Keep on Twittering – even when Twitter is down

By Mark O’Neill

Twitter has been crashing so much lately that it isn’t news when it goes down. But now, in an ironic twist, a mini-industry seems to be springing up to cater to Twitter users for when the service is not available. No, it’s not tea and sandwiches. No, not 24 hour suicide watch either.

Twiddict is a Web site where you can temporarily post your Twitter messages, and when Twitter eventually comes back up, Twiddict will automatically send all the queued messages to Twitter in the order they were posted.

You don’t need to have any withdrawal symptoms about Twitter being down, and you can stop writing suicide notes, Mr. Scoble! Just send all your messages to Twiddict and pretend everything is normal. Later on, Twiddict will send everything to your Twitter profile, and you won’t even notice the difference!

And look, you even get to see some pretty red flowers while inputing your messages!

Ordering Pizza Via the Command Line (Video)

You may have ordered pizza through a website or even a desktop widget in the past, but have you ever done so from the command prompt? Probably not!

Pizza Party is a free, text based application that will allow you to quickly order pizza online.

Pizza Party has many features to make ordering pizza super easy:

-Can order pizza with only a few keystrokes.
-Can save pizza preferences.
-Can use batch files for ordering many pizzas.
-Has easy to use flags for ordering different toppings.
-Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems.
-Supports most currently popular topings like “mushrooms”, and “pepperoni”!
-Unattended / background operation.
-Pizza Party is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

If you want to try it out, the software is available right here for free!



Palpatine does his own YouTube show

By Mark O’Neill

Between Chad Vader and now Emperor Palpatine, everyone is sure having fun squeezing as much satire as possible out of the Star Wars movies these days!

This one is Ask Palpatine which is obviously someone’s hand covered in a piece of cloth.    So zero budget compared to the Chad Vader episodes but this guy’s humour is spot on and I was laughing out loud.

You can apparently send questions to him and he will answer them.    This one is “what happened to your lightsaber?”

Visit Disney World in Google Earth

By Mark O’Neill

I went to Disney World today – well not the real Disney World.  Rather I went to the online digital version, courtesy of Google Earth. Not as good as the real thing obviously but it’s as near as I’m ever going to get to it. The Google Earth version doesn’t give you the chance to sit on Mickey Mouse’s knee (although I am rather partial to Minnie myself).

The online version of Disney World comes courtesy of the latest version of Google Earth and I have to admit it’s not bad. It didn’t have me jumping up and down for joy but then again I’m not five years old either. The graphics were pretty good and smooth and by clicking on Mickey’s ears, you could go to different areas of the park. But the big downside was that Google Earth was chewing up huge amounts of my RAM (300MB +) which meant I had to shut down everything else to keep it going. I seriously hope that this was a temporary glitch, otherwise this visit will be a one-off!

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Unbelievable Google suggestions

By Mark O’Neill

One of the features I like the most in Google is the suggestions feature when you are typing in your keywords. But sometimes you come across some really crazy and outrageous suggestions. I mean, look at these ones….

81,300 pages for that?

Yes, many a long and cold night, I have tapped away at Google, searching for the solution to that riddle. But still the answer eludes me….

You don’t need Google to tell you that one! I suppose it all depends on the class of girl you’re dating! Nice girls don’t fart (apparently) while guys just fart away ALL the time…

Now you may say this is just my imagination but Google searchers seem to have an unhealthy obsession with black people!    First with black kids in the cafeteria and now this?    Why are black people black? What the hell? And are there really 51.9 million pages on the subject?

Hasbro to introduce a revamped Millenium Falcon

By Mark O’Neill

Sometimes things are just fated to happen. When Hasbro broke the mold of the old Millenium Falcon toy, they realized that they would have to then make a new one. Then they thought, “since we’re making a new mold, why not make it 30% bigger and at the same time, make the toy absolutely wonderful, so wonderful in fact that a 33 year old geek blogger from Germany is going to salivate all over the computer screen screaming “I WANT ONE OF THOSE!!!!”.

Here is a YouTube video of the brand new spanking version of the Millenium Falcon due to hit the shelves on July 26th. You even get a free Han Solo and Chewbacca thrown in. Sweeeet!

All I’ve got to do now is break it to the girlfriend that she’s out and the Falcon is coming in her place… hmmm, how do I break THAT one to her?

12-year-old gives pro-environment speech at UN Earth Summit 1992

Raised in Vancouver and Toronto, Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been camping and hiking all her life. When she was 9 she started the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They were successful in many projects before 1992, when they raised enough money to go to the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Their aim was to remind the decision-makers of who their actions or inactions would ultimately affect. The goal was reached when 12 yr old Severn closed a Plenary Session with a powerful speech that received a standing ovation.

Believe it or not, what you are about to see has been filmed in 1992, yet the speech you’ll hear is now more relevant than ever.