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.