I had such a good time resting up on Sunday that I didn't get around to finishing off the blog until tonight... plus, I was just feeling too darn tired.
April 28 - Visits
My sister arrived today from Calgary for her three-day mini vacation. we drove straight from the airport to Buchchart Gardens to see all the gardens in full bloom for the spring season. Colour was everywhere: masses of complementary and contrasting flowers were everywhere one's eye fell. Full tourist season has not hit yet, so only a fair sprinkling of local people were out taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to tour the Gardens. If I had had time, I would have walked around again to get a closer look at some sections, and to spend more time relaxing in the Japanese area too.
Late last week there was an interesting bit of news about the future of the information cyberwar: GhostNet. Apparently based in China, this was an ultra-low-profile spy network based in hundreds of computers in highly sensitive locations around the globe. It was discovered by a Canadian research lab after some lengthy sleuthing - reminds me of cyber-battles for control of millions of zombie PC's by various criminal groups around the world, seeking to gain control of such 'botnets' for their own nefarious use.
Which makes me want one of these all the more, to add to my collection!
April 29 - Social Aging
The other day I was thinking about the future, specifically about end-of-life social circles. Where do you think you will end up? Busy with family visits from many grandchildren? A full social calendar with bake sales, music rehearsals and volunteer work? Or sitting at home, working on one's memoirs? None of the above? Sitting bored in a rest home, watching TV and feeling your mind slip away a few more notches each day?
Sometimes I wonder about where I will end up, or even IF I will end up, fifty or so years from now. That's a long time, and we just don't know how medical science will change in that time. Assuming you survive the next few decades, you may find that new advances will extend your lifetime even further... hopefully the quality of life will remain high too. Some people, like Dr. Oz, are all about ensuring quality of life all the way along the line. Add in things like how the Nintendo Wii is changing the way people keep their bodies and minds active in later life, and we have serious hopes to see the human lifespan extended by decades very soon.
After work today, I went to dinner with my sister and parents at the Millstream Milestone's restaurant for their Free Date Night - for every two people in the party, one person's appetizer & dinner are free! We all met there at 4pm, right when I finished work( it's just steps away )managing to get in before the crowds arrived... when we left, there was a lineup 30 people deep. Apparently there are a lot of cheap dates out there besides myself. ;-)
April 30 - Lots!
I've added Google AdSense to the blog to see if I can scrape a few pennies from the hit counter, which surpassed 1200 hits today at 10:45pm PST - 200 hits in the last month alone. I wonder if it's because of adding AdSense, or some other reason? I will be keeping an eye on it as time goes on, especially as Google also owns DoubleClick, which I am not a fan of in any way.
Ice Ship: Project Habakkuk was on the History Channel tonight, touching on a favourite subject of mine... unusual WWII secret projects( just like last week's blog posting ). Imagine a gigantic floating island able to base hundreds of planes and house thousands of personnel... and almost the entire thing made of ice. It is like something out of science fiction - more can be found here about it all.
My sister left this morning, returning back to Calgary and lingering cold weather, with snow. It was a good week here for her: very restful and relaxing away from Alberta. I was sad to see her go, as I had not been able to spend too much time with her this week, having to work every day.
After a long day, it is wonderful to be able to soak in the outdoor hottub for a few minutes. When I was living in Port Dalhousie we had a pool and like to keep it VERY warm( ala 85F )which meant in effect we had a very large, somewhat cooler hottub to swim around in. After living in Fonthill, where the was also a hottub, I came to appreciate locating such things outside, as sitting in your basement soaking was nice but had no view. Here in Langford one can sit back in the water and look right out over the lake towards the hills to the north, steaming comfortably. Even a very windy night like tonight was comfortable, as long as you kept yourself mostly immersed - it was interesting to watch the steam coil and twist away like angry spirits in the winds that blew through the moonlit trees.
May 1 - 1.5 years in B.C.
No celebrations, but today marks 1.5 years since I left Ontario for the West. Doesn't feel like that long, but here I am... and all too soon I will stop marking the years altogether, as here I am likely to stay. At this point in my life, the solitude and quiet I have at home is enough to keep me balanced, allowing me time to work on projects I feel are important to me. Going out for a beer or to a movie just isn't in the cards anymore, especially as I have few people I can call on at a moment's notice to have a drink with( heyas Lucas! ). Moving here, especially this area in Langford, is calming in so many ways: the parkland nearby, the incredible vista of the lake in the backyard, having my own Man Cave to relax in, being only a 5 minute drive from work... all of this and so much more really takes the twist out of my spine at day's end. That's all on that subject.
In terms of time, I do love clocks as you may have guessed from some of my previous blog postings. This week, I stumbled across a really cool flash-based clock, though if you leave it running it does tend to get out of sync - really neat to look at though and it has very soothing background audio. It is very similar to the flash Industorious Clock that Lucas sent me years ago, which tells time through hand-written numbers - great stuff.
May 2 - Writing Thangz
On writing: Steve Saylor wrote( Tweeted, actually )about how much he is enjoying using Scrivener, a writer's all-in-one software masterpiece for the Mac. While I do not have a Mac myself, I have been trying out a few programs this last year( mostly free ones )to try and find one to suit me. Thanks to Steve, I now have a link page showing some new possibilities, so I will try a few more of them out. to date, the easiest has been DarkRoom, which is a clone of WriteRoom for the Mac: just a simple black background with text on it, easy on the eyes yet with all the features one needs to pop around the parts of a project. Distraction-free, in other words.
Spellchecking is a bit of a pain sometimes. For example, my install of OpenOffice doesn't seem to have the spellchecker enabled... not will it let me install a Canadian version. So I have resorted to using a nice( free! )website called Orangoo, which so far has been quick & very accurate.
All this may be in the face of massive changes in the publishing industry. The advent of blogs, the internet and eBooks is beginning to shake up the staid publishing industry in general, as this report from io9.com about SciFi publishing makes quite clear.
Still, if you have a blog you can always turn it into a book... as this person has done with their upcoming book to be released on May 12th 2009. Guess what all of her 600 blog posts were all about? Bacon, of course!
May 3 - Futurama
Though not especially warm, work outside today was comfortable in shorts and t-shirt with the added bonus of working away the winter lack of a tan. No lawn trimming this week though: instead I concentrated on the vital task of... driveway weeding. Man, things really GROW out here - the gentle almost-daily rain and warm climate means plants have a field day. I cannot count how many houses I have seen with masses of moss on their roofs, which grows wherever the tall trees let their shadows fall on a home.
in the evening I watched Bender's Big Score, the first of the Futurama direct-to-DVD releases that have followed after it was cancelled by Fox in 2003. I only found out about the DVD releases last year and picked up the first of the DVDs a few months ago at future shop on sale( of course! ). I've always been a fan the show for its wacky cast, great writing and unique visual animation style, though not nearly as big a fan as these folks are. If I could, I think I would go out next Halloween as Bender, though I would have to figure out a way to imitate the smoking cigar somehow... there are quite a few folks out there who love Bender. What's not to love?
'ta!
April 28 - Visits
My sister arrived today from Calgary for her three-day mini vacation. we drove straight from the airport to Buchchart Gardens to see all the gardens in full bloom for the spring season. Colour was everywhere: masses of complementary and contrasting flowers were everywhere one's eye fell. Full tourist season has not hit yet, so only a fair sprinkling of local people were out taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to tour the Gardens. If I had had time, I would have walked around again to get a closer look at some sections, and to spend more time relaxing in the Japanese area too.
Late last week there was an interesting bit of news about the future of the information cyberwar: GhostNet. Apparently based in China, this was an ultra-low-profile spy network based in hundreds of computers in highly sensitive locations around the globe. It was discovered by a Canadian research lab after some lengthy sleuthing - reminds me of cyber-battles for control of millions of zombie PC's by various criminal groups around the world, seeking to gain control of such 'botnets' for their own nefarious use.
Which makes me want one of these all the more, to add to my collection!
April 29 - Social Aging
The other day I was thinking about the future, specifically about end-of-life social circles. Where do you think you will end up? Busy with family visits from many grandchildren? A full social calendar with bake sales, music rehearsals and volunteer work? Or sitting at home, working on one's memoirs? None of the above? Sitting bored in a rest home, watching TV and feeling your mind slip away a few more notches each day?
Sometimes I wonder about where I will end up, or even IF I will end up, fifty or so years from now. That's a long time, and we just don't know how medical science will change in that time. Assuming you survive the next few decades, you may find that new advances will extend your lifetime even further... hopefully the quality of life will remain high too. Some people, like Dr. Oz, are all about ensuring quality of life all the way along the line. Add in things like how the Nintendo Wii is changing the way people keep their bodies and minds active in later life, and we have serious hopes to see the human lifespan extended by decades very soon.
After work today, I went to dinner with my sister and parents at the Millstream Milestone's restaurant for their Free Date Night - for every two people in the party, one person's appetizer & dinner are free! We all met there at 4pm, right when I finished work( it's just steps away )managing to get in before the crowds arrived... when we left, there was a lineup 30 people deep. Apparently there are a lot of cheap dates out there besides myself. ;-)
April 30 - Lots!
I've added Google AdSense to the blog to see if I can scrape a few pennies from the hit counter, which surpassed 1200 hits today at 10:45pm PST - 200 hits in the last month alone. I wonder if it's because of adding AdSense, or some other reason? I will be keeping an eye on it as time goes on, especially as Google also owns DoubleClick, which I am not a fan of in any way.
Ice Ship: Project Habakkuk was on the History Channel tonight, touching on a favourite subject of mine... unusual WWII secret projects( just like last week's blog posting ). Imagine a gigantic floating island able to base hundreds of planes and house thousands of personnel... and almost the entire thing made of ice. It is like something out of science fiction - more can be found here about it all.
My sister left this morning, returning back to Calgary and lingering cold weather, with snow. It was a good week here for her: very restful and relaxing away from Alberta. I was sad to see her go, as I had not been able to spend too much time with her this week, having to work every day.
After a long day, it is wonderful to be able to soak in the outdoor hottub for a few minutes. When I was living in Port Dalhousie we had a pool and like to keep it VERY warm( ala 85F )which meant in effect we had a very large, somewhat cooler hottub to swim around in. After living in Fonthill, where the was also a hottub, I came to appreciate locating such things outside, as sitting in your basement soaking was nice but had no view. Here in Langford one can sit back in the water and look right out over the lake towards the hills to the north, steaming comfortably. Even a very windy night like tonight was comfortable, as long as you kept yourself mostly immersed - it was interesting to watch the steam coil and twist away like angry spirits in the winds that blew through the moonlit trees.
May 1 - 1.5 years in B.C.
No celebrations, but today marks 1.5 years since I left Ontario for the West. Doesn't feel like that long, but here I am... and all too soon I will stop marking the years altogether, as here I am likely to stay. At this point in my life, the solitude and quiet I have at home is enough to keep me balanced, allowing me time to work on projects I feel are important to me. Going out for a beer or to a movie just isn't in the cards anymore, especially as I have few people I can call on at a moment's notice to have a drink with( heyas Lucas! ). Moving here, especially this area in Langford, is calming in so many ways: the parkland nearby, the incredible vista of the lake in the backyard, having my own Man Cave to relax in, being only a 5 minute drive from work... all of this and so much more really takes the twist out of my spine at day's end. That's all on that subject.
In terms of time, I do love clocks as you may have guessed from some of my previous blog postings. This week, I stumbled across a really cool flash-based clock, though if you leave it running it does tend to get out of sync - really neat to look at though and it has very soothing background audio. It is very similar to the flash Industorious Clock that Lucas sent me years ago, which tells time through hand-written numbers - great stuff.
May 2 - Writing Thangz
On writing: Steve Saylor wrote( Tweeted, actually )about how much he is enjoying using Scrivener, a writer's all-in-one software masterpiece for the Mac. While I do not have a Mac myself, I have been trying out a few programs this last year( mostly free ones )to try and find one to suit me. Thanks to Steve, I now have a link page showing some new possibilities, so I will try a few more of them out. to date, the easiest has been DarkRoom, which is a clone of WriteRoom for the Mac: just a simple black background with text on it, easy on the eyes yet with all the features one needs to pop around the parts of a project. Distraction-free, in other words.
Spellchecking is a bit of a pain sometimes. For example, my install of OpenOffice doesn't seem to have the spellchecker enabled... not will it let me install a Canadian version. So I have resorted to using a nice( free! )website called Orangoo, which so far has been quick & very accurate.
All this may be in the face of massive changes in the publishing industry. The advent of blogs, the internet and eBooks is beginning to shake up the staid publishing industry in general, as this report from io9.com about SciFi publishing makes quite clear.
Still, if you have a blog you can always turn it into a book... as this person has done with their upcoming book to be released on May 12th 2009. Guess what all of her 600 blog posts were all about? Bacon, of course!
May 3 - Futurama
Though not especially warm, work outside today was comfortable in shorts and t-shirt with the added bonus of working away the winter lack of a tan. No lawn trimming this week though: instead I concentrated on the vital task of... driveway weeding. Man, things really GROW out here - the gentle almost-daily rain and warm climate means plants have a field day. I cannot count how many houses I have seen with masses of moss on their roofs, which grows wherever the tall trees let their shadows fall on a home.
in the evening I watched Bender's Big Score, the first of the Futurama direct-to-DVD releases that have followed after it was cancelled by Fox in 2003. I only found out about the DVD releases last year and picked up the first of the DVDs a few months ago at future shop on sale( of course! ). I've always been a fan the show for its wacky cast, great writing and unique visual animation style, though not nearly as big a fan as these folks are. If I could, I think I would go out next Halloween as Bender, though I would have to figure out a way to imitate the smoking cigar somehow... there are quite a few folks out there who love Bender. What's not to love?
'ta!
