BP’s New Pretty Boy; Cute Common Sense Blog; The Gaming Death; Cleverbot: Your Clever Bot;

Tony Hayward leaves BP and they find another pretty face to replace__________

It seems BP has made another move in repairing their shattered PR in getting rid of their old “fall man” and putting a new one, just as bad, into play.

People have definitely turned on the offensive against BP for the infamous oil spill that has just recently been capped (finally), but I feel obligated to remind those who aren’t aware that this could have happened to any company. 

This past semester I worked with a group of students researching information about America’s coal mines and the coal mine industry as a whole.  Our coal mine industry is practically the poster boy for not following government regulations and having a plethora of tragedies occur because of it.  The statistics are astounding.

I have no doubt that, like the mine industry, the vast majority of our oil industry do not follow government regulations.  It just so happens that BP was the one company to have an incident of such epic proportions.  Rather than tearing apart one company, I feel that we should stand back and look at the industry as a whole.  Take a magnifying glass and look and see just how similar BP is to other oil companies.  Those doing the regulating should be put under the microscope as well seeing as we heard about the payoffs those who were supposed to be doing the regulating were receiving.

A funny blog for those lacking in the common sense department__________

Or if you like that kind of humor…

 Stuff No One Told Me is a cute little blog that takes those things that we all know (well… most of us know) and makes them into funny little pictures and sketches.  I spent a good half hour going through and reading Alex Noriega’s work and I found it to be my type of humor.  I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

The Gaming Death____________

What will we do when blowing as hard as we can into our Super Nintendo’s no longer works?

As a fairly hardcore gamer, every now and then I’ll take a break, unplug my Xbox 360, get a chair and feel around in the top of my closet, and bring down one of my old treasures:  My Nintendo Entertainment System (the original Nintendo).

While most I know who use to have these had parents who bought theirs for them or they saved up for ages to buy their own, mine is actually the product of an interesting story.

One morning I was out walking my dog in the pouring rain, fairly miffed that I was becoming soaked for a dog that would much rather be inside as well.  On I walked down the street, on garbage day no less, when I spotted something sticking out of the trashcan beside me.  You never know the treasures that can be found in someone’s garbage until you find something, so I lifted up the lid and peered inside.  On top of a foul smelling garbage bag was an NES in perfect condition along with a controller and a lasergun controller.

There was just no way, this was too good to be true!  I pulled the system out of the can and laid it on the ground, careful to avoid the puddle I was standing in and began digging around for the adapter.  A few minutes later, I was on my way home with an armful of my treasure.  Sure enough when I got home I plugged that bad boy in and it worked perfectly!  Much more exciting than buying one in the store, now if only I could dig an HDTV out of someone’s trashcan I’d be set!

The article above talks about a paper that’s been written which illustrates the ups and downs of different ways to preserve our videogame heritage along with the legal issues surrounding.  It’s quite interesting and I encourage you to read it.

To go hand-in-hand with the paper, here’s a cool little geeky gamer game I found to test your reflexes and quick thinking abilities.  Check it out HERE

 Cleverbot- your AI friend__________

I found this website a few days back called Cleverbot.  It appears to be some AI created for no other purpose but to talk to, and it’s quite smart.  It kind of blows my mind how it responds and how it knows what to say.  It’s most likely a simple script that my non-Computer Science mind cannot grasp.  I’ll let you be the judge

____________________

Alright, there’s day two of the daily blog posts which have no name as of yet!  I noticed that I forgot to mention yesterday that all the links to articles I’m talking about are in the titles in case you weren’t aware, hyperlinks are bloody genius when you know about them.

Not sure how my weekend is going to be spent yet, probably the same routine as every other day, but we’ll see.  New True Blood on Sunday to look forward to!  I’ll be back on Monday to post again, so until then have a good weekend!

Ep. 31: Hitting the Ground - Preview

Ah yeah, and here’s a trailer for the new episode to sink your teeth into from HBO.  I won’t talk about it because I don’t want to ruin anything for those not caught up with the show.