• YouTube – Miniaturwunderland Hamburg Flughafen in Full HD 1080p Teil 2/3 Miniature Wonderland Airport – This is pretty intricate! Wow…
• World Of Mysteries: Abandoned Remains of the Russian Space Shuttle Project Buran – It is sad that Russian was never able to get this project off the ground.
• World Of Mysteries: Abandoned Remains of the Russian Space Shuttle Project Buran – It is sad that Russian was never able to get this project off the ground.
• The Food Lab: All About Asparagus | Serious Eats – Everything you have ever wanted to know about cooking asparagus.
• Regional Barbecue Sauces Available by Mail-Order | Serious Eats – BBQ Sauce!
• How To Grill a Gigantic Rib-Eye Steak | Serious Eats – It's grilling season!
• YouTube – Stefanie Woods status check – And there is even more!
• YouTube – Girl Scout Cookie Money Theft – Parts 5, 6 & 7 – The stupid idiot girls saga continues!
• YouTube – Girl Scout Cookie Money Theft – Part 3 "Arrested Again" – Maybe it isn't… WTF.
• YouTube – Dumbest Girls Ever Steal Girl Scout Money (raw interview) – This has to be fake…
• Press Start – S2E27 – Interview with Robert of Geek Chic –

Food Stuff
For Super Bowl we had a small party with our parents coming over to watch the game with us, I wanted to try and cook buffalo wings, but wasn’t at all in the mood for frying them up, I found this awesome recipe two days before the game for cooking up crunchy buffalo like wings in the oven from Serious Eats, you owe it to yourself to cook them this way!  I also found this cool site that reviews all the interesting snack foods out there called Taquitos.net, they have everything from national brands to regional favorites.  Lastly if you are the type of person that is interested in trying your hand at brewing your own beer check out this quick blurb on Lifehacker about two free open source programs that will help you with your goal.

Music Stuff
I haven’t had much music stuff lately, but I had to share this awesome project that Michael Deal is working on that is a graphical exploration into the Beatles and the creation of their music.  This is a project and any true Beatles fan will want to check out.

Sad Stuff
For those that don’t know the Mars rover Spirit is stuck and can no longer move, so they have pretty much pulled the plug on the project, xkcd has a sad comic to show us that rovers have feelings too.

Funny Stuff
If you are a friend of mine on Facebook you might have already seen this, but if not, check out this graphic on How to Suck at Facebook.   I’m proud to say I don’t do any of those things listed, so I must not suck.  If you saw the Google commercial during the Super Bowl (which was my favorite ad) you saw a clever use of their auto complete feature, the site Autocomplete Me turns the auto complete feature into a interesting look at what people search for on Google.

The Lego Millennium Falcon!

Cool Stuff
I just found this today but I wanted to pass it on, someone has taken the initiative to educate today’s men on what they need in their wardrobe, with Newbie Fashion Tips for Grown Men.  It really is a good group of tips and suggestions on how to look your best.  Wardrobe Oxygen takes it a step further, but I have to disagree with some their what to remove from your wardrobe section.  I’ve been wanting to get some Lego sets recently to put together for fun and I was checking out the online Lego store, they have a $499 Star Wars Millennium Falcon, a little more than I want to spend (it is 5000+ pieces though)…  I’ve seen a couple places recently selling recycled bottles that have had their tops cut off so you can use them as glasses, here is someone that decided they could just make them instead.  Check out this great article on the 19 Most Complex and Dangerous road in the world, I’ve seen some of these on Top Gear, the Road of Death in Bolivia looks like a bitch.  If you know me you know that Kelly and I met online, so I find the research that OkCupid is doing on their dating site is extraordinary, they recently wrote an article about profile pictures, and I highly suggest anyone that is doing any sort of online dating read their articles, they will help you make a better personal ad.  Example, Men: don’t make eye contact and don’t smile, Women: make eye contact and a flirty face.  And the last of the cool stuff, this blog post regarding the changes to the Crayola color spectrum throughout the years.

Not Cool Sports Stuff
The Chicago Cubs have thought up an complete asshole plan, they are going to charge a 20% premium on those that purchase tickets the 1st week they are on sale, and then after that they will be the normal face value.  Talk about scalping your customers.  I hope we don’t see this become a trend.  (edit, this is nothing new they have been doing it for 8 years.)

Cool Videos
Some geeks have figured out an awesome use for Microsoft’s surface, Dungeons and Dragons!

D&D on the Microsoft Surface from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

Hot Tub Time Machine will be the movie event of the year!

Someone has edited all the violence from the 2010 Super Bowl commercials into one epic Youtube video.

And last but not least does this sound familiar?

I know I didn’t mention this yesterday but it’s been pouring here in Southern California all week, some of the worst rains I’ve seen since 2005. Fortunately the house has held up well. Now on to the continuation of the Weekly Cool Links #21.

Cool Tech
For the last couple years I’ve used XBMC installed on my old Xbox as my be all media player for our living room, but with news from the most recent CES I just might look into replacing it sooner than later. Here are the devices I’m looking into.

Patriot Box Office Media Player
HDX BD-1
Asus O!Play HDP-R1
Popbox
Boxee Box (by D-Link)

The Boxee Box would be the one that is most like my current setup, since it’s based off the XBMC, but I’m not very happy with D-Link after various issues with some of their devices I’ve had in 2009. Right now it’s a wait and see approach, the Patriot Box Office is at Fry’s now for $130, but it seems a bit under whelming.

Cool Stuff
I know you thought I was done with 2009 lists after 21.1 but I had to share the Top 10 Everything of 2009 by Time. And the last mention of 2009 in this post, Gamasutra’s 99 Best Free games of 2009. Last week I watched this awesome video from TED about the intelligence of crows, it’s really eye-opening and will get you to look at crows in a whole different way. Of course this picture of search terms might make you wish you were a crow (women want their men to propose, and men want their women to give them head). If all that has made you feel a little less smart, check out this periodic table of elements with pictures!

Cool Advertising
Companies aren’t happy with just names, now they want to own colors… This is just plain wrong.

Cool Food
Kelly and I have done our best to start eating in more often, and it’s sites like No Takeout that help me plan our meals, they give a complete menu, shopping list, and game plan to get your meal done and on the table. Of if I’m just looking for a recipe based off of items I have there is Supercook or a new site I found call Cooking By Numbers.

Cool Videos
How online gamers play games in real life…

British comedy skits based on PBS like shows (this on is on Water there are others)

More PG Porn! This time with the lovely Jenna Haze!

Superhuman tape measure skills

Realistic Hollywood Sex-Scene

For those of you that didn’t see the pictures I posted 2 weeks ago, we put up our Christmas lights, we also got our tree decorated (pictures will be posted at the end of the month).  The past couple weeks we have been taking care of our Christmas shopping and also prepping the house for the first of what will be many Christmas parties our house will be the host of.  This Sunday is my dad’s side of the family’s Christmas party, we should have about 20-30 relatives in attendance.  And then on Christmas day we will have a party for my mom’s side of the family, which will be a bit smaller but will also include Kelly’s family (actually both parties will include Kelly’s family) and any friends that want to come over.  Work is winding down for the year as goals have been met and projects have been completed, I’m happy to say I still have a job that I enjoy although this year was a lot different from the previous two years due to the lack of new hires our department had to train.  Kelly’s business is doing well, although we did have a decrease in business compared to 2008, but we are in good standing.  All the animals are happy and healthy and we are all looking forward to the new year.  I’m proud of myself for keeping up with my Weekly Cool Links project, even though it’s not quite as ‘weekly’ as it claims to be, I hope someone out there finds some entertainment in me sharing what I find interesting.  Lastly my Eat in OC project has been doing great, I typically have around 5000 visits a month and I’ve made some major inroads with gaining new readers.  I’ve been linked to on a number of local websites, and high-profile local blogs, and in addition my articles are routinely linked to in the Orange County Register’s Community Blogs section which is only 5 links deep from their front page, how many others can say something like that?  I’ll probably post one more time before the year ends, but for now let’s move on to the rather large links section!

Food
Lifehacker had a great article on maximizing Thanksgiving leftovers that will also prove useful with Christmas leftovers.  While over at Slashfood they had 4 fast recipes for making great Tomato sauces.

Tiger Woods’ Women, er I mean Chicks
Some of these links may not be safe for work, or family friendly.  But this is my blog so if you don’t want to see possibly scantily clad women don’t look at the links in this section.  If you are related to me and offended, oh well, I’m sure you have something else you can be proud of me for, get over it… ;)
Twitter is a wonderful tool for communication and for people to share pictures with, some pictures are more interesting than others as you can see from this collection of Hot Chicks that use Twitter for the powers of good.  I do not approve or disapprove of their use of Twitter…  Maybe Twitter chicks aren’t your thing?  How about Chicks dressed in various NFL Team Jerseys?  What’s that?  You like farm girls?  How about German farm girls that model to help German agriculture?  Here you go.  Personally I like my girls a little different from the norm.  Lastly there is the Internet’s Girlfriend…  Funny how I’ve been on the internet for 15 years yet hadn’t heard of her till recently.  One suggestion for her site, more pictures like this and less like the one on the top of her website…

Sports
It got so bad at Notre Dame this year that after they fired Charlie Weis they went straight to the big man in the sky and offered him the head coaching job.  The Onion reports that Jesus Christ himself turned down a 3 year multimillion dollar offer to coach the Fightin’ Irish.  Maybe he was just holding out for the right job?  Such as this Head Coaching position with the Lingerie Football League!

Cool
Virgin Galactic has launched their official site for the space travel, complete with Spaceship Two pictures and information on the roll out.  Never would have thought space travel (even of this kind) would be available to the general public in my lifetime.  Lifehacker had a number of cool informative posts the past couple weeks, including Fixing Your Relatives Computer, Guide to Avoiding Online Scams, and the Most Popular Top 10s’ of 2009.

Funny
I read three comics online; Order of the Stick, Dilbert, and xkcd.  I’m particularly fond on one of the Dilbert comics from this week, because it’s how I feel at my job sometimes.
Another one from this week that really hits the mark is this one regarding the use of FAX machines.  As for xkcd I have to give some love to ‘Daylight Saving Time‘.  Looking for a last-minute gift for a friend or loved one?  How about, How to Date a White Woman or the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book?  All these and more really do exist!  If you are single and looking for a Russian Mail Order bride one of the companies involved has started to compare them to celebrities!  Now you too can date a girl that sort of looks like Jessica Beil!  Just make sure you ask them these 10 questions from Deadspin before you ask her to marry you, it will save you a lot of heartache.  And lastly, now that you got your celebrity look a like wife, it might be a good time to reflect upon those stupid things you did when you were young and might regret someday…

Videos
My website is currently sponsored by Bitch Slap The Movie!, in theaters: January 8th, 2010!

If you know anything about the movie, commercial, or TV show business you might find some humor in this.

I love reading Maximum PC and listing to their podcast, I love this video someone put together from Gordon’s rant of the week regarding the Apple Tablet.

And last but not least at all, the Space Shuttle is awesome and this high quality video of the STS-129 launch is worth spending 15 minutes to watch.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

Oh and Merry Christmas!

By the way, GO TROJANS!  That was an awesome 28-7 beating of the Bruins!

Now, on to the links!

TV Stuff
If you have ever wanted to know more about the themes that make TV writing then I highly suggest to take a couple hours to browse and read around TV Tropes.  It’s especially a great read for anyone that’s ever wanted to learn the tricks of the trade for writing anything from Comics to TV.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, what’s the difference?

Music Stuff
Looking for music like the music you like?  Check out Musicovery, a music discovery service.  Doing a search for Jimmy Eat World on there actually links me to a number of other bands I’ve also enjoyed throughout the years.  Pretty impressive.

Here is a funny music video

Chicks Man
If you are interested in attractive philologists, check out Hot for Words.  She’s not really my type, but hey I know there are a lot of you out there that like big boobed blondes.

Check out these chicks melting ice.

Food Stuff
Lifehacker had an article this week on 10 Simple Freeze Tricks to Save You Time and Money.  Info and links about what can be frozen (Broccoli yes, Onions No) to how to make your freeze more efficient.  It’s a good starting place for many people.

Windows 7 Stuff (Tech Stuff)
So yesterday Windows 7 was released.  I’ve already been using it for 3 weeks and think it’s pretty great, especially the 64bit version because nothing beats using 8 gigs of RAM on a computer (except 16 gigs).  A number of websites had guides for Windows 7, but Lifehacker’s Complete Guide to Windows 7 is the most comprehensive, plus it links to lots of other great starting points to learn more.  If you are looking for a more historical look at Windows, you have to check out Maximum PC’s 50 Best (and Worst) Moment’s in Windows History.

Funny Stuff
Check out Life’s pictorial on 30 Dumb Inventions, how about those screaming tomatoes, and to think people follow that crackpots “religion”.  I only read Maxim magazine for the articles, that’s why I’m sharing the 10 People in Every Office article they recently posted.  Lastly check out Stuff White People Life and Photobomb for some more funnies.

Oh no the Pixar lamp killed the letter I!

First off with the start of the NCAA College Football Season I have to kick off my links with this awesome video.

USC opens their quest for the Division 1 championship on Saturday at 12:30 PM (pacific).  Talking about college football anyone that loves college football should really check out my friend Brian’s website, In the Bleachers, the #1 College Football blog and podcast in the world!

Food

Tactical Bacon, there for you when you need it!

I already know how to cook a whole chicken, but I’ve never cooked a whole one in a slow cooker, it’s a great way to get it done with minimal effort.  I’d also suggest checking out the main $5 dinner site, she does a great job sharing the wealth on the ways she’s able to make good cheap family diners.  Bacon is the coolest thing on the internet since sliced bread, and now you can make sure you are able to enjoy the salty smokey goodness of bacon during the next natural disaster with Tactical Bacon!  (thanks to my friend Dippy for the link).  And while you are eating your bacon, why don’t you learn how to cook up a bunch of hard boiled eggs in the oven… Wait are those oven cooked eggs?!

Interesting
According to Carnegie Mellon‘s Death Risk Rankings, the chances of a age 30-39, white, male, from California dying in the next year is 1,537 out of 1,000,000 (wait I fit that description!).  In addition here at the top 5 and the number out of 1,000,000.

Cause of Death – MicroMort
Total – 1,537
Accidents – 408
Circulatory system diseases – 187
Suicide – 173
Cancers – 143
Infectious and parasitic diseases – 141
Homicide – 101

Geeky Stuff

Time Travel!

I love this travel time-line that someone put together based on popular TV shows and movies (I’ve included to the left for those too lazy to visit the site.)  If you’ve ever wanted to check if your favorite user name is available at 130 websites all at one time, then namechk is the site to go.  Warning it could be used for both good and evil!  Good in the fact that you can find 130 websites to register your user name at, bad for the fact that you can find 130 websites to register someone elses user name at so they can’t!

Funny Stuff
Kelly and I are thinking about having a child…  Actually no we aren’t but what better way to bullshit your way out of work and responsibilities than the Office Kid, complete with pictures and drawings!  If having a fake kid isn’t your idea of funny then check out the People of Walmart a place to see pictures of those interesting individuals that shop the crappiest store on earth.

Tech Stuff
Just an FYI for those that keep sending me MMS messages to my iPhone, Sept. 25th is the big day that I will actually be able to see them from my phone!  About damn time AT&T!

And lastly I leave with you a couple more videos.

Pretty cool Old Spice commercial (I really enjoy their advertising and commercials)

College Humors modern take on West Side Story with Web Site Story!   I highly recommend checking it out!  You got to go to their site I can’t embed it.

So last night I went with a group to a new burger restaurant called Slater’s 50/50 in Anaheim Hills, you can read all about it on my restaurant review site Eat in OC.  Also I started another side project/website Bite Orange, still in the development process but I’m pretty much online and running.  Tonight I’m going to a friends bachelor party, going to see The Hangover at Cinema Fusion in Anaheim, they serve beer and have leather recliner seats, then it’s off to the strip joint for a little relaxation, Kelly told me to have a lap dance, I can’t let her down.  Saturday I have the TinoJam softball event and Sunday a wedding, then I’m on vacation for a week!  Not much happened the past 2 weeks, which is why I’m talking about the upcoming weekend instead, since I’ll probably forget to talk about it in two weeks anyway.  But now on to what everyone visits here for Erica Durance photos, er I mean my weekly (cough) cool links!

(Warning this weeks links are video heavy (5 videos to share so I’m going to do something a little different…)

Leading off it’s a video from The Daily Show about people that don’t know when to stop after they have been proven wrong.

Yes I have my mind made up, it’s much ado about nothing.  And Jon Stewart pretty much sums up my feelings at the end of the clip…

Music
Do you like online web games of adventure and quests and like music?  Check out this one called The Sixty One, check out new music and complete quests, to be the ultimate music geek.  Maybe games aren’t your style, how about 8-bit music renditions of Weezer songs?

Movies
I can’t wait to see the newest Star Wars movie!  Wait what?  Oh I mean the fan created 15 second clip Star Wars: Uncut edition.  Fans will recreate the entire Star Wars movie 15 seconds at a time, till it’s complete, all 472 clips have already been selected and 25 clips are already completed.  Or if you are a guy and looking to watch a chick flick you can check out this list of 20 Great Chick Flicks for Men (Including a movie with one of my favorite ladies, Anne Hathaway!) at the Orange County Register.

Talking about movies, I’m looking forward to these both!

Alice in Wonderland

Beer Wars

Food
If you are looking to cook food on the cheap, 5 Dollar Dinners should be able to help you stretch your paycheck when you have a family to feed.

TV
Even with ComicCon going on I don’t have much TV news this week, other then Burn Notice is awesome and Eureka rules!  But I do have this totally cool poster to share for the upcoming season of Chuck!  Let’s hope Chuck is able to bounce back and get more then just the 13 episode order that it’s signed up for, it’s one of the best shows on TV.

Buzz Aldrin thinks I’m cool, but not this guy.

Cool Stuff
I’m really impressed by these cool solar lights that Lifehacker hacked together from some cheap lights, I might just have to make some of those for the backyard.  Or there is the $14 steadycam for you movie directors out there.  Lastly I highly suggest checking out the most recent issue of Wired magazine for their article on The New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans, I particularly enjoyed this chart to determine what excuses to use when calling out sick.  Long live Keyboard cat and the Three Wolf Moon!

Play me off Keyboard Cat…

So analog TV is dead, long live digital TV!  Not much new this week for us.  I’ve started going for walks at night, up to 6 miles so far this week, hoping for 10 by the end of the week.  I haven’t started the 100 pushup challenge since no one told me to.  But maybe I’ll start it this week.  Our friends Sean and Amber came over with their baby Jade, we had a really great time watching the Laker game.  I cooked chicken and steak kabobs with red onion, green bell peppers, and some of our tomatoes.  The kabobs tasted great thanks to my olive oil and garlic mix that I baste them with while I’m cooking (along with some salt and pepper).  The bathroom is coming along, the huge tub is in and all the walls are up, tile should be getting done next week.  I’ll post some pictures this weekend of how things are coming along.

And now it’s time for my weekly cool links, 3 WEEKS IN A ROW!  I’m on a roll!

If you cook like we do and you like a variety of sauces and condiments, you might want to check out the Table of Condiments, it shows you when it’s best to throw out things that have been sitting in your fridge.  Talking about food check out these pictures of school lunches around the world.  Talking about lunch I “brown bag” it 4 out of the 5 days of the week when I’m going ot work, so I’m going to take some of these tips at Lifehacker on ways to make it more appealing (I already have been doing some of them).  I find that cooking more meals for dinner help make lunches for appealing since you get more variety instead of just a sandwich.  In addition I want to get some nice lunchbox ware to take my lunches in so I’m going to look around the To-Go Ware website and find something that fits my needs, probably something like a tiffen.

There is lots of new tech coming out, iPhone 3GS, Windows 7, Google Wave, etc, and Lifehacker has put together a article explaining it all.

Wow that’s it, that’s all I have this week that probably interests anyone, I have some other links I kept for myself but nothing really that I think is that interesting.

But before you go, FlickChart has opened up their beta to the public and I’ve been rating movies (over 700 so far).  Here is my All-Time Top 20 according to the rankings (it’s pretty close but not perfect IMO).

Your Top 20
Of All Time

1. Forrest Gump
2. The Lord of th…
3. The Princess B…
4. Hot Fuzz
5. Saving Private…
6. Juno
7. Across the Uni…
8. Star Trek
9. American Pie
10. Raiders of the…
11. Sweeney Todd
12. Office Space
13. Rushmore
14. High Fidelity
15. Almost Famous
16. Serenity
17. Iron Man
18. Forgetting Sar…
19. Wall-E
20. The Dark Knight

Some of them are there just because they haven’t gone up against movies I like a lot more yet, so the rankings are a bit of luck, even if you’ve ranked movies over 900 times.

And then lastly I leave you with an infomercial gone wrong…

What are these advantages of being a big guy that the big guy speaks of?