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February 23, 2007
Down by the Bay
TTC fans in Toronto are in for a treat this weekend as maintenance work begins that requires trains be rerouted through Lower Bay station, a platform that hasn't been used since the 1950's. You can check out a bit of history about Lower Bay station here. And more info about some other "lost" stations here.
"Tea Birds - nothing but pictures of cute girls at tea." - well, really, what more do you need from a website?
Tea Birds was inspired by Michael Kelly's site, "Women with Cups of Tea"
Here's a stupidly addictive flash game. Jump the rabbit on the bells and birds, up and up and up as high as you can go.
Posted by Hamish at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2007
Moai this, Moai that
MSNBC has a terrific set of animal photos. Awwww...
Ambrosia Software's Mac conversion of the game DefCon looks really good. It's going to be released next month. I can't wait for it! It's a nuclear (nucular!) war game that bears an astonishing similarity (no doubt intentional) to the NORAD screens in the movie War Games. Freaky deaky.
On a shareware game-related note, I've really been enjoying playing Freeverse Software's WingNuts 2: Raina's Revenge.
I've been reading Collapse: How Societys Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. It's an amazing account. The section on Easter island is particularly compelling - and on that note, here's a fun game called Nests of Moai .. you have to (quickly) move the mouse over 100 moai each level... not easy!
Posted by Hamish at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2007
Fat/Pancake/Shrove
Law Professor Michael Geist continues the copyfight with a terrific article in today's Toronto Star, "The recording industry's off-key strategy."
The Christian Science Monitor has a good piece on "The other face of Carnival". It's fat tuesday today!
Posted by Hamish at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2007
Zanta Rules OK
There was a great feature on Toronto's own Zanta (David Zancai) in this past Saturday's National Post. Yesyesyes! If you don't know who Zanta is you've missed a beat on Toronto's street culture.
Special Sauce: a look into the sordid world of McDonald's staffers. A little blue.
Tampered Food photoshopping contest. Yuck!
Posted by Hamish at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
Jesus Camp
I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this documentary to go out and rent it or buy it or download it...
Posted by Hamish at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2007
Kodo Drumming Rocks
February 9th is the anniversary of the first successful test of the Boeing 747 Jet Airliner in 1969. Over 1,000 have been built since then and they're still in production. Not bad for a plane that was expected to be overshadowed by supersonic jets and be relegated to cargo duty. I love watching the big ones come in on arrival at Lester B. Pearson airport- my office overlooks the final approach for one of the runways... the big ones always seem like they're going a lot slower than the rest but it's just that they're so much bigger!
Torontoist has a good bit on the origins of the name "Toronto" - many people, starting with Henry Scadding in 1884 in his "Toronto, Past and Present", think it's a Huron word meaning "Meeting Place". But really, it turns out to be more likely the word means this (was) a good place to fish.
HOWTO find the Westinghouse Time Capsule after 5,000 years: Master archivist Rick Prelinger writes,
Westinghouse's Time Capsule was one of the prime attractions at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Not to be opened until the year 6939, it contained small artifacts of everyday American life and thousands of feet of microfilmed books, magazines and newspapers.So that people could locate the Capsule 5000 years later, Westinghouse published a special book and sent copies to libraries, temples, monasteries and lamaseries -- everywhere they thought a book had a chance of surviving the millennia. It contains coordinates, a key to the English language, and greetings from Einstein, the physicist Milliken and writer Thomas Mann.
Here's a scanned copy from our library -- download it and see if the bits last 5000 years!
Also, a booklet with a detailed listing of the Capsule's contents is here. (from Boing Boing)
Posted by Hamish at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2007
Wii Will Rock U
Sunday's SuperBowl game in Miami was a soggy mess - it's one of the only sporting events I watch each year and I think this one could easily be called the "See-Thru" SuperBowl... any white fabric on a player's uniform automatically became transparent in the wet, and skin started to glisten, too - so there was a) a lot of glare from the pink players and the Colts' white uniforms rendered their padding visible... the black players on the Chicago side, however, who wore white pants, were obviously wearing only jocks as the straps were plainly visible and their dark behinds were easily visible. Silly stuff.
What 'Israel's right to exist' means to Palestinians. A very good essay in The Christian Science Monitor today.
The Wii - a Lazy Sunday review. I'm totally getting one of these things for my son's birthday.
I am reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" lately, which features a run-down of the fall of the Rapa Nui/Easter Island civilization as a 'clear-cut' example of ecocide. This fellow has a terrific collection of photos of Easter Island and its moai, the gigantic statues that were part of the island's undoing.
Posted by Hamish at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)