Mario Kart

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 @ 12:30am

I had not played Mario Kart in a while due to sparsely playing other games (Okami, TF2, Lunar 2 to mention a few)… And was reminded there’s a lot of crap that goes on in the latest iteration of the game. So I present to you, Jason’s Laws of Mario Kart!

1st place is only a punishment.

Players who are in 1st place really don’t belong there anyway. So to help prevent someone from hogging first place too long an army of blue shells will be sent to remove said player from position. A player in 1st place is really being anti-social, but a couple of blue shells will help to put them back in their place with the rest of the group. Remember, Mario Kart is really a party game, so we don’t want someone to be a loner!

Dodging a blue shells requires a doctorate’s degree in astrophysics.

Blue shell dynamics are a mystery to most, and is under intense study by top scholars. Unfortunately for the rest of us who can’t afford to attend MIT, the avoidance of an incoming blue shell remains elusive.

Chance for lightning strike when there is no ground below increases ten fold.

Yet another mystery of nature unsolved. You’re happily flying along over a ramp, and when you least expect it, a bolt comes out of the blue sending you off into the deep abyss below. Many scholars suggest that ramps increase your negative charge to attract the lightning, but many dispute this theory. For now, it remains a mystery why this phenomenon happens.

My $0.02

Friday, July 11th, 2008 @ 6:11pm

Apparently, they didn’t value my work at Samford very much…

2 cents!

Yes, there is a story behind it but I figured the picture was interesting enough. Just my $0.02. Hah.

Scurker.com updates

Thursday, July 10th, 2008 @ 12:41pm

I’ve updated scurker.com again slightly. All “www.scurker.com” will now redirect simply to “scurker.com” as the www is quite redundant. The front page and navigation has been updated slightly to be more interesting. While I’m not completely satisfied with it, it believe it looks better than it has before.

If you haven’t tried out my google maps tsp application recently, I suggest you check it out again. A lot of stuff has changed since my last post. I think I’ve worked out a majority of the bugs and issues, but any feedback is certainly appreciated.

I am aware of the various IE bugs that still exist, but I need to do further research to determine a fix to the problem.

Google Maps Fun Beta v0.1

Friday, June 20th, 2008 @ 5:26pm

I have been working on a Google maps application for a while, and am finally releasing my first “public” beta of the map. The project’s goal was attempt to tackle the traveling salesman problem (shortest path between all points) with a real pratical application. View my Google Maps Fun page to view more details on the application.

Please, if you use it and like it, let me know! Any bugs/requests can be directed in the comments as well.

Download Firefox 3

Monday, June 16th, 2008 @ 5:59pm

Tomorrow is the release date of the official version of Firefox 3, and to boot it off they are having a download campaign. If you have an older version of Firefox, download it. If you don’t have Firefox *shudder*, download it.

I have been using the beta/release candidates for over a month, and the features and speed has been greatly improved over previous iterations of Firefox, so you really are doing yourself a disservice if you do not download Firefox 3 tomorrow.

Fuel Efficiency

Thursday, June 12th, 2008 @ 11:55am

So I have been considering getting a motorcycle/scooter for quite a while now, even back into last summer. I just had not had the means to actually really consider it until recently. Some might think I’m crazy, considering my success rate currently with vehicles on two wheels, but I hope that the odds are in my favor now that I’ve already been hit once.

I’m leaning more towards a motorcycle than a scooter at this point, considering I would have to deal with some hilly terrain here in Birmingham, so anything below a 100cc engine would not cut it. Not to mention that anything over 100cc is going to be close to the cost of a cheap motorcycle.

I was trying to run some of the data to compare exactly how much cost savings there would be compared to my current vehicle, a 2001 Honda CR-V. My CR-V tends to be about 23 city MPG and 28 highway mpg, so I figured I would average it approx. 25mpg. I would hope to find a bike that would at least reach 70mpg, so that’s my minimum determining factor. All my data is also assuming an average cost of of fuel at $3.75/gal.

Fuel Efficiency Chart

As you can see from the above chart, assuming I spend $1500 initially, I wouldn’t begin saving money over the CR-V until approx. 15,000 miles. Of course, $1500 is probably an unlikely amount and would likely be closer to $2000~ which would put the intersection at around 20,000 miles.

I’ve been mainly looking at the Honda Rebel, since it’s a lightweight bike and gets close to my target fuel efficiency. A 2000 model tends to be in the $2000 range, so I’m hoping I can get lucky and find a used bike for a little bit less than that.

To Mexico and Back

Saturday, May 24th, 2008 @ 5:36pm

Since going to Mexico and back again, I’ve uploaded my trip photos to my flickr photostream. Enjoy!

Indiana Jones and the Lego Boulder

Sunday, May 18th, 2008 @ 11:22pm

I don’t know if this is some kind of viral marketing, but it’s pretty amusing so take a look:


I would love to listen in on the phone call to the insurance company.

Insured: I would like to report a claim.
Insurance Company: What seems to be the problem?
Insured: Caller explains situation.
Insurance Company: Your car got hit by what? A giant lego boulder?

Bohemian Rhapsody

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 @ 11:41am

Can you play Queen too loud? Apparently…

Get Off My Lawn!

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 @ 6:17pm

I’ve determined that living in a controlled community sucks to a certain extent, considering that half the tenants/owners will complain about the most minor of things.

In the past we’ve received multiple complaints about parking when it shouldn’t even be an issue. And the worst part about it is that no one with these complaints is man enough to come up and even talk to us about it. If you have a valid complaint, come to us first and we can attempt to resolve it first without getting others involved in the mess. If that fails, THEN you go higher up with your complaint. Don’t be a jerk and ignore that process just because you think we’re just bunch of annoying kids. We actually are really nice if you would attempt to talk to us.

The more recent complaints were about loud noises with musical instruments. What? I will admit, it probably happened once (I wasn’t here at the time) but a complaint about a one time instance? If you had come to them and let them know that it was too loud, they would have been more than happy to turn it down. But apparently my roommate said multiple people walked by without complaining and several people stood and watched the practicing out of enjoyment.

These people really need to stop being jerks and complain about every nit picky little thing that comes up. We’ll be more than happy to respect your complaints provided you give us some respect in the first place.