Posts

Posted on

True Facts About Lethbridge (That Sound Made Up)

View showing the one stage of construction on High Level Bridge. The traveller is visible. Area of the river valley also visible.

I enjoyed reading this Reddit Thread of true facts about Lethbridge that sound fake.

Some of the most interesting facts include:

  • Marilyn Manson was puched out in a Denny’s restaurant
  • A city councilor faked her own kidnapping while on official visit to the States then ran away with her lover to Las Vegas before she was found out and caught
  • we renamed the city after some guy who had never been here and never came here after we named it after him
  • A girl dressed like a storm trooper was arrested on May the 4th because she had a blaster
  • Members of a Biker gang murdered some other bikers in a house in the London Road neighbourhood back in the 80s and the bodies ended up in a meat processing plant

These similar fact threads for Disneyland and Calgary are also great.

Posted on

RSS Feeds for Twitter

Dave Winer:

It is my pleasure to introduce TweetFeed. After you sign up, it’ll start reading your tweets and update your new RSS feed.

The docs are here.

If you have questions or comments, please post them here.

Why now? RSS 2.0 will be twenty years old on September 18. One month from today. I’m working on something pretty big for that day, maybe it’ll be out a bit earlier, who knows. But in the meantime, here’s something new to spark a new use for RSS and Twitter — hooking people’s tweets up to feed reader apps like NewsBlurand The Old Reader.

I don’t tweet an awful lot, but nevertheless here is the RSS feed to my Twitter stream.

Posted on

Apple Earnings Q3 – 2022

Apple Q3 Earnings

Tim Cook, on his earnings call earlier today:

Apple is proud to report another record quarter with a March quarter revenue record of $97.3 billion, up 9% from a year ago and better than we anticipated. iPhone, Mac, and Wearables, Home and Accessories had their best-ever March quarter, and services set an all-time record on the strength of subscription growth over the past year.

Jason Snell, Six-Colors:

Apple’s fiscal results are out. The company generated $83B in revenue. Compared to the year-ago quarter, Mac sales were down 10%, iPad sales down 2%, iPhone up 3%, Services up 13%, and Wearables down 8%.”

Services have been a big part of Apple’s strategic plan over the last few years and they are reaping the rewards. According to chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, Apple now has over 860 million subscribers across its iCloud, AppleTV+, Apple Music, Apple News and other services.

MacRumors:

Speaking during Apple’s third-quarter earnings call, Maestri said Apple has over 860 million subscribers, which is an increase of 160 million over just the last 12 months. Apple does not provide a breakdown of subscribers counts per service, but Maestri said growth was strong in offerings like Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade.

Mac sales might have slumped during this quarter compared to last year at this time, but it was last year’s third quarter where so many more people jumped into buying new MacBooks because of the pandemic and as well because of the long awaited arrival of Apple silicon. I’ve been using the M1 MacBook Air since it came out, and typing on this new M2 MacBook Air that arrived earlier today, I’m convinced 1 this one is going to sell even better than the M1.

  1. Disclosure: I own shares of AAPL. Also, this is not investing advice, I’m just excited about my new computer and for the company.[↩]
Posted on

M2 Macbook Air

MacBook Air with M2

Ever since my MacBook Pro (2015) screen went kaput a couple of years ago, I’ve been sharing a computer with my wife. Back in March I decided to go all out and ordered a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with M1 Ultra, but ultimately I cancelled my order and held out for this beautiful completely redesigned MacBook Air with Apple’s M2 processor. It arrived yesterday and as fun as that other computer would have been, I think I made the right decision.

Posted on

The Bad Review Revue

Jurassic World Dominion: “How many ways can you screw up a dinosaur movie? It seems like a slam dunk. The people are coming for the dinosaurs, so you give them dinosaurs. When you’re not doing that, just point your camera at Jeff Goldblum” — Chris McCoy, Memphis Flyer

Persuasion: “Austen works hard. But mediocrity, this movie reminds us, works harder.” — Rolling Stone

Morbius: “To call Morbius a corporate corpse of a movie is too kind.” — Matthew Pejkovic, Matt’s Movie Reviews

Where the Crawdads Sing: “Oh, the crawdads definitely sing in ‘Where the Crawdads Sing.’ Much of the time, you wish they’d shut the hell up.” — Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Alone Together: “One can’t help but wish that Holmes’ script would acknowledge that, on the sliding scale of March 2020 suffering, wealthy people sheltering in beautiful chateaus are pretty low.” — Aurora Amidon, Paste Magazine

Posted on

Twinkle Twinkle

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

— Douglas Adams, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

If you held up a grain of sand to the sky in the right position, it would block out the entirety of this image.

Posted on

A Hero’s Journey?

I took our van in for an oil change today and with some time to kill decided to take a little walk in downtown Lethbridge. I had just crossed the street when I noticed a little girl in a truck holding a napkin that was fully engulfed in flames. Her eyes were wide and I thought about how crazy this scenario was as I raced up, opened the door, and watched her drop the flaming napkin onto the truck floor. I swished the fiery cinders out trying not to burn myself but not wasting any time. She looked like she was in about grade three (8 years old).

I asked where her parent was and she said inside the store, so I went inside the motorcycle shop and asked around. One employee told me that the guy from that truck was test driving a bike and has been gone for a long time — like a half hour.

I talked to the girl again making sure she was ok and asked how it started which she explained was that she was playing with the cigarette lighter and accidentally started the napkin on fire.

After talking with a lady who works there that said she would keep her eyes on the truck I took the above photo of my hand and continued my walk.

I guess I probably did the wrong thing by just walking away at this point and not calling the police. This parent obviously needs to get it together, however, I also have distrust issues with our local law enforcers and I didn’t want to be the potential catalyst that blows up this guy’s life. I did consider that maybe this little girl’s caregiver needs a wake up call to realize you don’t leave an elementary aged child alone in a running vehicle (with air conditioning at least) for a half hour while she experiments with fire.

I doubled back after about 15 minutes of guilt and she and the truck were gone. A couple of my fingers are a little burned but no blisters so I’m fine.

My oil change was done at that point so I came home a hero — and also, I guess, a coward.

Posted on

Our Little Boy Blue

boo

Boo is one of the two cats Ange brought with her when we got together. It was quite some time before I learned his real name was actually Little Boy Blue. Ange explained that his name evolved over the years from Little Boy Blue into Blue and eventually stuck on Boo1. I sometimes called him Boo-bons (affectionately short for bubonic—yes, as in plague—because early on he liked to scratch me).

He came from a ditch

Ange was driving home from work and saw a cat (that wasn’t Boo) crossing the highway and run into the ditch. Something compelled her to follow it. She pulled off the highway and saw, sitting off the large concrete pad of a sign, was a little kitten with huge ears. He was looking pretty rough, so she picked him up and he bite her index finger. He bit her hard, so much so that had to shake him off her hand. When he came off he ran away and she couldn’t catch him again. The next afternoon she was again working at the same place and on the way home it was raining. She decided to go to the sign and see if the kitten was there. This time she put on some fish gloves and a little cardboard box and somehow she was able to catch him. He was probably tired and hungry. He had a big abscess on his back. She put him in the box and took him straight to the vet. The vet put a cone on him and she kept him quarantined in the bathroom of her basement suite.

Lost

Boo fit the mould when it came to the “cats have nine lives” proverb. Only a couple of months later, while he was still a little kitten and hadn’t yet been neutered, Andrea left him with roommates while she went away on a trip. Boo was supposed to stay inside but was snuck out and didn’t return. Her roommate was afraid to let her know that he had lost her kitten, so when she got back she found out the bad news. A couple of weeks later, a kind stranger called after seeing one of the posters she had hung up at a local animal shelter. The man had found Boo at the research centre outside of town climbing inside a dumpster. He picked up Boo and dropped him off at the shelter and even left money with the shelter to go with Boo. Andrea was so happy to have him back she made up a nice thank you basket and gave them a gift card for Georgia’s restaurant. She still likes to enthusiastically tell the story about how happy she was to get him back.

Over the last couple months Boo’s health began declining rapidly, and unfortunately at the beginning of the month it came time to say goodbye. We’ll miss him.

  1. Relevant XKCD Words for Pets[↩]