My family did an audit once to find the wifi hot spots in our house. It became clear why one kid was always using the next door neighbor's wifi. The neighbor's signal was much stronger in her bedroom than it was anywhere in his house! Our signal was spotty, and completely dead where I put the family's shared computer only ten feet from the router. Wifi can be completely eccentric. Steve just went with the password that always comes to mind when these eccentricities are encountered, in the latest comic from Megacynics.
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Think your apartment is bad? Take heart, at least you're not living in the bathroom.
The SFist spotted a rental listing for a small studio apartment in the Presidio Heights area of San Francisco. The landlord is asking for $2,000 a month, which is steep, but hey, that's the going rate for the most expensive rental market in the United States.
Here's the ad, which touts the studio as "quiet" and with "easy parking."
Looks like it's wide enough for a couch and not much else ...
And there's a nice built-in counter with stools, which is good because you can't fit a table or desk in the space. And the microwave is just an arm's reach from the shower - in case you need to heat something up while you take a shower in the morning.
All this for $2,000 a month, folks!
But hey, look at the bright side: the bathroom is really conveniently located!
Retro video game enthusiasts love everything about those old school games- the gameplay, the silly storylines, the difficulty, the awesome pixel sprites and, of course, that uniquely cheesy soundtrack music.
Those simple and catchy chiptunes were made to get stuck in your head for days on end, and the songs created for SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise are among the catchiest and the cheesiest.
If you're ready to let the sound of Sonic into your head for good then you'll be excited to hear SEGA has uploaded an entire catalog of music from their old games to Spotify, including songs from Sonic, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe and more!
-Via GameTyrant
The nominees for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects are Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Deepwater Horizon, The Jungle Book, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Doctor Strange. They all contain the kind of action scenes we like to see, with sometimes amazingly similar elements. Vic Rincon created this mashup to show us those parts of all of them. I don't think there's much in the way of spoilers here. -via Tastefully Offensive
The following article is from the new book Uncle John’s Uncanny Bathroom Reader.
A few years back we told you the story of the WWII submarine that was lost due to a malfunctioning toilet. It turns out that a similar incident threatened the space shuttle Discovery in 1989, earning it a place in Uncle John’s Stall of Fame.
TOP SECRET
On November 22, 1989, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a five-day secret mission in Earth orbit. It is believed to have deployed a spy satellite for the Department of Defense, but since the mission was (and still is) classified, only the United States government knows for sure.
But some details of the mission have emerged, and they involve something a little more down-to-earth: the space shuttle’s toilet, or Waste Collection System (WCS), as it was more properly known. The $30 million device looked like an ordinary toilet, but because it was designed to operate in zero gravity, the experience of using it was quite different from using a toilet on Earth.
When I ate in the school cafeteria in the 1960s, we ate beans and cornbread at least twice a week. Fish sticks on Fridays, and various mystery meats with mushy canned vegetables the rest of the time. But my husband, who grew up in California, had tacos and pizza at the school cafeteria. School lunches varied widely by both place and era. Back in the beginning, the government had nothing to do with school lunches.
Volunteer organizations became the main source for low-cost and subsidized school lunches. By 1912, more than 40 cities across the U.S. offered programs through groups like the New York School Lunch Committee, which offered 3-cent meals. Kids didn’t get much for their money [PDF]: Pea soup, lentils, or rice and a piece of bread was a common offering. If students had an extra cent, they could spring for an additional side like stewed prunes, rice pudding, or a candied apple. In rural communities, parent-teacher committees pooled their resources. Pinellas County in Florida started a program that served meat-and-potato stew to schoolchildren using ingredients donated by parents. Even with these innovative efforts, there was still massive concern about hunger and malnutrition amongst America’s schoolchildren.
The U.S. school lunch program has changed a lot in the last 100 years, from its private-sector beginnings to the fast food/healthy eating hybrid it is today. Read the history of the American school lunch program, decade by decade, at mental_floss.
It seems some modern cruise lines want to take sea travel back to the days of the Titanic, and with all the food poisoning, accidental collisions and passenger sickness there's no time like the present to stay home.
But if you're thinking about taking a pleasure cruise you should check out this video footage shot by passengers aboard the Carnival Legend first, so you're prepared for any possibility.
The Carnival Legend was heading back to Seattle after a week-long excursion around Alaska when the boat suddenly tilted to a stomach-churning degree, sending many passengers into a panic.
Water from the upper deck pools started pouring into the lower decks, people started screaming, but the passengers were (supposedly) able to shift the balance of weight and turn the ship upright again.
Carnival issued this statement about the incident:
“Carnival Legend experienced a technical issue related to the ship's starboard steering gear which caused the ship to unexpectedly list about eight degrees.” They also said the “issue was rapidly corrected and the ship proceeded to its scheduled stop” and the “ship has been operating since that times without any issues.”
Carnival may act like the ship tilting was no big deal, but those passengers probably won't be taking a Carnival cruise ever again!
-Via Aol. and Inside Edition
Here’s a great story about an aerial battle between the U.S. Air Force and a rogue drone over southern California in 1956, which became known as the Battle of Palmdale. Some World War II fighter planes were converted to radio-control so they could be flown as practice targets. One such unmanned plane took off on August 16, 1956, from Point Mugu Naval Air Station with its mission to be shot down over the Pacific Ocean.
Soon after takeoff, though, something happened. Perhaps it was during the switchover from ground-based control to aerial ‘mothership’ radio control, or perhaps the Hellcat felt that air coursing over its wings and thought, dammit, I want to live – it’s not clear what happened. What is clear is that the drone stopped responding to radio commands and started heading in a gentle curve and climb to the southeast.
To Los Angeles.
At this point, I can imagine very clearly a room of competent, wide-eyed men in uniforms with ties loosened and sleeves rolled up sitting around control panels, all momentarily frozen, one collective thought going through all their minds: oh, shit.
The last thing they needed was for an out-of control unmanned plane to crash into the city. Officials at the naval base called the Air Force, where fighter planes equipped with rockets were scrambled to chase the drone. These were experimental rockets, designed for a very different task, and they did not work as intended. The ensuing battle reads like a Keystone Kops script, and when you think the story is over, the destruction is only beginning. The tale unfolds at Foxtrot Alpha. -via Metafilter
You only have to look at a still image from the HBO series Game of Thrones to know that it’s an expensive production. The cost per episode in 2011 was estimated at about $6 million. But episodes for season six are up to $10 million! Where does the money go? We can assume that the actors are paid well, and it’s a huge cast. Location expenses are understandably high. And as the series goes on, there are more and more special effects. You might think that computer-generated effects are a bargain, but that’s only in comparison to practical effects. There’s no way that practical effects could replicate what Game of Thrones is doing now, no matter what you spend on them. And CGI is not exactly cheap.
The CGI industry acts as an assembly line with a team of 10-12 who processes shots through several stages: Modeling, Tracking, Animation, Dust Busting, BgPrep, FX, Compositing, Lighting, etc. The average time for this process within the team is at least four weeks if not more. This equates to around 1,600 man hour at a minimum without overtime. At $50 per hour, per person, that equates to a minimum of $80K per shot. If a Game of Thrones episode has 10-minutes of CGI, which equates to $800,000.
But that cost pales in comparison with computer resource time, which can take 12 hours per frame. Read about the expenses involved in the production of Game of Thrones at Money, Inc. Meanwhile, you might want to tell your kids about those $50 an hour graphics jobs.
A traffic officer in Hangzhou, China, knows his road. A slight depression developed in an intersection, and he noticed right off. He diverted traffic around the crack, even standing on top of it, to prevent cars from passing over it, until traffic cones were brought in. Motorists were not pleased at having to divert.
It only took a few moments for a giant sinkhole to appear and swallow the pavement! If it weren’t for that one diligent cop, there might be someone at the bottom of the hole. -via Arbroath
(Photo: Green Heron Tools)
When Ann Adams and Liz Brensinger created Green Heron Farms on their property in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, they promptly experienced a serious problem: many of the farming and gardening tools commonly available were made for men's bodies. In particular, they expected users to have a certain height and weight that Adams and Brensinger didn't have.
So the two launched Green Heron Tools, a company that designs and sells farming tools built with women's bodies in mind. Civil Eats explains why these modified tools are important:
“Before, a shovel was a shovel, with a handle that was usually too tall for me to use with any real dexterity and a blade that often cut into the soles of my shoes over time as I dug,” says Liz.
She adds: “I’ve met people who feel like using a different tool expresses weakness, and I think when I first moved into this field, I felt similarly. It’s an ego thing, [but] not realistic when you look at the science and see the differences in our body structure.”
“The HERShovel has completely changed the way I use this type of tool,” says Danielle Marvit, a former organic grower and herdswoman, who is currently the production manager for Garden Dreams Urban Farm & Nursery in Pittsburgh. “It has been great for my body, and it is the most efficient shovel I have ever used.”
-via Modern Farmer
Cats and other critters make photobombing look totally cool, but birds somehow manage to make the whole thing look like it's our fault they're in our shot.
They stare at us like we're in their way, sometimes captivated by the shiny lens or the flash but mostly they're just there, in the way of yet another photo with that dumb look on their face.
But that's what makes the bird photobomb such a special experience- they could fly away in an instant but they've chosen to satisfy their curiosity about humans by ruining our shots.
Ruining is really the wrong word, actually a bird photobomb is quite the opposite, and so long as they don't break our lenses or peck at our heads birds can guest star in our photos anytime!
Of course, inviting them to guest star in our shots may mean inviting disaster
Because birds weren't raised with our human sense of decency and respect
Writer and director Wes Craven was responsible for Freddy Krueger’s invasion of your nightmares in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which includes nine feature films and a TV series, plus books, comics, and video games.
From his feature film debut, The Last House on the Left in 1972 to the four Scream movies, he was a master of the modern horror genre. Craven’s IMDb entry has a list of 36 writing credits, 27 producing credits, 29 directing credits, and 19 acting credits.
Wes Craven died of brain cancer Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76.
(Image credit: Bob Bekian)
If you ever see a lizard man while you’re walking around Scape Ore Swamp in South Carolina don’t stop to sketch the creature, put away your sketchbook and run like hell!
Most of the witnesses who’ve sworn they spotted the Lizard Man of Lee County swear it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, but one man was brave enough to sketch the creature after it attacked him:
You may be asking yourself- how can South Carolina officials let some scary creature roam around Scape Ore Swamp attacking people? Because they don't believe that the cryptid actually exists, even with Christopher Davis' signed sketch offered up as proof.
So what's it gonna take to get them to send in the National Guard and slay the beast once and for all?
This photo shot by a woman simply known as "Sarah", who purportedly spotted the Lizard Man of Lee County while at church, should spur them into action:
This cryptid case has left us with three nagging questions- does this photo prove the existence of the fabled Lizard Man of Lee County? Is he more man than lizard, or more lizard than man? and are they filming a new Godzilla movie nearby?
Read more about the Lizard Man of Lee County at Dangerous Minds
Bradford Exchange produces this incredibly detailed clock that looks like a vintage Pac-Man arcade cabinet. It even has a joystick, coin slots, a Pac-Man pendulum, and the original sound effects. Every hour, it will chime with the sounds you loved as a child. And you don’t even have to put quarters in to make it keep ticking!
-via Technabob
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