There's a story on Fox News that indicates Iran's new president elect may very well be one of the 1979 Iranian hostage takers. Many who were involved say they recognize him, while others say they don't remember seeing him...

There are photos however, which at least confirm someone who looks exaclty like him was in fact involved.

This photo is of Iran's president elect today...




And this is the cover of a book about the Iran hostage crisis, which is available on Amazon...




Though this picture is fairly low res, you can clearly see in it that the facial structure is identical. Keep in mind that these two pictures were taken over 25 years appart... If you look at the nose in particular, they are the exact same size and preportion... I'd say this is a fairly clear match...

Being somewhat of an alien buff [being a regular listener to Coast To Coast AM, and having started reading books on UFOs way back in grade school], and having a PS2 I just finished reading reviews for the two big alien games currently out: Destroy All Humans and Area 51. I've been debating buying one or the other, so to the reviews I went...

I ran into the following quote when reading the review for Area 51...

The company meeting at Inevitable to flesh out plot details probably went a little something like, "So I'd like some freaking mutants, aliens, Illuminati, cyborgs, telepaths, ancient conspiracies, David Duchovny, alien colonization, galactic domination, modern conspiracies, men in black, teleportation, gray buggers, volcanic lairs, and spaceships up in this s***. Oh, and they should all make perfect sense."

The gist of the review is that the storyline gets way to confusing... Interesting thing is, I'm familiar with all of the topics listed... Which makes me wonder if I would get enhanced enjoyment out of the storyline, and possibly be able to understand it... Of corse I loose concentration easily so I may miss important stuff...

Well, if I see a used copy in EB Games, maybe I'll pick one up... My 10% off card won't pay for itself until I use it one more time...

Oh, and remember, there's Alien Mercandise available in The Torgo Store...

The article posted here stated theSupreme Court ruled against file-swapping

Though the page had the following quote:

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement.

To my knowedge, most producers of P2P software in fact do NOT promote this. However that isn't to say others don't... Namely there are sites that say "Get free movies and music legally!"... Then when you pay the $25 they direct you to the site of a creator of a free P2P client. This in itself is really screwed up, and it's not the P2P client authors who do this... It's other companies trying to make a buck by tricking people...

At any rate, will the P2P client authors be heald liable for other sites that do this WITHOUT the P2P client authors consent???

If so then maybe someone should put up how to get free movies and music, then put a link to IE or Safari and tell them if you search the net using the browsers you can find these things... Then I guess Microsoft and Apple will be liable for the fostering of the infringement...

Please ignore this post, unless you want to buy one...

I set up a Wishlist at ThinkGeek.com...

This post is just a link to it...

Waiting for the power to come back on...

I posted before about the Dragon Illusion, where there is an optical illusion when you move around that makes it appear the head is following you...

While I have recorded a video of my own, it didn't come out so well and it wasn't quite what I was shooting for anyway. I did, however, use my cell phone to take some photos of the dragons... I had to do it via my cell phone since my iBook was sent in for repairs... I've put the pictures below...

The thing to remember when looking at these is that in each picture, NONE of the dragons were touched, and NONE of the moved! Though it appears the heads of each dragon turned for each picture, in actuality this NEVER happened!!!

Neat huh?

A mo-blog test

The above was a test post using blogger's new go.blogger.com mo-blogging service... I've used Flickr in the past, but wanted to at least give this a try... I'll have to toss a coin to figure out which one I will go with normally...

I'm either going crazy or something here isn't right...

I'm attempting to use a ring sizing chart to figure out what size wedding band I need...

Now, I cut a peice of paper to the perfect length and am now trying to measure it...

I first measured it in inches, and it's EXACTLY 2 5/8 in... Well, according to this size chart that is a size 10 1/2...

So I then measure the EXACT SAME PIECE OF PAPER using the mm side, and get exactly 67mm... So that, according to the SAME CHART is a size 12 1/2...

So, thiking my ruler is screwed up I head over to WWW Unit Converter and convert 2 5/8 in (2.625 in) to mm and get 66.675 mm... Which basically means my ruler is 100% correct, and according to the size chart if I decide to use inches or mm I will get 2 different sizes for the same finger...

Am I going crazy here???

I checked other charts online as well, and they pretty much all say the same thing... Why must this be so stupidly difficult, as to not even make sense???

A post or two ago I talked about how I wasn't extremely bothered by Apple's switch to Intel...

I put that my only main concern was continued support for my G3 iBook, and I included about repairs and the fact my warranty is up soon...

Welp, as I could have figured, my iBook is once again on the fritz... I'm guessing it's an issue with the logic board, as the patern of what happened was symiler to what happened the last time I had my logic board give out... What's odd is that the replacement should have fixed the issue...

But I am still undear warranty (for exactly 180 days as of today), so I'm going to be recieveing a box here soon...

What I DON'T like is the fact that I had backed up some stuff on my iPod, and deleted it a few days ago to save some room... :(

If I can't get anything off my drive, and if my hard drive is fried, I may loose even more than I lost the last time my hard drive went bad... I'm going to attempt to put it into target disk mode tonight and hopefully can copy the stuff off of it... I'll keep my fingers crossed...

The other day I was helping a couple people play some game thing on deathball.net, and there was some level thing that featured 2 images representing 3D, and it had this little paper dragon thing in it...

It had the url to a video zipped up as some kind of hint. Well, needless to say the few of us were very confused and amazed by this video. You see the dragon appears to be looking at the camera, and regardless of where it moves, this paper dragon always appears to turn it's head twards the camera.

After watching the video several times, I tried to searh for the text written on it of "Gathering For Gardner"... Though after a few searches I didn't find anything relating to this weird dragon. So I finally did a search for "Dragon Illusion" and found it! It seems this little dragon thing is on Grand Illusions, and is downloadable...

It turns out the thing works by having an inside out head. Basically the brain (espeically in 2D, ie: one eye or on video), believes it's shapped differently than it really is (like it's rightside out). Because of this, the brain is tricked when you move to think the head is actually following you. However if you know how it's shaped when you watch it, you can easily see whats really happening...

What I've found is that after making a couple, I had a hard time "seeing" the head move... But I found lighting is key... I placed one of them in my house and by mere coincidence I found it was probably the perfect place for the effect. As when my lights in the room are on, I can actually view the moving head with both eyes uncovered...

As of now I've made 2 other colors out of the provided template. Basically I photoshoped it... I also have fully cleaned up the images, removing the little white lines & arrows and stuff used to help explain how to assemble it... Once you put 2 of them together, you really don't need thoes lines anymore... I also found it's easier to reference the template on the computer than try to decode the cut up paper...

I'm hoping to make my own type thing using this effect... I dunno if I will get anywhere, not being an artist and all... But I will see...

I found a commercial version of this too, called "Eye Foolery"...

This site is the best place I found to buy them, if you're intetested: Great Gift Ideas

Ignore this post, unless you wana buy this product...

Well, I've had a little over 24 hours now to let this sink in. I thought I would give my uncensored view...

At first I have to say I was in disbeleif, even though I had followed the rumor that Max OS X had been ported to run on Intel since the beginning...

I had called my mom last night & mentioned it to her, and she talked to me as if I was really disappointed... I told her that actually, it insn't necessarily a bad thing...

I'm mainly concerned about the big picture... My biggest concern now is where will I be left 2 years from now... You see I've got a VERY tight budget, and a new computer isn't an option. I had purchased a 3 year warranty on my iBook, which has saved me a couple times. I'm looking at my warrenty being up here in the next 5 months, and am really worried SOMETHING could happen after that, then I'd be without any computer at all...

For the last several months I've been working really hard at keeping my old iMac (Blueberry) running for my girlfriend to use. Right now I need to replace the hard drive (again) and she no longer has a dvd drive (though she does have an external firewire CD-RW)...

At any rate my point here is that, assuming my iBook is still operational in 2007/2008, I highly doubt I will even be considering getting a new inBook due to my financial burdens... So, when will Apple drop the PowerPC support all together? As of now my iBook is a G3, and it's quicly becomming obsolete for new programs... Will Mac OS X 10.5 still work on both? How about 10.6? Will that drop PowerPC all together???

I'm assumming Apple will support PowerPC for a long while, but I'm not looking forward to when support starts waining... And obvously now even if I could buy a new G4 iBook, I'm not so sure I would...

In the long run, assuming I can evenually buy an inBook, I am looking forward to where this leads... Hopefully there will be a noticable price drop... Maybe I can one day buy a dell and install OS X on it with a hack of some kind...

Though one thing I don't like is the idea of loosing some of the apps I commonly use... I tend to get attached to certain applications, and some times use them until a time when I have to scour the internet to re-download the application if I lost it because it's so outdated... I actually remember doing that a week or two ago, but can't remember what for right now... If I've got apps I'm actively using that are destin to die a whorible non-intel compatible death, I'm not going to be too pleased...

However, there is one thing I'm really excited about... The thought of what will come of products such as VirtualPC... I would assume that under an intel processor, such an emulator would emulate very little, and the emulation would be blazing... Furthermore we may end up in a position where a method of porting would allow certain windows applications to run natively on Intel based Macs with little extra work from a developer... Which could mean a huge influx in the number of applicaitons avalible on the Mac... I've read somewhere that some think windows apps may just work on a Mac, however I do not see this as possible... Mainly due to the environment windows apps are used to... The Mac OS X environment isn't even close, so I think it will take a little more to get the two working on the same level...

At this point in time, however, I'm just watching... Sitting here with my G3 iBook, wishing for more but not being able to afford it... So we'll see how things go...

Please wish my current iBook a continued long life for now...

In the June 10th 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly I was interviewed and quoted in an article on Manos -- The Hands of Fate! The article is entitled "The Worst Movie Ever Made". I wasn't sure if they would use anything I said, but they did! You can view a preview of it on line, but you must have an account to read the full article. You can, however, pick up a copy in your local grocery store... Assuming the demand for something with my name in it isn't so high, they run out of coppies immedately...

I've yet to read the article myself but someone in my office with a subscription read it and said they did use my name and some quotes...

Well, someone is bound to do this, so I figured I'd take a shot... There was one graphic I was expecting to see on the keynote screen while discussion of the Apple/Intel paring was going on...



Tada!

At any rate, that graphic was the only reason for this post...

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com

This is very scary. This may very well signal the beginning of the end of our world as we know it! This rumor has exsited for much longer than Mac OS X has. However many news sources are confirming this is going to happen, and if so, it will occur in the keynote starting just 20 minutes from now...

I'm racing to see if I can find a QuickTime broadcast of the event, but so far I've not found a link anywhere... I'll keep looking, but we may be moments away from Apple's biggest announcement of the century!!! Lock your doors...

HELP us find the tooth!

This is very interesting and seems a very credible explanation as to what The Loch Ness monster (Nessy) really is!

It's common belief it's a plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur that has survived to this day... Whelp, this is wrong, and many residents around the loch know this very well...

I heard all of this off of a Coast to Coast AM. An author who wrote a fictional book has based the tale on the monster in reality.

You see, the reason the residents and others in the know don't come forward, is mainly because the myth is a major driving force in their economy. If it comes out this thing is NOT a dinosaur, and is instead some breed of an eel like fish, once it's learned, the tourist trade would basically die... It would simply be a new species and if you think about it nobody would be drawn to the monster any more...

The monster is a fish, that looks remotely similar to an eel, is around 40 feet long, and lives in the deepest portions of the loch. It is sensitive to light, so does NOT come out during the day. It feeds on fish, however sometimes comes up during the winter (evenings) for other forms of food when the fish population in the loch (salmon) is down... It has very vicious teeth (as you can see in the site linked above), and is actually capable of feeding on land creatures. It can go across land in the same way a snake does... Are there more of these creatures in existence? Yes. There are a series of deep sea creatures in neighboring seas that have been picked up by sonar (and are called bloops by the navy). These creatures live in extremely deep water and normally never surface (except in rare instances when they can't find food down there, which never happens in the sea but does in the loch)... They have been detected by sonar, but live much to deep to be whales, sharks or other normally large sea creatures. They normally don't get overly gigantic, because they die shortly after mating... However if one were trapped alone, say in a deep loch, they would live for many years, being incapable of mating... Due to this, it would continue to grow and could get very large... Say 40-50 feet and 3000lbs...

At any rate check out the link above and you can see one of it's teeth. You would NOT want to camp on the loch shore at night in the winter, as this thing could take a sizable chunk out of your leg. It's not a pretty creature (and again, the residents know all this)... The story with the tooth is that these two kids found it, filmed it and photographed it. They then signaled a passing boat being very excited. Whelp, the boat was what is called a water bailiff, think of it as the loch's version of a forest ranger. He took the tooth and their pictures and videos saying he needed it for a report and they could pick everything, including the tooth the next day... Well, when they went to get it the police acted as if they were a couple crazy kids, then threatened to take away their passports if they continued to press the issue...

Well, the bailiff didn't get everything, they had another tape and some photographs that they managed to keep. They are now looking to try to get the tooth back, and are offering a $100,000 reward (which has gone up, as it was announced on Coast to Coast as being $5,000)... The bailiff of course took it for the same reason nobody there actually talks about it, it would kill the massive tourism for people wanting to find the monster themselves... And things like little plastic dinosaurs and other tourist trinkets...

So, if you wondered, this seems like a nicely credible story to me... I've always been one interested in cryptozoology... Along with the other things such as UFO's & extraterrestrials, ancient mythologies, and biblical artifacts... Dunno why, I just find them very intriguing...