PenguinSix » Random News

Super Bowl 2012 ads leaked online

Andrew — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 02:28:02 +0000

Had a chuckle watching this Chevrolet ad, only to find out that many other companies are early releasing their Super Bowl 2012 movies.

Chevrolet Super Bowl 2012

Volkswagon Teaser Trailer

Doritos Teaser

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Toy Trains Battle Royale for Supreme Dominance of the Tracks

Andrew — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:03:04 +0000

I couldn’t think of a better translation, but you get the general idea from above what’s going on here.

On Youtube, where you can find just about anything, there are quite a few guys in Japan who have filmed incredibly complex train crashes involving toy PLARAIL trains. These are plastic battery-powered Japanese toy trains that zip around on blue Tomica track, of which there is quite an abundance in my own home. These Otaku train guys film massive competitions between various train types across multiple track layouts to determine once and for all who is the strongest.

My kids are hooked.

There are literally hundreds of these videos. My boys watch them over and over again to the point they know which trains will succeed and which will fail, and more complicated, which track layouts we should attempt to duplicate here in the house. ”No daddy, build the one with six bridges and four crossing points” (and by the way, my son says ‘points’ instead of ‘switches’–darn British-based education system over here).

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Paper cutouts for boys

Andrew — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:56:49 +0000

With both sons home for the Christmas holiday, it doesn’t take long for the toys to become “boring” and playing to become “dull”. So we’re having to scour the net for new things to do, and that led to cutting out paper and making stuff.

First up was some Doctor Who Tardi(ses) or whatever is the plural of Tardis. The boys got “Where is Doctor Who” for Christmas so they are having fun looking for the Doctor and Rory and Amy in a book filled with Daleks and Cyberman.

Next up is their old love of bullet trains. This site has a slew of paper cutout Japanese bullet trains.

I guess we’ll make our way to paper planes soon enough.

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The 12 books I read in 2011.

Andrew — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:29:28 +0000

I guess I should feel lucky I had time for even these 12.

Basically these are the 12 books I read this year, in no particular order.

Steve Jobs biography
Arsene Wenger biography
The Quants (Wall Street Math guys)
Deadly Choices (about the vaccine / autism debate)
Defence of the Realm (MI-5 History tome)
The World According to Clarkson
Delivering Happiness (history of Zappos)
Cold Steel (the battle of steel industry giants)
The Black Swan (the effect, not the ballerinas)
Too Big to Fail (Lehman Brothers, the US government bailout of AIG, et al)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I was sick one day and re-read it)
The Facebook Effect (history of the Facebook)

Finding time to read is harder and harder. I managed to get a few of these in digital form rather than paper, since buying them over here in Hong Kong is such a pain in the butt. I don’t really have a review of most of them. They were all kind of well, interesting enough for me to buy or get them but not necessarily things that changed my life. Delivering Happiness is something I recommend to others, and the Facebook Effect for those who want to know more than the move.

Next year I have a bunch of classics (read — past their copyright and free) e-books already loaded on to the iPad. I’m reading some of the history of World War I, something I don’t know enough about. I’m also going to try and read some more spy novels. I have a Wallander book or two lying around that is about half done which I should eventually finish. This was also the first year my science-based reading went down a bit. Guess I didn’t have enough time to focus.

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Saturday Night Live: We will find you, and we will kill you.

Andrew — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:08:24 +0000

In honor of Billy Crystal being named to host the Oscars, one of his best bits from Saturday Night Live.

Yeah Winston U!

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Moving video of girl sharing the ‘secret’ of her mother’s suicide.

Andrew — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:33:51 +0000

Pretty moving viral video making the rounds today.

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The First 24 Hours at Fukushima

Andrew — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:44:49 +0000

Interesting report is out today from the IEEE Spectrum about the first 24 hours at Fukushima. While TEPCO has been rather quiet about the goings on, the authors and nuclear engineers have tried to ‘reverse engineer’ what happened by putting together public statements and other data.

One of the more interesting tidbits came a few hours into the disaster, when the control room couldn’t even get power to turn on the lights, let alone look at the monitors that were reporting how data from sensors within the reactor. The crew scrambled for an emergency solution, to the point they ran out to the parking lot and grabbed car batteries from various vehicles and hot-wired some form of power to get the machines back online.

As the operators surveyed the damage, they quickly realized that the diesel generators couldn’t be salvaged and that external power wouldn’t be restored anytime soon. In the plant’s parking lots, workers raised car hoods, grabbed the batteries, and lugged them back to the control rooms. They found cables in storage rooms and studied diagrams. If they could connect the batteries to the instrument panels, they could at least determine the water levels in the pressure vessels.

TEPCO did have a backup for the emergency generators: power supply trucks outfitted with high-voltage dynamos. That afternoon, emergency managers at TEPCO’s Tokyo headquarters sent 11 power supply trucks racing toward Fukushima Dai-ichi, 250 km away. They promptly got stuck in traffic. The roads that hadn’t been damaged by the earthquake or tsunami were clogged with residents fleeing the disaster sites.

A tad technical at times but definitely worth reading.

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Did you hear the one about the Polish airline that landed a plane without landing gear?

Andrew — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:38:22 +0000

I mean, this video is such a setup for some Polish jokes.

Nonetheless, looked like a flawless landing. Kudos to the crew for bringing it home with everyone safe.

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Obama Sauce, made from real sea urchins

Andrew — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:33:19 +0000

File this under #WTF or #CRAZYJAPANESE

I was in the City Super grocery store in Hong Kong when I just had to snap a picture of this. Obama Sauce. It’s about $12-$15US a bottle, and from the description sounds basically disgusting. But before you go off and say ‘whacky Japanese’ you should remember in China they have Obama Fried Chicken.

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Horrible IndyCar crash takes life of a Dan Wheldon

Andrew — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 02:13:26 +0000

Pretty horrendous video if you haven’t seen this crash. Multiple cars bursting into flames and going airborne. Once a hint of wind gets underneath these cars it’s like a kite flying in the sky.

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