Words and Links

This is a wonderful take on the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood from an engineers perspective.  The cutaway of the VW Bus is the best part.  Either that or the nutritional summary of Grandma.

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Yes, you can click on the above and Google will place your call to one of my phones, or to voicemail as I choose.  This is just one of the nice conveniences of Google Voice services. 

When you sign up for Google Voice you get a permanent number that you will give out to people that can be directed to whatever phone you choose based on the number that is calling.  For example if Joe from work calls, you might choose to have his call go to your cell, but when Mom calls you might route her call to your home phone.

Their call screening feature will announce callers and can allow you to listen to the message that is being left before answering.  Also you can create a list of numbers to block and phone spammers can be eliminated by banning them according to Google’s spam list.

SMS messages can be sent, received, and stored through this service and accessed through your phone or on the web.  The web interface allows for easy configuration of all services and management of call information and messaging. 

When a voicemail is left it is automatically transcribed and can be read on the web or sent right to your cell phone.  The transcription is not perfect, but this is a convenient feature allowing you to skip calling into voicemail to check messages.

Some other features are conference calling, the ability to record calls, saving preferences by groups, the ability to switch phones mid-call, and GOOG-411 directory information.

For more of the 411 on Google Voice check out their info site.

The Family Guy animated television series is at least as popular as The Simpsons, and arguably far funnier.  With millions watching the show there has to be some curiosity as to who is behind the cast of Family Guy characters.  Here are the faces that you can now associate with the Family Guy cast.

Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane is the voice of Peter Griffin, the patriarch of the Griffin household and central character of Family Guy.  MacFarlane also voices the characters: Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Glenn Quagmire, The Kool Aid Man, Bill Clinton, William Shatner and others.  Seth MacFarlane is the creator of the series.

Alex Borstein

Alex Borstein voices Lois Griffin, Peter’s wife and the sometimes voice of reason on the show.  She also plays Loretta Brown, Barbara Pewterschmidt, Tricia Takanawa, and Queen Latifah among others.

Seth Green

Seth Green is the voice of Chris Griffin, son of Peter and Lois, and probably the dimmest bulb of the show.  Green also portrays Neil Goldman.

Mila Kunis

Mila Kunis, That 70’s Show girl is the voice of Meg, the awkward daughter of the Griffins.

Mike Henry

Mike Henry voices Cleveland Brown, Herbert, The Greased Up Deaf Guy, Magic Johnson, Fred Rogers, and O.J. Simpson among others.

You can view a good clip of the actors performing their roles here on YouTube.  Learn more about Family Guy here.

Donkey Kong

…when it was the destination for the day and you came with pockets full of quarters?  And when you got there the sounds and flashing lights and smells of pizza and hotdogs?

It is possible to recreate some of those feelings by playing the original games on your PC!

MAME logo

Thanks to Nicola Salmoria and the MAME team there is an emulator that is capable of playing thousands of the original games from those arcades.

MAME is a program that allows your PC to simulate the original hardware that the original games ran on.  It then reads the original programs for these games and allows you to play them.  The programs for the games were stored on ROM chips on the motherboards of the arcade games.  These chips can be dumped to files to be used on modern computers.

To use MAME you will need to get the emulator itself, and some ROM images.  The emulators home page is The Official Site of the MAME Development Team.  Here you can download the executable files or the source files to compile your own program.

MAME is a command line program, and might take a little work to configure and get working.  An easier version to use, complete with a graphical user interface is MameUI.  this program can be downloaded here.  Just download this program and install it like any other windows program.

You will then need to get some ROMs.  According to copyright law, you can’t use any ROMs that you don’t physically own, So don’t go Google and search for MAME ROMs or anything like that.

A few free and non-copyright bound ROMs can be located at the official MAME site.  You can then put these ROMs into the ROM folder of your program and start playing them.  Enjoy!

Miracle Berries

Better known as Miracle Berries, Magic Berries, or Flavor Berries. Enough with the names, why am I reading about these guys right now?  The cool part is that when eaten, proteins in the fleshy part of the berry bind to, and alter your taste buds.  This causes any food eaten after this to taste sweet.  For example, a lemon eaten after eating the berries will be as sweet as candy.  The foods do have to have some natural sugars in them for the change to be noticed but most do.

You can get the berries and ready supply of tablets made from the fruit after it has been freeze dried and compressed.  A good source of them can be found right here.  I don’t think that I believe all of their claims, but it is an interesting thing.

Leave a comment if you have tried these and let us know your reaction.