Last Friday, early in the morning (4:30), we welcomed the newest member of our household: Noelle Joy. Obviously, we’ve taken some photos, which I’m including below for your enjoyment. She was born quite quickly – Mandi & I arrived in Labour & Delivery about 4:00am, so that gives you some idea. No time for drugs [...]
Read the full story »Movies, music, books and other elements of culture.
Teaching, instruction, students and whatnot.
Family stories, legislation affecting families, discussion on family issues.
Gizmos, gadgets and the latest gear.
Politics, news and happenings around the world.
Febricant (adj): causing fever. Funbricant (adj): feverishly fun. Here we go!
Science:
Social:
Language:
Phys. Ed.:
Miscellaneous:
Have a great weekend and remember, March is National Frozen Food Month, so bring on the Delissio!
Alfred Thompson mentioned earlier today via Twitter that he was interested in seeing medal counts per population for the countries involved. Realising that this kind of math was right up my alley, I decided to make such a table for my own interest… The first four columns were what Alfred was talking about, and I [...]
Fabaceous (adj): bean-like. Funbaceous (adj): humour-like. Here’s two weeks’ worth of links – brace yourselves!
Olympics:
Intro to Canada – At the beginning of the Olympics, NBC made this short film to introduce their American viewers to Canada. Tom Brokaw narrates.
Opening ceremonies – TBP’s take on the 2010 opening ceremonies in Vancouver. Lots of spectacle.
Week one – [...]
My impression of Canada Post’s online tracking system:
Day 1: Your package has been electronically submitted.
Day 2: Your package has been processed in Mississauga.
Day 3: Your package has been processed in Mississauga.
Day 4: Your package has been processed in Mississauga.
Day 5: Your package has been processed in Mississauga.
Day 6: Your package has been processed in Mississauga.
*package [...]
Fusillation (n): death by shooting. Funsillation (n): fun by linking. No categories this week, since there aren’t too many links. Here we go!
Hologram world? – Though it might seem absurd at first glance, there’s a distinct possibility that the universe around us may be nothing more than a projection of actions past the visible [...]
Facinorous (adj.): atrociously wicked. Funcinorous (adj.): wickedly funny. Here’s this week’s list ‘o links:
Science
Chess by machine – Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov talks about his time competing against ever-more-advanced computers until finally being beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer. Interesting look at how chess changed when computers were allowed, and how chess changed the [...]
No fun Friday this week – unfortunately, I had this thing called “work” that took up too much of my time… bummer. Bask instead in my choices for movies to see in 2010…
Jan 8th – Leap Year – Yes, I know it’s a standard romantic comedy, and yes I know it will be predictable, but [...]
Fontinal (adj): growing near springs. Funtinal (adj): springy and fun. A short list this week, which means each one is extra-special:
Science:
Auto-appendectomy – In the spring of 1961, with no other medical professional around, a Russian surgeon stationed at the South Pole was forced to perform an appendectomy on himself.
Media:
Tree house – A unique and unusual [...]
Finical (adj): excessively precise in trivial matters. Funical (adj): accuracy in amusement. Here we go:
Social:
Road to the Olympics – I’ve mentioned Capzles before as a timeline tool for the classroom, and this is a good example. CBC has included photos and videos of the lead-up to the Vancouver games.
Political manoeuvering – Tom Flanagan, professor of [...]
fanfaronade (n): grandiose trumpet blast. funfaronade (n): grand group of amusing links. Let the blast begin!
End of year/End of decade:
Decade in photos – The Big Picture looks back over the last 10 years with photos that are iconic of the times we lived through. Some are expected (Sept 11th), some I’d forgotten (Elian Gonzales), and [...]
I signed up for ClustrMaps last year at this time – it’s the service that generates the little red-spotted map at the botton-right of the page. Basically, it uses the geographic data from each visitor’s electronic trail to mark a world map of where they’re surfing from. The result is this:
As the counter at the [...]
Now that Christmas is officially over, I thought I’d post all twelve songs from the countdown in one easy-to-get-at place. So here they are:
12 – Relient K – 12 Days of Christmas
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
11 – BarlowGirl – Carol of the Bells/Sing We Now of Christmas
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
10 [...]
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had a great day with family and/or friends. We had a fun day of food, presents, movies, food and food. We opened many gifts this morning, both kids were pleased with their haul, as were the adults.
I got most of what I asked for, along with some things I [...]
The final song in the countdown is BarlowGirl’s “Hallelujah (Light Has Come),” another Christmas song from the perspective of the parents. This triumphant proclamation (“Hallelujah, we’ve been found/A child is born to save us now” ) is fitting for the day of expectation, the Eve of Christmas.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
–> D/L <–
Science:
DNATube – Science videos online. Organised into channels, from structural biology to neuroscience, with contributions from MIT and other scientific institutions. Very cool!
Science is Real – They Might Be Giants takes on public misperceptions about science and the scientific process. Ironically somewhat preachy, it none-the-less does a credible job of explaining in layman’s terms why [...]
I’m not the world’s healthiest eater, I’ll be the first to admit, but even I was a little surprised at how tight my waistband was getting. The bathroom scale verified that I’m the heaviest now that I’ve ever been, and I knew it was time to make a change. Fortunately, I already know of a [...]
Sorry to anyone who’s had troubles accessing the site recently – my host was having issues with my site. Apparently, one of the plugins for the blog had generated in excess of 6000 database entries in one table alone, which was making the queries extremely slow and CPU intensive. Because I’m on shared [...]
Sorry about the late post on this one – I got the email ready early last week, and thought I’d posted it here, too… my bad.
This being the last Fun Friday before the holidays, I thought I’d try and tilt the theme that way as much as possible. Unfortunately, while I did get some end-of-the-year [...]
As I mentioned in my last post, I volunteered my summer to go up to our local church camp and film the events of the week. I’ve put up some of the videos on YouTube, so for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, here’s what I’ve got so far:
Rules video – all [...]
A couple of months after I wrote the review on the Logitech Freepulse headphones, the power button stopped working, so I had to find a new pair of headphones.
For a while, I made do with a pair of wired headphones, but they’re clearly not geeky enough, so I was looking for a new pair of [...]
It’s not like they had a choice – their ruling was limited to whether Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, constituted an amendment or a revision to the state’s constitution. If it was a revision, it would require more legislative steps before being enshrined in the constitution. The court ruled that it was an amendment, [...]
