
I’d hate to be the webmaster at St Claire, Inc this morning. Seems that dweebs like me have discovered Sign Builder 2.0, and are hitting it hard.

I’d hate to be the webmaster at St Claire, Inc this morning. Seems that dweebs like me have discovered Sign Builder 2.0, and are hitting it hard.
According to Chris Arnall, today might be teh happiest day of the year. I mean, I know you’re all hyper ‘cos it’s my birthday and all, but you know, it’s not that big a deal …
Licence plate of a hearse seen in Mississauga: R U NEXT.
Picked up some Old Credit Amber Ale. It’s good; comes in obscenely large bottles, so one will get you gently munted. Then, after dismantling the old shed (yeah!), we picked up some great beef noodle soup from Pho Vietnam on Kennedy north of Ellesmere. Yum!
The days only get shorter from here on in, sigh …
Today I built a shed, and put things in it. It wasn’t as if it was a difficult shed (just a Keter prefab), but I like to think of it more as a storage solution than just a shed.
Strange that the supposedly deep green Viridian Design online store only features one organic item out of twenty six on sale …
I love the way the word softened has become a nice way of saying falsified, as in Ex-Oil Lobbyist Softened US Climate Research.
Hmm, my left eye has caome over all useless; all I can see is a flickering pattern in the middle. I haven’t had one for a long time, but I seem to remember this being the precursor to a migraine. Joy …
… he returns to his building blocks in preparation for the exhibition, rummaging through a bag of Lego. “Hear that sound? They feel so great. You know that feeling, when your fingers are chafed because you’ve been sticking so much Lego together? And that sound!”
Coupland continues to move his hand in a rhythmic, circular motion, making the hundreds of Lego bricks rattle up against each other. “I love Lego! I just love it!”
— from Douglas Coupland has a plan: Let’s live in Legoland, The Globe & Mail, 4 June 02005.
I have always loved Lego. Not in a grown-man-builds-working-model-of-Pickering-A-out-of-Lego-Technic kind of way, which would be weird (and would be more than nuclear engineers could do with the real Pickering A). Lego was such an integral part of my childhood that there was seldom a seat cushion that didn’t have a brick or too under them. And by Lego, I mean the real stuff; hundreds of little regular blocks (mostly red), not the modern stuff that you can make a B’Zurqar Battle Cruiser out of just two simple pieces. Things made from Lego were abstract. You had to use as much imagination to believe they represented the object you set out to make, as to make the object itself.
I predate Technic, though I had some of the proto-Technic gears and blocks. I used to make absurdly high ratio gearboxes out of the plastic spur gears and shafts, and crash them with satisfying gronks. We even made it to Legoland (for all of about 25 minutes), as we raced to catch the Esbjerg ferry in 1977.
The article about Coupland set me off on a serious Lego tactile jones yesterday. The Eaton Centre was about to be a site of great disappointment when I saw stacks of Lego buckets by the door of Toys Toys Toys. And not just any Lego; this was a classic 4028 Creator set, with hundreds of simple blocks. And it was reduced to $13!
So, yes, Lego still hurts to make — the sharp corners make a satisfying impression on the fingers. Prying them apart is still hard. And that sound!

Jean Shepherd‘s In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. I have rather a failing for the works of midwestern humorists, and Shep reads like a hopped-up Garrison Keillor. You’d like him.
First I saw groundhogs on Ashtonbee, then we saw Bill the Pomeranian Guy in Yorkville. He had a whole bunch of pups with him, and these little critters were friendly, fuzzy and fearless.
I managed to lose my Faber-Castell Pitt pen at the AGO last night. They’re not particularly expensive, but they do write well, and you have to find the right kind of art store that sells them.
Shop manager broke into own store
“A supermarket manager has been remanded in custody after admitting carrying out a £50,000 break-in at his own store.”
This would be unremarkable, except that we used to shop there when we lived in Kirkintilloch. It used to be a branch of The Co-op.
Bet he wouldn’t have done it had it still been the Co’; he’d have been stealing from himself!
I just bought a 12-pack of Nickel Brook Ale from Better Bitters Brewing Co, just near the GO station in Burlington. It’s pretty good. Nice with food.
New rodent species discovered at Laotian market, known locally as kha-nyou. It looks a bit like Roland Rat to me.
I think I’ve had one of the top three burgers of my life today. It was at the Detroit Eatery, on the Danforth at Chester. It was definitely one of the cheapest, but was seasoned and cooked to perfection. Score one for a Cheap Eats Toronto recommendation.
My top three burgers are probably:
Father Brown Stories, by G. K. Chesterton. Just as I’m getting into it, I think I lost it on the bus. Rats.