Remember the homemade Blu-Ray laser-phaser I POSTED WAY BACK IN DECEMBER 2007? Well here’s a video of the thing popping balloons from at least eight or ten feet. Ooh, ooh — do my eyes next! Starfleet Command has discovered a planet full of vicious balloons, and Jay “Scotty” Rob has modified the classic phaser pistol from The Original Series to be able to pop ‘em left and right. Oh man, I totally need this thing for my next presentation to the Board of Directors. So, Board, as is evident from this chart I just pulled off the internet, I’ve done little to no work for the past six months. Buuuut…. POP! POP! POP POP POP!! Leave the promotion on my desk, I’ll be at the bar. Homemade Star Trek phaser is powerful enough to pop balloons [dvice] Thanks to Darkpatu, Zmann966, and Lee, who can pop balloons with nothing but their thoughts. MINDFREAKS!

Remember the homemade Blu-Ray laser-phaser I POSTED WAY BACK IN DECEMBER 2007? Well here’s a video of the thing popping balloons from at least eight or ten feet. Ooh, ooh — do my eyes next! Starfleet Command has discovered a planet full of vicious balloons, and Jay “Scotty” Rob has modified the classic phaser pistol from The Original Series to be able to pop ‘em left and right. Oh man, I totally need this thing for my next presentation to the Board of Directors. So, Board, as is evident from this chart I just pulled off the internet, I’ve done little to no work for the past six months. Buuuut…. POP! POP! POP POP POP!! Leave the promotion on my desk, I’ll be at the bar. Homemade Star Trek phaser is powerful enough to pop balloons [dvice] Thanks to Darkpatu, Zmann966, and Lee, who can pop balloons with nothing but their thoughts. MINDFREAKS!

Remember how you heard J.J. Abrams snuck R2-D2 somewhere in the new Star Trek movie ? And remember how you kept going back to the theater with the hopes of spotting him? God, you need a hobby. I dunno, World of Warcraft or something. Anyway, thanks to the recent release of the film and newfangled slow-motion technology, the droid has been spotted. The blog Gizmodo has located the brave droid’s appearance, and frankly, it’s no surprise that 99.999% of the world couldn’t spot the “Star Wars” star. R2-D2 appears for about one microsecond during a battle scene. Floating across the screen from left to right, the droid appears to be enjoying himself, however briefly. Well, there he is. Finally, we can all sleep at night. Together, in a big pile like in Where The Wild Things Are the one time they’re all happy before Max proceeds to eff everything up. And speaking of which: you run away from my home and guess what — there isn’t going to be any chocolate cake waiting for you when you get back. There’s gonna be a locked door. And maybe a belt so you can whip yourself if you’re lucky . Confirmed: R2-D2 Finally Discovered In Star Trek [gizmodo] via Found: R2-D2 in ‘Star Trek’ [yahoomovies] Thanks to jessica, Matty and Lunarion, who spotted him the first time but didn’t want to say anything because they didn’t want to ruin it for the rest of you. Plus, they make great friends because they can keep secrets.

Nobody should own a $135,000 Goldmund Eidos Reference Blue Blu-ray player. That’s the bottom line . I mean, there are children in Africa who don’t even have Laserdisc players. So how someone could knowingly spend six figures on a Blu-ray player makes me sick. BLAAAAAAH! There, I hope you’re happy now. This 66-pound behemoth has such beautiful design, we’re thinking it would be right at home in an art gallery. But does it make the Blu-ray movies look any better? Only those with golden eyes and ears will know for sure. Those precision spring-loaded legs, a completely isolated power supply and fancy Goldmund Magnetic Damping drives the price up into the stratosphere, along with that ritzy Goldmund name. I’ve never heard of the Goldmund name, so that doesn’t mean anything to me. I guess I’m not an audiophile. Although, admittedly, I did experiment with a girl’s ear once in college, but it just wasn’t my thing (she got an inner-ear infection and dumped me). Hit the jump for one more shot of the ridiculousness.

Have you ever wondered how on earth rent-by-mail DVDs manage to get so scratched up? Take a close look at the photo above, from Boston.com , and notice how carefully a gloved Netflix employee is scratching up a DVD so it has that “used” appearance we’ve all come to know and love. Isn’t that considerate of them? Bad jokes aside, the gallery of images below provides a behind-the-scenes look at “an unmarked warehouse” in Northborough, Massachusetts, where about 50 Netflix employees “sort through and repackage more than 60,000 discs every day.” To be fair, it’s the customers who manage to scratch up DVDs, and Netflix appears to make a good-faith effort to discard DVDs that have become unplayable — at least to the extent they can, since they’re sorting them at the rate of 500-700 per hour. Netflix angered some customers this week with the announcement that it would be increasing the $1.00 per month surcharge for Blu-ray customers, which was just added last fall. They explained in an e-mail that they had “increased significantly” the number of Blu-ray titles they stocked, and “as you’ve probably heard, Blu-ray discs are substantially more expensive than standard-definition DVDs.” How big an increase depends on how you look at it: Information Week described it as a “300% increase,” since the surcharge would increase from $1.00 to $4.00 for customers on the “three disks at a time” monthly plan. Overall, the same plan would cost 24% more per month. I don’t have Blu-ray capability (it’s a long, sad story), so I’m wondering what your experiences have been renting Blu-rays, either online or in person. Completely satisfactory? Are you downloading / streaming more movies to watch on your computer or TV? Or do you prefer to buy your DVDs and Blu-rays? Gallery: Netflix at Work Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy , Home Entertainment , Images Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments