Ok, no. It's not the day after the day after tomorrow (Such a bad movie). It's -29 outside right now with that oh so sensational sounding -39 wind chill. Really, though it's pretty normal for it to get like this once a year, maybe twice. The same old week long cold snap.
What was interesting this morning on the drive home was the fog. It's was thicker than anything I've seen. I snapped a few photos while on the freeway. Traffic was just crawling anyway.

Labels: day to day

Retro Junk Playgrounds
This is a great read is you've ever played on a playground as a child. It got me thinking back to those giant play structures built entirely out of old tires bolted together. I remember one specifically in Fort Saskatchewan. There's also the wooden wall made up of pillars that I fell off of and broke my nose. I got stitches in my forehead from riding down a metal slide in a big old oil drum too. Oh the memories.

Labels: day to day, pop culture

Finally, winter is here for real this time. Blizzard conditions with temperatures creeping towards -30. It hasn't been like this since last winter. I don't know if I'm happy to see it or not. I knew it'd come eventually so I'll be happy to get it over with.
I gave myself an extra 10 minutes to get to work this morning. Funny thing is, I got to work 10 minutes early. I almost felt guilty. The roads were largely snow covered and with drifting snow to go along with it. It should have taken longer.
Of course knowing me, I snapped a few photos on the highway on the way in.

West of the City Limits

Inside the City Limits

Labels: day to day

Adblock

I don't really mean to block as with this tool. I realize that advertisers pay the bills for a lot of web designers. I do however use it to block other annoyances.
case in point...
Futureshop.ca has this incredibly annoying bald black guy on the left hand side. If you block the following file with adblock, he will go away and never be seen again.
http://www.futureshop.ca/javascript/avatar/callout_en.swf

Stumble Upon

This particular extension is pretty freaking addictive. You tell it what kinds of websites you're interested in and it's feeds them to you. Just click the button. It's a fantastic time waster.

NoScript

NoScript does what it says it does. It blocks javascript unless I decide that I want to unblock a particular script. I recommend this one when using stumble upon because you're constantly being led into new websites and you never know what scripts some sites are trying to push on your system. Of course this does block a lot of ads but there's nothing I can do about that.

Stylish

This one turns pages like boring old white igoogle to sleek sexy black igoogle with a sleep silver logo. You can import any styles you like. I prefer black. I guess I'm just emo that way.

iGoogle

Which brings us to iGoogle. I'm one of those people who if it's not right there in front of me I'll forget about it until I abandon it completely. iGoogle keeps things right in front of me. There are hundreds of addons. I use to view google calendar, gmail, my to-do list, currency converter, imperial to metric converter and an ip lookup. I really depend on this one.

Stop Autoplay

This extension blocks websites like youtube from automatically playing audio and video streams to you until you tell it to.

Fasterfox

Claims to speed up Firefox page load times. Nothing to lose by installing this one.

del.icio.us

There's several extensions to use with the del.icio.us bookmarking tool. I sometimes install different ones but they all pretty much do the same thing. I use several computers so this one's essential to keeping all my bookmarks in one place and in some kind of order.

Labels: tech stuff

So I'm channel surfing on the old satellite this morning and I stop on an episode of the Incredible Hulk. There's this guy banging on a soda machine because it ate his money. Then here comes Hulk, calm as can be, tears open the soda machine as only Hulk can. The guy who lost his money who should be running away in horror by now grabs his soda from the machine.
"That's pretty neat", he says "What kinda soda do ya want?"
He tosses a cold one over to Hulk. The guy promptly puts some more change in the machine to pay for the second pop. They guy shows Hulk how to pull the tab on the can and they stand there and have a soda together.

I just can't believe that this was the same show that caused me to leave the room when I was a kid because I was horrified of the Hulk.

Here's a longer version. The soda scene is towards the end.

Labels: pop culture

*Ring*
Call display has some domain on it.
I pick up...
Me: "Thank You for choosing blah blah" (the usual phone jingle)
Caller: Silence
Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello?
Me: I think you have the wrong number.
Caller: Yes, I think you do.
*Hangs up*

Labels: day to day

"There is no doubt in my mind when history was written, the final page will say: Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world." -George W. Bush, addressing U.S. troops at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Jan. 12, 2008

Isn't the final page at the end of the book? Is history's final page the end of the world?

There is no doubt in my mind that the United States will still be claiming victory even when theres is nothing left to be victorious about.

- from 42 Reasons We Will Always Hate President George W Bush"

Labels: social commentary

For no particular reason which is usually the case, I've been drawn into the forums at CyberpunkReview.com. I hope it's interesting. I'm just testing the waters but so far so good.

Labels: tech stuff

Cyberpunk as a genre, to me, is the consequence of technology that is not your friend. It's when the "can do" part of invention overshadows the "should do". A Cyberpunk character is not unlike a drug addict. They are the victims of technology.

The reason I'm writing this is because more and more I'm hearing about cutting edge technology that really should have been science fiction in that bygone cyberpunk genre.

I'm sure this will be a recurring theme in this blog so I wanted to make solid statement of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Cyberpunk.

Labels: tech stuff

Oh look, he's blogging more than every six months!

This year I've resolved to start blogging again. It's largely the result of my 45 minute drive to work and the 60 minute drive back home to the acreage. I get a lot of thinking done during this time. A lot of ideas come and go from my mind and many of them I'd like to keep.

Labels: day to day