This 'public service announcement' from Jack Black, international sensation, supermega rock and roll god and superstar, can be found on the website for the upcoming Tenacious D movie, but here is a direct link. Very funny stuff.
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay For their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes Taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life. This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick Was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him Brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an Institution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes Followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was Anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a Lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the School organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want To do that.''
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran More than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he Tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore For two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly Shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a Single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race Officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he Was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud Getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you Think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with A cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to Be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.
``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a Mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' One doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''
A recent study of our team on how to better our Windows XP systems comissioned to create an eBook on the subject for the main team at MPortela led us to investigate a countless number of details on how to better your performance and machine.
Some of the working tweaks you can do to your Windows XP can really be a blessing to your system’s speed. So I thought about sharing with you the safe tweaks on how to have a faster Windows XP. As a disclaimer do the following tweaks at your own risk, however they were all tested and are in use by most of our team members and friends.
A. DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:
1. Go to Start 2. Click Settings 3. Click Control Panel 4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs 5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components 6. Uncheck the Indexing services 7. Click Next
B. OPTIMISE DISPLAY SETTINGS
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:
1.Go to Start 2. Click Settings 3. Click Control Panel 4. Click System 5. Click Advanced tab 6. In the Performance tab click Settings 7. Leave only the following ticked: - Show shadows under menus - Show shadows under mouse pointer - Show translucent selection rectangle - Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop - Use visual styles on windows and buttons
C. SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING
You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
1. Open My Computer 2. Click on Tools menu 3. Click on Folder Options 4. Click on the View tab. 5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box 6. Click Apply 7. Click Ok 8. Reboot your computer
D. IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE
Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings. NOTE: This program is shareware and some features require activation. Once Installed:
1.Go to Show Wizard and select All 2.Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing. 3.Exit and Save Cacheman 4.Restart Windows
E. OPTIMISE YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION
There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer.
1. Download and install 2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps) 3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet 4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply 5. Reboot
F. OPTIMISE YOUR PAGEFILE
If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.
1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties 2. Select the Advanced tab 3. Under Performance choose the Settings button 4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change 5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.
Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
G. SPEEDUP FOLDER ACCESS - DISABLE LAST ACCESS UPDATE
If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.
1. Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit” 2. Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem” 3. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’ 4. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’ 5. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’ 6. Change the Value Data to ‘1′ 7. Click ‘OK’
H. MAKE YOUR MENUS LOAD FASTER
This is one of my favourite tweaks as it makes a huge difference to how fast your machine will ‘feel’. What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.
1. Go to Start then Run 2. Type ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’ 3. Find “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\” 4. Select “MenuShowDelay” 5. Right click and select “Modify’ 6. Reduce the number to around “100″ 7. This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to “0″ but it can make windows really hard to use as menus will open if you just look at them - well move your mouse over them anyway. I tend to go for anywhere between 50-150 depending on my mood
I. IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED
This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.
1. Go to Start then select Run 2. Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok 3. Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\’ 4. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’ 5. Right click and select ‘Modify’ 6. Change the value to ‘1000′ 7. Click ‘OK’ 8. Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’ 9. Right click and select ‘Modify’ 10. Change the value to ‘1000′ 11. Click ‘OK’ 12. Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\ .DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’ 13. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’ 14. Right click and select ‘Modify’ 15. Change the value to ‘1000′ 16. Click ‘OK’ 17. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’ 18. Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’ 19. Right click and select ‘Modify’ 20. Change the value to ‘1000′ 21. Click ‘OK’
J. IMPROVE SWAPFILE PERFORMANCE
If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.
1. Go to Start then Run 2. Type “msconfig.exe” then ok 3. Click on the System.ini tab 4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign 5. Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1″ 6. Click OK 7. Restart PC
K. ENSURE XP IS USING DMA MODE
XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer - a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA:
1. Open ‘Device Manager’ 2. Double-click ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’ 3. Right-click ‘Primary Channel’ and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Settings’ 4. In the ‘Current Transfer Mode’ drop-down box, select ‘DMA if Available’ if the current setting is ‘PIO Only’
I saw this word on the 5th Season of 24, when Jack Baeur was trying to convince Agent Aaron Pierce that Walt Cummings has conspired with the terrorist against the United States and the Government.
coup d'é‧tat a sudden and decisive action in politics, esp. one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.
[Origin: 1640–50; < F: lit., stroke concerning the state]
It's been a long and painful hiatus here at clubsonyericsson, but we're officially back to reporting all Sony Ericsson news, starting with something that's not so news, but pretty hot.
What you see on these photos could be Sony Ericsson's first Digital Video Broadband-Handheld enabled device. It could play videos and digital TV streamed wirelessly and even record them in its internal 10gb memory. That would allow for some live time-shifting too. It could be the first to be operated in landscape mode (except during calls, obviously) and to introduce an iPod-esque clickwheel for scrolling and fast-forwarding AS WELL as the traditional 5 or 9-way joystick it surrounds. It could have two additional softkeys to the right of the 3.5" 800x600px screen could replace the "back" and "C" buttons and make the interface even more flexible and powerful. It could also sport a Memory Stick Micro slot to support those 32gb cards that Sony claims will be available some day not soon.
It could be all that, but it's not. These aren't even spy shots. But they certainly aren't fake. This is a concept Sony Ericsson *I* (not Sony Ericsson) made for one of my classes (product design), and the photos have been stolen... from my K750. I want to make this clear to all german lawyers around before they rush to write a cease-and-desist letter. Look guys, it doesn't even have the official Sony Ericsson logo on it (but a huge one with the UCSE font engraved on the back instead).
The project was to take a cheap-ass ugly pda-looking electronic Sudoku and turn it into something else. Some of my classmates went for Star Trek Klingon transceiver and such, but what would I do other than a Sony Ericsson? Here's a bunch of photos of the final model, including the clickwheel+joystick thing I mentioned. The design is inspired in the white M600 with several speakers based on the back of the J220, with Walkman-orange accents around the border, the joystick and the front speaker. I hope you like it!
Here are some early ideation sketches:
Another design direction that was way more difficult to produce:
A hit man who’s very good at what he does, but is losing his taste for the business. Danny is a salesman whose marriage and finances are in trouble. One night, at the hotel bar, these two men meet. Before long, they find themselves having an extremely unique Mexico City experience, one that will change them both forever.
Trailer (2:30) Comedy Rating: Not yet rated In Theatres: December 30th, 2005
Richard Shepard (dir.) Pierce Brosnan Greg Kinnear Hope Davis
A Catholic, a Baptist, and a Mormon are bragging about the size of their families.
"I have four boys and my wife is expecting another. One more son and I''''ll have a basketball team!" said the Catholic.
"That''''s nothing!'''''''' said the Baptist. ''''''''I have ten boys now, and my wife is pregnant with another child. One more son and I''''ll have a football team!"
"You both should be ashamed of yourselves!'''''''' said the Mormon. ''''''''I have seventeen wives. One more and I''''ll have a golf course!"
A blonde walked into a gas station and said to the manager, ''I locked my keys in my car. Do you have a coat hanger or something I can stick through the window to unlock the door?''
''Why sure,'' said the manager, ''we have something that works especially well for that.''
A couple minutes later, the manager walked outside to see how the blonde was doing and he heard another voice. ''No, no! A little to the left,'' said the other blonde inside the car.
Two young men decided to make a bet as to which one of them could make love more times in one night. They agreed that sunrise would be the end of the contest and each went to their respective motel rooms. The more boastful of the two ... went right to it and made love to his date ... leaned over and marked a "l" on the wall ... Feeling sprightly, he went again ... and once again at the completion of the act ... marked another "l" on the wall - next to the first. Figuring he had the bet in the bag ... he decided to relax a bit and in relaxing ... fell asleep.
Awakened by the sun's rays coming in the window ... he quickly grab his lady and did it one more time ... and marked another "l" on the wall ... Just at that time ... His friend enters ... and upon seeing the marks on the wall exclaims:
"DAMN - a hundred and eleven ... beat me by three ..."
HOW TO - Free international calling... for the next 3 years?
Michael Gartenberg from Jupiter Research spotted this odd phone service for making free international calls, you call a number in Iowa (712-858-8883) and according to the site... "When the gateway answers, enter 011 then the country code and number you want to reach (mobile users, do not hit SEND - the call will go through on it's own). Wait a few moments for your call to ring through and then enjoy your free call."[via] - Link.
As Michael said, if there's a catch, I can't find one either (I called our MAKE Japan office, worked fine) - so, get your phone phreak on if you want to dabble and make some free international calls.
Here's a how-to of sorts so you don't need to pay for the Iowa call... use Skype to make a free local call to the Iowa # (in the USA calls are free within the USA) then just dial out internationally for free... Skype on a Mac sometimes has DTMF issues, but usually on a PC it works fine - try it out and post on up in the comments. I tried using Project Gizmo and it worked fine too...
Click here and enter any website in the box in the top right corner to view the current market price, and see if you want to bid according to its popularity. This goes for any website =D
Last night saw one of the best event of the year. Samsung's Ultra.
They honoured the finest few people in Singapore, FreshIMP, Beatrice and Aldrin. I was in Aldrin's guest list and have gotten 3 invites, so Ben Tan, Ben Soh, Adrian, Delan, Vick & I went down to Raffles City. Man oh man, there were free flow of soft drinks, red/white wine, beer, some blue coloured shooters and tons of finger foods.
Aldrin was also the man behind the decks. Can you imagine, right in the middle of Raffles City, we've got our very own electronic dance music.
The place just lack of a dance floor haha.
The event was supposed to be from 7.30pm to 10pm, however, we stayed till 11.20pm and the free flow was still going strong.
Here are some pics from the event.
Honouring Beatrice
FreshIMP, Aldrin & Beatrice
Linus (Janis's Bro)
Afterwhich, there was a fashion show on stage. We took a couple of pics together with the models after the catwalk.
Now here's the biggest highlight of the night. Corrinne May live right in front of me.
And here is JAMIE TAN YAN HUI! OMG! It's been like 4 years since we last met! I miss her so muchie... (Did I mention that the place was so warm.. I was perspiring like mad..
I managed to have a chat with Corrinne (ok, actually her first name's May) Took a photo right there. That's like the best thing of the night!!
Here's Mia & Me! :D
Delan, Mia & Vick
Ahhh.. Act Cool!
Eileen & Mia
The last batch of guys left at the atrium.
So there we were, all the way till 11.20pm and afterwhich, we headed down to Dragonfly, the newly opened CANTOPOP discotheque @ St James Power Station, for Terrence Chow's birthday party.
His party was filled with celebrities but seriously, I was so high on alcohol that night.
Here's some pics..
Delan, Adrian & Me Right outside the restroom in Dragonfly.
The Club Manager (seems pretty serious huh)
Me & Adrian in the restroom
Can someone tell me who is he? I could only recall that he's really darn cool.
I've no idea what was I talking to Pierre about.
The night just got better. Terrence brought a few of us to a very private room on the 3rd level of Dragonfly. In it was a KTV room and I recalled that the room was all females in it. It was pretty tiny as well so the couple of us went back to the 2nd floor and continued drinking.
Some bastard got me a big glass of chivas neat. It has nothing else, no mixer, no ice in it. Damn.. It was disgusting..
Story that I heard was.. I pushed the drink to Adrian and he cursed at me as well.
Moments later, I recalled leaving the place and we went down to Zouk.
I have no memory of anything that happened after this point. I have no idea what really happened, but after checking with my mates, I roughly have a picture of what's going on.
Apparently, we went down to Velvet Underground at 2.30am and I gave Andy a call to get the few of us in. He did so and we got in free. (Well, I believe I forgot to swipe my members card)
Afterwhich, we went to Zouk Members and I was told that I was very compose and I even lead the way for them. However, I was found sleeping at the stoney area outside members bar.
According to Vick, he couldnt find us and he left home.
According to Adrian, just like me, have no fucking idea how the hell did we reach home.
According to PoPo, I got home at 7.30am.
I checked my phone.. and yes.. I really did call Andy, which means, I was indeed at Zouk. My phone has a call out to Ben @ 5am, which may mean that I woke up, couldnt find anyone, found my way out, and got into a cab, then I got home.
I think that's the answer.. Hmm.. it's so confusing..
What happened during the time from 2.30am to 7.30am was a total blur.
I woke up at 10am feeling like I slept since 12am. And surprisingly, Vick was awake at that time. haha..
Can anyone tell me exactly what the hell happened ???? And how did I get home?
