It’s here. Two wholesome boxes of the king. The natural nectar.

STOKED – Wind Chill

There is a whole lineup offered in the Stoked family of energy drinks. I’m starting off with the Stoked Wind Chill.

The art on the can is awesome. This is the best looking drink I have seen so far in my drinking history. I’m not usually into the whole dragon thing, but for this drink I’ll make an exception. (What’s also cool is that they have a dragonology section on the can. Details are awesome)

The drink it’s self smells like ginger-ale with a slightly orange colour to it. After pouring it into a glass for further inspection the ginger-ale smell disappears and al that is left is a very faint orange smell very much like orange Gatorade.

I really don’t know what to expect from this drink. The can is blue and it’s called Wind Chill… that makes me think this should be minty and refreshing. In reality, the drink is murky yellow and smells of orange… wtf is going on here?

After taking a few gulps of this canned mind f***, I can defiantly taste the orange. It tastes almost exactly like orange gatorade (watered down orange flavor). I also noticed that the back of my throat feels tingly… almost numb. I think I understand why this drink is called Wind Chill now.

This chilling sensation in the back of my throat isn’t uncomfortable. I can notice that it’s there but it’s not bothersome. Reminds me of strong mints.

This drink provides no noticable buzz. It’s possible that im more focused, but nothing special.

Caffeine: 160mg per 473ml
Taste: 3 out of 5
Buzz: 1 out of 5
Verdict:Not bad, but not really worth it either.

Side note: I like caffeine.

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.

Imagine a world when, with the press of a button, you are presented the perfect playlist of music that all just flows together.

Oh. Apple already did this? Cool, does it actually work?

Apple’s new iTunes 8 presents a slew of new features including the ability to generate playlists of music that goes together. The website makes it sound so easy:

1. Select a song
2. Press the Genius button
3. A list is generated

Apple wasn’t lying, this is the way it works… but you will need to do some work before you can just “press the Genius button and pow its there”.

I have over 4,000 songs in the iTunes playlist so trust me when I say this process took a while. When you press the Genius button for the first time it asks you to log into the iTunes store. After logging in you are asked to agree to some terms of use. after you sign your life away you get to wait while your playlist is uploaded to iTunes, then while they generate your matches and you download them. It was painful sitting there watching the progress bar inch along at a snails pace. Maybe it was slow because I did this a few hours after iTunes 8 came out. Anyone else find the service slow?

Once you have the Genius list generated the system works just as advertised. Press the button and volia. One thing I do not like is the new side bar that comes with Genius… but this is totally optional so I have nothing to complain about.

Something worth noting is that all the new iPods that support Genius require you to generate the Genius list in iTunes before the feature becomes available. Not a big deal, I was just slightly disappointed with all the waiting. Clearly I’m impatient.

Anyone else find soemthing they really like about the Genius or any other new feature in iTunes 8? The visualizations are pretty sweet.

Amazing. I want this gas right beside my desk.

Remember back in the old days of last.fm there was this really helpful feature called paste your taste. It allowed you to get a list of all your top artists, copy that list, then paste it into social networking sites like FaceBook or MySpace. That featured disappeared with the release of the new last.fm… until now.

Follow my few easy steps to get your pasteable atrists in no-time.

Here at the office, when we’ve run into a bottleneck design wise, we’ve used a collection of images to inspire us, mostly in the form of large, slow to open, and hard to share layered PSD resource files.

To fix this problem I slapped together this simple php image gallery. No database required, no extensive configuration. Just upload files and folders and you’re done.

The gallery seeks through up to 2 levels of folders and generates thumbnails* of png, jpg or gif images on the fly. The left hand navigation lists all the main folders and sub folders so you can get to what you need to look at quickly.

Installation is simple:
1. Un-Rar all the files.
2. Upload to your server
3. Create the directory ‘files’ in the same folder as index.php
4. Upload your files and folders to the ‘files directory’

thats it.

Feel free to give it a shot, modify it to your heart’s content. If you come up with a wicked awesome mod let me know and I’ll add it to any modifications that I do in the future.

Download Here

*Thumbnails are generated by WV4, modified by me to work with png, jpg and gif

iPhone CDMA

Thats right, you didn’t read wrong. I said iPhone CDMA. It does almost everything the iPhone 3G does and it’s cheaper, has twice the space and I can send mass text messages.

This is me giving the finger to Rogers for their ridiculous iPhone plans. Lets backtrack to January 2008 for a minute.

Once upon a time, when iPhones were only available in the States, I pre-ordered an iPod Touch. It was a great piece of technology. I said ‘was’ because it disappeared a few months later. After mourning the loss of my beloved device I began searching for an imported iPhone. After giving up in light of the crazy-high prices on eBay I waited patiently for the iPhone to officially come to Canada.

The iPhone came to Canada, but not without a steep price. I weighed my options, fork over my hard earned cash for this sweet sweet phone or carry on with my Bell Mobility contract for a few more years and feel like a little part of me is missing.

Around this time is when it hit me, the iPod that I had once lost would have been able to function almost the same as the iPhone (minus all the phone and GPS goodness). The next day I headed over to my local Apple store and picked up an iPod Touch 32 GB. That night I had my fun downloading and rampaging the App store and damn was it ever worth it.

Now I carry with me my trusty Samsung SPH-A860 in one pocket and my iPod Touch in the other. It covers everything I need. Sure it would be nice to have access to the internet at all times on the iPod but seeing as I’m on a wireless network 90% of the time I think I’ll survive the other 10% without the access.

And that there is how I’m doing my part in not giving Rogers my $4,000 (give or take a bit) in iPhone and iPhone contracts. For the bit of inconvenience that the two devises will give me I think it’s worth it.

(11:18 AM) neil: what’s for lunch?
(11:19 AM) Justin Mazur: i was thinking BK, but it doesnt really matter to me
(11:19 AM) Justin Mazur: as long as the grease content is 75% i’m good
(11:20 AM) neil: sounds good… you sick bastard

(1:22 PM) Justin Mazur: pizza – 50%
(1:22 PM) Justin Mazur: mc d’s/BK – 30%
(1:22 PM) Justin Mazur: other shit – 20%
(1:22 PM) Justin Mazur: no. i lied
(1:23 PM) Justin Mazur: other shit – 19.9%
(1:23 PM) Justin Mazur: healthy shit – 0.1%