Hailee from Tigard, Oregon:
I cannot wait for the Entourage boys to be roaming the streets of Hollywood again. Any word on when the show is coming back?
Great news! According to Adrian Grenier, Entourage is back in production as we speak. But to tide you over until they return, Adrian is producing a television show for the Discovery Channel called The Green Life that's slated to premiere in June. Adrian says, "We're documenting basically the lifestyle we've been living for a long time, which happens to be green, but it's also quite fun, so watch out!" Want more Entourage dish? Keep checking the section for a big dish download, coming soon...
As we've discussed previously, hopefully they change things up a bit in order to get to the great show they had through the end of Season 2 and first half of Season 3. The writing since then (i.e. Season 3 Part 2 and Season 4) has been kind of lackluster in comparison.
This is the third "I'm F*cking ______" video, and let's hope it's the last. There's only a couple of funny things in this one, with the best joke at 1:58. I say hopefully it's the last because each one of these has less shock value than the last, and it'd get annoying to see 100 of these (Wait, am I describing these videos or Sarah Silverman's jokes? Zing!!!).
So here's Elizabeth Banks in "I'm F*cking Seth Rogen." It's probably mostly made to promote the new Kevin Smith movie they're making, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, so I should warn you that this video doesn't bleep the profanity in it (which actually makes it less funny).
About two months ago, Sprint had an ad in Wired magazine (pictured below) that talked about how things may soon get barcodes printed on them so you could scan them with a mobile device. For instance, a barcode on a movie poster could be scanned on your phone, and it would lead you to a website with showtimes. Or an ad for a music album could have a barcode that leads you to a free MP3 download.
The ad led Sprint users to text "scan" to 70734 to get a program called Scanlife that allows such interaction. The ad also contained a barcode which led to a page with some free ringtones. Some phones require you to take a picture of the barcode, which then gets interpreted. Other phones let you simply move the camera over the barcode and as soon as it is recognized (in real-time), the phone beeps and takes the appropriate action.
Scanlife uses their own format, EZcodes, though they also recognize several other popular formats. Depending on the format, many support more than just linking to websites such as storing contact information, SMS and text information, calendar info, call a phone number (no need to dial), etc. For instance you could put a code containing contact information onto your business card, and now someone can easily add all your information to their phone.
This is sweet...there's plenty of reasons windshield wipers on cars can be annoying. Whether they get frozen in ice during the winter, warp or tear and don't function as well as a result, or just suck in general. But there's a new prototype that's hoping to do away with wipers altogether (probably much to the chagrin of the companies producing those replacement blades) by using nanotechnology to do the job:
Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (of Pininfarina fame) has developed a prototype car with a windshield that doesn't need wipers. It can brush away water and dirt all by itself.
The car, dubbed Hidra, uses a special aerodynamic design along with four sophisticated surface treatments to the windshield to keep the driver's view clear. The first treatment filters the sun and repels water. The second is made of nano-dust which is able to push dirt to the edges of the glass. This dust is activated by the third layer, which senses dirt and activates the second layer as necessary. Finally, it's all topped off by the fourth layer which is a conductor of electricity to power the whole mechanism.
Fioravanti claims that this technology could go into mass production within 5 years, but it already works and has been installed on the Hidra concept car.
I do wonder if objects hitting the windshield would cause the treatments to deteriorate over time though. As it is right now, a windshield can take a lot of abuse, and small debris, particles, and bugs hit it constantly.
Yesterday, YouTube was completely inaccessible for a while, causing users to be unable to reach the homepage and blogs with YouTube videos embedded to load slowly. The cause of the mess? Pakistan decided to block YouTube because they either had cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad, or had an anti-Islam video on the site. In either case, they screwed up when instituting the block, and ended up triggering a ripple of bad information that caused everyone worldwide to get blocked from YouTube. It really is insane how simple it can be for a person to severely disrupt the internet for everyone:
On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No "sorry we're down" or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing. What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube's servers are in to a "black hole" as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube would end up in Pakistan Telecom's black hole instead.
On the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) mailing list, where many engineers in charge of Internet routing hang out, the consensus is that this was an accident. Only one or two people suggest that it may be a malicious act, possibly a trial of something bigger.
It turns out the whole thing is due to a known vulnerability in the way routing tables work (full details are in the Ars article). But it's just crazy to see how fragile the internet is.
It's been a little over three weeks since Sarah Silverman showed the "I'm fucking Matt Damon" video on Jimmy Kimmel's show. Now, Jimmy's getting back with, what else?, "I'm fucking Ben Affleck". It's pretty funny, though not nearly as catchy:
SNL returned to air last night after 4 months off due to the writers' strike. It was a decently funny episode, but Mike Huckabee led to its funniest moment:
He may not be great presidential material, but he's definitely hilarious, so it's been great seeing him repeatedly on Colbert and also his appearance on Leno when he was playing guitar with the band:
There's a hilarious series on YouTube (two series, in fact) under My Damn Channel. The celebrity one is done by David Wain. Who's David Wain? He's:
...the co-creator of comedy groups The State and Stella and directed the films Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten. The latter, recently released on DVD and iTunes, is heavily (but not annoyingly) pimped on all the most recent Wainy Days episodes.
Since Wain actually knows a ton of Hollywood talent from his films, he features actors you've actually heard of as guests on Wainy Days, including Rob Corddry (The Daily Show), Jonah Hill (SuperBad), Paul Rudd (The Ten, 40-Year-Old Virgin) and David Krumholtz (Numb3rs). And Wain is frequently helped out behind the scenes by former Stella and The State comrades such as Michael Ian Black--the man who used to be the voice of the beloved-by-some Pets.com sock puppet.
What's more, Wain knows many a cute starlet, and he usually casts them in roles where he can make out with them (at the very least). Who can blame him? Elizabeth Banks (Slither, Scrubs), Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein, Notes from the Underbelly), Callie Thorne (Rescue Me), Tawny Cypress (Heroes), and Julie Bowen (Lost, Boston Legal) have all felt the brunt of Wain's on-screen affections. Rashida Jones (The Office), however, played Wain in drag.
I only found it by first stumbling across the "You Suck at Photoshop" series, which I'm including below as well. Both players have a playlist button so you can easily browse the whole series in order. Sports Night fans will be pleased to find the actors that played Dan and Natalie on here.
It's been an idea that's been researched for a long while now, but there's finally a brain-controlled headset coming out that you can use with your computer. Details are still a bit sketchy on how much you can do (i.e. can you replace your mouse with it), but it's got a gyroscope in it so you can control a cursor with your head.
The thing looks kind of bulky, though it is housing a battery so it can work wirelessly, and many previous forays into this technology involved huge headsets with tons of cabling. The other good thing is it's going to be $299. Taht's not bad for a first iteration of this kind of device, considering some keyboards and mice can get into the $100 range. If this device works as promised, there's a lot more you could do with it.
Supposedly it can recognize thoughts, feelings, and facial expression, and the emphasis of the prduct is for gaming, though it seems like it could do a lot more.
They're letting people reserve them now even though they won't be out until late 2008. (Reserving now gets you some perks like an extended warranty)
What is going on with the new $5 bills? Like the redesigned $50, $20, and $10, it's got a bunch of colors on it, and several changes with new security features. However, unlike the previous redesigns, this one has a giant purple 5 on the back of it that makes the whole thing look counterfeit anyways:
Who are the ad wizards that came up with that one? Seriously, it looks stupid and is it that hard to distinguish a $5 from the other ones when the numbers are so big anyways? Maybe this was designed by someone that's legally blind. Or as the result of a dare.
