The visions of spring dancing in my head were abruptly ended when it began to snow on Saturday morning.
Come Monday night and it was still snowing. Despite this we are not up to our armpits in the white stuff because it’s been a heavy, wet kind of snow that packs down nicely, forming slick injury-making sheets of compacted slush.
Today the sun came out and it’s warming up, causing a gradual and pleasant melt. I trust this will be the last of the snow this winter. THANK YOU, MOTHER NATURE. MOVE ALONG PLEASE.
I’m now ready for summer. Only four months until the community pool at Hume Park opens. I hate swimming but it’s one of the official markers that you can doff the parkas and don the Bermudas.
When mechanical keyboards came back in vogue I started buying them, trying to find one that felt just right.
My first was a CoolerMaster Storm Trigger with blue switch keys.
It’s a fine keyboard in many ways and I like the solid clacky feel of the keys. When I resist pounding on the keys like a deranged ape they aren’t even that loud, really, because they actuate before being fully engaged.
However, there were some things I didn’t like:
the Windows key doesn’t work by default. You have to enable it in a profile. This is because it’s a GAMERZ keyboard and gamerz don’t need Windows.
it’s extra wide due to the macro keys,. I have never used macro keys on a keyboard.
the red LED lighting is distracting. When it’s off the keys are hard to read.
So I searched on and got a Metadot Das Keyboard, also using blue switches.
No backlit keys and a standard keyboard layout, no funny macro stuff. It would seem ideal, except for one thing.
The keyboard casing is glossy and the keys are as well, to a lesser extent. They reflect light and my computer corner cubbyhole has a light that sits nearly directly above the keyboard, so this becomes a problem.
Onto keyboard #3: The Filco Majestouch 2. This one has brown switches, which are less clacky.
(The lovely green border came as part of the stock photo.)
On balance I don’t mind the brown switches but if push came to shove I think I find the blue switches a little smoother in feel. The lack of a numeric keypad was a bit disconcerting at first but I realized I never used it much and the narrower width of the keyboard more than makes up for it. The finish on the keyboard is nicely matte so the keys are easily readable. I think if this keyboard had blue switches it might cause me to end my search.
But it doesn’t.
But Filco makes a model that does! Now I just have to find a retailer.
Also, their website is a charming pastiche of quaintly clumsy English and images like this:
I conclude with this video of the Ducky Shine 3 Yellow keyboard. This is a keyboard with backlit keys. And the keys are blank.
There are some things you can search for using Google and pretty much guarantee the results will not disappoint. One is “funny hats”. Observe:
I especially like the use of the drawstrings as legs.
The alt-text on this one would have to be “butt head”.
These are two examples. There are millions more. I am not kidding. The phrase “funny hats” yields over 450 million results. I don’t know what this means about our world but it simultaneously delights and depresses me.
And then there is perhaps the most-searched term on Google: cats (551 million results).
But cats alone, while adorable, is a bit plain for a search. “Funny cats” on the other hand yields 378 million hits, including these:
Note that nearly every image of a cat with a caption is incredibly unfunny, almost as if by design. This is about 377,999,950 of the images by my rough estimate.
Again, I’m not sure what the takeaway is here. We have a treasure trove of material on the web and the means to find virtually all of it instantly and vast amounts of this material and related searches consists of things like funny hats and cats.
In conclusion, I leave you with this, a cat wearing a funny hat:
The hat’s not really that funny but cats apparently do not take to goofy headgear the same way people do. Probably because of all the clawing and biting.
Back in the olden days if I wanted to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind I would go down to the video store and rent the DVD. In the real olden days I’d rent the VHS tape. In the really olden days I’d rent the VHS tape and top-loading VCR because who could afford one of those exotic machines, anyway?
But I’d be able to get the movie.
Today, with everyone who tried competing with Blockbuster starting up some on-demand video rental service you’d think it would be easy to rent the movie online. Apparently not, though, as my best result so far is to buy the SD version off iTunes for $17.99 and it doesn’t even say which version it is.
Look, it may be the crazy future world of 2014 but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I don’t expect flying cars or baby machines. I just want to rent an older movie I enjoyed. Is that too much to ask?
(This was prompted by the DVD player hooked up to the TV not working properly. Curse technology and how it breaks down.)
I posted this on the Martian Cartel forum back in 2007 and for some reason never included it here. Either that or I am inept at searching my own blog. If it is actually here, think of this as a summer rerun rather than an accidental repeat.
As context , in 2007 I took the bus daily to work and in fact have had to do so for nearly every job I’ve had in the last 20+ years. I have been on Vancouver area buses thousands of times.
I do not generally like the experience, as you shall see below.
A Salute to my Fellow Passengers
A salute to my fellow passengers! I bid you a warm and hearty hello, one and all. Especially…
Mr. “I’m wearing a backpack the size of Kansas and I am not taking it off.” Thank you for slapping me in the face with your backpack while grooving out obliviously to your iPod. Hey, that reminds me…
Thanks to Mr. “I like to share my music with everyone, even when I’m wearing earphones.” Yes, your iPod really does go to 11, just like the speakers in Spinal Tap. The Europeans don’t like it much but what do they know? They gave us Wham! The important thing isn’t that you’re going deaf but that I can clearly hear the words that accompany your horrible taste in music.
Ms “I like the exit but not for leaving!” Hey, look, the rear doors don’t have anyone standing there, so why not head over and block the exit? When people try to leave the bus, act surprised — every time it happens. Bonus points if you’re grossly obese and think that standing sideways makes a difference in letting people by. Hint: every side of you is fat.
I originally posted this on Broken Forum but the process bugged me so much that I feel obligated to repost it here.
I hooked up my Deathadder 2013 edition mouse to my MacBook because I switched over to a Logitech 700s on my PC and was no longer using the Deathadder there. Using the built-in drivers the Deathadder seemed a bit twitchy on the Mac, with the cursor often leaping from the external monitor back to the laptop’s display. I decided to install the much-maligned Razer Synapse 2.0 driver configuration thingie, which requires you to be online (initially, at least).
First I had to create an account. The system kept telling me that my chosen username and/or password were bad without providing any details as to why. I finally figured out it didn’t like special characters in passwords. What is this, the 1890s? Anyway, I got to where the account was created and apparently missed a verification email with a link I had to click on (because the page made no mention of it). I tried my username/password combo, knowing it was correctly entered but again the system kept saying it wasn’t (due to the aforementioned unmentioned verification requirement).
Here’s the best part, though: after several “unsuccessful” attempts I was locked out.
Of a driver.
I could not configure my mouse unless I waited at least five minutes first. At that point the system would generously grant me the privilege of entering my username and password again.
Instead I uninstalled the software and made a promise to myself to never buy another Razer product. (The uninstall naturally did not allow me to just drag the icon off the menu bar, I had to hunt down a separate uninstall app in the Applications/Library folder. But it is gone now. Hopefully.)
Via a link on digg I was shown this 11-minute film shot on April 14, 1906 in San Francisco, four days before the major earthquake that devastated the city.
While there is a certain tragic quality in seeing these people going about their ordinary lives not knowing the great destruction that was imminent, I was struck by several things. First, the roadway seen in the video–Market Street– is remarkably wide given that much of the traffic was still horse-drawn. Second, I love the utter casualness of the people dashing across and in-between the automobiles, streetcars, bicycles and horse-drawn carriages. Even as they come within inches of being run down, they maintain an air of perfect nonchalance.
Mostly, though, I notice the hats. I watched the entire 11 minutes and did not see a single person, whether man, woman or child, who was not wearing some kind of hat or cap. People loved hats back then. They probably slept while wearing them. Judging from the size of some, I have no doubt that they may have even protected certain people from debris raining down on them during the quake. Seriously, a few women in the film are wearing hats that are about two feet high. By the time a brick got through that it’d probably only muss the hair.
I was also surprised by how many cars there were. Looking it up, the Model T didn’t come out until 1908, so this appears to be the transition period where cars were still too expensive for most but affordable enough for many to no longer be rare. It must have sucked to be a horse back then, having to share the road with a bunch of noisy tin buckets full of yahoos. Fancy yahoos wearing hats.
I’ve unfortunately replaced it with a Mahjong addiction but at least I get semi-profound chunks of wisdom at the end of each game. You know, stuff like “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” or “Man, I hope you invested in some good shoes if you’re walking a thousand miles”.
In fact, I think I’ll head off to enrich my life with more ancient wisdom right now.
Here’s something to keep you up late at night: think about all the questions you can ask but never get answers for. I don’t mean profound, thought-provoking questions like “How many stars are there in the universe?” or “What’s the highest number you can count to?”
No, I mean simple stuff like “How many people on this train with me have never been on it before?” or “What would it be like to be a bird afraid of heights?” Okay, the second one could probably be answered with “It would suck” but for the first one, how would you ever know? Sure, it’s theoretically possible you could find out the answer by simply asking everyone, but you have to make a lot of assumptions for this to work:
everyone you ask is willing to answer
everyone speaks the same language as you
everyone who answers is being truthful or understands the question
you can meet the above conditions before the next stop where some will get off and others get on, polluting the sample
The reality is you’re very unlikely to ever know and there are an infinite number of these seemingly banal yet unanswerable questions if you stop and think about it for a minute.
I recommend watching YouTube videos of cats instead.
During the pre-awards ceremony for the recent 2014 Golden Globe Awards show a series of “fun facts” were displayed occasionally onscreen, including this one:
Fun indeed.
Also, Adam Sandler leads the nominations for the annual Razzie Awards. His movie Grown Ups 2 earned eight Golden Raspberry nominations. This will probably be as close as he gets to an Oscar. He’s still way richer than I’ll ever be so I’m just being petty here. Mostly.
On Saturday morning a train derailed near the entrance to Burnaby Lake, my preferred jogging area. The track runs along the northern side of the lake and on this particular morning nine of the cars came off the track, with three of them tipping and spilling their coal onto the ground and into the nearby stream. It could have been worse since it was coal and not, say, nuclear waste, which would have led to five generations of three-headed fish or just killed everything in the water for the next 500 years.
The torrential rains (we just went through a mini-Pineapple Express) are believed to have undermined the track but the main culprit for the derailment were beavers. They didn’t chew the track to bits, though one can imagine the havoc if they developed a taste for creosote. Instead, the rain washed out one of their mega-dams in a nearby creek and that helped wreck the track. As the CBC news story said:
“We’ve confirmed that the cause of the derailment yesterday in Burnaby was due to heavy rainfall that led to a beaver dam washout,” she told CBC News Sunday.
You have to admire that a few beavers can cause thousands of tons of machinery to topple over like that. And you know they’ll rebuild the dam, possibly with a not-quite-evil glint in their eyes.
