Happy New Year

First, I have to say that there is no better way to close out a year than having your favorite football team win the last game to finish the season with a .500 record. No playoffs this year, but they've shown some great improvements over the past few weeks (though their opponents were somewhat on the weak side).

Acutally, 2007 in the world of sports should prove to be a very interesting one - at least 3 World Cups are up for grabs - One-Day Cricket (West Indies, March-April), Women's Soccer (China, September), and Rugby Union (France, September-October). The US are participating in the Soccer and Rugby cups and have a far greater chance of doing well in the soccer considering that the group stage in the rugby includes both England and the Springboks.

For me, I look for it to be a good year, there are the photo projects - A photo a day and A photo a week; and of course, there are the lads to deal with; I'm kinda waiting for Skype to announce this disruptive pricing structure - it might mean more opportunities to call them on the phone and have some fun. Also, be on the lookout for my comments on movies throughout the year; I'll say that the first one is coming up pretty soon ;)

And for all of you reading, thanks for reading; if you're catching up on my posts via RSS, I'd love to know, and if you're stopping in and reading on a periodic basis, also feel free to say something. :)

Here's to a good 2007 for y'all.

A "small" problem

I'm not going to comment on it, other than the bad pun for the title. BBC link. Excerpt:

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

For a while, this was the second most popular story on the BBC website; right now the 4th emailed story there is this one from the Midlands. Excerpt:

Emergency call handlers were left "in disbelief" when a man dialled 999 because he could not find his trousers.

Hmm..ya think that alcohal might have been involved in that one? ;)

Some of the things you remember

I have to admit something - I am a Food Network junkie. Right now they have an episode of Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels about the Twin Cities. One of the locations that is mentioned to get ethnic cuisine is a place called "Eat Street". I remember in the time that I was up there (about 4 years ago or so), one of the things I did for a class was to go to Eat Street to make a map and discuss the area and why it was so diverse.

Well, I don't remember how that all came out, but I do remember some of the things - in particular all the stores that sold VCD discs, along with Karaoke songs. I also remember the variety of shops - from the Asian grocery markets, to the drug store that was closed, to the laundromats, and even the little grocery store that was there who had phone cards for cheap calls to Mexico and the various homelands of the folks in the area.

During my time in the cities, one thing that I liked to do was just to get on the bus and take a trip - usually down to the Mall of America; I'd never spend anything (except maybe on some food). In fact, most of the time I usually got onto another bus which went around the southeastern part of the metropolitan area and wound up at a different mall. The best thing is that I never got lost when I was riding around in the area; the closest I came was one time when I wound up at a 5-way intersection, but I got a bus to go the other way and it was all good again.

That is one thing that I liked about being up there - you could actually get public transit that went beyond the city limits of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Where I am now, the only way to actually get into the city is by taking a commuter bus that has a limited schedule. Not only that, they don't allow you to transfer to the city buses when you get there; thus you have to pay up to 6 fares -

1. (optional) Shared-Ride Taxi to bus pick-up site
2. Bus into city
3. City bus (you get a transfer that I think is good for an hour and a half)
4. City bus return
5. Regional bus return
6. Taxi return

Somewhat ironically, they advertise the bus as a way to save gas; it's somewhat true, just so long as you're in the city to begin with, or you are going to a spot (by yourself) that's on the regional bus line. ;)

Decking out the browser

I was browsing through LifeHacker today and I found this item asking how many extensions you have in your Firefox.

I personally have 10, but one is disabled. The extensions that I do use are -

FoxClocks
Adblock
IE Tab
VideoDownloader
Stylish
Fasterfox (only a couple of tweaks, and I love the page load timer)
Tabbrowser Preferences
All-in-One Gestures
Digger (which lets you go up the directory structure of a website quickly with a right-click on the Go button)

The disabled extension is Popup ALT Attribute. I don't mind that there are a lot of graphics that don't show a tooltip - as it is most sites are now using the title attribute to tell you about images and other things.

So anyway, the point of the Lifehacker piece was that this person had installed 200 extensions at one time. I personally don't have any need for more than the ten that I already have.

Incidentially, there's even an extension to tell you what extensions you have. I guess that this would be for the person who just says install at every opportunity to install something. There's also a thread about this at the CyberNotes site. It seems most of the people posting in that thread are firm believers in more is better. Ah well - nothing I can do :)

An interesting meme

I saw this over on Chubber Cheekers, and I found this interesting. This is a list of 252 movies; apparently if you seen 85 or more of them, you should get a life (I'd think a number closer to something well over half like 150 or more might be suitable for claiming someone "needs a life"). Anyhoo, if you know me, it's fairly easy to tell that I'm nowhere near that 85 mark. In all fairness, I'm kinda stretching what I have watched as there are a couple in there that I watched ages ago (namely Little Mermaid and Terminator 2). There are some that I didn't count which I have seen bits of - like Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Napoleon Dynamite. Enjoy! ;)

( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
( ) Neverending Story
( ) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total so far: 3

( ) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchor Man
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
( ) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 3

( ) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
( ) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 4

( ) Harry Potter 1
( ) Harry Potter 2
( ) Harry Potter 3
( ) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 5

(x) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
( ) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 6

( ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
( ) KING KONG
Total so far: 6

( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
( ) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber
Total so far: 6

( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
( ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
(x) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 7

( ) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child’s Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
( ) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 7

( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Seven
( ) Ocean’s Eleven
( ) Ocean’s Twelve
( ) Bourne Identity
( ) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 7

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
( ) Rush Hour
( ) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 9

( ) Best Bet
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She’s All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
( ) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
( ) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 12

( ) X-Men
( ) X2
( ) X-3
( ) Spider-Man
( ) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
( ) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far:13

( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf’s Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old-virgin
Total so far: 13

( ) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
( ) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
( ) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
( ) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
( ) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
( ) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 13

( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf
( ) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 13

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
( ) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 15

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
( ) Hook
( ) Chronicle Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
( ) Waterworld
Total so far: 15

( ) Kill Bill vol 1
( ) Kill Bill vol 2
( ) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) the Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) The Ghost and the Darkness
Total so far: 15

( ) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
( ) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
( ) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 18

( ) The Matrix
( ) The Matrix Reloaded
( ) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
( ) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
( ) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
Total: 18

It's probably wrong to do this...

While I was reminding myself why I don't watch much daytime TV (the absolute dearth of shows is amazing, depite having access to some 75 channels), I saw something that I couldn't help but have a little chuckle at.

Here, sitting in a studio with his trademark pinstripe suit with his logo on it, is Benny Hinn asking for his followers partners to donate above and beyond their regular donations as his ministry is supposedly running a $2 million defecit for the year. I know that most churches are run like businesses, but for the most part, they usually can figure out ways to save money by doing things differently, and you wouldn't see an annual defecit of more than a couple of thousand dollars.

I guess things are different when your main congregation huddle around tv sets to hear you speak, or speak and beg politely ask for money.

The Christmas Holiday

It is an interesting thing to think about: Christmas is a farily boring day. Even when I was younger, we did the present opening and the such on Christmas Eve--mostly because that was when we had the big Christmas pageant at church. Christmas Day would then be for checking out the presents. I think it was in 1988 that we went down to Chicago for the day, but I don't remember much other than not stopping at the stop sign about a mile from here (go figure :)).

Two years ago, we were fortunate enough to have an all-expenses paid trip to Atlanta, where it was about as cold there as it is here (just above freezing) and I was silly enough to not bring a jacket along...oops. ;) Anyway, Christmas Day we went out to do some sight-seeing of the neighborhoods of the city, and there were hardly any people on the roads, as you might expect. However, the strangest thing happened - at about 11.00 PM, there was a traffic jam in the pseudo-downtown area (it's not the technical downtown which is about a mile or two to the south). It never made any sense to me, but it is something that sticks in my mind.

So, anyway, Christmas this year was a very quiet one and since we didn't do much gift exchanging this year (in fact I only unwrapped one gift - a down comforter from a friend), there wasn't much to do other than to maybe watch TV. As Snos pointed out, there isn't much on TV no matter where you are (that is unless you're a fan of professional basketball, or follow much more than one team in the NFL). Two networks had marathons of the same movie - Christmas Story on TBS and Ice Age on FX. At one point, I wound up watching the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year on my new DVD player.

I'd been looking for a DVD player that can play DivX files (and consequently XviD files too, which is still the most common format for video out there). On Friday I was looking through the sales slips for the last-minute sales and at one store they had the a DVD player like the one I was looking for, and so it was purchased (this after my saying that I'll look at Amazon to see if it's the lowest price and then just realising that if I don't just get it I'll keep looking and not commit ;)).

I started looking at information online about the player and I found out that the player I got (Philips DVP642) is easily convertible to a region-free player! All I have to do is open the tray, press a few buttons and boom! It'll play DVDs from anywhere, even if it's not in NTSC formatting since it can convert back and forth between TV standards. Basically that means that if I wanted to order something from the ABC Shop or from overseas in general, I really have nothing to worry about as it'll play the disc. :)

It was not a white Christmas this year; the temperature was hovering just around freezing, and there were forecasts for snow, but none materialized. In fact, the grass is still green here, and I wouldn't be surprised if some nitwit will be out this weekend (provided the situation doesn't change) mowing their lawn. In the strangest coincidence of them all, one of the last places you'd expect to have a white Christmas had one this year. Snow was reported in the higher elevations of South-East Australia in the middle of summer (which could be somewhat comprehendable if it weren't for the fact that the highest mountain there doesn't even reach 3000m (or *very* loosely 10,000 ft).

Oh, and if you're interested, Christmas dinner this year wasn't the normal Ham (which we usually make with scalloped potatoes {separately, but we are known to mix a few pieces of ham into it}, which we really couldn't be bothered to do), but we decided to just stick a pizza into the oven. The idea of getting Chinese food was entertained for about 10 seconds, but then we figured that we couldn't be bothered to go anywhere either. ;)

One final thing - a question for the Aussies - how thick was your paper yesterday? I saw stories about the crush at stores (and a note to news.com.au on that last link, what is a CDB? :)) for Boxing Day sales. It sounds as if Boxing Day is the "Black Friday" for y'all.

It's come full circle

It's official. The Christmas shopping season is over; and it's only 8.40 on Christmas Eve. I know that it is over because today's paper is only about an inch thick. And the most surprising part is that, aside from the small ad over the fold, there are *no* ads embedded in the comics section. In fact, there are only a couple of regular ads in there, including two of the grocery stores, but no coupons.

Somehow, however, they still managed to get the 10-page job classifieds into two sections (the first has only 4 pages, which includes one page of a car ad.

Living in the Sticks

It is interesting to think what constitutes a reasonable or unreasonable distance for people. For some folks (or their relatives), 10 miles is too far to go to get to a decent shop. Where I live, the minimum distance you have to go to get to a choice for shopping is 10 miles. Sure, there's the "hometown" grocery store (whose owners have sold their franchises to the larger regional corporation) about 3 miles (~5km) away. There are also a few stores about 6 miles away, but there you have a choice of two grocery stores that fall on the higher side of pricing products, along with a single department store. It's really a case of the law of relatively here, as to me that 10 miles doesn't seem that far (20 minutes, it's about the same whether we take the freeway or the normal road) away. :)

However, if you go that 10 miles, in both directions you have a large megastore, along with a selection of other stores including a hobby store and a couple of home improvement chain stores. However, if you go in the direction of the city, you wind up in what is, essentially, a very sprawling shopping center composed of a few major retailers, along with some of your standard modern casual-dining chain restaurants that serve decent food at a moderate price and have HDTVs set up showing an analog signal. You also have the predominant electronics retailer in the country, plus a huge furniture store where they offer free delivery to certain areas with a $1000 minimum purchase. An additional bonus is that you can actually save at some stores as the sales tax is one-half percent lower depending on which city you're in.

If you go another 10 miles, you wind up at one major shopping mall or another. One is really the area's megamall, with the most retailers, and even a movie theatre. There are also a few major higher-end chain restaurants there. The other mall is in a major shopping strip that goes for about 5 or so miles. In the vicinity of the second mall is a shop called World Market, which sells (as one might expect) items from all over the world, including something that will probably make some folks' mouths water - TimTams (though they're marketed as Arnott's Original Chocolate Biscuits). According to the site, a 200g packet is $3.49 (that's before tax). It's quite reasonable since the same product (same size even) is priced at $A2.95.

In fact, I've been to a World Market before, but not this location; it was back in July of 2005, and of the items pictured here, the only one that didn't receive a try (as of yet) is the Colavita pasta; I tried the Vegemite, but I did not like it at all, and eventually (like after about a year) it got put in the trash.

What month is this?

It was only three weeks ago that we had a massive snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot (30cm) of snow on the ground here, but there is no trace anymore that the snow was even here. Now, it's been raining off-and-on since Wednesday night, and I've even heard some thunder in the vicinity.

If you look outside, you'd swear that it was April, with the mixing of green grass with large patches of brown. It's best summed up with this line from an email sent out from a local meteorologist -

Subject: Which Holiday is this?

Given today's weather, it would be perfectly understandable if you felt we were approaching Easter instead of Christmas. Get the scoop on the unusual weather headed to your location by going to your Personal forecast.

It's coming...

There are only 10 days or so until the Photo a Day project begins in earnest. In preparation, I have been making it a goal to take photos every day, and so far, I have accomplished this goal every day of the month. It's kinda neat to be able to go into the folder for my photos and see that there are folders corresponding to each day.

The challenging part for me is to choose a single photo to post for each day, as I tend to take a lot of photos if I have the time to do it. There are a few days where I will only take a photo or two, but for the most part I am a quantity photographer (and the vast majority of pictures that I do take are excellent, it's just that I don't make the time to get them resized/sharpened/etc. in order to post them to the internets).

If you're interested in becoming part of the photo a day (or if you're a more casual photographer, the Photo a Week) project, leave a comment and I'll try to get in touch with you :)

Christmas Shopping

Well, I haven't actually done any shopping (and probably won't do much of it this year, as is the norm for me anyway; except for the one year I went shopping with my one brother and wound up wrapping my own gift [which, incidentially was a video cassette, a blank one :)]).

However, in these final days before Christmas, the stores tend to stay open longer - some as late as midnight, but the majority of stores close around 9 or 10 pm; which I think is sufficiently late for most people to be out shopping, aside from those who might work second or third shift thus would be awake at those times.

I'm surprised that there aren't stores over here that are following the lead of the Chadstone Shopping Centre near Melbourne. I will grant that it is summer there, and personally, if I were down there, I would be out shopping at night considering that the current temperature is approaching 95°F (or more precisely, 36.7°C), I would be very welcome to shopping at night, considering that they are open both on Thursday and Friday until midnight. However, on Saturday, they are planning on opening at 8:00 AM and won't close until 6 PM on Sunday.

It might not sound too significant, but you don't see malls here open for 34 straight hours, though you will see grocery stores, and some "big-box" stores such as Wal-Mart or Target open from (in general) 6 AM on December 26th to 5 or 6 PM on December 24th. Nowadays, for many retailers, Christmas is the only day that they will not open, but I saw that there is one local grocery chain that will have a single store open on Monday, but they are having limited hours. Interestingly, one store advertises that they are your "Home Improvement Superstore, 362 days a year!" In other words, they close on Christmas, and two other days that most stores used to be closed on, but are opening up for with increasing frequency - Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

I have this feeling that one day soon, you will be seeing more businesses open on Christmas day, not so much to earn more money, but there is always someone needing something that day (and someone who forgot presents). For them, I'd suggest visiting the Walgreens and picking up Sterno gel, as was done as a gag on a TV show once, but I can't remember which one it was. :)

Christmas tree

tree1, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.

This is the tree this year. If you're curious, it is an artificial tree. In the last couple of years, the tree has been limited to a little fiber-optic tree that rotated, but this year, there was a want to have a regular tree. :)

Cool little things

I've always been one for customising how things look, for example, my firefox address/navigation/bookmark toolbars are all in two lines, in order to maximise space. I also like to make things look different from how they are in their original format. For me, it's mostly because I think something will look "cooler" to me if this font is changed, or if this color is changed.

For others, it's because they have a hard time seeing sites that have difficult surroundings, for example a site that uses yellow text on a white background. However, I have found a little extension for Firefox that allows you to change things up. Stylish allows you to do just that.

If you're knowledgable in CSS scripting, then you can go ahead and make your own styles, but if you need some assistance or just don't have the tools to make your own, you can go ahead and visit Userstyles where you can find styles for your favorite sites.

My favorite one is the Google Tahoma style (which I've since adjusted to use the Lucida Sans font which I think looks very sleek especially after seeing it on a couple of the typepad/typekey blogs out there.

If you're using opera, most of the scripts can be loaded as scripts, and the same goes for users of the greasemonkey extension.

The Comics Page

For me, the newspaper comics page has always been a part of life. In fact, I believe that it was the comics page (which at the time was printed on green paper in the "Green Sheet") where I picked up on reading at about age three.

One of my favorite strips, FoxTrot, is ending its daily run, and will run Sunday-only from the first of the year. You can read the press release here. But basically, the artist (Bill Amend) cites that after 18 years of doing the same strip, it's difficult to come up with fresh material on a day-to-day basis, and he'd really like to explore different things.

Something that I'd always loved about the strip is that it is a geeky strip, with things like the iFruit (think iMac) and its ability to take over the household's computing ability on its own, plus the way that Jason (the geeky youngest child) just sometimes seems to miss the references or tries to work his own references into things.

While some strips will take computer things and make a total mockery of them (for example, a recent Pickles strip where the cat is laying on a keyboard and Opal [the, in essence, female lead] says that it's at, and I'm not making this up, myspace.cat...ugh). FoxTrot will actually use them in a proper context, like this one where Roger and Andy (husband and wife) are discussing emails they received recently -

Year-End Lists

This is always a fun time of the year for someone who, like me, is a fan of lists; especially those lists that chronicle the year that has passed. Some lists of this type are the ones that Yahoo have put out with the top searches of the year. What's interesting is that all ten of the top searches here are somehow celebrity-related, while in the other ones that they provide internationally (Australia, Germany, Spain, Canada, Italy, UK/Ireland, France) there are only one or two celebrity searches listed.

Some tidbits from these searches -

• Rockstar Supernova wound up on the Canadian list - number 4 overall, number 2 in entertainment. It didn't appear in any other list


• Of all the sports figures, the only racers that made the list were: Michael Schumacher (Germany - #4 Male Star), Fernando Alonso (Spain - #2 Athlete) and the late Peter Brock (Australia - #1 Sport, #2 Male Celebrity). Honourable mention for this goes to the Bathurst 1000, which wound up as the #10 Sport search Down Under.


• Germans love porn. The number three search overall for 2006 there was "Erotik". Shockingly, it doesn't appear anywhere else in the world.


• The UK are just about as celebrity-obsessed as we are, with the number 1 search overall being Heather Mills (McCartney), and numbers 2 and three are Big Brother and this year's winner, Pete Burns.

Don't be surprised to pop in here one day (or if you're using RSS, for an item to appear in your feed list) and find me fleshing out the significance of some of these search terms around the world. If anything, it will be a way for me to find out who "Chris Brown" is (#8 overall, USA). Also, maybe an insight into the habits of non-english users of the web (considering that the number 1 search in Germany is Weather, this should be interesting) ;)

Another store...

This is a lesson in why you shouldn't just buy things on price. This morning, I was at the world-famous Wal-Mart, and they have a smallish selection of LCD Monitors. One of these monitors is a 19" model priced at $192. You'd think that would be a great deal, but of course the devil is in the details.

I know that it is difficult to see the actual text in the photo, but it should suffice my little explanation. :)

It starts out fine - Balance Monitor 19" LCD

The next line is a little confusing, but makes sense if you take the stuff in caps out ;) - "SXGA 1280x1024 DPI Resolution" (it would be interesting, however to see what a screen that was a 1280x1024 DPI looked like, despite the obvious problem of not being able to discern anything as small as it all would be)

Line 3. A Contrast Ratio - 700:1, pretty good, remembering that most of the basic monitors are 500:1 ratios.

It's all going quite well, we have your basic 19" LCD monitor, a good resolution and a more-than-adequate contrast ratio. So, why is this monitor priced at $192--other than it being an off-brand of course??? Your answer comes in line 4, which is printed like this - 25 ms Response Time. For the benefit of those who might have a hard time seeing things that small, including about 95% of shoppers at said store, let me repeat that. "25 ms Response Time".

Considering that (based on comments on my earlier query) the baseline for human eyes is 8 ms, this lovely monitor is three times slower than that. And I guess that would be why they don't show any sample images on these monitors, so that unsuspecting (and probably uninformed) customers would go off and buy this monitor thinking that they got a good price, but they get home and realize that the monitor really is pretty lousy performing. I would also bet that it won't last very long, especially if it is used with any frequency.

There is a lesson in this - if you want to make a purchase, make sure you have some clue about what you are going to buy; just because it's the cheapest item out there, that doesn't mean that it should be bought. As always, caveat emptor - buyer beware.

I should also add that something good did come out of this - I wound up teaching my mother about some basics about shopping for LCD monitors, that you should get nothing higher than 8 ms for a response time ;)

It's out of hand

First it was the Sunday paper, then the Daily Paper. Who else could be out there giving Christmas cards to their customers along the way? Well, there's the mailman, but I wouldn't expect that. Nope...it was from the garbage man.

Or, as it is on the cover of the envelope, "Your G-Man". Of the three pieces of Christmas regalia that have been received here this year, this is probably even more impersonal than the one from the Sunday paper. This was a Christmas card (cover a drawing of Mr. and Mrs Claus; the greeting is "Best wishes for a dreamy Christmas & bright New Year." And instead of signing the card, the name and address of the person has been stamped there. I would only guess that they had a lot of cards to fill in as I've heard reports of similar cards being received in the general area around here.

It's pretty obvious what the motivation behind this is - they want gifts from their "customers". They seem to forget that we pay their salaries and, quite frankly, they're expected to do their job and have specific criteria for delivery/pickup, and do earn a salary from doing said job. I think they are expecting you to give tips, but they maybe should realize that there are a lot of people who don't believe in tipping these folks or who don't like to leave money just lying outside for them to pick up. If you're interested, there's even a Tipping Etiquette Guide that will tell you how much you should give these folks at Christmastime. They do advise you that you really only should - "Tip those who serve you all year long and whom you have a personal relationship with."

Do they know something we don't?

From time to time I like to take a peek at Aussie TV listings, mostly the sports channels, and I noted this in the description of a game that's going to be airing on Fox Sports 1 from 11.30 AM my time (4.30 AM Friday there) -

It hasn't been a vintage season for the Packers but expect a big one as they face their old foes the 49ers. One more chance to see the great Brett Favre in action before his expected retirement at season's end.

I know that the Favre retirement question is a popular one in the offseason, but nobody here is expecting him to retire until the day that he actually says he's going to retire; of course then everyone here will be shocked and dismayed at the retirement of the legend. For a lot of Packer fans, he is the only quarterback that they have known; I kinda fall into that group because I can barely remember much about the days of Don Majkowski. The only thing that I can somewhat envision is the infamous Instant Replay game of 1989, but that's only mainly through radio calls. However, when you think of what Favre has done - starting every single game for 15 years or so even when injured - you have to appreciate what he has done.

Another interesting tidbit about the Fox Sports schedule is that I think that the game on the NFL Network tonight might be available to more Australians than it is here in the States since most cable companies don't offer the NFL channel citing the fact that the league are demanding 75-80¢ per customer, so the cable companies simply do not carry the channel. However, since the airing of NFL games internationally is separate (and the fact is that there are somewhat limited international options), it's available on more widely-distributed channels overseas (i.e. Fox Sports in Australia {though I think I've seen the Monday night games that air on ESPN here airing on ESPN there}, Sky Sports in the UK, etc.).

A Trip to the shops...

So, I was at one of my favorite stores tonight, again leading to not buying anything, but just to look (and by look, I mean take a three second look at things because my mother absolutely fears the employees of said store who have this penchant of being omnipresent and asking if you want some help in your shopping, so therefore one must keep moving throughout the store so as to not attract their attention) at the various products and come away even more confused about what is available for sale than you were before you came into the shop.

I'm actually thinking that these nice folks in the blue shirts probably are a very resourceful took considering that while they probably have less knowledge of certain things, they'll know something about what is actually there so that you're not a fool buying the one that looks the neatest. Take for example the selection of LCD screens that are available. I have no idea of what to get; all I know is some idea of what I'd like - for example, I know I don't want one of the 15" screens that only does a 1024x768 resolution. What I would love is to have one of those widescreen displays that do 1920 x 1450 or whatever that is, but the most likely candidate for me to get is a 17 or 19 inch 1280x1024 display, and probably the cheapest one. However, I really don't know and don't understand the idea of the response time (though if it is what i think it is which is the processing time for an image, thus lower is better) or of the Contrast Ratio - where I would guess that a higher ratio is better, or really some of the other aspects such as what brand to get.

Another thing that I don't get are all the different routers that are out there. I have a basic Netgear router that does plain old 802.11b wireless, but it sounds like none of the ones on offer actually provide standard wireless, but these different letters - G or Super G or now N. Seriously, who's ever going to need 54Mbps throughput in their ethernet connection? I think that 11 is more than enough, especially when you have only a 3Mbps down internet connection. As it is, I don't think that I do need a new router *right now* but I want to have a little knowledge just in case that I would need to get a new one, I would have a clue what to get; the one we have has been here for almost four years, and it is still doing great work even though it does stop working on the rare occasion (more rare since I moved my more bandwidth-intensive applications onto the wireless connection).

So, what I'm looking for - if you have a flatpanel monitor, what would you recommend for specifics - what size, resolution, etc. to get. Should I go widescreen or just stick to a 4:3 (1024x768, 1280x960, 1600x1200 for example) or 5:4 (1280x1024, my current resolution) format. I look at it and laugh now, but I could have had a flatpanel last year, but I decided against spending the extra $150 to get it. However, I know that the prices will probably be going down after Christmas.

Tuesday Randomness

Just some thoughts that have come into my head recently

- We got a Christmas card from the delivery people for the daily paper now; unlike the letter in the Sunday paper, this was just a card saying "Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Your {newspaper} Carriers, {names}" - and there was no return address.

- I think that the USA Network are doing something both a) interesting and b) kinda silly by running their show Monk back-to-back, first in black & white and then in color; it is the same episode and they are asking viewers to go to the website and vote on the one that they prefer. Seriously, if someone wanted to watch a TV show in black and white, they could just set the color setting to zero, thus defaulting to black and white.

- I didn't know that there were Aussie Christmas movies, but there is at least one - Bush Christmas; I actually have seen it on offer at the local DIY megastore for $7.77 or something like that.

A twist on a Christmas Favorite

Essentially, as it was described on TVSquad, you take your favorite Christmas special, and a popular medical comedy, mix them and you get this -

This is cool..

EBY_FooBar_35t, originally uploaded by Jaanus1.

I saw this while browsing through pictures labelled Skype. This is created by a person called "eboy". If you take a look at his site you can see more of his work, but you should be aware that there are a couple of depictions of nude women on some of the pages earlier.

It's over

Well, my posting streak ended yesterday after about a month of posting every day. No better time to start a new streak than now :)

An interesting item came along with today's newspaper: A letter from our deliveryman. This is actually the second year that he's done this; I think it's kinda neat because it allows an insight into the life of someone who you never really see because they do their work in the early morning hours. Some of the more interesting things learnt from the letter -

• His son is involved in sports, but isn't afraid to have his parents there (yet)
• The daily delivery route is 79 miles (about 120km) and he often had to make his own path
• Delays in delivery are probably the fault of the paper's distribution methods - especially considering it has to come from the city every day

He also mentions that if there are some problems with the delivery, you should call him. I guess that'd have to be a call by letter as there was no phone number included :)

Celeb-world revisited

I managed to stop on VH1 tonight because I like watching some of these reality shows where they follow some celebrity around in their everyday lives - first it was the Osbournes, and the chosen celeb of the day is Hulk Hogan. However, since I'm kinda lazy (and not patient enough to sit through listings that just show most of a show's title on the tv guide station), I've kept the TV tuned to VH1 for the last 2 hours or so.

The show that aired at 10:00 tonight was "Celebrity Eye Candy: Best of 2006". It is what you think it might be - a show covering the best (and worst) of the lives of celebs over the past (nearly) year. Included were segments on the years in the lives of Paris, Britney, The Hoff, and Lindsay. A recurring theme seemed to be idea that famous women didn't quite get the idea that they really should, ahem, cover their privates when there's the chance said parts of the anatomy could be exposed to a camera. It's something like that which makes you wonder why they decide to do something like that - it's not as if they don't realise that there will be these cameras everywhere they go. I know that if I were a woman in these positions, I'd make sure that I had the proper clothing on to make sure that the world at large didn't see parts of my body that should only be intended for those who you wish to see...but I'm neither a) a woman or b) a celebrity, so I'm not going to speculate ;).

As far as these cameras showing up *everywhere* - there was a segment showing various celebs in the supermarket. For fuck sake people, it's a supermarket and they're buying food. Who gives a shit what they're buying? Then again, I bet that that these celebs would probably like at least three or four minutes to themselves when they're outside (and I don't mean outside of their houses in their courtyards, I mean outside in the general public). It's kinda ridiculous, but I have to say that it was pretty hilarious at times. A part of the modern world, I guess ;)

A lighter side?

Yesterday, there was a tragic explosion at a factory in the city, where some 40 people were injured and there were 3 fatalities. One of the more interesting aspects of it was that it was felt for miles around the actual site - up to about 15 miles or so - and was picked up on a seismograph at one of the local colleges.

Among the stories that were touched upon by the various media outlets, this snippet from the major newspaper struck me as somewhat strange, but not really surprising, considering the circumstances:

Gamblers kept rolling in to the...Casino this morning, even after the blast...about 25 blocks to the west. "I hope the explosion shook some money loose from the machines," quipped one undeterred gambler, who asked to remain anonymous. Diane ventured to the...casino because her bonus chips from a casino slot were good only for Wednesday. Monica wasn't scared off by the explosion because she didn't hear it while ensconsed in the casino. She'd been there since 5 a.m. "Nobody knew what happened until we looked up on the big screen TV and heard the news."

How to sell a newspaper

In London, there has been an increase in the number of free newspapers - from the Metro to the Standard Lite (noontime edition of the Evening Standard) to this paper below - London Lite.

My fave part of the paper is the fact that the tout the fact that it "won't stain your hands" -

What if...

This is a hypothetical idea, but it's actually a serious suggestion from a committee in the Australian Parliament. They proposed the idea of linking the Aussie and the Kiwi Dollars, their markets, or even going all the way to merge the countries (a la the European Union). To me, it's not the story that's the most interesting, it's the resultant (and long) discussion casued when a blog posting was made about it on the Sydney Morning Herald's site.

I gotta say that my favourite ones are the folks who say that the only reason that this has been proposed is so that the Aussies could claim the All Blacks as their own - thusly being able to win the Bledisloe Cup every single year...

One thing mentioned as a way that the two nations are already very close is the fact that citizens of either country can work in the other without requiring a visa to work there, also, the fact that it is so easy to go back and forth which I find very ironic since here in the States, new rules go into effect shortly that will require everyone crossing our border to show their passport..

Following a new sport

Well, it's certainly not a new sport, but I have to say that I am enthralled with cricket now. It started with seeing the highlights of these matches with outrageously high scores in games that lasted upwards of 5 days, something that just isn't seen over here in the States. About the closest thing as far as high-scoring sport in this country is basketball - whose scorelines would look like a game of footy, in cricket terms, it'd probably be on par with a halfway-decent showing in an innings of a Twenty20 match.

So anyway, last year, I listened to the Ashes tests in England where the home side took back the urn for the first time in 18 years. After those tests, it was pretty much back to seeing the odd story on Sky Sports News (the Fox Soccer Channel aired an hour-long block of their programming nightly) about how the England team were faring and how the latest tests and ODIs were progressing around the world, along with the County championship in England.

I think that there are two major sports that this country are missing out bigtime in - rugby (though the US Eagles are in the 2007 World Cup [that's the one for Union, not League--which is non-existant here]) and cricket (where we're not even eligible for playing one-day international games). Thusly, the events today in Adelaide will (with a 99.9% certainty) not be reported on ESPN Sportscenter because there is a perception that there isn't any interest in this country for the sport. To be fair, I don't remember Sky Sports mentioning the World Series (of course, only teams from the US and Canada are eligible) in their reports.

Here are some links for your edification:

Cricket on Wikipedia
Cricket Australia
CricInfo (ironically, ESPN have a tie-in with this site, and are apparently the broadcaster of this series across Southeast Asia)
International Cricket Council
ABC Sport - Cricket
BBC Sport | Cricket

As at the time I press the publish button, the Aussies are at 2 wickets for 36 runs (2/37), and need 131 to win the test. Live scoring from the ABC is here.

After dark

littree_1827, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.

If you've been checking in with the A photo a day blog, you'll have noted that it gets dark really early in this part of the world at this time of the year.

This is allowing me the chance to take quite a few photos after dark, and the snow really helps as it allows the natural moonlight to reflect. Though, sometimes artificial light makes a great shot. Thanks to the Christmas lights that we had put on the tree over the previous weekend, the snow created a great glowing effect from the lights. Let me know what y'all think of these shots (and the ones in the full set). :)

After the Storm...

2ndplow_1409, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.

A couple of hours had passed by this time, and as you can see, the sun had come out (interestingly, I was monitoring the TV stations' communications on the radio, and one station made a call to all of their field staff to get video of the sun if it were possible).

For some reason, the town that I live in hadn't decided to send out their plows, but the privateers who go around and, for a nominal fee, plow folks out of their driveways, were already out and making their rounds, no matter if the road was plowed or not. Of the daytime shots that I took, I think that this is definitely among my favourites. :)

A couple hours pass

1040am, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.

This photo of the same scene was taken at 10:40 AM; you can see how much snow had fallen in the preceding two hours. If you want a really good comparison of how quickly the snow was falling, take a look at this photo and the one prior to it in the full photo set.

Snow pix

0814am, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.

This is the first in a series of a few photos that I took during and after Friday's snowstorm. This was at 8:14 AM.

Snow photos

Well, I promised that I'd have some photos to share with y'all by now, but it would appear that Blogger has broken the upload mechanism (along with all of the other buttons for text formatting); and I'm not going to try to do batch uploading on flickr at 1.45 AM, so I should have them posted one way or another by this time tomorrow or so.

By the way, the final photo count ended up at well in excess of 300. :)

Snow, big time!

The first day of December, considered by meteorologists as the first day of winter (as measured by the fact that December, January and February have the lowest average temperatures). Coincidentially, we're having the first snowstorm of the season. There was a large storm back in February, but it didn't recieve the same attention from the local media mainly because it didn't affect the city.

This is a common complaint of mine - it seems that if something is occuring outside of the city, it gets totally ignored by the media (unless it's of major proportions, then they go overboard).

It is interesting how the stations here cover the snow; they insist that people want to know every minute detail about what is going on, so they are on the air for way too long on these days - one station had their news on from 4 am this morning; they finally decided to go to other programming at 10.00; the other two main news stations in this area have also been on since 4 AM (when the snow had just started); one has said that they will broadcast until noon, and the other is still broadcasting as of 12:30pm. The fourth station in the market has had network programming on, but they've been running the "standard" closings bar at the bottom.

This storm is so bad that the weather service actually issued a blizzard warning for some of the counties in the region. The main reason for a blizzard warning is the high wind that has resulted from this storm. This is an excerpt from the actual warning that was issued by the National Weather Service earlier this morning:

THE MORNING COMMUTE WILL BE TREACHEROUS. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS
SITUATION. TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED HOWEVER PERSONS DECIDING TO
VENTURE OUT ARE URGED TO SLOW DOWN AND DRIVE WITH CAUTION...AND
ALLOW YOURSELF PLENTY OF EXTRA TIME. REMEMBER YOUR SAFE WINTER
DRIVING SKILLS!
IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF INDOORS...YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT
RISK. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...BRING ALONG A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT AND
STAY WITH YOUR CAR IF YOU BECOME STRANDED.

And this is the full text of the latest advisory; you'll note that the last line remains the same:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI
1228 PM CST FRI DEC 1 2006
...SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM SHOWING ITS LAST GASP...
.THE MAJOR WINTER STORM WHICH HAS AFFECTED SOUTHERN WISCONSIN IS
NEARLY OUT OF THE AREA BUT STILL HAS A LITTLE WAYS TO GO.
WIZ066-071-072-012100-
/O.CON.KMKX.BZ.W.0001.000000T0000Z-061201T2100Z/
MILWAUKEE-RACINE-KENOSHA-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...MILWAUKEE...RACINE...KENOSHA
1228 PM CST FRI DEC 1 2006
...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM CST THIS
AFTERNOON...
A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM CST THIS
AFTERNOON.
MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL WILL CONTINUE THROUGH 3 PM. ADDITIONAL
ACCUMULATIONS OF ANOTHER INCH IS POSSIBLE. NORTHWEST WINDS OF 15 TO
30 MPH WILL CREATE SOME VISIBILITIES OF 1/4 MILE OR LESS. TOTAL
ACCUMULATIONS OF 12 TO 18 INCHES IS LIKELY.
TRAVEL REMAINS TREACHEROUS. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION.
TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED HOWEVER PERSONS DECIDING TO VENTURE OUT
ARE URGED TO SLOW DOWN AND DRIVE WITH CAUTION...AND ALLOW
YOURSELF PLENTY OF EXTRA TIME. REMEMBER YOUR SAFE WINTER DRIVING
SKILLS!
IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF INDOORS...YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT
RISK. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...BRING ALONG A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT AND
STAY WITH YOUR CAR IF YOU BECOME STRANDED.

I'm going to venture out and take some photos of the scenery around here (I've already taken over 100 photos now, but they're mostly from one window), and seeing that the snowplow hasn't come through yet, the road should do well to serve my purposes