The irrational number song

Here is a gift of a web link you can send to anyone you know interested in math............. the Pi song. Unlike real pi, it keeps repeating itself though.....

It's catchy..... in a geometrical sort of way.

Silly thought of the day....

If I were a chef on TV, I'd specifically plan to cook up at least one pesto recipe. The whole point would be to set up a completely hoakey impression of Bullwinkle as I unveil the finished dish: "Nothing up my sleeve................. PESTO!"

Reviewing the Pulse (part two)

I finally had a chance to watch part two of Pink Floyd's new Pulse concert DVD. I would have been happy if the concert had been limited to just this one DVD. Basically the entire album Dark Side of the Moon is played, then they come back for a 3 song encore. I cannot even begin to imagine what this band spends on lighting and effects - but they were superb. Speaking of which, the little movies that were created to go along with certain tunes is included on the DVD as a separate section. All in all - if you're a fan of the Floyd, you want to get this DVD.

The only instrument is her voice

Every once in a while I come across something really eclectic that puts a smile on my face. Today it was Petra Hayden. Check out the amazing a cappella remake of Michael Jackson's Thriller - even the instrumentation is done with her voice. Stay long enough, you'll even hear her take on God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. Entertaining stuff.

Shorts in the summer....... how fitting

The National Film Board of Canada is very well-known the world over for its animated shorts, many of them Oscar-nominated. In case you've missed out on some of the gems they've produced, or just want a chance to see them again - you're in luck. The NFB has put some of the classics online for your viewing pleasure. The Sweater (about the Habs fan kid who gets a Toronto jersey instead); The Snit (about the guy who loves to saw); The Cat Came Back (probably the most known of the collection; Neighbours (the stop-motion clip about two neighbours fighting)...... A lot of stuff to see and an important part of our culture.

No more dual-booting

Some people are getting more curious about Linux. The distribution that seems to be getting a lot of exposure lately is Ubuntu. Then of course is the talk about that alternative web browser - Firefox. Well, if you are truly curious about giving Linux a try, there's no need to install it on your computer. You don't even need a Live CD. All you need is VMWare Player 1.0.1 and an image file to run the Ubuntu Browser Appliance (a 250MB download).

If you're not very technical, I'll try to be gentle with my explanation. You know how you run a program like MS Word in Windows? Well, VMWare Player lets you run whole virtual computers (running operating systems other than what you're running right now) as if it were just another program window. With the Browser Appliance image, you get to play with (the 5.10 version of) Ubuntu on your computer with the ability to switch back and forth to Windows at any time. The browser appliance is being touted as the safe way to cruise the nasty Internets, because any attempt to affect your Ubuntu computer is moot - it's just a virtual computer with no power to do anything to your real system - and - ready to be killed by simply closing VMWare. This is not only a safe way to browse, but a very unique method of test driving Ubuntu. Oh yeah - it's all free. If you're interested in all the virtual appliances that can be downloaded and run in the player, visit here. The list includes an actual full-blown Ubuntu 6.10 image and other versions of Linux.

Note: the VMWare player will give you much better results if you're running a late model computer with at least 512MB of RAM memory.

Bye bye Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader is a good example of bloatware. Bloatware is software that is way too bloated with stuff you'll probably never use, or bloated with inefficient code. Some people call it 'features'. I don't regard Firefox (or any browser for that matter) coughing up a hairball after viewing pdf files as a feature.

Wean yourself off the bloat - uninstall Adobe Acrobat and get a slim, trim reader like Foxit.

"You wanna know about three?"

Ask a Ninja tells the story about three. Watch for the toasted marshmallow.........

(how's he gonna eat that?)

Bad analogies

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

My favourite: "She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef."

More here.

Don't feed the machine!

You should never put food in your CD player. But if you did.................

But... can you count that high?

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go before you would find the letter "A"?

I put the answer in the comments.

Karl's tips on life - kitchen safety tip

Don't take out or put in your contact lenses immediately after cutting hot peppers.

Reviewing the Pulse

So now that the surround system is tweaked, I decided to sit back and enjoy the new Pink Floyd concert DVD - the re-mastered Pulse from 1994. I'm being brutally honest when I say that it's unfortunate that part one of the concert was dominated by Floyd's work post-Roger Waters. Not that this work is terrible, but one has to admit it doesn't quite measure up to material from The Wall and prior. Nevertheless, the sound and images were spectacular. The highlight so far (limited to part one) was the song Sorrow - particularly the guitar solo that opens and closes the song. My word - David Gilmour can make that guitar sing ............. my liver is still vibrating.

Blast from the past

If you're relatively new to this blog, give the archives a look. A highlight: 100 things about me (just updated today!)

Yes, that's me - from 1983......

No really - a real stick!

When I say memory stick, what image comes to mind? Some artificial-looking slab of plastic, right? Maybe it's time to get a memory stick that actually looks like a stick, no? No two pieces alike...... Could create a whole new term - burning to your stick.

Karl's tips on life - soap tip

As silly as it may sounds, dishwashing liquid should never go into a dishwasher. Dishwasher liquid is preferable and will not leave soap suds all over the kitchen.........

No, I have never done this myself....

I came along at the peak of Karldom

This scores very high on my coolness meter. The Baby Name Wizard will take whatever name you type and give you a statistical graph showing its popularity over the centuries. In my case, I typed in Karl and hit enter. See where that spike in Karl-ness occurs? That's when I was born! Coincidence? Not bloody likely. I tried Darlene's name - guess what? It peaks just a few years before she was named. Heidi! (my sister) Try it out. Talk about a peak in Heidis when you were born little sister!

[insert Twilight Zone music here]

What goes up must come down

Here's something you don't see every day. NASA attached a camera to one of its rocket boosters on the last shuttle flight. It managed to record the entire launch, up until the time the booster separates from the shuttle, then catches the booster falling back to earth and into the ocean. It's a good 8 or 9 minutes long, but worth it if you're into that kinda thing.......

How did you find me?

I have a statistics package running on this blog. It helps me see where readers are coming from and what brought them here, including what they were searching for that led them to this blog. What I find most intriguing is not so much what people were searching for that led them to my blog - but using which search page. I've been a slave to Google lo these past few years, but it turns out that when I try to find links to this blog on topics that I know I have blogged, Google doesn't rank my posts very highly. That's not really a surprise to me - what is a surprise is that an alternative search, like Yahoo turns up a link to my posts well within the first 5 pages of results. I only made this discovery because others have been finding my posts similarly. Perhaps I will have to start considering alternatives to Googling full time.

Their ears are ringing

How's this for creative - sheep made from telephones and telephone cables..........

See more here.

Karl's tips on life - musical standards edition

If you want a true measure of a music artist, listen to their whole album........

I'm surrounded!

Well, it certainly took long enough, but I finally got all the pieces together that I needed to finish building my home theatre. I was missing a surround receiver and the rest of the speakers. Not anymore. So today was setup day. A lot of cable hookups (one of which I did wrong - in haste); running speaker wire; testing; device configuration........ it was not an easy task. I have no confidence that the average consumer would be able to figure all of this crap out. I has a few issues to fix, including the fact that both my DVD player and my PVR were not set up to output digital audio [shrug]. The receiver (a Denon) has its own auto-setup feature for setting all the channel sound levels, but I wasn't too thrilled with its result. Meanwhile, the system overall sounds quieter than my old 2 channel setup - I still don't know why. But that's my only remaining issue. Now it's time to go through the DVD collection and replay some movies in surround baby!

It's too much bull for me

Perhaps it's my maturityold age combined with a dash of no longer being able to accept the standard "because we've always done it that way" answer anymore, but I have begun to question the value of rodeos. Yeah, I can hear the Westerners fuming already. Hell, I'm living in Calgary fercrissakes, home of the world-famous Stampede. But allow me to continue.

I think I understand what a rodeo is about. It's a competition showcasing the skills that developed as part of Western life. Well - with the exception maybe of riding the bull. That's just plain showing off. The point is, while the skills themselves may merit developing, I don't believe animals getting hurt or killed to showcase them is appropriate anymore. I mean, the ability to avoid and outrun a bear in the wild is an important skill. But we don't go showcasing it by tossing an innocent family into the ring with a bear and waiting to see how long before the fight or flight instinct kicks in. In fact even an act as bizarre as bull riding has been (in bars anyway) modernized by the mechanical bull.

So while Stampede will always be a great showcase for agriculture, cowpeople and the only official venue for getting mini-donuts - I hope the rodeo aspect of the exhibition is something that will become a distant memory.............. These are my thoughts only.

See you on the dark side of the moon.....

What a bizarre coincidence happened today. It was announced that Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd has passed away. A coincidence, because what is likely to be the final release of material from The Floyd - the re-mastered Pulse concert from Earl's Court in 1994, was also released today. By the way, this new DVD includes the first ever footage of The Floyd performing the entire album Dark Side of the Moon - sans Roger Waters.

Young Americans

Music trivia time......... which of the following artists did not appear on the David Bowie album Young Americans (hits included Young Americans, Fame.....):

Luther Vandross
John Lennon
David Sanborn
Randy Jackson

The answer is provided in the comments.........................

Kinda sums up my feelings on gas prices....

Legs, don't fail me now - or ever....

I feel sorry for handicapped people who depend on public transit to get around. I watched one poor older lady in a Medical Lab try to deal with the fact that she had been waiting 45 minutes for a Handi-bus to come get her from the lab. When she phoned, they claimed that the bus had come and gone since she was not ready. She explained in vain that it's not her fault the lab took so long to process her blood requisition. The Handi-bus folks told her it would be another hour and a half before the next ride. What a waste of a day just to get a friggin' blood test. From what Darlene tells me, it's not any better at Cancer Treatment Centres.

Karl's tips on life - nature moment

Animals don't necessarily cross at their respective crossings. For example, deer don't always cross at "deer crossing" signs. Nor do they look both ways before they cross. Come to think of it............... neither do children...

Little girl - big pipes

I haven't been watching this America's Got Talent show, but I heard this 11 year old girl blew the folks away with her performance. So much so, they basically told her she had essentially won the contest if she just changed her wardrobe.

Food data you can use

Some people I know spend a lot of time analyzing their diet for health reasons. I'm one of those people. That's why I found this site, Nutrition Data, to be the most sophisticated analysis site out there. Example: I wanted to know the scoop on almonds (follow along if you'd like). Up in the top right hand corner, type in the name of the thing - in this case almond. Click food search. It lists all the things it has data on with almond in it, including the one I was looking for - nuts, almonds, dry roasted, with salt added. Click the entry you want data on and voila - oodles of information.

But you can approach this from the other side - if you want to know what foods will meet a certain criteria, choose Food Category Explorer from the Tools menu. Choose the spot on one of the 2 coloured maps that describes the caloric ratio or fullness vs. nutritious factor and click. It will list what foods fall onto that part of the graph.