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Testing LifeCast iPhone app.

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What Lies Beneath

Ever wonder what those little mushroom guys in Mario look like under their hats? I have too, but technically what I'm going to show you isn't a mushroom guy or man or what have you, but a mushroom that would be ingested by Mario to gain an associated ability. So I went into a nearby Newbury Comics to get...comics and while checking out I saw these. Small mushrooms from the "New" Super Mario Bros. game which was released on the Nintendo DS last year. They came in three colors red (original big-up mushroom, buk buk), green (1-up), and blue (new micro mario mushroom). I got the green one.

So apparently the brains of these mushroom 'guys' are just little mushroom babies. Hmm...interesting. By this point you're probably wondering, "Ok what the hell am I looking at!?" These are just candy sours in a Mushroom tin. The thing cost a bit more than I would normally pay, however in this case I was paying for the tin more than the candy inside. I'm sure Nintendo obviously knew this when licencing the product.

Update

I removed the youtube element from my page. You guys are going to have to go to the site to get your fix. Also removed the Warcraft and WoWWiki links from the gaming section since I don't play any more.

Maybe I should update with an actual entry one of these days. NAAAH!

Winter Dragon

Up until a few days ago it seemed as if winter has been dragging on here in the good ol' Bay State. While the numbers range from the mid fifties to sixties the chill off the ocean and the wind tend to keep things on the cool side.

Yesterday the chill dissipated cause the temp hit the mid seventies. During last years' warm season I came close to perfecting my iced coffee. I required a cream that you can find in most supermarkets and had a French vanilla flavor. When the warm air hit me yesterday I recalled how close I was to achieving my goal perfecting my iced coffee, but soon realized that I also made the choice this year to cut back on coffee, and when I did have a cup of joe I would skip on cream and sugar and just use milk. I have yet brought my self down to black. I gotta have my taste standards.

To switch things up, this time around I did iced tea. For my first experiment I used Twinings Four Fruits Black Tea. The tea has a natural fruit taste that's refreshing and not overwhelming. On the down side the tea has a bit of a creamy texture similar to a chai which I'm not a fan off in my cold drinks.

While I wouldn't call this a total success, and for the next test I'll be using Earl Grey.

the Plauge

It's amazing how the flu has just run rampant this winter season. It basically seems that everyone is sick and it doesn't seem that you can become resistant either. Getting sick the first time doesn't give you a free pass for any infections following. I was able to fight it off twice before the flu gang up on me and hit me with Bronchitis.

I'm not on the road to recovery with some prescribed cough medicine and anti-viral pills. The past couple weeks have been nothing but staying indoors watching tv, dvds, reading, and video games. I'm kinda going nuts, but can't do much since I can't control my cough to the point where I can be comfortable in a social environment.

"le sigh"

Another thing is that I've been drinking nothing but tea and water for the past two weeks. I've never drank this much tea in my life, but in the end it's all for the best and its not like the tea is bad. Twinings English Afternoon, China Oolong, and Irish Breakfast are all good, and I plan on adding Lady Grey and Earl Grey to the mix.

It doesn't seem that you can do anything from being sick since everyone is sick. You could stop going outside and breathing but then you'll just have a whole other set of problems to deal with.

BEWARE!!!

What Americans have been Waiting for

So John McCain has released his first general election ad and there's some interesting hidden messages in this commercial. The ad hints that nationality the the next president should be or it implies the new commander-and-chief should display a certain level of patriotism.

That's not all! The ad's narrator is the actor from 24 who plays the evil vice president who tries to steal Presidency from the President (a black guy). Very sneaky Mr. McCain, very sneaky indeed.

Gang Leader for a Day

The book Freakonomics is by far my favorite book of all time and for those of you who have read it you would know that the Stephen's (as I like to call them) have a friend by the name of Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor at Columbia University. A trained sociologist, Sudhir lived in the Robert Taylor projects in Chicago to document how poor people lived.

This is an area where many researchers have failed since these areas are usually too dangerous to outsiders, and many studies are performed from the outside looking in using theories to fill in the gaps.

Sudhir, on the other hand, actually lived with people and temporarily became part of a gang for 6 years. While the chapter in Freakonomics gives excellent detail of his findings from an Economics point of view, Sudhir's book "Gang Leader for a Day" gives a lot more detail into his every day life in the projects. Since I have yet to read this book I can't honestly say go out and get it, based on the fact that I have only seen the cover. However, you have read the chapter in Freakonomics like I have then you already know this is a must read.

Below is a clip from his visit to the Colbert Report. ~Enjoy