Social Icons

Friday 25 January 2013

A news worthy Friday Time Waster


A Newsworthy Friday Time Waster


Jay Pinkerton Logo


Justin Bieber, Celine Dion, Brian Adams, Alanis Morisette, Avril Levine, Nickelback etc, music from Canada is not the best. At least Canada has apologized for Bryan Adams but they still have a lot of explaining to do.

Thank goodness for their comedians though. If someone cracks you up in a movie, odds are they are from Canada. Jim Carry and Mike Meyers are just two examples of excellent comedians coming from Canada.

Today’s time waster was written by the rock star of Internet comedy, Canadian Jay Pinkerton. He has been stirring shit on the Internet for years.

I have always been a big fan of Jay Pinkerton and it is an honor to finally steal his stuff and paste it into my blog.

You can get lost for days at his website - http://www.jaypinkerton.com. 

One of his biggest hits is the News Skim series, a satirical look at American politics. What would happen if Morgan Freeman run against Godzilla for American President? I can’t explain it, I will let Jay talk for himself.
 
Here we go with the first episode of News Skim:
 
Episode 1 - "Slip of the tongue"
 
 
 
Will the Consortium of Evil take over America? What can possibly stop them?
 
You can see the rest of the episodes on the Jay Pinkerton website:
 
 
 

Monday 21 January 2013

Will the art of reading go extinct?

Will the art of reading go extinct?


Is the art of reading and writing going extinct? Browsing RottenTomatoes.com I spot this ad:


 
raedng is fr n00bs anywayz lol !!!1!


Older generations have always suspected that the newer generations are fucked. They are dumber, their music is stupider and the schools are getting worse. But there has been some genuine concern recently about the newest generation’s reading and writing skills.
Texting on cellphones and tweeting on Twitter has corroded writing skills and anybody that has browsed YouTube’s commenting sections will see the average YouTube commenter does not have very good reading comprehension and most arguments are settled by calling anyone that disagrees with you a ‘fag’.
However, as always, the new generations will find a way to make it work. We did, and the generation that is following us will too.

Thursday 17 January 2013

Tripping Friday Time Waster


Tripping Friday Time Waster

 
Tripping the Rift Logo
 
 
By far one of the more NSFW Friday Time Wasters, here is risqué Tripping the Rift. 

It is an animated series set in a universe that is very much like the Star Trek universe however it also has elements of Star Wars, Space Odyssey 2001 and Battlestar Galactica. 

The galaxy they live in is dominated by two forces – The Confederation and the Dark Clown Empire. The Confederation is a spoof of Star Trek’s Federation and the Dark Clowns of course, is a spoof of the evil Galactic Empire from Star Wars.

Living as a subject of either the Confederation or Dark Clowns is not easy. They exploit and dominate their subjects through various means.

Between the empires is a border region “The Rift” that is controlled by no one. Filled with outlaws and other undesirables, it is the only place to be truly free. It is here where the story of Chode McBlob, Six, Gus and a few others take place.

A pilot episode was made by Chris Moeller (King of the Hill) and Chuck Austen (Action Comics and X-Men). After seeing the pilot episode CineGroupe bought the rights and started developing a series for the Sci Fi Channel.
 
Naturally, the first thing a TV network does when doing a series is to demand that all the ‘undesirable’ elements be removed i.e. all the fun things. 

It is unfortunate that the TV series is not as good as the original pilot. In an interview director Bernie Denk acknowledges this but is confident that the subsequent series will be better as communication between the writers and the Network increases. 

Here is the pilot episode.
 
~Be warned that it is very NSFW with a lot of coarse language. Also, space boobies.~
 
 
 
Here is an episode from the series produced for the Sci Fi channel, the animation has vastly improved, unfortunately, the content is shit. To put it mildly. Really, you take something as brilliant as the pilot episode, strip away everything that made it good and now you have something for TV. It is no wonder that TV is dying a slow death.
 
YouTube beats TV on so many fronts. You get to watch what you want, when you want, and of course you get to see what the people that made the episode in the first place wants you to see. Not the bland, toned down tofu shit served up by TV networks. (Wow what a rant)
 
Anyways, here is the spoof on Space Odyssey - 2001 Space Idiocies.
 
 
 

Visit the Tripping the Rift website - www.trippingtherift.tv. They have lots more content there including comics and games.

For more Tripping the Rift episodes you can look on YouTube.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Preview of David Grohl's movie Sound City

Preview of David Grohl's movie Sound City




In this video clip provided by Rolling Stone, various rock legends can be seen talking about the legendary recording studio Sound City Studio. In the video, legends such as Tom Petty, Trent Reznor and Butch Vig can be found reminiscing about their days recording at Sound City.

Sound City Studio is tucked away in Van Nuy, Los Angeles city behind some rundown warehouses. A hidden treasure, Sound City is, as Dave Grohl puts it - " America's greatest unsung recording studio.

The studio does have a history to be proud of! Seven of the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time has been recorded there:
Other renowned bands that have recorded there include Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Johnny Cash, Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age, too name but a few.

Sound City closed May 2011 and David Grohl of Nirvana and now Foo Fighters bought the recording console. This inspired him to make a documentary about the studio. In a handwritten note to the press he explains that it is a document of a "personal journey that started 20 years ago".

To promote the movie, Nirvana has reunited and is now playing a few gigs with Paul McCartney. They wrote a song together called "Cut me some slack". It's a noisy upbeat song, not something you would associate Paul McCartney with but the song has garnered a lot of attention. Despite Courtney Love's protest on Facebook.

She is not a fan of the reunion, saying this about their performance: "Uh it was bad." Well she has sold Curt Cobain's likeness to Activision which is a far worse crime, so she can kindly shut the fuck up.

The film Sound City will be on display at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival this February. The movie will then be released in March. Can't wait!

Monday 14 January 2013

Obama officially confirmed – no Death Star


Obama officially confirmed – no Death Star


Obama tweets - No Death Star


With this tweet Barack Obama shattered John D and 30 000 other American’s dream – The USA will not start work on a Star Wars like Death Star.

The Death Star
The infamous Death Star.

In November last year, a user called John D started a petition on the White House website. The petition asked the President to start working on a spaceship that would resemble the Death Star stating that it would spur job creation and further space exploration.

The petition gained momentum and was eventually signed by more than thirty thousand Americans. This was enough for the President to take notice and take an official stance. 

Unfortunately for John D, the President decided not to build a Death Star. In a statement released by Paul Shawcross, chief of the Science and Space Branch for the White House, Shawcross stated that building the Death Star would be very expensive and is not a good use for tax dollars, crushing any hope that John D had. 

Showing that he has a sense of humour, Shawcross continues that the USA does not support blowing up planets and it would be unwise to build such an expensive spaceship that has a serious design flaw. He was of course referring to the small hole in the Death Star that Luke Skywalker used to blow up the Death Star and save the galaxy from the evil empire.

However, Shawcross tells John D not to be disappointed because there various exciting space exploration projects going on at the moment.

Among the projects are the International Space Station that is the size of a football field, some more manned missions to the moon and the powerful James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Telescope will be so powerful that it would be able to tell scientist more about the origin of the universe!

To further show his good natured side he posted a link to President Obama fencing with a light saber!
 

Maybe going for the planet sized Death Star first was too much. Perhaps we should ask for something smaller that can be access by normal everyday people such as joy rides to the moon.

Friday 11 January 2013

Read my lips, it's Friday Time Waster


Bad Lip Reading


Bad Lip Reading logo
The exceptionally funny videos are done by an anonymous sound engineer from Texas.

In an email interview with the Washington Post, the creator of Bad Lip Reading (BLR) told them that years ago his mother suffered from hearing loss. As her hearing loss increased she automatically picked up the skill of lip reading. He tried to learn the skill himself but was terrible at it. He would sit and watch TV with the sound turned off and tried to guess what the people were saying but all he got was nonsensical sentences.

One day he filmed and recorded two people having a debate as part of a show for radio. One of the people involved in the debate kept mumbling softly to himself when the other guy was talking.

BLR had the idea to use his teribble lip reading skills to try and decipher what the candidate was saying to himself. He took the video of the debate and recorded what he thought the candidate was saying over it. The result was a video so hysterical that the rest of the people in the studio killed themselves laughing.

The success of the video prompted him to try his hand at a music video. It was right at that time that the Rebecca Black disaster ‘Friday’ was released.

BLR noticed that with the sound of, it seemed that Rebecca was mouthing the words Gang Fight and would make a great spoof. BLR’s YouTube video of “Gang Fight” got more than a million hits in less than a month.

Form there he moved on to tackle songs by Cold Play, Michael Bubble, One Direction and many more. The One Direction song is particularly funny since BLR cut the video to make it look like the trailer of a foreign movie. It’s really worth checking out.


Of course,when everybody is having fun somebody is going to come and spoil it. Lawyers representing Universal Music and Warner Music demanded that he takes down songs that they feel infringe on their copyright. So not all videos made by BLR are available anymore. Seriously, fuck you guys.

With the (remaing) videos being a great success BLR branched out spoofing movies and politicians.  

Of course Twilight is a target for BLR. We often see Twilight spoofs on the Internet. Most of them just insinuate that Edward is gay and do no more. However, the BLR spoofs of Twilight are hilarious. To anybody out there that want to spoof movies, this is how you do it:
 
 

Here is some more Twilight:


 

I think that the best BLR videos are the spoofs of politicians. We are used to songs with nonsensical lyrics but politicians are always well spoken and clear in what they are trying to say. So to see the stream of nonsense coming out of these respectable men and women is sidesplitting.
 
 
My absolute favourite BLR video:
 
 
These are just a few of the many awesome videos by BLR. Go find the rest on YouTube.

You can also follow Bad Lip Reading on Twitter and Facebook.

Friday 4 January 2013

Friday Time Waster - The Screenie Awards 2012

Friday Time Waster - The Screenie Awards 2012



Screen junkies released their Best and Worst of the Movies 2012 awards. This humorous award show pokes fun at the things that are wrong with movies these days.

For more entertainment check out the Screen junkies YouTube channel and the Honest Movie Trailers. The trailers cut through all the marketing bullshit Holleywood force feeds us and tell us what is really happening in a movie.

See what's really up with Michael Bay's Transformers:

 
 
 
Wondering if you should see James Cameron's Titanic in 3D? Check the trailer if the movie is worth it:

 
 
 
Watch the Screen Junkies take a swipe at yet another James Cameron movie, Avatar:

 
 
For many more funny videos and honest trailers go check out the Screen Junky YouTube channel.
 


Thursday 3 January 2013

Nice tool for gamers

Nice tool for gamers


This is one of the coolest tools I have seen in a while...
Have you ever bought a PC game only to be disappointed to find that it is not compatible with your computer?

Before you buy a game, go to System Requirements Lab.

This site lets you select from a variety of new games and then compare your machine to the minimum requirements for the game. It than tells you if the games will work on your computer or not.

Good news for me, according to Requirements lab Gears of War will work on my PC. BUT, they also seem to think that Assassins Creed will work on my PC, which I know from experience does not.

So some fine tuning on this tool is still necessary.

Paul McCartney and Nirvana releases new song

Paul McCartney and Nirvana releases new song


Oh man, I just love me some Nirvana, so the news that Paul McCartney recorded a song with the surviving members of Nirvana is just the best news ever.

The band performed the song live for the first time at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert. Find the new Nirvana or Sirvana jamming below:


The song, 'Cut Me Some Slack', was recorded for Dave Grohl's (Nirvana drummer) movie Sound City. Directed by Dave Grohl, Sound City is a documentary about the legendary recording studio in Van Nuys, California. Some of the people you can expect to see in the movie is rock legends Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Tom Petty and Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac, duh).

Looking at the track list for the movie and you will see it is going to be a scorcher. Taking a quick look I see all of the surviving Nirvana members, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Taylor Hawkins from Foo Fighters, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and Brad Wilk from Rage Against the Machine.

Can't wait for either the movie or the sound track!

Track list for Sound City:

1. Dave Grohl, Peter Hayes, and Robert Levon Been – "Heaven and All"
2. Brad Wilk, Chris Goss, Dave Grohl, and Tim Commerford – "Time Slowing Down"
3. Dave Grohl, Rami Jaffee, Stevie Nicks, and Taylor Hawkins – "You Can’t Fix This"
4. Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Pat Smear, Rick Springfield, and Taylor Hawkins – "The Man That Never Was"
4. Alain Johannes, Dave Grohl, Lee Ving, Pat Smear, and Taylor Hawkins – "Your Wife Is Calling"
6. Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, Rick Nielsen, and Scott Reeder – "From Can to Can't"
7. Alain Johannes, Chris Goss, Dave Grohl, and Joshua Homme – "Centipede"
8. Alain Johannes, Chris Goss, Dave Grohl, and Joshua Homme – "A Trick With No Sleeve"
9. Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear – "Cut Me Some Slack"
10. Dave Grohl, Jessy Greene, Jim Keltner, and Rami Jaffee – "Once Upon a Time… The End"
11. Dave Grohl, Joshua Homme, and Trent Reznor – "Mantra"

Wednesday 2 January 2013

The worst computer hacks in movies

The worst computer hacks in movies


Movies have to be fun to watch and to make a computer hack look fun and exciting is not easy. That is why directors have to use some poetic license when it comes to portraying a computer hack.

However, some portrayals are so laughably stupid you can’t help but wonder about the writer. Is he a dipshit? Was the script done on a typewriter?

This is not the ‘80 where you can just explain a computer scene with gibberish. Most people are computer savvy these days and they know you are just talking bullshit.

Here are three of the worst that I have seen.
 

Swordfish: Wolverine cracks the AES algorithm in 60 seconds


 
Hugh Jackman is not having a good day. He is locked in a room with Bad-Hair-John-Travolta and to make matters worse, he has a gun to his head. Hugh only has a few seconds to crack an encryption algorithm before John Travolta blows his brains out. Also, he is getting a blowjob at the same time (for some reason).

Hugh bangs at the keyboard for a while and ‘TA-DA’, encryption broken! Later when asked how he managed to do it, he says, “I don’t know, I can see the code in my head.”

See the code in your head? Like that is a genius ability to have. You can see the code in your eyes too.

The code for the AES algorithm is published right here.

The code is public knowledge. You see, back in the day organizations relied on keeping their security measures secret. That did not work very well, when the secret got out (leaked by a disgruntled employee or whatever) the entire system is compromised. The phenomenon was called “Security by obscurity”.

Security experts realized a better way of doing this would be to publish the algorithm that you are using. That way all the best experts in the world (and hackers) can take a look at your algorithm and find all the bugs and weaknesses.  Once the experts can’t find any more weaknesses, you have a pretty strong algorithm on your hands. Now, nobody can compromise your system, even if they have in depth knowledge of it.

AES, the encryption scheme used by the Department of Defence (as seen in the video), was put through this test and survived scrutiny from all over the world.

 There is no way to easily crack it. The only way possible to get in is a Brute Force attack. That is where you try and guess every password that there is. To give you an idea just how resistant AES is to Brute Force attack:

If you start guessing a million passwords every second since the Big Bang you will still be busy to this very day.

So, if you ever find yourself in the same situation as Hugh up there, just sit back and enjoy the blowie.

Firewall: Indiana Jones hacks a server with an iPod




In a scene where Harrison Ford has to steal some information of a server, he sticks a scanner into an iPod and then duck tapes the thing to a computer screen. This contraption than proceeds to steal the bank account numbers.

Do I have to explain to anybody why that won’t work? 

Texas Walker: The first time Chuck Norris sees a computer


This episode was shot in 2000. Computers were already a thing back then. It was not something new, but for the writer it was obviously a new thing and you have to assume the script was done on a typewriter.

In this episode of Walker Texas Ranger a hacker has hacked the FBI’s database and is selling the information to mobsters. To combat the hacker Walker sets up a high tech computer command center.

When the other rangers see the center for the first time their jaws drop open. One of them breathlessly whispers: “It’s like NASA!” when another one hilariously exclaims “NASA 20 years into the future!” never having actually seen what NASA looks like.

NASA. Twenty years into the future.

Walker also got himself a good hacker to take down the bad hacker. For her first task he asks her to hack into a mobster’s bank account. She asks Walker what is his name and where is he located and then casually taps the keyboard three or four times and she‘s in his bank account!

BRILLIANT! She just hacked a bank’s website with less keystrokes it takes me to type the URL to my online bank!

You can see the full episode at TubePlus (if it has not been removed). There are plenty more stupid hacking tricks, like the bad guy hacking the FBI by typing really fast and many more. It’s a must see.
 

Sponsor