I have to admit, at first I wasn’t a big fan of those Windows 7 commercials.  You know the ones:  Joe Somebody is sitting there, talking about some problem he has with older Windows, then he says, “So I called Microsoft, and they made blah blah blah!  Windows 7 was my idea!”

The lynchpin was when a friend of mine said, “I LOVE THE ZOMBIE PC COMMERCIAL!” in a very excited manner.  Of course, despite the fact I watch a ton of TV, I had no idea what was going on, so I implied further and got linked to this video with the further comment, “I laugh every time I see it.”  Then I watched it and laughed too, for an entirely different reason.

Of course, the idea of a shark and a zombie being buddies is really funny, but for a horror movie buff like myself, the video is hilarious because the clip of the shark and zombie used in the commercial is from Lucio Fulci’s faux Dawn of the Dead (titled Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi in Italy) sequel/rip-off/tribute Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie in the US). The shark versus zombie fight is one of the most well-known scenes in B-movie history, and one of the standout weird scenes in Fulci’s oeuvre of super gore special effects and general weirdness.  Also, it’s one of the weirdest, most random, most dangerous scenes ever filmed in a movie.

On the day the scene was supposed to be shot, the actor who was supposed to play the zombie didn’t show up (big surprise).  The shark, an actual man-eating tiger shark, was well fed before the scene (I believe they fed it horse meat), but the guy in the zombie makeup was completely unprotected.  The replacement zombie, an underwater photographer named Ramon Bravo, was the shark’s trainer and was one of the few men comfortable enough with the shark to fill in for the supposedly-sick actor.  Bravo would later go on to do underwater photography on the James Bond film License to Kill.

Just an interesting bit of Windows 7 zombie shark trivia for you, noble reader.  Windows 7 mining pop culture gold for their commercials was my idea!

One of io9′s 12 awesome science fiction lunch boxes.

The average Blu-ray disc holds about 25GB.  A double-sided Blu-ray disc holds 50GB.  The highest-capacity Blu-ray disc (at least that I can find) is TDK’s 200GB DURABIS Blu-ray disc.  However, Japanese scientists are working on a new disc format that will make even the 200GB disc look like nothing.  We’re talking a 5 terabyte, or 5,000 gigabyte, disc made from titanium oxide.

The disc is the brainchild of Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, a chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo.  The secret to titanium oxide’s responsiveness is how it reacts to light, changing from a solid metal to a semiconductor state in the presence of a laser.  The best part is titanium oxide is both cheap and perfectly safe, since it’s in anything from makeup to white paint.

It offers hard drive array size in a single platter!  One disc can store 1000 DVDs including special features, with no compression, no storage issues, and no fuss or muss.  Imagine having an entire DVD collection (plus the collections of 5 or 6 of your closest movie-loving friends) all compressed on one piece of physical media!  Imagine the possibilities this would have for libraries and other digital archivists, or just the incredibly dedicated home collector!

Actually, Mario does more than get jazzy with Super Mario Galaxy 2, which came out over the weekend.  Mario actually gets the full orchestral treatment thanks to composer Mahito Yokota and the Mario Galaxy Orchestra.  Even better, the entire OST for Super Mario Galaxy 2 (including the song playing right now, Supermassive Galaxy) is available for streaming at Mahito Yokota’s YouTube channel.

It’s a great soundtrack, and an even better way to get the day moving in the right direction.  Yokota manages to find the right balance between stirring, whimsical, nostalgic, and modern for this sound track, which is probably the best soundtrack ever included on a video game, or at least for a video game of this generation.  It’s definitely music worth streaming sometime today.

Are you fed up by the rules and regulations of travel?  Are you unsure of what you have to declare and what you don’t have to declare?  Are you like me, in that you can never figure out anything without the help of a computer?  Well, there’s an app for getting through customs.

The Dutch government, tired of having to distribute pamphlets and answer questions about customs and what you can and can’t bring into/out of the country, has developed the OK App, which is basically an app that tells you what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable.  It also helps you figure out the taxes on the goods, how much you can bring in without having to pay taxes, shoe size and clothing size differences, and currency conversion.

And it’s not just for the Netherlands, either.  The OK app covers a wide variety of countries that anyone might be traveling to from the Netherlands.  Hopefully something like this heads to America soon (or the Dutch code an English version).  This is one of the reasons why smartphones were invented, to make traveling life easier!

The Geek Alphabet, via Geeks Are Sexy.

Sometimes you get a comment on a post that’s so good, and so relevent, that you have to share it.  In the post below this one, The Dangers Of Texting While Driving, I got a comment from a man named Erik Wood.  He’s the inventor of an Android app called OTTER, or One Touch Text Response, which enables users of the app to protect themselves from the urge to respond to texts while driving, or just whenever responding to texts is inconvenient.

Basically, how OTTER works is that it has a built-in GPS.  When you travel over 10 miles an hour (like in a car), OTTER automatically disables the vibrate, tone, and light-up features of your phone that alert you to texts.  It also sends an automatic response to the person who texted you, saying that you’re currently driving and can’t text back.  When you stop traveling at 10 miles an hour, OTTER shuts itself off and you can resume texting as normal.  Alternately, you can program Otter in order to send back one-touch sentence responses to the most common text questions/requests you get.

Interestingly, OTTER also features a text management system.  Basically, if you want a few hours away from the digital chains, you just schedule a blackout period.  OTTER tells your interested friends that you won’t be available until whatever time you specify, and you get some much-needed peace and quiet.  Sounds like my kind of app!

OTTER is currently available only for Android phones, but they’re looking to expand and develop the product for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile platforms.  This is the kind of thing that will be a must-have app for me when I finally switch from a dumbphone to a smartphone.

Image:  Android App Inspection

Fed up with texting, short belly shirts, and gum chomping, a group of teachers from Bloomingdale Senior High School in Valrico, Florida, have taken a tip from their own teenage years.  They’ve stood up and declared, in one lip-synching voice, that they’re not gonna take it!  That’s right, turning the tables on the teens are the teachers, who are taking a tip from Twisted Sister!  Of all the bands to co-opt for an anti-texting message, the original anti-teacher, anti-parent, anti-authority anthem is one for the books!

I know, or am related to, a lot of teachers who have gotten out of the business of teaching in recent years thanks in no small part to just how awful the kids have gotten in the past 5-10 years.  Here’s hoping a goofy little video might make some impact.  If not, turn them over to the cops.  They know how to stop texting!

Vermont is aware of the dangers of texting while driving, and if a new program from the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles takes off, teens will learn the danger of texting while driving, too.  In Vermont, teens make up 15% of the state’s drivers, but account for 30% of the crashes.  Drivers that use phones or text while driving are 400% more likely to make errors, have delayed reaction times, and are significantly more likely to crash.  Hence, Vermont’s trying to show students just how distracted they are when they text friends.

What the state does is have teens traverse an obstacle course via golf cart.  First, they do it normally.  Then, they do it while texting a friend.  A ride-along officer scores both rides, so teens can see the dramatic jump in errors, mistakes, and mashed orange cones.

The Turn Off Texting program is making a big difference in Vermont, and it’s spreading to other states.  So far, 25 states have anti-texting laws on the books, and more are looking to add them while looking to increase driver awareness.  You can visit the official website at TurnOffTexting.com for more information.

I’m lucky.  I have a massive desk with lots of empty space.  At one point, it was a school desk for like a principal or administrator that we picked up at the surplus auction, so it’s both wide (about 7 feet from left to right) and deep (probably 4 feet deep).  So when it’s time for my cat to get nosy and investigate what I’m doing, she’s got plenty of room to roam around or flop down.

Still, it’d be nice if she had a place to go where she could watch me work and not be in the way, so I’ve been thinking about picking up one of these PC Cat Beds from Etsy crafter alpinebutterfly.  It’s expensive (to me), but it’s made from low impact, high-quality materials, features a very cute paint job, and all the hazardous and/or pointy stuff from the inside of the monitor’s hard plastic casing has been removed (which is worth the cost of purchase alone, as the guts of any TV/monitor are always kind of unpleasant).

If I knew for sure my cat would go for it, I’d turn one of my old monitors into a cat bed for her.  I think she prefers to be in the way, though!  Generally, cats love to be in the way whenever possible, because that means you can’t ignore them.