre-order the Samsung’s YM-P1 portable/personal media player for only $370 according to the Samsung page. And it’s t3h sw3ck-See.

The YM-P1 features a 16M-color 4″ TFT widescreen display, 20GB of storage, MP3 / WMA / OGG / AC3 audio playback, MPEG-4 / DivX / WMV video playback, JPG / BMP photo viewing, line-in video recording, voice recording, FM tuner, SDIO memory card and expansion slots, USB host functionality, and a 15-hour battery life (6 hours for video). The domestically released YM-PD1 includes the addition of T-DMB TV reception.

[tags]Samsung, PMP[/tags]

Self-parking car from Toyota in US soon

(via Engadget)

I know sooooo many people who need this.  It amazes me how much trouble people have parallel parking.

Vehicles that are able to parallel park themselves while drivers sit and relax behind the wheel are coming to the United States, according to a Local 6 News report.

New Toyota hybrid cars are now available in Britain with a $700 “parking assist” option.

Local 6 news showed video of a driver sitting and allowing the car’s steering wheel to turn on its own as it pulled into a tight parking spot on a London street. The reporter never touched the wheel as the car parked itself.

[tags]Self-parking car, Toyota[/tags]

Your guide to all shoe tying knowledge

(via MAKEzine blog)

tie-shoes.jpg

If LatticeLacing18.jpgyou find your shoelaces just don’t have to pep they used to, maybe you are tying them wrong. Why not visit Ian’s shoelace site and learn how to to a better job with those shoelaces?

Slipping Shoelaces?
Do your shoelaces always seem to come undone? If so, you’re probably tying a “Slip” knot, and one simple change to your technique will turn it into a “Reef” knot that stays secure. Note that my “Ian Knot“, the World’s Fastest Shoelace Knot, forms a secure “Reef” knot!

[tags]Shoelaces, Knots[/tags]