SlackthePlanet

Just thought I’d let everyone know I am also a Jedi master. May the force be with you.

Alright, one more clip from the “Whitest Kids U Know” before I go to bed. I think it sends a good message to children that they never have to just settle for what they are given.

Its 6am, I have not been to bed yet and this is insanely funny.

I think the title says it all:

I was messing around on the Interwebz today and found Bighugelabs.com. They have so many cool toys to play with on that site. No registration needed, which let me just say is so awesome. I don’t know about you but if I have to register for one more website my head may very well explode from all the useless logins floating around in it. But I digress.

I only spent a little time on the site today but managed to create some really fun things. These were made from some photos I had of my pets. I will certainly be heading back later to play with some of the other apps. Anyway, here is the results of my time spent slacking on the webz. Enjoy!

Links: BigHugeLabs

I have a webcam, chances are you probably do to. But, if you don’t have a Mac you are missing out on some serious fun with the photo booth application. Never fear, cameroid to the rescue. I’m not quite sure how long they have been around but its shaping up to be loads of fun. No need for special software or anything like that, just make sure your webcam is plugged in and point your browser to cameroid.com. Here are a few examples of things you can do with it.

This website kept me entertained for a good 15-20mins. I can see where this would be a great page for kids. Its nice, safe, and could keep them entertained for hours. This will definitely be on the to-do list the next time my nephews come to spend then day with me.

Links:

Cameroid

Alright, so not many people know this about me but other than being a slacker and computer geek I am also an aquarium nerd. If it lives in water I love it, its just that simple. I’ve kept fresh and saltwater aquariums now for almost 12 years. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be kicking the habit anytime soon. Over the last few years I probably haven’t gone more than a day or two without checking in on Nano-Reef.com. Its a great place for information about anything saltwater related.

Lately I’ve also been playing with Animoto.com. Its a video production website that allows users to upload their pics, choose or upload a song, and then *poof* a video is born. At first I simply scoffed. There was just no way a web interface could produce something as good as a video slide-show from a home computer. I was SOOO wrong. Not only did it produce video with much high production values than “most” people can do at home, it was also dead simple to do. I don’t think I would be to far off in saying someones grandma could probably figure it out in five minutes. Well…once you got past showing good old grandma how to use a mouse for an hour anyway.

So to my point, what do these two things have in common? Nothing really, I was just setting up the fact that I just made a simple video using pictures from nano-reef.com using animoto.com and it took all of 10 minutes. Oh, did I mention that they can also transfer your shiny new video straight to your Youtube account? Try it out, its fun and free…FREE PEOPLE!!!

A little history. I’ve been stuck in the dark ages for a long, long, long, time. When I first started using computers way back then 14.4 modems were considered fast(Don’t laugh). Over time I did what any reasonable geek would do I upgraded every chance I got throwing money away on what now would be considered “relics”. I made the progression up to 28.8 to 33.6 and then 56k…sadly however that is where it all stopped for me.

I had the misfortune of living in the country. Yes, this does mean I am blessedly free of neighbors complaining every time I do something like walk naked in front of an open window. However it means I am also on my local phone providers shit list. I had been begging their customer service for years to run DSL to my location. Their response over the last six years has always been the same “Very soon, we are expanding all the time”. It turns out that the customer service line about expansion could not have been further from the truth. One day I happened to talk with a DSL technician for said phone company. I asked the gentleman is there was anything he could do to speed up the deployment or possible give me an ETA. The response was the one I had been expecting all these years, he begins with a laugh and then says:

“Out there? You’ll never get DSL way out there. We need at least fifty houses to agree to sign up before it becomes financially viable to put a switch out there.”

In itself this wouldn’t be so bad for most people. Then again most people have more than one option for internet access. Not here though. In my area my local phone provider is also the only dial-up internet provider. No AOL, Earthlink, NetZero, nothing at all…and to make matters worse my phone provider didn’t just charge $9.95 for their dial-up. Oh no, I was paying $21.95 a month for FREAKIN DIAL-UP PEOPLE!

Now its not that I’m a cheapskate, I told them I would gladly pay much more for a faster connection. At this point most people usually point out HughesNet or Wildblue or some other satellite service. That unfortunately was a no-go as well. But all was not lost! My savior came in the form of a website by the name: EVDOforums. It was there that I learned all about broadband through cell service.

I am currently with AT&T wireless but they were defiantly not an option considering how slow the EDGE network is on my iphone. In the end I signed a two year contract with Alltel just for their EVDO data plan. My speeds aren’t anywhere near what most people on DSL or Cable are accustomed to, but coming from 56k it feels like I’m finally set free<insert song: Born Free>. If anyone else out there is suffering like I was then I beg you, break the bonds of dial-up and give your local phone company the middle finger and a hearty F.U.