June 30, 2004
	Rent A Dog
	Here's something I never heard of: in Japan you can now rent a dog by the hour! It turns out that many Japanese who love pets are unable to raise them because of their cramped homes or strict apartment rules. So now for about $15 they can rent a dog for an hour walk. I wonder how much a dog walker costs in Japan (if it costs less then you can rent a dog and hire a dog walker so you don't have to worry about walking your rental :o). Posted by Guy at 12:00 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 29, 2004
	Touch Watch
	Ever feel uneasy looking at your watch while at a social event (so people won't think that you're bored and want to leave)? If so then the Silen-T series watches from Tissot are the watches for you. These watches let you know what time it is without looking at your watch, just touch the watch's face and you'll be able to feel what time it is according to the vibrating hands. Next thing you know you'll be able to rub your watch and a magic genie will grant you 3 wishes... Posted by Guy at 12:36 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 28, 2004
	Random Quote
	I added a random quote to the main guymal.com page. You can easily add one to your own site just by copying the HTML code from my random quote syndication page. Posted by Guy at 12:41 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 27, 2004
	Arcade Industry
	I just read an article about the arcade industry. Although it's a bit long it's an interesting read (if you're into that sort of thing). The article discusses the current problems of the arcade industry, why the industry is in the state that it's currently in (it's not doing to good mainly due to the increasing popularity of home video game consoles), and some optimism for the future. Who knows, maybe we'll start seeing Pac-Man arcade games again... Posted by Guy at 01:16 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 26, 2004
	iPod Engravings
	When you order an iPod from Apple you can also order a custom laser engraving on it. BUT, for some reason Apple will not engrave all messages, they have been known to reject certain engravings that they do not find fit. Here is a site that has a list of messages that have been rejected by Apple. A few examples: 10,000 Stolen Tunes Inside Something Small and White that Enrique Eglasias Isn't In Steal this? Will self destruct when used and a few more that I won't list here Posted by Guy at 04:14 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 25, 2004
	Search
	Just a short update: I changed the search engine that is used throughout the site. Now instead of Atomz search I'm using Google (once again). The major improvement is that you can now search either the entire web, just search guymal.com, or just search Guy's World (available from the Guy's World pages). So the entire web is at your fingertips without even having to leave guymal.com (actually it's ok if you leave guymal.com, just come back sometime in the future... :o). Happy searching! Posted by Guy at 02:19 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 24, 2004
	Pianos
	Just an interesting picture of an outdoor piano recital in China. Talk about organized... Posted by Guy at 12:44 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 23, 2004
	Car Pool
	Now here's a car for the car pool lane. Talk about wacky wheels, I wonder what they do with it in the winter...(maybe it turns into an ice-skating mobile). Posted by Guy at 12:51 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 22, 2004
	Weird On Amazon
	Here's a list of the top 25 weirdest items you can buy on Amazon. Some of the odd items on the list are (and I kid you not): Natural Skunk Scent Xtreme Ant Farm Colossal Ten Pound Live New England Lobster (just $150) Owl Puke Fish and Poop (contains liquid fish and bird guanos) Stinky Cheese Board Pork Chocs - Sugar Free Milk Chocolate Dipped Pork Rinds Mr. Poopy the Octopus Stop Eating Poop (contains Glutamic Acid to deter dogs from eating their own stool) Thanks to the Internet you can get all these quality items in 24 hours without even having to leave your chair :o) Posted by Guy at 12:54 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 21, 2004
	GTray
	Since I'm already on the roll of blabbing about GMail then I'll add another post on the subject. This time it's GTray for GMail. GTray is exactly what was missing from GMail: it's a small program that lives in your system tray and automatically notifies you when you have new GMail. This is a very small project, created by one dude so it may not be the most fancy application but it does do its job (and it does it well). Some features that I do feel are (currently) missing (off the top of my head): The GTray icon doesn't change visually according to the number of new GMails that are waiting. I'd like to see the icon change color when I get a new mail and show the number of new mails. Have the popup bubble disappear automatically after X seconds. and just a small cosmetic feature that I'd like: have the popups look like the new Office 2003 popups (similar to FeedDemon 1.1) Overall, this is a great application that goes along hand in hand with the excellent GMail. Posted by Guy at 12:50 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 20, 2004
	Gmail So Far
	Here are my first impressions of GMail, after a few hours of owning an account: Let's start out with the obvious: 1GB of storage! That's a bit more than the measly 2MB that Hotmail gives you (actually it's 8,573,157,376 bits more of storage). The idea behind the huge capacity, combined with Google's strength at searching, is that you can easily locate any old email and wont have to ever delete an email message again. GMail also has some cool new ideas about how to manage your emails. Instead of folders you can define different labels for organizing your mails. The basic difference between labels and folders is that you can assign multiple labels to each email (whereas you can only put an email in one folder). Another feature that isn't exactly new (it's been in Outlook for quite a while now) but this is the first time that it's been available in web based email systems is automatically grouping mails by conversations. GMail automatically arranges your email conversations like a deck of cards where the newest email in the conversation is on top of the deck (and you can look at the previous mails in the conversation). Regarding GMail's user interface, the folks at Google did some great work on making the user interface fast and friendly. You get a feeling that is pretty close to working locally with a non webby application. Some of the cool user interface features that I noticed so far are the keyboard shortcuts for navigating to different parts of the application, address autocomplete, and a very cool inline spell checker (that is quite impressive). Aside from these features, just working with the application feels very fast and responsive. Even simple tasks like replying to an email have been improved from what we have been used to. Overall, GMail is a great tool that is definitely raising the bar for all other web based applications. Posted by Guy at 12:54 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 19, 2004
	GMail
	I just won a Gmail invite from the Gmail Machine! For those who don't know yet, Gmail is the new Google web email service that gives you 1GB of storage. Currently they don't let the general public open free accounts, you can only get an account by invitation (the word on the "street" is that Google employees can give out invitations, some blogger users get invitations, and some Gmail users get invitations to give out). Scott Meinzer had several invites to give out so he created the Gmail machine and the way that it works is that every time the page loads it displays a random number. If the number that you get is 1337 then you win a Gmail invite. And I just got one (after refreshing the page several hundred thousand times)! Once I play around a bit with the account I'll post about anything interesting that I find there... Posted by Guy at 04:01 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 18, 2004
	1981 DeLorean
	I finally found the car that I want to buy: a 1981 DeLorean. But not just any old 1981 DeLorean, this one is a replica of the famous DeLorean time machine from Back To The Future! The current price on eBay is (only) $8,100. Talk about a cool ride.... Posted by Guy at 12:29 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 17, 2004
	Developers
	This Steve Ballmer clip has been spreading around the net for a while but here it is, just in case you happened to miss it. Talk about passionate, but dude, say it, don't spray it! Posted by Guy at 12:39 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 16, 2004
	Kill BBBill
	No that's not a typo, check out this cool commercial to see why... BTW: it seems that more and more companies have noticed that creating short, expensive commercials for TV isn't that worthwhile anymore, thanks to the increasing popularity of Tivo like devices (that let you easily skip over commercials), and instead are creating cool commercials that people look for online (and email to their friends). Posted by Guy at 12:27 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 15, 2004
	Plug Me In
	Here are some great free Photoshop plugins. For those who don't know what I'm rambling about: Photoshop plugins basically let you apply special effects (filters) to your images (like add borders, add a blur, enhance some colors...) that didn't come built in with the image manipulating program that you are using. Although the plugins are in Photoshop format, luckily, many other image programs also support Photoshop plugins, so you can use these plugins in other image applications. Even my all time favorite (free) image viewer, Irfanview, supports Photoshop plugins so you can download it and the free plugins and start Photoshopping away (or should I say Irfanviewing away...). Posted by Guy at 12:55 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

	June 14, 2004
	Hatching Eggs
	This Easter Eggs site is not about the holiday, but about amusing "features" called Easter Eggs that authors hide in their creations. Easter Eggs can be found in computer software, movies, music, art, books, or even your watch. There are thousands of them, and they can be quite entertaining, if you know where to look. This site has lists of cool hidden Easter Eggs according to categories (computers, movies, music, tv...). Here are two example eggs that I found there: In MSN Messenger there are some hidden emoticons: Storms: (li) Turtle: (tu) Dish: (pl) Xbox: (xx) Cigarette : (ci) and here's one for the real geeks: "If you look up the word "recursion" in the index of "The C Programming Language", you'll find that Kernighan and Ritchie have listed page 269 as one of the reference pages. Page 269 happens to be the page of the index containing the word recursion. This seems to be the only self-referential entry the index and is a subtle and clever way to illustrate the meaning of recursion. There are thousands of these hidden gems. Cool ah? Posted by Guy at 01:01 AM | Comments |TrackBack (0)

June 13, 2004