Well, for lack of anything better to post:

Pelican Eats Pigeon

Posted at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)

This tortoise will try to kill you.

It will fail miserably, in an adorable manner, but it will still try.

Posted at 09:51 AM | Comments (1)

This year's garden:

- Six potato plants sprouted from previous years (originally planted by my former downstairs neighbours)
- Row of bolted radishes (with sweet seed pods)
- Row of small radishes (with yummy roots)
- Small random garlics (planted last year but never sprouted until now)
- One volunteer onion
- Two or three huge potato plants sprouted from old supermarket potatoes (have gorgeous flowers)
- One curious yet determined volunteer now identified as a pumpkin
- Tons of flowers, enough to consistently keep a fresh bouquet on the kitchen table for a couple of months now

Posted at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

I had quite the busy weekend. Fun-busy, I should clarify.

I saw The Dark Knight on Saturday with Angela. I won't spoil anything for you, but I will tell you the following. The Dark Knight is an amazing film. It has been called one of the best superhero films of our decade and one of the great crime dramas of our age. I can't impress upon you enough how deserving the film is of this critical praise. Top it all off with Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker which not only accurately expresses but boldly redefines the character. The Dark Knight is 2.5 hours of dense, gorgeous material, which I will need to see again to truly appreciate. See it. NOW.

Angela and I also saw the last performance of Cirque du Soleil's Corteo, which was also awesome, and like Batman involved much suspense, acrobatics, and crazy costumes. It was just a little more lighthearted, though. I love Cirque du Soleil's style, and I hope they loved Vancouver.

Posted at 10:18 AM | Comments (2)

Unless you live in hole (or somewhere other than Metro Vancouver, which might as well be a hole, since this is "The Best Place on Earth™") you probably know about the massive power outage in Vancouver's downtown core. While AFS was not affected, Shaw's network has been flaky all day yesterday and today. And since GeekMan's World is on that network, my site has been having some outages, as you may have noticed.

A few of our clients are still without power and/or internet, which is great timing because it is a quarterly and extended annual deadline. CBC News is bang-on when it says that lots of businesses are running on "cash and Blackberrys". Coming home from work yesterday there was a cop directing traffic at every single intersection, because even areas with power had lost their traffic lights.

In other news, I met two great people yesterday who are both very interested in being our new roommate. It will be a tough call to choose between them, but it's way better than the alternative. More later as the story develops.

Posted at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)

Here's the kind of ideas we need to run a sustainable society. My old hometown, Port Coquitlam, has now upgraded its green waste collection program to include compostable kitchen waste. For those of you who don't live in Metro Vancouver, the green bins were previously used for garden waste only, and had an irregular pickup schedule.

A big chunk of what we throw out can easily be turned back into nutrient-rich soil with a little composting TLC. So why bury it in a landfill? Say what you will about PoCo mayor Scott Young and his domestic-dispute-causing ways, but the man has amazing ideas for the municipality. We need to just strap him down and plug his brain into a giant computer that comes up with ideas.

I sincerely hope that the rest of Metro-Vancouver is not far behind adopting the ingenious scheme. I will be right on board with my "organic trash" pail in the kitchen.

Posted at 01:37 PM | Comments (2)

After announcing their (mostly) successful missile tests the other day, the Iranian state media released an impressive picture to the western media that made the front page of several major newspapers. The problem? PHOTOSHOP. It became clear that the image was the result of a hackneyed chop-job to add an extra missile, embarrassing not only Iran but the western media outlets that couldn't be bothered to inspect an image for a few minutes before plastering it on their front pages.

The readers of boingboing have taken it upon themselves to "improve" Iran's bad Photoshop job. I'm especially fond of the LOLcat and Neo bullet-time versions. Seeing Wile E. in action was nice too. The job is taken to its logical conclusion with more cowbell.

I added my own contribution referencing some classic Photoshop lore.

UPDATE: Okay, one more.

Posted at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

Sorry, I couldn't resist. A young woman spent half the day at work without realizing that she had a bat in her bra.

It seems that while her bra was on the clothesline during the night, a baby bat decided it would be a good idea to nestle away in the padded pocket for the day. When it started moving around during her lunch break, the bat was discovered and freed unharmed.

Sounds comfy. :-)

Posted at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

Angela and I went to see WALL-E yesterday afternoon. Pixar (with the exception of Cars) never fails to disappoint with its charming, all-ages movies. WALL-E is definitely deserving of the almost universal praise it's been getting from critics. One in fact wonders if that reluctant other 4% is simply too afraid to swallow a film with a subtly environmentalist, anti-consumerism message, no matter how good that film is otherwise.

Working most of its length as a film with essentially mute characters, WALL-E nonetheless shows great depths of expression, ideas, and emotion. It's also nice to see a see a rebellious robot movie where the 'bots aren't intent on annihilating us hapless humans, rather, they just want to do their jobs.

Anyway, I've already said too much. Go see the movie if you haven't already!

In the meantime, amuse yourself with this film of a real-life WALL-E wandering around L.A. recently, probably as a promotional stunt for the movie.

Did I mention that my Roomba vacuumed two rooms today?

Posted at 04:47 PM | Comments (1)

It's high time I redesigned my website.

Posted at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

So time has passed and yet another roommate has decided to move out. Apparently it's because he wants to be closer to work. I can't help feeling that there may be some misunderstanding regarding the way food costs are divvied up. Either way, Jeff and I have to find a new roommate, yet again, or move on...

In other home related news, I have done something which may receive mixed responses from the peanut gallery. I have purchased a Roomba.

I'll wait for some of you to stop laughing.

For those of you who aren't laughing, you might not know what this Roomba thing is. No, it is not a dance. Rather, it is a little robotic vacuum cleaner that buzzes around your floor. Yes, its movements are dancelike.

No, it doesn't do a spectacular job. Yes, it still does a good job. Yes, it most certainly does a better job than I would do. Yes, it is adorable. Yes, you may grow to love it as you would a child. No, that would not be normal. No, buying it did not break the bank.

It follows walls, crisscrosses floors, and make other various movements over the course of its cleaning cycle to get complete coverage. You can keep it in one room either by setting up a Roomba "Virtual Wall", or you could just put a suitcase in the doorway. You can also set up a device called a "Lighthouse" which allows the Roomba to intelligently switch rooms when it is done with the first. When it is done cleaning, it goes back to the little charging station it calls home, parks itself, and plays a triumphant series of beeps (Yes, that is kind of like R2-D2). To empty the dustbin you just pull the butt off of it and dump the contents in the trash..

The Roomba is made by a company called iRobot which also makes a shopvac robot, a floor washing robot, and a gutter cleaning robot. The Roombas have been around for a number of years and are continuing to be successful. I've had my eye on them for a while, and since they're available at Costco I finally gave in and decided to give one a try. On Sunday it vacuumed the living room while I washed the kitchen floor.

Yes, I have decided to name it: Cavil.

Posted at 01:48 PM | Comments (5)