Entries Tagged 'Geek' ↓

For all my fellow SIMS fans, SIMS 3 is soon to be released – June 2nd, its supposed to be on the shelves!! I’m extremely curious to see what they’ve come up with, and cannot wait to get my hands on it.

In the meantime, if you’re as bored with the old SIMS as me, here are some ways to kill your SIMS…

Electrocution. Really too random to be an effective murder tool. If a Sim with no Mechanical points attempts to repair an appliance, the result is almost always fatal. There is also a 1% chance of electrocution while changing a light bulb, regardless of Mechanical skill. This death can only affect family members, not neighbours or most NPC’s. Sims can also be electrocuted if they attempt to use an electric appliance while they are standing in water. This CAN kill neighbours and NPC’s.

Guinea Pig Disease. Again, another death that’s fairly random. If you don’t take proper care of the guinea pig, it may bite and infect your Sim with the dreaded Guinea Pig Disease. Unless steps are taken, the Sim will die from it. The disease apparently does not affect neighbors or NPC’s. The disease starts as mild cold, with minor coughing and the occasional sneeze, gradually progressing to a major illness, and eventually death. See below for cures, if you want to save your Sims for some weird reason.

Woodworkers Disease. One of the rarest deaths, continuously operating the woodworking table in a room with no windows may result in a Sim becoming ill. Cures are probably similar to those for the Guinea Pig Disease. This disease probably does not affect neighbors or NPC’s.

Spontaneous Combustion. The most extremely rare form of Sim death. I’ve only heard of this one, and never seen it. There is no known cause. The Sim just randomly bursts into flames. It is unknown if neighbors or NPC’s can suffer from this.

Slurm Overdose. The Slurm Vending Machine (It’s highly addictive!) is a download available on the Internet, it does not come with the Sims. It’s a fairly cheap vending machine, a mere $100. However, if your Sim drinks too much Slurm, he/she will double over in pain, collapse, and die. This may affect neighbors, but probably will not affect NPC’s.

Starve them. Remove all fridges, phones, anything that’s a way of getting your Sim fed. Removing the phone is important, because otherwise your Sims will keep calling for pizza (or Chinese after you have University). Your Sim will whine, cry, and yell at you for not feeding them, but ignore it. After they whine and cry for awhile, they’ll curl up into a ball and die.

Death via broken elevator.
This one took me a while to discover, as I hadn’t really made use of the extra building tools that came with the Open For Business expansion pack. The advent of elevators, however, has ‘opened new doors’ in the death arena. If you’ve got no handy mechanical Sims in your house (and are too cheap to hire a repairman), a poorly repaired elevator can send your Sim plummeting to his or her death in a quick trip to the bottom floor. Just like a bad soap opera.

Fire – rocket. You know those really cool outdoor rockets you can buy? Ever set one up inside? With lots of carpets surrounding it? And your Sim in the middle?

Burn them. Get a Sim that is bad at cooking. Buy the cheapest stove – or even better, a microwave. Cook a big dinner. Then let it burn away. For maximum effect, fill the room with wooden furniture and plants, and delete the door. Remember to remove any fire alarms, as this will automatically call the fire brigade. If all of your Sims are good cooks, buy the decoration that shoots fire. You can find it in Decorative/Misc. Simply place it adjacent to any item in the room, including your Sim.
Buy a fireplace and a heart-shaped rug. Place the rug in front of the fireplace and light a fire. Before long, the rug will catch fire. You can also buy a rug made of flowers, found in the Decorative/Misc. section

Fire Storm. The absolute most spectacular way to commit mass-murder. Simply place rugs through a room, so that the rugs overlap each other. Leave one square uncovered. Then place the model rocket launcher in the room. When someone launches a rocket, it will land in that one empty square and the entire room will ignite at once. The number of flames appearing could potentially crash a slower computer, so try not to make the fire too big. Because you can easily kill a dozen or more Sims at once, it may take the Grim Reaper several minutes to collect all the dead. This will kill anything in the room, including neighbors and NPC’s.

Drown them. Get a pool with no ladder, just a diving board. Make your Sim jump into it. They will soon drown. Or, if you have Seasons, tell them to jump into the pool; you won’t need a diving board. A relative can’t plead with the grim reaper because they can’t access the death site, so the drowned Sim has no opportunity to be revived.

Do a double whammy. Create a family of about 8 Sims and just put them on a lot. No house, nothing else and just hit that fast-forward key until the grim reaper shows up. Once everyone’s dead, exit, but do not bulldoze the lot. Place another family on the lot (feel free to build a house this time if you like). Do this often enough and you will have a lot full of urns and tombstones in no time.

Watch clouds/stargaze without a telescope. If you wait long enough, a satellite will fall down and crush your Sim.

Make them talk on the phone a long time. Each time they use the phone (not the cell phone that comes with University) there is a small chance the phone will burst into flames. This only works if they are cooking in a different room.

Scare your sim to death. After you’ve killed all of the other Sims, their ghosts may very well scare the living daylights out of your survivors.

Allow your Sim to be eaten alive by vicious bugs. Put your Sim in a narrow hallway filled with rotting food/dirty dishes. Stepping on a tile with rotten food carries a small chance that a swarm of flies will engulf your Sim.

Refuse to care for a sick Sim, and it will die from its own illness (unless that illness is morning sickness). Also, you can’t die from a cold, but colds turn into pneumonia, which can kill you.

Build a small room to trap them in (1X1 with no door should be fine). Enable the movement cheat (type “moveObjects on” exactly as it is seen here, minus the quotes, into the cheat box. The cheat box can be displayed by pressing Ctrl, Shift, and C at the same time) and, in Buy Mode or Build mode, use the Hand tool to drop your Sim into the room.

Bring up the cheat box and type “boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true”, and then hold down the shift button and click on the Sim you want to kill. Go through the menu until you see the spawn option. Click on it, then go to Rodneys death creator. A little tombstone will appear next to your Sim, click on it, and chose the way your Sim dies.

Get a Sim to use the most expensive telescope for a very long time. Every time he uses the telescope between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. there is a 5% chance he will be abducted by aliens. Rarely, the aliens do not return him. If it is an adult male, and he is returned, he will return pregnant with an alien baby.

Download the InSimenator. This program comes with many of the methods listed above, such as “Dying of Fright”, sickness, fire, satellite, so on and so forth. There is also an option to have your sim of old age. Find it here [1]. You must register for a free account first, however.

Laganaphyllis Simnovorii. Otherwise known as a ‘Cow Plant’, the Laganaphyllis Simnovorii dangles a piece of something that looks like cake from its mouth, luring your guests into its clutches and an early death. Your Sim, meanwhile, gets to enjoy another full five days of life from the resulting elixir. You couldn’t ask for a better pet really. The Laganaphyllis Simnovorii also makes up for having to wear nothing but fig leaves once you’ve reached the top of the Natural Science career path. I thought nothing could beat the Cow Plant, until I remembered the dread…

Death Island. Are those pesky visitors always annoying you? Then here’s an easy and fun way to get rid of them! Build your dream house and add a little something extra. A Swimming Pool Moat all the way round your house. On the side the side-walk is on, place a diving board. On the side your house is on, place a ladder. This means that your visitors come along, dive into your moat and climb up on the other side to ring your doorbell. But when they leave they climb into the moat but can’t get out as there is only a diving board there. Their only option is to return to Death Island, but instead they drown or die of hunger.

Whenever I can’t find something worthwhile to read on one of our local news websites, I go to the science section, and usually find something interesting there.

Here’s what I found in today’s science section on IOL…

• Global warming puts king penguins in danger – King penguins that feed on fish and squid at the northern edges of Antarctica are threatened by global warming, which is cutting down on their food supply.
• Bones of flying reptile found in China – Paleontologists have discovered the fossil of a new species of tiny prehistoric flying reptile in north-eastern China, a study released on Monday said. The miniature reptile lived about 120-million years ago and was about the size of a sparrow, with a wingspan less than a foot across.
• ‘Giant baby’ planet discovered – German astronomers have discovered a “giant baby” planet in deep space which they say has a mass 10 times as dense as Jupiter but is a scant 10 million years old – a newborn by cosmic standards.
• Ancient Indian city uncovered – Archaeologists have dug out the remains of a 2 500-year old city – believed to be bigger than classical Athens – from under the ruins of an ancient fort in India’s eastern state of Orissa, a newspaper reported on Monday. The findings of the team of archaeologists from India and the United States include the debris of household pottery and terracotta ornaments showing that the city’s inhabitants led an advanced lifestyle.

The ancient Indian city which was discovered particularly interests me. If I could’ve chosen another job, I would’ve loved to be an archaeologist. I guess its the adventurous side of the job that appeals to me so much. Just imagine finding a building which is centuries old, buried by sand, and completely forgotten. Yet still there were people who walked in those building, who LIVED there, and to whom it was as normal as our shopping malls are now. I find it intriguing, and would LOVE to discover something like that. One day.

The reason why I shared this today is because I sometimes forget what amazing people are out there, and the awesome things they’re doing. I forget that there are people out there STILL making discoveries, and that its not something that only happened in my history classes. Its just a reminder that we don’t know half the secrets that our Earth holds, and that there are still so many unknown things. Even though we live life “normally” each day, there’s a whole new ‘world’ out there. Somewhere.

So finally, when I have a few moments to sit down, pick up my pen… I mean,… Sit at my PC and type I don’t have much news, except that I got the Rooibos for Beth, Christine & Joe, and will send it off . I am so glad that its weekend, but aren’t we all?

So instead of boring you with my monotonous daily routine or something like that, I will show you what options you have if you’re upgrading your mobile phone sometime in the nearby (or not so nearby) future…..Some of these really remind me of the horrible 60’s films which were made about the ‘future’.

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1 . Nokia 888 Communicator
Nokia definitely has the most interesting concept phones. Nokia 888 Communicator is a striking futuristic concept phone. The phone, which uses liquid batteries, speech recognition, flexible touchscreen and touch-sensitive body cover,is designed by Tamer Nakisci and won the Nokia Design Award

2 . Nokia Aeon
Nokia Aeon was presented by Nokia on their website in the Research & Development section. What is so great about this phone is that it looks like it will actually go into production next February. Of course, its just a rumor, but still, makes us hope to actually see it someday in the GSM shop. All we know about it for now is that its a touchscreen phone and it looks fantastic.

3 . Sky “Sleak n Slim”
“Sleek & Slim” from SKY is another concept based on touchscreen technology. The phone has a discretely glowing touch-pad, hideaway keys and generally utterly-fashionable minimalist design.

4 . Benq-Siemens “Snaked”
Benq designers thought of women too and presented Snaked. This is a “reptile” looking phone, creepy somehow, but still is very cool. The Snaked is a fashion phone for sport loving women, because it also has body monitoring sensors to help the ladies keep those fine shapes. Somehow similar to the Snaked concept, the NEC Tag is a flexible phone concept that can be , for example, hung from a belt or wrapped around the user’s arm. Interesting is that the phone has shape-memorizing material and sensors that allows the phone to change its shape according to the mode.

5 . What You See is What You Get Concept
One thing is for sure about this concept phone…they could’ve named it shorter. Designed by Pei-Hua Hang, the phone’s name comes from the fact that this concept no longer uses an LCD as viewfinder for the digital camera, instead it uses a transparent frame. And of course, interaction is made through a touchscreen.

6 . Retroxis By Dark Label
If most phones presented here will never be sold in store for sure, the Retroxis concept phone from Dark Label looks kinda human, and makes us hope we’ll be able to get one of these one day. Designed by Lim Sze Tat the phone is encased in high polished polycarbonate renowned for its lightweight and toughness and has an invisible OLED display that silently hides away when inactive.

7 . Benq-Siemens “The Blackbox”
Black Box designed by Benq-Siemens uses a touch screen as its keypad and, depending on the functions you are using, the touch screen changes the control layout immediately.

8 . NEC Tag
Somehow similar to the Snaked concept, the NEC Tag is a flexible phone concept that can be , for example, hung from a belt or wrapped around the user’s arm. Interesting is that the phone has shape-memorizing material and sensors that allows the phone to change its shape according to the mode.

9 . TripleWatch
Though the idea of a cellphone watch is not so new, the TripleWatch designed by Manon Maneenawa has an interesting triple flip technique that allows the user to transform the watch into a normal cellphone. When used as a wrist watch, the phone has a speaker button that allows the user to answer the phone and hang up while driving.

10 . Asus Aura
And here’s another concept phone – Asus Aura, produced by Hungarian design company Egy Studio for Taiwanese vendor. It was clearly inspired by iPhone, although it has some interesting innovations addressing commonly mentioned shortcomings of Apple’s cellphone.
Asus Aura Concept Phone. One of them is a movable navigation module with navigation buttons, another – a sliding QWERTY keyboard that should make text entry much easier. Other features of Asus Aura include – 3,9″ touchscreen covering the whole surface of the phone, 2 megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot, GSM, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. All of this in a 6mm thick package. Unfortunately Asus Aura is just a concept so far and will stay that way probably a few years.

If you’re bored. Try this:

76% Geek

Yeah, I know, dumb title, but who cares?
Its time for bed, and I’m fussing with all kinds of things. First I got an app on my phone to do VOIP. I then got Twitter to work from my phone, just had to figure it out though. And now I’m posting to Wordpress from my phone! Cool hey? I’m now fully mobile!!

I really need to go to bed now. Can’t stop yawning. Night for now

Hey you all… Just popped in to say hi, and that I’m on BloggersChoiceAwards - So please vote for me!

As you will see, the button is already there on your top left hand side (had to think for a moment which side <- that is…)
I’ve been trying hard to get back to everyone who has ever commented on my site, and was surprised to see how many of those blogs don’t exist any more.

You might have noticed that I’ cleared my blogroll too – removed some of the old and dead links. If you’d like to be on my blogroll however, please contact me by leaving a comment or e-mailing me.

Please note however that I do reserve the right to deny adding your blog due to lack of updates, obscene material, abusive advertisements, or any other offensive material which I do not wish to promote.

Here’s what I did today…

Name Surname
Company Name
+ 00 00 000 0000
+ 00 00 000 0000
person@company.com
skypename

Well, its not ALL I’ve done, but its all I can show you.  Do you like it?  I thought it good to use icons instead of the usual “Office”, “Mobile”, etc.

You’re welcome to use it if you like

Chat slang can be such a nuisance, but at the same time so convenient. I know in school there were cliques, but while type-chatting with someone on Skype (or whatever other IM program you use), one can easily tell if a person is part of the internet junky club, or someone who still refers to java when they talk about their favourite coffee, or mention the word blog with a weird expression on their face (like its some sort of conspiracy?)

Most people I know still think that there has to be something wrong with “bloggers“. They tend to steer clear of me if they hear that “blog“…. Note, each time they pronounce the word “blog” their eyes go a bit bigger, and they stretch out the “o” sound just a bit longer than necessary… If you’re one of THOSE people and you’re reading this, you might just as well join in and blog. If you’re here, reading this, and you know me, then you probably like the idea of someone spilling all their guts online, or maybe you’re just curious to find out more about my thoughts. Either way, you’ll feel much better if you start “sharing” – like an AA meeting, you know?

So here’s for starters some chat abbreviations or acronyms…by googling you will find loads more… (If you don’t know what the term ‘googling’ means, refer to this post)

IM - Instant message
IMing - Chatting with someone online (verb form of im)
PM - Private message (as opposed to public message in chat rooms)
404 - I haven’t a clue
<3 - Heart
AFAIK - As far as I know
AFK - Away from keyboard
ASL? – Age – sex – location?
B4N – Bye for now
BAK – Back at the keyboard
BBIAB – Be back in a bit
BBL - Be back later
BEG – Big evil grin
BF - Boyfriend
GF – Girlfriend
BRB - Be right back (people confuse this for “burping”)
BTW - By the way
CU - See you
CUL8ER - See you later
DOM - Dream of me
F2F - Face to face
LOL - Laughing out loud
ROFL - Rolling on the floor laughing
LMAO - Laughing my ass off
ROFLMAO - Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off
FOMCL - Falling off my chair laughing
G2GP - Gotta go pee
GMTA - Great minds think alike
H&K - Hug and kiss
LUL - Love you lots
LTNS - Long time no see
MorF - Male or female
NI - No Idea
NP - No problem
OIC - Oh, i see
PEBCAK - Problem exists between chair and keyboard
PITA - Pain in the ass
::POOF:: – Goodbye (leaving the room)
Sup - What’s up
SU - Shut up
TA - Thank you
TMI - Too much information
TLK2UL8R - Talk to you later
TTFN - Ta-ta for now
TTYL - Talk to you later
WTF - What the ****
WTG - Way to go
WTH - What the hell
YW - You’re welcome

TLK2UL8R….

I’ve always been a loyal Google fan. No other search engine has thus far impressed me more. Shockingly enough I realized that not all people even know what is? I suppose I cannot blame them, but as for us bloggers, I assume we all know what Google is, and what it does. Well, maybe not all of it… I was surprised to find a few more items to add to the Google functionality list… If you have a gmail account you get access to a lot of really cool services – all for free! Have a look at the list below, because you may not not about them all. I still have some Gmail invites left, so if you’re interested in getting a Gmail account, you can e-mail me and request an account, or you can leave a comment. I only have a certain amount left, so first come first serve!

…Google AdSense is adverts which you include on your website or blog, and when someone clicks on an advert, you get paid! Easy as that!

…Google Analytics offers very detailed information on who visits your website or blog, where they’re from, what links were clicked etc. Once again you have to add a small bit of script to your page(s).

…Google Calendar allows you to add calender notes, appointments, and birthday, and also comes with an option to set an alarm for each even you add, for which you will get an e-mail reminder!

…Docs and Spreadsheet allows you to either create or upload word documents and spreadsheets. These are not limited to Microsoft word documents, or excel spreadsheets, but you can also upload OpenOffice documents and spreadsheets, as well as RTF and HTML documents. This includes a spell checker, and most of the formatting found in Microsoft Word. You can also download these documents again, as word documents and even pdf’s! You can also share your documents, choose between making your documents public, or only inviting certain people [by e-mail address] to view your documents. You can even publish your documents to your blog!

…Gmail is Google’s web based e-mail service. This is by far the best free web based e-mail account I have EVER had! You can set it up to download as POP3 [Meaning you can receive your mail into Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunder Bird].

…Google Talk is part of Gmail, and you don’t need to download anything to use it!! If you have your Gmail e-mail account open in a browser, you can chat with your friends in the same browser! You can however download the Google Talk application which is relatively small [1.5MB], and enables you to make a phone call to someone else who has Google Talk, send files, and type chat.

…Google Groups allows to join a group of people in a discussions, or create your own group. Groups are divided in categories, such as science, technology etc. When creating your own group you can set it to be public, or private. When set to private, only people you invite will be able to join your group. This is especially useful if you want other people’s opinions on a specific subject, or if you want to create a place of discussion, instead of sending out loads of e-mails to a group of people.

… A personal favorite of mine is the Notebook, here you can keep all your notes. Shopping lists, ideas for birthday gifts, and even notes about your next blog entry.

…Reader is a built in RSS Reader. If you’re wondering what an RSS reader is, its the abbreviation for “Rich Site Summary”. This basically mean that you can subscribe to a blog with the RSS Reader, and whenever there is a new post you will be able to see it in your RSS Reader, without having to go to the blog to check manually.

…Google Video allows you to upload video’s and share them with your friends, or to watch already uploaded video’s. These are again categorized, just like the Google groups, to allow you to find what you’re looking for fairly easily.

… Google Photos is something which I’ve only noticed recently, and haven’t tried out myself. Apparently you can download Picasa for free, or use the Google web interface to upload your photo’s to an online album. Again you can choose to keep your photo’s private, or make them public. There’s 250MB of space to use, which is not too much, but should allow for about 65 fairly large photo’s. They do however have an option to increase your storage space for an annual fee. Here are the different upgrade options: 6.25GB [$25 per year], 25GB [$100 per year], 100GB [$300 per year], 250GB [$500 per year].

…There’s also a pretty neat extention for Firefox called Gmail Space. This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space [2.5 GB and growing] for file storage.

Apart from the features listed above, there are a whole long list more, see below if you’re interested!

Note: The features below don’t require a Google account, and is accessed from the normal Google search page. The applicable keyword must just be entered in the search box along with the commands listen below.

Glossary & Dictionary

…For the glossary of any English word, type define:word for which Google will return definitions. This page includes all the definitions for the word that Google found on the web.

…You can also try adding “What is” in front of the word you want to know the definition for. Like what is sleep, for which Google returns a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended.

Calculation & Mathematical Constants

…Google calculater handles basic addition, multiplication, subtraction & division. But also helps you with more advanced calculations such as, trigonometric functions, inverse trigonometric functions, hyperbolic functions, and logarithmic functions. Just enter the proper formula into the search box, and wait for Google to display the answer. By entering 4 + ((16 x 66) / 2) Google will give you the answer, 542 - easy as that!

…In addition to performing calculations, Google also knows a variety of mathematical and scientific constants, such as pi, Avogadro’s Number, and Planck’s Constant. It also knows the radius of the Earth, the mass of the sun, the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and a lot more. For example, if you’re not sure what the value of pi is, just enter pi into the Search box and press Enter; Google returns 3.14159265, as it should. How about the speed of light? Enter speed of light, and Google returns 299,792,458 m/s.

Converter

…If you want to convert any unit of measure into another, for example 5 minutes in seconds, you type just that, and voila, you get 300 seconds. You can do the exact same with mass, temperature, and probably every other unit of measure you can think of.

…Google lists facts, so if you type in the key words of what you’re looking for, Google will give you the facts. For instance, if you type in William Shakespeare birthday, Google returns Date of Birth: 23 April 1564. Google will also be able to return the population of a certain country, birthplace of a well known person, currency of any country, and even the current president of a country.

As you know there is also Google Earth, which is a application you can download showing satellite images of nearly the whole Earth! Froogle is Google shopping, but I haven’t spent much time researching that, as it really doesn’t interest me. If you know anything else interesting about Google, make sure to leave your comment!

Sources: Google, and Informit