Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Hipster Movement

I hate hipsters. Southern AZ is practically filled with them. This is what it is like:



Now that being said, hipsters try to be this way. Legends have it that there are places where the people are like this not because they want to be, but simply because they are. It is as if they are stuck in another time...



How are the Hipsters elsewhere in the world?

Monday, February 27, 2012

Nick Swardson receives distinguished acting nominations

He is nominated for worst actor, worst supporting actor (for "Jack and Jill"), and worst screenplay for "Bucky Larson". Adam Sandler gets worst actor and actress noms for his performances in "Jack and Jill". Way to go Nick!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jack_and_jill_2011/news/1924606/awards_tour_2012_razzie_awards_nominations/t

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Sony BDP-s580: A Review

For Jeremy.

So the PS3 died. I figured I would get another sony blu-ray player since they use the XMB menu which the PS3 has so I wouldn't have to learn anything new. The player is cool and it has newer hdmi functionality than the PS3 so my tv remote can control the player via hdmi commands even going through my receiver! Like wise, when I turn the player on it changes my tv input to hdmi. Nice. Also, my PS3 had been very loud for more than a year or so and this thing is dead quiet which is nice. The media player functionality is great. I t plays everything I have thrown at it. mkvs are no problem so no more converting to mpg for the PS3 which is a time saver. Also, sometimes the conversion wouldn't work and the audio would get out of sync and DTS audio would have to be reencoded. I am playing mkvs directly now and I swear the picture quality looks better. Maybe this is due to the lack of the reencode (supposed to be lossless)? Maybe because of a better video engine in the new player? Better hdmi connectivity? Who knows? Anyway the thing works great and I highly recommend it. It has all the hulu and netflix apps built in likes everything else does these days. Wifi and ethernet built in. 2x usb ports. Everything is great about it.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Braun cheats Kemp out of MVP, cheats at baseball, gets to play!

You did it man! You won! We are going to cheat now.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/02/ryan-braun-wins-appeal-will-not-be-suspended.html

Help me Fur Fathers

Here is my pickle. My PS3 can only be described right now as "dying". It shuts off and the red light flickers. Sometimes it pauses on a video and then freezes and can't be controlled via the controller. It is the old 60GB model with hardware PS2 emulation which some people really want so it has value if it could be fixed. The question is: do I pay to get it fixed or do I go order a new one (~$249 US)? Or do I do something even crazier and get a different media player that can natively play MKVs thus giving me back around 1TB of storage space for my backed up MKVs which I had to convert in order to play? I welcome your thoughts.

****Update****
I bought the Sony s580 model which has the capability to play back mkvs and nearly everything else although it can't do flac. It will be here tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDP-S580-Blu-ray-Player-Black/dp/B004K1EOCA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330032923&sr=8-1

Monday, February 20, 2012

Excellent American Dad! quote

Do you love the films of Emilio Estevez? How great is he? He's a Sheen, he's from an acting dynasty and yet he chooses to be Mexican. Makes it huge, realizes people have had enough of him and is decent enough to fall off the face of the earth. Emiliooooo!


Sawsheezle's Shave Blog: Walgreens' lie and the journey it led me on

This one has been taking a while to put together. I dedicate it to Marcus and to RyDub for his patience.

One of my favorite shaving/grooming accessories is a man-fragrance. A good man-fragrance (MF) should have the following qualities: it should make you smell like a man. Many men have several go to MFs, but I had only one in my proverbial "shaving corner" and that was the old-timey Clubman Bay Rum Pinaud aftershave/splash. capital_prototype has been known to use this when he crosses paths with Sawsheezle and he rocks it every time. Here it is in all its glory.


But when I traveled home for X-mas this year there was a problem. The morning of my flight back home, I knocked my beloved onto the floor and the neck of the frail space-age plastic bottle snapped in half and the elixir was lost forever. I didn't fret as I knew I would be able to get some more (albeit of a different vintage) when I came back from my winter vacay. Boy was I wrong. I originally purchased this tonic from a local Walgreens and thought I could just go online and check their stock and go to one of the nearly 100 Walgreens in town and just pick it up. So I looked online and sure enough it was in stock at two different locations, but was not carried by many of the other stores. I began my wild goose-chase over town tracking this stuff down. The first store didn't have it and moreover didn't even have a spot for it on the shelf. I began to panic a little bit, but knew I could go across town and get it at another location. Wrong again. I don't think they carry it anymore. Now I could always order it online from some other retailers, but it is much more expensive and since I felt I had been lied to, I decided to go in another direction. It was at this time that I started looking into people "home-brewing" their own bay rum batches and I found a lot of information. Apparently others who came before me had decided to do the same and they had plenty of knowledge to share. A simple look at the ingredients of any aftershave/cologne shows they they consist of two main components: alcohol and "fragrance". The % (proof) of the alcohol sort of determines its use as either an aftershave or a colonge (the higher the % the longer the scent may linger -> cologne). The fragrance comes from oil droplets suspended in the alcohol. So with that knowledge, one may ask one's self why in the hell do we spend so much money on these things? I don't know, but obtaining extremely pure grade alcohols that are also unscented is difficult for consumers. It appears that "big-cologne" is buying up all the reserves leaving little for the average Joe to buy. However common alcohols can be used to good effect. So the next was to come up with a recipe. The two main ingredients on people's recipes that were posted online were bay leaves and rum. The alcohol in the rum extracts the essential oils in the bay and hence the "bay rum". Now these aren't your ordinary run of the mill Bay Leaves that you would buy at the store (laurus nobilis/ bay laurel/ turkish bay leaves). No they have to be West Indies bay leaves (Pimenta Racemosa). Finding these leaves led me on another wild goose chase. I found I could order the essential oil directly online for around $5 for 0.5 oz. which is a good price, but after shipping costs the total cost would be around $15 and I wasn't going to spend that much on a whim so I tried at some local B&M stores around town here. I tried World Market and they only Turkish bay leaves. I looked at some of the grocery stores and they too only had turkish bay leaves. I got a crazy idea that perhaps Whole Foods would have them and so I went. If you have never been to a Whole Foods before, don't go. It will hurt your brain. I saw so many college student "hipsters" there buying $10 a lb. ground beef I didn't know what to do with myself. You can get that stuff at the mexican grocery store for $2 a lb bro! Wow. Anyway, I eventually found an impressive albeit extremely overpriced essential oils section of the Whole Foods and overheard some guy asking if he could special order some "ultra" organic product because the regular organic version good enough for him. I think I heard something about saving Mother Gaia and got the hell out of there. They didn't have the right bay leaves anyway. I read online that I could use the regular bay leaves to good effect and then discovered that allspice berries come from the same plant as the bay leaves and smell very similar. I decided then to just round up my ingredients. Here is everything.

Vodka
Spiced Rum
"Black Strap" Rum (has molasses in it)
Witch Hazel
Isopropyl
Bay Leaves
Allspice Berries
Orange
Cinnamon
Ginger
Cloves

I know. Why so many alcohols? I don't know except that halfway through I thought the brew wasn't going to be strong enough. Anyway, here is a pic of the setup.




The orange was not pictured. The proportions were mostly eyeballed, but there was about 12 fl oz of the liquids. I put all of this into a bottle and let it sit for two weeks and shook it around everyday. While it brewed, the oils from the spices and the orange were being extracted yielding fragrant as well and antioxidant properties. I did tweak it a few times. Mostly adding more ginger. I love ginger. After two weeks, It was time to take it out and filter the brew.



After three filtration stages, the stuff came out and smelled great. A very unique scent not exactly what I had previously experienced with the Clubman version, but it was my own concoction and I was proud of it. I added some glycerin and vitamin E oil to the brew to aid in the moisturizing qualities. When you put this stuff on it dries somewhat quickly due to the alcohol, but the glycerin and vitamin E oil leave the skin feeling really moisturized. These ingredients aren't in store bought aftershaves. The scent is good, but it doesn't linger as long as I would like. I will tweak the recipe next time. Most people suggest using purer alcohols and there is something called perfumers alcohol which is close to 100% alcohol and is not scented like Isopropyl is. Anyway, it was a fun experience and may be something you could try at home too. Check out these links for more info.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/202504-Mattface-s-Bay-Rum-Recipe

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/206159-My-Homemade-Bay-Rum-AS

Friday, February 17, 2012

Clark Duke steals the show

Clark Duke was on New Girl this week. You nailed it man. Go spend time with your birds.

Flashback NES

So I'm watching this documentary called Flashback NES. It's put together by Gamespot and is just a bunch of people talking about NES memories. What keeps annoying me is how they keep calling the system "Ness." I have NEVER heard anyone call it "the ness." Am I alone in this?

Rant

If I see another news article or whatever about people being infatuated with Kate Middleton (the now Princess Kate bs) I am going to flip my lid. People!!!!!!!! We fought against the British because of the tyranny of their oprressive government. Why are we celebrating their archaic figureheads that we fought so hard to break away from? Makes me sick. I am getting sick. Why don't we celebrate real American heroes?

Monday, February 13, 2012

Eastbound & Down Season 3 (Feb 19th)


Didn't know this show was coming back. Thank god it is.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Unlimited Data Plans in Russia

Russian wins vacation for downloading the most data with his cell phone. I am not saying it should be this way, but this is another clue that we are so far behind in telecom infrastructure in this country even though we are somewhat pioneering the 4g movement.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Russia-MegaFon-Contest-Unlimited-Data-3G,news-14122.html

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Remember when Legos were simple?

In direct response to RyDub's post from the other day.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Friday nights are awesome!

So they re-re-re-released a new LEGO X-Wing Starfighter this year and it's pretty sweet. Decided to buy it and build it. The wings open up with a twist of a gear in the back. Yup...