Goram Kinder Surprise.

When I was younger, I used to love Kinder Surprise. The chocolate itself is pretty disappointing, but I cared more for the prize hiding inside. The toys themselves are admittedly rather useless, but you don't buy a 99 cent chocolate egg expecting a remote controlled helicopter or a transformer - it's the excitement of opening the egg to see what you've gotten and assembling the pieces, adding stickers, etc., to end up with your tiny creation, that is why they were so cool. Bonus if you actually like the plastic chocolate.

I'm not sure if it's because I've grown up and become a little disillusioned, or if Kinder Surprise has just stopped producing good toys, these new ones are honestly lame. Most of them you don't even get to build anymore, it's all one piece, along with a confusing illustration that usually involves a couple kids having a great time chucking their new bit of plastic at a wall, or trying to throw it at their friend's equally useless bit of plastic. Most of the time the thing that tells you how to play with your toy requires you to have a friend with a toy from the same set, meaning you both have to go buy eggs until you each have one, and then proceed to play what appears to be one of the most boring and pointless games ever conceived.

Just the other day, I walked into my the cafeteria at my University, and they had a bunch of Kinder Surprise eggs. Hoping for a tiny car or perhaps a many-pieced animal I bought one, only to find a little plastic yellow thing that vaguely resembles a lion, and these instructions:
Step 1: Find a friend unfortunate enough to get one of these amorphous animals as well. Put your toys on a table, then blow on them.
Step 2: If your toy falls over, you win. Congratulations.

Gee, what a thrilling time. Sounds easy enough, right? The only problem is, aside from the fact that I could have just as much fun blowing on rocks or bits of wood, I couldn't even get the darn thing to stand up in the first place.

Shown here: my lion sitting on its head. I guess I won...?

It seems like the only things that you are able to 'build' from modern Kinder Surprises are tiny 12 piece puzzles. Because kids just love puzzles, am I right? This is what happens when child safety goes so far as to suck the fun out of things. Whatever happened to the little toy cars and boats and dragons with 8 pieces and stickers? I miss my childhood, and I feel sorry for the kids growing up in today's world of plastic playgrounds and rounded edges.

I am addicted to typing games

93 words/minute
Here's the link if you want to try!

Granted, the words they use are I think some of the more commonly used words in the English language and they're presented randomly, without sentence structure, so you don't have to use much punctuation; still, it's a nice, quick test to at least give you an idea of whether you might need a personal secretary, or have a future as one.

Mutants, not zombies!

I grew up using Mavis Beacon teaches typing like it was a game, so don't feel too bad if I've destroyed your score. If you're interested in improving your speed with something that actually is a game, go for The Typing of the Dead: they took an old arcade shooter and replaced the gun with your keyboard. The words you have to type are pretty entertaining. Blood and curses abound, and the storyline is ... interesting, to say the least!

Cake Decorating

Yesterday was my 19th birthday, so really I should be posting pictures of all the alcohol I can now (legally, anyway) drink - but, in the spirit of celebration, here are some sweet cakes I've come across.

I can't imagine how long it must have taken to make this! So much fondant.

For some reason, I imagine this was made in Japan.

Snorlax cake! He's clearly the best pokemon, and I'm sure
he would make a delicious cake as well.

This one just made me giggle.

In Soviet Russia, cake eats you!

Alright so I snuck the last one in there, I made that one when I was a cake decorator at Dairy Queen during high school. I miss that job ... nothing better than coming home every day smelling of ice cream and chocolate. Unfortunately I completely lost interest in eating icing ever again - even smelling it makes me feel a little sick. I don't think ice cream will ever get old, thankfully.

Shaved Bieber

Results when searching with Shaved Bieber

Sick of Justin Bieber popping up everywhere you look? Well, you're in luck, because the people at the Free Art and Technology Lab have developed an addon for Firefox and Chrome users that blocks out all Justin Bieber content for your surfing pleasure! Download here:
Firefox
Chrome

Barrarror Pancake

Well this is just straight up adorable. Why won't my cat barrel roll?? Obviously it's defective...

Face Composites

I thought this was pretty neat. These are the faces of a large sampling of women from various countries, mashed together to make one image that is an 'average face' for each country. I do wish they had done Canada and the US as well - it would be interesting to see how they relate to each other, and to England, France, Spain etc.

Face composites - click for fullview

Catwoman Cast for New Batman Movie

Anne Hathaway, Cast to play Catwoman in
The Dark Knight Rises

So, apparently Anne Hathaway has just been cast to play Selina Kyle (Catwoman) in the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. I'm pretty excited to see Catwoman come into the picture, but I'm not sure about how well Hathaway will be able to play her...to me, she just seems too sweet/silly to be able to live up to the high expectations fans will have of Catwoman (especially after the painful travesty that was Halle Berry's version...I don't have anything against her acting, but that was hard to watch).

I guess we'll have to wait and see; she might just be amazing, who knows. I think by this point we can at least trust Christopher Nolan to produce something worth watching, and if he believes in an Anne Hathaway Catwoman then so will I.

Russian People

One of my electives is Russian and the textbook, while helpful in the learning-the-language sense, has some of the most ridiculously terrible pictures I have ever seen. For example, here is an artist's depiction of the average Russian person, saying hello to a friend or teaching a class:

Yup. They look somewhat like large, blocky monkeys. And the real people aren't much better:

 

This is only chapter 1; I have so much more to look forward to! I would be a little more forgiving if this textbook was from 20 years ago, but it's the newest version, published fairly recently.

My teacher is pretty darn attractive, so maybe the only people they could find for this book were the ones they normally don't let out of Russia.

The Green Hornet

I'm home from University for the weekend, so I managed to convince my parents to take me to dinner and a movie. We saw The Green Hornet in 3D, and while I went in not knowing what to expect (not having seen the TV series or read any of the comics), I came out much the same. It was a strange mix of a comedy and a superhero movie, although it wasn't a spectacular example of either genre. I suppose that a good comedy/superhero movie could be made, but in this case I was extremely underwhelmed. The plot was predictable, the villain was pretty lame, and the comedy often felt forced, and never made me laugh out loud. I'm not saying it was terrible, it was somewhat entertaining, just not spectacular. I'll have to find some people who are more familiar with The Green Hornet and see how they liked it ... for all I know they could have hit the nail right on the head. Although were that the case, I can't imagine finding many true fans out there...

USBs for everyone!

It seems that things seem be tending more and more towards personalized, individualized everything - do you like Batman? Have this Batman coffee mug, a Batman watch and some Batman underwear, a toothbrush, a pillow cover, maybe even a shirt or two. A licence plate and phone cover, so people will know you're cool and unique, before you've ever been introduced. No personalized laptop cover? WHO ARE YOU?

If your urge to identify yourself by your belongings happens to extend even to the smallest of objects, I present to you this list of fully functional USB sticks, from the gold-plated to the profane.

 At a meagre $3500 for this gold-plated, diamond studded stick, this
1 GB USB is simply a steal. I really hope it's easy to swap out the insides,
considering the speed at which technology is advancing, but I suppose if
you've got $3500 to blow on one of these you don't care too much anyway.

We all know what's going to be stored on this.

This will actually work with normal lego pieces, which is neat if you're
a spy with children.

The 'thumb' drive, har har. More than a little bit disturbing, but hey, it comes
with an in-built joke.

In case you prefer fidgeting with your data instead of using it, a transformer USB stick.

These will actually glow when you plug them in. Are you a Jedi, or a Sith?

A burger, you ask? What do burgers have to do with computer storage?
Absolutely nothing, I respond.

In case you're ever on Jeopardy, USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. Recently, the storage of these tiny devices have expanded exponentially, to the point where they can now hold over 1 TB of data. Perhaps soon human heads will come ready-equipped with USB 3.0 ports.

Watchmen Condoms

I stumbled upon these recently, and I thought they were pretty funny. Bright blue, just like Dr. Manhattan. I can only imagine the colour they might turn your penis. I believe they were given out as a promotional item before Watchmen came out in 2009.
I wonder if they make condoms based on other superheroes or movies; I'd personally enjoy some Star Wars light saber condoms, or  perhaps a blocky Minecraft one.