We Saw a Chicken …

Blog

  • good work, GO!

    I wonder if GO Transit could ever get a train running on time on the Stouffville line. Ten minutes late on an 18 minute journey.

  • “paste special: values” is special

    This saved me a bunch of time yesterday when I was pasting many sets of values into a spreadsheet: Daily Dose of Excel » Blog Archive » Mouse shortcuts.

  • penticentenary (if that’s the right word)

    I’ve been driving for 20 years. Seems a long time since I took that Mini Metro (which stank of Insignia aftershave – the instructor used it to clean the glass) from the BSM depot in
    Pollokshields and puttered around the south side.

    No speeding tickets, no parking tickets, and only one insurance claim. The insurers must be making a fortune from me.

  • a bit better than before

    I just ran the fuel numbers for our recent grand trip to Missouri. For 4380km in a Honda Civic DX, we used about 292 litres of fuel. That works out to be 6.7l/100km (or 42.3 / 35.3 UK / US mpg). That’s not quite as good as I’d hoped; I’ll put it down to driving a little fast on very chunky snow tyres.

    At least it’s better than last time …

  • Anssi, not ANSI

    Note to IKEA: while cheese has many excellent qualities — nutrition, sustainability, yumminess amongst them — it is not a suitable material for making nuts and bolts. While building an Anssi bar stool, I managed to round out just about every fastener, despite using good tools.

    Building the Anssi was especially frustrating, as it’s the only IKEA piece I’ve ever built that had such poor tolerances that everything needed slackened off in order to make the next part fit. It’s built now, though, and hasn’t imploded from internal stresses (yet).

    I bought it as a banjo seat, for while I was at Casa Wakefield in Missouri the other week, I noticed how good a bar stool is for comfortable playing.

  • Costco Photo Centre, part II

    So I got the photos back today. The service is pretty quick; I sent the order at 16:45, and had a ready-for-collection confirmation at 10:41 the next day. After braving the lines at Costco (no fun), I had a look at them.

    The prints are pretty good; colour’s bright, everything’s sharp, and there’s no obvious digital artefacts. But I got a bunch of dupes (maybe those failed uploads didn’t really fail at all). If I needed pictures again in a hurry and cheaply, I might go for Costco, as long as it wasn’t for anything really important.

    I’ll still thinking about a networkable photo-printer, though. CompuSmart had a demo HP Photosmart 8450 for cheap, but it had no cables or PSU, so was pretty useless.

  • Another of Paul’s Good Ideas

    Paul Hart has just launched Relovable: Share kids’ clothes & toys in your area. It’s rather clever.

  • T’aint what you coup (it’s the way that you do it)

    I know I shouldn’t, but every time I see the name of Fijian military coup leader Frank Bainimarama, the songs of this eighties girl group come to mind.

  • Costco Photo Centre: cheap, but stupid

    So I’ve got the holiday photos, and want to print them for those that like that. I’d used Future Shop in the past, but Costco is offering such cheap prints, I thought I’d give them a try.

    Probably a mistake:

    • Their drag and drop uploader is an ActiveX control that only works under IE on Windows. Use any other browser, and you get presented with an old-school HTML form. For 94 pictures, that would get dull quickly.
    • The uploader transmits several images at once. It seems that if any of the uploads should fail, all the files uploading at that time also fail. Uploading a few at a time doesn’t seem to help much; around one in ten files will fail randomly.
    • While the uploader does warn you when an upload fails, it’s up to you to remember which files haven’t worked. Clicking Retry just takes you back to the uploader, and since it’s an embedded applet, there’s no browser history to take you back to note your failed uploads.
    • The albums store files in the order uploaded, and can’t be changed.
    • Long file names get truncated, and then get uselessly used as the title on the back.

    Still, I’ll let you know how it all went when I get the prints in a couple of days.

  • extremely childish fun with US$1 and a marker pen …

    Thanks to Kathy (whose name I have probably misspelled) in Kansas City for showing us this:

    FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE becomes FART, teehee ...

    (please note: no actual US currency was defaced to make this blog posting.)

  • ack bleah

    I picked up a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme Coffee Flavored (as they say) Gum in Missouri last week. I strongly advise that you don’t.

    To use the crude but apt expression coined by Jay Primeau to describe a badly-mixed Kahlua cocktail, it tastes like coffee flavoured ass. While chewing, it causes the gorge to rise (I think it’s the slightly minty edge of the gum base), and has an aftertaste akin to latte barf.

    Canada’s own Thrills Gum may still taste like soap (as it says on the package, and they’re not lying), but this is just … eww.

  • home again

    The 4000km holiday roadtrip is over. We’re back home now. It was good to be away, but it’s also good to be back.

  • 365 Days – The Project Returns

    The 365 Days Project — the year-long net music weirdness that made 2003 bearable — is back!

  • Year of ZOOT

    Happy 2007, folks!

  • thought for the day

    Dance as if no-one were watching.
    — anon.

    Laugh as if watching someone dance as if no-one were watching.
    — me.

  • Carter Arter Blues

    For Paul Carter: Carter Arter Blues – Alan Walsh (mp3).

  • what day is it?

    Why, it’s Rush Day – 21/12 – of course. So have a good one, straight from the land of the Rand-fanciers themselves.

  • happy solstice

    And we didn’t even need to sacrifice anything to bring the sun back. But don’t forget the old Scottish saw: “As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.”

  • bye bye bikeshare

    BikeShare is no more, sadly.

  • take me to your lieder

    Now playing: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, by Josephine Foster. Classical German lieder, with overlaid psych guitar. Good and weird, but weird and good.