stream of conciousness

Going back over the front page of the blog:

• My back was better enough that I could function by the weekend, thankfully. It was still bugging me at curling two weeks later, but now I seem to be completely back to normal. (Yes, I know what you’re all thinking: “As normal as Harald ever gets…”).

• I’ve emptied the eavestroughs and other clutter from the roof. I think a pile of sticks was trapping water, allowing it to seep up under the shingles and then down. The flashing is all intact, so I can’t see any other way for it to get in. Tonight’s the first big rain since then, so we’ll see what happens.

sf book meme

via Tanya. Out of the 50, I’ve read 23, loved 10, hated 2, and never put down any of the ones I started. Not too bad, but could be better, considering my SF&F shelves have over 1000 books. (I’m amused by the set of (mainly older) SF that I’ve read but Tanya hasn’t…)

The Meme:

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club.

Mr. McGroovy’s

I was talking on Thursday night about how the Internet is enabling The Long Tail. Disintermediation is allowing small, specialized producers to deal directly with their far-flung customers.

Today I tripped over a perfect example: Mr. McGroovy’s sells “box rivets”. These are small plastic fasteners designed to hold cardboard together in building projects. You know, fire trucks, castles, submarines, etc. for kids to play in.

Now this is a specialty market! But his website doesn’t just have the product; he has free plans, and details on how to easily get large cardboard boxes (and how to load them into your car!). Very well done, and an excellent example.

wasps redux

We’re sleeping in our own bed tonight! The last couple of days only one or two wasps have made it into our bedroom and they’ve all died in front of the windows, so it’s probably safe…

aaaaaaaaargh!

I arrived home this evening to find my dining room dripping (it’s been raining fairly heavily all day).

You are at wits’ end. Passages lead off in all directions.

wasps

I woke up Sunday morning from evil dreams involving buzzing creatures to find a dozen wasps in our bedroom! Fortunately they were all clustered in the windows at the opposite end of the room; they’re attracted to the sunlight. It turns out that there’s a nest under the floor in our bedroom. The wasps found a home there because the second floor sticks out about 3-feet farther than the first floor, and the overhang is just covered in aluminum, with lots of nice cracks for wasps to crawl through.

ouch

Yes, it’s true, I threw out my back washing my hands.

On Monday morning I woke up with a bit of a twinge in my lower back, right over my left pelvic bone. A day in the car driving from Ottawa to Toronto didn’t help, but I was feeling a bit better on Tuesday, so I went into the office to deal with about a half a million burning fires.

peril

G: “Uh-oh… one of us is going to die!”

C: “Who’s wearing a red shirt?”

Trickle Theory

Rands In Repose: Trickle Theory

My advice is: START.

“But Rands… I’ve got three hundred tests to run and one day to…”

Stop. Go run one test. Now.

“Wait, wait, wait. Rands. Listen. They need this spec tomorrow @ 9am….”

Shush. Quiet. Go write. Just a paragraph. Now.

Welcome to Trickle Theory.

I first encountered this in the context of ripping CDs. A friend had a huge CD collection that he wanted as MP3s. He’d take 6-7 discs to work every day and rip them on his laptop while working on his desktop. The whole process took three months, but it got done, a Trickle at a time.

Cape Breton joins space race

TheStar.com - Cape Breton joins space race

They’re building a private launch facility in Cape Breton, launches planned by 2009 or 2010.

I wonder if they need any network security people?

(They broke ground in 2022, apparently)

quote of the day

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

• George Bernard Shaw

via Quotation of the Day List

more movies

Film of the Book: Top 50 movie adaptations revealed

I’ve marked the one’s I’ve seen (any version of) and/or read (12 books, 23 movies, including 10 “both”):

1. [BM] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. American Psycho
4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. [BM] Catch 22
7. [BM] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. [BM] The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [BM] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. [M] Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. The Godfather
21. [BM] Goldfinger
22. Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. [B] The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [BM] The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. LA Confidential
29. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. Lolita
31. [B] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [M] Oliver Twist
34. [BM] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. The Outsiders
37. [M] Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. [M] The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. The Talented Mr. Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. The Vanishing
51. [BM] Watership Down

102 must-see movies?

:: rogerebert.com :: Editor’s Notes :: 101 102 Movies You Must See Before…

This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

cubicle farm

I found it wonderfully ironic that this appeared in my inbox on the same day that we are moving into a new cubicle farm:

Schneier on Security: Cubicle Farms are a Terrorism Risk

modern info warfare

feint and attack; move and countermove. The escalation is constant.

Steel armor meant the end of bows and crossbows. Firearms that could punch through armour made it useless as a defense, since armor only made the soldier slow and uncoordinated; a sitting duck. A close formation of infantry firing volleys by the numbers was unstoppable, until the devasation of the machine gun spelled their demise. Kevlar armor influenced the development of armor-piercing rounds (which, incidentally, are less deadly because they tend to go through their targets).

new campaign

The Queen’s Guard

Not much there yet, but knowing Rob, there will be real soon now…