Hold/Fold? Walk away/Run?

How are your poker skeelz? Test 'em out against Hollywood's heavy hitters in Travel Channel's World Poker Tour Hold 'Em or Fold 'Em Challenge.

At the tone, the time will be 31,920 dots *beep*

Back in the mists of yesteryear, a fledgling blog named Information Nation directed you to gaze upon a nifty way to visualize large numbers. And verily, that was to visit a site called The MegaPenny Project, which showed us what a thousand, a million, a billion or a quintillion pennies would look like.

The point being that when we talk about "a billion people" or "a trillion dollars", it's hard for us to grasp what that really means. So if I told you that there are 86,400 seconds in a day, what would you think that looked like? Take a look at a clock that shades in a dot for every second of the day and see for yourself!

(via Diversionz)

Feelin' testy

Quizzes on The Notorious Confusables (you know, its/it's appraised/apprised ingenuous/ingenious... that kind of thing).

Free practice tests for SAT, ACT, ASVAB, PSAT, FCAT, GMAT and a bunch of other alphabet soups.

One thing's for sure. If for some inexplicable reason, I ever had to step in for a Registered Nurse, there's gonna be some patients in serious trouble. I flunked the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses. Big time.

Slice of life

Can you name the candy bar by looking at its cross-section?
(via Life In The Present)


Atlas of Human Anatomy in Cross Section

Fascinating? Inconceivable!

You keep using that word...


The Fascinating World Of Phylum Dinoflagellata
The Fascinating World Of Nozzles
The Fascinating World Of Stevengraphs
The Fascinating World Of Golf
The Fascinating World Of Cookie Cutters
The Fascinating World Of Gold Leaf
The Fascinating World Of Incense
The Fascinating World Of the Corporate Art Consultant
The Fascinating World Of Sheet Metal

More Power Pop To You

The Mod Pop Punk Archives have got an impressive collection of powerpop and bubblegum punk from the mid-70s through the mid-80s, complete with biographies, discographies, album art and mp3s. I never heard of probably 95% of these bands, but the random tracks I listened to (Elevators - Your I's Are Too Close Together, The Times - Red With Purple Flashes and Nikki & The Corvettes - Back Seat Love) were surprisingly good.

(via metafilter)

h3y $0n, @/V\ i 1337 3Nuf 4 j00 n0\/\/?

When I first saw A Parent's Primer to Computer Slang, I thought this was a parody, like the classic Is Your Son A Computer Hacker? But no, it's really from Microsoft... it just reads like it was written by Ward Cleaver, doesn't it?

Streamin' Like Sunday Morning

SLAY Radio streams remixes of Commodore 64 game songs. In case you are too young, this is a Commodore 64. And in case you were wondering, "How many C64 games could there possibly have been to remix the songs from?", the site Lemon64 (lovers of all things Commodore-ish), they have detailed information for 3857 C64 games in their archives. That's a lotta remix material...

(via The Ultimate Insult)

What's your nerditity?

Take some quizzes to establish the exactitude of your nerdliness.

How nerdy are you?


The 500-point nerdity test

The poetic nerd test

Yet another nerd test

Lord Of The Rings nerd test

More the band geek type? Maybe you're a music nerd.

I saw what you thought last summer

Thinking Machine 4 is a step above the usual online chess games. "See" what moves your computer opponent is considering. And yes, of course it beat the tar outta me.

Is this the beak? That's my stop!

Animals on the underground

The Animals, made up using tube lines, stations and junctions were spotted by Paul Middlewick some 15 years ago.

The original Animal, the Elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey to work.

Avert your eyes

Those who hate math and topology (especially you, Ogre) ought best to just keep right on surfing by this particular post.

Three statisticians go out hunting together. After a while they spot a solitary rabbit. The first statistician takes aim and overshoots. The second aims and undershoots. The third shouts out "We got him!"

Just one of (too) many jokes only funny if you are a math geek. Or maybe just if you're a geek. You big geek...

If you thought that was funny, wait'll you get a load of the Acme Klein Bottle store. For those of you with a low topology dorkiness quotient, this is humorous to because (heehee) you see (giggle), Klein bottles are (wait for it...) impossible in three-dimensional Euclidean space! Get it?! They're a zero-volume, one-sided bottle with no inside or outside??! Hahahahaha! Ohhhhhhh, I slay me sometimes.

PS. Ogre Update: Apparently, Ogre a/k/a Don Gibb, he of "Revenge of the Nerds" fame is selling his own brand of beer. No doubt to be served at the next Alpha Beta kegger. He also has some amusing outgoing answering machine messages for you to download.

So you wanna be a blogger?

How to become a blogger in just fifty-one E-Z steps!

Oddly, "captnkurt" didn't even make the list

Now this is pretty nifty.

Type a first name into The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager and it will show you where it placed in popularity for each decade since 1900.

Gosh, I wonder why this name bottomed out after, ohhh...looks like about 1941?

Hi-yo Red Pen! Away!

The Masked Grader doesn't really anonymously grade papers he found in the hallways of UT Austin. No, that would be cruel. He just puts snarky, sarcastic, spirit-crushing comments on already-graded papers he found in the hallways of UT Austin. Which I guess is still cruel if you think about it.

2/15/05 - UPDATE: It appears that The Masked Grader has opted to hang up his mask, at least until the smoke clears. This from his website:

At the request of UT Austin's Student Judicial Services office, I've taken down the files pending an appointment I have with them next week. I'll have more information sometime next week.

Then shouldn't it be pronounced Moertley Crueh?

Histöry öf thë "Hëävy Mëtäl Ümläüt".

(via del.icio.us)

Is that in Celsifunk or Rockenheit?

Band To Band is kinda like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, only with Rock bands. Two bands are linked if they have shared the same band member. Up above you can see it's just a six-degree hop-skip and jump from The Go-Gos to SoCal doom metalists Goatsnake. According to the site, the longest known chain is a wayyy-more-than-six-degrees of 32, though which two bands have this distinction is not disclosed.

(via Incoming Signals)

Huck 'n' Buck! WTF?!

First let me rant that Flickr is not working for me today. I can upload pics, but it is not letting me see the URL of the uploaded photos. So until that's fixed, Information Nation will be kickin' it Old Skool, with text only.
Okay, figured out the Flickr thing... seems they have changed their layout around a bit.

It's a little hard to describe The Ol' Huck 'n' Buck. In the old days, it was the "classic football pose" you'd find on all the football trading cards. Football in the crook of one arm, opposite leg raised high and other arm extended for a block. When it's done right, it looks kinda cool. But when it's done wrong... That's where it gets funny.

Here's the way The Ol' Huck 'n' Buck should look


and here's how it shouldn't look


Maybe the easiest thing for you to do is to see it in all its glory. Further old-timey pigskin humiliation can be found here and here.

(via Cardhouse)

Ruining the movies for you

Please read these if you would like to completely ruin your moviegoing experience.

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters - Explains how Raquel Welch should have gotten her butt kicked by molecules in Fantastic Voyage, and why King Kong's legs would probably shatter under his own weight. (via Neat New Stuff)

Insultingly Bad Movie Physics explains why cars don't usually burst into flames every time they crash, and how when the hero falls 300 feet and then grabs hold of a window ledge, by all logic he should just keep on falling, though maybe now minus his arms...

Mashin' it up, live

There's plenty of DJ's out there making mash-ups, but as far as I know, there's only one band doing it live, and that's Smash-Up Derby. Download a few of their live tracks

Jet Lady Joe – JET vs. the BEATLES vs. JOE WALSH
Tainted Like You – SOFT CELL vs. the DANDY WARHOLS
Talking Franz - FRANZ FERDINAND vs. TALKING HEADS
Smells Like Billie Jean – NIRVANA vs. MICHAEL JACKSON

(via Bifurcated Rivets)

Heap plenty "traditional" mash-ups at dj BC's site, his as well as links to lots of others.

If the shoe fits...

The shoelace technology cup runneth over:

Never tie your shoeleaces again with 'Lastic Laces, though you will look like a dork, if you want my opinion.

The manufacturers of Speed Laces claim their product "automatically adjusts to changing pressures of the run" and "lace tension is always equal throughout the system". At least they're cooler looking than 'Lastic Laces.

Think you're gonna find someone who knows more about Ian, host of Ian's Shoelace Site? Frayed knot... He invented his own shoelace knot, fer cryin' out loud.

Here Be Monsters

This simply brilliant/brilliantly simple idea came from a Zefrank page called Monsters.

To make a monster:

1. take a picture of yourself (works best if your head is at a slight angle),
2. import the picture into some sort of image editing software (Photoshop,Paint, etc..)
3. copy half of the image, flip it along its horizontal axis, and line it up until it matches.

Here are some pics of my two boys, Sam and Ben. Anyone else want to submit some monsters of their own, and I'll post them here? The email link is at the bottom of the right-hand column.

Dearly beloved...

We are gathered here today to remember our fallen brethren at The Museum of E-Failure.

WHAT IS THE MUSEUM OF E-FAILURE?
This feature of Ghost Sites was launched in early 2000; it is an image gallery of some 1,250 screens captured from some 900 Web projects that for various reasons "went dark" during the years 1998 to 2004.

(via digg)

Cubed

Icing - Lac Leman, near Geneva, Switzerland (via The Presurfer)


ICING - International Curling Information Network Group


Icing done creatively -- at Mike's Amazing Cakes

Have some cereal, Killer

Ever wonder what's the story with the Trix Rabbit? (His predecessor was Stick Figure Boy!) Or how Cap'n Crunch got his start? (His first name's Horatio!) Read all about it in Topher's Breakfast Cereal Character Guide

In 1963, John Holahan cut up some pieces of those hideous rubbery orange Circus Peanuts and put them in his cereal. Thus the popular cereal ingredient known in the industry as "marbits" was born. More than you ever wanted to know about how marbits are made. I mean extruded. Yuk, let's just stick with "made".

The Boxtop newsletter offers "Crunchy Nuggets for Cerealists"

I've mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating: The Empty Bowl may be THE Ultimate Cerealophile site.

Lastly, don't forget about the prize inside.

Note to self:

The next time you think it would be a hoot changing your default Windows font to the Aerosmith font , THINK AGAIN! Two hours and six Advil later, and I've finally got a screen that doesn't look like it was written by a three-year-old on meth...

Hey office drones! Just 'cause you spend your 9 to 5s workin' for The Man, doesn't mean you can't also RAWK! Now you can write your Powerpoint presentations like a rockstar with these free Rock Band Fonts. Assuming rockstars made Powerpoint presentations. Which they don't. Except for Creed, that is. Regular Powerpoint-lovin'-mofos those Creed guys are...

Some more famous fonts (but not all of them free), covering not only music, but also TV shows, movies, food & drink, etc.

Her art doesn't make a statement. It is a statement.

Quick test to see if you're a left-brained or a right-brained person:

Kate Bingaman, creator of Obsessive Consumption, has six credit cards she pays on every month. And each month, until she has paid them off, she will be posting a drawing of each statement.

If you had any of the following responses, congratulations! You're a left-brainer!

"That's about the stupidest thing I've seen all day!"
"Isn't she worried about identity theft?"
"Why in God's name is she making only the minimum payments?"

If you had any of the following responses, congratulations! You're a right-brainer!

"That's about the greatest thing I've seen all day!"
"Isn't she worried that other people will copy her idea?"
"Thank God she's only making minimum payments! This way I can enjoy these every month for the next 50 years!"

Also mentioned on the site, knuckleheads/dipsticks/insert favorite pejorative here who are eBaying their forehead as advertising space. Might as well... seems to be lots of unused space up there anyway. As a point of civic pride, I'd like to especially call attention to this gem from my hometown who just leased his forehead. For three months. For $5.50. Or about a quarter of a cent an hour for the next 90 days. There's not many career opportunities out there that are dwarfed by earning a dime an hour stamping license plates in The Big House, but Our Boy has managed to find one...

Oh, and if you do bother to read Doofus McForehead's page, please note that Grand Rapids, MI may have had "a population of 19,900 as of the 200 census", but the town has grown considerably in the 1,800 years since then.

(via Lifehacker)

I got a Nikon camera

"On June 17th, every year, the family goes through a private ritual: we photograph ourselves to stop a fleeting moment, the arrow of time passing by."