Dell’s Practical Joke switch

I learned about this switch today, a hilarious joke from Dell! The switch is located on the side so that sometimes when you slide your laptop in your briefcase, it slides to the off position.

The result for you is no wireless internet until you go crazy and call support. They will (probably) play around with you for a bit until bursting out in laughter and confessing that they’ve played this practical joke on you.

The brilliantly funny part is that no amount of software configuration, restarting, bios upgrades, driver installs will get you out of your misery untill you flip the hardware switch.

If the switch wouldn’t have broken off while I was frantically banging my laptop against the walls in despair, I would have never known it was there…

Nice one, Dell

iPhone users spend more time in the smallest room

A survey among iPhone owners has shown that people who own an iPhone spend more time on the toilet than before they had the populair cellphone.

Don’t worry if you’re an iPhone user yourself; it has got nothing to do with medical reasons. People are simply using the iPhone to kill some time while taking care of their everyday “business”.

The survey shows that people who own an iPhone spend up to 4 times more time on the toilet than before. Some even report going to the small room for the sole purpose of playing with their phone, when they do not really “need to go”.

A few male participants also wrote that they switched from a standing to a seated position for “nr. 1″ visits, so they can have both their hands free to play with their gadget (refering to the iPhone of course .

Popular activities while sitting on the throne are playing games, twittering and checking email.

HardSID 4 me

I got my HardSID 4u! What is it? It’s a black box with a USB cable and it doesn’t do anything… that is, it doesn’t do anything until you put some SID chips in.

The SID chip is the sound module from the legendary Commodore 64 home computer, which owes a big part of it’s legendary status to that particular chip. Of course it sounds terribly retro nowadays but there are still many people who can value that particular SID sound.

The HardSID 4u can hold a maximum of 4(!) of these chips and is typically used for things like:

• Playing Commodore 64 tunes on the original soundchip, but using your PC.
• Composing new Commodore 64 tunes (it’s being done more than you would imagine!)
• Creating retro sounds and effects in modern music production.

With it comes a VSTi that you can use in your favourite VST host. I’m using Renoise, which is still giving me some headaches because of timing issues… but it’s cool to have the old sound at your fingertips in a contemporary setup.

I’m glad I stored up some old Commodore 64’s in the attic; the minute I got my HardSID 4u I was able to fill it up with 4 genuine SID chips (3x 6581 and 1x 8085). Now all I have to do is think up some retro-style tunes…

To the rescue!

I was at a garden party last weekend, having some drinks with my collegues, when all of a sudden one of them was over the hedge and into a pond behind the garden. Despite being somewhat intoxicated I managed to save his life.

Electric Sheep

The Electric Sheep screensaver doesn’t only look good, it always looks different. That’s because there’s an interesting concept of evolution behind it; the animations, called sheep, can mate with other sheep over the internet, and make new sheep.

You, the user can vote for sheep that you like. That makes them mate more and keeps their genes alive, making a nice flock of good looking sheep.

You can download the screensaver for windows or mac, for free, at http://www.electricsheep.org

Dutch Donald Duck lecturing on illegal copying

Check out this article on the dutch site showing this funny Donald Duck comic.
www.dumpert.nl – Moraalridders bij de DD

Orbital & Hardcastle goosebumps

These two videos have something in common; they are both iconic synthie tunes, and in these live versions they have been fitted with buildups that give me goosebumps. See what you think and oh, if anybody has the complete Hardcastle recording, I want it!

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=u7RlIZywxNQ[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=AHVdAfujzH0[/youtube]

Free and legal classic cartoons

Torrentfreak has a post about free and legal Superman cartoons from the early 40’s. If you like classic toons also check out the Vintage Tooncast and the Refrederator video podcasts. The latter is a spin-off of the excellent, must-have video podcast Channel Frederator.