Aww yeah!

This cat is amazing

America, don’t waste your chance to change.

It’s taken a few listens to get into Keane’s new album Perfect Symmetry but the sonic goodness that is Stuart Price production is definitely winning me over. Yeah, I know, it starts off sounding like The Killers for about 30 seconds (which is funny because apparently Stuart Price has produced their next album as well) but after that it’s a new sound for a band that many think have had their day.

Just watched John “The Mac Is Back” McCain publicly concede the election to Barack Obama. After listening to the crowd boo the next president’s name I heard a wonderful U-S-A! chant emerge from an upset group of McCain supporters. Then I got to thinking if anyone used this anthemic rally chant before the legendary Hacksaw Jim Duggan back in the the WWF glory days?

Thanks to Wikipedia, now I know: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

I’ve been waiting a good while for my current pair of basketball shoes to give out. They’re just about at that point which means I can finally get around to purchasing a pair of these awesome Nike Trash Talk basketball shoes.

Working with Steve Nash, Nike has ingeniously come up with an “environmentally friendly” shoe that features an upper made of pieces of leather and synthetic leather collected from the factory floor, a mid-sole that uses factory scrap foam and an outer-sole that uses a less toxic upper and ground material from outer-sole manufacturing waste.

And to top it all off, these bad boys are only $100. Sold.

Topps has finally produced a coffee table book about Wacky Packages with exclusive bonus stickers and interviews. Clocking in at a hefty 240 pages, the guilty pleasure of kids for the 70’s and early 80’s.

You’ll laugh (maybe) as you remember such knock off products as Shingles, Gums and Mulller Low Life. To this day, my favourite part of Wacky Packages is the included gum slice. So stale and powdery, yet sooooo good.

We’ve recently converted all of our image processing from using GD to using ImageMagick and one of the biggest stumbling blocks in doing that has been the lack of documentation for PHP’s Imagick class. I ran into a problem when I realized that I needed to convert a jpeg from CMYK to RGB. After some googling, I was only able to find a solution that used imagemagick on the command line. This just isn’t a viable solution for my current needs, I need a solution in PHP, preferably using the Imagick class. Back to google. I finally find what appears to be exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s on one of those question/answer sites where you have to pay to see the answer. Forget that! So I read through the little Imagick documentation that exists and trial-and-errored my way to a working solution.

Here’s a simple script that gives a run through of converting a CMYK jpeg to RGB using ImageMagick’s Imagic class:

<?php

$filePath = '/path/to/your/file.jpg';
$i = new Imagick($filePath);

$cs = $i->getImageColorspace();

if ($cs == Imagick::COLORSPACE_CMYK) {

    print "Image is CMYK<br/>n";

    ?>
    CMYK Image:<br/>
    <img src="<?=$filePath ?>"/>
    <br/><br/>
    <?php

    $i->setImageColorspace(Imagick::COLORSPACE_SRGB);
    $i->setImageFormat('jpeg');

    $cs = $i->getImageColorspace();

    if ($cs != Imagick::COLORSPACE_CMYK) {

        print "Image is no longer CMYK<br/>n";

        // write it to a temp file
        $filePath = '/path/to/temp/file.jpg';
        $i->writeImage($filePath);

    }

} else {
    print "Image is not CMYK<br/>n";
}

if ($cs == Imagick::COLORSPACE_SRGB ||
    $cs == Imagick::COLORSPACE_RGB){
    print "Image is RGB<br/>n";
}

?>
RGB Image:<br/>
<img src="<?=$filePath ?>"/>
<?php

$i->clear();
$i->destroy();
$i = null;

Hopefully this will help some of you out! I know there are a lot of people out there looking for the same (or at least a similar) solution.

Original GURU

As you probably just witnessed in the video above, we got a package from our new friends at GURU (we are friends, right?). That box made me feel like I was 5 years old on christmas morning. I had the biggest smile on my face opening up and admiring all 24 cans of the assorted GURU greatness. It was an amazing day.

Out of all the drinks within that box there is one that truly stood out, the Original GURU Energy Drink. It changed my energy drinking life forever.

Crack open the can and you are greeted with a somewhat familiar smell. The smell reminded me of jumbo sour keys. I was pumped. The drink has a very faint golden colour to it, oddly inviting. It took me a few sips to grasp the flavor: Sweet candy, with some bitterness. Not too bitter mind you. It was perfect. It was very light in my mouth and went down easy.

Most energy drinks carbonate it to the max. Some even past the max. All that carbonation is hard on your throat. GURU is just slightly carbonated. Just enough to make it refreshing.

The all natural ingredients within the GURU energy drinks is a drawing factor. In this day and age where we are constantly pumping crap into our systems (*cough* bk) its nice to have a drink that boosts energy and wont trash your system as much as the other drinks I have had before (I’m looking at you JOLT).

Another notable difference in the GURU line of drinks is the new can size. The new 355mL cans are the perfect size, they are just enough to feel satisfied and not too much to make you need the washroom every 5 minutes.

Shake Test:
This caffeine doesn’t fool around. I expected the average boost in energy, but I wasn’t ready for something like this. Similar to the Full On Lemonade I tested the caffeine hits very hard and keeps going for a longer than average run.

Caffeine: 125mg per 245mL
Taste: 5 out of 5
Buzz: 4 out of 5
Verdict: This is my #1 choice for a drink when I’m craving good taste and an awesome boost in energy.

Side note: I’m spinning in my chair.

The first publicly launched rocket has made it into orbit. 10 minutes after lift off yesterday the Falcon 1 entered Earth orbit.

There’s nothing more mesmerising than watching a rocket lift off into space - Especially when you’re listening to Midnight Juggernauts.