Decor modifications

Well, despite the 2 day work week for me, it's been a very busy 7 days. Patched the bathroom wall (one of the towel hooks came out a few weeks ago, making a nasty hole), touched up the bedroom wall (crack down one wall). Did a not-too-bad job of it, if I do say so myself.

Also picked up a couple of "shelf-lights" from IKEA. Man, I love that place... even though they were out of the pint glasses that I like so much. The shelf-lights are now shining brightly on my mini-library, and are quite pleasing. I did manage to screw one into the shelf with these little mini roberton screws that I have (but that I lack an appropriate screwdriver for) before I realized that the lights came with their own philips screws (for which I do have an appropriate screwdriver). Oh well. Life's one crushing blow after another I suppose. Well, not really.

I also picked up a nice orchid, a lamp, and some bamboo. Well, they're not expensive, they all give pleasure, and improve the home decor a little... so why not. At least we didn't buy the $700 sofa table we'd seen in Sears that would fit so nicely behind our upstairs couch.

So, I guess with spring comes redecorating. Well, with the hope of spring at least. May hope spring eternal.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service. Essentially, instead of keeping all your bookmarks/favorites in your browser, you use a bookmarklet to quickly post them onto your public delicious bookmark site. Others can see them if you wish, and you can access them anywhere, and even post the rss feed to your website.

I'd put off playing with this for quite some time. But it seems that, like everyone else who has tried it, I'm hooked. del.icio.us forever!

Google Montage

Montage-a-google takes a search input, uses Google's image search, and produces a montage based on it. Useless. But o so nifty.

I found trying country names created some interesting stuff. Perhaps you'll be more creative.

I must not fear!

For those who've read and love Dune, this I must not fear! Firefox extension is there for when you need it. For the rest of you, I highly recommend reading the book(s).

Take Your Thumbware Anywhere

Does anyone else think it odd that we're returning to the days of the floppy drive?

I remember floppys. I mean real floppys, the black flexible kind. We didn't need no stinkin hard drives. Anything worth saving was worth carrying around 10 or 15 of these things.

Bookmarklets

Bookmarklets are a nifty way of customizing your browser. I've recently created some (and modified a few to suit my own needs). Yea, they're all for boring library stuff. But hey, that's what I do. Share and enjoy.

The Secret Onion Bloomer

We took our sister/(soon to be) sister-in-law out to dinner the other night, and we got a blooming onion. She was fantastically impressed, having never seen one before. Well, here's how it's done. **Warning. If you're the type of person who does not like to know how magic tricks are done, don't click. It's perhaps less nifty than you think.** Well, it's less nifty than I thought anyway. I was thinking more along the lines of a sushi chef and a particularly sharp ginsu knife.

Last Chance to See

I've recently read (in the span of 24 hours) Last Chance to See by my favourite Douglas Adams. As usual when reading one of his books, there were points for astounding contemplation, and outright belly laughter.

Basically, Douglas and his zoologist friend Mark Carwardine travel to a series of places around the globe to track down and see some of the most endangered species on the planet. It's literally their last chance to see some of these creatures before their gone. The laughs come from the adventures along the way, and takes a few plugs at the bureaucracy retained by small former colonial nations.

Thanks to Richard for recomending that I read it.

Recent Movie Viewings

Saw both King Arthur and Alien Vs Predator in the past couple of days. Both were entertaining. Certainly worth the rental price.

King Arthur is a new take on the Arthurian legend, set many hundreds of years before traditional tellings of the story. All the favourites are there, but it's based in a time of a sagging Roman empire, and Anglo vs Saxon warfare. Interesting, and I thought enjoyable.

Alien Vs Predator gave slightly more than I expected. Of course, I expected very little. However, it was fun, nice to see the "predator" in a different light, and the gooey-evil-razor-teeth-acid action of the "aliens" is always fun. I can say this, it didn't disappoint (well, except the little bit at the very end...)

St. Patrick's Day

The luck of the Irish be with you today.

Well, not the marching religious independance bombing kinda luck... the luck they used to have... you know, back in the old days of the potato famine and such. Come to think of it, the Irish luck seems a little overrated.

I think I'll smack the next fellow that wishes me the luck of the Irish.

Fun with Serial Console Servers

Here's a page that let's you tell a guy how you'd like him to destroy a server, and then he does it... again and again, for your pure adolescent pleasure.

There's another one like this with a guy in a chicken suit... but I can't seem to find it at the moment. How unfortunate.

Steve Anthony's Universe

We (Richard Akerman and I) have released a new version of the Experimental CISTI Research Sidebar.

Both the firefox extension, and the related web pages/bookmarklets have been updated to be 1) prettier, 2) have improved functionality including: highlighting CISTI e-content links on other sites; allowing users to "proxify" all links in a given page to point to the CISTI/NRC proxy server (EZProxy); a few bug fixes.

In future, we hope to generalize the configuration to apply to more users, and to external users with their own OpenURL resolvers, links to highlight, etc... but for now, as a demonstration the sidebar is using hard-coded values for these.

Enjoy, reuse, do your own, extend and be happy!

Steve.

Pimp my Firefox

An article on Kuro5hin about Pimping (read: customizing) Firefox.

Note, I'm told that the pipelineing enhancement listed can cause issues with some sites, use with caution.

Teleflip Text Messaging

Teleflip offers a free email to cell text message gateway. Nifty fun. I'd been looking for something like this for awhile, but hadn't been able to find one. The cell service providers usually have a webpage that allow you to do this sort of thing, but often it's not programmable on your own site. Now you just need the ability to send an email.

The Groom's Planner

The Groom's Planner from the Frugal Bride is a useful resource for a fellow like me. I don't know what to do, when I should be doing it, how it should be done. Now I know.

Save Toby

Only you have the power to Save Toby.

Well, I'm not sure that I should be giving this guy any more airtime for his cause. But I couldn't resist. Brilliant in its cruelty.

There are some nifty recipies on the site too.

I bet you Toby 2 will be a small whitecoat seal pup.

The Fruit Machine

This is an odd tidbit I came across in my wanderings. Apparently the Canadian government took some interesting, if not perverse, measures to discover homosexuals in various forms of government service. The "Fruit Machine" was intended for the task. You don't see that in the travel brochure anymore.

For more information on the colorful history of Canada, see: What About Freud? Canada's New Cold War History, a review of the book: Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada's Cold War. Richard Cavell, ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8020-8500-8.

And I thought the Diefenbunker was nifty.

Axworthy Fires Back

Lloyd tells it like it is: from the Winnipeg Free Press - View from the West:

"Missile Counter-Attack
Axworthy fires back at U.S. -- and Canadian -- critics of our BMD decision in An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice".