It's Bigfoot, Bro! (Pics)

What Bigfoot, bro?

Having just caught wind of a Bigfoot sighting in Northwest Pennsylvania (news reports put the location at RIDGWAY, Pa. er... Ridgeway, not sure why they shortened it... My bad, RIDGWAY is correct.), I set out to investigate this current internet phenomenon as stated by the IHT. (That's International Herald Tribune for those of you who don't read the news. Actually neither do I, not IHT anyway, but that's besides the point. :) )

So this so-called Bigfoot was caught on camera by a hunter named Rick Jacobs and was submitted to Bigfoot Research Organization for verification or whatever it is they do. :P (Not to nitpick with the news folks, but it is actually called Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, not Bigfoot Research Organization. A simple Google search told me so. I've highlighted this fact because I'm not sure how a 4-word title became a 3-word title.)

And so my journey began...

Can't find pics, bro‽

To cut a way-too-long story short, I couldn't find the pictures they were talking about. No photos/images of supposed Bigfoot at all! There were tons of words and words and more words, but no graphics. That is sad, bro. Just sad.

There is hope, bro!

Of course that isn't totally true. I knew where the pictures of the Rick Jacobs Bigfoot, as it is known now (seems it's also called Ridgway Pa Bigfoot and Pennsylvania Bigfoot, but I think calling it after the discoverer is more appropriate. Heh, I like this one - Jacob's creature.), were located - at the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website. Naturally it is swarmed with people and as expected their server isn't holding up too well.

But I (you) want to see those pics!!!

Bigfoot pics, bro‽

And so, I downloaded those photos from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website for you to examine in detail. Yeah, they aren't the puny resolution types, they're at 800x600 pixels. Ok, so that can't match the 16 billion pixel Last Supper, but the last time I checked, 16 billion pixels can't fit on your computer screen.

Word of warning, bro.

You're about to see Bigfoot in action! (Not as exciting as you think.) This Bigfoot has been named the

Rick Jacobs Bigfoot, Ridgway Pa Bigfoot, Pennsylvania Bigfoot or Jacob's creature.

Any other names, bro? Let me know, bro!

It's Bigfoot, bro!

Click on the last three images to be rewarded with a larger picture. Credit: Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, taken by Rick Jacobs



Closeup of Rick Jacobs Bigfoot. Is Bigfoot bending over?



Evil glowing eyes of Bigfoot, or maybe it's just the err... effects of the night vision camera.



Attention, Bigfoot spotted us! Bigfoot spotted us! He is escaping!



Oops, false alarm. Bigfoot is just having a stretch.

What say you, bro?

Sasquatch? Bigfoot? Bear? Alien? Let me know, bro! (Err... gals welcome too. :) )

An update, bro.

Now that the BFRO site is up (at least for me), the black object you see in the last three pictures is a black plate and a mineral block. Just in case anyone was hoping for some fancy UFO or something else. :)

The area in the foreground was baited with a deer attractant mix and a mineral lick block. In the first image (the one with the bear cubs) the mineral lick block can be seen sitting on a large black plastic plate. One of the bear cubs is apparently licking or sniffing the mineral block. In the two subsequent images the black plate is turned over and leaning against the mineral block. - from Jacobs Photos - Pennsylvania, 9/16/2007 @ BFRO

And you can join in the discussion over at BFRO's dedicated Jacobs Photos - Pennsylvania forum. There are polls, image enhancements/analysis and plenty of talk going on there. More than enough to make it into a subject you can get a degree in. :)

The Unofficial iPhone Revirginizer

A new method that relies on iPhoneSIMFree to restore your seczone (revirginizes your iPhone) appeared yesterday or the day before (I'm not too sure :) ). It uses an emulated server so you don't need to possess an iPhoneSIMFree license. If you're impatient and want to test it out, note that

• Your ltoken/seczone are being saved to this server.
• These could contain personal information.
• This is a test server, and will be taken down and have all the info deleted this Monday.
• The source of the server will be released then.
• This probably only works for Windows.
  

So if you're willing to wait till Monday, you can host it yourself when everything gets released. Edit: Source's out. That way you won't need to worry about bugs, if any, or where your personal info is going. :) Otherwise, if you're waiting for the iPhone Dev Team's one-click revirginizer, it may be out next week.

Once you got your iPhone revirginized, see The 100% WORKING guide to unlock 1.1.1 (windows) @ Hackint0sh to get it unlocked as well (multiple SIM and YouTube works). After all, unlocking your iPhone is the whole point of revirginizing. ;)

Edit: If you have an Out Of The Box 1.1.1 iPhone, this unlocking guide is for Macs - Full Unlock OOB 1.1.1 using a mac (NOW BULLET PROOF) @ Hackint0sh.

And yes, people have tried out both (revirginizer and unlock) and are happily reporting that they work.

Edit: Btw iNdependence 1.2.4 is out in case you didn't know.

Teacup Pigs - Miniature pigs the size of a tea cup

Cute little pigs that can fit in your hand. Just a fantasy? Nope. See the piglet on the left? He's Tetley and he's no bigger than your standard tea cup. He's part of the Pennywell miniature pigs recently born on the Pennywell farm, which is famous for breeding these ultra small pigs. Catch more of Tetley and his siblings in the video below (made by Richard Austin, who also photographed Tetley above) and at PHOTOS: MINI-PIGS: POCKET-SIZED PETS @ ABC News or Meet Tetley, the little piggy the size of a cup of tea @ Daily Mail.

Fun with Calligrams - Pictures or Words?

A digg about optical illusions inspired me to look further into the wonderful world of calligrams. And I was glad I did. Here are the pretty results of my discoveries (courtesy of digg user YouKnowWho).

What is a calligram?

A calligram is a poem (though can also be a phrase or single word) in which the typeface or handwriting forms an important part of the focus. Indeed, it is a visual manifestation of themes presented aurally and textually. Guillaume Apollinaire is a famous calligram writer. - Wikipedia

Calligrams are also closely related to another form of visual art known as concrete poetry or visual poetry.

Warning! Pretty pictures popping up next!

Veja Campaign Pictures from Veja Magazine - Get Both Sides Campaign @ Teo.eSuper


Bin Laden - Dead or Alive


Bush - Peace or War


Saddam - Threat or Pretext


Castro - Tirany (Tyranny) or Freedom


Victory or Defeat


Bomb or Bluff


Suicide or Right to die


Heal or Sin


Mix of calligrams
designed and typeset by Laura Ruggeri



Calligram Ant by ~Inky-la-reve


Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire @ Computer generated poetry and visual arts

Avast, me hearties!

It's that time of the year again - Talk like a pirate day! Wait that's no right let me try it again - Be rrrattlin' on like a pirrrate day! Here's how it got started from Wikipedia:

International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD) is a parodic holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur ("Ol' Chumbucket") and Mark Summers ("Cap'n Slappy"), of the United States, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.[1] For example, an observer of this holiday would greet friends not with "Hello", but with "Ahoy, me hearty!" The date was selected because it was the birthday of Summers's ex-wife and consequently would be easy for him to remember.

Not sure how a pirate sounds like? Try out a english-to-pirate-speak translator here or here.

The talklikeapirate site (link below) has more coverage like global pirate events, FAQ and more.

Edit: Video on Pirate speak



[Link: Wikipedia]
[Source: Original website]

Father of All Bombs

The Russians recently demonstrated a new bomb which is supposed to be 4 times more powerful than the US version known as Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) or "Mother of All Bombs". Hence the Russians called theirs the "Father of All Bombs".

From the video, the Father (Dad) of All Bombs doesn't look all too impressive. Maybe I've been spoiled by the Masters of spectacular (but fairly harmless) explosions - Hollywood movies.

Father (Dad) of All Bombs


Mother (Mum) of All Bombs


[Source: Reuters]

Is This Lootie?

Who is Lootie?

Do I need to tell you? Really? Ok, during Hurricane Katrina, some guy was photographed taking a case of beer, while wading in knee-deep water. You can see his glee in grabbing free beer in the AP photo on the left.

So? What's up?

Well he became (in)famous and everyone's been photoshopping his image and trying to look for him. Heck they even made a game based on Lootie. And they finally found him after a long and exhausting search. But I must say, he looks quite different without his hair.

[Pic: AP photo]

Female Beefeater Makes History

I'm very certain that if you're not British, you're wondering if Beefeater actually means someone who eats beef. That's why I did a double-take when I saw the title of my source, "First Female Beefeater Begins Job". I was thinking, hmm, beefeater? Sounds like a great job. Taste beef all day, just like wine tasters.

Unfortunately for me and you, beefeater isn't what you thought it meant. Since Wikipedia has already done a great job of describing what a beefeater actually does, here are their duties.

The Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, popularly known as the Beefeaters, are ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London. In principle they are responsible for looking after any prisoners at the Tower and safeguarding the British crown jewels, but in practice they act as tour guides and are a tourist attraction in their own right.

And this is how they came to be known as beefeaters.

The transition from "loaf" to "beef" may originate from the fact that early Warders were paid in beef, amongst other things. Count Cosimo, grand duke of Tuscany, visited the Tower in 1669 and commented on this "A very large ration of beef is given to them daily at court...that they might be called Beef-eaters" and earlier references can also be found.

So how did Moira Cameron, 42, who started work at the Tower of London today make history? It's simply because of who she is, which is a woman. Imagine all that fuss just because she's a woman. But when you consider that the 1000 year old tradition had no females before her, it becomes quite a big deal.

Not everyone thinks the same way though. According to her,

"I had one chap at the gate one day who said he was completely and utterly against me doing the job,"

To which she replied,

'I would like to thank you for dismissing my 22 years service in Her Majesty's Armed Forces'.

(she spent 22 years in the Army, a prerequisite for the job)

And no, she's not keeping a beard. Not that it helps in the job.

I think I would still prefer "beef-eaters".

[Link: Wikipedia]
[Source: Sky News]

Mythical Chupacabra Found?

More weird stuff is happening in Texas (what are they doing down there?). The last one was a giant 200 yard spider web made by social spiders. Now a hunter claims to have found the mythical chupacabra. If you're going, "What?", welcome to the club.

Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

In case you are not a walking encyclopedia, here's an explanation of Chupacabra.

Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.

And no, this isn't the first finding. Many people claimed to have found it before. But none were the Chupacabra. This probably won't be the last time that the Chupacabra gets discovered.

[Source: Comcast News]

What the ҉???‮‪‫‬‭‮

This one just caught my eye on digg. Apparently if you insert this character, ‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭҉, it will screw up your typing and it'll start going from right to left. Spooky! Well, that's not entirely true as you can see from the previous sentence. But I can try..‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭.
‫‬‭‮‪‫‬

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉ What's happening?

I had no idea what that character was either, but upon reading the very helpful comments at the site, I began to understand what was going on. If you refer to the ever helpful Wikipedia, you'll see that it's not ‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭҉ at work, but invisible (non-printing) unicode characters to enforce right-to-left (think arabic) directional flow. These characters simply force left-to-right stuff to become right-to-left stuff.

Another person notes that ҉ is simply the Unicode character U+0489 COMBINING CYRILLIC MILLIONS SIGN. And there you have it, mystery solved.

[Source: Tip o' the Day]

Edit: I had to bump this post up because, well, let's just say this is quite popular and few are actually seeing it, even though it is in fact on the blog!

Some even think that this is ‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉language . a

TSFU? TFSU? Hmm?

If you have been to Gizmodo recently, you should have noticed that there's a strangely familiar yet unfamiliar acronym "TSFU" "TFSU". And you're probably wondering what the hell TFSU actually means. Well, if you used your intuition, you should have figured out by now that it actually has the same meaning as the acronym created when you switch the first two letters in "TSFU" (more switching around for "TFSU", which by the way is the proper spelling). If you still haven't got it, I'm afraid I have to spell it out for you, STFU!

Now you must be thinking, yeah sure smart ass (smartass is not a word according to Firefox!), you've got it all figured out. So if you're so clever, why don't you explain why Gizmodo wrote it that way? It's actually quite simple if you're a Star Wars fan (*hint hint*). Look at the very first post by Gizmodo with "TSFU" "TFSU" in it (pic above). What famous Star Wars character spoke the magic words (hint: it's not the guy)? By now the answer should have struck you if you're a true Stars Wars fan. If it hasn't, well, you should be ashamed of yourself. Go watch Star Wars and listen to how that green dude (Yoda) speaks. As Yoda would say "Learn to use the force, you must".

Edit: No, no, I'm fine. I'm not dyslexic. Just a typo on TFSU.

Typhoid Mary - The Most Dangerous Woman in America

Who was she?
She was Mary Mallon, aka "Typhoid Mary", as she was the first person in the US found to be a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. PBS Nova had a show about her on Aug 21.

So? Why is she so (in)famous?
Typhoid fever is spread through contaminated food or water. And, Mary worked as a cook for a living, so that's a double whammy. Investigators traced the infection to her and had her quarantined for a few years. But she didn't believe them since she was in good health and was a strong believer in fate. After she was released (due to sympathy from the new health commissioner), she secretly went back to cooking (duh, she's a cook). And the next round of infections began, which led to her being quarantined again.

How many people actually died?
You would think that due to her notoriety, surely tons of people would have been infected and succumbed to the infection. Like most (sensationalized) news, however, only 33 were infected and only 3 didn't make it. I'm not saying that those people weren't important, but she wasn't the only healthy carrier at that time, in fact, there were 50 of them.

Did she really carry typhoid bacteria?
Mary never believed she had the bacteria on her and even engaged a private lab to do testing. Supposedly, the results came back negative for typhoid bacteria. But in an autopsy, the bacteria was eventually found on her.

Find out more about Typhoid Mary at Nova, Snopes and Wikipedia.

In the mood for free food?

"They eat food they find in bins and are driven by conscience, not financial need. Meet the freegans."

Apparently there are some people out there who think supermarkets dump too much food and so they grab it for themselves to reduce food wastage. And it looks like its true according to them (at least in the UK). The practice is generally fine with me but some diggers pointed out that feeding (possibly) expired and (likely to be) unsafe food to their children is probably not a wise thing to do. For what it's worth, I heard that a certain fast food company throws out their fries if no one buys them within a certain period of time. That definitely sounds like quite a waste to me. If you're in the mood (and possess a lot of patience) maybe you can join them in "dumpster-diving".

Source: Digg