Global Agency Network of the Year hiring in Malaysia

Tribal DDB Malaysia is looking for a multimedia Programmer.

want to take on the task? check here:

Job Details

Summonses dating back over seven years and still allowed to drive a bus

The summonses, amounting to RM2,660, dated as far back as 2000.
--Bus driver in fatal crash had 13 summonses

Tell me, isn't every person involved in letting this man drive a bus culpable in the deaths?

from the counter person at the Civil Vehicles Licensing Board all the way up?

and the driver's immediate boss all the way up again?

they had more than seven years to stop these deaths. seven years.

Update: sign the petition to the Ministry of Transport asking for explanations and reform.

Is God interested in Gmail?

When Gmail's storage began to soar recently, I used IMAP to sync all my email, dating back a decade, into my Gmail account. you can see the little spike and plateau in the blue line--that's my usage.

the red line is my Gmail account storage capacity.

notice how they both begin to plateau at the same point?

to borrow a line from Morpheus:

Where some see coincidence, I see providence.

what do you see?

Carl Sagan on baking

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
--Carl Sagan

He probably said this to feel less guilty about using canned apples, you think?

Word of mouth--could this be how it really works?

The technique marries Watts's two main epiphanies: Cascades require word-of-mouth effects, so you need to build a six-degrees effect into an ad campaign; but since you can never know which person is going to spark the fire, you should aim the ad at as broad a market as possible--and not waste money chasing 'important' people. And it worked.
Is the Tipping Point Toast? -- Duncan Watts -- Trendsetting

So:

Yesterday: try to tell everybody

Today: try to tell the infectors

Tomorrow: try to infect everybody

How-to: taking care of babies

Feeling a bit nervous about someday having babies? all you need is a little
guidance on bringing them up:

http://www.c00lstuff.com/1133/Do_s_and_don_ts_with_babies/

I'm glad I found this link. it helped clear up some misconceptions I had on
taking care of my son...

Dilbert's got a hit song now

Oh, she amazed me! With her love, she tazed me. Oh, she amazed me! And it escapes me how she outer spaced me.

Profound, no?

nonsense lyrics provided by Dilbert Blog readers, strung together by Rivo Drei, a German band and fellow Blog readers.

to prove that you can write a hit song with nonsense lyrics, since most hit songs have nonsense lyrics anyway.

go. download. listen to hit song.

it's catchy. and the lyrics will plough your memories like a rainbow shear on the second night of a new moon...

The Dilbert Blog: The Hit Song You Wrote

Darth Vader will not be pleased

We will have teachings based on Yoda - the 900-year-old grand master - as well as readings, essays submitted, meditation and relaxation, visualisation and discuss healthy eating.

They started a Jedi church.

step 2: elsewhere, other geeks start a Sith coven.

step 3: religious war.

just you watch.

let's pray they don't invent lightsabres.

can someone please start the cloning process now?

Global Agency Network of the Year: Tribal DDB Worldwide

Global Agency of the Year: Tribal DDB

It is the coming of age of digital media. for the first time ever, a digital agency has bagged the Global Agency Network of the Year. (did you notice it's from the DDB group?)

does it mean that the whole world has gone banners and pop-ups and microsites?

a little bit. but much of it is that the digital shops have adapted their skills to "the real world" that exists on the human side of the computer screen.

read all about it here.

The hardest thing to see is the easiest thing to see

Nothing is as difficult to see as the obvious.
--Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture

From The Book of Threes - The Number Three in American Culture

A treatise on Calvin's Transmogrifier

The first transmogrifier Calvin invents consists of an upside-down cardboard box (first appeared March 23, 1987) with the word transmogrifier handwritten on the side in marker. A dial on the side of the box may be pointed towards one of several settings, also marked on the box in marker. More settings can be added by simply writing them around the dial. A button initiates the transmogrification process, turning the thing under the box into whatever is indicated on the dial always accompanied by a loud "zap!" sound when activated. Calvin used his transmogrifier to great effect in the comic strip, transforming himself into a tiger, dinosaur, elephant and other animals.

Calvin made subsequent improvements upon the transmogrifier technology, turning the box into a duplicator (by turning it on its side and writing "duplicator" on the side) and a time machine (by turning the box upright and writing "time machine" on the side). He also produced an improved, portable transmogrifier, which was incorporated into his water pistol. This latter invention was once used as a button icon in a paint program for the Apple Macintosh, and the operation, which randomly mixed pixels, was named transmogrify.
--Transmogrifier--Wikipedia

You've gotta love the matter-of-fact tone of this entry...

'Fartfull' workbench, 'Jerker' desk: Is Ikea hiding a grin? | Chicago Sun-Times | Find Articles at BNET.com

Ikea would be perfect, really, if it weren't for that nagging feeling: That maybe -- just maybe -- the Swedes are making fun of us.

It's the product names. They can't be for real.

If you think ordering a J. Crew sweater in the color 'yam' is embarrassing, try requesting Ikea's 'Jerker' desk in large.

The 'Billy' shelving system isn't so bad, but the 'Fartfull' workbench and the 'Beslut' chair are pushing it.

It's almost as though the names are meant to sound Swedish, without actually meaning anything. Their only purpose is to sound exotic. Imported. 'Svinga.' 'Malm.' 'Muck.' 'Slabang.' 'Nipper.' 'Ingolf.' 'Herman.' The 'Lessebo' sofa?
--"Fartfull" workbench, "Jerker" desk: Is Ikea hiding a grin? | Chicago Sun-Times

Speak Japanese in no time at all

Animelab.com: Japanese--English Dictionary:

kakuteru--cocktail

kakuterudoresu--cocktail dress

kakuterugurasu--cocktail glass

Is this for real? is it really that easy to translate English into Japanese?

I willo be speakingu Japonesu ina no timesu.

Haha to those who laugh at my clean desk

Excessive clutter and disorganization are often symptoms of a bigger health problem. People who have suffered an emotional trauma or a brain injury often find housecleaning an insurmountable task. Attention deficit disorder, depression, chronic pain and grief can prevent people from getting organized or lead to a buildup of clutter. At its most extreme, chronic disorganization is called hoarding, a condition many experts believe is a mental illness in its own right, although psychiatrists have yet to formally recognize it.
--Health Effects of Clutter - New York Times

Too turned on by email?

I feel like standing in New York's Times Square and yelling, "yatta!"

but since I can't bend space/time, maybe I'll go to Berjaya Times Square and shout, "fuleyshiok!"

today is the day I finished syncing my Outlook email archives dating back to 1998, with my Gmail account.

as an added bonus, I've imported my old Gmail account into my current one, too.

so now all my email exists in one amorphous blob on Google's servers. synced in real time with my desktop, via IMAP.

but about my Gmail accounts.

I used to have one with the username alphadarius. after using it for several months, I opened another one under alphalim, which is easier to communicate. I set up alphadarius to forward all mail to alphalim, so the transition was seamless.

but mail that arrived before the transition remained stranded in my old account. this bothered me a little. okay, it nagged me incredibly.

today I activated POP downloading in my old account and set up my new account to automatically suck in all mail in my old account, including any future mail. (I also have this feature setup for my Jaring account, which dates back to 1995, Year 0 of the commercial web. I used to access that account with my 256 bps modem. no, that's not a typo.)

the POP-sucking feature is found under the Accounts tab of Gmail's Settings. I know, I could have done this POP-suck trick ages ago, but it never occurred to me until I started fiddling around with IMAP.

anyway, now I really do have all my email--ten years' worth--in one amorphous, eminently searchable blob.

it's things like this that make people geeks love Google.

fuleyshiok!

if you're as turned on by geeky hacks, I'd love to hear from you...

you freak.

The relationship between sheep and goats

Recently, there was some uncertainty as to who came up with the goats being sheep without wool theory.... aptly named Cheah's Goat-Sheep Conversion Theory®.

You have to check this out.

it's got an interactive widget with immense educational value.

If a bank gets robbed without witnesses, is the money still stolen?

Some people are lucky not to get caught.--Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, resigning after getting captured on video having sex with an unidentified woman

He's got spunk. that's for sure.

and a little bit of self righteousness and quite a dose of defiance.

read the article on his farewell press briefing and you'll see that his basic response to getting caught having sex with a woman not his wife is: "lots of politicians do it. it's just that I got caught.

"oh, and we have a great, close-knit family. which is why I was sleeping with another woman.

"I guess that doesn't make sense, but I'm the man anyway. so long suckers."

now some are going to say this incident is proof that BN is corrupt. haha.

but it's not. it's proof that human beings are corrupt. (some just think they're not; these are the ones who produce the most corruption.)

but not all of us get caught.

because we're lucky? in some cases, yes.

in other cases, it's because we don't have illicit sex, so there's nothing to catch, get it, Datuk Seri? get off your high horse.

<rant>

in related news, the letters section contained one headlined, "Teens look up to politicians as role models."

what?

do you watch TV? movies? surf the internet? read anything at all?

do you walk down the street with your eyes open?

</rant>

thank you for doing the right thing after doing the wrong thing, Datuk Seri.

Avoid cliches like the plague

Wordsmiths, avoid these words... | Reuters.com:

A 'surge' of overused words and phrases formed a 'perfect storm' of 'post-9/11' cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.

This is for Irene, who knows why...