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Want to see what a lightning strike looks like at 9,000 frames per second?

So did Tom A. Warner, so he made it happen. More amazing video on his website, ZT Research.

Posted at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

TRON OMG

Posted at 06:57 PM | Comments (1)

Rough cut. Rough piano. I want to do more of these, and properly, in time.

But sometimes this is the best way to express yourself. Piano and voice are both me.

Posted at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)

Anyone caught bitching about the plotholes or plausibility of decent T.V. shows and movies must immediately read this LiveJournal post about the poor writing in one our culture's most epic sagas: World War II.

Posted at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

Strangely beautiful, at first. Then after a moment of staring the sickening magnitude of what one is viewing becomes apparent, leading to instant nausea.

I'm the sort of petty person who takes a cathartic pleasure in being able to tell people "I told you so", in the faint hope that they'll listen next time. There's no pleasure this time, just that sickening sinking feeling.

The Deepwater Horizon oil well, as suspected, is indeed leaking around 60,000 barrels per day (Contrary to BP's original, fatally-optimistic estimates). Tomorrow will be the 80th day of the spill. Minimal amounts of oil have been captured from the well. Do the math and you'll find that 4.8 million barrels of oil will have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. That's nearly 769 million litres for those of us who are metrically inclined.

Also as suspected, all initial efforts to contain the spill have failed, because the pressure of the oil is too high. The only thing we can do is wait until the relief wells are completed. We must also hope that the relief wells, which have to be slant-drilled into the narrow conduit of the first well, meet their target space within a few inches. Drilling should be completed sometime in August, four months after the leak began. In 1979, it took nine months in shallower water (with less advanced technology, admittedly) to complete the relief well and cap the Ixtoc I oil leak.

I won't link to pictures or stories of what's happening to the wildlife because its just too upsetting. Needless to say, the environmental damage to the Gulf and the American coastal marshes is catastrophic. Will the next stop be Varadero's beautiful beaches in Cuba?

What I will post is a link to a computer simulation created by the University of Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, which shows what will happen if the oil spill continues into late September. It's in August, around the 120-day mark, that the oil escapes the Loop Current and enters the Atlantic Ocean currents, affecting the entire U.S. Atlantic coast, and some parts of Europe.

Brace yourselves: This will get a lot worse before it gets better.

Posted at 11:20 AM | Comments (1)

My gloomy month is a little bit brighter today, because the Netherlands, the country that represents that majority of my heritage, has beaten Uruguay and is going to the FIFA World Cup Final!

One of my friends from Toronto informed me that she'll be attending a World Cup potluck party where the foods must be indicative of the cultures involved. But, she had no idea what "Dutch food" consists of. Well, I was happy to oblige! Below is my advice:

Traditional Dutch foods include:

- Pannekoeken: Pancakes, flat-style like crepes. I may be a Canadian by default, but I've always preferred pannekoeken to flapjacks.

- Stamppot: (pronounced "stompoht") which is a mash that includes vegetable(s) other than potato. My mom made it with carrots and onion, but I've made versions with turnips, zucchini, or spinach. Best served with sausages!

- Appelflappen are beer-battered, fried apple slices dusted with icing sugar. Traditionally served on New Years Eve but good for any celebratory event.

- Hagelslag is putting butter and chocolate sprinkles on fresh-baked, fluffy white bread. See if you can find some De Ruijter brand sprinkles at your local specialty store.

- Heineken Pilsner has been made in the Netherlands by the same company since 1873, using the same yeast strain the company developed during the very dawn of bacteriology.

And if you go for cheese, don't just get Gouda. There's also Edam, from the town of the same name where my maternal Dutch ancestors hail from.

NEDERLAND! NEDERLAND!

Posted at 03:55 PM | Comments (1)

It stays so light out so late. 8PM is a sunny late afternoon. 10:15 is the end of dusk. When it did finally get dark today, a bright yellow moon illuminated everything, making it feel like life should not contain sleep. Making me feel like I should be nocturnal.

I sped home through the night, somewhat heedless. Today, as per usual lately, didn't contain a lot of feelings, except the distinct impression that this isn't going to be as easy as I thought it would.

I flicked on Radio-Canada. A song began: this one. It completely epitomized how I feel: hip, young, moving forward, but in the end utterly pointless and despondent. And all the while: Ding-dong... tick tick tick tick...

If you're out there somewhere, I don't know where you are. I'm not sure I believe you exist anymore.

Posted at 12:19 AM

If you're watching the FIFA World Cup, you've almost certainly heard the Vuvuzelas: a fascinating African football-match tradition which creates a distinctively annoying-yet-infectious buzz. So behold the official internet meme of 2010: the vuvuzela.

Posted at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

This song is so tremendously infectious and uplifting that it's irresistible.

Posted at 03:54 PM | Comments (2)

What's big enough to cover the entire Lower Mainland, Bellingham and Mount Baker in Washington state, a third or Vancouver Island (including Victoria and Nanaimo) and enough of the Thompson-Okanagan to eclipse both Kamloops and Kelowna? Why the BP Oil Spill of course!

This image comes from a website called If It Was My Home, which allows you to center the BP spill over any place in the world you like. I was completely unprepared for the scale of this thing. Having been to most of the places on this map frequently, I know exactly how much distance is being covered, and it's a lot.

In this picture, I've centered the spill over Cultus Lake for maximum effect, but you can put it over top of Vancouver proper and eat up a lot more of Vancouver Island and the Georgia Strait. Or you could head over to io9 and see it over most of Scotland.

Attempts to cap the well continue to fail, so the spill is only going to get worse before it gets better. It looks like a relief well may have to be drilled before any real attempt can be made to cap the well. The coastline of the Southern U.S. has already suffered irreparable environmental damage. We can only hope that a significant amount of oil does not enter the Atlantic currents and spread ecological havoc.

Posted at 09:45 AM | Comments (2)