Author: Kirk

We All Love Robert Munsch!

I grew up loving Robert Munsch’s story about Jonathan and the subway station in his wall. I’m sure we all have favorites. Now I find that the author and entertainer has made audio versions of many of his books available for free on his website. Download them all and play them for your children – you can’t really go wrong. What a great gesture from a great children’s writer.

On a related note, I had no idea he was a Canadian, and that he based the stories he writes on the children he first tells them to. His story telling style is apparent in the audio recordings, and are quite entertaining as Wikipedia states:

Munsch stories are well known for their juvenile, yet catchy, humour. Parents sometimes criticised them as being rude or obscene. Munsch himself is well known for his manic storytelling methods, with exaggerated expressions and well-acted voices; his performances are always loved by kids, of all ages.

Red Paperclip = Living in Kipling, Saskatchewan!

The red paperclip guy has done it! He’s managed to finesse his way through 12 trades all the way to a house. Congratulations on a ‘job’ well done. Now he wants to write a book about the experience – something I figure he’ll have plenty of time to do in his new house.

Shoot – he also gets to be mayor for a day, and receives a key to the city. Who knew negotiating obtuse trades could be so … honorary?

Here’s my previous post on the fellow.

Thanck Goodeness Fore SpelChequers

These tools are so very useful – can we really live without them?

I quote:

Eye halve a spelling chequer,
It came with my pea sea,
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I’m shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew.

Canadian Music – This City Rocks!

In addition to the CBC Radio 3 podcast I can now wholeheartedly recommend another source of information on Canadian Music: This City Rocks.

It’s a vlog (video blog – don’t blame me I didn’t make the word up) that started out focusing on Vancouver’s music talent, and has recently decided to open it up to the rest of the country’s artists. They do a little interview with a band in an effort to introduce you to their style and sound.

It’s a nice way to get to know a local band, as perusing the Straight’s band listing really doesn’t give you an idea of who these bands are. I also think the Straight’s music section tends to ignore local talent as well, preferring to focus on up-and-comers from out of town. So it is nice to have a local resource in Vancouver itself.

I just hope this new ‘Canadian’ focus doesn’t shatter the usefulness of this vlog – I really enjoyed the first 3 episodes and getting to see some of the talent located locally.

theBside Moved Servers

Well I managed to figure out how to get the website moved over with minimal fuss. I switched to a new theme to boot – I didn’t like the ‘mechanical’ feeling of the last one. Somehow it felt desolate. I’m not sure I like this one either – too much space wasted on the sides. But we’ll see if I find another one.

So right now everything is running on the new server so things should be a bit faster. The only thing left to do is to migrate all those pictures from the old gallery to the new one. So you’ll notice that old links don’t work to pictures, and many pictures and albums are still missing. Please be patient as I get them all migrated over.

The new gallery will also make uploading easier, so look forward to that.

Putting The Squeeze On The Tooth Fairy

I always wondered what happened to my teeth once the tooth fairy took them away in the dark of the night. Eventually I just figured that the most obvious and practical option was the most likely – the fairy takes the teeth down underground somewhere and melts them all down into molten teeth. The fairy then purifies the molten teeth, whitening them and removing all that nasty discolouration. Once the liquid is pipping hot it is poured into silver metal moulds in the shape of unicorns. Once cooled the new tooth unicorn statue is added to the “Unicorn Garden” – a growing pile of pristinely white statues spreading wildly over a simple green lawn.

At this point things get fuzzy, because I’m not sure if the unicorn statues come to life every Hallowe’en, sadly watching costumed children (in who’s mouth the unicorns once dwelt) traipse about collecting tooth-rotting candy from strangers, or if the fairy uses them in demonic rituals, animating them as grotesque creatures who’s sole desire in life is to bring the world to a thundering, shattering, enamel drenched end.

But I digress.

Scientists in Edmonton have miniaturized a device that will allow a tooth to be regrown from a root – how cool is that? Forget false teeth! I’ll just regrow my missing/broken/chipped tooth! It only takes a few months. Combine this new device with an interest in using stem cells to create new teeth and we have a brand new way of growing teeth. What used to be something we experienced only as children can soon be relived by all of us – well, all of us with the cash to pay for it.

So now the Unicorn Garden may start to grow a little faster – people will be jettisoning teeth throughout their lives not just as children but repeatedly as adults as their teeth grow old and fall out or get bashed about by flying pucks. So either the garden will have to be expanded beyond the underground lair (how cool would that be?) or the fairy will be doing more demonic rituals. Could this mean a return of the unicorn to modern day zoological references? If so, does it mean we should see them only on Hallowe’en, or is this simple Edmontonian discovery a harbinger of the end of the world?

Upcoming Site Upgrade = Downtime

I’ve been slowly migrating everything on this server to my new server, and the only two things left are the blog and the picture gallery. Since every time someone makes an update to either of these I need to recapture the data for migration, I’m going to stop letting people make updates.

The easiest way to do this will be to simply close my firewall for a bit, until the site is moved properly. I have no idea how long that will take. I’m hoping less than a day but with my spare time slowly ebbing away … I can’t really say.

So in the near future (sometime in July I think) if you come surfing over here and there’s nothing to read – don’t be surprised. Check back regularly and see if I manage to get everything right.

Want To Speak With Someone At The CRIA?

Defective By Design, a rallying site for people opposed to DRM, is having a one-day “call the big wig” event they’re calling “Freedom Rings” today. When you sign up they give you the contact information for some of the big names in the recording industry associations in various countries.

The idea is that you can then call this person and speak to them directly to let them know that DRM is simply not a good idea. It’s an interesting approach to ‘protesting’. Many people think you should just stop buying CDs labelled “Copy Protected” as a means of protesting, but it has been shown that the recording executives are perceiving any drop in record sales as attributable to piracy. This is an opportunity for those of us who really oppose DRM to simply tell someone that should be interested in hearing from us.

If you sign up there is a number for a fellow at the CRIA – Canada’s version of the RIAA, so we can all call Graham Henderson, apparently the president of the CRIA.

Hybrids Are So 2005 – Or Are They?

We’ve all heard about how the hybrid engine is going to change the world as we know it in terms of automobile fuel efficiency. Those of us who are rooting for Mother Nature naturally look favourably upon any improvement on fossil fuel consumption rates and pollution reduction. But for anyone looking at buying a hybrid today it is important to look at all the factors, not just the LC-factors (Leonardo DiCaprio factors: many people seem to think movie stars are smarter than the rest of us and when one of them starts advocating new technology we follow like sheep).

Here’s an interesting article on purchasing a hybrid in late 2005 versus an economy car. The conclusion points out that, in terms of money, you pay more for the hybrid even with the increased fuel economy (assuming you even get what the car manufacturers advertise).

While no “green” person would ever advocate buying a hybrid for purely economic reasons, it is painfully obvious that existing hybrids lack the ability to make up for their steep prices with gas savings. While a hybrid would present significant savings over something like a new Ford Super Duty, you would always save more with any of a number of economy cars.

Hybrid technology is just entering the mainstream, however. As gas prices rise and hybrid technology improves and cheapens, don’t be surprised to find hybrid owners in the green.

Of course as gas prices go up these calculations will change, but it certainly points out that the picture is not as clear as many people think it is. The article also mentions replacing the car’s battery every 8-10 years – I’m not really sure if there has been an analysis of the environmental impact of making and destroying all those batteries yet.

The optimists in us look forward to the days of cars powered by hydrogen. The realists (hello engineers!) look forward to refining the existing technology. Just look at what the UBC engineers can do with existing gasoline-powered engines: a trip from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon gas!

So hybrid technology is slowly becoming mainstream and is improving because of it. As it matures we’ll see costs drop and parts/repairs start to cost the same as combustion engines. It’s nice to see an alternative in the market – I just hope the LC-factors don’t lead us down the wrong path. Thanks to the engineers in the world who refuse to give up so quickly on something we’ve taken for granted for so long. Did I just call engineers stubborn?