Frogs in Space

Courtesy of Debbie and Co.

In the hospital, the relatives gathered in the waiting room, where their family member lay gravely ill.

Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber.

'I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news,' he said as he surveyed the worried faces.

'The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant.

It's an experimental procedure, very risky but it is the only hope.

Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the brain yourselves...'

The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a great length of time, someone asked, 'Well, how much does a brain cost?'

The doctor quickly responded, '$5,000 for a male brain, and $200 for a female brain.'

The moment turned awkward. Men in the room tried not to smile, avoiding eye contact with the women, but some actually smirked.

A man unable to control his curiosity, blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, 'Why is the male brain so much more?'

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to mark down the price of the female brains, because they've actually been used.'

Courtoisie du Fa.

Voici un tout petit exercice de prononciation assez réjouissant :

On dit que la langue française est compliquée, mais que dire de l'Anglais !

Français : '1H58 à 2H02 : une heure cinquante-huit à deux heures deux.'
Anglais : 'From two to two to two two.'

Français : 'Trois sorcières regardent trois montres Swatch. Quelle sorcière regarde quelle montre Swatch ?'
Anglais : 'Three witches watch three Swatch watches. Which witch watches which Swatch watch?’

Et maintenant pour les spécialistes...

Français : 'Trois sorcières suédoises et transsexuelles regardent les boutons de trois montres Swatch suisses. Quelle sorcière suédoise transsexuelle regarde quel bouton de quelle montre Swatch suisse?'
Anglais (accrochez-vous) : 'Three Swedish switched witches watch three Swiss Swatch watch switches. Which Swedish switched witch watches which Swiss Swatch watch switch?'

On peut aller se rhabiller avec nos chaussettes sèches de l’archiduchesse !!

Courtesy of Debbie & Co.

There is not one dirty word in it, and it is funny.

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, 'Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon.'

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. 'Good morning, Ma'am', he said, 'I've come to...'

'Oh, no need to explain,' Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, 'I've been expecting you.'

'Have you really?' said the photographer. 'Well, that's good. Did you know babies are my specialty?'

'Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat'.

After a moment she asked, blushing, 'Well, where do we start?'

'Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there.'

'Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!'

'Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.'

'My, that's a lot!', gasped Mrs. Smith.

'Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be In and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that.'

'Don't I know it,' said Mrs. Smith quietly.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. 'This was done on the top of a bus,' he said.

'Oh, my word!' Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

'And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.'

'She was difficult?' asked Mrs. Smith.

'Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look.'

'Four and five deep?' said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.

'Yes', the photographer replied. 'And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in.'

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. 'Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh...equipment?'

'It's true, Ma'am, yes.. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away.'

'Tripod?'

'Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand very long.'

Mrs. Smith fainted...

Maybe not the case for all of us out there, but it rings true enough in some cases, too much to ignore it. Men of the world unite!

SINGLE

MARRIED

DIVORCED

ANY QUESTIONS?

The (Sad) End...

Pas de commentaires nécessaires, ça a pris un moment, mais c'est fait, je peux enfin dire "mission accomplie" !

Courtesy of Debbie & Co.

Jane and Arlene are outside their nursing home, having a drink and a smoke, when it starts to rain. Jane pulls out a condom, cuts off the end, puts it over her cigarette, and continues smoking.

Arlene: What in the hell is that?

Jane: A condom. This way my cigarette doesn't get wet.

Arlene: Where did you get it?

Jane: You can get them at any drugstore.

The next day, Arlene hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms.

The pharmacist, obviously embarrassed, looks at her kind of strangely (she is after all, over 80 years of age), but very delicately asks what brand of condom she prefers.

Arlene: "Doesn't matter Sonny, as long as it fits on a Camel."

The pharmacist fainted.

Due to popular demand we have just released an update to Silverlight Streaming that allows you to bypass the transcoding service when uploading a VC-1 compliant video without using the workaround described in my previous blog post about this matter.

When you go to the "Manage Videos" page on the Silverlight Streaming admin web site you will now see a checkbox below the video file name text box. Simply check it if you wish to bypass the transcoding service and upload your video to Silverlight Streaming "as is". This would apply to all WMV files encoded using Expression Encoder for example.

Remember, you should make sure you run your video through the transcoding service -and leave the checkbox unchecked- for videos that are not VC-1 compliant and Silverlight-ready. This would be the case for any non-WMV files and some WMV files. When in doubt, leave the checkbox unchecked.

Note that there is a glitch (we'll fix it shortly) that clears the video file name when refreshing the upload control after your check the checkbox, so check it before you actually browse to the video file you wish to upload to Silverlight Streaming, so you don't have to go look for it a second time.

Another FAQ for you...

As you may have already noticed, currently there is a bug in Silverlight Streaming that prevents WMV files created with Expression Encoder 2 to be transcoded successfully when you upload them to SLS using the Manage Videos turnkey scenario. Note that it works fine with WMV files encoded using Expression Encoder 1.

If you go through the time and effort of editing a video file with Expression Encoder 2, you probably don't want to run it through another transcoding pass anyway (different encoding profile than what you chose, double-encode glitches, etc.) So here is a simple workaround to bypass the SLS transcoding service should you want to upload a video file only.

Needless to say, this workaround only makes sense if the video file you are uploading to SLS is already Silverlight-compliant, encoded using a VC-1 codec. If you upload a file that cannot be played back in a Silverlight player, it won't do you much good to have it hosted in SLS.

1. Once you’re done encoding your video file, rename it to VIDEO.WMV
2. Go to http://silverlight.live.com, sign in into your SLS account and go to Manage Applications, *not* Manage Videos
3. Provide an application name, then click on Create
4. Browse to the file you just encoded, remember, it is called VIDEO.WMV, then click on Upload
5. Done! Go to Manage Videos, you’ll see the “application” name in the video list, your video file is now hosted in SLS (you can play it back either by using the new http permalink feature, or the good old iframe invoking the default SLS player) and you’ve bypassed the SLS transcoding service.

Note: the standard SLS file size restrictions apply. If your video file is larger than 105 MB, the upload will fail.

Me talking about it directly from Tech Ed '08. Beware, Angus's camera work is prone to making you sick, so sit down first.

Hopefully this will help you out, until we