Category: lulz

Your Sunday horror: The 1960s Gelatine Plague

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There really should have been a 72 hour waiting period for purchases of unflavored gelatine so we could stop and think about the horror we were about to unleash
There really should have been a 72 hour waiting period for purchases of unflavored gelatine so we could stop and think about the horror we were about to unleash

It was a far different time. A time before people posting pictures of their food on Instagram, a time when America was running in the space race and everything had to look all cool and futuristic….. and all our recipes had to involve locking our food in Carbonite. But since Carbonite preservation wasn’t entirely ready for prime time yet, we settled instead for bricking it in gelatine.

Everything.

Everything was sealed in gelatine.

Desserts, salads, meats, you could grab the edge of the table and shake it and make your whole dinner quiver.

spaghetti-o-mold
Clearly, we failed to learn from past mistakes.

At least, this is the mental picture I’m getting from things like the infamous old Betty Crocker recipe cards. Please prepare yourself, the page linked mentions something called “Prune Whip”. Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.

This post was inspired by seeing a picture of a MODERN creation that’s been floating around on Pinterest and Facebook – a Spaghetti-O’s jello molded doughnut of sadness covered in Vienna sausages. Like the bright red and mottled appearance of the fly agaric Amanita muscaria, this is a warning that you may not be happy if you eat it.

Also, would this thing get you in trouble on Metrorail? If I saw someone bring one of these things proudly aboard the train I’d probably exit at the next station and run for dear life, in fear that the gelatine plague could spread to me next and cause me to start entombing Mediterranean salads in gelatine.

Excuse me while I go write my congressperson a letter in favor of gelatine abuse prevention programs.

 

Who needs the American Dream’s indoor ski slope?

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We’ve got your crazy thrill ride right here.

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It’s become a big game of chance lately as to whether the Metromover will make this ramp and turnout successfully. Failures are spectacular when they happen; the train either shorts out power with a big loud, bright arc, screeches to an abrupt halt, politely comes to a complete stop and sits there in front of the maintenance facility, or goes dark and free falls down the ramp for a few seconds before being slammed to a halt by the spring loaded parking brakes setting.

There is talk about charging passengers a fare to ride Metromover again, but personally I think all they need is this magical phrase heard on many thrill rides everywhere: “Exit through the gift shop“.

That radio life…

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I'm either a total badass or insane?

You never truly leave radio, nor does it ever leave you.

It sneaks up when you least expect it.

That XPR6550 may not work anymore and I hope to cheeeeze that I don’t have to strip down and repair an old Harris transmitter while wearing an inflexible leather corset again, but yeah… I seem to be getting offers to do little bits and pieces of radio stuff at times. I definitely do not want to make it by nine to five (more like eight to WTF, eleven?!) thing again but it’s fun once in a while.

For the record it only took a week before my shoulders stopped burning… Ooowwww.

A useful haiku

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Frame of reference bent
YOU need to open your eyes
Please lay off the drugs

Seriously, if I had a nickel for each time someone who’s totally warped their brain with some designer drug told me to open my eyes I’d be slightly richer.

Trust me, I’m an engineer.

Ain’t no brakes on the shitposting train

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Welcome to the Internet. Sorry, the throttle’s stuck in Run 8 and the font’s stuck on Comic Sans MS Bold.

ShitPostTrainSD70MAC-ComicSans is the worst possible locomotive. The horn just makes the ICQ incoming message noise really loudly and the engine’s head gasket is made out of old dried scene kid makeup.

This has been an entirely useful content-free post.

 

SK. Dead from laughter.

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This showed up on Facebook and well that was it. I’m doomed. This is a transmitter full of TRI-COLOR FOAMING WAX.

This was posted by Erick Burnstad who undoubtedly has a great story behind it.

Whoever that is in the background is clearly trying hard not to totally lose it… I already have. Forever. I can’t even.

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Your argument is invalid.

Apple iOS: “Try again in 40 years…”

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Whoop whoop, big surprise, there’s a BUG in this operating system! Apple iOS on the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iToilet have all been reported to do this once in a blue moon. Apparently it’s a result of a login failure followed by the system realtime clock resetting back to 0 seconds after Jan 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC.

At least on the desktop Mac OS X, a warning is thrown and sensible measures are taken to prevent meltdown when the system time gets lost like this. On the iBaubles, though, you may be faced with this: “iPhone / iPod / iPad is disabled, try again in 23,000,000+ minutes (about 40 years)”.

This would indicate that the login system is basically just doing something like this: if the password entered is invalid, it adds 60 seconds (or whatever) to the current time in seconds since January 1, 1970, then sets that as a deadline before which you cannot login again. Unfortunately this is stored in nonvolatile storage somewhere, but the time can still be lost by a loss of power, and no sanity check is present to reset the timeout if the system time is lost. (A much better method would be to just check the kernel’s register for system uptime!!) Since NONE of the Apple devices have user-replaceable batteries, this wouldn’t exactly be defeating the security granted by slowing down an attacker trying multiple passwords on the device.
IMAG4769_1[1]

 

The solutions:

* Get the time set on the device again. Either move into range of a WiFi network the device previously recognizes, or into range of a cellular signal in the case of an iPhone or 3G/4G connected iPad. Upon reestablishing connection, the device may reset its clock and allow login again.

* Reset completely and restore from DFU mode. You will lose anything stored on the device…. but it’ll be unbricked.
DFU mode instructions here.

Gee, is it any wonder why I prefer Android? 😉