Geek Dream

A Geek Dream:

Cam-Trax brings computer vision to your PC

Cam-Trax.com recently unveiled its first demo reel, for your viewing pleasure. Watch and be fascinated, as advanced computer vision is performed before your very eyes - using any run-of-the-mill webcam.

A beta version will be available very soon for those who have signed up on the official Cam-Trax website.

And now, without further ado, the Cam-Trax pre-Beta demonstration reel:

New Washing Machine and Dryer — NOW MIT BAUMWOLLE und MANGELTROCKEN!

We recently purchased a washer/dryer set for our little home (now made several cubic meters littler). I was highly impressed with the number of features sported by the dryer:

As you can see, I have a large set of choices. Why settle for a poorly, incomplete Leichtbügeln, when you could Bügel, or possibly even Bügeltrocken? (Note the EXTRATROCKEN, for a more powerful Trock.)

We have yet to receive full authorization from the City of Givataiim to operate such dangerous and massive pieces of machinery. However, today we came one step closer after installing the mandatory Feline Pet Safety Warning Sign:

The sign (hopefully) says, “Do not feed the washing machine”, in Russian.

If you would like Chloe’s elegant plumpness to help keep your own household feline away from your evil, cat-eating washing machine and dryer, please feel free to use this graphic in your own home:

(Right-click and choose “save as…” to store it on your own computer, in full size.)

Thank you for keeping your private household compliant with city regulations by explaining to others in plain, simple words that feeding your washing machine and/or dryer with your housecat is not allowed.

WALKTHROUGH: How to Quit Assassin’s Creed for PC in Under 35 Easy Moves (*** MILD SPOILERS ***)

Put in some hard hours beating up guards and climbing buildings? Let’s call it a day.

Just follow these easy, illustrated instructions, and you’ll be fine!

So you start out with this nice screen:

Followed up by this straightforward prompt:

Wait … now it’s loading?

Oh, right - because Assassin’s Creed is kind of a meta-game-within-a-game, so it’s extremely logical that I have to jump through a hoop to exit. So here we are, at the Animus prompt, about to actually EXIT the game:

Did I say game? I meant “Animus”. As soon as you leave the Animus, you may now QUIT:

Despite the fact that we’re pretty sure about ourselves at this point, we are interrogated further:

Thankfully, there is no password to quit - even though we are now at a kind of entrance page:

Ok, in order to quit the game, you need to go into a profile (yes, my profile is named after our cutesy name for our cat):

And now, at the very last screen. Well, the very next-to-last screen.

AWW HELL! I sure do want to keep playing at this point. Let’s NOT quit!!!

Vitaly discovered the correct solution: simply press ALT+F4 when it’s time to “push the button”.

Possible Reasons Ubisoft Never Tried to Make Quitting Easy:

1. Vitaly theorized that perhaps because AC is ported from the console, they expect you to just yank the plug out of the wall when you’re through playing.
2. Since people who can afford PS3s are so freakin’ rich, maybe they are expected to just put their entire system into the trash compactor, and buy a new one.
3. Ubisoft doesn’t believe their gamers have lives, and they will never need to quit.
4. The game is so buggy on some systems that there is really no need to initiate a quit (thanks, Chen).

Welcome to Yud-Alef-3.com

My apparently VIRTUAL psychometric class takes place in the lovely cyberspace called Yud Alef 3, which belongs to one of the hundred-thousand IRONI high schools in Tel Aviv.

Yud Alef 3 has many features; one of which is the virtual workspace collaboration tool known as the “whiteboard” application:

So put on your VR goggles and hit the jump to read more.

Anagrams of “Toblerone”

Nobody know what it means in Swiss, so we spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what they were trying to say.

• Elbo Trone
• Noble Rote
• Robot Lene
• Robo ‘n’ leet

My favorite is Bone Trole.

Alternatively, perhaps it was taken from a Swiss street sign: To Blerone →

striving for the top-down approach

I love it when software metaphors have no bearing on reality. The Egyptians actually built their pyramids starting with the apex block, that’s how they managed without modern cranes. I can’t wait for people to look at our skyscraping feats of urban engineering and say, “Those ancients - they knew secrets we can’t even dream of. Did you know that they understood what pi is?”

crog taste many fermented grape

The Second International Wines Exhibition in Israel (ISRAWINEXPO)
One day left!!!!

We went today and had a great time. Basically, you pay 49nis and you get entrance + a nice little wine glass to take home + 10 tasting coupons. Most of the wine-stands won’t take your coupons, so you get much more than 10 tastes of wines. Even better if you bring friends, that way you can all get different kinds of wine and trade tastes with each other.

Only two hands?!!?? Why, Lord, why?!?

There’s also an awesome food area where you can buy chocolates and cheeses of all kinds.

Overall, we tasted a great number of wines, and I was impressed by the accessibility of the entire event. I didn’t get the feeling that it was overly snobby or anything. I don’t know the first thing about wine, but this is how you start, I guess.

girls are fun when they’re drunk!!!

This event is highly recommended, and it will be around for one more day only. So pick yourself up, grab some friends, and head on out there. It’s at the Exhibition Gardens (גני התערוכה), from 16:00 to 22:00 tomorrow (Thursday, 28th of February, 2008).

What would Freud say???

tumbling down, no brakes

After much analysis and self-debate, I have decided that the Blog Format of Choice is:

THE TUMBLELOG!

Read about Tumblelogs here. According to the article, our favorite folk hero why the lucky stiff was the first to correctly identify the trend. 10 points to House Gryffinpuff!!!

There are many reasons to go with a tumblelog, but let’s put it simply: it’s less bloggy than a blog, but it has more content than Twitter. And it encourages pasting all sorts of things that are totally awesome but would probably just get lost otherwise. That means more cool stuff.

I will still update Crog’s blog from time to time, but if I were you guys, I’d turn my telescopes toward the rich land of Tumblr.

Please, enter these fine coordinates into your teleportation systems:

http://elib.tumblr.com

And just so you don’t feel entirely ripped off, here is a comic I drew about a real-life situation that happened this evening:

Keep on tumbling!!!

Best album name ever

Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow

by Oscar Mulero