For example, if you know a lot about cars, you might have the confidence to take apart an engine and rebuild it. Or if you know a lot about cakes, you can go nuts with that fondant stuff and make some pretty interesting designs.

However, I also believe that there exists some amount of risk that increases as you start to dabble in those areas. The problem arises when your confidence in your knowledge overshadows your actual skill. You may think you know what you’re doing, but you really could be setting yourself up for a grandiose fail. Let me relay a personal story to solidify all this.

I was transferring songs to and from my phone and needed to free up some space. When I mount my phone to my Mac and move folders to the trash, it doesn’t really delete the folders, it just moves them to a hidden "trash" folder on the phone. This really doesn’t do me any good, so I popped open Terminal and navigated to the phone’s trash directory.

If you’ve ever done any Linux command-line deleting, you know that you either have to confirm each file you delete or just tell it to go ahead and delete everything you want. I didn’t want to have to continuously press "y" so I figured the old recursive force delete would do the trick. rm -rf ./* was what I meant, rm -rf /* was what I typed.

That one character (.) in Linux translates "delete everything in this directory" to "delete everything in the root directory of the machine". Needless to say I was surprised to see Terminal trying to delete files in my Applications folder. Thankfully I stopped it before too much damage was done, but it blazed through my Adobe apps fast and furiously.

I guess the moral of the story is: even if you know a lot about something, don’t assume you are immune to fail. Or measure twice cut once. Or believe in yourself but have a humble and reasonable confidence in your abilities. Or you have a Mac, get an external drive and use Time Machine, you idiot.

There’s so many ways to get around this "protection" it’s really not worth your time trying to put it in place. Here’s a few ways around it:

1. Disable JavaScript
   Open up your browser’s preferences and have a look around. For example, in Firefox under the Content area, just un-check the "Enable JavaScript" option. Reload the page, right-click away. Just remember to turn it back on once you’re done.
2. Page Media
   In Firefox, if you click "Page Info" from the "Tools" menu, and click the "Media" button, it brings up a list of all the media items loaded on the page. It shows you the type, the full URI and even gives you a preview. Best of all, there’s a "Save As…" button right there. The Activity window in Safari will give you about the same results.
3. View Source
   Feeling especially hardcore? View the source code of the page. If you’re determined enough and the code isn’t too messy, you can probably get what you’re looking for. Your browsers find tool will come in handy looking for those file extensions.
4. Get Creative
   Still can’t get what you want? Time to get creative. Take a screenshot of what you want and crop it, or bust out your favorite screen capturing software and start recording.

Remember: everything on the internet is free. You just might have to put in some time to get it.

1. Parasailing. Even If you manage to take off without grinding your face into the ground, keep in mind you still have to land at some point.
   
2. Piñatas. Here’s an idea! Let’s blindfold a kid, give him a stick, spin him around and tell him to have at it. Guaranteed someone is getting hit in the face and/or groin area.
   
3. Trampolines. Usually the ownage results from people trying to go a little too far above their skill level, i.e. "Well I can jump pretty high, so I can probably do a backflip!"
   
4. Model glider planes. These things are expertly engineered to take off from your hand, fly in a perfect backwards loop, and hit you in the back of the head. Every time!
   

I’m sure there’s many more, these are just a few off the top of my head. Any others come to mind?

They don’t come at you with crushing blast-beats but instead provide a slower and more gloomy ambiance. The growling vocals are well done, but again they aren’t really screaming at you as much as they are sort of just angrily brooding away. There are also some clean vocal breakdowns with female guest singers to bring some additional dimensions to the music.

I can recommend both of their most recent releases. From what I can tell, they’re about due for another album, so be on the lookout for some new material as well.

More on Noumena:
MySpace | Last.fm | Official Site

1. Will I update it enough to where it’s actually meaningful to anyone following me?
2. Will anyone even care enough to follow me?

Whether true or not, I’ve always had it in my mind that the majority of people you talk to really don’t care what you have to say. Unless you’re dying they’re just "waiting for their turn to speak." Maybe that’s why I’m so often told that I’m "quiet."

Thanks for letting me know, BTW.

Anyway, my curiosity has been piqued enough that I think I might give it a try. The guys at Videosift also just put out an interesting social voting site that fits right in with Twitter.

So the challenge will be: update my status often, but with something more compelling than the banal minutiae of my everyday existence. Hey, this thing might actually force me to make my life more interesting!

Follow me here.

Switching over from Geneva to Massachusettes, a team of biologists at Harvard are inching their way towards creating new life forms in the laboratory. They are attempting to recreate the conditions whereby cellular life could arise and the process of evolution could begin.

So barring any catastrophic destruction caused by the LHC and the creation of some synthetic super-bacteria, we could soon be unlocking the very secrets of our existence. It’s exciting to live in a time where we could literally see the beginning of all things, and (much more unlikely) the end of all things by our own hands.

BONUS: You can now check to see if the LHC has destroyed the world yet using this nifty site.