Celebrity throw pillows

Free range gasoline!

Some people don't care where they get their gasoline from. Others always get their gas (when possible) from the same brand of gas station every time. I'm one of those latter people and I'm not sure exactly why.

My brand of choice is Shell. For any readers here who are not Canadian, my other choices are Petro-Canada, Esso, Mobil, Husky, Mohawk, Co-op, and Costco. Some places in Canada also have Texaco, Chevron, Ultramar, and Sinclair, but not in Alberta. I didn't mention any brands that aren't considered top-tier.

Why Shell? I like the logo. No, but seriously, I guess I drank the koolaid that suggested Shell made better gas. Their commercials always went on and on about how their gasoline was formulated with the best detergents and based on racing fuel. It's nitrogen enriched! I'm sure they aren't the only ones, but they said it first. V-Power! Shell was also the first brand to suggest that they are getting oil in the most ethical way possible. So, free-range gas, if you will. By the way, if you want a good laugh, search YouTube for old Shell commercials. But seriously - free range gas...... isn't that hilarious? [tap.. tap] Is this thing on?

But the most influential thing that kept me with Shell is the Air Miles rewards program. Shell gives Air Miles for purchases. I collect them. There's a reason the Air Miles parent company is called Loyalty Inc. What made buying Shell gas even better, for a while anyway, was the tag you could get. If you registered with them and gave them your credit card info, they sent you a chip-embedded RFID key tag that you used to pay for your gas. Tap, fill, done. Then they took the tag away. That was very disappointing. So, did I leave Shell?

Nope. Now I insert the credit card, tell it how much gas I plan to buy (for pre-authorization), plug in a PIN number, wait for authorization, remove the credit card, insert my Air Miles card, and only then can I start pumping gas. First world problems.

I still buy Shell whenever I can and fly a few free flights from time to time. Trivia: Jiffy Lube is owned by Shell. So is Pennzoil.

This is how unfriending worked pre-internet

Things I learned lately 21 Sep

• Chevy Chase in college, at Bard, had been in a band with a pair of classmates, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who would go on to form Steely Dan.
• La Belle et La Boeuf Burger Bar in Broisbriand Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, posts a letter on the windshield of cars left in the parking lot overnight (who obviously did not drink and drive). The letter invites them to come in and enjoy a free small poutine (pictured) for being responsible.
• The Tesla Model 3 got the highest 5 star safety rating from the NHTSA.
• The Apple iPhone XS, which costs $1379 and up (in Canada), does not come with a fast charger, it only comes with the cheapest 5W USB adapter. The 30W adapter is only $35 more.
• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that they plan to livestream the 2023 mission around the moon in real time, in HD virtual reality. He said, "It'll feel like you're there in real-time minus a few seconds for speed of light." He also anticipates SpaceX's Starlink satellite system to be operational by then, which should aid in the broadcast, particularly when the moon is between the Earth and the spaceship.
• There is a site that is tracking the false things President Trump has said (2321 and counting). 
• There is a site that has tracked everything Trump has done since taking office. 
• It took Puerto Rico 328 days to restore power to the entire island.
• The average regular worker would have to work for 167 years to earn as much as a typical CEO earns in one year.

More nonsense about creativity (I kid - it's definitely not nonsense)

I think that as adults we have a duty to keep reminding our children not to fear being wrong. As Sir Ken Robinson said, children don't learn creativity, they are born with it. They will try anything because they don't fear being wrong, or making a mistake.

The problem is that the school system teaches them that being wrong or making a mistake is bad. If you learn that making a mistake isn't good, you eventually stop taking risks. You meander through life. The school system educates the creativity out of you, unless you attend a school that promotes creativity above all else.

Worse, if children fear being wrong, they will stop challenging established theories and principles. Has every scientific theory stood the test of time? Absolutely not. It's a wonder that scientists have the courage to challenge what they were taught.

We need to remind our kids that nobody is 'absolutely right', nothing is completely 'figured out'. Our message to them needs to be 'challenge everything'. Embrace failure. Take risks. Help evolve the ideas of others, especially if they don't match your own ideas. Create. Anything. Nothing is finished. And there is no such thing as good or bad art. Art simply is. Whether you connect with it or not is just subjective. It was important in the mind of its creator and that's all that matters.

Incidentally, all of these messages are relevant to adults as well. The problem is finding adults who can still believe it. And if you do find them, send them to improv class.

This was inspired by a classic TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

Small things 14 Sep

• All odd numbers have an 'e' in them......
• Toast. Someone took a bite of some bread and said, "Cook it again..."
• Toast II. Someone went to cook some bread again, and someone said, "Wait. Dip it in this egg and cinnamon mixture first, then fry it."
• Toast III. Someone took some toast and said, "Awesome! Now I have something to mop up my runny egg yolk with." (Incidentally, do you think I could find a picture of someone using their toast to mop up their runny egg yolk? Nope)
• Mars is the only known planet inhabited solely by robots. In fact, you could say it was invaded by robots.
• Idea: instead of burning your Nikes, give them away to the homeless, or veterans.
• Scrambled eggs come from crazy chickens.
• Not that long ago, parents told their kids not to trust everything they read online. Now they be like, "Did you know that the democrats have a pedophile ring operating out of a pizza joint in DC?"
• I wonder what kids think when their parents tell them that their imaginary friend isn't real, then take them to church....
• Dyslexics hate it when they mean to write Santa for a puppy, but they end up writing Satan instead.

Voices as instruments

I have always wondered how the song 'I'm not in love' by 10CC was made. It became one of the top 5 songs of my youth, partly because the sound of the song was mesmerizing. That backing choral sound that seemed out of this world. How did they do that?

Well, here's the story. The boys basically recorded a bunch of vocal harmonies and played them back like a voice synthesizer, but using the mixing board sliders to play the notes. Incredible. The entire song follows the story in this clip.

Star Wars vs Calvin & Hobbes mashup

Things I learned lately 14 Sep

• Edmonton installed noise level sensors, some of which had LED displays showing decibel levels. That led to a competition from drivers trying to get high readings to display. The city has since disabled the displays.
• The author of 'How to murder your husband' was arrested for murdering her husband.
• The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is supported by about 200 friction piles that go 45m deep into the earth and are 1.5 m in diameter.
• The Burj Khalifa has a restaurant, the At.Mosphere, on the 122nd floor. Because it's so high, it can't use natural gas, so it uses a Spanish charcoal oven.
• 233,698 rail cars of crude oil per year are required to make up for each oil pipeline not built.
• Elon Musk has essentially said that the 3 Laws of Robotics (or AI for that matter) that was showcased in Isaac Asimov's science fiction books doesn't actually exist. Those famous rules that protect humans from AI and protect AI from humans have never been formally adopted by anyone. And the problem is that the only people with the authority to get to understand where AI capability is, and what needs to be done to prevent it from getting out of our control, don't feel the need to do anything right now. Of course, Elon thinks this is bad and that people need to start working on this now, because AI is going to become smart enough for us to have to deal with this topic sooner than most people expect. The biggest reason governments need to be proactive in this realm is that technology advances far faster than governments can react to those advancements.
• 2 underground nuclear bomb blasts were set off in Mississippi in the mid 1960s.
• New Zealand has banned foreigners from buying property there. There's a housing crisis believed to be caused by Chinese investors, which have driven up prices. Australians, and people from Singapore are exempt from the ban. New Zealand is being perceived as a good place to escape to if the world 'changes'.
• In South Korea, they sell a banana-a-day 5 pack (pictured), where each banana is a different ripeness, so you can eat one each day at the optimal ripeness.
• Heineken is developing marijuana infused drinks, as are most beer and alcohol makers. I'd like a Heineken Blackberry Kush please.....
• In related news, Corona just invested $4 billion in the Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth.

They spelled Krasinski wrong.......

Small things 7 Sep

• Fwiw, Nike doesn't care if you burn their stuff once you bought it........
• To the owner / CEO of any business who is complaining about minimum wage being increased, I would challenge you to live off of that hourly rate for one month without touching other money you have banked. I'll even grant you not having to cover your mortgage with those earnings. Bet you can't do it.....
• Elon Musk is short for Elongated Muskrat.
• Some talk to you in their free time and some free their time to talk to you.
• My favourite part of texting is when you keep seeing the 3 dots of the other person typing, for like 17 times in a row, and then when they finally press send you see "OK".
• A vanilla soy latte is basically a 3 bean soup.
• When a spouse gets up for work the other spouse still in bed probably thinks, "YES!! Now I get to spread out and relax......"

I guess it isn't classified anymore......

When you spend 20 years in a military trade that puts you in contact with things you're not allowed to talk about because they're classified, it's pretty weird when you see pictures of some of those things on the internet.

Like this front panel of an equipment I'm not supposed to talk about. In fact, I have no idea what it is. Yeah. No idea whatsoever. It definitely has nothing to do with military research of alien spacecraft. No, really. It doesn't.

LOL. I could tell you what it is, but then...... you know.......

Burn.....

In light of the fact that Nike chose Colin Kaepernick in their latest ad, and that people said they would burn their Nike stuff......

Things I learned lately 7 Sep

• Jeff Bezos makes the equivalent of $4 million. Per hour.
• A reporter asked seasoned yacht crew that were at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat show, if they were rich, would they buy a boat. The answer, overwhelmingly, was 'no'. Owners can expect to pay 10% of the purchase price annually on operating and maintaining a yacht.
• The most commonly spoken language in Coney Island is Russian.
• Aproximately 60 million electric bikes were produced in 2017. In France, 1 in 5 bikes sold are electric; in Germany, it's 1 in 3; in Holland, it's 1 in 2. (pictured: the French made Moustache Lundi) 
• Boscombe Pier, located in Bournemouth UK, has a mini golf where the golf balls are made of fish food and at the 18th hole, they fall through into the ocean and dissolve.
• Phrases that don't mean what they used to: riding shotgun (is just what it sounds like - helping a stagecoach driver by being ready to shoot at any would be robbers); highway robbery (you're literally being robbed); painting the town red (for real, as in willful property damage); read you the riot act (if this was happening in 1715, the police were one step from arrest you for being part of an assembled group of 12 or more); baker's dozen (started by bakers who wanted to avoid getting their hands chopped of for selling small or low quality bread); deadline (a line inside of the area where Federal prisoners of war were kept during the civil war. If a prisoner attempted to cross the line, they would be shot).
• Amazon is in the running to buy the Landmark movie theatre chain. Don't know if that would include Canadian Landmark brand cinemas.
• The American Legion would prefer if Trump spent the money for his big military parade on veterans. The parade has been pushed off to 2019 for now.
• It is not a good idea to drink your own pee as a survival strategy.

Chicken samich

Small things 31 Aug

• Imagine a President who suggests that if you impeach him, the stock market will go crazy and a lot of people will lose their money; and if the Democrats win midterm elections, there will be violence. Rule through fear and intimidation.
• "Who is this clown?" is a pretty good insult, because 1. you're calling them a clown, and 2. you're saying they're not even a well known clown.
• In Canada we have the "using 'sorry' unnecessarily" jar.
• I'm an Adobeist. I converted my family to PDF.
• Daylight savings should not happen at midnight, it should happen at 4:00 pm on a Friday. That would make it 5:00 pm and everyone gets to go home early.
• I have a dad bod. Or as I like to call it - a father figure.
• Youtube. Your child's first words might be "Don't forget to subscribe."
• If I live to be 100 and people ask me how I did it, I'm going to make something wacky up. 

Domino's review on Yelp

Happy birthday is so last year

There's a growing trend to stop singing 'happy birthday' to someone on their birthday and instead completely demolish the birthday boy/girl's favourite song.

I like this trend and I'm hoping it grows exponentially.

Things I learned lately 31 Aug

• A 10 bedroom penthouse apartment in Hell's Kitchen in NYC comes with some extra perks to try and sell it, because it's been on the market for 5 years. 2 tickets to outer space ($250,000 each); and extra 5,000 square feet (half of the next floor down); 2 Rolls Royce Phantoms and a Lamborghini Aventor ($1.2 million); a Hamptons vacation rental for one summer; court-side season tickets to the Brooklyn Nets for a year (up to $130,000); a $1 million yacht with one year of docking fees; a $2 million renovation credit to fix things you don't like. Cost: $85 million.
• Trump's disapproval rating hit 60% during the last week of August 2018.
• U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan ruled on May 23 that comments on the president's account, and those of other government officials, were public forums and that blocking Twitter Inc users for their views violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
• Google now sells a security dongle called the Titan Security Key (pictured). It is meant to be a physical layer of security to protect your Google account. Hackers would need your username, password, AND the dongle to get into your account. It costs $50 and either plugs into your USB port or pairs with your phone / tablet via Bluetooth or NFC.
• Trump's claim that Google is biased because it didn't promote his State of the Union address on 12 Jan 2016 is completely fabricated. Not only is the video he used to prove it fake, because the updated Google logo is missing, that day also featured a Cinderella doodle, also missing from the video clip.
• As of June 2018, Germany boasts 1 million homes that have rooftop solar installed. And now, 100,000 homes also have battery storage for excess electricity.
• People don't have a strong intuitive sense of how much bigger one billion is compared to one million. One million seconds is 11.5 days. One billion seconds is 31.7 years.
• Typical garage sale banter: Browser: How Much? Seller: $2 Browser: Are you firm on that price? Seller: .........................

Refugee statistics

• Number of asylum seekers who entered Canada illegally in 2017: 18,116
• Number of people who entered Canada and made refugee claims in total in 2017: 50,469
• Number of people who entered Canada and made refugee claims in total in 2001: 44,640
• UNHCR estimates of forcibly displaced people: 68.5 million worldwide
• UNHCR estimates of refugees forced to flee conflict or persecution in their home countries: 25.4 million
• Number of refugees Turkey is coping with: 3,500,000
• Number of refugees Pakistan, Uganda, Lebanon and Iran are coping with: 1,400,000; 1,400,000; 1,000,000; and 980,000 respectively.
• Number of refugees that entered Europe (Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain) by sea in 2016: 363,504
• Number of refugees Germany is coping with: 186,644 in 2017

Small things 24 Aug

• Dentists make money off of people with bad teeth. So why should I buy toothpaste that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend?
• Being an adult means you still know you shouldn't eat just dessert for your supper. But you know you can. And we damned well do too. 
• The stock market. If you're rich and it goes up, you make money. If it goes down, you lose money. If you're poor and it goes up, nothing happens. If it goes down, you lose your job.
• A colleague at work has Matthew McConaughy saying his famous "Alright, alright alright..." line as a ring tone. It made me smile.
• Is a rubber gasket on an aircraft carrier considered a Navy seal?
• Geology rocks. But Geography is where it's at..............
• A pentagon has five sides. How many sides does an Oregon have?

Zoom earth

It's always cool to look at the world in satellite view in Google Maps or Google earth, but the pictures aren't live.

Well, Zoom Earth gives you a much more recent satellite image. You can even go back in time. So for example, I can see that on 16 March 2018, while Toronto and southwestern Ontario were free of snow, most of the rest of Canada was still covered in the white stuff.

In the picture above, taken 16 Aug 2018, we see just how much wildfire smoke is drifting from British Columbia into Alberta and right across the prairies and into Ontario. That's Hudson's Bay at top right.

Things I learned lately 24 Aug

• Google Chrome plans to stop supporting Flash web content by 2020. As it is, you'll have to enable flash web site by web site.
• If you omit the terrorist attacks on September 11, in 41 years (1975-2015) only 41 US citizens were killed by a foreign born terrorist. In 30 of those 41 years, nobody was killed in such an attack.
• Roughly 1.6% of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated in the US, compared to 3.3% of the native-born. That's less than half.
• Cameron Crowe only got to direct the movie he wrote, Say Anything, because nobody else was available. He had never done it before and really had no idea what he was doing. He didn't even consider doing scenes from multiple angles until people told him it was something he had to do.
• Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that 39% of university grads and 33% of college grads are overqualified for their current jobs.
• In Canada, 62.6% of 20-24 year olds still live with their parents.
• Visible minorities make up 51.4% of the population of urban Toronto.

It's 4:25 somewhere.........

Oh Henry put out a limited edition chocolate bar to commemorate the legalization of cannabis, called 4:25.

Get it?

Yes that's Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad

Computer musical accompaniment is now a thing

Olafur Arnalds, the Icelandic composer known for the title music in the UK TV series Broadchurch, did a Tiny Desk concert on NPR lately that is an amazing example of how technology can be leveraged to create music in an entirely new way.

At the 3:55 mark, he starts to play his synthesizer, but the two pianos behind him accompany him on their own, as if a ghost is playing the keys. In fact, he's using a system called Stratus, which listens to what he's playing, and responds by creating patterns that are musically in tune with the chord or notes Ólafur performed.

"Basically, it's a way to break out of the box musicians often fall back on as performers — the familiar responses that years of playing can reinforce. With that is the hope that the computer will create a response that is unfamiliar and, in some cases through speed of performance and the sheer number of notes played, impossible for a human to have made. So, it breathes new life into the music for the listener and the performer."

Small things 11 Aug

• When you visit the doctor and they ask, "How are you?" and you say "Fine." Why don't they say "Well, I guess we're done here....."?
• When I can smell your cologne from the next car at the red light....... you're wearing too much, okay?
• Veni Vidi Wiki. I came, I saw, I edited collaboratively.....
• Never tease a little person with a really high five.....
• "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect." ~Mark Twain 

Dear pipeline protesters: You're too late

Somehow I think that people protesting pipelines haven't seen this map.

The purple lines are all the oil pipelines in Alberta. The orange lines are all the natural gas pipelines.

I tried to find an equivalent map of BC and failed, but I hope I made my point.

Model 3 sales not doing well? Fake news my friends......

Things I learned lately 11 Aug

• There are still about 1000 homes without electricity in Puerto Rico one year after Hurricane Maria.
• It takes Kylie Jenner just over 2 hours to make as much money as the average American makes in a year.
• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed a man by crucifixion in Mecca on 8 August amid waging a public-relations battle with Canada over human rights. The man was accused of murder, theft, and attempted rape.
• Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte will debut on August 28 this year, according to internal documents.
• KFC announced on 6 August that the newest celebrity Colonel is Jason Alexander, best known for playing George Costanza on "Seinfeld."
• Facebook has been in talks with banks about accessing users' financial data and integrating it into its platform. Facebook is reportedly considering showing users their bank balance or potential fraud alerts, as well as encouraging people to use its Messenger app more, if the partnerships ultimately go ahead. Needless to say, after what's been happening to user data, most people are not thrilled with this development.
• McDonald's employees typically have a hard time getting the smell of fries out of their clothes.
• In the new version of GMail, you can send messages in 'confidential mode', where the recipient won't be able to forward, copy/paste, download, or print your email. You can also enable an SMS pass-code requirement to open the email.
• The Mercatus report on Bernie Sander's plan to extend Medicare to all Americans cost of $32.6 trillion from 2022 to 2031 doesn't take a few things into account. For one, it doesn't allow for the concept of lowered costs due to mass purchasing power. It doesn't allow for reduced insurance costs when profit isn't priority one. It doesn't take into account that one of the reasons healthcare costs are as high as they are is because uninsured people tend to wait until their illness is serious, which tends to cost more to cure. When people don't hesitate to go to their doctor, problems can usually be solved before they get out of control.