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I don’t think we’ve blogged about this internet meme yet. So, if you didn’t know about it, LOL cats, as it is generally called, is big enough to be talked about by borderline mainstream media an has spawned spinoffs
(last one via Chad’s blog). Basically, it’s just gluing bad grammar onto photos. I enjoy it for the same reasons I enjoy 1337. LOL cats took an interesting turn today. An off-beat news story tells about how a cat in a hospice has been choosing who will die next. According to the article if the cat curls up next to you, you’ve only got 4 hours to live. It’s been right 25 times. Creepy. But great inspiration for captions!

For any players of Half-Life 2 I would strongly recommend the “SMOD” along with the CSS Sci Fi Mod… they can be downloaded together here and information on them is also available on the page. Essentially, the SMOD adds a bunch of neat functionalities to the game: more weapons, enemies, bullet-time, better graphics, better ragdolls, a melee kick, and so forth. The Sci Fi mod takes pre-existing counterstrike maps, and populates them randomly with enemies, ammo, friends, etc (diablo-style), allowing you to play them over and over again, in any of several game types (hostage rescue, smash-n-grab, assasination, etc.). Unfortunately, it’s single-player only, but it’s still just darn good stuff.

Pretty phenomenal-sounding game that is a “multiplayer cooperative survival horror shooter” in which 4 players battle it out to escape from the “infected” (fast-zombies, essentially) to a chopper. The previews look and sound reasonably phenomenal. I almost wished the reviewer hadn’t creamed his pants so much, it almost sounds exaggerated, but he backs up what he says.

I’ve never really loved the “survival” part of a lot of games (HL2 stands out) so much in single player, but I gotta admit it could be really, really cool in this format.

Oh, if you couldn’t tell from the title it’s called Left4Dead and no, no word on when it’s out, looks like.

I stumbled across a nerdy web comic the other day taht I thought some of you might enjoy. Sometimes it’s a little blah, but there are a few gems that made me laugh out audibly. It makes good use of math, physics, video games and veloceraptors.

Web comic

another one

“Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).”

From avclub.com:

Dethklok, the fictional band from Adult Swim’s underrated Metalocalypse, is set to release its debut album September 25. Dethalbum will come in two editions. The single CD will have 16 tracks of songs from the show, including “Murmaider,” “Briefcase Full of Guts,” “Birthday Dethday,” “Bloodrocuted” and “Deththeme.” The deluxe edition will also come with a second CD of six additional tracks like “Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle,” “Blood Ocean” and “Pickles’ Intro – Kill You.” Also included will be the video for “Bloodrocuted” and the first episode from the show’s forthcoming second season.

Human Brain Cloud is a “game” where, shown a word, you enter in the first word or phrase that comes to your mind. This is then mapped according to the results submitted by other users, and, given any word, you can see a visual web connecting them all. It started with just the word “volcano” and is up to 150k+ unique words. The results are interesting, and you can see your statistics based on how many connected words you entered were unique. It’s moderately fascinating.

Yesterday I competed in my first triathlon! I’ve spent the last few months training and I love it. This post is kinda out of out-of-the-blue, but the triathlon preparations have been going on for months. I didn’t want to blog about it until I actually did it. First, a breakdown of my race on Sunday:

Swim (750 meters = 0.46 miles)– 23 min 15 sec
Bike (22 km = 13.67 miles) — 41 min 34 sec
Run (5 km = 3.1 miles) –22 min 19 sec
Total time: 1 hour, 30 min, 7 sec (the difference is transitions)
Rank: 100 out of 172 combined men, women, all ages.
See all the results

I’ve been training from the programs listed on beginnertriathlete.com, specifically the 16 week olympic swim focused plan. My advisor did the Ironman two years ago (swim 2 miles, bike 110 miles, run a marathon) and recommened the website.

The triathlon training has been a rewarding adventure. I took a swim class during the spring quarter because I had no idea how to swim. I could float and tred water, but that was it. I still struggle with open-water swimming (can’t swim in a straight line), but I’m generally pleased with my progress. Biking is really expensive. A new road bike costs no less than $600 without pedals. I got a cheaper used bike on ebay. But I keep bleeding money to replace the worn parts of the bike. I really enjoy the rides I take outside of Columbus and racing on the bike, so it’s a good trade. Running has been my foundation. I was running 4-5 miles a few times a week when I started the program. But it’s pretty clear that both the swimming and the biking have improved my running. My legs are stronger from the biking and my lung capacity has increased from the swimming. Overall, I’m definitely in the best shape of my life and I’ve lost 20 lbs since this time last year. It’s given me a lot of focus for my spare time and I really enjoy that aspect. I hope I do an olympic distance triathlon (1500m swim, 44k bike, 10k run) at the end of August.

Turns out at one point sound effects studios discovered a scream that they really liked — the “Wilhelm Scream” that has been used in something like 140 movies. Here’s a compilation of its use in numerous of those, including most all of George Lucas’ movies. EDIT: Lurker (non-Losure) Michael points out a comprehensive list of media featuring the scream: here.

I hope you get fired at work for watching this.

Interesting off-beat news: In China, 85% of the 1.3 billion people (or roughly 1.1 billion people) share 100 surnames.

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