Iceland greener than ever

Iceland is on the way to becoming the first country in the world to stop using gasoline. Of course, they have a great supply of renewable energy.

He's not a cheese

This list of New Rules for 2006 is funny. My faves:

New Rule 5:
Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.

New Rule 8:
The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grandee half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low and one NutraSweet," ooh buddy, you're a huge asshole.

New Rule 10:
Just because your tattoo is a butterfly with Chinese characters under it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above your left breast and it translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant......

New Rule 13:
If you're going to insist on making movies based on crappy, old television shows, then you have to give everyone in the Cineplex a remote so we can see what's playing on the other screens. Let's remember the reason something was a television show in the first place is the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.

New Rule 16:
When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to know in months. "27 months." "He's two," will do just fine. He's not a cheese.......

Error 404 : Page not found

I like this cute take on the traditional Error 404 : page not found message you often get on the web.

Hey sleepy head!

I am thoroughly intrigued by the contagiousness of a yawn. Just reading this post about yawning will likely get you to yawn yourself. Isn't that weird?

Can't we all just move along?

This whole ring road fiasco in Calgary has me baffled. We desperately need a ring road completed to take some heat off the inner-city thoroughfares. But now that the T'suu T'ina have agreed to cooperate by letting the Southwest portion go through their land, citizens are complaining that traffic on the connecting roads will increase. Well, what did they expect? In reality, the traffic shouldn't increase, it should just become more balanced. Commuters will have two major ways to leave and return to their neighbourhood instead of one. This is a good thing. Maybe some people have already forgotten the rush-hour congestion along 14th St SW and Glenmore Trail?

Meanwhile, the T'suu T'ina are threatening to back out if they don't get the 2 connectors they need for their business park, etc. Good job everyone. Let's make sure we ruin another good plan for this city.

Polly wanna rat her

If you own a parrot or are in a relationship with someone who does, beware if you're thinking of cheating. Here's the story of a parrot that actually outed a cheater.

Small world

I'm reading this wonderful book Darlene got me for Christmas: Pink Floyd - Inside Out by Nick Mason (their drummer). It tells the story of the band from the time they met right up to Live 8. So, I'm looking through the pictures in the book and spot the guys in St Tropez with friends, including their road manager, Peter Watts. Also in the picture is their daughter, Naomi Watts, who looks to be about 4 or 5 years old. So I'm thinking - is that the Naomi Watts, the actress? Why in fact, yes it is...........

Words of wisdom from yours truly.......

Never tell a crazy person they're insane.............................. it just makes them mental!

Photoshop is a wonderful tool

Another great Worth1000 theme: Hell Freezes Over edition 5. Ashlee Simpson holding her many Grammy awards was cute, as was the free gas sign. But the one on the left was my fave.

Money changes everything.....

This is what money from oil can buy. Ski Dubai. The largest indoor snow park in the world. The longest run is 400m. There are 5 runs. -1C year-round. In Dubai. As in 'holy God is it ever hot in ______'. Gee, if they can build a snow park at a mall in Dubai with oil money, then we should be able to build a water park in a mall with...............

Never mind.

Another great Honda ad

Honda keep making great commercials - this one is from the UK. The site is linked from many places, so be patient. Once it loads, the link you want to click is Watch (the film).

Trying to dual boot Ubuntu with XP

So here's what happened. I tried installing Ubuntu, but ran into trouble with the built-in partitioning tool. I couldn't get my ntfs partition shrunk to free up some space for the Linux partitions. After a little Googling, I even tried using an alternate partitioning tool - qtparted, which I had on my Knoppix Live CD (live CDs are good for more than just demos). Qtparted couldn't do it either. A little more Googling uncovered a possible solution by running the Windows command chkdsk /f, which checks the ntfs partition for problems and tries to fix them (on the next boot). It worked. I could now use Qtparted to resize the partition. But then I ran into a new issue. Stupid Windows would not let go of a section of hard drive space in an area about 15 GB away from the end of the drive. I tried everything, 10+ defrags, alternate defrag programs, killing the swap file - nuthin' doin'. In the end I said screw it and took the measly 15GB I could get for Ubuntu and sacrificed my plan for a shared Fat32 partition (for swapping files between XP and Ubuntu).

The rest of the install was painless. I started with a wired network connection just to get things rolling and it went fine, once I configured the connection properly. Then I gave my wireless PCCard network card a try. Again, with the configuration. I had to choose hex WEP key, it was ASCII by default. But it worked! Impressive. Spent the rest of the morning trying out different screen resolutions, disabling the screensaver, tweaking the look of Firefox and trying out GAIM (to access MSN Messenger buddies).

Bottom line - installing Ubuntu (to dual boot with Windows) is not something I would recommend anyone but a seasoned user try on their own. Get or arrange for some help from someone familiar, it will go much smoother. Tutorial on dual-boot with ntfs.

Look mummy.......there's an airplane up in the sky

I love my Microsoft Flight Simulator program. But I have a feeling I'm going to like the next version even better. More pics here.

Hurry up Christmas 2006! (that's when it'll be out - supposedly)

Ubuntu - day 2

Well, it was a long day 1, let me tell you. Long story short - Windows doesn't make it easy to share space with a new OS. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suggest Microsoft purposely made their file system so inefficient - errrr I mean proprietary, as to disallow upstarts like Linux from running on the same PC. But I prevailed. I can now choose between XP and Ubuntu when I turn the computer on. First thing I was greeted with by Ubuntu? "We have some lovely updates - would you like them?" Yes please. P.S.: Firefox? Standard......

Here's a picture of the default desktop.

I dream of maglev

If this is what we have to look forward to in the future - I say "bring it on!" This breathtaking video of a maglev train in Japan(?) - watch it through, the best part is near the end, when you see the train speed by some bystanders. Weeeeeee! If we could build something like this in Canada....... awww man! Edmonton to Calgary - 45 minutes. Calgary to Winnipeg - 2 hours 45 minutes.

My 2nd Motivation poster

The motto is brilliant. We're not happy unless you're not happy. God, I love that!

No, it's not a Nigerian scam.........

Have you ever thought about giving Linux a try instead of Windows? Pundits claim Linux isn't ready for prime time. I'm going to give it a try over the next few months and report how it goes. I've chosen the Ubuntu distribution for a few reasons. It's free; they'll mail it to you on CD-ROM if you ask; it's dummied down to the point where anyone could use it; and they make it easier to find and trust add-on applications from the internet. In my mind, if all you use your PC for is e-mail, chat, web browsing and composing documents - you don't need no stinking Windows.

On the advice of a good friend, I took the Ubuntu Live CD out and booted my laptop from it instead of Windows (no install - just a live demo). Keep in mind, loading an operating system from a CD is inherently slow. After answering a few basic questions, I was looking at an Ubuntu desktop in under 4 minutes. I opened the menu, found Firefox, opened it and tried to surf the web. No go. I was intuitively able to find the network settings in the menu and simply enable the network connection. Click, click, done. I'm surfing the net using a new OS in 5 minutes. Windows is sound asleep on my hard drive, unaware that an interloper has complete control over my computer.

So now that I know it works with my hardware (wireless network card as yet untested), it's time to install Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup, keeping Windows in case I need it.

The kid is hot.....

When Google announced a while back that it was going to allow people to upload video to share with the masses, I had visions of the kind of 'world's funniest videos' crap that wouldn't even be bad enough to make 'worst of' episode. But here's an example of the true gems you can find - Tony Royster Jr. - 12 year old drummer extraordinaire......... wicked!

If you have to be annoying, at least use your name

Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name.

Inspiration................ if that's what you need....

The world's best quotes in 1 - 10 words. Food for thought.

Scary stuff boys and girls

This is why some people should not be allowed access to television production facilities folks. Behold Chip the Black Boy, Otto Kaiser, James Quall the scary White Guy who speaks funny and Mr Grey Spaceman, my children..........

Do yourself a favour, watch this through, or at very least, try and catch each of them speaking. Warning: This is not something that should be watched under the influence of any narcotic, hallucinogen or other drug. Be afraid................... be very afraid.

Disaster averted......

The coolest tool (OK....... OK...... it's a gadget) I have ever owned finally did something bad yesterday - it refused to turn on. GAACCKK!! I had to press on that scary reset button thingy on the back. All I can say is, good thing I back the thing up regularly.........Phew.

How's the weather out East?

What a winter we've been having here in Calgary. I knew things were milder than normal, but I had to look at the almanac to see just how mild.

Since December 8th, we've only had 7 days where the high was below 0C. 5 days were above 10C and 19 days were above 5C. It tried to snow here over the last 2 days, but all we ended up with was a dusting of snow.

Of course, we can be all smug about the terrific weather. But as usual, we'll be all ready for days to get longer than darkness in March and just when we're no longer thinking about snow and cold - BOOM! - we'll get the typical Spring dump of snow which will be with us until almost the end of April.

Way cool

More excellent retro game wear. The Super Mario 3 scarf. Why can I only find ultra-cool stuff like this made by individuals? Why can't you buy stuff like this in the stores? Huh? Why?

This is what 50 cents gets you.......

A homeowner nearby is hoping to subdivide their lot so a second house can be built on the other half. The City sent out notices to that effect, asking neighbours for their input, which was supposed to be sent back by .......... 10 January 2006. The problem - we only got the notice on .......... 10 January 2006. Being curious, I decided to see when the notice was drafted ........... 27 December 2005. That's like 14 days beforehand. Hmmmm. Maybe it sat on someone's desk at the City. So when was it postmarked? 28 December 2005. That's right, Canada Post took 13 calendar days, or 9 (non-holiday) working days to deliver a letter the distance it takes me 12 minutes to drive.

Well done Canada Post.

Bizarre

Your mission - should you choose to accept it, is to stare at this face for 20 seconds. Doesn't that drive you nuts? Try not to go mad.......

Some alcohol is good for you, but............

Check out these before and after pics of a 39 year old woman who went on a 30 day drinking binge for a Brit documentary. Holy! Check out how old she looks! Those bags under her eyes........

Soon, you'll be able to smell the coffee....

I am proud to be a resident of Calgary most of the time, but one thing I am ashamed of is that we will soon be (if we aren't already) the only major city left in Canada that has yet to ban smoking in every workplace (including bars, casinos, and night clubs). Sure we are scheduled to enact such a ban by 2008, but why wait? Almost every jurisdiction in the country warned that businesses would suffer under such a ban and the evidence I'm seeing and hearing is quite the contrary. People elsewhere are actually more inclined to go to the pub, now that such a visit is no longer spoiled by smoke-choked air. I don't contest that rules against smokers are very inconvenient to them (having been a smoker once myself), but everyone has the right to breathe cleaner air, no matter where they are - and even more importantly, no matter where they work.

If you agree, support SmokeFreeCalgary.

On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese.......

Some people are really having a fun time exploiting the whole Pastafarian (mock) religion - you know - those who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster? The latest entry is a brilliant church of the FSM, made of lego bricks. Oh my - where do I begin? Between the sign announcing the daily sermon on 'pirates and global warming'; the 'Touched By His Noodly Appendage' mural on an outside wall; the 'Shrine of the Lost Meatball' (and the hymn it inspired - can you guess what it is?); the free beer; the pirate fish............. totally awesome work.

Bloggies!

If you enjoy a number of blogs on a regular basis, you owe it to their authors to participate in the 6th annual Bloggies. They look for nominations in various regions of the world, best blog tag line, and types of blogs, like food blogs, humourous blogs, political blogs and tech blogs, among others. The site has links to past winners and I have to say the nominees and winners in each category are some of the finest bloggers in the world. It's been tons of fun visiting these sites. Hurry - nominations end 10 Jan 2006.

The Bloggies tag line says it best:
Millions of blogs.
Thousands of nominees.
151 finalists.
Thirty winners.