Transmission

North Cascades

2007-05-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I hiked to Barclay Lake below Mount Baring with Suor.Last Saturday I hiked up to Heybrook Lookout with Nabeel. On the way, we also stopped at Deception Falls.

Fossil Watches Are Evil

2007-04-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

The Fossil watch company is dishonest and makes cheap watches. Also, Fossil does not respect their warranty. I would recommend that if you are in the market for a watch that you do not buy a Fossil watch. My very nice watch broke after only two years, so I mailed it to them to fix. They were pretty quick at fixing it. However, Fossil did not honour their warranty.On the form, I wrote My watch

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

2007-04-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps is a compelling editorial in The Guardian....As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in

Electric Cars (in Europe)

2007-04-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

French plan green postal service [BBC] - the French postal service is going to start using electric cars to deliver mail.

The Seventeen Traditions

2007-04-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

I finished reading The Seventeen Traditions. I got a copy when I went to see Ralph Nader speak in Olympia a couple months ago.It was a quick read and only took me a few days to read. (The fact that it's only 150 pages long and the page size is small helped). The "Seventeen Traditions" are principles taught to him by his parents when he was a young child. So it's filled with stories about his

Cougar & Tiger Mountains

2007-04-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

The past two Saturdays I've gone hiking. I've posted some photos to Flickr.Cougar MountainTiger MountainBoth mountains are part of the "Issaquah Alps" which are in the suburbs east of Seattle. I think I'll try going to the northeast on my next hiking trip - Barclay Lake below Mount Baring sounds good.

Vimy Ridge

2007-04-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. It is a significant event in Canadian history because the entire Canadian army fought together for the first time in the War and won one of the few decisive battles in World War I.I visited the Vimy Memorial when I was in France in 2004. It was quite an experience.

Dodgy Search

2007-04-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

I was making a comment on my friends blog and was too lazy to walk to the other room and check the title of a book on my shelf (The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy). So I tried searching Amazon.com with a few different combinations, such as New York Times Book Foreign Policy, which yields 48 results. They are mostly about crossword puzzles and you have to

Is It Worth Being Wise?

2007-03-24T15:30:00.001-07:00

An interesting essay by Paul Graham: Is It Worth Being Wise?

North Cascades National Park

2007-03-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

I thought that there were only three (US) national parks near Seattle - Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake.The other day I stumbled the North Cascades National Park online. According the its website it is very scenic and has lots of camping and hiking with mountains and glaciers. It's only two and half hours away from Seattle too. I going to drag my friends there in the summer

Daylight Savings

2007-03-12T22:51:00.000-07:00

Leaving work while the sun was still up was a nice feeling. Dragging my ass out of bed in the morning was impossible though. I want my hour of sleep back! Somehow I'm really tired despite it being "really" only 10 pm... :-(The good news is that after a ridiculous amount of work to prepare for starting daylight savings earlier and patching what seemed like a zillion systems, nothing broke a work.

The End Of Suburbia

2007-03-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched the documentary The End Of Suburbia. It's been in a Netflix queue for a long time, but its availability was always "Very Long Wait". I can understand why after seeing it; the film was quite thought provoking. It covers the emergence of the suburbs in North American society then discusses Peak Oil and how it will affect society. Because so many people list in the suburbs, they

Snow Patrol

2007-02-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

I went to the Snow Patrol at Key Arena last night with Suor.The first opening act was Silversun Pickups. I'd never heard of them, but I think I recognized the last song they played from somewhere (probably KEXP). Their music had a rather uniform "loud" sound and I didn't find it all that interesting.Ok Go was the second opening act. The commentary by their singer as well as their videoes were

Ralph Nader

2007-02-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

Ralph Nader speaking at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington.I spent Sunday in Olympia, the capital of Washington State and an hour south of Seattle, with Dave and Caroline. We watched the documentary An Unreasonable Man, which was about Ralph Nader - his rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a consumer advocate, as well as his presidential campaign in 2000. It was in a theatre that

Crystal Mountain

2007-02-14T20:39:00.000-08:00

Photos from skiing at Crystal Mountain on Sunday.

Warming 'very likely' human-made

2007-02-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

While flipping channels, I noticed that a Republic Congressman from the Denial Machine was on Larry King last night, but wasn't rebuked.Today, the BBC says [Global] Warming 'very likely' human-made.

"The president of the United States is not a fact-checker"

2007-01-26T23:56:00.000-08:00

Untruth and Consequences is an interesting read. It's an essay about lies by US Presidents over the past several decades, but it focuses upon the current one and Iraq.

Travel Plans

2007-01-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

I don't really have much vacation saved up at work, but my plans for this year are:Costa Rica - go and see the rainforest and do something a bit different than my past two vacations (which were to Europe).Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons - Crater Lake was an awesome camping trip. I want to go to camping at Yellowstone next and Grand Teton is right beside it.New York City - I have a friend who's

The Broker

2007-01-13T17:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't read a novel in a while. I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately like Collapse, The Goal, Code Complete, Lonely Planet Denmark, and The Modern Defence.While I was home for Christmas, I borrowed John Grisham's The Broker from my brother-in-law. It's John Grisham doing a spy novel. (e.g. The main character was a lawyer that a bunch of spies want to kill). I liked it and read it

Do I Live In A "Red State"?

2007-01-13T01:17:00.000-08:00

One of the school boards in the Seattle area, banned showing An Inconvenient Truth because it is "controversial". What is the World coming to? If that's their standard does this mean they can't show Schnidler's List unless they also include commentary by Ahmadinejad?! I hear that smoking is good for you too. Perhaps that needs to be taught in health class?! Maybe Civics clas needs to

Burnout

2007-01-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

A (somewhat) long, but interesting article about burnout: Can’t Get No Satisfaction (via Slashdot).

Best Movies Of 2006

2007-01-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

Just like last year, I watched a lot of movies. (Perhaps even a few more). I saw a few really awful movies, but also a lot good ones and even a few great ones.The best film I saw was Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. It took me a long time to get around to seeing it (and it was so long that it took me two nights to watch it), but it's easily one of the greatest movies of all time.I like drama

Environmentally-Friendly Light Bulbs

2007-01-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

The NY Times has a good article about Walmart trying to sell more environmentally-friendly light bulbs, but meeting a variety of obstacles: Wal-Mart Puts Some Muscle Behind Power-Sipping Bulbs (via Slashdot and Metafilter).I have one of these light bulbs (given to me by Seattle City Light) and its lasted at least 18 months (and it's in a lamp that is on most of the time that I'm home).

Gray Areas In Java

2006-12-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

In case you ever wondered what weak and soft references are in Java, here are couple good articles explain what they are and when you might use them:Plugging memory leaks with weak referencesPlugging memory leaks with soft references

Python vs. Alligator

2006-12-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

It sounds like a crazy Sci-Fi Channel B-movie. CNN has an interesting article about pythons invading the Florida Everglades. The middle of the article has the stories about pythons attacking alligators.

The Denial Machine

2006-12-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

The CBC's Fifth Estate has a great documentary, The Denial Machine, available online (in its entirety without commercials) about how Big Tobacco's PR firms and junk scientists from the 1990's are now on the payroll for Exxon Mobil and other oil and coal companies. They are being paid to deny Global Warming and are busy partnering with the Bush White House to censor science and lie to and

Linear Algebra And Google's PageRank

2006-12-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

The American Mathematical Society has a good article, How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web's Haystack, which explains how Google ranks the importance of each web page. There's lots of linear algebra, but its fairly accesible. [Via Slashdot].

Forward Declarations And Faster Compilations

2006-12-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

In C++, a Forward Declaration is a declaration of a type that occurs before the definition of that type. For example, suppose you write the small program:#include int main(void) { doSomething(); return 0;}void doSomething(void) { std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;}This program, won't compile - you'll get an error like dosomething.cc:4: error: `doSomething' undeclared (first

Yangtze Dolphin Extinct

2006-11-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

Yangtze Dolphin Extinct [UK Times; via Metafilter]. A sad encore to the West African Black Rhino's Extinction earlier this year.

Places Visited

2006-11-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

I've visited 18 countries:6 provinces:and 15 states:I need to figure out where I want to travel to next year. I'm thinking maybe Costa Rica (to see a rainforest) and maybe Yellowstone National Park.

The Land Of Contradictions

2006-11-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

Only in JesusLand and centre of the Free World could a Christmas Wreath in the shape of the Peace Sign be "symbol of Satan" or "anti-Iraq-War protest".Isaiah 9.6: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (KJV) comes to mind

What Does Peanut Butter Tell You About Work?

2006-11-26T22:45:00.000-08:00

The past year at work has been an...interesting?!...one and I know a lot of my friends and co-workers would have a lot to say about it too. Recent news like Yahoo's Peanut Butter Memo and Siebel and IBM settling class-action lawsuits regarding overtime feel somewhat relevant and only give me pause to think about my current situation and where I'd like to be...I'm not really sure. I'm not even

Who Killed The Electric Car?

2006-11-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

Who Killed The Electric Car? is a pretty good documentary. Until I saw it, I didn't know that electric cars actually existed. California had a law that car companies had to make zero-emission vehicles, and all the major car makers produced electric cars. They produced 2% of the pollution of a regular car (taking into account the pollution from the power plants that generate their electricity) and

Canuck

2006-11-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to my previous post, I also got perfect on the How Canadian Are You? quiz:You are 100% Canuck! You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?

Accent

2006-11-19T17:20:00.000-08:00

I took the What American accent do you have? quiz. I think my (American) friends, will be amused by the result:What American accent do you have?Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.The

Lost "Loose Ends"

2006-11-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

IGN has a very long article about the Top 50 Lost Loose Ends with a discussion about each. I think they've hit on pretty much everything that's been bothering me, including: #32: The Supply Drop #31: Why Couldn't Desmond Leave? #26: Libby #24: Michael & Walt #21: Christian's Body #8: Locke's Legs #5: The Unusual Connections Between Castaways

New URL

2006-11-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

I'm moving my blog from http://www.s93608309.onlinehome.us/ to http://sendingtransmission.blogspot.com/ as my free hosting with 1&1 is going to expire soon. I'll continue posting new photos on Flickr. I know links to old photos and image are all broken, eventually I'll get around to fixing them (probably by posting older photos to Flickr). I'll see about coming up with a better template too.

Memories of 342

2006-11-06T22:52:00.000-08:00

Building a better HashMap is a short, but interesting, article on IBM's website about how java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap is implemented to provide much efficient concurrency than java.util.Hashtable.

No More Fish?

2006-11-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

...this century is the last century of wild seafood... The BBC has an article about the rapid decline of fisheries: 'Only 50 years left' for sea fish.It reminds of Collapse, by Jared Diamond, which I just finished reading. It talked a lot of over fishing, over logging, soil erosion, pollution, over populating, etc. It's a good book.

Black & White Photos

2006-11-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

I went to the Pike Place Market this weekend and took some photos.

Good Agile, Bad Agile

2006-10-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Steve Y's Good Agile, Bad Agile. I think this anecdote was my favourite part:Most engineers are not early risers. I know a team that has to come in for an 8:00am meeting at least once (maybe several times) a week. Then they sit like zombies in front of their email until lunch. Then they go home and take a nap. Then they come in at night and work, but they're bleary-eyed

Carded

2006-10-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got carded when I bought a bottle of white wine at the grocery store. For crying out load, I'm 26 now. You can stop carding me already.My hypothesis is that if I shave the morning before I get groceries then I'll get carded if I buy beer/wine. Conversely, if I haven't shaved in a few days (and look all scruffy) then I won't get carded. I've also observed, that if I buy beer then I'm

Work

2006-10-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

Working at Microsoft is an interesting essay. (It's one of the many articles I bookmarked and took forever to get around to reading, so I'm not sure where I found it). I can relate to many of the points in it. I especially liked the subsection "Managers". The statement "...the Seattle area is known for being somewhat isolating — lots of young, ambitious professionals with no time for making

Worst Congress Ever

2006-10-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

Rolling Stone has an interesting (sad?!) article about The Worst Congress Ever:...Instead of dealing with its chief constitutional duty -- approving all government spending -- Congress devotes its time to dumb bullshit. "This Congress spent a week and a half debating Terri Schiavo..."......Despite an international uproar over Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue.

CRC

2006-10-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

In case you ever wondered how CRC worked (or how to use what you learned in Polynomials, Rings and Finite Fields), Cyclic Redundancy Check gives a short description of the math behind CRC as well as how to implement it as an algorithm.

Building a Better Voting Machine

2006-10-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Building a Better Voting Machine is a short and interesting article about voting machines (via Slashdot).I've been meaning to print a copy of Rivest's Third Ballot Voting System and read it while I take the bus to work, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Web Services

2006-10-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

I transfered to the Web Services group at the start of October. It's a little strange to not know what I'm doing, anyone I work with, or anything about where I work (as it's in a different building in a different part of town). It's kind of like the start of a co-op work term all over again. I think I needed a change of scenery though and I'm excited to try out something new.The people I work

Crater Lake

2006-10-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Lots of lots of photos from last month's camping trip to Crater Lake.

Learn Ruby Or Python?

2006-10-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of short computer-programming articles online lately, such as Exception-Handling Antipatterns, which I bookmarked a couple weeks ago (as a possible reference for a talk about Defensive Programming that I gave two weeks ago), but didn't end up reading it until today.I also learn about Duck Typing (via Joel on Software's Ruby Performance Revisited). The articles The Perils

Piecora's Pizza

2006-09-30T20:23:00.000-07:00

I went hiking today with Prashant to Greenwater Lakes, which is a bit past Enumclaw (about an hour and a half southeast of Seattle). It was pretty decent - the forest was nice. The lakes were more like ponds though. And we couldn't find the "awe-inspriing western red cedar" that my guidebook called out.I was too lazy to cook dinner (and don't have very much food in my apartment), so I decided to

Real Madrid Photos

2006-09-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

Photos from last month's Real Madrid v. DC United football match.

Mount St. Helens

2006-09-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

I put up some photos of Mount St. Helens on Flickr from when I went hiking there with Suor in August.

Wine Is Confusing

2006-09-10T18:28:00.000-07:00

My Mom sent a clipping from Vintages (a wine-marketing magazine from the LBCO) about Washington and British Columbia wines.Columbia Crest 'Grand Estates' Merlot 2002...The nose is a bit shy at first before unveiling notes of Oreo cookie, black cherries, oak spice and cedar. Brace your lips, though, for an explosion of sweet, dark and rich fruit - black cherries, plums, and marionberries - joined

Lost Season Two

2006-09-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

DVDs for season two of Lost came in the mail on Thursday. I watched the first two episodes last night. It's an awesome show! My plan is to watch the whole series by the end of the month, so I'm caught up before season three starts.

Mount Si

2006-09-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

I went hiking up Mount Si yesterday with Sudhanshu. It was my third time hiking up to the top. I can tell that I'm in better shape then the previous times, but it was still quite grueling (and my knees are a bit sore today). The weather was little hazy, but the view from the top was good.I'll post some photos once I install a new hard drive. (My current one is a bit small and full of music and

Lake Serene and Talapus Lake

2006-08-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

Some hiking photos from July: Lake Serene (with Suor and Nabeel) and Talapus Lake (with Dave and Caroline).Lake SereneTalapus Lake

Why Mississauga is a pluton

2006-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Why Mississauga is a pluton is a hilarious editorial about the new planet classification system using lots of analogies about TO.

Budapest

2006-08-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

All the photos from my European adventure are now on Flickr. In particular, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest are the recent additions.ViennaBratislavaBudapest

Real Madrid

2006-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

I went to see the Real Madrid - DC United football (soccer) match last night a Qwest Field (with my Mom who is in town this week). It was the second soccer game that I've attended (and the first for my Mom). I went to see Manchester United beat Celtic FC three years ago when they were in Seattle.Zidane retired, but Real Madrid has David Beckham and the recently acquired Ruud van Nistelrooy. They

Prague

2006-08-02T22:42:00.000-07:00

Some of the photos I took in Prague are now up on Flickr.

21 Grams

2006-07-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

The next movie in my Netflix queue is 21 Grams (which was recommended by Ramanan).Netflix said it would arrive on Saturday, but it was late and didn't arrive until today. Just now I opened the envelope to pop it into my DVD player and the disc has a massive crack the size of its radius. Needless to say, it does not play. Thanks, Netflix. Now I will go an entire week without a movie. :-(My first

30 Days

2006-07-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Season two of 30 Days premiered last night. Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, gets someone to experience something they generalize oppose for 30 days and films the results. Last night, a gun-toting, border-patrolling Minuteman moved in with a large family of illegal immigrants living below the poverty in LA. It was really good. If the other documentaries in the season are as good then it

Baseball

2006-07-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

I got four (free) tickets to tonight's Seattle Mariners - Toronto Blue Jays game from a co-worker. I went with some friends from work. I haven't watched baseball in a long time.We had a good time. It was a rather peculiar as all four of us don't watch baseball and we all moved here from Canada so we didn't know which team to cheer for. It didn't help that there seemed to be an inordinately large

Peak Oil?

2006-07-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

Peak Oil? is an episode of an Australia news journal TV show about how the World is running out of oil. [Via award tour].

Interesting Articles

2006-07-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

A few interesting articles: Google's unknown artist has huge following [CNN] via Slashdot This cabbie needs no map [Toronto Star] via Funkaoshi Tut's gem hints at space impact [BBC]

West African Black Rhino Extinct.

2006-07-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Extinction fear for black rhino [BBC] - one of the six species of rhino in Africa is now extinct.

Fast Food Nation

2006-07-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behaviour. -- Eric SchlosserFast Food Nation is a good book. I expected it to be something akin to Super Size Me, but it is much more like The Corporation. I enjoyed reading it and would definitely recommend reading it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

2006-07-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Defending liberties in high-tech world [MSNBC] is a good description of what the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is all about. (Via Slashdot)

Running With The Bulls

2006-07-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Man partially paralyzed at bull festival [CNN]Running with the bulls in Pamplona would be a crazy rush. But I don't think I'm crazy enough.

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-07-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with Dave and Caroline. I thought it was well done and informative. I would recommend seeing it.

Lake Serene

2006-07-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

I went hiking to Lake Serene [Seattle PI] yesterday with Suor and Nabeel. We got a late start and it was a bit of drive to get there - it's 8 miles east of Gold Bar (Highway 2). The bottom part of the trail was relatively flat and a little boring. After about a mile in a half, you reach a rock face with water trickling down that was cool looking. Then the trail got really hard. The signpost at

Viking

2006-06-28T00:42:00.000-07:00

A Couple Interesting Articles

2006-06-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Bush Is Not Incompetent - it's worth reading and it won't be what you expect.Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection Pattern - an older computer science/programming article, but I found it enlightening. (Perhaps the title doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but if something has a title that long and still isn't clear then I can't succinctly explain what it's about either! ;-)

Flickr

2006-06-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

I created a Flick Account for myself. I've posted photos and commentary from the London lag of my vacation. I plan to add photos from more cities as time permits.

Vacation

2006-06-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my (second) great European adventure. I started with a visit to my cousin Michael and his girlfriend Katie in London then travelled around Zealand/Øresund in Denmark and Sweden (i.e. Copenhagen). Afterward I went on the Berlin to Budapest Contiki tour (that also included intermediate stops in Prague and Vienna).It was a lot of travelling (14 towns and cities in 8 countries, 6

Another Move From The Bush Playbook?

2006-05-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

CTV: PM, press gallery draw battle lines on the Hill"The Press Gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view," [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] said Wednesday in an interview on A-Channel TV in London, Ont.He added: "I have trouble believing a Liberal prime minister would have this problem.The article goes on into great detail about the current squabble between Prime Minister

What Came First - The Chicken Or The Egg?

2006-05-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

CNN claims that Chicken and egg debate unscrambled:Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed

How To Be Silicon Valley

2006-05-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

Another interesting Paul Graham essay: How To Be Silicon Valley (via Slashdot).His link to an urban sprawl photo (and the photo's caption) made me laugh.

Assorted Interesting Articles

2006-05-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

I finished reading The World Is Flat this weekend. I thought it was good book. So I found BBC's brief comparison of China and India (as well as the US), which shows things like GDP, population, literacy, etc. with projections out to 2050, interesting.The Chess Olympiad started this weekend in Turin. I can't find any results on the "offical" website, but an Austrian site has a good level of detail

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-05-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

The documentary An Inconvenient Truth comes out in a couple weeks. I want to go see it. It's about lectures Al Gore has given about climate change and the enviornment. The BBC has a short article about it: Politician Gore appears at Cannes.

Disappointing Movies

2006-05-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much luck picking movies the past couple weeks. Everything I've seen has been disappointing.When I saw a preview for Coffee and Cigarettes at Princess Cinema a couple years ago, it looked novel and full of potential . But it was just a bunch of vacuous and dull vignettes. Nothing in it was compelling. Normally if a movie is bad, I'll still watch it. I thought about turning it off,

Wallace Falls

2006-05-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Photos from last Saturday's hike to Wallace Falls.

Dolphins Have Names

2006-05-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

BBC: Dolphins 'have their own names'Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by name, scientists in Fife have found.Cool.

Waterfalls

2006-05-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Nandu also recommends hiking to Wallace Falls. After Googling this and Twin Falls, I've discovered that (a) there are lots of detailed websites about waterfalls and (b) Washington state has some of the "best" waterfalls in the World.So I also want to try hiking to Sulphide Creek Falls and Colonial Creek Falls. Both are in the North Cascades. Depending upon whom you consult they are the 12th and

Twin Falls

2006-05-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went hiking with Suor to Twin Falls, 40 minutes east of Seattle. The trail wasn't too difficult and after 1.5 mile lead to a bridge above and behind the falls. There was also lookup point facing the falls. I've posted twenty-one photos with some more details in the accompanying descriptions.

Information czar blasts Harper's accountability bill

2006-04-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think it's a bad sign for Harper when the National Post is calling him out:Information czar blasts Harper's accountability billCanada's information czar unleashed on Friday a scathing attack on proposed access to information reforms, calling them dangerous and disappointing."No previous government, since the Access to Information Act came into force in 1983, has put forward a more

War and Politics

2006-04-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Ottawa in 2002, I remember Parliament and the other government buildings lowering their flags to half-mast when Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Stephen Harper, the new Prime Minister, reversed government policy to not lower the flag. Moreover, the media was been banned from covering the repatriation ceremony at CFB Trenton today."It is not about photo-ops and media

Vibe

2006-04-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't been taking too many photos recently, so here are some random macro shots of my new Vibe Glasses. (As no three of drinking glasses/mugs/cups matched, I thought an upgrade was in order; I now have sixteen complementary glasses).

Bowling

2006-04-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

I went bowling this afternoon at Garage with most of my co-workers. I haven't been bowling in a long time. I'm not very good at bowling, so my goal was to make it to 100. The first game, I did amazingly well. I made eight spares and score 147, which was the highest score of everyone (about 20 people)! Of course, the next game was not so impressive, I managed to make two strikes, but I still

Are Software Patents Evil?

2006-04-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

Patent trolls are companies consisting mainly of lawyers whose whole business is to accumulate patents and threaten to sue companies who actually make things. Patent trolls, it seems safe to say, are evil. I feel a bit stupid saying that, because when you're saying something that Richard Stallman and Bill Gates would both agree with, you must be perilously close to tautologies.Are Software

Control Room

2006-04-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

I watched the documentary Control Room tonight. It's about Al Jazeera. Specifically, it takes place during the Iraq War (March - May 2003) and is a collection of interviews with employees of Al Jazeera as well as other pressand US military media relations officers in Qatar. The interviews are interleaved with relevant video clips from Al Jazeera (and related news footage).It had a less context

Skiing

2006-04-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went skiing at Summit for my third (and final) lesson. I think I'm getting better. Gallery (blue-square) was closed, so the lesson was on Holiday (green-circle). Afterward, Suor took me to the top of the mountain on Central Express to go down one of the harder slopes. I feel every-which-way going down (backwards, sideways, forwards), losing a ski twice. I guess I need more practice.

Amusing Article About Soccer (in the US)

2006-04-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

American sports are played with your hands. Using your feet is for commies. is an amusing article about soccer in the US....The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. No other sport can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying

Quantum Physics and Riemann's Hypothesis

2006-03-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

Prime Numbers Get Hitched is an interesting little article about connections between Riemann's Hypothesis and Quantum Physics. It's a short on details though.

Be worried, be very worried

2006-03-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

CNN has finally noticed:Be worried, be very worried:The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blameNo one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth.Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.From heat waves to

V For Vendetta

2006-03-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

I watched V For Vendetta tonight at Cinerama. I liked it. (Enough to palliate the Wachowski brother's faux pas with the sequels to the Matrix).It's kind of hard to describe though. In the near future, Britain is ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship. V is a masked figure, working to overthrow the government. The story is told from the perspective of Evey (Natalie Portman), who becomes entangled in

Patenting Thoughts

2006-03-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

For example, the human genome exists in every one of us, and is therefore our shared heritage and an undoubted fact of nature. Nevertheless 20 percent of the genome is now privately owned. The gene for diabetes is owned, and its owner has something to say about any research you do, and what it will cost you. The entire genome of the hepatitis C virus is owned by a biotech company. Royalty costs

Who Can Name The Bigger Number?

2006-03-17T22:38:00.000-08:00

Who Can Name The Bigger Number? (via Metafilter)....Ackermann numbers are pretty big, but they’re not yet big enough. The quest for still bigger numbers takes us back to the formalists. After Ackermann demonstrated that ‘primitive recursive’ isn’t what we mean by ‘computable,’ the question still stood: what do we mean by ‘computable’? In 1936, Alonzo Church and Alan Turing independently

Big Dipper

2006-03-17T19:49:00.000-08:00

The Astronomy Picture of the Day has a nice photograph of the Big Dipper today.

White To Play And Win

2006-03-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

From my game today:52. Rd8! Re8+53. Rxc8 Rxc854. d7 Rxc755. d8=Q+ Kg759. Qxc7 +-[In fact, 53. Rxe8+ is also winning since after both 53...Kxe8 54. Bc6+ Kf8 55. d7 and 53...Rxe8 54. d7 White wins the rook and promotes a pawn too].