The Fox Blog

Here’s something ’special’ I found out today on the net: the live broadcast of cooking a hamburger. Yes, what kind of non strange stuff haven’t we experienced on the internet! The next generation of television is here, I think I’ll call it selfTV, everyone can watch whatever program they want and even make their own show. Is that great or what?
Check the Cam In Style Broadcast: Making food in Halden

I think at some point it’ll stop broadcasting. So find below some screenshots.

Here is a cool animation I accidentally landed on today. It’s only a 1 min 35 sec but still, it’s a damn good job. Produced by 5 students from “Gobelins l’école de l’image” as an introductory movie for the Annecy 2006 international animation festival, Pyrats required 7 month of work. Although the movie is in 2D cartoon-style, it required the use of some 3D techniques through the use of Alias Maya.

It reminds me of Monkey Island, yes that old Sierra game I used to play some time ago. The graphics looks pretty much like in the game, it won’t surprise if the producers were inspired by it. Some screenshots below:

Watch the movie

Some people do associate terrorism with the Middle East and the Arab world. Obviously not directly, but still news and speeches do offer glimpses of that notion.
Google goes a step forward unintentionally probably, but whatever. Here’s something to laugh about.
Search “irhab” (the Arabic equivalent of terrorism) on Google and you’ll get a message saying “Did you mean: arab”.

A news that’s being heard everywhere in the country these days is the successful operation Abass underwent. Abou Riyad, his friend, contributed in propagating the news (ask anyone today and he’ll know about it, even kids!).

If you’re still wondering what the hell I’m talking about, here’s the story: a popular comedy show, called ‘La Youmal’, the Arabic equivalent of ‘Doesn’t Get You Bored’, broadcasted on Future TV, is featuring lately a character called Abou Riyad. He is supposed to be the incarnation of the crabby Lebanese old men next door. In one of the sketches, Abou Riyad is telling everyone in the neighborhood about the successful medical operation his friend Abass (or 3ebess) underwent. Now that they know that he was suffering of this ‘physical condition’, they can go and tell everyone about it… On top of it all, Abou Riyad creates a song saying: Mabrouk ya 3ebess, w ya 3ebess Mabrouk.
Mabrouk (in Arabic) = Congratulations

I searched for the MP3 of the Lebanese sketch, couldn’t find it on the net. So I got it from someone and decided to post it for download.

Download Mabrouk Abass (Format: MP3, Size: 383 Kbs, in Arabic obviously)

مبروك عباس من برنامج لا يمل، ابو رياض

As part of an Artificial Intelligence course I’m currently taking, I’ve been confronted to an interesting logic problem called “Cannibals & Missionaries”. It’s a kind of Jigzaw that we could solve using a specific algorithm. Anyone with some logic can solve the problem, not just computers, so I though someone might be interested in taking a look at it.

The problem: There are 3 missionaries and 3 cannibals on the left side of a river. We want to move them all to the right side of the river. In order to do that, we have a boat that can move two characters maximum at the time. Your job is to move all characters considering that:
- The number of cannibals cannot be greater than the number of missionaries at any time on either side of the river (character on the boat are included in the count). If this occurs, the cannibals will eat the missionaries - Miam!
- The boat can move 1 or 2 people at the time, it cannot move if it’s empty
- The boat can be driven any of the characters no matter in what combination they are placed

Instead of solving it on pen on paper, you can play a flash version of the problem, as well as other logic problem, on Plastelina.net
Play Cannibals and Missionaries

I heard this morning on the radio a funny story.
In Liverpool, UK, where funny stuff don’t stop happening - take the Beatles for example - a parrot is believed to have saved it’s owner’s home from a much certain theft.

The story: After picking up some tools from the garage, thieves were able to force the entrance of the house and managed to get in. A parrot, called Matilda, asked “Hello, how are you?” The thieves though that someone was home and didn’t respond, so the parrot got mad and asked the question once more. All that time, the thieves didn’t notice anyone and didn’t suspect a parrot was talking to them so they quickly left the place. The police weren’t to determine why the theft went wrong until the parrot started talking to them similarly it did with the thieves.

Ever since, the parrot has been hosted on several TV shows and became a star in the country.

Some parrot pictures (from MorgueFile.com, royalties free image site) below

Not long ago, I had fried eggs for breakfast (typical isn’t it? I was probably short of breakfast ideas that day). Well the cooking went ok and everything, but a big problem occurred afterwards, when I moved the tray – with the fried eggs on it - from the kitchen to the dining room: the fried eggs were looking at me! Well actually, the yellow part of the two eggs when fried happened to stand symmetrically in the upper white part. In English, it was a face-like fried eggs meal.

A dialogue that might have occurred if the fried eggs could talk:
EGG: Why did you fry me Human, who will feed my family now?
ME: Shut up egg, you don’t have any final words to say, this is not a western.
EGG: Can I have a last cigarette though?
ME: No.
EGG: Bouhouhouhouhouhouhou….
Then the egg stopped crying and looked at me fearlessly.
EGG: I’m going to kill you, freakin’ Human.
ME: How are going to do that, you don’t have the balls (see the analogy ).
EGG: Just try to eat me.
ME: Hmm, maybe someone poisoned you, I think I’ll pass.
EGG: Eat me, eat me, eat me, eat me…

The egg didn’t seem to want to shut up, so I grabbed the bread and started by tearing his right eye, then his left eye and then the rest of it. I noticed I was taking a big risk eating this egg. A couple of days later, I started feeling… well nothing special, I had probably digested the egg already!

You can see below the original picture of the EGG and some pictures modified with a basic editing software.