Doobybrain.com

Man, the weather lately sure has been fluctuating quite a lot. First, it’s super hot for two days straight (so hot that people were dying from the heat) and then it rains so much on the days following that the NYS reservoir capacity is near overflowing (potential flood risk). Check out some more near real-time water statistics for NYS here.
Also, parts of Queens have been without power for about 5 days now. I think that’s totally unacceptable. How can they leave people without their TV for so long?!

Neat! Brooklyn Industries is opening up a shop on W 18th St and 8th Ave. I like the Einstein Bomber.

Wow, there’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out, and surprise surprise, it’s going to be called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But from the teaser/trailer, it looks fantastic! The movie is set to be released March 30, 2007. I can’t wait. YES!

Maybe it’s because I’m viewing the website in Firefox, but the Microsoft website seems to have gone through a small update/revision. Still blue, still shiny. I wonder if the Microsoft site will change drastically to match the look of the Windows Vista website when that operating system gets released.

I’m pretty set on buying a Nintendo DS Lite. The only thing is, I don’t want to splurge on it and then end up not playing it at all. So I’ve been watching Norman play his to see how much fun he’s actually having, and up until now, he seems to be enjoying it. So that makes me really want to buy one (and considering that I get my first paycheck next week, I think I will).
To curb my DS Lite craving, I keep looking at photos of it on Flickr. For some reason, people take some wonderful photos of their DS Lite systems and upload them to Flickr. I’ve seen so many aesthetically good photos on Flickr. It’s the weirdest thing. This is a good Nintendo DS Lite Flickr set (photos featured on Dech). Unboxing has got some photos of the unpacking process as well.

Oh yeah, I’ve mentioned before that my Sony PSP hardly ever gets play time anymore. It’s mainly because the games for the PSP aren’t too great and also because Sony keeps crippling the system with pointless firmware updates. They should just let the hackers do the hacking and work more on establishing good game titles, because as far as as the industry is concerned, the PSP seems to be a dead beat object (I couldn’t have written a better article with better arguments against the PSP).

For fun and randomness, play with this DHTML color picker (click on “demo”). Cool, no?

I’ve always suspected that my iPod (code named: Dooby–help me think of a better name) was playing favorites even when it was supposed to be playing songs at random. Sometimes, I would start the player on the Shuffle Songs option and just keep hearing the same songs over and over again. Random, to me, means not hearing a song more than once if I have over 3000+ songs loaded onto the iPod (which I do). Whatever the reason is, I do tend to hear the same songs over and over while others seem to never ever be played unless I choose them manually.

I explained this phenomenon to Temple University prof John Allen Paulos, an expert in applying mathematical theory to everyday life. His conclusion: it’s entirely possible that nothing at all is amiss with the shuffle function. It’s quite common for random processes (like coin tosses) to get unlikely results here and there, like runs of six heads in a row. Over a very long time, it evens out, but it’s hard for us to envision that. “We often interpret and impose patterns on random processes,” he says, adding that this might be expected in the case of music, which evokes strong emotions. Paul Kocher, president of Cryptography Research, puts it another way: “Our brains aren’t wired to understand randomness.”

Read more about your iPod on random here (by Steven Levy).

Screw you all and your hip Apple laptops. I am gunning for a Lenovo T60 Thinkpad dual core beauty. If you’re envious like I am, maybe these hi-res photos of Lenovo products will cure you. Mmm, Yelena, maybe in a couple of weeks, more than just our iPods will be married. Our Thinkpads will definitely be next.

How come the Puma Showroom doesn’t carry any Puma Train Away sets? The Train Away is “a revolutionary new travel running collection from Puma”. I think it’s a totally brilliant idea and very nicely designed. Imagine everything you need for a simple run packed away in a jacket that folds into a bag. Yep, that’s the Puma Train Away package.

I was driving around Staten Island with Pamera the other night and we came across a house which had light up numbers in the front. The numbers on that house were bright red, so it made the house kinda scary looking. Anyway, when I came across these Solar LED Address Numbers, I immediately thought of those numbers that I saw in Staten Island. I wouldn’t mind these in my future home. [via]

If you’re a Myspace junkie (how in the heck do you do it??!! Seriously, the Myspace login page itself annoys the heck out of me and all the user pages are SOOOOO ugly), then maybe you should check to see if you have been a victim of the recent Myspace adaware ad vulnerability. Myspace is so dead. Make friends the real way, people.

Holy Juggernaut! These Adidas Stan Smith Rainbow sneaks are marvelous! Do they really have to be priced at such a premium price of $126 though? C’mon now!

Has anybody noticed that YouTube now shows a NEXT button at the bottom right hand of each video when you hover over the video screen? Also, at the end of each video, YouTube will also show related clips and other information. I wonder how they embed that stuff into the videos. Go ahead, play any video, and just hover over the player or wait until the video is done. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

I received the most recent issue of Giant Magazine (Aug/Sep 2006 with Beyonce on the cover) this week and I must say, their new logo and magazine redesign is hideous. The typeface used to show “GIANT” is probably the worst choice ever made in human history. Wow, it makes the magazine look so much more stupid and mediocre. I can’t believe nobody from within the company said anything. I already miss the larger-than-normal old Giant Magazine size.
This ugly redesign of the magazine reminds me of another ugly recent redesign: The New School. Go figure.

Take good care of yourselves!