Archives for: May 2007

Natural Moral Fiber

05/31/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Thoughts, People, Science
Shankar Vedantam brings us news that doing good makes us feel good: "You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written to his colleague. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., had been scanning the… more »
 

The Warcraft Dance Sources

05/31/07 | by Adam | Categories: Games
Link is to a video that superimposes the World of Warcraft dance routines over the source material. (Via Nodwick) more »
 

Palm Foleo

05/30/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology
I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. It's basically an ultralight portable with Treo connectivity running a Linux OS and solid-state storage. Guess I'll keep an eye on the discussion forums to see if someone comes up with a convincing use for… more »
 

Fun with Bluetooth audio

05/29/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology
While the concept of Bluetooth is great, I have to say that frequently the implementation of it is pretty poor. Perhaps it comes down to a misunderstanding on my part, but for something that's supposed to be simple it's sure not reliable or easy to get… more »
 

A Wii Adventure

05/27/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Distractions
Right at the end of the day at work on Friday, visiting the QA department netted me some "inside information" on where to get a Wii. One of them had been watching forums on occasion to see where and when Wiis show up, and Westbook Mall got a shipment of… more »
 

Remember the XSL Default Rule

05/25/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Thoughts, Programming
XSL or Extensible Stylesheet Language can be a bit mind-bending. I have essentially come up to speed on it in a week to use it in the generation of migration scripts. It is essentially a big list of rules, calls and writing commands for matching XML. It… more »
 

Mix tapes

05/23/07 | by Adam | Categories: Music, Copyright
Alas, what with all those copyright and intellectual property issues these days, the mix "tape" is basically dead. That's too bad -- I always thought it was a great way of introducing friends to a selection of music. Get those tunes wandering through… more »
 

Colour blindness simulator for OSX

05/22/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology
This is an interesting one. "Sim Daltonism" is a simulator that tries to show how people who are colour blind see the world. The concept is relatively simple: a small window contains a colour-corrected version of whatever the mouse pointer is over that… more »
 

Fast Food: the promise and the reality

05/21/07 | by Adam | Categories: Silly
Link is to a quite amusing comparison of fast food meals with the advertisement photo directly contrasted with the delivered product. (Via Kottke) more »
 

Who The Hell Is Mo Henry?

05/21/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Distractions
We just watched Spider-Man 3 a day after watching Shrek 3, and we're credit-watchers (though I must say that we have been very disappointed in the lack of after-credit easter eggs these days), and one name keeps cropping up as recognizable: the negative… more »
 

Bye, Spots

05/20/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology
Since 1995 I've been using a Calgary ISP called Spots Interconnect. For the first few years, I used them exclusively for dialup access and webpage hosting. They set up an ISDN connection for a trade show I arranged and gave us free access to it; it was… more »
 

The Police's "Synchronicity"

05/20/07 | by Adam | Categories: Music
Presumably as part of the upcoming tour, all of the albums by the Police have gone on sale in their remastered form, and quite cheaply too -- about $5 a disc. I've taken the opportunity to upgrade the couple I already had and fill in the holes. As I… more »
 

First Apple, now Amazon

05/17/07 | by Adam | Categories: Copyright
The first chink in the DRM wall was when Apple's iTunes store started selling EMI's music in a non-DRM'd format (albeit at a markup.) Now Amazon is joining the fray selling the same catalogue. This is good and I hope other music distributors and… more »
 

Singin' in Korean

05/14/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Distractions
I get such a damned kick out of Stephen Colbert. He has made a marvelous career out of parodying the right, but some of my favourite clips of his are when he indulges in over-the-top geekery (like the Green Screen Challenge) and some of his other… more »
 

The Colin and Brad Show

05/09/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Distractions
We went down to the Jack Singer on Sunday to see the Just For Laughs tour of Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood. more »
 

Travelling with gadgets

05/08/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology
Periodically I'm sent on business trips to miscellaneous locales, some far flung, some a little more domestic. As such I'm frequently looking for ways of meeting my gadget-mania. This is what's I've chosen at the moment: more »
 

Lampoonesque Picture of the Day

05/06/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Distractions
I used to love the photo sections of National Lampoon with signs that, intentionally or not, sounded really funny. This one's a bit politically incorrect, but we stayed across from it once when we were in Edmonton, and it gave us a giggle each time we… more »
 

The Great Theft : Khaled Abou El Fadl

05/05/07 | by Nimble | Categories: Reviews, Books, Politics, Religion
The tagline for the book, "Wrestling Islam from the Extremists", caught my eye, as did a quick flip through the book. We don't tend to hear a lot from moderate Muslims in the public square here, so there are a lot of questions that run through our… more »