Model Ship Update

Well, I was able to put in some good time on my model in the past week or so and finally got all the hull planking done. The job was tougher than I though, especially around the bow, but I think it came out pretty good. The next step is to clip off all the nail heads and then sand the hull smooth. I'll be sure to get in some more pics when that stage is done. Mike

Updates Coming - In the Meantime, Lewis Black

I've noticed my last few posts have just been You-Tube videos. Pretty weak. Oh well, you'll find another one at the bottom of this post :). Anyway, I have been busy. The course I've taken, reports from a couple of weeks ago. Then, when that settled down, Uru came on strong so I've been posting there => My Uru Blog. But things have settled a bit. I've even got some good model ship time in the past couple of days, so maybe I'll put some stuff up on all 'o that soon.

In the meantime, here's Lewis Black. You may find him offensive, but the man is a genius - not to mention hysterical. I watched his On Broadway show one late night a week or so ago when I couldn't sleep. Here's a clip ...

Ringwald and Molly in: Halloweenies!

25th Anniversary of :-)

Digital smiley face turns 25 years old

Last month marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the smiley emoticon => :-).

It was invented by Scott E. Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University. By 1982, the Internet had spread to major university computer science departments - still, an amazing 10 years away from going public. Among other things, students and staff could communicate via the Internet in an early version of today's BBS, and soon, like today, they discovered that something said in jest in text can easily be taken as being serious.

The discussion turned to ways of indicating a post is meant to be taken as a joke. Being computer scientists, things like preceding the post with an asterisk were suggested but, of course, the meaning of something like that would hardly be obvious.

Then Fahlman wrote, "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways."

He let the conversation go and was shocked to soon find that everyone was now using his new symbol, and the rather obvious :-( too. It spread quickly through universities and, when the Internet went public, to the rest of us.

One of the things that is not often mentioned in this story, but that I find interesting, is that Fahlman and the rest hardly recognized the significance of what they had conceived until it spread to the general public a decade later. They went digging through the old data tapes (yes TAPES!) to find his post, and low and behold, there it was.

It's kind of a lesson to us all, the internet is forever. Be careful what you type. :-)

Anyway, to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to change the wallpaper on my laptop to Fahlman's post, as it may have appeared on someone's terminal in the early eighties. I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I made it instead. It isn't anything special, so feel free to steal it if you like.


Oh, and sorry about only one screen size.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

This is a YouTube video that I showed to my grade ten computer class as we were in our HTML unit.

I really like it. Very thought provoking.

Baird Saving Lake Simcoe

This story is a couple of days old, but I've gotta talk about it because John Baird (the Canadian Environment Minister) just cracks me up.

Canada's New Government taking action to clean up Lake Simcoe

Baird is in Lake Simcoe for the photo op to try and convince us all that the Tory's are all green.

Here's a quote.

"Our Government believes that clean, safe and secure water is something all Canadians should have the right to enjoy," said Minister Baird. "Today's announcement will clean up Lake Simcoe, improve water quality, and ultimately protect our precious ecosystems."

... Right!

This one is just a few weeks ago.

Environment Canada budget cuts threaten wildlife programs

Sources say the budget cuts are as follows:

The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Network, which observes changes in ecosystems, has lost 80 per cent of its budget.

The Migratory Bird Program, which monitors the health of bird populations, has seen its budget cut by 50 per cent.

The budget for the National Wildlife Areas, a program that protects nationally significant habitats for wildlife and birds, has been slashed from $1.9 million to zero.

Did you get that? the National Wildlife Areas budget has gone from $1.9 million to zero! Holy crap!!! You see, actually monitoring what's happening out there isn't necessary. We already have all the answers, don't we? All I gotta do is look out the window.

Of course, this says nothing about our joke of a policy on Climate Change.

Canadian government's evolving climate change policy all hot air

Hey man, this is no biggie. No need for any heavy legislation or anything. Everyone will just reduce emissions voluntarily. A compact florescent here, a little bit more ethanol there and everything will be cool.

If you believe that, you are in for a rude awakening my friend. We have got to cut (not curb) our carbon emissions, period. And we have to do it soon. This is going to happen, whether we like it or not, and we can save ourselves a lot of pain (even economic pain) if we get ourselves on the boat now. The only way to do this is to make spewing carbon into the air more expensive. Carbon tax? You bet! Sorry, Alberta.

Let's face it, Baird got this job because the former environment minister, Rona Ambrose, couldn't sell this nonsense. When she said the kinda of crap that comes out of Baird's mouth, you could tell she didn't believe a word of it. Baird on the other hand could sell a drowning man a glass of water.

Hey, we all havta do what we can with the skills we gots.

Ship: Update #2

I thought I would do a quick ship update. I'm not getting at it as much as I would like, but at least I got the macro working on my camera so the pics are better.


I've done some searching and found other pictures of people doing similar (and in a couple of cases the exact same) models. The hull always look a little rough at this stage but after some sanding and varnishing, it should come out pretty solid.

I'm very eager to be done this stage. The planking is getting pretty repetitive.

I coach sailing after classes at school. Yesterday was cold but the wind was there. A number of kids still showed up with shorts and t-shirts (including Michael) so we couldn't let them go out. What we were left with was just the hard cores. One of the other staff had a new SLR camera he wanted to test out so he took a ton of pics from the crash boat. It was just me and half a dozen windsurfers. Unfortunately, the wind died down (it was blowing a stink when right after class) but we still had a lot of fun.

Bizarre assaults hit quiet town

Here are a couple of quotes.

Since April there have been three cases of assault, mischief and theft against the mostly Asian-Canadian fishermen in the area.

Another incident, the most recent, has left a 23-year-old fisherman in a coma, with damage to his ribs, lungs, limbs and brain. Shayne Berwick, of Toronto, who was thrown from a car during a pursuit, was initially given a 10 per cent chance of survival, say his parents Colin and Terry Berwick.

Local youth call it "nippertipping."

It consists of locals driving around in the middle of the night, looking for cars parked near piers, docks and bridges. They then creep up behind fishermen and shove them into the lake. Sometimes the fishermen's gear is tossed in or damaged.

Some locals "don't like foreigners" said one man, who did not want his name used. "It's been happening since I was young – nippertipping," said the 20-year-old. "Everybody talks about doing it – `Oh, I went down to the docks the other night and roughed up some Asians.' I guess they think it sounds cool. But it doesn't happen often at all."

Where do they breed these people!?

Absolutely bizarre and embarrassing. Some locals "don't like foreigners". Idiot! These people are Canadians. What planet are you on?

Race crime? Absolutely! Nail these assholes to the wall and we'll see how funny they think it is!

Mike

L'engrenage

I thought this was cute (well, maybe not that cute actually) but the main reason I plunked it here was because I wanted to lift the code and post it at a family group I just created. I was a bit peeved to find that it can't be posted in the page section. The code disappears (even though that section is HTML compatible). What's up Google? You own YouTube for Christ's sake!

Attack of the Nematodes

On the weekend we discovered that we had an investation of beetle grubs eating the roots of our grass, leaving large dead patches. Turns out, there's an investation all over the west end of Peterborough. I talked to a neighbour of mine who works for the Ministry of Natural Resources who said that the problem is that parasitic nematodes used to keep the grubs in check, but our use of pestacides has all but wiped them out. Now that the city has banned the use of pesticides, the grubs are making a dramatic comeback, but the nematodes are not.

The solution, buy nematodes. Yup, you can buy them and apply them to the lawn with an applicator that attaches to the garden hose (similar to how you can apply some plant foods and fertilizers). The thing is, thanks to the investation in our end of the city, everyone is sold out of the things. I managed to pick up the last batch from a store 30 km north of the city and sprayed them on tonight.

Apparently, the things burrow into the grubs, and feed and multiply until the grubs explode. Isn't the insect world wonderful. :D

Uru - My Other Time Vampire

The Myst games have been something I've greatly enjoyed since the very first game so many years ago. The series has had it's ups and downs (certainly more ups, though), but the Uru idea was always an interesting one. Though set in the Myst universe, Uru was very different as it was initially invisioned as a massive multiplayer game. The original on-line portion quickly died, but last December it was revived through Game Tap.

Now, new material has been added, story lines developed, and many new players have joined. I've got to say, from my initial trial membership, I've enjoyed Uru far more than I would have expected. I've met a lot of great people and had the kind of multiplayer fun that I didn't think was possible in a Myst game.

Shortly after signing on last spring, I began a log of my experiences within the game. Check it out if you like.

On another note, I took a picture of what my model of the HMS Supply is supposed to look like when done.


We'll see how close I get.

Survivor Blahs

Last night Survivor China aired and I pretty much couldn't have cared less.

I used to be a Survivor fanatic. To attest to this, just take a look at this website I started during Survivor's second season in Australia. I used to play a strategy game called Diplomacy and the alliances and back stabbing of Survivor reminded me so much of Saturday afternoons playing Diplomacy that I couldn't help but be intrigued. Besides that site, I spewed on about Survivor Strategy on various boards and blogs, the latest you can find if you view my profile.

So why did the latest season premier come and go without so much as a blink from me? Quite frankly, the show has just become more and more tired. It was really only momentum that carried me as far as it already has, but now, it just isn't worth the energy anymore.

HMS Supply

For our 20th anniversary last June, Debbie bought me a wooden model kit of a 18th century brigantine, the HMS Supply. The boat itself doesn't mean anything to me, but my wife knew my love of tall-ships, especially from this period, and how I've wanted to try one of the models for some time. She had a number of options, including the fictional HMS Surprise from Master & Commander, but the Supply was of level two difficulty which she figured would be good for my first one.

My summer had been a busy one, with not a lot of time spent at home, so I haven't gotten too far into it. The frame, decking and some of the hull is complete. Here's a pic, though a couple more rows of the hull lining has been done since this picture.


The hull planking is tricky because you have to bend the wood to fit the frame. It is especially tough around the stern where the planks have to twist upward. Here's a rather crappy pic of the stern as it looks now.


The wood is bent by soaking it in water and then using a soldering iron on it. I'm eager to get the hull done, because the model gets more interesting after that. I'll keep posting pics here as to how things are going. I also figure I should post a pic of what it's supposed to look like when done too.

Mike

Hereos

I don't watch I lot of network TV (I know, everyone says that). My wife had been bugging me to watch this show all last season but each time I gave it a shot I just couldn't get behind it. Debbie would try to explain, "well that guy, he can absorb other people powers, and he can bend time."

... Okay?

Debbie also suggested I should try watching Lost the year before. That show I did give a fair shake but, I have to say, I hate Lost. The show stinks. I could get into all the reasons why I dislike the show (which will likely prompt the, "You f------ suck, man - LOST ROCKS!!!" type of reply - that is assuming anyone reads this), but the main reason I can't enjoy the show is how much I dislike it's principle characters: a pompous boy-scout doctor, a pretentious barbie whom I'm supposed to believe actually killed someone, and a self-righteous punk. And, I'm supposed to care what happens to these people?

Well, Heroes came out in DVD a bit ago and I took advantage of the situation to begin renting the disks from the video store. I've got to say, the thing has got me hooked. I've just finished off disk five - the first eighteen episodes down now - and plan on picking up the final episodes tomorrow. Very enjoyable, believable, characters and a well paced plot. Lost should be taking notes.

Mike

Hi There

You know, it's funny. I've been on the Internet publishing materials and spewing my opinions about whatever topic has obsessed me at the time for more than the past decade, but it's always been under a pseudonym - HCIsland in case you want to dig him up.

It's not that HCIsland is any different than me, he's not, but I've always wanted to keep my on-line identity separate from "real life" one. So why the change?

To be honest, I don't know. I think part of it could be this, so called, Web 2.0 and the proliferation of on line social networking services like MySpace and Facebook. I did give those a very brief try, but they just weren't me. Too busy.

So here I am on Blogger (actually - I've got other Blogger material out there that I'll post links to -- probably soon though no promises). What, exactly, I'm going to do with this space, I'm not exactly sure, but I think I will center it around things I do in my everyday life.

But who knows. This may fizzle out too.