Out of The PIT

MJO told me about this video of some Star Wars scenes using James Earl Jones voice from Coming to America.

So here's a timeline of the ice storm for us: Saturday, December 21st 1700 drove through rain to go to Woburn reunion. Roads slippery but not bad. 2100 power out at the party house. Apparently there were bright blue and azure flashes outside before lights flickered out. 2130 leave the house. Neighborhood completely out of power. Traffic lights out. I remember to treat as four way stop, so long as I see them before I get there. 2200 get home and go to sleep. Decide to charge up portable battery. Sunday, December 22nd 0530 wake up to natures call and noticed that power was out 0730 take shower. Water getting cold 0900 drive to airport. Lots of branches and wires down on the ground. 0930 flight delayed 1000 bridge frozen mike can't disembark 1030 parents call. My phone dies. 1100 go to uncle Betty's. See streets that are cordoned off due to fallen brances blocking road. 1115 arrive at restaurant. Place is packed, half of the businesses on yonge are out of ...

I finally have been able to get to a location with power, so hopefully I will be able to repower my electronics. That and check my e-mail.

Apparently that story I've been telling people about those monkeys getting hosed did happen . I'd like to get a copy of those papers though.

We have been having issues at work where e-mail has not been coming in for some reason. Yesterday I decided to finally do something about it and run some tests. It took me a good part of the morning, but it was worth it. I found out that any message with the word "fax" was not coming in. After talking with the network guys, I found out that the spam filter was automatically updated to include "fax" in the filter. What? For a business e-mail system, not allowing "fax" is nearly as bad as not allowing "e-mail" or "phone". Sure, facsimiles are slowly going the way of the dinosaur, but still..

On the highway on my way to work on Wednesday, I came across a rider, which was rare enough at this time of the year. I noticed that the rider was wearing pants only, which at this time of the year was an invitation for frost bite despite the unseasonably warm weather that day. As I got closer, I noticed that the bike was Kawasaki in standard bright green paint, but I also noticed that it was a woman who was riding the bike! Kudos to her. It was even stranger when we both pulled up the Victoria Park exit, but I thought nothing much at that time. After work the same day, on my way to pick up MJNL, I found myself stuck in traffic getting on to Yonge. While sitting around in the jam I glanced to my left and noticed a rider next to me. It was a green Kawasaki and the rider.. It was the same rider from the morning! Holy crap! What were the odds? Oh, an aside about Kawasakis. When I was younger and was thinking about riding a motorcycle, I thought that I would have gotten myself a Kawasa...

You think this woman who lost her winning lottery ticket, only to be found by OLG was lucky? I think that this guy who was trapped at the bottom of the ocean for three days before being rescued was luckier! Also from Metro Morning , this interesting video of the best films of 2013 .

HKL forwarded a ST:TNG music video just in time for the holiday season.

So I finished A Dark Room . It took me half a day to play, and it was surprisingly addictive, but at least I finished it! I like how it built the story from nothing, and it reminded me of those classic text games like Angband , or Roadwar 2000 . But included the time based resource gathering of many of those mobile games you see today. I definitely would recommend this game to anyone to try if they have a day to kill.

RM mentioned The Day of the Doctor special that was on this past weekend and I had forgotten about checking it out. I have watched the new Doctor Who series only a handful of times. The type of sci-fi adventure that that show represents is not the type of entertainment that I am looking for these days. I do enjoy a bit of Whoness now and then, and I did used to watch it religiously while I was a kid, but then again, science fiction television shows at that time were.. sparse. Also, while I was getting The Day of the Doctor , I came across The Night of the Doctor as well. I did enjoy this special. It had a number of in jokes and a surprise cameo at the end. Oh, and Laz mentioned a game called A Dark Room . This reminds me of a cross between those old text adventure games and the time based mobile games that can be frustratingly time consuming, yet so addictive..

AI sent me a link for a very cool concept vehicle which I would like to get once I get rid of my current bike.

I was just reminded of Pacific Rim and one of the most glaring tech issues was equating nuclear power to being analog. Apart from the fact that you probably need lots of electronics to keep the reaction from running away from you, comparing different power sources and analog vs digital is like comparing apples to oranges! Or apples to airplanes! Or.. whatever. That shocking (in more ways than one) reveal reminded me of (spoiler alert!) another nuclear powered robot which had a similar twist: Giant Robo . At least in this story it makes way more sense. As the world moved towards a new and clean power source called the Shizuma Drive, people feared the problems of using nuclear power and thus got rid of it completely. Except there was a flaw with the Shizuma Drive..

Something I forgot to mention last month was one of the milestones that my car has had during my long tenure of driving it. I have owned my RSX for over ten years now. Now owning a car for ten years is not unheard of, but ten years is still a long time to own a car, and mine has been through its bumps and bruises. However, it has lasted this long and is still running very well, and I do plan on keeping the car, much to the chagrin of certain cousins who might want to take it off my hands once I am done with it. That being said, if the car is still running well, and still fulfills one's transportation requirements, why not keep it? Here's to another ten years of happy driving! *knocks on hood*

You know, ever since the whole Rob Ford thing blew up, I recalled that Ylvis video from a couple of months ago. I was thinking of doing a similar parody to this parody music video by This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

I went to a funeral tonight for one of MJNL's relatives and bumped into MK! Small world! I gotta tell GG.

Okay, I think I found out what my issue is with my USB drives. Since upgrading to Windows 8.1, my USB 3.0 drives have been disconnecting and reconnecting every fifteen minutes or so. Basically the device times out and disconnects. It is quite annoying if you are accessing the drive regularly. The workaround it to use the USB 2.0 port instead. Not the best solution, but at least I don't get any corrupted data..

AI sent me a link to the documents that were released yesterday regarding the Mayor.

I've been trying to upgrade my systems to Windows 8.1 but have not had a lot of luck. My server refuses to complete the upgrade, while my main computer is starting to act funny with the new OS. Some of my programs are not running as well and my USB drive seems to disconnect on occasion. Today, out building water pressure dropped to a level where we are getting nothing on the top floor. None of the toilets are working - even on the ground floor. I'm glad I already got all my business done this morning..

MJO sent me a link for a cool Fortress House , which I passed along to AI, who trumped me with some Tear-able Cloth !

I came across this cool Periodic Table of magnetism and states that was created for (by?) MinutePhysics .

It took a while for me to find it, but while I was talking about anime and cartoons with MIBAgentQ, I recalled a superhero interview show that involved some sort of ex-superhero that was doing some sort of late night show. The name of the super hero was Space Ghost and his talk show was Space Ghost Coast to Coast .

I recently came across these two youtube videos on how Episode 1 and Episode 2 could have been good.

Laz and HKL came over to play some Artemis yesterday. I wanted to try out the new version which included some new submarine type 3-d maneuvering. We tried to get MJO connected with us but we had some technical difficulties and he was never able to connect to my network for some reason. That was unfortunate, as we could've used the extra pair of hands. After our session, we decided to change gears and play some cards. I suggested that we play 8-5-3 since it was a great game for three people. HKL and I were a little fuzzy on the rules, but Wikipedia came to the rescue. They had the rules there, like the optional rule of looking at the kitty before discarding your card which we used, but there were a couple of rules that we had at Woburn that we implemented to try to make the game a bit more balanced. I was mostly Mahesh, LXC and I who came up with these rules after thousands of hands - yes we played this way too many times. The first new optional rule involved the first round of ...

Okay, it seems like there is already an LED globe in Tokyo , but it is obviously much larger than the one I was thinking of. It does do all the stuff I thought about for the personalized globes, but one more thing to add while I was thinking about these guys: It doesn't have to be just the globe it displays. We could also use it for displaying video for video conferencing, for true 3-D displays of objects. Problem of course is that a single camera would be unable to show off that type of information. You need multiple cameras at least to get a true representation of the object, but it just might be feasible.

Is there an app out there that will allow me to play my voice so that others can hear my voice as I would hear it myself?

I was at Home Sense yesterday and found that someone had left a small globe in the linen section of the store. I took a closer look and noticed that the globe was manufactured incorrectly: some of the maps got overlapped and so countries were either cut off or not even present! That was terrible, no wonder why nobody purchased it. I also took a close look to see if the globe was out of date, and it was (as most globes are). In this case, it was missing South Sudan. But this got me thinking: Why don't we have globes that are always up to date? We have the technology do we not? We already have LCD photo frames, why not have a LCD (or LED) world globe? Power requirements are not really that high, and it should be a snap to update with the latest maps. In fact, that could be your support stream. You can even sell more by including historical maps, or atlas information and even making it a touch screen so that the user can focus on a specific area to get more information. Cool.

For those of you folks interested in checking out any attractions around Ontario, there is a web site that is offering coupons that will reduce the price of your tickets by more than most general coupons. The place is called Attractions Ontario . We used it to get a 20% discount on our Ontario Science Centre tickets, and I think we'll be using it again for our Art Gallery of Ontario tickets..

It has been a pretty busy long weekend. MJNL and I took Friday off to go to a friend's wedding. Saturday was spent driving out to Brampton to pick up some pies before driving back to a clan gathering. Sunday was spent back in Brampton with MJNL's family for lunch and dinner. On Monday I went with Laz to the Ontario Science Centre to check out the Game On 2.0 exhibit. We both had high hopes, but were a little saddened to discover that for the most part it was a glorified video arcade. We were also shocked by the blatant sponsorship of just about every part of the centre. Come on, the escalator was sponsored! Last night MJNL and I had a nice anniversary dinner at Epic, which had really good food and service. We just ended up dinged with a $30 parking tab because we didn't know that parking was free at the restaurant..

Maybe if I had left a little earlier I would've been able to get to work on time? I was stuck on the highway for an hour because of one of these crashes . I was on my bike, so I didn't hear about the incident until I came upon it. Since I was already in the express lanes, I was stuck with the rest of the commuters there.

One of MJNL's friends wrote an article for the Globe and Mail a while ago. I only got around to reading it recently.

MJNL and I just had our first yellow watermelon. It tasted pretty much like the red watermelon.

MJNL wanted to try out a Vietnamese restaurant that was near us. The prices were a little higher than the norm, but considering the area, it was understandable. I made my order and was told that the food would be ready in fifteen to twenty minutes. A minute later, I got a call back telling me that the food would not be ready for thirty-five minutes. That was fine, but I decided to go a little early in case the food was done sooner. Well, I got down to the restaurant and put my bike on the curb in front of the restaurant. As I was going to go inside to pick up the food, I noticed a sign on the door indicating that the restaurant was closing it's doors at the end of the month! Crappy. If we didn't like the food, then that was bad. If we liked the food, then that was also bad! I got inside and was told that the food wasn't ready, so I hung around for several minutes while they prepared the food. After I had picked up the food and started out, I saw one of the patrons looking...

RM sent me a link for a video about some guy throwing a raccoon . Also, I got a call from my dad telling me that he just bought a car! I could have sworn that we told him to shop around first. Meh.

MJNL and I went to the Blue Jay's game last night. The less I speak of that game the better methinks. Before the game, we decided that we would have a quick meal and then head downtown. I was to pick up some Harvey's on the way home so that we could eat and go. The weather yesterday was nice (although it looked like it could rain) so I decided to ride to work. I made sure that I had plenty of space in my backpack to hold the food on the way home. I made our order and the moment he placed the cardboard cup holder on the counter, I realized my folly: There are no cup holders on my motorcycle. I had a several options: I could leave the drinks there, which seemed like a waste since, well, I probably would have saved money by just ordering the burgers and ignoring the drinks if I didn't need to get the meal deal. I could take the drinks with me in my bag, but that was a disaster waiting to happen. I could put the drinks in my jacket, but this was also a disaster wait...

So we had drinks with the (Woo-)Tang clan last night and we were placed at a table next to someone who looked like Ben Johnson. Everybody at the table thought it was him, except me. Of course, no one would confirm it, although Growly did want to bet me $50 that it was him. I was going to take him up on that offer except he asked the others if they agreed with him and they did. At that point my Conjecture of Truth kicked in: If everyone believes that it is true, then it is true. (Regardless of whether or not it is correct.) Being the lone dissenter amongst the group, I bit my tongue, but I still had to know for sure. So I went over and asked the guy if he was Ben Johnson. He was. I wonder what kind of look I had on my face. But I wished him a good night. An aside: girl and I went over to the front counter to leave our plate numbers and ask the concierge if Ben Johnson could be staying at the hotel. She looked at us quizzically and asked "Who is Ben Johnson?". She was 21. S...

Now, I'm not sure if this is really spam (I don't think it is because I saw it on my other account), but I just checked my Gmail spam folder, and found e-mail from Gmail about the new Gmail inbox. I guess enough people marked Gmail's own e-mail message as spam that it got thrown into there. Either that, or the automatic spam filter decided that the message was not worth relaying, even though it came from the same company.. Here's the content of the "spam": Meet the new inbox Inbox tabs put you back in control with simple organization so that you can see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. Watch the video Organized into categories You choose from five optional tabs: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. These categories make it easy to read messages of the same type all at once. Easy to customize Select the tabs you want from all five to none. And, if you see a message you want in a different tab, all...

Okay, I have been watching a fair bit of Periodic Videos and it's rekindled my interest in the elements. Apparently you can purchase some of these elements online. Thanks to NurdRage via xkcd, I found a place called GalliumSource , which has.. Gallium! Amongst other things..

I need to do some more analysis, but vacuum or zero point energy (ZPE) is a property of empty space, while dark energy is a repulsive force in the universe which seems to be causing the universe's expansion rate to increase. I saw somewhere that mentioned that within a proton, there are less energy fluctuations between the quarks than there is in empty space. Could ZPE be the source of dark energy? When there's more matter, there's less energy in space itself as the matter clears out those fluctuations. The more matter, the less fluctuations. I would envision this ZPE to act like a pressure, where empty space would push out against itself and more so against areas that have matter, causing the latter to clump together. I really should look at the maths again when I have the time.

Planetary Resources are crowd funding a space telescope . Seriously. I'm tempted to participate! I first heard about this on SciShow .

I came across this Reddiquette Song checking out the first list of Grey's Favorites . But honestly what I would like to do is find if anyone's done something similar to Unfinished London for Toronto. I've come across a lot of city planning changes to the city that I found really interesting, like Lower Bay Station , the Queen Line , the Allen Expressway , the Crosstown Expressway , etc. Does anyone know of anyone who made a quick documentary on these topics?

For any prime number P, the first multiple of the prime that is not already a multiple of another prime is P^2. I am sure someone has proved this already.

I found this page on how to properly eat certain foods, and now I forgot the source. Ah well!

A pretty minor one though. Weaker than the couple that we had in the past few years.

I did find a program that would generate a list of files from a directory that I could then put into a spreadsheet. This is not perfect, but considering how often I'll be updating the file, it should be good enough. The program is called Directory List & Print .

I haven't been able to find some sort of software solution to keep track of my files. I should explain. I, like many people, keep a folder of files that contain installation programs for the various drivers, software, etc. that I use on my computer. Maintenance of this folder is manual, and considering that the file names are usually a little obscure, keeping track of what file does what requires either renaming the file, placing it in a specific subfolder, or keeping track of the description in a text file in the directory (which I do - which is a laborious manual process). I would like some sort of software that will automatically refresh the folder listing with a database of information about what each file does, and if changes have occurred since the last refresh. I am sure something like that must be around, or if not, easy enough to code?

MJNL and I went to Twilight Tea with MIBAgentQ and BL. During the meal, BL was mentioning some neat math tricks where if you take a number, switch two digits, and then take the difference between the new number and the original number, the difference is divisible by 9. I told to her how it could be explained by simple algebra, with a fairly generic argument that the operation was the same as taking the difference of a digit multiplied by two different whole powers of 10. The difference would be the original digit multiplied by a number that was always divisible by 9, since the difference between any two whole powers of 10 is always a multiple of 9. For example: 100 - 1 = 99, or 10 - 1000 = -990. I thought about it for a bit and realized that the difference of any two integers will always be divisible by 9 so long as the signs of the two numbers match (both positive or both negative) and that both numbers use the same digits (order does not matter). I think I'll post a proof...

I got this video link from HKL.

AI sent me a link about a video of a cargo plane crash in Afghanistan just recently . Video was dated Feb 1st though..

MJNL and I are finishing off Hustle (finally) and coincidentally enough, Monaco just surfaced on Penny Arcade . It looks like quite an interesting game. Since I'm here, another game that Penny Arcade brought up was Dragon Crown, which mentioned Tower of Doom which I thought was one of the best games that came out that year in the arcade. I should see if I can find it again, that or the sequel: Shadow over Mystara .

My Christmas present from MJNL was a introductory flying lesson from the Canadian Flight Academy in Oshawa. I have always wanted to fly a plane, but getting an actual license costs quite a bit of cash. This introduction however, was a bit more affordable, especially considering that it was a group purchase. The skies were mostly clear and there was not too much wind, but I had hoped that the weather would be warmer (the high was five degrees Celsius) because I wanted to ride out to the airport. (It saves on gas.) I got to the airport right on time and was quickly introduced to the pilot. We walked out to the plane, a Cessna 152, which was smaller than I had expected. The gross weight was 1670 lbs and I was taller than the plane. Me standing next to the Cessna 152 that I got to fly. Also, the seating was tight for two average people, and I had a little trouble jamming myself into the cockpit. Still, I was looking forward for my first foray into the flying world! The pilot wa...

MJNL and I went to LW 's visitation tonight. It was good to see some of the group, even though it was not the best of circumstances.

Laz and I went to this year's board game jam and my mantra for this year was simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. The only idea I had was to either build or climb a pyramid, and from there, we designed Ziggurat. I was surprised how quickly we hammered out the game mechanics and started play testing with an Uno deck that we had used for Automa Arena. After play testing it a number of times, we were able to polish it a bit and we both really enjoy the game. Let's see how others like it..

I am sure others have thought of this, but consider the four classical elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. I do think that the ancients had an idea of what was going on, and in a way to classify all of matter, they did it in a way that they could grasp and convey the information using the language and technology of the time. I consider the classical elements more of a representation of all states of matter, which they did a good job of. Earth = Solid, Water = Liquid, Air = Gas, Fire = Plasma. (Although some might consider Aether = Plasma.) It would take until the modern era before they could truly explain the behaviour of matter with chemistry.

So yes, I got MJNL a new car for her 30th birthday. I had purchased the car along with MIBAgentQ a month ago, and we had to keep it secret since then. On top of that, we had to organize the date of the reveal, order cake, get bows, pick up the cars, hope that the weather would cooperate (we had a 30cm dump the day before which was much too close for comfort), and keep it on the down low. Apparently both twins were completely surprised and had no idea. Apparently they have no idea how to top these gifts, but considering how empty my wallet is now, I say that saving up for a house might be a good thing for the next little while..

Gosh, I've been busy haven't I? Saw an accident on my way to Growly's birthday party on Saturday. A car sideswiped a taxi. It was minor damage so I did not think I needed to stick around. I did have a good time wrestling and getting a long needed workout, except that I was still sick. It seems as if my body is not ready for physical activity yet as I still have to recover from the events of that day. On Sunday, I went snowboarding with MJNL and one of her co-workers. They got lost on the way to the ski hill, but the weather was not very good so I was glad I was not the one driving the car. I did witness some lady ski straight into the fence while I was on the chair lift. Since my snowboarding skills sucked, I ran from the chair to free her. Seems like there were no injuries and she was just stuck (for a few minutes). Later on the same lady fell down and couldn't get up, so I had to take the board off and help her get the skis off. I told her to walk down the hill....

I first heard about Spaceteam from Penny Arcade . It is kind of like Artemis in the sense that you require communication and more than one person. Otherwise, it is not. But it seems fun.

I first came across this group from a Vsauce leanback , but here are a couple of entertaining links. An Abridged History of Western Music in 16 Genres and a History of Misheard Lyrics .

Happy New Year world! I have been busy of late due to all of the end of year celebrations going on at this time of the year. So although we have been busy going from one gathering to another, or cleaning the apartment during whatever time we are at home, I have been unable to update this blog for the past two weeks! The holiday break went by quickly, and now I am faced with a new year already. How time flies. In any case, with the changes to the TFSA limit, I had to adjust my TFSA spreadsheet calculations. It should be a bit more managable when the limit changes again in a few years.