I can't believe that I didn't come across mention of this game. It's been in the works for a little while, and there's an extremely cool video from 2005 demonstrating the capabilities at that time. The video from the next E3 in 2006 lacks some of the… more »

When our bathroom spigot started dripping a little, we were slightly nervous. When it started dripping a lot, we got anxious. After all, we do not yet have a good relationship with a plumber. That said, we have some minor D-I-Y capability here, so the… more »

I have gone ahead and added some forums, since Halton Arp's site has been offline for "maintenance" for an awfully long time. It may come back, it may not. In the meantime, it's a decent excuse to experiment with new forum software. I had a tough time… more »

I missed this in its theatrical run, to my dismay, but it works just fine on the small screen. Here is a movie that is perennially confusing up until close to the end, where the plot does actually get pulled together. It's based on a Philip K. Dick… more »

'Tis the season for movie rentals over Christmas and Boxing Day, where there is either too little to do elsewhere, or there are boxing day sales, the likes of which mortals are not prepared for. This movie was surprisingly interesting. It's a Canadian… more »

Now that I've had some distance in time away from the trip to East Africa, it's a nicer recollection. I remember some of the bad toilets, but the memories no longer affect me viscerally. I remember the nice people and the annoying people, and it's cool… more »

A friend of mine had pondered putting together a program where you could take a lot of photos of the same scene, with a tiny bit of movement in-between, and then you could do some interpolation and get a sort of super-resolution that your camera could… more »

Since I am running this blog on b2evolution, and since the built-in editor has a lot of ALT key shortcuts that I really like, when I upgraded to Firefox 2.0, it drove me nuts. The shortcut keys for italicizing and making links no longer operated. Well,… more »

Today is the 10th Anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan. Joel Schlosberg has organized a Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon. Nick Sagan has a very nice retrospective of his own, providing some interesting, and nice, views of Carl Sagan as a father. There is also… more »

The full subtitle: "How Advances in Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Postpone Aging". This was a good book, although almost too simple in spots. Since aging is a topic I follow (and, apparently unusually, since I was fairly young), the impact of the… more »

My software turned ten today. I had mentioned that my software would turn ten this year to a coworker of mine, and he watched the date listed in the header of my oldest source code file like a hawk, or an egret, and sent out our traditional birthday… more »

Over the past few years, on the buses I take to work, I've noticed more and more that teenagers seem very, very attracted to standing or, in some cases, even huddling by the bus exit. In many cases, it's not even a matter of lack of available seating.… more »

I'm off to torment some relatives for the next week or so; as there's very little where I'm going that resembles an internet connection, I'm not going to be able to post on the blog. But, never fear, I will be bringing my MacBook so during the periods… more »

Sxtrumpetmarionismo/Felicxa Esperanto-Tago In honour of Esperanto Day, December 15, I am also translating this blog entry into Esperanto. I'm sure it's quite an awful translation I've done! Honori Esperanto-Tago, la 15(dek kvin)a de decembro, mi… more »

As you may imagine, since pretty much everything is available on the internet somewhere, there is a site the specializes in tracking media retractions and corrections. Most of the time, these are pretty dull, but sometimes the retraction itself is… more »

Cuteness is irrelevant; you will be assimilated. Warning: do *not* play the first part of this in front of a small child. (Via Gizmodo) more »

The link is to a music video of a person playing quite a nice bit of music on the drums and piano. The nifty part is that although he can't play either, through the magic if clever video editing it sure looks as if he can. The wild part of it is that… more »

BoingBoing has a hysterical discussion on the old conundrum of whether an aircraft on a treadmill could take flight. Being neither a physicist, engineer nor a mathematician some of the erudite discussion escapes me, but as far as I can tell there are… more »

This is a case mod that I'd actually like. It's nice work! more »

I'm not much of a vehicle racing fan -- what's with those endless circuits, NASCAR? -- but I make an exception for the Paris-Dakar rally. It's truly impressive and looks to be one step shy of lethal. Link goes to YouTube highlights from the 2003 one.… more »

Something someone wrote today reminded me that in the discussion of biology and evolutionary theory, everyone looks at mutations, mutations, mutations, but they miss out the extremely powerful silent partners, chromosomal crossover and its most… more »

A disturbing selection of Christmas songs, all in the style of H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. They even have downloadable score music, from such classics as Death to the World! Such wonderful songs as: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fish-Men… more »

It's been a few weeks since the last round up so I figured it was time for another bunch: more »

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber lays into a recent Macintosh switcher saying: What I take away from stories like this is not “Hey, it’s great to see another PC user switch to the Mac.” What I take away is that he ought to feel like a jerk for… more »

An interesting post from Declan over at "Crawl Across The Ocean" about one of the better new shows on TV, "Heroes". What he posits is that the show would be even better if they switched the genders of the lead characters. Reading through his post, I… more »

Go watch the movie then come back here. more »

I'm probably going to have to create a new category for this type of link. I don't think "silly" really captures the essence of this "yuck". For those who don't want to follow the link, the synopsis is an art project to display one cubic metre of semen.… more »

I couldn't resist the ProdiKeys. Part typing keyboard, part musical keyboard. I had to have one. When my birthday/Xmas cheque from grandma arrived, it was just the perfect excuse. Actually, ProdiKeys are much harder to find than I was expecting. There… more »

I don't know how far I can go with this card game I've put together, but it might actually be worth pursuing publication. Without giving away too many details, a short history... more »

With the exception of when I'm flying -- they seem to have this thing about sharp pointy objects -- I just about always have a penknife nearby. The Grauniad has a pretty good article on the history of the Swiss Army penknife (original and genuine… more »

My wife and I went down to our local polling station at the sportsplex, bought a Progressive Conservative party membership for $5 apiece, and voted. more »

Today's big announcement from NASA was more signs of possible water on Mars. Not that this will turn out to be any guarantee for life on Mars, or indeed whether the effect is caused by water, but with all the liquids we have been finding around the… more »

This is a bit of longer term usage following up on the Creative SoundBlaster wireless that I originally reviewed a few months ago. Recently, I decommissioned a Celeron XP box. When I did that I lost the software server for the Creative Soundblaster… more »

With the low distribution costs inherent with the YouTube video-on-demand service, people have been remixing movies into trailers for a different genre. The original one was converting "The Shining" into a romantic comedy which was promptly followed up… more »

No car deserves this, particularly not the otherwise gorgeous Mercedes S-Class. Watch it before YouTube takes the clip down. Part 1 Part 2 more »

There is a certain fascination to getting blood drawn. No, I don't even really like to watch it being done, but phlebotomists are rather interesting and slightly nerdy folks, and there are interesting pieces to the process. Only from a phlebotomist are… more »

...or at least he did in the early 80's. more »

The newest Barenaked Ladies album had a tough job ahead of it. "Gordon" at the beginning of their career set the stakes pretty high. The next two albums ("Maybe You Should Drive", "Born On A Pirate Ship") were -- unfortunately -- forgettable. "Stunt" in… more »

I'm well aware that having a consistent user interface makes for a more attractive system (so long as you actually like that interface.) The site linked to above is this the first time I've ever heard of someone refusing to use good software because it… more »

Yes. Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Torchwood, Jericho, Robot Chicken (Ritchie's Review) Yeah, I'm a sucker for SF. I'm a bit disappointed that with the exception of BSG, not one of those is Canadian. more »

Not really a lot to add to Engadget's comment on copyright infringement by the family of music studio Edgar Bronfman. more »

Summary: Portable DVD player with an 8.5" LCD screen I picked this one up to be my seven year-old niece's Christmas present this year. As we're still in the pre-Christmas period, I'm hoping that she won't find this blog and read that. Anyway, the… more »

I must admit, I like this idea. Jack Chick tracts made into video, under the title "Hot Chicks". Well... I must admit, I only like the idea with the intentions of parody aforethought. The art of parodying Jack Chick reminds me of the wonderful… more »

I was checking up on how the LED projector revolution was coming along, when I ran across a site that connects exporters and importers. Normally, that wouldn't seem like a very exciting place to look around on, but a great many of the sell offers are… more »

We actually went out to vote in the PC party leadership elections today, which made us feel pretty good, actually. Afterwards, it was time for an extraordinarily late lunch, so we decided to pop into the Edo Ichiban restaurant on 32nd, not too far from… more »

"Eternity" from 2002 is a mostly instrumental album from Vancouver's Mythos. Slotted into the vaguaries of the New Age section, it's like a rather more relaxed and less electronic version of Delerium. These are not dance tunes but do borrow a lot of the… more »

It's been a while since I've run a forum. I used to run a gardening forum, a couple of hosts ago. I ran the forum under the fairly popular phpBB forum software. It was pretty easy to install, but some of the features made it hard to maintain. A dearth… more »

Ian Welsh over at The Agonist has a good run down on the DRM in Microsoft Vista and what it means. It's a good article, but Vista's not what I'm interested in for this discussion. There's a brief reference to imbedded DRM on purchased downloaded music.… more »

One of my usual stops is RandsInRepose which is a site dealing with project management issues in the IT domain. It's very much a non-political site and rarely has anything to say outside of that particular focus. It's due to that that I was very… more »

I cannot claim to be able to validate this particular article given that I have not, in fact, completed a Ph.D. I do, however have a good friend who has and based on comments over the years, feel the representation is quite accurate. Particularly this… more »

We first encountered Nando's, strangely, in Nairobi. It was at the gas station near the Indaba campsite, with a grocery store and a pizza place. We didn't have the chicken there, but we did have some of their sauces with the pizza we ordered from… more »