Well, it looks like we’re paying tribute to pork meat this week on [GaS]. Yesterday, we featured the Original Bacon Explosion, and lo and behold, today, we have the geekiest piece of porkchop ever: Darth Porkchop.
[Via BuzzFeed]
This incredibly small 98.2kb file will allow you to automagically power off your display when you lock your computer.
It also does a bunch of other things, including muting your master volume and setting your status on IM clients to “away.”
The full list of features is as follows:
We all know that energy consumption has both environmental and monetary implications. So by using this little application you can save yourself some dough and make the world a better place – all at the same time! WOOT!
Now let’s check out how this simple application works. After downloading the app you simply run it. It does not need installation. Upon running the application you will see this:
The settings are mostly turned off by default so you will want to hit the button labeled “Option” to rectify that.
I was not able to figure out what the option for “Media Status” does, but all the other ones are self explanatory. Another big plus of running this application is the pause key on your keyboard actually becomes a pause key for your media. Not all media players and instant messengers are compatible right now, but most of the big ones are included. Here is a list of compatible ones:
As you can see, VLC, WMP, and iTunes are on there, so that has about 98% of you covered, right? Though for instant messengers it will only work with Yahoo and Google as of right now – sorry AOL users! But Digsby and Songbird will be included in the next release. And the author has also confirmed that he is working on a Linux version as well! For those of you out there wondering if this will actually help The Planet or our wallets, you might appreciate this snip from http://www.doit.wisc.edu:
Someone recently asked if we should inform our users that monitors in screen-save mode reduce energy consumption by only a few watts. At $.105 per kilowatt hour (kwh), turning off a 75-watt monitor outside 40 hours a week saves $4.38 a month (42 kwh). This saves 750 lb. of CO2 (greenhouse gas emissions) by burning 450 fewer pounds of coal each year! Flat screen monitors consume about one third this much energy.
I like to save money and I love my planet, so can you guess what I am doing with all the computers I manage that ALWAYS have to stay on? Let’s hear your guesses in the comments!
This post was written by guest blogger Karl Gechlik,. Karl is a superhero of the IT industry and a Microsoft Certified Engineer who loves the hell out of NYC! You can check out Karl’s other posts at www.askTheAdmin.com – tell him [GAS] sent ya!
By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
I have a long history with Harry Potter – getting the books at midnight (and reading them in the eight or so hours immediately following), going to line parties for some of the film premieres, dressing as Tonks for Halloween, even writing law review articles about fandom. I point this out so that you’ll know that I’m practically an expert when I say that the newest movie is absolutely fantastic.
Half-Blood Prince was not one of my favorites of the books, largely because I didn’t care for a lot of the romantic subplot, but I actually found that part much more endearing in the film. I think this was in large part due to some of the young actors; Rupert Grint in particular is a surprisingly awesome comedic actor, and I think that this film had a lot more laugh-out-loud moments than the previous five. But then again, there’s a lot of comedic fodder in 16-year-olds learning about the birds and the bees. On the subject of acting, I will also add that Daniel Radcliffe gets better with each film, but he still hasn’t quite worked out how to cry yet (I was reminded of the “BUT HE WAS THEIR FRIEND!” moment from Prisoner of Azkaban at one point). Also, Tom Felton is quite good, and I imagine that thirteen-year-old girls everywhere are swooning into their pillows.
Though of course the real meat of the story has nothing to do with silly teenage relationships at all – it is, as always, ultimately a battle between good and evil. And one of the things I loved about the film is that there is a wonderful motif of duality running throughout – fire and water, light and dark, twins, counterparts, and of course, good and evil. The special effects are absolutely amazing (best yet), and one of the best parts about these films if you’re a fan of the books is seeing things you imagined in your head coming to life – the magical ropes of the Unbreakable Vow, Slughorn as a couch, Hermione’s attack-by-birds on Ron… And overall, the movie is beautifully shot, much of it quite breathtaking. (Though speaking of CGI, there is one scene in particular where I thought for a moment that they’d borrowed Gollum from Lord of the Rings.)
Obviously there are things to nitpick about, especially if you’re a fan of the books, and though I think that overall this film did a pretty good job of picking and choosing what to put in and what to leave out (good news if you’re a fan of Quidditch – it’s back!), there were definitely some head-scratching moments. Like a completely new scene in the middle of the film that has nothing to do with the book and seems to serve little purpose except providing some suspense and vaguely neat visual stuff. And it was thin on explanations in some places in the same way that Prisoner of Azkaban was – remember how, unless you’d read the books, you would have been wondering why on earth Harry’s patronus looked like a stag (as we never found out who the Marauders were)? I had a similar reaction to this film’s revelation about what should (arguably) be a central question in this story: the identity of “the half-blood prince.” So if you haven’t read the books and are blinking at that one after the film – find someone who has and ask them to explain it to you!
If you have kids and are wondering how scary or dark this film might be, I will say that there was a small child in the audience sitting right in front of me who started bawling at one point – and my friend sitting beside me shrieked at the top of her lungs. However, it is just one scene (near the end of the movie… something to do with a lake…).
As a final note, I will add that Michael Gambon as always is absolutely amazing as Dumbledore. And there is one scene in particular that showcases Dumbledore’s bad-assness that made me rather gleeful.
Overall, one of my very favorite films in the series, and I suspect that both obsessive and casual fans will be pleasantly surprised.
An internet consultant says he’s solved the mystery of how a New Hampshire man was charged $23 quadrillion dollars for cigarettes.
Josh Muszynski hit the headlines after paying for the cigarettes at a gas station on Monday using a prepaid Visa card. He was somewhat surprised when he next logged into his online account and found the purchase had been charged at $23,148,855,308,184,500.
Oh, and another $15 for going overdrawn.
Fortunately, his issuing bank, Bank of America, has refunded the money and the fee, though there was no clear explanation for how it had happened.
Visa later announced that the problem could be widespread with as many as 13,000 transactions coming up with the same unlikely charge. It says it’s now fixed the problem but isn’t saying what caused it. That soon became the question of the week as computer analysts tried to figure out what was so significant about the number.
The race appears to have been won by Frank Wales (pictured right) of British firm Limitless Innovations. Writing on his personal blog he noted that he thought to represent the number in base 16 (or hexadecimal). That’s a system which has 16 units rather than the traditional 10 we use in our daily lives, or the two used in binary.
The hexadecimal system is commonly used in computer systems as it is easily compatible with binary (2 doubles to 4, then to 8, then to 16), but is large enough to represent bytes of computer data.
Once you add on the cents and take out the commas, $23,148,855,308,184,500 becomes 2314885530818450000. Convert that to hexadecimal and you get 2020202020201250.
Wales’ theory is that the last four digits of that number represent $12.50 – which sounds just about right if Musynski bought two pack of cigarettes.
And the string of 20s at the start? Well, as you’ll know if you’ve ever mistakenly typed a space in a website address, many computer systems automatically convert spaces into the number 20.
If Wales’s theory is correct, the problem appears to be that somewhere along the processing line, somebody created a system with too much space in a database field and didn’t set the application to automatically remove any spaces that a user typed in to make it fit. (You may recognize this problem from websites which won’t let you type spaces when you input your credit card number.)
If this is the explanation, and the problem was indeed triggered by people spending $12.50, it’s not entirely clear why that number alone should be so problematic.
In the following video, a women asks Hillary Clinton why the US State Department staff cannot use Firefox, even though the browser is completely free and was approved for the “entire intelligence community.” The answer? Deploying and maintaining the browser is “too expensive.”
The only reason I can think of as to why they would give an answer like this is that the organization runs non-standard compliant applications that only work under IE. Converting those applications could cost a lot of money. But noting deployment and maintenance costs as reasons to not adopt the browser is completely ridiculous.
From the Egyptian desert to deep below the polar ice caps, the elite G.I. Joe team uses the latest in next-generation spy and military equipment to fight the corrupt arms dealer Destro and the growing threat of the mysterious Cobra organization to prevent them from plunging the world into chaos.
[Via TechEblog]
As the 40th anniversary of the first moon landings draws nearer, space travel both past and present continues to make headlines.
NASA has launched an official web page to commemorate the Apollo 11 flight. Highlights include a state by state map showing locations of lunar tie-ins, from the birthplaces of astronauts to the current homes of moon rock samples. There’s also a slightly bizarre photo contest where pictures must include the 40th anniversary logo. (If you’ve always wanted to see pictures of children in pirate outfits wearing NASA shirts, it’s a must.)
Of course, it’s nowhere near as cool as We Choose The Moon, a site offering a real-time recreation of the way Apollo 11 was covered. If you haven’t had a chance to do so, check out our own Miss Cellenia’s article about the site.
Meanwhile the agency continues to struggle with its modern-day missions. Tonight will see a sixth attempt to launch the Endeavor shuttle which is due to take seven astronauts to the International Space Station along with the final piece of a Japanese-made space laboratory. The mission has been delayed three times by thunderstorms and twice by hydrogen leaks. If the shuttle doesn’t launch by tomorrow, there will be another 10 day delay to allow a previously scheduled Russian supply run to the station.
Speaking of Russia, six men from the country have just finished a mission to Mars – or the nearest thing to it. The crew have been on a training exercise which concentrates on the journey rather than the destination.
The Associated Press reports they have spent the past 105 days sealed off in a mock-up space capsule made of windowless metal canisters around the size of a railway carriage. Just as with a real shuttle mission, the only contact they’ve had with the outside world has been with the mock controllers, complete with a realistic 20 minute delay.
While the experiment was partly designed to test physical effects (most of those involved put on weight despite extensive exercising), the emotional and mental responses were also of interest. A similar experiment in 1999 was marred by complaints of sexual harassment by a female participant and involved two men having a bloody fistfight. There were no such problems with the all-male crew this time, which will certainly reinforce some stereotypes about how men behave around women.
The men, who were paid just over $20,000 for their participation, said that as well as missing friends and relatives, the main negative effect was missing the sights and sounds of nature.
[Picture source: AP]
Remember our inaugural Wednesday Geeky Pics post? Well, maybe I’ve been watching too much Cake Boss, but I have cake on the brain again. Plus, who doesn’t like cake?
Also remember – these cakes should not be judged by quality but by geekiness! Plus, I’m sure they were all delicious.
To keep on going with our series of posts on super-unhealthy food, let us present you the arteries-clogging Original Bacon Explosion:
Unfortunately, the inventor of this life-threatening delicacy didn’t list the recipe’s dietary values, but if our guess is right, this thing probably has a few 1000’s calories along with way too many grams of saturated fat to be considered safe for one’s health.
Update: For those of you who were curious about The Original Bacon Explosion’s nutritional values, it has about 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat.
If you’re interested in making one of those monstrosities, DIY instructions are available over at BBQAddicts.
Born out of the demented mind of Fabien Cappello, this oldschool typewriter has each of its keys wired to play a different musical note as you type. And while we give it a 10 for creativity, the device doesn’t rate very high in our mind when it comes to melodiousness, especially if you use it in the usual matter.
[Via PopSci]
