Big Fat Ostrich

Dan just got his brand new American Standard Fender Stratocaster, in Olympic White, no less! Of course, this called for a celebration, so we met up at Big Fat Ostrich Guitar Labs to road test it.

And take it apart.

And change the pickups.

With a glass of Campari in one hand.

And a red hot soldering iron in the other.

Yeah, life’s dangerous.

Here’s the strat.

It’s such a beautiful guitar, that we just had to take it apart. Dan had already devised a plan and ordered a set of D. Allen 69 Voodoo pickups. All we had to was remove the stock pickups and start soldering. Actually you gotta solder to first and THEN remove the pickups. But you knew what I meant, didn’t you?

Now, normally you’d remove the strings and unscrew the pickguard before starting. We were lazy and actually just loosened the strings until they were slack. Then we unscrewed the pickguard and flipped it over for the operation. It’s do-able, and we did it.

Check out that clean wiring job. It’s even got that inside of a brand new guitar smell:

It’s a pretty simple circuit. In fact, we discussed this while taking a break over a glass of sweet sweet Campari after unscrewing that pickguard and loosening the strings. The circuit and volume and tone pots haven’t changed much since they were invented and it’s fascinating just how pleasing and enduring the shape of a Stratocaster is. Just like the Telecaster, they got that sexy shape right very early on.

Ok ok. Less talk, more soldering. Here’s what our signature soldering joints look like:

1 pickup in, 2 more to go! And no, we are not leaving an extra pickup in there:

And just like that, it’s done. Look at those joints:

And that’s it! We’ll be back with some sound clips because you can’t hear shit from just looking at the pics.

Yep, it’s totally possible!

I found this article recently on Lookout which has a pretty big list of Android apps found to include RuFraud. This is one of those SMS fraud malware downloaders that so far has mainly affected European. The fake SMS code doesn’t affect users in Canada or the US thanks to the limitations of their North American SIM cards.

Note that the malware was found in supposed downloaders of popular games, not the games themselves.

Here’s the full list of apps which Google has removed from the Android Market.

Corazon LLC:

Horoscope (horoscope.android)
Horoscope (com.corazon.horoscope)

Corelly LLC:

Horoscope (com.corelly.horoscope)

Ranzy LLC:

Twilight (com.Twilight.wallpapers)
Puss in Boots (com.Puss.Boots.wallpapers)
Moneyball (com.Moneyball.wallpapers)

Astrolog LLC:

Sim City Deluxe FREE (com.astrolog.sim.city.deluxe.free)
Need for Speed Shift FREE (com.astrolog.need.forspeed.shift.free)
Great Little War Game FREE (com.astrolog.great.little.war.game.free)

Logastrod:

Cut the Rope (com.Cut.the.Rope)
Angry Birds (com.Angry.Birds)
Assassins Creed (com.Assassins.Creed)
Talking Tom Cat (com.Talking.Tom.Cat)
NEED FOR SPEED Shift (com.nsf.Shift)
Where is My Water? (com.swampy.Water)
Great Little War Game (com.Great.little.War.Game)
World of Goo (com.World.Goo)
Shoot The Birds (com.Shoot.The.Birds)
Riptide GP (com.Riptide.GP)
Talking Larry the Bird (com.Talking.larry.Bird)
Bag It! (com.Bag.It)
Talking Larry the Bird (com.Talking.Larry.Bird)
Angry Birds (com.Angry.Birds.free)

Allwing Concept:

TETRIS (com.tetris.free) (God! Even my beloved Tetris! Oh the humanity!)
Pool Master Pro (com.Pool.Master.free)
Reckless Racing (com.Reckless.Racing.free)
Paradise Island (com.Paradise.Island.free)

Just when you thought things couldn’t get crazier in my kitchen… THEY DID! I just invented the “pout-caroni and cheese-tine”. It all started because I felt like having a homemade poutine but I didn’t have the right kind of cheese and was too lazy to go get some at the store. “Well” I thought “I still have Kraft singles… wait a minute… I ALSO HAVE PASTA!!!” The rest is history.

So, let’s start with the first half of this recipe, my homemade mac and cheese:

Pick any type of pasta. Short ones are better.

When they’re ready, add 3 Kraft Singles, some butter and some milk. Stir until it looks like mac and cheese.

Now on to the second half of this culinary wonder:

Put frozen fries in the oven. When they’re ready, add them to the mac and cheese. Then pour hot poutine sauce over the whole thing. Mix until it looks like diarhea.

Then put the mix in a rectangular thing that goes in the oven (like for meatloaf). Add some pepper and put it back in the oven for 20 minutes at around 425 C. Let it cool a bit afterwards.

That’s it! You’re done! Doesn’t it look like totally legit food? I’m afraid it does!

Bye guys. Oh and if I don’t come back till next year, happy holidays!

******UPDATE******

I’ve been receiving hundreds of thousands of BILLIONS OF DOZENS OF MILLIONS of emails asking me “But Dan, what does it taste like?” I invite you all to check out the comments section for a detailed answer.

Back in October I read a bunch of articles stating that Android 4.0 would be available for the Nexus S “within weeks”. Clearly, they were all lying because we’re still waiting!

But it’s cool.

Google is now testing Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich aka ICS) on its employees as an over the air update, so as long as they QA the shit out of that thing and make sure it’s ready for public consumption, I can wait.

However, if you really can’t wait for Ice Cream Sandwich and you have to have it now, check out the following how to. Your Nexus S will have to be rooted of course, etc, etc.

So even though you have to hack your android phone to have Ice Cream Sandwich (at the moment), the reviews that I’ve read about ICS Android 4.0 have been pretty good. Like I said, the source is available, so people have been installing ICS on a variety of models like the Nexus S and the Motorola Razr (good to see Motorola still working it). Even the tablets have been getting the treatment with people installing Android on their Kindle Fires and Snapdragons S4 tablets.

Google, just bring on the update already, ok?

Update: Well it looks like Ice Cream Sandwich DID arrive for some Nexus S users in time for Christmas, except there have been some reports of bugs. Therefore, Google put the update on hold and paused the rollout. But, the roll out is still continuing in selected regions. We’re still waiting for it and will report back as soon as we update our Nexus S.

So I finally installed the ever popular Linux Mint 12 aka Lisa. The last time I tried Linux Mint was version 3.0 (Cassandra), which was back in 2007 (eons ago in Internet time). Back then, Linux Mint was a little shaky and one horribly broken  upgrade had me reverting back to Ubuntu.

Well, alot has changed since then and Linux Mint 12 appears very solid!

Instead of wiping my recent installation of Ubuntu 11.10 (even though I kind of want to), I installed Linux Mint as a virtual machine in VirtualBox. There’s not much to say about it except that the installation was hassle free. Typical installation, where you hit next a bunch of times. You can choose the advanced options of course, but we’re really trying out Mint for its simplicity.

Linux Mint is a Debian based distro, so like Ubuntu, apt-get is your package manager, and best friend. After using Arch Linux on my other machine for awhile, I have to say that apt-get is still the best. Pacman is fine, just a little too manual.

New features in Linux Mint 12 include Gnome 3 and MGSE aka Mint Shell Gnome Extensions which gives the desktop a super slick look. We used to make fun of Mint and call it Lounge Linux because of it’s pseudo-stylish look, but it really does look good. And the whole feel is just fast and snappy. There’s also MATE, which is a fork of Gnome 2. However, the dudes at Linux Mint central say that it’s not 100% stable yet so I’m not going to get into that now.

Overall the whole thing feels fast, and I’m running it on a mere 512M of RAM. I should say that I initially tried to install Mint using a bare minimum of 256M and that caused the installation to crash. I know. What was I thinking?

There are also tons of visual improvements, slick wallpapers, and MGSE doesn’t have the convoluted look of Unity. Unity feels like it’s there to confuse you. MGSE and Mint just feel better. Like you can just start using the OS without having to play scavenger hunt for all your apps. And it’s all running on the new 3.0 kernel.

Last new thing: I was surprised to see that Linux Mint is using Duck Duck Go as its default search engine. Yep. Where every other OS just assumes that you’re going to want to use Google, in Mint it’s Duck Duck Go. But don’t worry: you can use Google too if you want.

Aside from the weird name, Duck Duck Go is a really great search engine. I think many of us have gotten to a point where we use Google out of habit. Back in the old prospector days of the internet, we used to use multiple search engine all the time because no single search engine had all the results we wanted. Then Google changed all that by becoming so great. However, Duck Duck Go is very good and much cleaner than Google at this point. One of its best features is that its results act like a dynamic feed, so all you have to do is keep scrolling down the page for more results, kind of like Twitter does. With Google, you still have to click next page, next page, next page, etc. Which is so 3 years ago.

Duck Duck Go also has a strict privacy policy where they state that they do not collect any personal information.

All that to say, give Duck Duck Go a try. I’m challenging myself to use it for a week even if I’m having trouble getting used to looking at that bow tie wearing duck. And the name. Again: What is with people using animals in names for software and websites? Yeah, I’m looking at you, IPchicken.

One last thing! If you want a clue about how amazing Linux Mint 12 is, do a Google search for something like Linux Mint 12 Issues or Problems with Linux Mint 12. The results of my searches were mainly Linux Mint reviews, and for the most part, positive ones. The issues that people have been having have been minor so far, which is a good sign.

Ok, I need to go so let’s end this thing: Linux Mint 12 looks and feels great. Try it and adopt it.

Really? High guitar, moustache, whiny voice?! REALLY?!

When I heard a few 30 second samples from Lou Reed and Metallica‘s collaboration on Lulu, I was all ready to trash it. I even had a bunch of hilarious jokes and witty lines about how bad this 2 disc concept album is, but then I changed my mind and decided to take the high road and actually give it a shot.

So I headed over to Grooveshark, cued up all the tracks, and listened to the whole thing. All 87 minutes of it.

First off, there really are some truly awful moments. Many, actually. Lou Reed  voices the story of Lulu, a dancer who rises to fame, only to fall into despair and destitution. His style is more spoken word, and some of Reed’s poetry comes across as so horrible, you can’t help but laugh. But I wouldn’t use the word ‘horrible’, because again, it’s too easy. ‘Blunt’ is more like it.

Ok, horrible.

But there are moments. The average Metallica fan is going to be pissed that there are no rockers on this thing. The average Lou Reed fan won’t be too surprised. If you know what to expect from Lou, then you’ll know that he’s always trying to push the envelope. Often though, Lou’s voice just sounds like a weak layer on top of Metallica’s unrelenting power. Plus, when James Hetfield’s backing vocals kick in, it sounds like he has Tourette’s syndrome and everyone is too embarrassed to ask him to stop.

Oh yeah, those moments I was going to talk about. If you listen to the whole album, it kind of starts to gel on the second disc. Dragon and Junior Dad properly guide the listener to the end of the album on a wave, almost gently, on a magic carpet of noise. It does work, and by the end you feel relief. Yeah, you’re happy it’s over, but I think the relief is what Reed’tallica intended. Mostly.

Ostrich Picks:  Iced Honey (closest you’re gonna get to a ‘normal’ song), Pumping Blood (best comedy track), Junior Dad.

Ostrich Rating: Lulu gets all the beaks and all the internetz we have. They’re all yours. Take ‘em all.

One of my great pleasures in life is to invent dishes. I am the proud father of the “hamburdog” and of course, the inevitable “hot-durger”. I make a killer taco salad that uses the hard shells as croutons (since they kept fucking crumbling in my hands anyway). But my greatest achievement so far has to be the Spagstramizza.

Intrigued yet? Good.

Let me show you how to prepare the thing.

First you take a plate. Any plate will do.

Then you add a fat toasted slice of pumpernickel bread:

Then you pour hot homemade spaghetti sauce on the fucker:

Then you sprinkle your favorite cheese on it:

Then you add hot smoked meat (Montreal style, like Levitts’, is the best, but standard pastrami will do):

And then you eat it with utensils. A pickle or coleslaw on the side are great addition to the experience.

Enjoy!!!

PS.: To the chick who wanted to sell us ads and then said that our website “tried to attack her computer” because Norton said so but she didn’t remember the exact error message but to not try to contact her again: Go fuck yourself. Our website is squeaky clean, bitch.