Stories, Swedes and Snow

Well, l'm not sure what to make of Brian hijacking my blog... my thoughts are akin to watching a chihuahua try to chew my leg off: good luck, little nipper. Though it'd be cute to watch him try, with those beady little eyes and that yappy noise he makes. Oh, the chihuahua, not Brian. Really.

Dec 8 - Butchart and Goldstream

Off today, but busy nonetheless; left in the late AM to travel north to Goldstream park. The stench of dead salmon was still strong despite the cool air; you could smell it from the road just as the trees began to close in from the park proper. But I was not there to see the dead dish, no - I was there to see eagles. Not just ANY eagles either: bald eagles. Yes, you heard correctly... this is the time of year when the bald eagles flock to cleanup duty, when the streams disgorge their cargo of dead fish into the estuaries and the eagles feast.

We ended up at the far end of Goldstream park, which was mercifully free of crowds, being a weekday and after the Salmon Run died off weeks ago... literally. The weather was great, illuminating the trees and their mossy coverings. We stood outside the Nature Lodge and watched at least a dozen bald eagles, both the parents and the young, in trees across the expanse of the 'Quiet Zone' which is an area where humans are forbidden to trespass or make noise - this has brought larger numbers of eagles back every year for years since its institution at this end of the park. Once I knew what to look for, the bald eagles were easy to spot( hi Brian! )as their heads looked like white golf balls against the green trees. Really - they looked just like that. Only, well, eagle-ish. Having a pair of good binoculars helped bring things close, and they were amazing to watch - there are live cameras accessible through this site here, which has cams for other wildlife parks in the area too.

On to lunch at the Waddling Dog, a bar with a great name, good food and mediocre service. Apparently, the bar is named after a mascot dachshund, whose bigger-than-life-sized image stands ready by the far entrance. They're up to John the 6th apparently, who spends most of his time sleeping under the counter by the main entrance - we didn't see him, as we arrived around 2pm and didn't want to bother the sodden crowd gathered around the sports scores at the main bar. The food was good, in decent portions, but the whole time we were given the feeling that the waitress would rather be anywhere else... she was easily the most inattentive and least personable waitress we've had in years. Not rude... just indifferent in large doses. Ah well... that's what tips are for, or in this case, lacking thereof.

Finally, we got to Butchart Gardens, arriving in time for me to actually get some pictures in daylight this time. Now that the winter is here, the flowers are in short supply, but there is still a lot of green everywhere; the lawns are full and lush despite the low temperatures, which surprised me. We took a walk through once while the daylight was waning, then set out again more slowly to capture the Christmas lights in all their glory - they go all-out here, with tens of thousands of lights strung all throughout the Gardens. They had the Twelve Days of Christmas done to the nines at various points in the park, like the Five Golden Rings here and here, seen after dark. You can see some other folk's pictures here, along with the IEOA Lighted Truck Parade that took place last week, which I missed due to work - again. Ah well... they have it every year, so I'll see it eventually.

Dec 9 - Frankly G33k Decorating

I spent a good part of the day moving my Blue Frankenstein from one side of my apartment to the other, which involved a lot of wire untangling and general cursing. It really made the place look bigger and less cluttered though, now that it is ensconced next to my couch and no longer a hulking, glowing focal point for the room. Quieter too, with fan noise being muffled by proximity to the fabric and not stuck out in the open to reflect off surfaces, like hardwood floors. A technical challenge though, to get the HDMI signal across the room to the TV, which a long cable solved... sort of. Once I had everything hooked up and turned it on, the video flickered, went red, and then went to static. A problem...

Which is the kind of thing I enjoy solving. After some head-scratching and cursing, I surmised that the signal being output by my video card simply wasn't strong enough to wend its way through twenty-five feet of cable and arrive all fresh and happy at the TV... hence the odd colour-then-static failure. So I grabbed a few extra cables and ran the signal through a handy HDMI splitter I'd purchased for other reasons... lo and behold: a perfectly strong boosted signal. Stick THAT in your tech support, ATI! I am bitter about ATI's total inability to solve my antiquated All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro video card issues, despite several years of emails... but since Microsoft can't solve my Xbox360 HDMI issues either, I have to make do with what I come up with.

Dec 10 - Swedish Shelves

After moving things around yesterday, I got down to the business of bookshelf-building today, as the final shelf has sat in a box in my bedroom for almost 11 months now awaiting space to be cleared. It took but an hour to put things together and set it up under my TV next to the fireplace, and I must say the room has a completed look to it now that the pile of PC cables and gear never gave it. Perhaps this is what things are moving towards: hiding the home computer out of sight so that only the interface, like wireless keyboards and a TV display, are visible. Aside from the PC modder community, I think this is how things will be for most folk, as nobody likes to see this taking up space in their living room or den. What with having a laptop now, the old PC has taken a back seat, mainly existing to heat my place in the winter while processing the latest BOINC files, as well as gather my email and serve media to the TV... not a bad life, as retired computers go; things could be much worse. Especially since in the ten years since this article on computer recycling was published, not much has changed - the only province in Canada to charge an environmental levy on electronic purchases is B.C. - how ironic! I love the fact that you can go to this RCBC website and look up available recycling methods for almost any product... lack of knowledge often results in things being landfilled that could otherwise be recycled.

On a completely unrelated note, the Swedish Chef has been on my mind of late. Nothing got me laughing faster while watching TV than an episode of The Muppets with the Chef on it. The way things always progressed from simple cooking to bizarre disaster was always creative and uproariously funny as well as being a new twist every time, guest stars aside. As befits a scion of St. Catharines, one of my favourite clips is the Chef showing us how to make a donut.

There is even a Swedish Chef Translator, which apparently has been around in one form or another for over a decade... who knew? Go ahead, use the Borkifier and see what happens!

Then there is the related Theory of Swedish Meatballs...

Dec 11 - Short Stories

Does anyone remember "The Storyteller" ? It was a great series designed to present fairy tales to modern audiences, created by who else but Jim Henson. It starred John Hurt, and was a great show to curl up in front of the fire with, so to speak. Other shows along the same lines were Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone and the live-action show Dinosaurs, again by Brian Henson.

My DVD copy of the Robotech Protoculture Collection arrived from Amazon.ca today, a used copy that was mailed to me all the way from England. Considering that a new copy is currently running around $150.00 CAN plus shipping, I got quite a sweet deal. Now I can erase all 80 or so episodes I recorded on my DVR last spring, which will clear a LOT of space, I tell you. Though since I don't use it to record much TV of late, the extra space isn't really necessary... again with the irony.

Dec 12 - Silly people, locks are for hicks!

I thought today would start out horribly, as I had no sooner arrived at work and locked the door behind me than Crazy Lady showed up wanting in. A too-long mime session later, she got the point that no, we were NOT open, that she could come back at 11am, and that the hours posted on the door DID actually apply to her as well as everyone else. Amazingly, she went away and only came back once to rattle the door at 10:50 am, ever so briefly, before coming back at 11:10 to act totally normal when dealing with me... not even a peep of derision for not opening the store immediately when she arrived. Perhaps she was discovering that Canada did not run to her schedule of needs, and that she might actually need to consult a bus schedule or read posted business hours once in a while?

Nah. She's crazy. That's all I have to say about today, as the rest was pretty normal.

Dec 13 - Snow. Yes, it is exciting. For some.

Late in the evening, well after I arrived home, it began to snow. Now, this is no big thing back in Niagara, but this is the first snow of the year for Victoria. For the last week, talk on the radio, among customers in the lobby, passers-by and total strangers can all be summed up with the question: "When do you think it will start snowing?" - again, it felt odd to me, but people here get excited. Not to mention silly, for a few simple cm of gently falling powder makes people cower inside their homes.

Which are not all that warm, with single-glazed windows and an almost total lack of insulation. Again I am astounded at the difference my insulation efforts have made to my apartment, as I have yet to turn on the heat despite the mercury dropping to a few notches below zero. Comfy inside? You betcha!

Here's a poem I wrote to keep up the spirits of one of my co-workers, as the heat failed in their branch today and they were wrapped up like an Eskimo in a meat locker:

Cold days should be warm, filled with happy thought,
Of hearth-warmth and the smiles it has brought.

Kettle's whistle brings cocoa in hand-warming mugs,
Curled up by the fire, stocking feet tucked in snug.

Snow flutters outside, silent piles of white,
As friends share stories on cold winter's night.

For the critical among my readers, I invite you to see this link on the world's greatest poet. The choice may surprise you. Or not. I know this poor guy would love to have been considered for the title above.

Dec 14 - Rocks Fall... no, not asteroids!

Well, the roads are covered in snow finally, but the stoic acceptance that is so Canadian meant most people simply piled on a few more layers and sauntered out into the weather. I was amused to see how some of my neighbours cleared snow from their yard: she with a shovel, he with... a garden hoe. Hoe, Hoe, Hoe, as the holiday Santas say.

Work was very quiet, and nobody bothered to come by in the last hours after the sun went down and things really started to chill. Though again some folks had different opinions on what 'cold' meant: the girl from Alberta, wearing only a blazer jacket, was used to -40C temps, and the guy from Saudi Arabia went on about how nice it was out compared to the sunstroke-inducing temps of his native country.

I was reading through an extremely funny online comic take on the Lord of The Rings saga, which looks at things as though the whole story was being played as an adventure by a group of gamers. Feel free to skip it if you've never played an RPG before, as you won't get most of the jokes. It's funny, trust me.

Erm, back to the point: one phrase mentioned in one of the comics is 'Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.' Now, this is a phrase that any old-school RPG gamer has heard at one time or another... but nobody seems to be able to put an origin to. Along of the lines of such phrases as 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey', the Rocks phrase seems to have sprung into being at the beginning of RPG lore. Funny as well too, as it is basically a cop-out, where the person running the game is tired of his player's whining and simply kills them off by saying the phrase. The look of shock on the players faces is usually worth it, but the whining almost never stops after that point. Speaking of which, did I have a point here somewhere...? Ah yes: obscure origins of phrases are endlessly fascinating. Well, to some, they are... and thanks to the 'net, there is now the Slang Dictionary - go read it before I break your crayons. Or something.

I was dead tired after work today, so much so that I kept falling asleep while typing up the blog after a late dinner. Perhaps the week just caught up to me, or I was just feeling warm and cozy curled up with the laptop tossing out heat like a hot brick - seriously, this thing can melt ice cubes in less than a minute. Which is not all that useful, but if you have nothing better to do you could look at this site, which compiles the Top 10 Time-Wasting Sites on the internet today. I wonder how much time it took to compile that list...?

Thanks to all those who sent their well-wishes during my last few weeks of illness... oh wait, nobody did. Well, thanks to those who might have thought about it, then forgot; after all, especially at this time of year, its the thought that counts. And chicken soup doesn't keep hot long during shipping... too bad.

Memories, Movies and Morals

Last year at this time, I was incredibly busy with settling into our temporary home over on Douglas St. So much so, that I had to catch up the blog some weeks later, based on my notes and what I could recall. How useful then, that the first thing I set up was my PC, to record such things... *grin* As it is, we broke 500 hits this week for the blog... wowsa!

Nov 10 - Spam and Urban Legends

All of us dislike spam email, and I daresay most of us dislike chain-letter emails. Myself, I find those various warnings 'passed on to your friends' to be VERY annoying, as I have often received the same warning year after year after year... about the same fictional topic, like Bill Gates giving away free money. One way to cut down on this waste of 'net bandwidth is to check with places like Snopes.com first, before forwarding something onwards... a common theme among these Urban Legend emails is to tug at emotional heartstrings or religious beliefs, like the 'Professor and the Dropped Chalk' legend. Which is why I like Snopes; it debunks a LOT of common urban legends, along the lines of the great Mythbusters show... one of the few things I miss about cable TV of late.

Bonus: What YOU can do to help Kill Spam Dead.

Nov 11 - Remember



Ninety years.

Nine decades since the end of the First World War, called the Great War, the War to End All Wars.

Yet it was followed only twenty years later by the Second World War. Did we learn anything?

Both wars saw horrific loss of life. Great evil was performed by mankind, in ways that still shock in the telling today.

The Veteran's Affairs website has simple, touching information about all the reasons we should never forget the sacrifices of the few, for the many. How the world came to be the way it is today, when ordinary men and women stood against tyrrany, often giving their lives so that we future generations could live in peace and never know the horrors of gobal war.

Here you can read about an American woman's visit to Belgium during the war, in 1916, with photos.

Perhaps this is why I am so fascinated with post-apocolyptic themes; I see the world as it could have been if history had taken a different turn... as it could have at any point in both wars, or before.

I am pleased to see television taking a less-glorious view of war in the last few decades; shows like Tour of Duty and even Space: Above and Beyond pulled no punches when it came to looking at the moral and visual horrors war brings to the human condition.

Never forget.

Nov 12 - Watch the Movies

Though it has been some time since I last saw a movie, I sill enjoy looking at what is coming out soon. Plus, there are some things that all of us can relate to when it comes to movies. For example, movie endings. Some movies end in ways that leave a lot of questions unanswered, or in a way that the viewer thinks is odd compared to the rest of the film. One place that looks at how movies SHOULD have ended is, well.. How It Should Have Ended.com - check out how Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars should have ended.

Speaking of Star Wars... being the cultural icon that it is, for the last thirty years, much has been made about it, by many people. Some of it funny, some of it bad... some of it just silly. For your viewing pleasure: Darth Vader does the Muppet's Mahanamahana song. And here is the original too. Heck, if you remember Cops from the early Fox Network days, then you'll love... Star Wars Cops!

As for movies coming up... check out The Watchmen, based on the famous graphical novel of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons some twenty years ago. Amazing stuff... as is the new Terminator movie concept art.

Nov 13 - Who is Harlan?

I have a lot of books on the shelves here, too many according to some people - I try not to listen to those folks. Other than living in an actual library, I cannot imagine any home of mine without a few shelves full of books. I remember reading an article a few years back about illiteracy in America, written by a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman who wrote that in 9 out of 10 homes he went to, the most 'literary' thing he saw in terms of reading materials were a few scattered magazines, in all the homes he was invited into over the years. He said it amazed him how few books he saw, in homes from all walks of life, which disturbed me, especially when he said that the TV was always in a prominent spot.

In a roundabout way then, this brings me to one of my favourite authors: Harlan Ellison. Famous not only for his works but also his acerbic attitude, I recently stumbled across a piece about Harlan's creative process. This article talks about how Harlan and a Polish surrealist artist combined their talents in a unique book; have a look at the article, as the paintings are incredible in their detail. Incidentally, he was the technical consultant on Babylon 5... another feather in that show's cap, in my opinion. Damn good writing.

Nov 14 - Wasted Tech

Ahem: GeekSpeak warning for those of you who avoid such... skip the below paragraph, and instead bemuse yourself with: CrazyThoughts.com - lots there to cogitate on!

Before I left Ontario, I had to divest myself of many old pieces of electronic and computer hardware that I had kept for various reasons. Mostly, I wanted to see if I could save or recycle moot of it instead of consigning it to the dump for the simple crime of being obsolete. In fact, I managed to salvage three PC systems which I gave to friends, after reformatting them with Ubuntu, a simple form of Linux that makes even old PC's run like new again... at least as basic email, media and web terminals. Thanks to Arthur for putting me onto Ubuntu; he was( and likely still is )a big Debian Linux fan. I like Linux for its flexibility and low overhead, but it still does not like to play with Windows...

Back to the old tech: a recent C|Net article tells how 60Minutes examines the awful human suffering that is behind a lot of the current efforts to recycle high-tech garbage, a lot of it going on in China. While some North American programs are in place, they are small and find it hard to turn any sort of profit with the current tech sector slump - not good news for my tech career aspirations for that matter either.

Nov 15 - My company is doing what?

A busy day at work, which is good; no customers means hours get cut, and too much of that would mean serious consideration put towards closing the branch. Not that it is anywhere close to that, but traffic this month has been light, given the economic downturn and the pre-holiday lull.

Along the lines of last week's cubicle blogging, anyone who has worked for a large company knows of the inevitable charts, graphs and other organizational clutter that evolves as management from many levels try to justify their salaries. A thought-provoking website, City of Work, looks at this with unique charts of their own, like this Productivity chart that makes sense to me in a very cynical way.

A somewhat dated Report on the 14 most Evil Corporations is an educating read. I remember hearing about some of this back in my first year of university, when I attended a world conference on corporate crimes held at McMaster University, as a reporter for The Brock Press. For me, it was eye-opening to learn about all the evil things that were being done by companies on a global scale, those same companies who sold their products in Canada with a squeaky-clean image that is blissfully unattached to their other activities.

Nov 16 - Fall Leaving

Yet another Sunday spent working, earning a wage instead of idling playing XboxLive games with my friends. Hardly fair, really, but I suppose we all cannot have every Sunday off... being the Day of Rest and all that. At least today was less busy than yesterday, so I had rest of a sort... and as an added plus, Crazy Lady was absent all week - something I was heartily grateful for. My last day of six in a row is tomorrow, a Monday( of course ); working all week by myself has been educational, in some ways. I've realized I work well on my own, don't need all that much company, and I don't have to close the door to the washroom when I feel the nature call. The last bit is nice, but unnecessary.

Cycling to work in the fall weather here is a change from what I am used to as well. There are tons of leaves on the roadside, literally piles and piles of them. What with all the trees around here, I am surprised that we are not knee-deep in leaves by now - rakes must be as common as dirt here to keep the piles in check. Which makes cycling around corners a little tricky in spots, as the windblown leaves tend to get smeared in a slippery layer sometimes. Yet the visuals here are spectacular... and me without my camera to get my own pictures, of course.



Fall in Victoria, B.C.

Coming home today, I could really smell the sea's salt tang in the air, as a light fog had rolled in. Just enough to flavour the air and give a tiny halo to each passing light, as well as bring out the rich, damp smell of the masses of leaves piled all along the roads... the smell brought back memories of times from my youth, when I would adventure in the ravine that ran along behind Westgate Park Drive in St. Catharines. The rich, damp earth and tall trees still echo with me today, in my love of forests and wild places... but not so much with the unpleasant aspects of camping and hiking. More of an abstract, wanna-hug-a-tree but don't want the mess of the bark, or the long trek to get there...


Damn, it's hot in here - ten degrees outside at 11pmPST, and twenty-five inside with the heat off. Great for the gas bill, though TerasenGas must hate me. Until next week folks, take care...

Searches, Spaghetti and Satchels

Being weather-sensitive has its ups and downs... so right now, with all the blah weather this week, I am feeling distinctly lacking in energy and verve. Good thing I have a sunlamp!

Oct 6th - Crazy Foreign Folk

Ah, Mondays. When you want to start off the week right...

Today marked the return of Crazy Lady from the UK. Yes, the same one who made my day a living hell back on Aug. 26th returned today to send some money back to the poor bastards who have to admit to knowing her across the pond - maybe they exiled her here? She was relatively restrained today, though regrettably not in a straitjacket. I was sweetness and light while serving her, in hopes of getting the hell out of the branch before her eyes rolled back in her head and the vomit started spewing. Still, she managed to complain that the branch "didn't smell right"( we have an Irish Cafe and a Chinese Restaurant on each side, respectively )as well as trying to start an argument about how... *ahem* Yes, I have to write this: how I had not properly underlined the rate of exchange.. which is a courtesy, as it's plainly printed on her receipt. Valiantly, I stopped myself from rolling my eyes - instead, I simply circled the relevant section and moved to the next customer. Would you believe she stood at the counter for another five minutes, trying to think of something else to complain about, before finally leaving? The man I was serving waited until she had left, then said "If she was any unhappier, the rain would be following her around." I grinned, but said nothing, of course.

One little factoid for you about money transfers: in Italy, getting a telegram is considered by many to be a Bad Omen, as most telegrams are notices that a family member has died. Telling someone you are receiving a wire transfer is MUCH better, as saying "I'm waiting for a telegram" will get you some shocked looks. Unfortunately, I have a feeling this is related to people who think black cats are bad luck... and in Italy, being a black cat is likely to lead to a shortened life, again at the hands of the ignorant. Some more Italian Superstitions can be found here, sans tomato sauce.

Related to that, we have this gallery of people who just don't care about others... when they park. Seems the world is full of folks who couldn't give a crap for their fellow man, or at least not while they are in a hurry to shop before the store / mall / beer store closes.

Oct 7th - Hauling Out the Pack

Ironing. Why, you ask, do clothes still need to be freed of wrinkles, decades after the invention of the Leisure Suit? As you may have guessed, I used part of my day today to catch up on the ironing, and it was not nearly as bad as I thought. There is something soothing about seeing a wrinkled mass of fabric turn into a smooth set of planes demarcated by buttons and seams. Modern fabrics are catchup up though, but still it is a slow road to the elimination of the iron from today's household.

I also went through the storage locker at my parent's place and found a few more 'missing' items, including my beloved Spalding satchel, not to be confused with a rucksack( the German word for backpack )or a messenger bag. This green bag( my fave colour, btw )got me through university and innumerable gaming sessions carrying extra-heavy loads of books, and is still in amazing shape. Now I'll be using it mainly as a laptop bag, which is a form of retirement, I guess... going easy on the satchel after all those years of hard work.

Though... maybe I should have bought a backpack back then, given all the shoulder strain involved. Kids today have it even worse, as this CNN article shows. Which is why I am all for projects like OLPC, which aims to give every child in the world a laptop, which in part would eliminate some of the heavy books toted to and from school. Along the same lines, Better World Books aims to raise social awareness while preventing thousands of books from being wasted - all from the work of two college students. Given the fact that many online book companies are merging, like the merging of local Victoria AbeBooks and Amazon.com, it's good to see smaller independents remaining, well, independent.

Oct 8th - Mad Max Lives!

For some reason Mad Max has been running around in my head this week. Perhaps the dated news that Mad Max 4 is in development, or that I found out that a die-cast version of the Interceptor is now available for fans... who knows? As I have mentioned before, apocalyptic stories, movies and related paraphernalia appeal to me, and the Max Max series of films was always well-realized. Other favourites of mine were the Wasteland game for the venerable AppleIIe, followed by its incomparable( and unofficial )sequel, Fallout. A fairly complete list of such games can be found here, and a great place that compiles all sorts of apocalyptic media is, well, Post-Apocolyptic Media.

An inevitable fallout of the Nuclear Crisis of the Sixties was the fallout shelter. You can read a little about these rad rec rooms at BadFads.com, which also compiles such things as the HackeySack and... the Leisure Suit! I think what I find fascinating about such things is that we can look back with the perspective of years and ask ourselves "What the heck was so great about it?"

Well, cheer up - have a look at an end of the world scenario, with zombies... and Lego!

Oct 9th - Churches That Aren't

Again with the Mad Max today... though it was due to the weather. The cold, actually: it was only five degrees outside whilst cycling to work, and let me tell you, that's not pleasant. Though most of me is fairly well covered, my face isn't, so cold air plus windchill equals a rather rosy nose and cheeks... which have been staying rosy for hours, ouch. So I popped on my smog mask, purchased a few years back for the joyful Smog Days of Summer in St. Catharines, and that seemed to do the trick. Though I looked a lot like one of the bandit drivers from the Mad Max movies, I was in good company: four Olympic cyclists showed up in Beijing last August wearing smog masks.

On a special note: the Church of the Banana v.2 went live, and will be continually improved as time permits. With our massive creative time and powerful drive for success, we should see our traffic double in no time... or within a few months, we hope. Tell your friends!

Some of you may remember back in May of 2005, that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was born. Though the Church of the Banana was not sparked from the same kind of debate of Evolution versus Directed Creationism, it can be said that the COTFSM was inspirational in that it still exists today, and inspires others to fight against society's stupider elements, some of them religious, some not. I mention this because I actually SAW a COTFSM 'fish' symbol today on a bumper of a car at a stoplight, and I managed to grab a picture of it. Hilarious! Take that, Jesus Fish... even the Darwin Fish has not the Hilarity Power of the COTFSM!

Oct 10th - Virtually Yours for the Asking

Thinking lately about superheroes, I found a useful site for those who find they have far too many enemies to deal with, and that their secretaries keep getting turned into lime jello by various death rays. Nemester.com is a wondeful place for a hero to compile a list of their dastardly counterparts.

Another site I have not visited for many a year is AskJeeves.com - which seems to be part search engine now, as well as a huge database of answers to questions on many topics. Back in the day, this sort of interactive database was new and shiny; many folk were thrilled just to see an answer pop up to their plain-english question instead of having to parse it word-by-word! Reminds me a little of the hype that surrounded Ananova.com, where a virtual talking head would read out the latest news in a 'realistic' simulation of a newscaster. Stories about how this sort of 'virtual actor' would replace traditional humans sprung up all over, but the tech quickly proved to be far behind the hype. Still, the subject is far from closed, and has ramifications for all of us, famous or not - if there is an image of you somewhere, does it belong to you, or someone else? Just for as long as you are alive, or for all time?

On that note, we jump from talk of virtual actors in LOTR to... Muppets and LOTR. If that appealed to your tastes, this candy version of the Battle For Helm's Deep will appeal even more. Enjoy!

Oct 11th - Searching for Life?

Considering I first heard the phrase "Google it!" from Spider Robinson at Torcon2003, searching the web is something I have managed to develop into a decent skill. Which means basically, that I do not waste too much time DOING my searches, as I arrive at results fairly quickly. For those of us who shudder when we see the phrase "1,450,000 Search Results" Google offers some basic tips. You can also find a more comprehensive guide here - you can amuse yourself by searching these three keywords: French, mlitary, victories ... and seeing how many results pop up.

While searching something local, I found this interesting tidbit from the past. Sixty-nine years ago today, a Victoria woman by the name of Ethel McCall had her story run in the Victoria Times Colonist on October 11th, 1939. It was about the early days of the submarine war from WWII, when the Germans in the early days of the conflict behaved much like their counterparts from more civilized eras. Too bad it degenerated so quickly into the modern mess we all know today.

On searches too: For a few years now I have been running a program called BOINC, which utilizes unused computer time to help with various computing projects around the world. Since I usually leave my PC on, I just let BOINC use it when I don't, to help search for cures to various diseases. I used to run a SETI@Home search program, but that's been doing very well recently. Now that the cool weather has moved in, leaving the PC on all day doesn't run the risk of overheating it, and the warm air really helps to keep my apartment cozy at the same time - I'll likely not turn on my gas fireplace until well into December, given my large south-facing windows and the extra insulation I've added to the walls of the place.

Oct 12th - Tic, Tac, Time

My, how time flies... or gets scribbled on bits of paper. Already the end of another week, and still so much left to do. Though one has to admire folk like Kate Kelton, whose claim to fame is... TicTacs.

Work was interesting today, in that a steady, simple day with just dull rain outside turned unusual at about an hour to closing time. Without warning( is there ever? )a massive power outage hit the Island - over 200,000 homes and businesses were affected, which included most of the South Island and so all of Victoria. It was off for over an hour, which was well past the branch's closing time. Of course, we had the usual brightsparks who peered in the darkened door both before AND after the posted closing times, looking confused. Perhaps they didn't notice the little clue that the WHOLE CITY was blacked out, and that maybe, just maybe, most places of business would NOT be open without power for little things like lights? Sometimes I wonder about how observant the general public is... then days like today confirm my already low opinion.

Though I did get a ride home, so cycling on the darkened streets was not to be...

Dang - I forgot to mention yodeling! Oh well... it's late on Thanksgiving Monday, and I just want to relax for a few hours tonight. More on Turkey Day next week!