HOW TO:

Properly microwave a polariod picture.

The trick to microwaving a polaroid is to do it right after taking the picture, before it develops.  You want to microwave it for EXACTLY six seconds.  Any longer and YOU WILL BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE.

The payoff, though, is huge.  Check out this puppy:



Please note: NEVER shake a polaroid picture.  It will ruin the development!

Just so we're all on the same page, I've created a review of the planets in the solar system.  I'm going to forgo my traditional Jupiter rating, for obvious reasons.

Mercury - I like Mercury.  It's all up in the suns spotty face, and yet there is still ice on it.  Mercury is like the friend that I don't call, but that's OK, cause we're tight. 

Venus - According to the 80's, this is where women are from.  And what's the deal with airplane food?  On February 20, 1992, shrimp tainted with cholera was served on Air Argentina, flight 386. An elderly passenger died and several other passengers fell ill.  I bet you thought I was going to say a joke.

Earth - This is the bar that I compare all other planets to, mainly because I've spent the majority of my life here.  Sometimes I think it's going to be cold, and so I over dress, and then I'm too warm.  Also, our oceans are dying so we should eat all the fish while we can.

Mars - Earth Jr.  The way things are going, one day, it's arid surface might be an improvement.  I see it as a stepping stone, we setup a little base on Mars, then we fly right past Saturn, to Jupiter, where we'll have a big party.

Saturn - A stupid idiot of a planet that nobody would pay any attention to if it weren't for that ring around it.  The cosmic equivalent to a goat wearing a hat.  In addition to it's rings, it has over sixty moons.  Clearly, Saturn is one insecure ball of gas.  Saturn's moon, Titan, is cool though.  It's the only moon in our solar system with a real atmosphere. 

Jupiter - 'Hilary!  Get in here!  You have to see what's on TV right now!' I love making her sprint in to see some TV spot featuring my boy.  I hope that one day she appreciates it as well.  It's no secret that I'm Jupiter's biggest fanboy.  If you add up the mass of all other planets, Jupiter is still 2.5 times more massive.  Visually, no other planet compares.  Don't even get me started on that red spot.  I'm going to stop gushing now, as I'm inspired to write a proper entry about my superstar giant.

Uranus - I'm much too high-brow to do silly Uranus jokes, even though I still laugh when Alex Trebek says it.  Uranus is cool cause, like Saturn, and Jupiter, it has rings, but to keep it unique, Uranus has vertical rings running from it's north to south pole.  If you look at Uranus directly, it looks like an archery target, and Uranus is the bullseye.

Neptune - Neptune is the final planet in the solar system, but it's had a tough time maintaining that status.  It's colour is a very cool blue, but it's much too cold and far away to be of much use to me at the moment.  There's a lot going on down at the core of Neptune though, with pressure at it's core 7 million times the core of Earth, I'd expect some kind of diamond shelled crab people, slowly plotting a way out.

So for the past three months I've been (grudgingly) drinking folgers coffee at work, cause that's what they have.  Today they switched to Maxwell House, and I think I was too happy for such a minor change.  I did a little happy dance to celebrate the end of the folgers reign of terror.
Then somebody let me in on a secret.
"Upstairs, near the execs, is one of those super high end single cup Krups grind and brews."

The rumors were true!  It makes everything!  It grinds, it brew, it froths, it frazzles, it frumps, and it froils!

There's a selection of quality beans!

I'm in coffee heaven, which is my version of pie heaven.

Folgers, you suck.  I'm giving you an impromptu review.  You get zero jupiters.

Wizards finally replied to one of my 'Ask Wizards' that I sent in.  Oh wonderful day!!!  It may not seem like a big deal to YOU, but you don't know how many times I've used that 'Ask Wizards' field without a response.  They never respond to my questions about the TV show Rosanne, or the time that I asked them if they give Graham (Velvety) an advance view of their janky combo decks.   I must have hit a nerve when I asked them about the 'click here for a free xbox360 link' on their site.  And in the great tradition of Andy Dufraine of Shawshank, this has only increased my letter writing desire.



-----Original Message-----
From: XXXX@daveyb.net [mailto:XXXXX@daveyb.net]
Posted At: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 6:14 PM
Posted To: Ask Wizards
Conversation: Magic Website
Subject: Magic Website

In the ferret's article is an advert that says 'click here for a free
xbox360', and it plays an annoying electrical buzz. Is it possible to
turn off the noise without muting my computer? I can't read articles
with that buzzing sound.
Also, perhaps I am a fool, as I haven't clicked the link to claim my
free xbox 360. Have you guys got your xbox360's? If so, what's your
favourite xbox game?
--dvb

------------------------------
THE REPLY
------------------------------


David,

We report ads that make noise or expand on rollover. When you see ads
like that, if possible, please take a screen cap, note the target URL,
and email them to me. That's the fastest and best way to get them off
the site.

Thanks!
Kelly XXXXX

-------------------------
My Reply to Kelly
------------------------

Kelly,

I swear an oath upon the hammer of bogarden that I will be your avatar of hope against the greed of your marketing department. 

PS:  Have you played Oblivion?  I'm the Hero of Kvatch.

Breaking down IP addresses.

An IP address consists of four numbers, which are called 'octets'.  Why are they called 'octets'? Cause computers read these numbers in binary, baby!  An octet is a number that is eight bits long.  A bit is the smallest number that can be computed (on or off, zero or one).

The binary number 11111111 converts to 255 in the decimal system. When you include 00000000, you get a total range of 256 numbers per octet.  With four octets, to calculate the maximum possible IP address combinations, you just resolve:

 256 ^ 4 = 4,294,967,296

There was a time when four billion IP addresses seemed like a lot.  It's not anymore.  That's not even one IP address per person.  There's even less than that available, as many of the numbers are taken up by routers, and some ranges are reserved for internal routing, and other functions.

This is why IPv6 is coming out.  It's 128 bits long, as opposed to 32 bits.  It's going to be written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, and they will be separated by a colon instead of a decimal.

128 bits is huge (2^128).  There's going to be 3.4x10^38 possible IP addresses.  It's going to be very expensive to switch over to IPv6, but it's happening soon.  Vista currently supports it, but your router at home probably doesn't.

It's going to be annoying to have to type in a new IPv6 address, as they are going to look like this: 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7348, but we're finally going to be able to network our toaster, coffee maker, alarm clock, and george forman grill.

I love alternative media.  I feel it's important to bring attention to sources like this.  Gracenote is a very compelling site that I learned about through Alan Cross's radio show.
Often in your music program (Itunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, Nero, etc) there will be an option to the effect of "Automatically download CD, Artist, and Track details".  It's on by default.  They all contact gracenote's database.  The way it works, is your media player sends the amount of tracks and the length of each track to gracenote, and gracenote determines what CD you are playing (or ripping), and sends the details.  Gracenote has developed an amazing database of what people are really listening to.
This is the link that I want people to check out.  It's a map, where you can view what the most popular music is, updated hourly.  You can see who is currently number one in your country (or state in the US).  At the time I am writing this, The Beetles is Canada's most popular band.
I feel that the potential for this site is immense, and if you check it out, I'm sure you'll agree.

People use it all the time, but a lot of people don’t actually know how the Internet works.
 

I’m going to reveal it’s secrets and try to make it as simple as possible.

The Internet would be much simpler and faster if people could just remember numbers.  If you type 72.14.253.104 into your web browser address bar, Google pops up.  IP addresses work just like phone numbers, the request is routed to the 72 server, which is routed to the 72.14 server, which is then routed to the 72.14.253 server, etc, until the site is found.  Dead simple.

Companies lease blocks of IP addresses, just like phone companies lease blocks of phone numbers.  In order to hit these web sites, these companies host DNS (Domain Name System) servers.  These are servers that literally host text files, very similar to a phone book.  There will be an entry in a DNS server somewhere that looks as follows:

google.com  72.14.253.104
 

For a lot of people, this is nothing new and so far, you haven’t learned anything from me.  I hope you are still reading, cause I’m about to blow your mind.

The proper way to write a URL is as follows:

http://www.google.com.

I put that period after .com on purpose.  Try it when you type in an address.  It works.  URL’s are read by computers in reverse order. There is actually a place in the world known as The Dot.  It is considered the ‘top’ of the Internet.

When you type in a URL into your address bar, it automatically adds the DOT to the end of what you type, and then contacts the dot.

The dot knows the IP address of all the top level domains name servers  (.com, .net, .org, biz, .ca, etc).  That’s why there’s only a specific few of these, and it’s actually a big deal with a new one gets added.

In our http://www.google.com. example, the Dot has no idea where google is, but it knows where the .COM server is.  It contacts the .COM server and passes the routing onto it.
The.COM server knows where google is, but knows nothing about the "http://www." part of it.  Google does though.  It knows that you’re using HTTP as your transfer protocol, and knows that you’re requesting it’s internal server that it has designated www.  
It sends you the requested data, the page that it has setup named WWW, and it sends it to you using hyper text transfer protocol.
If you read this you have just become more nerdy.  Congratulations.