Eric &c.

In teh beginz is teh meow

2009-08-14T20:50:18Z

Someone at the Long Now Foundation blog decided to have a fun post rather than the more serrious, "we're all going to die" content they normally post.

I'm sure a certain percentage have seen this but darned if it isn't cute.

here

Nanking Cherry

2009-08-11T18:00:19Z

Hey Calgary.

The Nanking Cherry Bushes should be full of fruit by now... I was hoping someone could ship me a bunch of seeds so I could plant them here in good ole' Ottawa. The city is full of fruit bearing bushes but almost all are poisonous/taste bad.

I figure they'll do just fine in the mail if the pulp is removed and they're dry. We'll work something out re the shipping cost...

Thanks tonnes.

PS: Nanking Cherry is the small red fruit with the single pit, the bush has small almond shaped leaves that are a little fuzzy, it flowers early with small white flowers.

Jul 25, 2009

2009-07-25T13:36:23Z

Driving to the Lusk Caves to play in the water.

If its going to piss rain, I figure on playing in the water.

Jul 24, 2009

2009-07-25T01:02:03Z

Hard drive thoughts....

2009-07-19T14:58:20Z

So I bought a 1.5TB seagate drive the other day to replace an 80 and 200 in the HTPC...and it's totally messed up.. sigh.

It works..but I ran a profile with HD Tune and in addition to making a huge clicking rackket while operating the performance is all over the map...and crazy slow. Double Sigh.

So.. I have to swap it for a new one..but I'm thinking that maybe these 1.5TB drives aren't quite ready for primetime...and I could swap out the 500 in there too and get two 1TB drives for about $40 more. The 1TB drives are even a little faster.

Thoughts?

Danke.

PS: Anyone else with a recent Seagate drive? I've noticed a couple of flagged lines in the SMART data that annoy me even though it still passes. My little 2,5" 80GB Hitatchi drive has been to hell and back and doesn't have a single blemish.

Costa Rica

2009-05-31T17:31:04Z

So.. Andrew and I were going to spend last week in the lap of luctury in Cancun.. until industrial farming, poor sanitation, and a globilized ecponomy caught up with us.....so it was off to Costa Rica. What a wonderful place. I'm definately sold.

I'll post some of the better photos..because there are a couple that can hardly be beleived.

In other news, I passed my second french test and now only have to prove that I can speak it :) . . . on June 8th!

I'm tired of that bacon post being my last

2009-03-25T15:57:01Z

Poor live journal..I've sorely neglected you.

Imagine a world without bacon

2008-11-13T23:21:36Z

If bacon were forever taken away, we'd miss it for sure... but what if it had never existed? I, for one, think that we'd feel a deep longing and sense that something was missing from world.

Which got me thinking. Lots of people *do* feel like there's a void..some sense that there's something bigger than themselves that they need to feel connected to..and so turn to religion as a way of filling that need..or hunger.

I propose that what's truly missing is something even better than bacon. For lack of a better term lets call it super-bacon or uberbacon. I really feel that a concerted effort to discover this, life-sustaining food, is required and that if forgoing all organized religion is the sacrifice to be made then that's ok by me.

PS: Did anyone know that the german word for bacon is "speck"?

Prime Minister Duceppe

2008-10-03T16:53:57Z

We were talking last night and it occurred to me that if the other parties split the seats just-so then it's conceivable that, with Quebec's 75-odd seats, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe could hold more seats than anyone else...and form the next government with the support of the Liberals or NDP.

It's really not likely and he'd probably wet himself...but it's an amusing thought.

Vote well.

Google Chrome First day

2008-09-02T22:44:34Z

I spent the long weekend in Montreal and fell bwhind in my news..so I was surprised to read about Google's new product only minutes before it was launched.

Google Chrome

It's a web browser...sort of a Safari/Firefox Hybrid. Just like everyone else in the not-IE browser market they compare themselves to Internet Explorer.

It's clearly not fully featured but it's pretty fantastic right out the box. My only complaint is that many of my common pages seem to take longer to load... but that might just be that it's waiting longer with a white screen before rendering. I'm not sure that the total time is any longer.

Facebook clearly has some js related glitches. I found that popup dialogs like those used to comment on friend's status updates don't seem to work.

I was also immediately reminded of how much I like AddBlock in Firefox...holy crap does it cut down on the clutter.

One big difference is that Chrome is using separate threads for each tab so you can see them each in task manager. That means that you can see per-page how much memory is being used and you can see the memory being freed when you close a tab. I love that.

I also like being able to break tabs out into their own panes and then put them back again.

Keep an eye on this thing.

</plug>

The Dog

2008-08-13T02:24:30Z

My roomate just told me the best story. She swears that it happened to a friend of hers on the weekend.

She was babysitting someone's dog, an older german shepherd. They knew the dog was old and sick, so they warned the baby sitter, I'll call her Jane, that she dog might die and left the vet's contact info.

They mostly just stressed that Jane not feel bad if something happened to the Dog.

...
...

So the dog died.

... And Jane realized that she had no way to get the dog to the vet...and so packed it into a suitcase and took it on the bus. At the main bus station some guy helped her onto the bus, because the dog was pretty heavy.

He asked her what was in the suitcase because it was so heavy, and Jane told him that it was her computer and a bunch of her stuff because she was moving..you know because "It's a dog corpse" doesn't have the same ring.

...
...

So she gets off the bus and is headed to the vet and someone pushes her down and runs off with the suitcase. The guy had followed her off the bus to steal her stuff.. Hahahahahaa...

Speedracer

2008-07-28T18:12:27Z

I finaly got to watch the modern, western, adaptation of the old anime series today..and it was fantastic. That the plot was a little weak and predictable was almost as important to the film as the fact that it was ridiculous.

I'd say that it was instantly one of my favourite movies, ever.

Sweetness

2008-07-23T02:22:40Z

Yes!

Google has rolled out walking directions as an option to maps for everywhere..They've had it in Seattle and the Bay area for a while now

(from here)

Take a peek..it's great when you can get directions that are usable..and acknowledged the little things like that I don't have to obey one-way streets.

Now all they need to to is to get my local transit authority to give up on the crappy and overdue mobile transit planner.

All I want is someone to cause expensive and selective damage to my corneas...

2008-07-22T20:20:35Z

but instead they seem to want to be jerks about it.

I went for the free ACT-NOW (fracophone) operators are standing by consult for eye surgery at the most convenrient place in Ottawa..it's one of the LASIK eye-something places that are in every major city.

I mean sure.. it's my eyes and it's inportant and I don't want to be cheap about it..but I'd like to pay what it should cost and I certainly don't want to feel like the entire intake procedure is an upsell on something I don't need.

Fer frakin' sake.

The experience has left me quite cranky.

Here's how they failed:
- They tested my vision twice in an all-but-the same way without explaingin why
- They showed me some image generated from some mystery-machine and said "it won't mean anything to you" but then couldn't acutally be bothered to actually try explaining it
- They confused (in name) testing the thickness of my corneas with testing the internal pressure of the eye
- They were fairly firm that my rediculously low and stable presecrption along with mysteriously "thin" corneas and "large" pupils was at the upper end of mystery-tech-A (LASIK) so I had to go to mystery-tech-B (PRK) but then she wasn't really clear on what she was upselling because then she was all about the mystery-laser-A vs. mystery-laser-B without actually being able to point out a difference between them that I was prepared to buy.

I really got the impression that they'd rather I pick the $3.2K procedure or never call back rather than waste their time with something in-between.

My favourite line was "you don't have to pick between the "standard" and the "zyoptic" laser until you're here for the procedure..which instead of leaving my options open and reassuring me just convinced me that there is no signifigant difference between them.

Bah. Humans.

I guess I'll peruse the yellow pages and find someone that just wants to do a simple procedure and make good money doing it...rather than waste my time.

SCA x Theatre x Cyberpunk hotness

2008-07-03T21:29:24Z

Wow.

It's like the wet dreams of my calgary folks all in one (here)

mrarlyn @ 2008-06-30T02:56:00

2008-06-30T06:58:48Z

"Man cannot live on facebook alone"
-- Some poor bastard

Squiril boy plus one got married and I was in Calgary.

bunny meets bear

2008-06-26T16:49:20Z

Cool DSLR Rig for the field

2008-06-18T19:16:38Z

They're being all artsy by calling it a "Language" and they give the impression that they invented the concept. I remember seeing something almost identical in the Anime series FLAG from a couple years ago..it's funny because it was used there for similar shots.

I wouldn't count on the fact that somone related to the real world project saw the anime, but there is a striking similarity, even in the style of the editing. I expect that the movie that was made from the footage will be worth a watch..and I encourage anyone equipped to hunt down a copy of FLAG to wathc the series.

A new photographic language? Dramatic pictures from the front-lines

"The Last Airbender" Movie

2008-06-18T04:30:23Z

So I'm thrilled at the thought of the story that I've alreadt read and watched as a (almost) anime series will be a movie!

Yay for the theory of mass communication being born out in the format shifting of this quite watchable story.

View Original Article

Sunglasses

2008-06-16T23:09:07Z

I didn't mention it much but my grandfatehr passed away about a month ago.. Since I'm the only one who would apreciate them, my mom sent me his military cap and sunglasses. He was a RCAF airforce captain.

The cap is almost perfect but the sunglasses are missing an arm (even though they're otherwise perfect.)

The arm is some silver metal (steel?) and is clearly made from a single piece of 14ga (ish) wire.

Anyone have thoughts on replacing it? I might be able to find a jewelery artist-type that could make the piece..but they might be standard enough to exist out in the world.

The screw/hinge is in place so it's the one part that's missing. The bridge and nose pads look great..Are those bone?

	sunglasses
	sunglasses

There are a couple other shots in the gallery there if it will help identify them.

PS: Oh and in case there was much doubt this is essentially directly at zastrazzi

mrarlyn @ 2008-06-12T14:29:00

2008-06-12T18:29:29Z

Neat word tag generator
Made from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada using http://wordle.net/

Ok..so for some reason (probably load on the lj server and the fact that I've let my paid account lapse) I'm using the site without js or css aparently. That means that I can't quite see what this will look like...but it was too cute not to post.

Geekiest search page ever

2008-06-03T16:06:15Z

http://goosh.org

aka my new homepage, at least until I geet tired of it.

Wow

2008-05-29T23:27:01Z

this made me sad

Kind of a geekey/nostalgic moment I guess

Chicago repeals foie gras ban

2008-05-15T19:05:42Z

One word:Yay!

The only thing better than better than eating baby animals is eating the fatty gorged liver of a tasty duck.

NB: Not sarcasm; Mantra.

Veracruz con't

2008-05-15T17:35:45Z

I have some more pictures up here

We went to an old spanish port on Tuesday, and then yesterday we wandered around the downtown. The elevator at the Hotel Flamingo on the Zocalo was installed in 1904 after the hotel was built and it one of two. The other is in the Castle that overlooks Mexico City. We took a fantastic ride up and down.