A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
“I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”
-Rodney Dangerfield
I am almost ready to give up on the playoffs. With the obvious exception of International hockey, the teams I cheer for so rarely get to the finals. The Calgary Flames didn’t even make the play-offs this year. At least the weather is getting nice so I will be out playing Ultimate and road hockey a lot this spring.
I downloaded my first purchased app for my iPod touch this morning. Air Video streams videos straight to your iPhone / iPod Touch, and converts them on-the-fly. Every video I’ve tried so far streams with no problems. I used to have to convert videos with Handbreak (a pretty great program), download them to the iPod, and was then able to watch them (I can hook my iPod up to the big screen in the living room directly). Now I can just stream movies directly to the TV through my iPod. It’s totally worth the $2.99 price tag!
Alternatively, you can get the free version, which works great too, it’s just harder to browse your files.
For the first time in 25 years, The Lethbridge Women’s Space was denied funding by the federal department for the Status of Women.
The CBC has the story.
We were status of woman funded for the last 25 years and we were very shocked when our application was denied because we have a very good relationship with Status of Women. We were [continuing] a previous project where we had served so many women with financial literacy services and we were shocked that it was denied because financial literacy has been identified as such a priority by this particular government.
A friend of mine, Shannon Phillips was interviewed on CBC regarding the loss of funding.
If you’d like to learn more about Womanspace, visit the Womanspace website. If you’d like to help, their site also links to those you could contact.
One of my good friends, David Logue, was on this week’s episode of Quirks and Quarks.
The interview is about cricket songs. We tested the H that aggressive signals mitigate the costs of fighting by muting and looking at a population that had lost its song. Turns out they fight like crazy if they can’t signal.
Quirks and Quarks April 17, 2010
From Quirks and Quarks Website:
Silent means Deadly
When crickets fight, there’s a lot of noise. Not just the clashing of mandibles and the clicking of legs, but the cricket equivalent of “trash talking” as well. Dr. David Logue, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico and his colleagues from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, were interested in what would happen when the crickets couldn’t make the sounds associated with their fights. What they saw was mayhem. Crickets, who were either naturally silent or had their noisemakers removed, fought viciously, longer, and more violently than those full of sound and fury. Apparently, these insects use bluster not to provoke, but to avoid violence.
I’ve only got one more week of school before the summer. I hate to talk about how posting has been rare lately, but I have been feeling guilty about it — hopefully I’ll get back to regular blogging when I finish up my final projects.
This summer looks to be very exciting for me, I’m headed back to Quebec in July to learn more French.
I had a great birthday weekend but things really went downhill yesterday. I always think it’s pretty silly when people get thrown off by the time change, however, it turns out I’m now one of those people. My iTouch had the correct time on it, but the alarm clock beside my bed was an hour slow. When I figured things out I had less than a half hour to get ready for school and make it to class. Lately I’ve been doing my part for the environment (not to mention saving money on gas) by taking the bus to the University, but since I was late, I had to drive. Since I don’t drive regularly, I parked on the street, and since I was late, there were no close parking spaces — oh except that one with the “no parking” sign. What are the chances they’d give me a ticket? It turns out, the chances are pretty good.
A ticket for parking without a pass at the University works out to about $8. That’s less than some people pay for parking at regular price. A ticket for parking beside a no parking sign? Sixty @#^^ing dollars! (With a reduction of $19 if paid within a week). Argh.
It also turns out that I forgot to renew the jeffmilner.com domain name when I paid to renew the hosting plan. The stress caused by the fact that I might not be able to get my web site back easily made me pretty mad and I found myself racing home from reffing water polo with the pedal to the metal. Knowing full well that if I wasn’t careful I’d end up with a speeding ticket too, I calmed down and slowed down. No sooner than I slowed down to the speed limit, someone’s cat darted out in front of my vehicle and if I hadn’t taken a moment to simmer down, I would’ve taken that cat’s nine lives with nothing more than a bump.
I thought, this might make for an interesting story to post on my blog. Oh… right.
Luckily, LUCKILY, I was able to renew it when I got home last night and once again all is well in my universe — oh except for that nasty parking ticket. What was I thinking?
When I read Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt, I really liked his take on the phrase “it turns out” and have attempted to incorporate it into my lexicon.
“Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression “it turns out” to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors “I read somewhere that…” or the craven “they say that…” because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it’s research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight.”
Here’s a great little blog post from jsomers.net on the usefulness of the sneaky phrase, “it turns out“.
OK Go’s new video, “This Too Will Pass” is centred around a rube goldberg machine and even if you’ve watched the entire 30 minute movie, “The Way Things Go” (wikipedia) and feel like you’re rube goldberged out, this is still totally worth watching.
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – YouTube
I’m very pleased that Canada won the gold medal hockey game this afternoon against the USA. Our countries may be the best of friends in real life, but at the same time, I love our rivalry in sports — especially when Canada comes out on top.
I love this:
Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans – YouTube
P.S. Parliament has been prorogued during the Olympics so Harper’s little flag waving speech was actually given at the British Columbia legislature.