Flour Power

Imagine a hood.

And a thong.

A hood and a thong.

A hood that is, at the same time, a thong.

And vice-versa.

Got it?

OK, I'll give you more time. I understand it's not a simple thing to imagine.

Got it now?

Is it something like this?

(...) one of the most progressive, functional, temperature-controlled pieces of fashion around.

The Hood Thong™ is possibly the most stupid piece of clothing I've ever seen, and I can't imagine any situation where someone would use something like this. Well, maybe there are people who like to wear thongs and at the same time worry a lot about getting their head cold. In that case this is just what they need.

You can pre-order your Hood Thong™ now, but I have no idea how much it costs, because the price is not shown on the site.

The geek in me just gave a few good laughs at these screen shots of what Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Chewie, C-3PO and other Star Wars characters would write on their Facebook walls.

And if you haven't seen it before, here's another Facebook parody - The Facebook of Genesis.

(image from Times Online)

Ahh, what would be of an important football game without some controversy? And to make it even more disgusting, it had to involve, and be in favor of, France…

The Irish team had lost 0-1 at Croke Park and travelled to France in a very difficult position. After 33 minutes at the Stade de France, Robbie Keane got the goal (and qualification equalizer) for Ireland , which they kept until the 90 minutes were over. And then, 14 minutes into extra time, Gallas scored the goal that got France in the World Cup, after an assist from Thierry Henry. Small detail: Henry controlled the ball with his hand. Wait, there’s more. Henry controlled the ball with his hand… twice!

I'm not even going to comment on the game itself, because that's of little importance and there's plenty of sites discussing it. The real issue here is that it was proven again that soccer desperately needs to adopt what today's technology has to offer. It's outrageous that a game of such importance gets decided in a clearly illegal play, one that would be easily detected by watching a replay. And any replay would be enough, as it was so obvious that you could almost see it from the other side of the pitch…

Tennis has Hawk-Eye. Quite a lot of sports use instant-replay to help decide on controversial situations. But football remains in the dark ages, leading to situations like this one over and over again. Maradona’s “God’s Hand” was 23 years ago, I think we should have evolved enough avoid these mistakes…

I’m not blaming Henry, because most players would do the same. Although he’s still a sneaky bastard.

I’m not blaming the referees, because it is possible that they really didn’t see the (did I say it was double?) handball. Although this was France.

But things like these make me sick.

In related news, Portugal got the qualification after defeating Bosnia and Herzegovina by 1 goal in Zenica (aggregate 2-0).

Oh... wait...

Nevermind...

I've been wanting to write about this tool, but for the sake of credibility, I didn't want to write a review before actually using it. And today I did.

Ninite calls itself an "easy PC setup and multiple app installer. And that's exactly what it is. It couldn't be any simpler, I guess. The website is just a list of the best Windows applications divided in several categories. You just select the ones you want, download a customized installer and run it. The selection is very good, and all the essentials are there, like Firefox and Chrome, uTorrent, VLC, ImgBurn, 7-Zip, Notepad++, etc.

The installer doesn't ask you any annoying installer questions. It just downloads the stuff you requested and installs it. Simple.

To make things even faster, it fires up several downloads at once, so that when when program finishes installing, it is very likely that the next one on the list has already been downloaded and ready to go.

But not everything is good. In my test the installer froze while installing Dropbox. I'm guessing that was because Dropbox requires, in the end of the install process, a login to the service, and the automated wizard couldn't deal with that. It would be nice to have a way to skip the current app and install the remaining ones (I had to cancel the whole thing and go to the site again for the ones that didn't install in the first run). Also, it's not possible to specify an installation folder other than the default (typically C:/Windows/Program Files), although this might be a necessary evil to make the whole thing as simple as possible.

In short, it's a great little tool that makes the task of setting up a new computer much, much easier.

On the 19th of July, Coldplay performed a "Stripped" acoustic show for iheartradio at the Capitol Records Studio in Hollywood. The intimate show is now available to watch online. The track list:

• Lost
• Strawberry Swing
• Viva La Vida
• Death Will Never Conquer
• Billie Jean

I especially liked the Michael Jackson's Billie Jean cover, but you should already know that I love covers.

(via Coldplay's Twitter)

I'm confused now. Is it large or is it petit?

FYI, petit is French for small. And pain is French for bread. They should really italicize that sign...

I've clearly been distracted, because Billy Corgan has announced more than one month ago that the next Smashing Pumpkins album will released for free, on the Internet, one track at a time. And I only heard about it this weekend. It was big news when Radiohead first did something similar with In Rainbows in 2007, but now it seems news like these just go a bit unnoticed.

The new new record, entitled Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, will feature 44 songs, each of which will be made available online by the band, completely free of charge.

Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free, which means you won't have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish.

11 "highly limited edition" EPs with 4 songs each will be available for the more devoted fans, and when the album is complete it will be compiled in a deluxe box set.

In the meanwhile, and to help create anticipation for the songs, Kerry Brown (the producer) has been releasing some studio videos in his TwitVid.

The first song was scheduled for "around Halloween", so it shouldn't take long now.

Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? What about those long and boring conference calls? Here is a way to change all of that!

Check off each block when you hear these words during a meeting, seminar, or phone call. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!

(via fukung.net)