cat /dev/brain

I spend an inordinate amount of time using Firefox, both at work and at home. (No it’s not wasted time, most of my work involves online information.) My biggest beef with Firefox 1.5 was the incredibly slow and CPU-consuming performance when hitting a page that included Flash objects. Then I found Flashblock. It blocks all…

We went to see the latest Disney creation this weekend, the first movie (of seven?) of the Chronicles of Narnia. Yes, I know, Prince Caspian is the first book, and there were other (awful) movies. This is the first good one. The movie was incredible, and very true to the book, I didn’t find any…

Now this guy (WMV file) has way, way too much time (and money) on his hands. I bet he drives his neighbours crazy.

Last weekend found us in Ottawa, visiting my brother Brian and his lovely wife Alanna. Their little guy Lucas was a bit shy at first, and was completely stunned by the amount of noise our three kids could make. Then to top it off, he couldn’t even sleep in his own bed, which his parents…

Remember the stories about the fire department rescuing cats in trees? This gentlemen had to be rescued after getting stuck 40 feet up the mast of his sailboat.

After having declared my undying love for the Googlebar in Firefox, I upgraded to Firefox 1.5 RC1 (released yesterday) and found that the googlebar doesn’t work. After some quick reading I found an enterprising fellow who figured out how to hack it. So here’s the instructions in more detail: Download the google toolbar XPI file…

According to this site, my blog is worth $25,968.84!!! So, it’s hereby for-sale for exactly that amount. Reasonable offers will be considered. Any takers? My blog is worth $25,968.84.How much is your blog worth?

I’ve noticed something very cool about the latest Google Toolbar. The wizards at Google have very quietly incorporated the Google Suggest features into the toolbar. When I start typing (provided I type slowly), A drop down box appears with common terms matching what I’ve typed, but with the number of hits beside it. That has…

Every now and then a list like this makes it around the internet. Have a look over here, it’s very funny. The odd part is that while these are bloopers, written by high school students, with a bit of refinement Stephen Leacock could have written them.

Here’s a university student with a great idea for paying his tuition. He’s got a page with 1 million squares of advertising space, available at $1 per square. So far he’s up to $435K already!

Microsoft has setup a new program called “Microsoft Feels Your Pain”. The video speaks better than text, have a look over here. It’s brilliant! I’m going to setup this system at work for those break the auto-build system we’ve got running. 🙂

On a whim I bought a set of Popeye DVD’s, for a whopping $6.88 at Walmart. I’ve always loved Popeye as a kid, and here was 24 episodes, color and black&white! My lovely wife doesn’t share my love for Popeye sailor man, but Noah and Mikaela think he’s the greatest. And as an added benefit,…

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to crew on the “Coyote”, a 42-foot sailboat owned by my neighbour, who incidentally works in the same department as I do. You can see a few pictures of the boat here, here (boat on the left) and here (boat on the far right). The pictures were of an…

Yesterday I biked to work. Not on my moped, but on my bicycle. Unlike my brother‘s five minute ride, it’s a 25km ride, with about 500 feet of elevation changes. The way to work is all downhill, and took an hour, including a scenic ride along the Bayfront trail. Consequently the way back is all…

I’ve joined the two-wheel commuter society, in the form of a Tomos Moped. It’s a 49cc motorbike with pedals, and falls into a dusty corner of the Highway Traffic Act (regulations for Ontario roads). It has pedals, requires a license plate, but doesn’t require a motorbike license. I get somewhere close to 100 miles per…

Now this is cool. Wired.com published this article about a company called emachineshop.com. The concept is really simple: you design parts using their free downloadable CAD software, upload the finished CAD drawing to them, they build it, FedEx ships it. Once you’ve designed it you can price it out using a variety of materials. There’s…

I’m sure every blogger has written about the disaster in New Orleans, so I’ll keep it brief. This study was written last year, describing the worst-case scenario if a large hurricane hit New Orleans. It’s exactly what happened… the paper predicts it’ll take 9 weeks to pump the water out of the city. Our thoughts…

I haven’t written in a long time because a) work was absolutely nuts for the past three weeks and b) I was sick and c) I used the Firefox password manager and d) I moved to a Mac Mini and the passwords didn’t migrate and e) the password for my own blog was in the…

Yesterday morning I managed to get out for an early morning run. Ok, you’ll realize by now that “early morning” and I don’t go together too well. Correctly stated this should read that “Yesterday morning Jodies shoved me out of bed …”. You get the idea. One of my favourite trails follows the top of…