Sriracha Lip Balm: A Christmas Gift for Masochists in Your Life

[okay... awesome! -Josh]

Sriracha Lip Balm: A Christmas Gift for Masochists in Your Life:

Sriracha makes most things better, including popcorn and lollipops. But the latest addition to the Sriracha camp—lip balm—might just be a step too far for most people. More »

My Precious Dress

[okay... probably the best dress ever designed!]


My Precious Dress:

Submitted by:
Unknown (via Flavorwire)

Tagged:
fashion
, lord of the rings
, nerdgasm
, dress
, poorly dressed

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You Can Pre-Order the Back to the Future Hoverboard Right Now

You Can Pre-Order the Back to the Future Hoverboard Right Now:

If you missed ordering it earlier this year, you can pre-order the official Mattel Back to the Future hoverboard right now at MattyCollector.com. Plop down a $130 and you'll get the 1:1 scale model that's fully sanctioned by the movies. It's the real deal. More »

Game Changer

Game Changer:

Submitted by:
Unknown

Tagged:
black sabbath
, ukelele
, song book
, Music FAILS
, g rated

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I wrote today!! (and made a comic :P)

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” Passes Justin Bieber’s “Baby” To Become The Most Popular YouTube Video Ever With Over 805 Million Views

Damn! - Josh

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” Passes Justin Bieber’s “Baby” To Become The Most Popular YouTube Video Ever With Over 805 Million Views:
It was only a matter of time, and we’re happy this happened on a slow news day over the weekend: Psy’s viral music video hit “Gangnam Style” just passed Justin Bieber’s “Baby” to become the most popular video in the history of YouTube. The video has now been watched over 805 million times.
The video made its YouTube debut on July 15 and currently has over 5.3 million likes and about 320,000 dislikes. Bieber’s “Baby” – which had a nice run at the top of YouTube’s charts since its debut in February 2010 – only has about 1.4 million likes and a whopping 3.2 million dislikes. At least Bieber’s corporate parents won’t be too unhappy about this development: since September, Psy and Bieber work for the same music label.
Thanks to Psy’s (and his management’s) relatively hands-off approach to fan-made remakes and parodies, the song itself has likely been heard quite a bit more often on YouTube. According to one metric, these fan remakes have garnered over 220 million views. The first live performance of the song on Korean TV also has a full 152 million views.
With the exception of “Charlie bit my finger – again,” every single video in the YouTube top 30 is now a music video and sadly, this list also includes the “Tootin’ Bathtub Baby Cousins” with 251 million views and “The Gummy Bear Song” with 265 million views. We’ll leave it up to future anthropologists to decide what this all means…

How to Enjoy Life

How to Enjoy Life:

Enjoying life is often thought to be a mindset, the result of reflection, action and gratitude. And while most of us lack sufficient free time to escape to some mountaintop temple to follow our bliss, the best way to find happiness is to make practical, everyday changes. Coupled with conscious choices to appreciate the people in your life and making space to do the things you're best at, small changes to your life soon add up to greater enjoyment in life.

Edit Steps

Emotional well-being

1. Get a pet. Owning a pet provides love, companionship, and hours of entertainment. Pet ownership has health benefits too, such as reducing your blood pressure and the risk of heart disease, increasing your feelings of well-being and connectedness, and teaching you lessons in empathy and nurturing.^[1] For extra warm and fuzzy feelings, consider rescuing a pet from your local shelter.
   
2. Get into music. Listening to music taps into your brain’s imagination and sense of self-identity, boosts your self-esteem, and lessens feelings of isolation.^[2] Listening to music feels empowering. Put on your favorite album––or that one you keep meaning to dive into, turn up the volume, and cut out all other distractions so that you can really experience the music.
   
   • In some cases, music has been shown to help people coping with dementia, giving them a greater sense of empowerment.^[3]
     
3. Start the day with a smile. Your facial expression is traditionally thought of as a window into how you feel, but it's also thought that your facial expression can influence your mood.^[4] Therefor, be sure to smile freely, to ensure that your mood is upbeat. You might even want to greet yourself in the mirror with a smile first thing in the morning––that happy face may be just enough to keep that mood flowing all day long.
   
4. Take a break. A decent break doesn’t mean zoning out to the TV or going down the internet rabbit hole. It means setting some time aside and making it special. As a thank-you to yourself, give yourself a vacation or “staycation”; a change of scenery––even if it just means having a picnic in your backyard or building a fort with your kids in the living room. Taking a break that is different from the ordinary and lets you "hang loose" can do wonders for your sense of fun, escape, and fulfillment.
   
5. Spend time with interesting people. It is well known that people with a wide circle of friends tend to live longer.^[5] Of course, birds of a feather flock together, and it’s also been shown that your friends’ behavior can actually have a big impact on yours.^[6] Make sure you hang around with positive, interesting people to inspire yourself to live a richer life.
   
   • Putting off getting in touch with an old friend? Make that call today! If you can’t reach the person by phone, set some time aside to write a long email.
     
   • Being dragged down by an unhealthy friendship? Enabling your friend’s bad behavior doesn’t do either of you any good. Do some soul-searching and decide whether to resolve things with a heart-to-heart or to simply end the relationship.
     
   • Have trouble meeting new people? Get outside your comfort zone by going to new places, striking up conversations with strangers, taking on a new hobby, or even joining a social activity group on something like Meetup.com.
     

Mental well-being

1. Reduce stress. You don’t need a clinician to tell you that stress is no fun, but did you know that even a mild stress-induced mood disorder like sub-clinical depression can ravage your immune system? In fact, the duration of a stressful period has more effect on immunity than its severity.^[7] To fight stress, first recognize it and stop trying to battle on alone. Find ways to ground yourself and to let off steam constructively. Sport, exercise, a hobby and spending time with friends are all good ways to counteract stress. You might like to try guided imagery, yoga, or tai-chi; if you have a severe mood disorder, seek counseling and/or medication.^[8]
   
   • Remove the stress or manage it better. Can you change the cause of the stress? Then do so. In many cases though, stress links back to your job. In uncertain times, changing jobs can be difficult, in which case, you must find ways to manage it better. This includes becoming more assertive about your needs and boundaries, working smarter not harder and using workplace resources to counteract detrimental practices that are impacting your health and well-being.
     
2. Learn new things. Getting a higher education can bolster your self-esteem and interest in the world. But it's not for everyone and it's not the only solution––reading, traveling, taking fun classes, attending guest lectures, and meeting people from other cultures will do the same thing. Or try MOOCs––massive online open courses––these courses offer very stimulating ways of stretching your knowledge and abilities, in your own time. Ultimately, instead of running from new experiences, engage in them––and seek more whenever you can. After all, you only live once.
   
3. Find a hobby. Whether you choose stamp collecting or kickboxing, hobbies and extracurricular activities are necessary in the pursuit to enjoy life. Hard routines are counterproductive to spontaneity and surprise––leave a little flexibility in your schedule so that it doesn't become routine and humdrum. Do your hobby or activity because you love it, and because it gets you "into the flow", and not for reasons such as keeping up with other people or conforming to unrealistic social standards.
   
4. Read a good book. Putting your feet up and watching your favorite show at the end of the day is definitely a treat, but since passively watching a story doesn’t do much to stimulate your imagination, it can also leave you feeling restless and zombified. For a change of pace, find a book that you can lose yourself in for a while. If you don’t consider yourself much of a reader, think outside the box and find something that relates to your hobbies: if you’re a baseball fan, pick up Bill Veek’s autobiography; if you’re a biker, try Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
   
   • Keep notes of passages or ideas that really resonate with you. If you keep a notebook in your usual reading spot, ready to jot down such inspirations, you'll soon amass an inspirational collection of ideas that matter to you and may help direct your sense of purpose for years to come.
     

Physical well-being

1. Bolster your immune system. Nobody feels happy when they’re sick! Even doing something as simple as taking a vitamin with vitamins C, E, and A, selenium, and beta Carotene might help to boost your immunity.^[9] More usefully though, eating good food such as fruit, vegetables, grains and animal foods will provide good nutrients as a result of the complexity of vitamin and mineral interactions unprocessed foods offer. Exercising, sleeping well, and taking mental breaks can also do wonders for your body’s natural defenses, thereby boosting your energy and well-being.
   
2. Exercise. Exercising effects the release of endorphins, which transmit messages to the brain, translating into positive feelings.^[10] Regular exercise not only combats depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness, but also bolsters your immune system. Even walking for exercise can increase your antibody and T-killer cell response.^[8]
   
3. Sleep well. Sleep is strongly linked with a person’s health, stress levels, weight and quality of life. Moreover, while you sleep, your body produces cells that fight infection, inflammation, and stress, which means that getting too little sleep makes you more prone to getting sick and increases the time you need to recover from illness.^[11]
   
   
   
   • Exercising is one of the absolute best ways to sleep better at night.^[12]
     
4. Play in the dirt. Scientists are finding that friendly bacteria in the soil actually trigger the brain to produce serotonin (much like how antidepressants work).^[13] If you have a garden, get out there and dig. If you don’t, consider starting one––if not for flowers, for vegetables and herbs. Even a designing a container garden can create a spot of sunshine in your life.
   
   • Obviously, not-so-friendly bacteria are also in your garden. Wear gloves to protect your hands, especially if you have cats or neighboring cats use your garden as a toilet. And wash your hands well after playing in dirt!
     
5. Eat healthy. It’s a no-brainer that eating well (fresh, unprocessed, basic foods) has a huge variety of health benefits. In addition, taking the time to cook fresh foods for yourself gives you an emotional boost: it smells good, it looks good, it tastes good, and, when you become proficient at cooking, it can even provide a fun, creative break from your routine. In addition to being a form of self-pampering, cooking is also good for your wallet. If you’re new to it, start with a few fast, foolproof recipes that won’t turn you off cooking forever. The less processed food in your diet, the healthier you'll be, which in turn will ensure a good deal more happiness for you.
   

Edit Tips

• While these guidelines have scientific theories supporting them about happiness, remember that being able to enjoy life depends on the person. There is no scientific measurement of happiness, and everyone's idea of happiness and fulfillment is different. In a nutshell, you can choose to be happy––or not––and the only person with control over that, is you.
  
• Worry is a useless form of wasting energy. Take that worry energy and do something instead of fretting. If you're so wound up that the thought of doing anything frightens you, take a break or a snooze, then come back and deal with the problem confronting you. You'll feel a lot better for tackling it than not.
  

Edit Warnings

• There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to happiness. By all means read what the self-help gurus and articles such as this suggest you try. But don't take it as gospel––if a suggestion doesn't work for you, then don't beat yourself up over it. Find an alternative that does work and stick with it instead.
  

Edit Related wikiHows

• How to Make Something of Your Life
  
• How to Enjoy Life After 50
  

Edit Sources and Citations

Edit Related wikiHows

• How to Be Happy
  
• How to Accomplish a Goal
  
• How to Get a Date
  
• How to Dance
  
• How to Ballroom Dance
  
• How to Belly Dance
  
• How to Get Happy when You're Sad
  
• How to Do Yoga and Positive Thinking
  
• How to Enjoy a Boring School Life
  
• How to Enjoy Every Day of Your Life
  

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“I am no man”: for Zelda-playing daughter, dad gives Link a sex change

[Awesome! Way to go, Dad :) -Josh]

“I am no man”: for Zelda-playing daughter, dad gives Link a sex change:

A selection of text modified to address Mike Hoye's daughter.

Mike Hoye

Why did small business owner and gamer dad Mike Hoye spend the last few weeks hand-tweaking the text in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker so that the main character was referred to as a girl instead of a boy? As he put it, “I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.”
Hoye and his three-and-a-half year old daughter Maya have recently been playing Wind Waker together, but Hoye was bothered by the fact that even players who change the protagonist's name to something other than "Link"—which the game allows—always get addressed as though they are male. The main character is always referred to with words like “master,” “my lad,” and “swordsman.” Because Hoye's daughter can't yet read, Hoye has been reading the on-screen dialogue aloud to her and diligently transliterating the gendered language from male to female on the fly as they traverse the game's Great Sea together.
To make this process smoother, Hoye eventually decided to hack away at the actual text of the story, producing a female-oriented version by altering the game's data files. According to his blog post on the project, Hoye took a GameCube disk image (.GCM) of Wind Waker and dug into it with a hex editor. He changed all story text and dialogue by hand, then tested his work by playing the game file in the Dolphin GameCube emulator.
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How To Make Sparkling Cider at Home

How To Make Sparkling Cider at Home:
We're always amazed by how truly easy it is to make things like sparkling cider at home. All you do is add a bit of yeast to some juice, bottle in recycled soda bottles, and wait for it to carbonate. Presto chango, fizzy cider!

• How To Make Sparkling Cider
  The Kitchn


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Colorful & Intricate Decorative Glass Panels for Game-Enthusiasts

Colorful & Intricate Decorative Glass Panels for Game-Enthusiasts:

How would you like to have your favorite superhero look down at your from your room window or glass door? Okay, this may not be everyone’s dream, but for those of you nostalgic about Super Mario, Iron Man, Warhammer 40k or the shield of the Knights of Hyrul, these colorful stained glass panels could make for some alluring home additions. The original designs belong to artist R. Evan Daniels of Martian Glass Works and have the ability to completely transform the look and feel of any room.

All these complex projects are featured on Etsy, with prices ranging from $400 to $4500. The most expensive piece is the Iron Man 3, which the artist describes as follows: “This is possibly the most amazing and complicated piece I’ve ever made. The final dimensions for this piece are 31″x47″ There are a total of 334 Pieces of Glass and the window is 9.5 square feet. I used 275 feet of copper foil and 5 rolls of solder to complete this. Construction time is over 100 hours“. Impressive. But would you consider having it in your home?







You're reading Colorful & Intricate Decorative Glass Panels for Game-Enthusiasts originally posted on Freshome.
The post Colorful & Intricate Decorative Glass Panels for Game-Enthusiasts appeared first on Freshome.com.

Dive Right Into the Largest Ever Image of Our Galaxy's Centre

Dive Right Into the Largest Ever Image of Our Galaxy's Centre:

You are looking at more than 84 million stars, the largest ever catalogue of the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile, stitched the 9 gigapixels of the original image from thousands of individual infrared pictures.You can see the full, zoomable version here. More »

The Fuss-Free Squash: Delicata Squash — Ingredient Spotlight

[Josh] Booyah! I have a bunch of these from my CSA. Now I know what to do with 'em :)

The Fuss-Free Squash: Delicata Squash — Ingredient Spotlight:
Love butternut squash but hate all the work it takes to peel, chop, and roast them? It's time to try delicata. These striped, mild-flavored squashes are far easier to slice, and get this: you don't even have to peel them. Is that a collective sigh of relief I hear? More


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Report: Subaru developing engine for BRZ Turbo

[josh] -drool-

Report: Subaru developing engine for BRZ Turbo:
Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Subaru




Based on how many turbocharged boxer engines Subaru currently uses in its cars, solid news of a force-fed BRZ was only a matter of time. So it comes as little surprise that Automotive News is reporting that Subaru is currently developing a turbocharged version of the 2.0-liter engine currently found under the hood of the much-loved but somewhat underpowered 2013 BRZ.



AN's unnamed sources indicate that this engine will use a twin-scroll turbocharger and a new direct-injection system that will help give the engine an estimated 280 horsepower and torque that could be in excess of 250 pound-feet... still being sent to the rear wheels. The turbo'd BRZ will reportedly be making its debut for the 2014 model year, but it isn't clear if Subaru will simply call the car a BRZ Turbo or if it will finally deliver the BRZ STI that many enthusiasts have been clamoring for since the BRZ STI Concept hit the scene in 2011.



As soon as we know more, so will you.

Subaru developing engine for BRZ Turbo originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Googler loads Ubuntu on an ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, gives solace to the offline among us

[josh] Love it! Still rocking my Cr-48 Chromebook, BTW (dual-boot with Ubuntu, of course)!

Googler loads Ubuntu on an ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, gives solace to the offline among us:

Samsung's ARM-running Chromebook is barely out of the starting gate, and it's already being tweaked to run without as much of an online dependency. By a Google employee, no less. Not content to rely solely on Chrome OS, Olof Johansson has loaded Ubuntu on the Chromebook by partitioning an SD card, mixing OS components and booting from USB. The technique unsurprisingly requires being more than a little comfortable with a Linux command line as well as playing fast and loose with the warranty. It also won't be cheap or quick -- commenters note that you'll ideally have a partitioning-friendly SD card, and running a desktop OS from a slower kind of flash storage creates an inherent bottleneck. Anyone who likes the Chromebook's $249 price, but isn't as enraptured with the cloud as most of the team in Mountain View, might still want to try Johansson's step-by-step process for themselves.
Filed under: Laptops, Software, Samsung, Google

Googler loads Ubuntu on an ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, gives solace to the offline among us originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 23:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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