A stunt driver has crashed the car used by movie secret agent James Bond into Italy's Lake Garda during filming of 007's latest movie, Quantum of Solace. The driver was delivering the iconic Aston Martin DBS to the film scene in heavy rain when he lost control around one of the lake's narrow curves.
Italian TV showed the car, reportedly the only one available for use in the film, being winched out of the lake.
Caption from BBC: It is not known how the stunt driver lost control of the vehicle while driving to the film set on scenic Lake Garda.
First of all, the BBC caption is ridiculous...I can take one guess how the driver lost control...driving too fast in the rain around a freaking cliff! Also, how could this possibly be the only car they have for filming? It's James-freaking-Bond and there's all sorts of wild stunts and car chases that go on. Do they really think they could film it with only one car? And finally, the stunt driver is an idiot since this wasn't even during a stunt...he was simply delivering it to the set.
Last night's Colbert Report was truly incredible. Of course, on Monday when Chris Matthews was on, he blew the fact that Hillary Clinton was going to be a surprise guest so it wasn't a surprise anymore.
But the show still had plenty of surprises, and I'd highly recommend watching the whole episode. But if clips (and spoilers) are your thing, I've got them right here:
Hillary at the top of the show:
John Edwards does The EdWørd:
With 3 minutes left, Obama makes a surprise appearance and takes part in a Colbert tradition:
"Sit Down," from Tantamount, Sony and Granada, centers on staff members at a high school who are preoccupied with their own needs and agendas, which means the students come second. Fox greenlighted a table read of "Sit Down," based on the live-action Australian series, last month.
Also joining the voice cast are Cheri Oteri, Will Forte, Regina King, Nick Kroll, Tom Kenny and Maria Bamford.
Apparently it's an adaptation of an Australian comedy, and I'm not finding any images online yet of what it'll look like, but it certainly sounds like it could have some potential.
Looks like the "Colbert Bump" may have some significance after all, as both Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton are appearing on the Colbert Report this week when it's in Philadelphia. The news about Michelle Obama appearing came out a while ago, but the news about Hillary appearing this Thursday was (inadvertently?) revealed by Chris Matthews yesterday. However Variety confirms she will appear.
I missed last night's episode but have it DVR'ed, so stay tuned for more news after tonight.
Yeah, I just got back from a week in L.A. and I totally had a brush with fame. By which I mean I saw the setup for the movie premiere of Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, but was there way too early to see any of the celebrities that showed up later (I was on a tour so I couldn't exactly stick around for hours). And to top it off, I had forgotten to bring my digital camera along, so I have some cool pics but they're on a disposable camera which I need to get developed. In the meantime, since I know you're chomping at the bit, here's a much crappier pic I took on my cellphone. I didn't even bother to re-take it with the van in the way since I was more concerned about the disposable.
And to emphasize the location:
Apparently Yahoo thinks they're better than me with their pictures from the premiere of Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Judd Apatow, Alyson Hannigan, ... I hate you Yahoo.
You can see in some of the photos that there's hundreds of people standing across the street (that's where I took my pictures from...they closed the sidewalks on the theater side).
I really hate how Amazon likes to share product reviews across different versions of the same product. It causes major issues in areas like movies, digital cameras, and other products where you might have two similarly named items or items with different versions. Here's the email I just fired off to them in hopes of getting something more substantial than a canned response:
Please stop displaying the same reviews under different versions of the same product. I have encountered this issue numerous times, and it always leads to confusion and incorrect information. I'll give two examples in which this has been a major problem.
In looking up information about DVDs, a movie may have a widescreen DVD, a special edition package, and a collector's edition package. Amazon will usually show the same customer reviews across all three versions. So if someone complained about a missing commentary track on the widescreen version, looking from the special edition page you wouldn't realize they were complaining about the widescreen version, which may be different. Here's a concrete example of what I mean, with a review of the BluRay version of the 5-disc version of Blade Runner appearing under the 2-disc special edition non-BluRay version of the product: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000UD0ESA/...
And again for the Spectec line of wireless SDIO cards, it's impossible to tell what subtle differences there are between cards, because Spectec uses the same model number for two different cards...one that works in the Motorola Q9C and one that does not. However, the grouping of reviews has caused one person's review about the card working in the Q9C to appear under all of the cards.
While it may make sense in some cases to include the same reviews under multiple product listings, the majority of the time it seems to lead to incorrect information or confusion unless the review specifically states what version of a product it is talking about. This would also lead to product ratings being inaccurate, because a poor quality BluRay DVD could cause the rating of the standard DVD version to fall as well.
I can't be the only one that's been annoyed by this, and it really does lead to some really inaccurate information.
I just found out about a Firefox extension called PicLens, and it's awesome. It integrates with a bunch of image services to display an endless wall of images. It really is much easier to explain it in video form:
I meant to post this when I first saw the new UPS ads, but better late than never.
I'll admit it, as much as I hated the guy, there was still something interesting in watching him form simple drawings on a whiteboard while explaining different UPS services.
But the new series of ads have all shattered that new style of ad by adding animation to the whiteboard. Now it's no longer a guy with the ability to quickly draw something cool and then change it into something else on the fly, but instead it becomes apparent that there's a reason all the drawings look so perfect...there's CGI involved. It disrupts your focus and ruins what made the ads so captivating to begin with.
With animation:
Without animation:
(And I really do dislike him. I can't pinpoint what it is. I think it's a combination of him being a smug bastard, the way he starts out by saying "Ok" and then the name of some service as if I had asked about it, and the way he adds something pointless to the drawing as the commercial ends. Or because he looks like he should be in a Mac commercial. Hmmm....maybe I have pinpointed it after all.)
As the weather warms up, it's interesting to see some people driving around with their windows down and sunroofs open, while others do the exact opposite and run their air conditioning. But which option is more fuel efficient? After all, A/C eats a bunch of gas. But having the windows down has got to create more drag on the vehicle.
It turns out that both of those are true, and for that reason it's most fuel efficient to use your air conditioner at speeds over 45 mph, since wind drag would increase to where it is far less efficient to have the windows down. But under 45 mph, it's more efficient to have the windows rolled down since the amount of drag is not significant enough to be worse than air conditioning.
Consumer Reports' auto-test department reports that the air conditioner reduces your car's fuel efficiency by up to 10 percent. So to achieve maximum fuel efficiency, motorists should avoid using the air conditioner at speeds below 40 mph and travel with their windows down, explains Gabe Shenhar, senior auto test engineer at Consumer Report's auto-test department.
"But as your speed increases to 45 mph, or highway speeds," says Jason Toews, co-founder of GasBuddy.com, "wind drag becomes an issue. Driving with the windows down increases the drag on your vehicle, resulting in decreased fuel economy by up to 10 percent. Drive at speeds over 55 mph with windows down and you'll decrease fuel economy by up to 20 percent or greater."
dave submitted a story, saying, "To follow up on your previous barcode story, here are some beautiful ones. My favorite is the waterfall." And yeah, some of these are really pretty awesome.
Some of the other ones they picture wouldn't be to useful in actual application, but are cool anyways:
