86 Words

I’m not sure why, but I always like these little webapps that let you build a police profile, avatar, or, in this case, a face that looks like a Picasso.

It’s out of character but I actually named this post after the app (I was in a weird mood - maybe it was the Picasso effect). Anyway, the webapp site is called MrPicassoHead, and it’s just what it sounds like - a Picassofied Mr. Potato Head.

Hey! I bet there’s a site for that too!

You start with a blank canvas and then add eyes, nose, etc from nine choices each.

Sometimes the choices are a little abstract, but I think that’s to be expected given the app’s name!

Some of the eyes are a bit wiggy, but they’re also the most recognizibly Picasso-esque feature in the program.

And here, my dear readers, is my final masterpiece!
Anybody know where I can sell a Picasso-style piece for a few million in cash?

- www.MrPicassoHead.com -

Tags: Generators, Collections, Retro, Reference, Weird, Virtual, Software, Art / Visual, Gadgets, General by Jai
59 Comments »

If you’re a D&D geek, you’ve probably heard the name. Possibly you’ve met the guy, used some of his stuff, built a shrine, etc.

If you’re that type, I have a treat for you!

DungeonADay.com is a site run by Monty Cook that features, predictably enough, a Dungeon A Day to use in your own games. But there’s more than that.

 From the site:

You get a lot, but it is a pay site, and seems a little expensive (~$10/month)… But it IS Monty Cook.

Mr. Cook. He seems a bit more mundane than I would have expected for someone of such revered D&D status.

A lot of the stuff on the site is blocked until you subscribe, but the things you can see show the quality!

All of the “dungeons” are mapped, described, and formatted in a comfortable, old-school D&D style. Maps can be downloaded without the identifiers as well so that players see just the blank rooms.

- www.DungeonADay.com -

Tags: Life Tips, Collections, Gaming, Cool Sites, Geek Stuff, General by Jai
41 Comments »

This site is supposed to be a Twitter tool, but I find it fun as a stand-alone toy.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the computer translation experiment that translated "The Spirit is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak" into Russian and back and ended up with "The Vodka is Desirable, but the Meat is Rotten". That’s the idea here - translate things across numerous languages and back again to see what you get.

You could even use it to build email sig lines.

Or you could use it to encode your Twitter phrases.

You can choose which languages to translate through, and they’re used in random order

Sometimes you really have to wonder how a translation came about!

Roger HQ, that’s a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…

Well, I’m not sure how it translated, but I have to agree with the final conclusion! (Note, by the way, that because of the random order of the translations, just re-translating can give completely different results)

- www.Twibberish.com -

Tags: Humor, Generators, Reference, Weird, Gadgets, Geek Stuff, Software, Cool Sites, General by Jai
49 Comments »

When I first heard about URDB, I thought it was kinda hoaky, but after looking at it, I "got" it (and decided that it’s pretty cool).

The idea is a little more whimsical than the Guiness book - make up a record, set it (provide evidence if you like - most people provide videos), and then post it for others to challenge. Some seem like people will try to top them, others will probably stay for sheer bizarreness.

 So, do you have something to prove?

Will it one day replace the hallowed Guiness Book?

At the bottom here, you can see that Brian Pierce is the only person to (so far) attempt this record. Some of the records have been challenged (and beaten) many times!

These are the further stats for the Brian Pierce record above ("Fastest Time to Recite All 50 United States in Alphabetical Order While Being Hit in the Head with Wooden Spoons).

- www.URDB.org -
( Stands for Universal Record Data Base )

Tags: Collections, Reference, Current Events, Net Life, Cool Sites, General by Jai
54 Comments »

This is obviously not a Spectator Sports post, but the theme is here nonetheless.

The score I’m talking about is used for making purchase decisions - you get to see the score (using a sports scoreboard motif) a company has received for various aspects of it’s customer service.

Next time you want to buy a Thingy, Widget, or Doodad, compare scores first!

CustomerServiceScoreboard.com allows you to see easy, at-a-glance data concerning a companies quality of… Well… Customer Service

I decided to do a computer-company comparison. Apple came in with the highest score - not just for computer companies, they came in highest period. This doesn’t surprise me, their CS is amazing!

This is the score for Sony, the second place on the list for computer companies. Though their score isn’t based on computer sales alone, they also came in 11th for overall customer satisfaction!

Next on the computer company list came Lenovo - a small, but apparently on-the-ball computer manufacturer! These guys are the ones who bought the ThinkPad line from IBM… I guess not SO small!

At the extreme other end, the worst rated computer manufacturer is Gateway - I included this entry to show how bad it can get. They weren’t very far behind Dell.

For quick and easy visual scanning of the scores, the site also includes a leader board of the top 150 or so companies

- CustomerServiceScoreboard.com -

Tags: Virtual, Current Events, Reference, Gadgets, Net Life, Cool Sites, Life Tips, General by Jai
67 Comments »

This is a little outside our normal fare, but I really liked the idea.

StoryBird is a site designed to allow you read/write children’s books. You can browse collections of art provided by each artist to get ideas, then build your book on the site.

When you finish you can publish it online with an option to print it "coming soon".

If you have kids, or a creative knack for kids’ things, this could be your ticket!

Your work area is a little limited in capability, but after a few minutes of playing around, everything seems pretty easy - You can’t combine or edit pictures, but there is a lot of art to choose from.

Your cover is created for you, but you can change it (I did here)

Then you start adding your pages until your story is done.

Due to the limitations in the way artwork is chosen, you have to get a little creative to tell a coherent story, but I actually found that to be kind of fun (and it helps to frame ideas)!

- StoryBird.com -

Tags: Net Life, Virtual, Collections, Reference, Art / Visual, Life Tips, Software, HowTo, Cool Sites, General by Jai
65 Comments »

CodePad.org is a cool little online compiler site that’s simple to use for doing quick tests in several current programming languages or sharing a code snippet with someone quickly and cleanly.

If you regularly switch between several different programming languages (and believe me, I really, really do!), you’ll also find this site useful for quick idea tests or small code ports.

Even if you’re just learning a new language, CodePad.org lets you sample the language before you bother to set up a whole environment!

It couldn’t be much simpler - enter (or paste) your code, select the language, and hit the [Submit] button (which is cut off of the right side to make the screen readable)

The compiler spits out a numbered list of the code it read, the output of the execution, and an edit box to continue to work.

If you happen to have made a mistake in your code (which I never do except to demo it), the line number is shown in orange in the numbered list and specified in blue in the output for easy debugging. Admittedly very basic, but I’ve certainly seen worse!

- CodePad.org -

Tags: Gadgets, Virtual, Reference, Net Life, Cool Sites, Geek Stuff, Software, General by Jai
65 Comments »

We’ve pointed you at some cool games in the past, and even sites to find them, but RemainInPlay is a little different than most - they only cover games that were commercial and are now free!

Now before you go dissing “old games” as uninteresting - let me ask: How many late nights did you spend playing Civilization? Sim City? Maybe some of the Cinemaware titles?

Fact is, some old school games rocked, and this site features quite a few that still do!

This is Major Tom… Er… I mean this is Ground Control - an excellent RTS game

This is a shot from LucasArts title, Lure of the Temptress

Return to Castle Wolfenstein - this shot shows the multi-player game, but I preferred the single-player

This is Wild Metal - I haven’t played it, but I’m gonna!

- www.RemainInPlay.com -

Tags: Virtual, Collections, Retro, Reference, Video Gaming, Gaming, Geek Stuff, Software, Cool Sites, General by Jai
53 Comments »

But it’s still pretty freaking cool (check out the pics in sequence below)!

Okay, let’s start with the Valve game "Portal" (if you haven’t heard of it, you need to check it out!)

Now let’s convert it to 2D. Yeah, I know, another boring platformer with bad graphics, right?

Nope. It doesn’t have any graphics - it’s all in Ascii. And as I said above, it’s cool!

Realy, really cool!

I’m the green guy, I have a broken ladder (gold), and the green box with the "E" is my goal

Now to break your mind. I shot a yellow portal at the top (offscreen) and a blue one onto the left wall. I’m looking into blue and out of yellow to see myself standing at the bottom of the broken ladder.

As I approach the blue portal, my view of myself shows me walking along the bottom (up the left from my view point). The narrow opening shows more since I’m closer to it, so the viewing angle is much wider.

Now I’ve stepped into blue and fell out of yellow. I did a quick dodge to the left so I landed on the ladder. Now I can just walk over and grab the green box and go to the next level!

- Download for Win, Mac, Lin32, or Lin 64 -

Tags: Weird, Virtual, Scary, Retro, Reference, Just Cool, Art / Visual, Geek Stuff, Software, Gaming, Video Gaming, General by Jai
59 Comments »

A few weeks ago, LifeHacker did a post on installing OSX on PC hardware to turn it in to a cheap Mac (and we posted it here!). Well, they’ve posted another one for doing the install with less terminal “hacking”.

As before, they recommend specific hardware, not because other hardware won’t work, but because they can’t know the details of unknown hardware - there may be some things that you’ll need to tweak.

If your looking for a simpler install, here’s your ticket!

Snow Leopard on a PC - Now that all Macs run Intel hardware, it’s possible!

The area that will most likely need tweaked on other hardware is probably going to be dealing with the BIOS - they tend to vary from PC to PC.

The good news is that, like the previous article’s install, after you install Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), the update to the 10.6.1 patch will work just like it does on a Mac!

- Article on Lifehacker.com -

- The Earlier Post, Also on Lifehacker.com -

Tags: Virtual, Current Events, Reference, Just Cool, Life Tips, Geek Stuff, Software, HowTo, General by Jai
53 Comments »