Self-Lacing Sneakers?

Nike’s Plans For “Back To The Future” Self-Lacing Sneakers — via Deadspin.com

Remember the self-lacing shoes that Marty McFly put on in Back to the Future 2 when Doc Brown brought him into the future to save his son from getting arrested? He stepped out of the DeLorean and Doc handed him a jacket and shoes. He slipped the shoes on, pressed the button and they tightened around his feet.

This could be reality soon. Nike has filed a patent to make these shoes 5 years before it was destined to be reality along with the flying cars and no door handles on all houses. Here is a quote:

“The automatic lacing system provides a set of straps that can be automatically opened and closed to switch between a loosened and tightened position of the upper. The article further includes an automatic ankle cinching system that is configured to automatically adjust an ankle portion of the upper.”

And check out this video:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEZs0HpFQc&fmt=18

For clarification, the above video is NOT from Nike but a DIY video found on YouTube.  Nike would not sell shoes with a huge motor in the back lol.

Cool eh? Now if we can just get to work on those flying cars, door handles, tv screen windows,fax machines in every room including the closet and bathrooms, pizza hydraters, hovering wheelchairs, hover boards and everything else we will be set.

James Potter

I accidentally found a book that J.K. Rowling wrote that was a prequel to the Harry Potter novels, it was called Chapter Zero. Apparently it was a prank that J.K. Rowling was playing on her fans but that’s quite alright, I can take a joke.

While searching for the name James Potter I stumbled onto this website which is a fan novel series called James Potter by G. Norman Lippert. These novels are based on J.K. Rowling’s novels but they are not hers. It’s a fan fiction novel(s) based on the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

So far there are 3 novels. James Potter and the Hall of Elders’ CrossingJames Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper and James Potter and the Vault of Destinies.

I have not read them yet because they are in pdf format and I really don’t like reading pdf files on the computer screen. It’s too hard on my eyes and I’d much rather be able to lay down on my bed and read it. When I get my Nook I’ll be able to read them on that.

I am really excited about reading these books because 1 I’m a huge fan and 2 they are FREE! Who doesn’t like free?

The one thing about these books for those who are unaware, James Potter is not Harry’s father, he’s his first-born son.

“Your Father’s Battle is Over. Your’ Begins.”

If you are interested, they did some videos for YouTube to advertise the first book. You can click the big picture for “James Potter and the Hall of Elders’ Crossing the FULL FILM” I have to warn you though, the acting isn’t A grade but it’s something. And it’s not a full 90 minute or 3 hour movie, it’s 5 videos all under 10 minutes. Watching it will give you an idea of what’s coming in the story.

As soon as I get my Nook I will add it to it after I convert the pdf files to epub format then I will add it to my very long list of books to read. I’ll push it up near the top because I am very interested in it.

AMAZING Child Singers

I thought I would share these amazing videos:

The Four Fingers of Death

via The Four Fingers of Death – Hachette Book Group.

A few months ago I won a book on GetGlue called The Living Dead by George Romero and then I found out in a stage Q&A video on YouTube that he knew nothing about the book and denied it’s existence. Today I got an email from GetGlue telling me that the Hatchette Group who I apparently won the book from has offered 4 other alternatives. Here they are:

ADAM by Ted Dekker
A serial killer known only as Eve is on the loose. The victims are sixteen young women, each murdered on the night of a new moon. Special Agent Daniel Clark is determined to find Eve at any cost, even if it means he might be the next target.

THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH by Rick Moody
Rick Moody’s masterful new novel vividly imagines a lowdown, darkly comic future, as inspired by a drive-in movie classic.

THE CAPITOL GAME by Brian Haig
New York Times bestselling author Brian Haig returns with a riveting new thriller about a man caught between the politics of big government and the corruption of big business.

POSTCARD KILLERS by James Patterson and Liza Marklund
James Patterson teams up with #1 European bestseller Liza Marklund to create the scariest vacation thriller ever.

I think it was very cool that they offered a new book instead of making me wait for the book that they offered me a couple of months ago. Since I already knew that The Living Dead wasn’t going to happen, I gave up on waiting for it.

The only issue that I have with these 4 books is that they are not an equal alternative to “the livingdead”. They aren’t zombie books which is what I won for being the guru of a zombie book.

So because I had to choose 1 I chose The Four Fingers because it sort of has a zombie in it, the reanimated arm with the middle finger missing. That should be interesting to read about considering it is the remains of an earth human who went to Mars and the only thing that came back was his arm. I’d also like to see how the arm came back to Earth lol.

The other 3 books seemed suspenseful but I’m not into murder mysteries. The book genre I’m really into is fantasy and horror. You know, vampires, demons, zombies, magicians, wizards and witches.  If it is supernatural then I like it. Those other 3 did not seem very supernatural to me.

It is hardcover which is a bit of a bonus and I look forward to receiving it but I won’t hold my breath for too long.

Update 2011-01-27: I still have yet to receive this book

Update 2012-10-03: I STILL have yet to receive any book.  I gave up a long time ago.  In fact, I totally forgot about it until I received an email saying that 2 of the links from this post were broken.  I tried to fix them, but 1 of them isn’t even on the Hatchette Group website anymore.  The Capital Game.  Oh well.  I guess after nearly 3 years I might as well just give up ever expecting to receive any “free” gift other than stickers from GetGlue.

No Zombie Book For Me

On June 30th I got an email from GetGlue saying I won a book for being the guru of the book Zombies for Zombies .  Well the book that I won “ The Living Dead” by George Romero is apparently not really happening.

I haven’t really been that focused on getting it on a certain day or week because I know when you win things it could take a month or longer.  But since it has been over 3 weeks I thought maybe it might come soon.  I waited for the mail like a little pup but once again, no book.

I decided to go onto Amazon and get more information about the book, maybe read some reviews.  What I see is confusing because it says that this book is available for pre-order and that it has not been released yet. Hmmm , ok well I go down and see in the product details that it was released on July 1st 2010.  Well that’s odd.  So I scroll all the way down for the discussion section for this book and find out that in the post at the very top that this book is not even real.  It was actually someone who responded to the post titled “ Exciting! “.

Someone on July 13th said there was an interview on YouTube of him saying it’s not real and another person on the 24th said they would like the link to that.  I searched and found it.  I had to watch the first part of the interview then watch the second part of the interview to see and it was the very last question all the way at the end of the interview.

The question was asked at 6:09 and he responded at 6:25 that you can’t listen to what you read on IMDB, he responds about amazon at 6:51 saying you can’t believe any of the “shit” you read on amazon.

Seriously?  I really don’t believe this.  The Q&A session he did in this video was posted on YouTube on May 12 2010 by a woman who clearly sounded annoyed by the video game and novel questions and she clearly had her nose so far up George Romero’s ass, it was any wonder you could hear her chuckling at the questions being asked.

Anyway, I am a bit disappointed that the one thing I did win from GetGlue might never arrive, it was fun to think that it would though.  I guess I can stop waiting for it to come in the mail now.

Scared Shitless from YouTube

Have you seen these videos on YouTube that claim that there is a “real ghost” or a “car accident” and they show a car driving on a road.  You see a lot of green grass and trees and it’s winding down this road then all of a sudden this scary figure of a female ghost shows up on the screen and you hear a screaming sound.  All of a sudden your legs slam into the keyboard tray, your glasses have also flown up in the air and landed in your lap and one of the arms are now bent and the headphones that were turned up full blast are on the floor.

Yeah, I hate it when they do that on YouTube.

Want to see the video I’m talking about?  Are you sure?  Are you absolutely sure?  Be 100% positive that you want to see it.  If you have a heart condition please do not watch this.  Now please turn your volume down or off, remove your glasses, push in your keyboard tray and click here.  I will not be held liable for anything happening.

Ghostly Dreams

ghostI’ve been watching all these ghost videos on YouTube that it has entered my dreams lol.

The one thing that I’ve learned from watching Ghost Hunters on the SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi) channel is that they can’t hurt you.  Well, they kinda can because Jason has gotten scratches and they show people with scratches on their back that they couldn’t have possibly done to themselves.  And there was that one Halloween episode where Grant was being held back and you could see the collar of his jacket being tugged on.  But is that really hurting?

The videos on YouTube that I’ve been watching have been that stupid “Pantry Ghost” video where you can see hands and a face through the glass but someone has proven that it is a fake by showing you how they do it.  So I don’t believe in that one.  This same person has also shot video of himself playing hide n’ seek with his daughter and at the very end you see what appears to be a ghostly apparition in the corner by the dresser.  Well, that could’ve easily been faked using the same techniques as the pantry video.  They also made a video of going into a room and seeing a ghost girl standing up and then another where he opens the board to theattic and he sees a ghost girl turning around to see the camera.  Those are all fake because you cannot see through the ghost, it’s a solid apparition.

I’ve actually had encounters with “ghosts” in my bedroom.  Feeling a cat jump up on the bed and walk around.  That happens sometimes but I’ve accepted that it’s a kitty cat ghost, it can’t hurt me so it doesn’t frighten me in the least.  And one night, this only happened once, I was laying in bed and I felt what seemed like 4 cats on the bed but then I felt as though someone just sat down on the edge of the bed.  The edge of the bed felt like it was pressed down.  You could feel someone sitting.  I didn’t move because I didn’t want to scare it, it didn’t scare me.  I even said hello to it.  I eventually fell asleep.

But last night I had this dream that there was this ghost in the house and it was stalking me.  I went to the front door and there was a piece of furniture sitting in front of the door and it was keeping me in the house.  But I can’t put any stock into that dream because some how our toy chihuahua dog “Flower” duplicated so I had 2 “flowers” lol.

It still scared me, I was frightened and basically just scared out of my mind.  But I know that it was just a dream, they can’t hurt me.  I have to just keep saying and thinking that they cannot hurt me.

I saw “ghosts” as a kid, so did my older sister, my mother told me that she sees them too and that if I feel scared then perhaps it’s not good, it’s “evil” and to say the “lords prayer”.  Well, personally I don’t believe in evil as in hell or the devil.  I do believe in evil as in people who are evil such as those who have murdered other people and laughed about it and don’t regret it or apologize for it.  So I guess if a ghost can be good as people can be good then a ghost can be evil as people can be evil.  It works both ways.

I think the only way to stop those dreams is to stop watching YouTube ghost videos that try to scare you lol.

My Pez Collection

It was time to dust off all of my pez dispensers.  They collect a lot of dust sitting on the shelf that I made for them and I don’t clean them very often because it’s such a job but they desperately needed to be cleaned lol.  While I was cleaning the dust off I decided to take pictures of them in all of their collections.

There are a couple collections that I wasn’t quite sure about like the first one with all the bugs.  I’m not sure what those are from.  I think 2 of them are from Bee movie but then some are from Bugs, I don’t know.  They are all bugs so I just added them together lol.  Then there are the Madagascar ones, I accidentally added a panda to it not knowing where it belongs but apparently that collection only has 3, not 4.  But I don’t care lol.

The very last picture is all of them on the shelf (except for the boxes and the petz, those are on another shelf).  I made that shelf by the way out of very very thin wood that I found at Home Depot when we were still living in Hollywood.  It started out as a smaller shelf but then I kept adding to it so I had to buy more wood and made another shelf.  I’m getting to the point where I think I’m gonna need to plan a bigger shelf lol.

I wanted to compile all of these pictures into a video and put on YouTube but I looked at other peoples videos and they all put mine to shame so I thought that they just deserved a blog post at least lol.











bat

Edit 8/28/09: I went to Walgreens today and they already have the Halloween stuff in their seasonal aisle so I went to look at the Pez dispensers and they have the new glow in the dark Bat Pez.  I added the picture above next to the pez dispenser collection rack.  Click on it to see full size.

Chia Pet Status

This morning I went to look at the Scooby Doo Chia Pet and noticed that it’s still just seeds.  My laptop with the time-lapse software with my webcam has been taking a picture every minute over the last 24 hours and nothing has happened.  The seeds aren’t sprouting yet.  I figured that if they aren’t even going to start sprouting yet then maybe now is a good time to reset everything.

Yesterday I messed up the camera angle and I think I fixed it so it was at the right angle again but I wasn’t 100% sure.  So turning it off and deleting all the pictures was ok.  I turned it back on but instead of 1 picture every minute I figured 1 picture every hour would be fine.  Maybe I might change that to every 10 minutes though which means I might have to shut it down and start over again lol.  That’s ok, it’s all still just seeds anyway.

Ok I went and stopped it and changed it to 5 minutes (300 seconds) instead of every  60 minutes.  I figured maybe 10 minutes was still too long that 5 minutes would be good because a lot can happen in 10 minutes.  I mean as far as movement, the growth might move toward the sun in 10 minutes and it might look funny.

So it’s back on starting now lol.  The video is going to be too long anyway if it’s every minute and I don’t want it to be a 20 minute video in time-lapse.  I did a video of me sleeping with time-lapse and it ended up being 17 minutes and that was just from 6 hours of sleep too but then again it was taking a picture every second so there you go.  But this video is going to be going on for 1 week.  I’m pretty sure every 1 minute is going to make it a very long and boring video.

Well whatever it is I will make it about 5 minutes so it will go really fast lol.  I’m going to work on the other video today that I made yesterday while I was spreading the seeds.  I will get that on YouTube (and here) A.S.A.P.

So anyway, see you in a week with the progress.

Time-Lapse Software

I was looking at a video on YouTube where they take a banana, put a watch on it then let the camera take a picture every second for a whole week.  The banana had a light over it so naturally it got a really bad tan and you could see the second, minute and hour hands just going and going.

Perios by Martin Slovacek.  It’s totally free and you don’t even have to install anything, just download it and run the exe file (after you unzip it of course).  It finds your webcam and starts taking pictures as soon as you find a directory, choose the amount of time in seconds, minutes or hours then click the Start button.  Once you are finished click the Export button and it combines all of those images into an .avi file.

I did find a program that cost $10 but it only works on the computer you register it on.  Every computer after that costs $5.  I guess it’s a small price to pay but if you reformat your hard drive you might have to buy the upgrade for $5.  I haven’t tested that theory out yet and I don’t plan on it either lol.

It’s called Webcam Flix and I bought it for my laptop.  I think it works a lot better because when you go to make the video it just looks way smoother than the free one I listed above.

I’m going to put it on my laptop and have it do time-lapse on the Scooby Doo Chia Pet.  I have a poor mans version of a time-lapse video on YouTube of my Scooby Doo chia pet so I will redo it lol.  It really is lame lol.  I just gotta find it and I will work on that.

Update: I’ve changed some things in this post so if you notice something is different, it is.  I took out the free part in the subject and I added that I did buy the $10 webcam software, only because it’s superior to the free one.  Here is the new Scooby Doo Chia Pet time lapse video I made with it.