It's not real - but it's funky

Speaking of Christmas trees, here's an artificial one that is sure to get your guests talking - the upside down tree. Hey - if you're expecting a lot of gifts, it's perfect! Lots more room underneath - YO!

Hey hosers! We need stubbies

For those of you who are curious, the introduction to The Show with Ze Frank that my friend Bernie and I are working on is missing one final set prop and we're ready to begin filming - stubby beer bottles.

If any of my readers (in Calgary) know where I can acquire (even on loan) some of these rarities (besides Crossroads - we already checked), we will mention you in our film.

[update] Never mind. We found some stubbies.

Wallpapers.................. get yer wallpapers

If you're the kind of person that likes to adorn your desktop background with a nice image, this site should offer you some original choices. With categories like Space; Abstract; Music; Illustrations and many selections from various contests, you're sure to find something special. The Space category alone is breathtakingly beautiful.

Retro garments

Here are some classic video game scarves.

Is it me, or am I dwelling a lot on clothing - you know - the kind that would make great presents?

Awww............ it's Christmas!

Found on Ohgizmo

Real Christmas tree? Why?

It boggles my mind why people still get real Christmas trees. Tradition aside, let's look at the down side of getting a real tree:

• Cutting trees down for temporary decoration is very wasteful
• Real trees don't stay fresh very long
• The needles get everywhere
• For what many people pay for a real tree, you could have a better looking fake one in two years
• They are a huge fire hazard
• Possibility of running into a Sasquatch while looking for trees in the woods
• That awful pine smell stays in the house for weeks ; D
  
• Did I mention they typically look pitiful?

We haven't had a real tree - ever. How about you?

Stake!

Aren't t-shirts fun?

More fun here.

P.S.: the title of the post is a play on the Subway exclamation "steak!". Get it? How would you kill a zombie? There ya go...........

More fun tees

Seen on a t-shirt online.

How well do you know me?

Or how well can you guess things about me? I will place the answers to 10 specific questions about me and you, my glorious readers, get to guess what the 10 questions were. It's like Jeopardy!
(please post your guesses in the comments)

1. 20 years
2. Heidi
3. Hamburgers
4. Grey
5. Montreal
6. Cannon Beach
7. Darlene
8. July 2004
9. TSX
10. Swim

I did it!

I was chosen Time Magazine's Person of the Year!

OK, so were you................

Come Robin.................. to the Bat Pisser.........

Victoria BC, is thinking of installing these high tech urinals for night-time use by those (men) who can't wait to get back to the hotel / home / homeless hangout to relieve themselves. These things disappear into the ground by day and pop up at night, allowing the men to drain the vein somewhere other than on the walls of the Legislature Building.

The device doesn't actually offer any privacy, just a receptacle for your post-processed beer. This is all very interesting, but what about the ladies?

West Edmonton Mall II?

I've been hearing rumours about a new shopping mall destined for the Calgary area, but the details have been coming in dribs and drabs. I finally found more information on it (thanks to Ernest), but its future is still uncertain.

The mall would be called Crossiron Mills and it would be patterned after Vaughan Mills outside of Toronto. But it's actually part of a huge complex that would include a horse race track ...errr Equine Centre, casino and some major hotels. At almost a million square feet, the mall will be quite large - the stated number of stores (180) is deceivingly low. There is currently an issue about where this huge development would get its water, so it will be interesting to see how much this delays the ball rolling. On the official web site, they're optimistically planning a 2008 opening.

Personally, I think this development is perfect - in fact the planners may be thinking too small. While the south half of Calgary and area is well serviced by malls, the north end is not. I take into account the nearby communities of Airdrie, the huge development still planned for Simons Valley and the entire north half of Calgary which will be serviced by the ring road, which would open up the mall to areas like Cochrane, Springbank, Bearspaw, etc.

Not to mention that the chosen site is a mere 8.5km up the highway from the Calgary International Airport (versus the 32km West Edmonton Mall is from their airport). See where I'm going with this?

Who likes fruitcake?

I don't know many people who like fruitcake. But I am one of those people. It's perfectly logical as to why I like it too. I was conditioned. My family would get fruitcake at Christmas time and put it away in the cupboard. Where it was forgotten. But not by me. That was my secret stash. When Karl was jonesing for a little some'n some'n, he would go at that fruitcake. He knew nobody would be the wiser. He was wrong - but it didn't matter. I likes me some fruitcake. But it has to be the rich, nutty kind with the cherries and pecans ready to fall off the thing like so much yummy avalanche material. Much to my surprise, Darlene likes fruitcake too. This has to be rare.

Anyone out there dig fruitcake? Any couples out there who both like the stuff?

When you need to know the distance

Never mind Google Planimeter. The panacea of map tools is here! GMaps Pedometer lets you double-click on points on a map and calculates the distance of the path you just drew in miles or kilometres.

Now I know it is 2.4km from my house to the nearest Tim Horton's.

Now you don't have to guess how far it is to drive to work for the purposes of reporting it to your insurance company.

You all tell the truth about that, right?

CG artists - I salute you

I have a new image gracing my Windows desktop (click the image to see the whole thing). This is some very imaginative CG artwork of a space city. It reminds me of Ringworld.

See what's behind you

I love cars. I love cool things about cool cars. For instance? Let me list some for you:

Heated side mirrors; HID headlights; traction control (and all its cousins); sports shift; keyless entry; auto-dimming rear view mirror; well designed cup holders; LED tail lights; Continuously variable transmissions; hybrid technology; etc.

But the coolest thing I've seen of late is the backup camera. Most of the time, you have to install this yourself. But one of my friends just bought a Nissan Murano - and it has a freaking backup camera! The image is displayed on the Murano's kick-ass display screen. But it even has guiding lines on the image, so you know how wide the vehicle is compared to the space you're backing into, and a line showing where you need to stop.

Now that's cool.

Dude!

Message to those not 'in the know'. The term dude now applies to both sexes. You call a guy or a girl 'dude'. The term dudette is no longer acceptable. But I understand the confusion, so let's pontificate, shall we? (Excerpt from Wikipedia) (with edits):

Depending on one's tone and body language, dude can mean a wide array of things:

• Hey! Look over here! or Wow! (with great emphasis or excitement; "DUDE")
• Shame on you! (Elongated and soft, often while shaking head; "Duuuuude")
• Are you ok? or Are you there? (Short, interrogative "Dude?")
• That is very cool! (Long, exclamatory, with emphasis on the long O sound; "Doood" [printed here phonetically])
• Oh my God. (Slightly elongated, with moderate emphasis)
• Woah... you are really pretty (while looking at a girl)
• Cool Person (Saying "The Dude")
• Dude, wassup? (greeting)

This use of 'dude' with body language was well demonstrated in the 1998 movie BASEketball where the two lead characters have an entire argument with the word 'dude'.

Coop: Dude, I'm not gonna cave in! End of story, dude!

Remer: Duuude?? (inquisitive)

Coop: Dude! (firm)

Remer: Dude!! (indignant)

Coop: Dude. (down-to-earth)

Remer: Dude! (argumentative)

Coop: DUDE! (even more argumentative)

Remer: Duude!! (firmly and contentiously) [Coop opens his mouth but says nothing. Remer continues firmly]

Remer: Dude. (in a more peaceful tone, seeking an end to hostilities)

Coop: [speechless, mouths around for something to say]I guess you got a point there. All right all right, look. Maybe I was wrong. From now on... we're full partners.

Quit changing stuff just because!

I don't know about you, but it bugs me when service providers change their rules or terms without telling you or asking for your input. [whining begins now]

I use eBay on occasion and was getting used to the way things had to be filled out when you set up an auction. But in the last couple of months, they seemed to have changed their form and it often defaults to settings I specifically did not choose - forcing me to really go through the form selections with a fine tooth comb before submitted an item for auction. Worse, if I forget to check something, eBay doesn't always make it easy to go back in and change things. I'm not saying it's impossible, they just don't have a very intuitive interface - or shall we say - it's now 'less' intuitive.

Then there's PayPal. When I started using PayPal, I only registered a credit card. This was perfect in that it allowed me to keep costs for things I bought for me separate from things I bought for Darlene - and earn Air Miles. I eventually had to register a bank account so I could withdraw the money directly instead of applying it to my credit card. But all purchases were debited from my credit card, even if there was a balance in my PayPal account. This was perfect. Well, guess what? Even they had to screw things up. Now, purchases are deducted from the account, until the account is empty. Then they deduct funds directly from my bank account - not my credit card. They explained to me that this is the default method now. But I don't want it that way. No problem they said - just change where the money's coming from every time you buy something. But it will always come from your PayPal funds by default if there are any.

Message to business world: Just because a change you're planning to implement makes sense to you, doesn't mean your customers want it......... try to remember - they're your customers and they have choices. If you're not going to give them choices - they will exercise their other big choice - to go elsewhere. [whining ends]

"How about some pity sex, Laverne?"

Everyone loves the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special. But you haven't seen it like this - the cast of Scrubs (yeah that show with the guy who wrote and starred in Garden State) overdubbed the special with their own voices. And totally different dialogue of course. Most definitely not safe for work - or the kids.

You're outta touch............

Rolling Stone has released their Top 100 Best Songs of 2006. The number one song? Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. How predictable was that? I'm actually amazed though at how few of the rest of the tunes I recognize.

Two bytes walk into.................. [buffering]................

The people who work at (visit?) Real Networks have a great sense of humour. I'm sorry if you have no idea who Real Networks are. OK, they're the people who make the Real Player. You know - for watching streaming internet video and audio content? Oh, never mind............. it's not even funny anymore.

More funny pictures here. And here (some are the same). I liked monorail cat too.

It's a good thing books don't do this

Here's a clever advertisement about books.

Plastic = evil........... OK, that's harsh....

A while back I vented about a problem I was having with my Palm. I never did get any satisfaction from the folks at Palm - they never did accept responsibility for their 'defect'. But I was still curious about the fact that my Tungsten E seemed to be susceptible to ESD (static).

Then it dawned on me. I have been using a special hard case to protect the device, which I purchased when the Palm was new. The case is made of plastic. Plastic is a very good creator and storer of static electricity. Could my case be storing enough static to jolt my Palm into unresponsiveness? As an experiment, I got rid of the case for a while and carried the Palm bare-assed in my pocket. I haven't had a freeze-up since.

Go figure.

But they are quite beautiful

If you like stunning images, then you'll like this site. 40 pictures total - may take a minute or two to load. There is of course no guarantee they're real - or untouched.

Free like presents

It's the holiday season - so how about treating yourself to some quality free software?

Before you click the map, it's pointless (ha ha - get it?)

I can only think of limited uses for this, but who am I to pre-judge the usefulness of something? Google Planimeter lets you trace points around a Google map, then the area represented by the trace is displayed at the bottom of the screen. So in this example, I traced around Parc Gatineau near Hull, Quebec. It's huge! About 370km squared. Or 143 square miles.

Can you make a dog chase its tail............. yes, yes you can

What do you get when you mix a dog, 2 cats and a laser pointer? Lots of laughs, of course.

Two heads better than one

I don't know many people who like mimes, but if you do, this one is pretty good. His name is Jerome Murat. The video is not short, so settle in for a show.

Roku wins

Before you read this post, read the next one down first.

So I bought the Roku Soundbridge M1001 at Best Buy on sale for $200. Once I had the device connected to my home theatre receiver and plugged it in, the next step was to configure the wireless networking. It found my wireless network right away and after entering my WEP key, was now a client on my network.

The next thing I had to do was install Windows Media Connect. Microsoft doesn't make this software easy to find now because it's built into Media Player 11, but with a little Googling, I found it. Once Media Connect is running, it's a simple matter of sharing out your mp3 folder(s) and then you should have full access to your mp3 collection on the Soundbridge. I had a Windows firewall issue, but documentation on Roku's site solved that problem.

It works! I only had one more thing to set up. The Soundbridge works best if you have playlists already stored in the shared folder (it can use playlists to catalogue all your music), so I opened Winamp, created a playlist (m3u file) of every song I had, called it "Everything" and saved it in the same folder as the rest of my songs. The Soundbridge found it no problem. I just opened the playlist, played the first song, hit the shuffle button on the remote and walked away. If you want to skip a song, you just hit the skip button. Otherwise, you can search by song, artist, or album. The sound is very good too.

I may be getting another one for upstairs.

Setting my music free

I've been researching multimedia solutions that would allow the sharing of mp3 music files I have on my PC to different areas of my house. The music I have just isn't being put to maximum use and the technology exists now to rectify that situation. I've been looking at 2 contenders: The Sonos system (pictured) and the Roku Soundbridge system.

The Sonos system revolves around a complex remote control device that manages every piece of the Sonos system. The idea is that you can buy 2 different Sonos modules. One only requires speakers to play your music collection, the other requires an amp and speakers. But while one module connects to your home network (to access the music on your PC), the other modules (you can have many) are put in any location where you'd want to listen to music. Each module acts as a wireless peer repeater, which means that each module can assist in getting the
music streamed to whatever device you're listening on, even if other modules are playing other songs at the same time (this is known as mesh networking for those of you in the know). It's quite a system, but because it's so complex, it costs a few bucks. The starter system is worth $1200, which gets you the remote and 2 modules, one with amplifier and one without. The only flaw I see with the Sonos system (besides the price) is that every module is controlled by the same single remote [edit] unless you get more remotes. So if you have 2 or more people listening to different modules at the same time, only one person can be controlling those modules. That could get hairy [edit] unless you get additional remotes. A Sonos user also commented that an advantage of the Sonos system is that you don't actually have to 'see' your player to make a change - thank you anonymous.....

The Roku Soundbridge system is a bit different. There is really only one type of module and it has no amplifier, so you need an amp and speakers to use it. The Soundbridge can hook to your network via built in wireless (B or G) or a network cable. But each Soundbridge is independant, with its own remote. You can have more than one, the maximum determined by what software you're serving out your music collection with on your PC. Windows Media Connect allows for 10 Soundbridges. The Soundbridge is not as easy to set up as the Sonos system and your networking skills will be put to the test to get it functioning, especially with Wireless. Each
Soundbridge is worth $250, so starting up with Roku is much cheaper than the Sonos solution, which is why I decided to give it a try.

More on the Roku Soundbridge experience in my next post.

Surefire business idea #203

Back in July 2004, I blogged about a business idea I have for if (or maybe I should say when) Canada legalizes marijuana.

Well, with the Conservatives in power, we know that isn't going to happen any time soon, so I have a backup plan. Imagine a fleet of trucks that wander industrial parks, mall parking lots and construction sites selling............. Tim Horton's coffee and donuts! Let it sink in.............

Yeah.