Brent's Blog

I first saw this video advertised on Dailymotion.com's main page so I decided to check it out.  This guy named Lasse Gjertsen has made a previous video where he used video editing to make him have incredible beat-boxing skills, well now he's done the same with a drum set and a piano.  Check out the video!  It's a pretty good song.

Also check out his beat boxing video: here

I just discovered this page after looking through recently submitted stuff on del.icio.us. 

On Wikipedia you can find a list of a ton of unusual deaths dating back to 456 BC.  Very strange and some are amusing, here are some good ones.

• 207 BC: Chrysippus, Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.

• 260: Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by their king.

• 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine.

• 1532: Vlad Înecatul (Vlad the Drowned), Prince of Wallachia, got severely drunk and rode his horse into the waters of the Dâmboviţa River.

• 1543: Pedro de Valdivia, a dreaded conquistador, was captured by Native Americans and supposedly executed by pouring molten gold down his throat to satisfy his thirst for treasures.

• 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn't stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish.

• 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the famous Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning from a toe injury he received after kicking his safe in anger when he could not remember its combination code.'

• 1915: François Faber, Luxembourgean Tour de France winner, died in a trench on the western front of World War I. He received a telegram saying his wife had given birth to a daughter. He cheered, giving away his position, and was shot by a German sniper.

• 1983:Tennessee Williams, a major American playwright died choking on a bottle cap.

• 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players dumped a Gatorade bucket on him following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football), resulting in pneumonia.

• 2003: Jane McDonald, a seminary student from Scotland, slipped and fell into an open dishwasher and was impaled by a kitchen knife.

• 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote portion of Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by bears, as was his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in the documentary film Grizzly Man.

• 2005: Kenneth Pinyan, a Seattle, WA. man, died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion in the town of Enumclaw, WA. The man had done this before, but he delayed several hours to visit a hospital wishing to avoid official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington.

• 2005: 28-year-old Korean video game addict Lee Seung Seop collapsed in an Internet cafe after playing World of Warcraft and Starcraft for almost 50 hours.

• 2006: A Canadian woman choked on marshmallows at London, Ontario's Western Fair while taking part in a "Chubby Bunny" contest, and later died in hospital.

-- Brent

For those of you who didn't know, Comedy Central's owner Viacom sent a letter to YouTube saying to remove all their shit.  This includes the Colbert Report, The Daily Show and South Park, which have very many clips and full episodes on YouTube.  Now, YouTube acted quickly and soon almost all of the top videos of those shows (and some others) owned by Comedy Central (Viacom) were removed from YouTube (you'd get the message "This video has been removed due to copyright violations." or something like that).

HOWEVER, just a few days after that happened, YouTube struck up a deal with Comedy Central (Viacom) to allow them to put back up many of the clips of the Colbert Report, South Park, etc.. legally!  That's right, YouTube will now allow users to post Colbert Report and South Park clips at no risk of getting them taken off.  BUT, according to the articles I read, Comedy Central does not want full episodes of these shows being posted on YouTube.  So, my friends who go there to watch the new South Park episode every week (which will be online later tonight, by the way) may not be available for long.  I don't know how YouTube is going to keep track of what videos are full episodes or not, but the length should be a good way of telling (South Park is usually split into 3 parts due to video length, so the names should have Part 1 or 2 or 3 in them). 

Anyways, I think this is a big step for YouTube and online TV in general.  I mean, ABC is now allowing people in the USA to watch entire episodes of the hit show LOST on their website for FREE.  That is awesome!  I mean, I usually just download the episodes of a torrent site if I want to watch it, but streaming videos off of websites is a lot easier and doesn't take up any hard drive space.  I mean, I like making a collection of TV shows on my hard drive, but if I'm at school or at someone else's house and I'm talking about this one part of a show, I can load it up in a couple minutes online.  It's fuckin sweet!  I hope YouTube and other companies start putting full shows online legally and letting the mainstream know what's going on in the web.  Trust me, the TV and the internet are going to get much closer in the future, it's only a matter of time where every TV show on air will be online legally as well.  That's my two cents.

Stephen Colbert stands up to Kim Jong-IL

PS:  Full episodes of many more shows can be found at Daily Motion (which is like YouTube's evil brother) and there's also Rape the Web which has every episode of South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, and tons more! Check it out!  (Go to Cartoon Portal to view all the shows!)

-- ßЯ£₪†

I picked up Final Fantasy XII yesterday, and I must say that it could be the best Final Fantasy game yet.  I've racked up almost 10 hours so far, and it's been AMAZING.  I'm blown away by it's story and deep battle system.  If you're into RPGs and have a Playstation 2, PICK IT UP!  You won't be disappointed, other than the fact that it's going to own your life for a while, but it's worth every minute of it.  A masterpiece.

In between playing FFXII, I've been on my computer.  My hard drive is making clicking sounds (never good), it transfers files slow and it constantly screws with me while I'm playing Counter-Strike (freezes for a minute, then back into the game for 5 minutes, freezes again, repeat).  I've only had the hard drive since March and it's fuckin' dying on me.  Great.  I'm going to get a new 320GB Seagate hard drive today and hopefully all my computer troubles will stop... for now.  I've got to send this broken hard drive back to Maxtor.  That'll be a pain in the ass because I need to pack it just right or else Maxtor will void my warranty.  I've got to put it in a static bag, buy foam padding, (at least to inches thick) surround the motherfucker in it, pack it in a certain size box and put a bow on top.  Fucking warranty bullshit.  They should come pick it up from my house, that'd be good customer service.  Instead they slap a 3 year warranty on their shit and then make it so much trouble to claim anything.  Great.  Fucking computers, you love em but you've got to hate them at the same time.  Anyways, hopefully in a couple months I'll have sent out my old hard drive and gotten a new one from them.  Then I'll have 620 GB of hard drive space... mmmmm... lots of pirated shit is going on there...

This has been a random rant, but it's my life.  Anyways, take it easy, and comment if you read this.  It feels like I'm talking to a wall...

-- ßЯ£₪†

I'll probably be adding my Vox site url in my MSN name for a while, so anyone who knows me personally can talk to me about going to this Halloween keg party downtown on saturday.  A guy at school gave me this flyer today and it sounds like it'll be a blast.  I'm going to go check it out, if you want to come with me let me know and we'll PARTY!  Yeah baby!  Read the flyers for detail and give me a shout!  Peace.

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Halloween party

Wow.  I am very impressed with this site.  I dabbled a bit in Myspace and MSN Space, on Friendster and I'm on Facebook occasionally but this is by far the best networking/blog site ever.  It's got everything!  The most impressive things are the beautiful layout and the amount of content you can upload.  I uploaded a couple of songs, White and Nerdy by Weird Al' Yankovic and Liar by Taking Back Sunday.  They uploaded very quickly and I was impressed with how fast they stream and the quality.  I'm going to test that quality of streaming video from the site a bit later.  I wonder if they have a upload limit... I've got to check that.  Well, hopefully I'll be able to get lots of people to join this awesome site.  Much better than any other blog/networking sites out there.  Anyways, enjoy my uploads and check back for more guys.  Sign up and add me! Cheers.

EDIT: Checked the streaming video, I get about 50 kilobytes a second for streaming a full episode... not very good.  Need at least 200 KB/s, I'd say.  Anyways, it should be good enough for small videos of a few minutes, but not 20 minute long videos.

-- ßЯ£₪†

Check out the MP3s below