This is a big day in the history of Liquid Egg Product. That smiling egg you see in the picture is now the website’s official mascot! Here’s the exclusive interview I had with him.
Me: So tell the readers, what was it about my page that attracted you?
LEP Mascot: I couldn’t get a gig anywhere else, and you’re actually willing to pay me. So now I know what it feels like to be an illegal immigrant. Sometimes you have to take the work no one else wants to do.
Me: Um…right. You sound a little bitter.
LEP Mascot: Let me tell you something. I tried to get a job hawking Liquid Egg Product cereal. Kellogg’s, General Mills, Post, and Quaker—they all turned me down. But they’re billion dollar companies, and I can see why they don’t need me. Competing against Tony the Tiger and Cap’n Crunch…
Me: You were fighting tradition. That’s tough!
LEP Mascot: But getting laughed out of Malt-O-Meal HQ…that’s when I realized I had to start at the bottom. So I found the bottomest rung on the ladder I could find.
Me: [coughs] Yes, er, well, you get your first chance to strut yourself in a few days for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Feeling nervous?
LEP Mascot: I’m not sure which is more humiliating, being forced to talk like a pirate or being rejected by Malt-O-Meal.
Me: I guess we’re done here.
LEP Mascot: Righty-o.
September 17th, 2007
12 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Uncomfortability
Another reason to keep your gaming sessions under 35 hours at a time: a guy died in an internet bar after playing online games for 3 days straight. This mode of death seems to be getting more and more popular in China and Korea.
Although the game was not specified, it was more than likely 50K Racewalker or StrongBadZone. You could play those forever! (C’mon, you sissy, click on the links and try them!)
September 17th, 2007
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Gaming
As of today, there have been 100 attempts at posting spam comments. Liquid Egg Product would like to thank all the spammers that have made this day possible.
September 17th, 2007
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Bad Ads
After a hiatus, it’s time for Monday Fighter! to make its return. I actually have a few more fortune cookies left, but keep on forgetting to scan them, so it’ll take a different approach this week.
Our company is currently looking to fill an entry-level computer programmer position, and many of the resumés have certainly gotten themselves noticed.
To his credit, this applicant did not brag about his skills in Bisual Vasic. Nonetheless, it was apparent that “fluent” may not be the best word to describe his English proficiency.
Even so, we would have taken one of him instead of an army of this applicant. Simply put, there is no snide remark or sarcastic gesture ample enough for a proper response.
September 17th, 2007
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Monday Fighter!
USC is now routing Nebraska 41-10, so, unbelievably, I’m bothering to watch Colorado/Florida State. The over/under on this game had to be…25? In the first quarter, Colorado blew a field goal, which might be one of the 2 possessions where they cross the 50 (Florida State is in Colorado territory, but that’s because of an interception.)
Kentucky’s leading #9 Louisville with under 30 seconds left. (Update: they won.)
Baylor got past Texas St. 34-27. I’m really hoping Colorado’s part of their conference schedule so they get at least one Big 12 win.
The list of teams that are good enough to compete for the national title seems very short this year. USC, Oklahoma, LSU, and Florida simply have been that much more impressive than everyone else, Rutgers’ 59-0 win against the University of Pacifist Nurses notwithstanding.
Duke broke their 22-game losing streak. Congrats.
September 16th, 2007
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Sports
I’m visiting my parents, and ironically, this is the first week of actually watching college football. They aren’t much into football.
Right now, it’s almost halftime in the USC-Nebraska game. It looks like the Trojans simply have more athletic players.
Notre Dame is awful. They haven’t scored on offensive touchdown in 3 games.
It’s amazing how the ABC commentators were talking about how well the Penn State defense did. They allowed 24 points against perennial loser Buffalo. Buffalo’s scoring came after the game was decided.
Baylor…at least they’re winning. They tacked on another touchdown to lead Texas St. 28-17 early in the 4th. It’s not very confidence inspiring.
Despite my “Go Horns!” promise, I must say that Texas cannot possibly be a top 10 team. They barely beat Arkansas St. and now Central Florida. Unfortunately, voters aren’t smart enough to take this into account, and will keep the Longhorns in the top 10 simply because they won. The Horns and Aggies are closer in skill than the rankings would indicate (if it’s any comfort, I don’t believe Baylor is a top 10 program either.)
Friggin’ Gators! They crushed Tennessee 59-20 on the road. Last year, I watched a LOT of Gators football, and thought that Tim Tebow would be an inadequate passer. He didn’t pass a lot, going 14/19, but it was for almost 300 yards.
FAU Owls went into Minnesota and beat them 42-39.
Miami-FIU had their rematch after last year’s brawl, the Hurricanes only winning 23-9. I wonder how FIU running back Ned did. Must tell you his amazing story in another post (although it’s quite old news…)
September 15th, 2007
no comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Sports
Probably a fair portion of you have heard the name John Conway in conjunction with a game called Life. It’s amazing how the few simple rules can generate tons of interest, research, and analysis.
Playing Life:
This isn’t a game where you take turns to try to obtain an objective; think of it more as a simulator. You start with a grid of cells, a universe (really small for this example). Fill in the cells however you wish. Empty cells are dead, while the grey cells are alive:
A game of Life, turn 0
Each cell has eight neighbor cells surrounding it. The following rules determine whether a cell will be alive on the following turn:
- A dead cell with 3 living neighbors gains life.
- A live cell has 2 or 3 living neighbors stays alive.
- A live cell with 0 or 1 living neighbors dies of loneliness.
- A live cell with 4 or more living neighbors dies of overcrowding.
So taking our starting position above:
What will happen for turn 1?
The green cells are dead cells that will live next turn, and the red cells will be killed.
The next few turns you can see here:
It’s still far from certain what the fate of this universe will be. Sometimes, all the cells will eventually die. Othertimes, the universe will remain stable, or continually expand. There’s no good way to predict how it will end up for an arbitrary starting position.
Another complexity is how we treat the edges of the universe. You could have the universe “wrap around”, so the cells on the far left and far right edges (as well as top and bottom) would actually be neighbors.
I could hack up a basic implementation of Life pretty quickly, but it’s been done so many times, I’ll just link you Johan Bontes’ program. According to the website it’s an awesome program (plus it’s free).
Or, if you have time and graph paper, I suppose you could do it by hand.
September 15th, 2007
5 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Mathematics
This site is pretty cool: purves-lab’s “See For Yourself” section. It lets you interact with various optical illusions, many famous, but quite a few I’d not seen presented before.
This illusion is very famous: which one of the two line segments is longer? You know the answer, of course; they are both the same length. But this page adds a little twist by letting you adjust the bottom line’s length until they look even to you, and reports the results. For me, there ended up being a 16% difference in perception versus reality.
Many of the illusions are more maddening (and fascinating) than this.
September 14th, 2007
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
These I stumbled on more-or-less randomly. They fit under Link Criterion #2: interesting enough so that I’m now making it a point to visit their site at least once a week. (Link Criterion #1 is that the author’s a family member or friend. This explains why ROTK is still linked, even though it hasn’t been updated since May.)
These first two guys come from different sides of the fence.
BlackSun is a staunch atheist (despite the name, the author is white) with an eye-catching website. It’s a rather different animal from the other links, being quite heavy and serious. In fact, I have no hard evidence that the guy even has a sense of humor. If you need a break from my silliness, it works.
Batman…er, I mean, l3ruce Wayne (sorry to blow your cover, buddy!) is a strong advocate of ID (intelligent design). He just started blogging last month, and is putting some gusto into it. He plays chess, and I need to test his skill on FICS sometime.
The third guy, Shazgood, is Irish, which means he drinks and says “begorrah” a lot. He started his WordPress blog 3 days after I did (we’re brothers, man!). The page is rather attractive, and was also found via chess tag channels. But there’s other stuff, too.
September 14th, 2007
5 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Entertainment
thank...