What good are the many pleasures of alcohol if they can not serve to relieve the tedium of a PowerPoint presentation?

The Booze
The most difficult part of any office drinking game is consuming alcohol without raising suspicion. If you have an opaque container, your choice of beverage is unlimited. If you've got a clear water bottle, vodka, (strained) Goldschlager or Everclear will work. If you're limited to a coffee mug, add a little coffee to a hard liquor of your choosing to pull off a convincing look. Always remember: Kahlua is for pussies.

Technical Difficulties (1 drink)
Players drink at the first signs of any type of technical snafu, including but not limited to...

• Screen saver kicks on.
• Any error message (BSOD = finish your drink. You've now got time to go get a fresh one).
• "How is it that our conference room doesn't have ANY electric outlets??"

Bullet Points (1 drink)

Every slide containing bullet points gets you 

• one step
• closer
• to complete
• liver failure.

Comic Sans (1 drink)
Nothing screams "severely unbalanced mental state" like using Comic Sans. If there are players in the room who are not familiar with common fonts, a subtle dry heave can serve as a signal to all that it's time to drink up.

Scripting (1 drink)
All PowerPoint presentations suck more than any presentation could ever suck in all of suck-landia but it's only that much more painful when the presenter couldn't care less about preparation. It's OK to have note-cards in hand. It's even OK to have a script in front of you, to be read verbatim. It's NOT OK to have every damn word of your presentation on screen. If you treat us like kindergartners, we will drink like kindergartners. And kindergartners drink fucking HARD.

Typos (1 drink)
Spotting a misspelling in a presentation isn't always easy because we all make mistakes. Luckily, PowerPoint has a built in spell-checker and screams "Drink up, fuckers" with triumphant, squiggly red underlines.

Irrelevant/Unnecessary Clip Art (1 drink)
Some common examples...

• A slide mentioning "emails" features some sort of shitty envelope with an cursor or a big fat "@"
• Shaking hands - because cooperation is a nearly impossible concept for killer pirates like yourself.
• A globe - because nobody knows what the hell that crazy Earth looks like.
• Jesus - Jesus Christ.

The Recap (finish your drink)
What does it say when a presentation has a recap? It either says "This thing was so damn long, I expect you've already forgotten most of it" or "Check it out. I could have done this whole thing in one friggin' slide!"

Credit to my wife for helping create the concept (as she prepped for a "dry" PowerPoint presentation).

Forgiveness for the creators of shitty presentations: If you Google "PowerPoint Presentations", the very first result is PETE'S POWER POINT STATION. Go there. Look around. Go ask your mom why the world is such a horrible place.

I installed Trac on dreamhost.com using CreamyTrac with an svnsynced Subversion repository from our local one, and the post-commit hook to do ‘close #3′ wasn’t working and the correct commit messages and users weren’t showing up until I did a trac-admin resync.

Most of the info I found on the web didn’t help, but I eventually solved it myself by using hook post-revprop-change instead of post-commit with the code shown below. This code only activates when svnsync is completely finished and has unlocked the destination repository, then it syncs the latest revision with Trac and then runs the Trac post-commit hook to close tickets, etc. Svnsync only seems to update commit messages and users after committing code, so Trac has the wrong information in post-commit, so you have to use post-revprop-change instead.

REPOS="$1"
REV="$2"
USER="$3"
PROPNAME="$4"
ACTION="$5"

# Export bash variables required by trac.fcgi
export HOME="/home/me"
# Root directory for the Trac project
export TRAC_PROJECT_DIR="/home/me/trac_projects"
export TRAC_ENV="/home/me/trac_projects/myproj"

. ${HOME}/.bash_profile

if [ "$ACTION" = "D" -a "$PROPNAME" = "svn:sync-lock" ]; then
    YOUNGEST_REV=`svnlook youngest /home/me/svn/myproj`
    trac-admin $TRAC_ENV resync $YOUNGEST_REV
    ${RUN}/bin/python ${RUN}/share/trac/contrib/trac-post-commit-hook \
        -p "$TRAC_ENV" \
        -r "$YOUNGEST_REV"
fi

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Emily, as Image Metrics have dubbed her, is based on actress Emily O’Brien. It’s not Emily O’Brien though. The producers asked O’Brien to pose for 35 facial images and then they went to work creating virtual Emily. New modelling technology allowed Image Metrics to control the most minute parts of her face to give Emily the most convincing movement we’ve ever seen.

Wow. Just wow. That’s so close it’s unreal, I was second guessing if it was real the whole way through. They did cheat by only rendering the face and not the hair, etc., but even so, that’s some impressive work. Now do it in realtime and put it in games!

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This is a great program (windows only)... converts any MP3 to a ringtone and sends it to your phone in a text message. Completely free, and works with most phones on the market.

It works great with my Sanyo Katana, but the volume is not loud enough. Any tips?

Here's the link to the software: http://www.tonethis.com/

digg this

1. Firefox – this one’s a no-brainer. If you’re still using Internet Explorer, you REALLY need to check out Firefox. I recommend the following extensions to get started: Adblock, Cookie Culler, Sage, Scrapbook, Customize Google, Flashgot, Foxmarks and Tiny URL (does not work with Firefox 2.0 yet). Free.

And if you use del.icio.us (you really should), check out del.icio.us and Foxylicious. Free.

2. Graphic Converter – This is the best free photo utility software I’ve ever used. Convert, import, rename, resize, rotate, etc. The startup screen asking for money is a pain, and I’ll probably pay for it eventually to get rid of it. If you’re a photographer you’ll use it daily. Free.

Note: Importing photos with Graphic Converter is the ONLY way I’ve found to retain the date and time information on the photo. If you import in the finder or via iphoto, you can lose this information.

3. Audacity – This is a very useful program for editing any type of audio file. I use it frequently to rip songs from podcasts. It’s also useful to change the tempo of a song without changing the pitch, which is great for putting together the perfect running mix! Free.

4. Mac the Ripper and Toast – Use Mac the Ripper to rip any DVD to your hard drive, even if it has copy protection on it. Then use Toast to compress and burn the movie to a DVD. Toast is not free but you might be able to find it on Limewire (of course I don't encourage that.... of course not). Mac the Ripper is Free.

5. FLV Viewer and Flip4Mac – Between these two apps, plus Quicktime, you should be able to watch almost anything. FLV Viewer allows you to watch downloaded YouTube or Google Video movies, and Flip Mac allows you to watch WMV movies in Quicktime. Amazing and Free.

6. Quicksilver – This will really change how you use your computer forever. I was resistant until I tried it. It’s amazing… allows you to launch or open anything with just a few keystrokes, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s an introduction and here’s a great video demo. Free (but worth $50).

7. Photoshop – OK, this one is not even cheap, let alone free. But it’s essential. It’s easy enough to find for free (not that I encourage you to do so). There’s no other program that gives you the power that this does. If you are an amateur photographer, you need this program. Not free.

8. iScrobbler and Yamipod – For all you music fans out there… I hope you’re using LastFM? It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. You install iscrobbler (I prefer the old-school plugin version, not the LastFM program) and the Last FM site keeps track of every song you play. This allows you to track your listening habits and find new music similar to the music you actually listen to. Here’s my LastFM page, for example. Yamipod allows you to sync music played on your ipod too (plus lots of other uses). Free.

9. Flickr Uploader – If you’re into photography, you’ve got to check out Flickr. Here’s my photostream, for example, currently at about 3,600 photos, viewed over 26,000 times. Use the Flickr uploader to easily upload copies of ALL your photos. Free.

10. Disk Inventory X – If you’ve got lots of movies, photos, music, etc., you are probably running out of disc space as fast as I am. This program allows you to see what you’ve got and what’s eating up all your hard drive space. Great way to discover those 2 GB files you forgot about. Free.

That's it for now... more to come.


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