Doobybrain.com

WHOOO HOOO!! HELLO HELLO! IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE AN UPDATE (THOSE COUNTDOWN ONES DON’T QUITE COUNT), BUT FOR GOOD REASON! I’VE BEEN A VERY BUSY BEE THE PAST FEW DAYS AND I’M JUST STARTING TO WIND BACK DOWN TO “NORMAL” MODE AGAIN. I TRY TO RECORD MY LIFE THROUGH PICTURES BUT UNFORTUNATELY I DON’T ALWAYS HAVE MY CAMERA ON ME. SO WHILE YOU’LL SEE SOME OF THE STUFF I’VE BEEN UP TO BELOW, YOU WON’T KNOW ALL OF IT UNLESS YOU ASK ME. IF YOU ASK, I’LL TELL YOU. IF YOU DON’T ASK, THEN YOU LOOK LIKE FOOL. HAHAHAHA! I’M A BIT DELIRIOUS STILL FROM THE CRAZY WEEK, BUT I WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING IF I COULD (ISN’T THAT FROM A SONG?).

SO CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S SNOWING AGAIN? WOW, IT’S KINDA WEIRD! THE OTHER DAY IT WAS 68 DEGREES AND I WAS WEARING JUST A T-SHIRT OUT, AND NOW I HAVE TO GET ALL BUNDLED UP AGAIN. THE WEATHER IS INSANE [IN THE MEMBRANE]! AT LEAST THE FRESH LAYER OF SNOW IS MAKING THE CITY FEEL AND LOOK NICE. IT’S SO MUCH QUIETER NOW THAT THERE’S SNOW ON THE GROUND. THE CARS SEEM TO JUST PASS RIGHT ON BY, AND FOR SOME ODD REASON, THE SNOW JUST QUIETS DOWN THE STREETS AND THE PEOPLE ON THEM. PEOPLE JUST WANT TO GET TO WHERE THEY ARE GOING INSTEAD OF SCREAMING AROUND LIKE THEY USUALLY DO.

SO THE OTHER NIGHT, I ALMOST DID SOMETHING REALLY STUPID. IT’S ONE OF THOSE THINGS I’LL NEVER REALLY TYPE OUT AND EXPLAIN. ALL I’LL DO IS HINT TOWARDS WHAT IT IS AND LEAVE IT AT THAT. EXCEPT FOR RARE INSTANCES, LIKE THE OTHER NIGHT, WHERE I SERIOUSLY ALMOST BARFED IN MY MOUTH BECAUSE I WAS BEING SO STUPID. IT’S ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT I REALLY WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW BUT NOT KNOW AT THE SAME TIME. HAHAHAHA. NERVOUS!!!! IT’S EMBARRASSING. IT’S FRIGHTENING!! IT’S DEFINITELY ONE OF THOSE ROUNDABOUT SITUATIONS. THE ONES WHERE YOU CAN’T WAIT TO REVEAL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF A SITUATION BUT YOU DON’T BECAUSE YOU ARE DEATHLY AFRAID OF REJECTION. AHH, LIKE, SO COMPLICATED! HA HA HA! YOU’D BE CLEVER IF YOU GOT MY HINTS HERE. IT’S JUST ALL TOO FUNNY. LIFE HAS BEEN GOOD. AHH, TOO GOOD. :)

SOOOOO…THIS ENTRY BELOW HAS BEEN SITTING AROUND IN THE QUEUE FOR THE WHOLE WEEK. BEAR WITH THE LENGTH, PLEASE. I’M HILARIOUS. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT? CAN’T TOUCH ME!!!! HYUK HYUK HYUK!!

Yahoo! Answers answers the age old question: What’s the difference between C and CE on calculators? I’m a bit confused now though because I was always under the impression that CE meant “clear everything” and thus cleared all the memory while C only cleared the most recent. Apparently, I’m completely wrong. The opposite of what I thought is true.

Go to Great Firewall of China to see if a particular website (or your website) is blocked in China. I’m at work, so I just felt like checking both Doobybrain.com and Goodhousekeeping.com. It turns out that Doobybrain.com is BLOCKED and Goodhousekeeping.com is NOT. I guess in China I’m just too vulgar to handle. Ok, thanks to Justin for actually testing it out FROM China. Doobybrain.com is NOT blocked. Yay! :)

Florence sent me this one: Apparently, a joke I recently re-told (NOT MINE) is the subject of a scientific research study about why people laugh and when they laugh. The results and conclusions are a bit fascinating, particularly since the long-standing belief that we all laugh because something is funny is somewhat being thrown out the window.

Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along.

He and Professor Provine figure that the first primate joke — that is, the first action to produce a laugh without physical contact — was the feigned tickle, the same kind of coo-chi-coo move parents make when they thrust their wiggling fingers at a baby. Professor Panksepp thinks the brain has ancient wiring to produce laughter so that young animals learn to play with one another. The laughter stimulates euphoria circuits in the brain and also reassures the other animals that they’re playing, not fighting.

“Primal laughter evolved as a signaling device to highlight readiness for friendly interaction,” Professor Panksepp says. “Sophisticated social animals such as mammals need an emotionally positive mechanism to help create social brains and to weave organisms effectively into the social fabric.”

Laughter can be used cruelly to reinforce a group’s solidarity and pride by mocking deviants and insulting outsiders, but mainly it’s a subtle social lubricant. It’s a way to make friends and also make clear who belongs where in the status hierarchy.

Interesting! I know sometimes I’m coerced into laughing for the sake of the action (it happens a lot at work actually — go figure). Anyway, now that I’ve read this, I’m gonna be more aware of my laughter (as odd as that sounds).

Drivl goes ahead and illustrates some of the top social media websites for us. It’s funny.

If you don’t use Google Reader then you won’t really understand the usefulness and cleverness that is behind this photoshopped keyboard with a huge J key. [via]

I’m a news whore, basically. And I find it so incredibly ridiculous of me that I’ve never even bothered to include Topix on my list of daily news checks. Problem with these social news sites though is that after a while, they all sorta say the same thing because all the same kinds of people are all on these sites at once, “reporting” about the same friggin thing.
Then…of course, you get those retarded threads like “are women as sexy as they used to be?”

If you’re like me and you want one of those lovely new t-shirts from the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, then you’re in luck because now they are on sale at their city store for $18. Unfortunately, the colors are a bit tragic. I’ve seen better ones at non-official locations. But you gotta scoop those out yourself.

HOLY MOLY! All we have to do is just get Mars a bit closer to the sun and the humongous polar ice caps at its South pole will melt with enough water to cover the ENTIRE surface of the planet in 30 feet of water.

Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

With a radar technique, astronomers have penetrated for the first time about 2.5 miles (nearly four kilometers) beneath the south pole’s frozen surface. The data showed that nearly pure water ice lies beneath.

Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. I want to live on Mars. More info about the discovery from NASA Mars Express.

These ads from Surfride Foundation are really funny and neat. The illustration and art is fantastic and conveys the truth behind the ad quite well.

Yelena showed me this Cingular commercial that she’s using for her SMG presentation. I thought it was a brilliant ad. I like it.

The Optimus Keyboard — the one with the configurable LED keys — has officially debuted. And while it looks nice and spiffy, the outrageous price tag of $1490 (US Dollars) is surely going to turn some people off from it. I guess the high price partially has to do with each key being a small bit like a computer of its own (not literally, of course, but I guess you can look at it that way). Anyway, I guess the idea is still cool. But I’m waiting for when the technology gets cheap enough for me to afford. More info on the keyboard (and more pictures) on their keyboard blog.

Look at Joyce’s iPod! Crazy! I want one! This money one is right on the…money. Ha! I’m so dang clever with my puns. Yar yar yar!

Ever wish you could just drive straight through a mall in your car? Yeah, me neither. But I guess some people can and will try. [via] Ha! What an idiot.

Last Christmas (Christmas 2006), Simon got me a pretty neat Christmas present: a Kidrobot Munny figurine. Since Christmas time was so busy for me though — because of the move and other miscellaneous things — I haven’t actually gotten around to opening the present until just now. And boy was that a mistake. It turns out the Munny is actually much cooler than it looks in a display case (that’s how they’re mostly displayed at the Kidrobot store). I have the special edition “holiday 2006″ one and it’s awesome. I can’t wait to doodle and color on it. It stands really solid too. And heck, for $25, it sure does make a good gift. I’d want another one any time! Feel free to buy me one!
If you want a better sense of how big the Munny is, you can check out this photo. I need to name mine. Any suggestions?

At work, I spend a lot of time at the computer. And because I’m at the computer a lot, I end up frequenting sites like Facebook a lot to either pass time or just keep myself sane (usually both). I just hope that Hearst isn’t monitoring my surfing habits because, dang, if they are, then I’m as dead meat as this dude who surfed Facebook so much at work that he almost got fired.
One thing I’ll say though, is that I think personal freedom at work to surf to whatever site you please is actually more productive than most companies would like to believe or admit.

OMG. This is life changing. If you hold down ALT in Microsoft Word, you can vertically select text. WTH! I didn’t know that!!! WOW! [via]

This is exactly what I think of everybody who is telling me that they want to get the Apple iPhone. Really.

Vestal Design has an interesting look at how train tickets (and probably tickets in general) can be re-designed to better serve the common people. I don’t take the train very often, but I know that tickets for just about anything are as confusing as ever. Take airplane tickets and concert tickets for example. Both kinds of tickets are basically all text, with either zero or very little graphical interpretations. This means that someone would have to take the time out to read, or at least skim over, every line of the ticket before finding out the specific information he/she may want to know (ie: seat number, location, destination, arrival/departure time, etc.). Also, there’s a good point about the life expectancy of most standard issue tickets: they suck. Paper quality is almost always utter crap and most of the time you can’t put a ticket in your purse or wallet without having it rip or get folded into a paper airplane.
To remedy the situation, Vestal Design has suggested using large graphic icons (universally recognizable or at least interpretable) as well as a color scheme of some sort.
Check out the rest of the project to redesign tickets here.

How come I didn’t see this stunning photo before? I must have been blind.
And oddly enough, I have a photo in Brooklyn taken near Enid’s that looks almost exactly like this.

Are you serious?! The Shake Shack is on The Wall Street Journal’s list of best burger joints in the COUNTRY??!??! Is someone on crack?! I can sorta understand being on the list of best burger places in NYC, but c’mon…FOR REAL?! THE COUNTRY???!!!! I have a feeling somebody’s not eating enough burgers nationwide…

To end this post, I wanted to show you Lily Allen’s rendition of her own song, Smile, in Simlish. [via]
Simlish is the made-up language that the Sims speak in The Sims games. It’s a real language and it’s quite complex.
If you want to see the original music video for Smile, then go here.

By the way, Lily Allen is coming to NYC for a concert on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 @ Irving Plaza. I sorta really want to go. I think she’d put on a good show.

WAS THE CAPS HARD TO READ? YEAH? YEAH? YEAH?! BYE!