Let them eat pie

Well the results of the 'pie or cake?' poll are in. Pie won by a landslide. It makes you wonder why we eat cake at all. Probably weddings and birthdays pre-date pie as we know it today, and it's their strong association with cake that keeps cake in the game. Pie does have Thanksgiving going for it though, and an obvious math pun, which counts for alot. Pie are round indeed.

Chain refraction

Today on the way to work I caught this, and my co-worker found a bunch of change in front of the united church. Am I insinuating that the leprechaun spilled his pot of gold. No. But it is pretty rare that I see such a complete rainbow. Dare I call it a "Double Rainbow"?

Ink

So I can't believe I read 485 of these before I got this pun.

12-2 BMX

In ancient times, the BMX was a symbol of a bountiful harvest

Tickle the ironies

So last night I killed a mosquito playing the piano.. let me say, my self-esteem has never been at such an all-time medium.

Utahraptor Jazz

Here's my submission to a CBC/Dinosaur Comics entry. I strongly recommend everyone on the planet to participate. here.

Citizen Vain

Well there was an election today. The government's commercials asked me to vote. So I voted. It made me a little nervous that they had numbers on the ballots. Anyways, then I got home and there was a census package on my door handle. Never before had my government wanted to know so much about me! But can you blame them?

Head last

OCD

Ok, so I've been thinking about Smallville and Naruto again. Oh Rob.
Anyways, in one of the later episodes of season 4, Lex and his father Lionel are having a little tete a tete (pretend there are accents). Lex knows that Lionel is being less than truthful about the stones from Krypton (that everyone is looking for in season 4) and Lionel tells Lex that there is a difference between finding all the answers and understanding what they mean, and just what does he hope to achieve (which is kinda pot calling the kettle black).
I think I can sort of understand what he means. I was a heck of a lot happier before I read a bunch of books, but I still don't stop reading books. I have stopped thinking, though, that I'll ever find all the answers out.
Then I was thinking how Sasuke from Naruto is just like that. He's obsessive, and he's pursuing something. Only his goal is revenge. He too was almost a good guy, and his teachers all told him or rather tried to convince him that getting revenge is just a big let down. And when he finally killed his brother and got his revenge, it totally was, a big let down that is, especially because he found out it was all part of his brother's plan to protect the village. But isn't it weird that the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of a foe can both drive people to obsessive lengths and ultimately don't result in any satisfaction, but the exact opposite? But then again, life is pretty dull without obsession.

Gorbachevy Chase

Welp, the results of the Balance of Power poll are in. Buncha Commies read my blog. I actually forgot to vote on this one. Oh well.
Balance of power for those who don't know is a computer game that my big brother and my little brother would play for hours on end patiently practicing diplomacy while their middle brother clawed his eyes out just hoping someone would get nuked so that we could play Infiltrator instead. Don't forget to put the helicopter on whisper mode or you've screwed up right from the start. Good times.

Happy Birthday Nice

Han's Best Friend

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

I thought this was pretty excellent. Only from Montreal.

Happy Birthday Nice

Cops and Robert

Last night I got pulled over because I was driving a little too aggressively for the conditions. I didn't get a ticket or anything, I wasn't actually doing anything wrong. Man did the policeman seem disappointed when I told him I was an accountant. I think he got another call because he handed me back my license pretty abruptly and took off in his car in the other direction quite quickly.

runtime error

Well, the results of the 2011 Peterborough YMCA Half are up and I did about how I expected to do. I've been working out, but not like last year. See results here. They also changed the route this year. More scenic and engaging than the old route, but not nearly as flat (especially at the 5k mark where there's a huge hill, that you must pass a second time on the return portion. Ow.). The best part is that I now have a decent enough data set. I made this graph, and another showing my positions in proportion to overall, category and gender placements, but due to some computer pain I accidentally lost the data and am too lazy right now to re-enter it because I ran a half-marathon today.

I love it when you call me big poppa

Well, the results of the Existentialist Poll are in. It turns out Sartre is to existentialism as Biggie is to rap. One thing can be said for sure: Those Penguin classic paperback covers can't be beat.

Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?

Did anyone else just watch the last three days of Jeopardy? My big brother assures me it's not the singularity, but it's still pretty cool to see a computer giving questions to answers. WATSON had a definite buzzing advantage, but I thought Brad and Ken hung in there pretty well. It's kinda painful, because you can see those guys both know all the answers, except that they can't buzz in fast enough. But what I really wanted to talk about was this certain, I-don't-know-what in human nature that makes us do stuff like this. I wonder if those dudes at IBM have seen the Matrix. I mean, I'm sure the singularity is way off. I'm also pretty sure we'll get there, and maybe it already happened like was suggested in QC. I can't help but think of the tower of babble. It always seemed to me God was a little unfair here, putting the slant on cooperation, ambition and achievement in one fell swoop. But I think the story is more about the danger of this drive that is in people. Scientists are gonna keep trying to find out more junk. Business dudes are gonna keep trying to make more money. Some guy in Utah is gonna keep trying to build a rocket car that will beat the land-speed record. Even though all this stuff can ruin them, or even the human world. Well, maybe not that guy in Utah, keep at it. Kudos. But I think this is also what makes humans so ruthlessly successful. To be able to ignore the things that can't be reconciled in the mind and go and live your life
anyways. Ah, that reminds me of 'The Year of the Dog', a movie about a woman who becomes obsessed with saving animals and basically goes crazy and ruins her life trying because she is unable to just shrug and say, "That's too bad." Man that movie was sad (and it had Molly Shannon!). Or how the planet is getting warmer and in a few years there will be mass flooding and population migrations and no one will be able to breathe our atmosphere. But no one does anything and I still drive my car to work. Oh well, "that's too bad." I figure, I better get my hot showers in now. I guess I'm hoping the computers take over before it gets to that. Keep it up IBM.

Horsepower of love

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tony Danza

Say what?



Oh man, I love the Superbowl. I actually didn't watch it this year. Thank goodness for Youtube.

New Glasses

I got new glasses. May I say they are nerdtronic?

Feats of Sleep

Last night I got home from work and was feelin' a 'lil weary, usin' lotsa apostrophes and such, so I decided to take a nap. I didn't wake up until 11 pm. So since it was past my bed time, I went to bed.

Orange you glad I puched myself in the face?

Thriller

Royal Flush

So basically I've been trying to decide what makes our modern civilization the most advanced ever thus far. How did we get here? I mean, we were already way more advanced than the Egyptians by the time electricity even came around, and I'm pretty sure Spinning Jenny kicks the crap out of anything the Romans ever did. You might say, "Rob, you're pretty awesome, though maybe not very humble, but this is not a new question and is unlikely to be answered in any meaningful way in a short blog entry." and you might be right, but might not be, because the answer is plumbing and democracy.
I know, I know, A couple of Egyptian Pharaohs had something akin to a flush toilet, and there are a few instances of pipes in Roman and Chinese palaces and such, and even what you think about when talking about plumbing wasn't even maturing until the end of the 19th century. But holy snooks, you couldn't build a steam engine without plumbing, and you couldn't proliferate water and gas to the population without plumbing. And really, it's infrastructure that make places great to live in.
How awesome is it to take a shower and be clean. Pretty friggin awesome, and you just have to look at the Egyptians or Romans to see how bad life sucked for the average Joe when there is no plumbing or democracy, or if you want to look at a more recent example, there's any number of examples in the 3rd world. Oh and you can build a potato cannon out of ABS like snap.

Get Shorty

Well the results of the Favourite Shortbread Cookie Shape poll are in. A four-way tie has us scratching our heads. Perhaps all shortbread are created equal. Or at least equally yummy. I myself and me especially, partook in a great deal of shortbread this Christmas season. Now with the new year I shall resume my in-some-ways Spartan lifestyle.