Snakes and Lattes, owned and operated by new entrepreneurs Castanie and his girlfriend, Aurelia Peynet, looks -- at first glance -- like any other downtown Toronto coffee shop. But unlike any other Bloor Street café this new venue is also home to hundreds upon hundreds of board games.

These board games, collected by the owner over a two year period from garage sales and thrift stores, can be used by customers for a flat fee of five dollars for unlimited use of the game collection during a single visit.

On top of gaming, customers can also purchase various drinks and snacks and word on the street has it that a liquor license is on the way any day now.

What could be better than a hot coffee or cold beer, a group of your closest friends, and a rousing game of Settlers? Well, with a game going on in a public place like this, you're bound to make more like-minded, board-game-loving friends too! Why not turn your two-man game into an eight-man game?

"A game is not meant to be [played by] two," Castanie says. "So you know what? If there's two groups, well then, we'll just make sure they play together, right?"

"You learn a lot from people playing board games."

This, of course, makes me wish evolution did work this way. I'd have wings or crazy elastic body parts or gigantic breasts or something, I'm sure. Based on my current theory that there are way cool things to eat that I can only get to by flying.... err willpower. Okay, maybe I just want wings and can't think of any other way I could just spontaneously grow them.

I also wish there were midget giraffes. Jussayin'.

The code powering the PS3's first modchip is now officially out there, meaning anyone with an internet connection and a USB micro-controller can get under their PS3's skin. The PSGroove, a new jailbreak solution engineered from the same code that powers the first modchip, is touted as an "open source" PS3 exploit, meaning it's not out for profit, not being sold by anyone and doesn't have a company name behind it to pin a lawsuit on. This development renders Sony's impending court showdown with Australian retailers a shallow public relations gesture at best. Why? Because defeating them would be like cutting one head off a million-headed hydra; now that PS3-cracking code is out there online, and the only device you require to operate it is a legally-available PC accessory, anyone that has the will to back-up their PS3 games and the ability to read an internet forum will be able to do it. As of right now, the standard PSGroove code doesn't let you play backups of your games. But now that it's out there in the hands of hackers, that feature will be with us soon, if it isn't already. I'll be honest, the codework on this flies a mile over my head, but you can get a full account of how it all works at the link below.

From Engadget: "If you see it, just say it," says Microsoft's Kinect, but only in the US, UK, Mexico and Japan to start -- those are the only four countries that will support Kinect voice control by the motion-sensing peripheral's November launch. So said Microsoft PR manager Lidia Pitzalis in an interview with Eurogamer Spain, adding that Germany, Italy, France and even Canada and Spain would have to wait for a Spring 2011 update for additional language support. Microsoft claims it's a matter of accents throwing off the voice recognition, as the company's already had to build separate software versions for US and UK English, but if you're an Italian who can fake a good Cockney, you're still out of luck, as Microsoft's reportedly disabling voice control entirely in said regions until it can formally support it. And game companies wonder why we try so hard to hack those DVD drives...

 

Source: Ffffound!

After striking deals with Lionsgate, MGM and Sony Pictures in the US and UK movie service Blinkbox, YouTube launched a free new movie service with an initial catalog of 400 full-length movies available on-demand.

Simply entitled “Films”, the new section has its own YouTube URL and offers mainstream releases, classics and also Bollywood hits. At the time of writing, the front page offers a couple of Jackie Chan films, Ridley Scott’s Life In A Day YouTube project and a number of independent films.

 

YouTube head of video partnerships, Donagh O’Malley spoke to The Guardian:

“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows.

We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”

YouTube’s deal with Blinkbox sees around 165 of it’s films, normally priced at $1.99 and upwards, available for free. These films will have advertising incorporated into the films, I noticed a trailer for a 3D film on one of the videos I viewed.

I imagine there will be a number of films that will excite some readers, but on the most part the selection is very limited at present.

[via]

 

"Titkerchief" was my favourite part.

Parody of - http://tinyurl.com/388cfhy - The Cami Secret is quite possibly the worst idea in the history of mankind. This "parody" might be more brutal honesty than satire. Your call.

Extremely clever concept from Etsy seller QueInteresante: Label crayon colors with the names of the chemical compounds that produce them. As much as I like this idea, I'm obliged to point out a bit of hand-waving going on with the fine points of spectroscopy, here. One of the crayons, for instance, is apparently labeled "Barium Nitrate Ba(NO3)2 Flame," which is to say that the crayon is the same color as the flame produced when you burn barium nitrate in air, not that barium nitrate is the pigment used to produce the color in the crayon itself.