Joe’s Blog

sometimes youtube is even funnier when you watch the follow-ups - in this case, Ken Lee (watch all 3)

Wintopia - Series 2 Trailer

Via Wintopia Facebook Group

717 Productions secure services of Daniel Smith, Kieran Stack and Jamie O’Brien for Season 2 of hit uber-drama.
Undisclosed fee quoted as “ridiculous” was used to reclaim the actors.

Donnie Walshberg will relinquish his role as “main attraction”. The 6 time Oscar nominated, 1 time winner, will take on a more supporting role and has signed up for guest-star appearances on what has been stated as an “unknown” number of episodes. The actor says filming in other projects and spending time with his baby daughter are also high on his priorities.

Emily Moon, unknown actress, and guest star in “the edge of forever” will make a return in season 2, but 717 productions declined to say to what extent.

Relations between 717 Productions and A-Block Design were renewed after the two companies parted, after the pilot episode. There have been talks, concerning characters and cameos but nothing has been decided as of yet.

Brendan Moroney…the “voice” of Wintopia, has also signed a new contract keeping him with the show for another season. Moroney, narrator, says that narrating has always been his dream and now with Wintopia and Planet Earth under his belt he feels he is a “big-deal”

The direction of Wintopia may be under threat. Colm “flash you” Bambury, has issued a statement saying he wants “nothing to do with the show or the actors”. This is believed to be the case as bambury, a highly sought after cameraman and director was becoming “run-down” spending so much time on the set of Wintopia. Bambury is also reported to have a fast-food addiction and has battled this disease for many years now.
…
Also Prime time television with Reginald Wheatsheaf 3rd filmed a behind the scenes interview evening with the actors that is also due for release shortly.

Wintopia - Series 1 outtakes

Official Wintopia Youtube Page
Wintopia Facebook Group
Wintopia Bebo Page
See all the posts on Wintopia: www.grizi.net/blog2/category/wintopia/

Via Random Reflective Rantings
“A German Navy Boat doing a risky maneuver, missing one and hitting another one”

Reported by Stern on 22nd June 2007 Schnellboot-Crash vor Libanon and here is a rough summary in English

Two German boats crashed into each other off the coast of Lebanon four weeks ago. A video of the crash that has turned up on the Internet shows that the captain apparently wanted to allow a bit of fun, that blew up in his face.

The video video could be shown in “Ooops - the Boopers” in a special episode “crazy military accidents or: how one can waste tax money professionally”. The German fast attack craft “Frettchen” can be seen bombing across the wash caused by the other warship off the Lebanese coast. One of the observers said “that looks cool” but shortly later one of the others shouts “shit, shit.” Because after riding over the wash, the “Frettchen” can’t avoid the “Gepard”, a second Fast Attack Craft travelling parallel to the warship, any more. And so there was a crash

In the second scene, the accident is seen from the perspective of the “Frettchen.” Firstly, a fun powertrip over the waves, den someone says “look out!” but it’s too late. The boats bang off each other. In the final seconds, the camera catches a glimpse of the German flag - as if it must be made clear to whom this embarrassing incident has happened.

“No good explanation”
Götz Meiert, spokesman for the German fleet command in Glücksburg confirmed to stern.de that the video is real. The incident occurred almost a month ago and no-one was injured. But the boats suffered heavy damage because they are built from wood. Photos of the wrecked ships can be seen in an Austrian Internet forum. They show that the “Frettchen” ripped a large hole in the side of the “Gepard.” Both ships are being repaired in Cyprus according to Meiert.

Meiert was not able to say why the captain of the “Frettchen” risked his vehicle for a bit of fun. “I cannot think of a good explanation.” The navy have set up a committee to enquire into the incident. All parties concerned will be questioned. The only thing that is certain, is that the ship was on the way back from a sending-home ceremony for the “Brandenburg” frigate. At these ceremonies, it is common to sail by and salute again on the way home. A crash doesn’t belong to the normal bye-bye of course.

The filmmakers are also on the line.
Not only must the chief of the “Frettchen” prepare to be disciplined. The filmmakers that were on board face adversity too. “The film damages the reputation of the German Armed Forces; there is the possibility that the soldiers are guilty of misconduct” Meiert said. On the other hand, the have unintentionally done a good deed: the film and the photos in the Internet help the investigation.”There is hardly a loss, that is so well documented” said Meiert.

The fast attack crafts belong to an international naval unit under German command. It patrols off the Lebanese coast and ought to prevent weapons smuggling. In total, the Germans have two frigages, four fast attack crafts and two supply ships in operation. The fast attack crafts’ home dock is Rostock-Warnemünde.

---

Also reported in The Guardian German navy finds new enemy - itself on Wednesday January 30 2008.
They report that the captain lost his job

---

For ship/military fans; the “S-76 Frettchen” is a Fast Attack Craft (FAC) (German: Schnellboot) - Type 143A Gepard class. “Frettchen” translates as “ferret”
Crymod has some more detail and specifications on the ship . And here is the official page from the German Navy on Gepard-class ships (143A) (in german)

Via CE4706
Source Unknown

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisers for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. “What do you think this is?”

One advisor, an engineer, answered first. “It is a toaster,” he said. The king asked, “How would you design an embedded computer for it?” The engineer replied, “Using a four-bit micro-controller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I’ll show you a working prototype.”

The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognised the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, “Toasters don’t just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don’t look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years.”

“With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialise this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialisation process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelette classes.”

“The ham and cheese omelette class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, ‘Cook yourself.’ The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs.”

“Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don’t want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.”

“We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won’t buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message ‘Booting UNIX v. 8.3′ appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook.”

“Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel Pentium with 32MB of memory, a 1G hard disk, and an SVGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program
will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit micro-controller!).”

The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
Another deep meaning tale
A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Project Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careered out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car’s occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes.

What were they to do?

“I know”, said the Project Manager, “Let’s have a meeting, build a Vision by consensus, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, then we can be on our way.”

“No, no”, said the Hardware Engineer, “That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I’ve got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car’s braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way.”

“Well”, said the Software Engineer, “Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again.”

Some thoughts:
Which one are you?
Which one pays best?
Which one might you become?

Wintopia “The Genesis Epilogue Part 1″

Wintopia “The Genesis Epilogue Part 2″

Enjoy episodes 1 to 4 of Wintopia by “717 Productions”. Well done lads and keep them coming!

Episode 1 “Peril In Wintopia”

Episode 2 “Dreams and Daggers”

Episode 3 “The Edge of Forever”

Episode 4 “In Search of Destiny”

I thought this was just a joke:

until Aidanf pointed out the solution (scroll down to number 10)

For MGB Via Geewiz

Also - allegation that Mark Zuckerberg cashed in before Web 2.0 crashed. Quickly followed by clarification that it was a baseless rumour

Via Damien A tribute to Dialup Dempsey (the man who also screwed provisional drivers….defended by Bertie Ahern)

Do battery indicators on phones etc lie? - User-hostile battery strength indicators

Those crazy Saxons - they decided to move a 660-ton church 12km down the road on a truck…

ViaTom Raftery - Funny Virgin Atlantic Ad

Nasty hotels - Fox news finds some shocking stuff (via ZeFrank)

Did you check your glass skitz?

Remember this scene from the Addams Family?