Is Seraphim Proudleduck the new ‘Trout Fishing In America’?
Seraphim Proudleduck is a google challenge created by Salmonbones Marketing worth almost $2,000 in prize money. The seraphim proudleduck champion will be crowned on January 1st 2005. Seraphim Proudleduck does not stop there though, a PR7 website and a year of hosting will be awarded for the top seraphim proudleduck image in google images.
I’ve been using the Symphonie Data Retriever utility for the NRG Symphonie wind dataloggers. I just discovered that the *.NSD site files in C:\NRG\SiteFiles are MS Access databases. This could mean that users could write their own custom data analysis tools outside NRG’s software.
And I though they were just big ol’ binary files, too.
OpenClipart has loads of SVG clip art. I like SVG.
NewsIsFree has all the RSS feeds you could ever want. The old internet purist in me balks at calling an RSS reader a newsreader, since that’s for usenet.
We just watched Salmer fra kj�kkenet, a Norwegian/Swedish film about kitchen efficiency in Norwegian bachelors’ homes in 1950. It’s a very touching comedy, and it even has a musical saw!
Can I just say that feed on feeds, the server-side RSS aggregator, rocks?
From October 31, 2004 to November 6, 2004, more than a third of my readers were using Mozilla. Less than a year ago, it was about 10%. The real common sense revolution rolls on!
Further to They’ll turn white soon enough, I’ve heard from CFSC that you can’t get white poppies in Canada. Maybe that’s a project for next year.
I am no philatelist (though I was a half-hearted member of The Stamp Bug Club — and no, I didn’t know who Alain de Cadenet was, either) but this is the best thing ever: Muppets to appear on U.S. stamps.
The article says: Kermit and his friends are not the first puppets to be featured on a U.S. stamp
… That’s strange, I don’t remember seeing a stamp with George W. Bush on it.
It’s so nice to have a November 5th without having neds lobbing rockets and firecrackers about the place.
(click on the image for larger versions)
Ford Canada really have excelled themselves with the Escape Hybrid. It’s a great big huge SUV, but that doesn’t matter because it’s one of those lovely clean hybrids. Yes, that’s right, you can feel good about driving it, because you’re only supporting repressive regimes a bit.
But the best bit is in the writeup (emphasis mine):
Giving back to the environment doesn’t just stop at printing this advertisement on recyclable paper. …
C’mon guys, it’s just a regular car glossy. All paper is recyclable. If you’d have printed it on recycled hemp paper using vegetable inks, maybe, just maybe, you’d be giving something back. But this is just a sop to the car-besotted consumer.
As they go on to say: We keep thinking about the environment.
There’s a huge gap between just thinking, and actually doing something useful.
On several people’s recommendation, I bought Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender CD. It is quite remarkable. Her lyrics remind me of Mervyn Peake‘s nonsense poems (… Even mollusks have weddings, / though solemn and leaden / but you dirge for the dead, / take no jam on your bread …
). She sings of catenaries and dirigibles, rephrasing words into unfamiliar shapes. It’s not the most common act, a harpist with a fey wee voice who can also raise up a real backwoods caterwaul, but it works for me.
Here’s a video of one of her songs: Sprout and the Bean.
(Norvin, you’d hate it. In fact, you’d hate it so much that I’d advise you listen to it, just so folks around you can experience the ‘neitzen’ effect.)
… so do it.
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12213
Mayor McCa
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
18th June 02004
172MB, FLAC format
Set List
========
I’m So Poor. Buy My CD : 4’13”
That’s A Wrap : 3’14”
Hey Man, You Gotta Nice Job : 4’58”
I Got A Haircut : 3’11”
Funky Fresh Beets : 7’45”
I Can’t Pay The Rent : 3’13”
You Better Watch Out : 4’34”
Recording Details
=================
Audience recorded by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone -> iRiver H120 digital WAV recorder
(Direct digital file transfer to host Linux box)
Tracks split using Audacity
Levels normalized using the ‘normalize’ command-line tool.
This recording was made with CA Smith’s permission.
About the Artist
================
CA “Mayor McCa” Smith — One-man Band Singing Sensation, Cartoonist,
Tapdancer, almost-Mayor of Hamilton, ON — is probably best explained by
visiting his website: < http://mayormcca.com/>.
MP3s live here.
Not bad for my first attempt at pumpkin carving. It smells pretty bad when it’s got the full complement of candles charring the inside.
Update, 9:30pm: Phew — it’s over. We handed out something like $60-worth of candy tonight. I had to make two emergency runs to the shops to get more. I have to say, this “Trick or Treat” thing is getting off lightly. When I was a kid in Glasgow, we’d go guising, all costumed up, and we each did a little party piece (song, poem, joke) to earn our loot. We had a retired teacher as a neighbour, and she was a difficult audience. You’d spend about five minutes inside each house, not just a few seconds at the door. Kids today, eh?
Whenever you have to defrost live bread dough, make sure you don’t do it in a sealed polyethylene bag. It looks like a squid has been at it …
(the resulting bagels were great, though.)
http://www.easytree.org/torrents-details.php?id=12198
Circulatory System
Lee’s Palace, Toronto
13 April 2003
Audience recording by Stewart C. Russell
Sony ECM-909A microphone
-> Sharp MD-SR60 minidisc
-> analogue PC soundcard.
Tracks split with Audacity, normalized with ‘normalize’.
Compressed with ‘flac –best’
288 megabytes.
Track List:
1 Yesterday’s World
2 Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?
3 [door/days]
4 Joy
5 Round
6 The Lovely Universe
7 Diary of Wood
8 Outside Blasts
9 [now]
— Pause to repair Will’s guitar —
10 Lately/Realize
11 Days To Come (In Photographs)
12 Waves of Bark & Light
13 Away
Track names in [square brackets] are unclear from the recording, and are from the (still) upcoming album
