Frogman's Photoblog

Hamsters and terrorists everywhere, rejoice!

Municipality police of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, has come forth with yet another breathtaking initiative to keep us all safe and free from the evil oppression.

This time, it’s a campaign educating the public on how to spot a terrorist, urging them to report people who would seek to destroy our liberties.
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There is hope for men after all :-)

Who wouldn’t want a perfect partner with looks that could be envied by Maxim cover gils, mental stability of a rock, and house-keeping skills that could put your grandma to shame? And the best thing… she never ever nags. Meet Aiko, the first step on the way.

She would read you newsfeeds every morning after she fixed you a breakfast, she could read a map and navigate, and her daddy, Mr. Le Trung, even believes that she can even be “tweaked” to turn into a sexual partner, and one that’s blatantly easy to turn on, for that matter. ;-) Le gleefully explains that “her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.”

Seriously now, I do hope she’s open source. :-D Here’s a toast to bright future, and stable relationships. At least now I know I won’t be sad and lonely when I’m sixty-four. ;-)

(Don’t) take your kids’ games away

A US teenager murdered his mother and shot his father in the head, in revenge after they took away his copy of Halo 3 video game, a judge has ruled.

Unfortunately, it seems somebody can claim that the game was a contributing factor; the judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant “had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.” Of course, it’s all video games’ fault.

Jolly. :-D I do hope parents have long respawn timers…

—-

However, on defense of video games, they are very educationary. A six year old kid stole a car, drove it around, and eventually crashed, claiming that he learned that stuff playing Grand Theft Auto.

Sweet. I can’t wait till I learn some cool swordsmanship and magic from Warhammer Online. :-D

Geek’s birthday

Every once in approximately 31 556 926 seconds the Earth completes its orbit around the only star around for almost 1.29 parsecs. Apparently, the fact that Earth is yet again located in the same relative angular position from the Sun as the day you were born, is a reason to celebrate. And there’s more. As Sheldon has eloquently put it, some people even participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun’s apparent position relevant to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.

Be that as it may, I’d like to share with you some of the greatest and most witty birthday wishes I ever got, and treasure them so much that it would be a pity for them not to be shared… I won’t be explaining the mechanics behind these in detail, because this could spoil the fun for the geeks reading this, and the rest of you don’t care, anyway, or probably have stopped reading by now. :-D

All of those were created two years ago, when Fox started this on our discussion forum, although his wish is so otherworldly, that I’ll keep it for the end. ZZ used unix shell to write a clever pipe of two commands, which looks very cryptic at the first glance, but is in fact very simple.

echo pTaalqbirtARTlqtoqloyhqATaalqbirtARTlqto\
qloyhqATaalqbirtARTlqRXTrqfXvXrXzRhqATaalqbir\
tARTlqtoqloy.qsqIonqxXqzTIqzXoDXr\!|tr fTaplb\
iqMthRtoyhDAmXsInxzr RapHybi\ rthdtou,zhDeAmcsnr

It translates into Happy Birthday song lyrics, along with a suggestion that I shouldn’t get too wasted partying that night. Nick immediately created a very smart contra in C programming language:

#include<stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
long long int L = 729987139091064141LL;
while (L) { putchar(L&0xFF); L >>= 8; }
return 0;
}

If compiled, this gem prints out nothing more than “Me too!”. And finally, Fox, who started all this, used Brainfuck language for this jewel of code:

>+++++++++[< ++++++++>-]< .>++++++[< ++++>-]< +.>+++[< +++++>-]< ..
>++[< ++++>-]< +.[-]>++++++++[< ++++>-]< .>+++++++[< +++++++++>-]< +++.
+++++++.>++[< ++++>-]< +.++.>+++[< ---->-]< .----.---.>++++++[< ++++>-]< .
[-]>++++++++[< ++++>- ]< +.[-]++++++++++.

Lovely. It even made me code a simple Brainfuck compiler, to sate the curiosity. One of my friends adorably described this piece of code as: a dead fish without a head, followed by a dead fish without head and a tail, followed by random chopped pieces of dead fish.

So that’s it. :-D Thanks a lot guys, it was a load of fun… Have any more clever geek birthday wishes to share?

Shut up already!

Slashdot reports: “An editor for the Telegraph, Roger Highfield, recently volunteered to allow a UK researcher to shut off the speech center of his brain with a high-powered magnetic pulse. Regular speech is controlled by a section of the brain called Broca’s area. Once the precise location is determined in the subject, a magnetic pulse can temporarily disrupt speech without impairing other cognitive functions. The link contains a video in which you can watch Highfield stutter and twitch while attempting to recite a nursery rhyme. A later test shows that he’s able to sing the rhyme without difficulty, since singing is controlled in a different part of the brain (as you may remember from Scott Adams’ speech disorder).”

Cool. I wonder who will be the first to commercialize this technology and advertise: Now it costs only $79.99 to save your marriage!  ;-)

Why do we– WHAT?!

LONDON (AP) — University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind’s makeup.

“There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?” said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

“One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation,” he said.


Capital! :-D This research is probably going to be more entertaining than your average blockbuster movie… Also, Roger Trigg’s skill of drawing implications is impeccable. Presumably, the researchers will follow his lead, and I will have no other choice than to congratulate the John Templeton Foundation for $4 mil well spent!

Smart and heavy go together…

…and I’m not talking about the weight. ;-)

Obviously, someone at Britain’s National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth has decided to label heavy metal as “a favoured music of 11-19 year olds with lower self-esteem than their peers.” Well, I beg to be the counter-example when it comes to both age, and low self-esteem. :-D

Of course, heavy metal doesn’t hesitate, and strikes right back with a widely reported study of pure power and steel, which found out that heavy metal is, in fact, the “music of choice for today’s brightest youngsters”.

So many smart people! :-D There is hope for the humankind, after all…

Naturally, we knew this already – but it’s finally official! One thing remains uncertain to me, though… do we listen to heavy metal because we are smart, or are we smart because we listen to heavy metal? :-D

Up the irons!

–
PS: I have decided to increase the width of my content column by 50 %, so that you don’t have to scroll so much, and photos have more horizontal space – 400px really wasn’t enough.

Pink think tank

(Sequel to Sinister Pink and Fluffy.)

Although the situation is seemingly calm and peaceful, there is no telling when the pink hell breaks loose. The worldwide surveillance system has been silent over the weekend, but that is not the case right now. We have a tier 2 pink alert in Illinois. Undoubtedly, the reason for targeting this area is directly connected to one of the premier members of WTO, who, rumour has it, is currently undercover in Chicago.

“Last night,” he reports, “I went on a little walk to the park. It was a lovely, warm evening, but something was troubling me. Something, I just couldn’t point out, at least not at that time. I was outside taking a few photos 0f the skyline, but I didn’t feel quite well, so I called it a short night and went to bed. It wasn’t until morning that I realised something went very, very awry. The weird feeling in my gut kicked in when I opened this photo.”

“Don’t see anything wrong? Neither did I, at first. However, the building on the left struck me as most suspicious, and using state-of-the-art WTO technology, I was able to restore great detail of what was really there.”
WTO knowledge base: The Smurfit-Stone building often displays various signs to propagate various subjects, mostly sport teams and healthy lifestyle. This building has been suspicious with relation to the Pink Menace. It is considered no coincidence, that the best way to get to this building is using the Pink train line.

It was surely very appealing to evil forces of pink and fluffy to abuse this estate for their vile schemes, this time via subliminal messaging. Note the vaginal shape of the area, neatly combined with a sign proposing the viewer to appreciate pink. Freud himself would be proud.

It got worse than that, however. The information available is sketchy at best, however if any of it is true, we have a situation here. The following is an account of the events by an eye-witness. No modifications have been made, so please try to understand that he might have been a little confused.

Ehm, be ‘is thing on, me lad? Aye? Good. Soo… hic! Here I goes with me mateys out at nite, a pint’a Guinness in each fist we have. I winks at ‘ose preety lasses in the street, ye would not believe ‘ow many ‘ere were, oh I swears. Anyhoo, as dark a feelin’ as an ocean storm ’bout to strike, suddenly we feel horror like never before. “Tim, ye brainless sod,” I says, “what in virgin Mary’s name you reckon’s goin’ on?” He answers me not, fer he’s writhein’ on the ground. By the gates of Hell ‘emselves, Tim neva’ gets down, not even if he drinks two barrels’o brandy by himself he doesn’t. I looks around meself, and what does I see? People just going ’round with blank stares, ‘eird smiles and vacant faces, a ‘eird glint in ‘eir eyes. Oh cursed be thee, gods unmerciful, I sees pink. Right ‘ere as high as it gets, all the way up above the city… ‘is ain’t good one wee bit. It presses on me as ‘ough the sky was fallin’ on me shoulders, and I remembers no more.

Although the officials denied everything, reliable sources have informed us that radio administration lost control of transmitters on the highest spot in the state, the Sears Tower. It is said that, for several hours, they were glowing a very radiant pink and transmitting neural waves of yet unknown potential. We have an extremely valuable photograph of this process, which proves it. Generally, the antennae are dormant.

Last night, however, during the process of whatever great evil, the antennae looked like this.
So far we had very little luck when trying to find out what exactly happened last night. Whatever it was, though, it doesn’t take a mastermind to realise what’s going on. Ordinary people on the street, when confronted with a sample pink item, expressed greatly positive emotions, ranging from cuddling to tears of happiness. It seems that the enemy is employing mind control to achieve complete control of the area.

Also, there is a group of people, including our eyewitness, who have retained memories and don’t seem to be affected by whatever was going on. There is one common link between these cases; booze. This is the advice of Green Resistance to worldwide population. Drink often and in substantial quantities. It will give you an edge against the Sinister Pink and Fluffy.

*****************

Our top scientists waste no time, though, and counter this menace with an amazing discovery, which couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. Worldwide news report that they have managed to create a transparent frog. While that may not seem as such a big breakthrough, it’s a very important step towards creating the perfect minion: an invisible frog. Surely you can imagine how deploying billions of invisible frogs everywhere would not only thwart the wicked Pink schemes, but even grant world domination to where it’s due. Mwhahaa! ]:->

Sinister pink and fluffy

(This one dedicated to Mim, who commented: “I’m still waiting for the ponderings of pink and fluffy stuff.”)

After a decimating defeat in the second age, the pink fluffy menace had no choice but to flee the realms of Arda. However, recent findings suggest that another abhorrent assault is being underway, beginning, as usual, under the clever, if worn disguise of sweetness and innocence.

Trustworthy sources have reported a grand scheme of vile and deviant mastermind, his abominable majesty Fluffy the Pink III, that is soon to reach its most gruesome second stage. If successful, it would inadvertently result in unchallenged domination over this dimension. Undercover agents of unimaginable terror are are being spread around our world as we speak, posing as… you’ve guessed it, something cute, pink, and fluffy. A laptop cover!

They obviously have a sense of irony, calling this product “deadly pink”. Ingenious, that much is hard to deny. Not only is this the ideal position to observe user’s activities and behavioral patterns, the pink and fluffy invaders also intend to hijack the machines to wage cyberwar on world’s governments. Even as we speak, pink and fluffy laptops hack the Pentagon and other military mainframes, (and successfully place the blame on our communist friend, China,) while their users slumber peacefully, oblivious of the grave danger they are in.

Once the time has come for attack, their intention is to terminate unsuspecting users by first biting their hands off, and then jumping and ripping out their throat. After successful assimilation, laptop becomes a part of endoskeleton and nervous system of the atrocious, newly risen pink and fluffy ghoul. Shortly following this sinister strike, the pink and fluffy laptop lays its eggs into the user’s recently deceased body, which soon becomes a source of nutrition for its monstrous offspring.

Multiplying at an exponential rate, it is estimated that pink and fluffy abominations will triumph with their ghastly, harrowing intentions, before they reach fourth generation. So be advised, everything pink and fluffy is a mere repugnant monstrosity, plotting you a morbid fate. Annihilate it mercilessly, and with great joy, because for every single pink and fluffy thing vanquished, the world becomes a better place, no matter how futile these little victories could be… For they will not be enough.

It is too late for us to prevail now, and it indeed seems that all is lost. However, in ancient books, one faint hope remains. An age-old being of tremendous power and endless potency, that could prove an astounding asset and tip the scales of victory, if persuaded to aid our cause. We must obtain the assistance of mighty Chrono-tapír!