Tuesday, August 31, 2010

an idea incubated

two drunkards:

"dude"
"dude"
"you know what's fucking awesome?"
"what?"
"big-ass ferris wheels"
"ferris wheels?"
"big ass ones"
"dude ferris wheels are boring"
"not big-ass ones"
"yes, big ass ones"
"hmmm.. how about a big ass one that's hovering over water?"
"umm.. over water.. hovering? hanging!"
"yes hanging! fucking hanging over water, with the shit holding it up all tilted"
"fuck yeah! and instead of beams, we'll hang the whole thing on fucking cables!"
"yes, yes, and we'll make it spin!"
"but how do we build it?"
"easy.. we build it over the water, then we hoist it into the vertical"
"yeah"
"fuck yeah"
"fuck YEAH"

how the london eye was envisioned. true story.

bad, bad movies

i don't get it. those people who try to incorporate science into movies. some do it well. some explain it well. but others just seriously fuck it up. i mean fuck it up so bad that it ruins the movie. and i'm not talking about the specific weight or uranium messed by a few tenths of a percent, i'm talking about something like iron man, where the rich genius "invents" a new element in his basement. wtf. he levels his home-built accelerator with a fucking metal emblem.
oh and how fuck do people using computers in csi and criminal minds not use mice. they furiously type on their keyboards, yet their screens magically show pictures popping up, recordings being analyzed. so much bullshit.
writers and producers, before bringing science into a movie, consult a 5th grade science book. thank you.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

waiters - stay away from me. further. further more. i can still see you...

ok seriously, wtf is up with waiters who keep hovering after they drop off the menus? does anyone else feel the pressure to order asap? i mean you try to focus on the food, but they're always there in your peripheral vision, standing calmly, judging you. and as soon as you glance up, they're next to you in an instant, smiling and their hands shakily holding the pen and pad, so eager are they to take your order. you then start mumbling your order, carefully trying to read the exotic names they have for their food. but of course you mess it up, and the waiter corrects you by brightly - and loudly - repeating the name correctly. you're still nervous at this stage, but a little relieved that that part is over and he's moved on to the next person. the trauma goes on, until everyone finishes and you breathe a sigh of relief, thinking it's over, until he hits you with "anything to drink" and you're fucking hell i totally forgot to look at the drinks menu.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

save a tree - don't print this blog

you know what's the first thing that crosses my mind when i see those self-righteous email signatures that have a small picture of a tree begging you not to print the email unless your life depended on it? printing it out just to kill a fucking tree. in fact, it makes me want to print out all the emails, documents and pictures i have on my pc, then hit the internets (yes, internets) and start printing out fucking wikidepia. the whole fucking thing, starting with the page about trees.

killing mother earth - on tree at a time

Monday, August 16, 2010

stay away from the cookies!

"Every fiber of your being will want to go back to the old way of doing things. Inevitably, you’ll slip. And if I were uncharitable, I’d see you going back to the old way and I’d say, You’re so lazy. Why can’t you just change?"


Saturday, August 14, 2010

it has the wifis

"they could put out a fucking brick and call it an iphone if they wanted to"

Thursday, August 12, 2010

sheep: how do you lure them in?

i am engineer. to my eyes, all women's bags and shoes look the same. i'm not talking about a red bag versus a black one. my poor brain almost exploded looking at a catalog in bloomingdale's with seemingly identical bags ranging in price from $300 to $3,000. i looked really hard for something different but didn't see anything. i decided to do a hands-on investigation, by picking up a bag and comparing it to another ten times as expensive. instead of finding blast-proof coating, emp-resistive lining or diamonds lining the zipper, the $3,000 bag had the same crap that made the normal (albeit still overpriced) bag.

the same applies to shoes. ridiculously expensive shoes. a month's salary pair of shoes. i mean a couple of pieces of leather with a week's labor? but, of course, i forgot that those people cater to sheep. yes, you lady, with the criminally expensive footwear, you're a sheep. bags, shoes, etc, etc. but what really got me thinking was this: how do you lure the sheep in? allow me to explain: when i buy a normal car, i pay for material, labor and r&d. when i buy a sports car, add some prestige. when i buy an exotic, i buy all the above, plus the name. but basically, the is usually parts, labor and r&d. simple. the same applies to software: labor, overhead and the perceived value (how much roi it will bring me).

so back to luring the sheep: if the bag i produce costs me $50, how the fuck do i determine its selling price? surely $2,000 was not arrived at using the methodology used for cars and software (unless i want a 4,000% margin). so from my hands-on investigation, i've arrived at the following conclusion: i pull the number out of my ass. i understand that quality costs money, but for fuck's sake, unless it contains some exotic materials (like radiation protection), a bag will not cost more than $100 to mass produce. so for all you sheep out there: not only are you blindly following other misguided souls, you're paying prices pulled out of an ass.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

ah, to be a woman in saudi

so i was watching an ad on tv the other day: there was this girl flipping on one of these gymnast saddle kinda things, and the caption underneath read "i might not be able to vote, but i can get a country to its feet" and as she finishes the the jump the audience, on its feet, goes crazy. then another shot saying "i might not be able to drive, but i can fly". at this point i really wasn't seeing the picture, only focusing on the captions. the third shot was "i might not be able to get into a club, but i can make you dance"

at this point i felt my blood heating. this was an ad about women's rights and it was all the things that women in saudi (and other advanced countries) can't do: they can't vote, they can't drive, and all hell will break loose if they as much as pass by a club. men in these countries, these fucking assholes dictating their fucked up points of view on the women (and human right's organizations questioning their acts). it's a bit of ignorant religious beliefs, tribal habits and blind ego concoted by men stuck in the 11th century into a faux religion that drives women in these country into a sheep-like state that often leads to rebellion.

the next caption was "i can't get a tattoo but i can ink history". but then the ad finished and it wasn't an ad about women's rights. it was an ad about youth olympics. yes, that's exactly it! women in these countries are treated like kids: people who are simply incapable of taking decisions for themselves.

TorrentReactor buys its own Russian town for $148,000

yes, that actually happened. not happy with the rules? buy a town and make your own!

Sunday, August 08, 2010