Dena found this one outfit in town that did "3D Ultrasound". The concept was pretty interesting: getting a decent idea of what your baby will look like, while it's still in the womb. If you haven't seen regular ultrasounds, there is a lot of activity… more »

I like a good turn of phrase. To wit: I dislike crapping on sci-fi movies for 'bad science'. It's like crapping on Lord of the Rings for having elves and magic. It's a movie. If there were ever to be a truly realistic sci-fi movie, it would be several… more »

I've been trying to avoid the whole lolcats meme thing, but this one got me on two counts: 1) It's funny. 2) I have absolutely no idea what the animal pictured actually is but it does a great Monty Burns impression. more »

Kraft foods tried to use copyright infringement as an argument to prevent grey market imports of their chocolate bars into Canada. Canada's Supreme Court fortunately disagreed with Kraft's argument and disallowed their suit. Although the article doesn't… more »

I have seen a remarkable decline in the variant of the 419 scam with civil servant/general needing to get millions of dollars out of the country and having chosen you to help with this sub-legal endeavour. The slightly newer take seems to be asking… more »

One of the standard criticisms of the Wikipedia is that anyone can edit a page and thus effectively vandalize it. One of the standard defences is that such behaviour is typically caught quickly and the edit reverted. The difficulty is determining when… more »

Every asked yourself what irritates a professional font designer or typesetter when watching movies? Wonder no more! more »

Summary: 4 USB port 802.11g print server with some extra functionality Due to heating issues -- it's been a warm summer here in Calgary -- I've moved my D-Link DNS-323 NAS out of my office to somewhere a bit cooler. The downside of this is that I've… more »

Well, technically I suppose all anti-gravity or perpetual motion engines inventions are novel as none actually work, but Wired has a nice graphic showing their stab at it based on two truisms: toast always lands butter side down, and cats always land on… more »

There's a quote which has been circulating some time, purportedly from Alfred Einstein, which goes something like this: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more… more »

I know that Wikipedia can be dodgy on its information, but goldarnit, it's absolutely correct with this definition: High Tea (also known as Meat Tea[1]) is an early evening meal, typically eaten between 5 and 6 o'clock in the evening. It would be eaten… more »

We show no referrers to the world, but we still get referral spam, i.e. something pretends to have visited your site through someone else's clicks. Referrals used to be a fun way to show who was visiting you. Spammers have crapped all over that feature.… more »

Okay, okay, I'm exaggerating, but I feel the sting of lines of dinnerware and flatware being discontinued because it seems to affect the stuff I really like... disproportionately. When you're on the hunt for plates and such, you generally have choices… more »

Wired picked up on the saga of an overly-enthusiastic off-kilter creationist making escalating insults and threats to University of Colorado professors, as well as a few other folks online. Well, he has absconded. more »

Just days after I said I wouldn't, here's another Potter related post. I couldn't resist wondering about this statement from the CBC Arts page: The book was attracting scores of fans dressed as Ron, Hermione, witches, Death Eaters and Muggles CBC, dear,… more »

One of my favourite places to visit online is "Irregular Webcomic". The strip runs several independent plotlines which sometimes overlap, including Shakespeare as a modern technical writer, an incompetent fantasy-world adventuring party, an entirely… more »

Oh, it's bad. I knew it was going to be weak, and then it managed to be even worse than that. This frisbee is a rendition of the instrumental works of the Alan Parsons Project performed on what sound like some remarkably cheap synths by an anonymous… more »

Lore Sjöberg, Wired's resident humourist, takes a look over the various spells from the world of Harry Potter. This will be my only Potter-related link ever, promise. Ritchie, on the other hand, will happily post reams on why magic is entirely… more »

The Panasonic Lumix TZ1 is my newest digital camera. I bought it new after a bit of careful research (well, kinda), examining the competition and cocking an eye to upcoming releases. I've now owned it for probably ten months at this point. It therefore… more »

Punny title aside, this Wired News article on some New York buildings using ice instead of (or in addition to) air conditioning systems is nifty. It's like reaching back into the 1800s and their ice cellars for a solution to a contemporary problem.… more »

I can't decide if this print-on-demand technology is going to improve matters or not. It's fun to pop into a bookstore with a huge collection and browse the aisles. This is going to kill that. On the other hand, I usually can't find what I'm looking for… more »

The Chinese implementation of World of Warcraft has replaced all mobile skeletons with live humans and bones with tombstones. The9 Ltd, WoW's Chinese licensee, claims that they did it on their own accord and that the government was not involved. Ya… more »

The linked-to article is about Calgary's Mayor Bronconnier commenting on the use of the cream pie as a medium of dissatisfaction, or as he puts it: "the method of choice" of those who want to make a political statement. more »

This CBC article caught my eye solely because I know the area; while Cowansville is indeed south east of Montreal, it is no more in southeast Montreal than Red Deer is in northern Calgary. more »

The Transformers movie did indeed suck. However, this throwaway from McSweeneys is much more funny, better written and conceivably has snappier dialogue. Lacks a little on the special effects though. (Via Ezra Klein) more »

Helium balloons. Lawn chair. Why does this just sound like it's leading into a bad joke? And yeah, I would love to hear this exchange: Walters managed to surprise an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn… more »

We're learning all sorts of things in our pre-natal classes, and there are a few things that were mythology-dispelling. Where do we pick up on such mythology? Television. Well, at least, according to what I've learned so far, I have not witnessed proper… more »

This article about the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner (has it out hyped the iPhone yet?) has a statement that really jumped out at me: They had their team travel around the world 5 times in economy class before they started! As a fairly regular flyer, that's… more »

Creative, makers of the Audigy, SoundBlaster cards as well as my unloved wireless media player, have decided to start charging for the Vista versions of their drivers. I'm very much opposed to vendors doing this; one would expect that the software and… more »

While looking at the referred searches, I noticed a lot of hits from people looking for entries on "googlestreets"; it looks like we've got the #1 hit on Google for the term. What's interesting is that GoogleStreets is not even a Google approved name;… more »

When's a public street not a public street? The answer is "When it's a diguised shopping mall". There's a case at the moment where a development partially funded with public money using a public street is now covered by faux-anti-photography laws… more »

(ƃuıoqƃuıoq ɐıʌ) (¡ɥɔnɯ ʇı ƃuısn ǝq ll,ı ʇɐɥʇ ʇou) ʇı ǝʌol ı ˙ʎɹǝʞɔɐɥ ɟo… more »

The Dutch have a term called an "oorworm" ("earworm" or "earwig" in English.) It's defined as a tune that you can't get out of your head or that you play over and over and over and over and... Well, here's a recommendation: Murray Gold's soundtrack CD… more »

It's probably just me, but every time I hear Canadian AOR staple Chilliwack's "Fly At Night" I'm utterly convinced it's a missing Neil Young song. Yeah, it probably is just me. Updated: Corrected the song title as per the comment thread :) more »

This isn't a review per se as it's just a look at the new reissues of three Alan Parsons Project albums: "I Robot", "Eye In The Sky" and "Vulture Culture". Besides, if you've reached this second sentence, the chances are you already know the original… more »

I've not been much of a reader of the Calgary Herald since they started putting columnists on the front page and the editorial page has been annoying me for a lot longer than that, but the linked selection of comments culled from the online Calgary… more »

For fun (and after much badgering,) I took a look at workopolis.com, a Canadian job site. In the top right corner of the screen I noticed a link labelled "Boss Panic Button". So I pressed it. This is what you get: a browser window with a Windows… more »

I spent the day away from the computer so forgot to post this on the correct date. Hope you had a good one! (Oh, and a good Canada Day quiz from CalgaryGrit; check out the sly comment about Canadian prime ministers not buried in Canada.) more »

I have been using Rossen Assenov's pseudo-generics in Delphi for quite a while now to great effect. (See here for downloads) In an effort to more properly ".NET-ify" things, I have been converting Delphi unit names into namespace-scoped unit names. For… more »