Ketherian's Notebook

This viral video hit iO9 this morning.
A bit of googling shows that it's pretty much making the rounds of the tech and geek websites. From reading most of them, it seems that Waterworld: The Musical stars Patrick Warburton (aka The Tick). The video clip is a viral video to draw attention to Made for Each Other, a movie starring Warburton, Danny and Christopher Masterson, Samm Levine, and Bijou Phillips.

See the video on FunnyorDie.

Why are abandoned places so hauntingly beautiful?
Seeing the slow decay of a place so once joyful and beautiful is both fascinating and disturbing.
Fascinating because it is a rare site.
Disturbing because beauty should never die.

When browsing giz this morning, I found an article titled iPhone May Take Pictures of Your Junk and Send them to your Attractive CoWorker.
Links in the giz article go to the Inquirer and the Apple forums. These links make for highly amusing reading.

Comericals and their making
The making of  Skoda Fabia - Car Cake.
The final commercial is available on youtube.

Wow. I saw this originally via Cake Wreck.

This was amazing.  But I have to wonder what they did with the cake after the commercial? Typically comercial (and TV props) are either resold (rarely), or just given or thrown away. That's a lot of very delectable food.

Would they tour with the cake to a few auto shows?
Maybe offer it up as a meal to a factory of workers?
Or just throw it out.

Another commercial and the making of is available on Neatorama. Check out Bullet time 2.0 by Toshiba.

The Teastick Gem
x-posted to tea-lovers.

There's a new teastick out there.
Today on Slashfood the teastick gem was reviewed. It currently comes in two colors and is cheaper than the original stainless steel version. 

The US President-elect on the intertubes
No, not talking about the intertubes, but actually on it. (Hat tip to Boing Boing).

Sunday night he was on 60-minutes.
Transcript and videos are on the linked page for those, like me, who missed it.

Tony Hillerman's obit is in the times today. I really enjoy this man's writings, almost as much as I enjoyed the American Mystery series on PBS.

Today on Boing Boing, they point to Subterranea Britannica. This wonderful site of urban exploration (of the subterranean type) reminds me of Inside the Urban Landscape, a site that features shots from Montreal, Hamilton and Toronto. The local site doesn't have near as many world war II and cold war bunkers, but the photography in both places is amazing. So much so it almost makes me want to go explore the strange, dark and damp man-made spaces below the city. Almost.

Micheal Geist started a contest on YouTube for people to make videos talking about C61. Today the winners were announced. Check out the BoingBoing post about it, Michael Geist's post, or the list of all the entries over on YouTube. The winning three (well, the winning two -- the link to Kill Bill C-61 doesn't seem to work for me) are really good summaries of the problems with Bill C-61. Just because the bill's been killed by the Call for Elections doesn't mean it won't come back.

I'm not going to back any one particular party on this LJ, but those who read regularly probably already know my politics. If you don't know yours - I strongly suggest you visit Canada Votes on the CBC website. The best place to start is probably either "Leaders and Parties" or "Issues & Analysis". If you want to visit the political sites* for each party check out the official list of registered (and available) political parties.

To learn more about your electoral district, go to the Elections Canada On-Line Electoral district section and enter your postal code at the bottom of the column on the left-hand side of the page. Then click on the question "Who are the candidates in my electoral district?" The close of nominations is 22-September-2008; so the list will not be formalized until then.

In my family you can't talk about politics if you haven't voted. Want to complain about the PM? Dislike how a bill is going through the house? Didn't vote? Then tough luck. I grew up believing that voting is a privilege that should be exercised.

Pulp 2.0 provided a link to the movie Bitch Slap today. The trailer (as shown on the Bitch Slap sight) seems to define the genre of the movie pretty succinctly and gave me a good laugh this morning. The title of the movie tells you about all you really need to know. It opens Christmas 2008.

Crockpot 365 is my latest rss read. I love cooking with my crockpot; it's an easy way to cook. Unfortunately, the 1960s recipes that I first learned focused on ready-made ingredients (tins of soup and tinned vegetables). This blog's recipes seem to be scratch-built. I'm looking forward to trying some of them. My year without was mentioned in a comment on FayFood. It's an interesting attempt and I'm always interested in finding out ways to avoid sugar. I've not read much from it yet, but it's now in my list of rss feeds. Updated -- added My year without.

Cunningham (on Pulp 2.0) wrote that this trailer requires no explanation. I'd say it defies explanation beyond it's title. The Toronto After Dark Film Festival (October 2008) has a lot of great trailers on YouTube. These films should especially interest those of you into horror, cult films, and action.

I found this mentioned in WWdN:In Exile this morning, and had to post it to share. Coilhouse's article on the Kowloon Walled City: The Modern Pirate Utopia. It's a reference with video to a place in Hong Kong that was unique in the world's history. While it was replaced by a park, it's still a facinating story. Great setting for a novel neh?

Edit: Must remember to preview before posting. Sorry if you see this twice. :)

Cool LOTD
Diane Duane (out of ambit) is absolutely right. This is a fun thing. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Is it safe
There's been a lot of press about the safety of plastics. National Geographic has a Q&A over here. I keep looking at the price of glass containers and wincing. I'm too cheap, so I'll be sticking to plastic containers. But the fear of plastics does bring up some problems: how do you bring home something wet and messy (like a rotisserie chicken, or frozen foods) without plastic to provide a catch-all container? We now use recycled bags (made from either cloth or plastic) about 90% of the time (we do forget to return said bags to the car from time to time).

We buy a lot of rotisserie chicken (especially in the summer) and it always comes home in a plastic bag. Lately the stores around here have started selling insulated bags for either hot or cold foods; but I'm cheap--and spending 5 bucks for a specialty bag is problematic for me. We're trying to get into the habit of putting all the frozen goods into the same big recycled plastic shopping bag, and the rotisserie chicken into its own bag--but using plastic in these instances is easy; but maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. We get 5 cents for every recycled bag we use (typically we use 7-8 in a weekend of shopping). So the more I use, the more I save.

Produce bags. I don't mind not using them for some items, but they're handy for grouping things together and some foods (like lettuce) will end up shredded in your cart if you don't bag it.

Cheese. We buy it and deli meat at a deli. Could I bring my own containers and have them fill them? I'll have to ask. I know I've been tempted to ask for my deli meat to be stacked in a container. Rather than puzzle out how many grams of lunch meat I want, it would be great to hand over the container and say "fill it please".

The butcher. He wraps everything in butcher's paper. And I usually wrap things in cling film before putting them in the freezer. The meat would probably freeze ok in a plastic container, assuming it would fit. I've got a couple of long(ish) containers I'm going to try, but I think I'll need something (wax paper maybe) to line the bottom and place between the layers
to avoid the frozen goods turning into a solid block of ice. And then there's freezer burn -- the more air in a container (and the thinner the product) the more likely freezer burn will occur. Sounds like another point on which to experiment.

Zip-lock bags. Handy to freeze chicken carcases (for making stock later), things packed as snacks for lunch. Some things I can put in a plastic reusable container, but the habit for grabbing a zip-lock bag is strong and hard to break.

Aluminum foil is another problem. I only use it to line my roasting pan to catch drips and such. It makes clean-up a lot easier. I know there are silicone roasting racks, but I've yet to find a silicone roasting pan (the cake pan I have is too wide and not long enough to fit my tiny roaster.

Enough ranting. Back to work.

FailFoods
The first post I see today from Fail Foods (introduced to me from Slashfood) makes me laugh so loud that I get coworkers peeking over my shoulder. I don't see this as a fail. But it is funny.
citruside.
Burnt, scary, Baby, food (and no, I didn't mis-type that).

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred (see here for the meme):

1. Venison. My father use to hunt. My mother has an amazing recipe for venison mince meat.
2. Nettle tea. Drank it at a survival outting in Explorers (think Brownies, but more religious).
3. Huevos rancheros.
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari. I'm picky about Calamari and rarely eat it at restaurants for fear it will be over-chewy.
12. Pho.
13. PB&J sandwich.
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart. Outside the Toronto Convention Center, Torcon2.
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes. Apricots, Peach and Nectarine (3 different ones).
19. Steamed pork buns. My favorite.
20. Pistachio ice cream.
21. Heirloom tomatoes.
22. Fresh wild berries. Every summer at my Parent's house. Wild strawberries are so very tiny!
23. Foie gras. In Quebec? Who hasn’t.
24. Rice and beans. Red beans and rice, black beans and rice - hey this one's a budget saver.
25. Brawn, or head cheese. Too salty.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche.
28. Oysters. Not a fan, they're better lightly steamed than raw to my taste. Funny - I like oysters, but I don't like muscles.
29. Baklava. Yes. Oh yes. A thousand times yes!
30. Bagna cauda. Ever since I saw this one on Babylon 5 I've wanted to try it.
31. Wasabi peas.
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. Didn't Timmy's offer this as a lunch a while back?
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut.
35. Root beer float.
36. Cognac with a fat cigar. Don't smoke. Don't want to start. Regardless of the reason. Or my sister will kill me.
37. Clotted cream tea.
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O.
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects Chocolate covered they're OK. Toasted maggots taste like popcorn. Except for the black bit. That part grossed me out.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk. Yuck. I prefer Goat's cheese.
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu. No interest. I'm not interested in eating something just because if cut improperly you could die (if I were, I'd be hunting skunk).
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel Eel sushi.
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut Once. Never. Again.
50. Sea urchin Sushi.
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal. As a kid - often. It was the go-to place for lunch on car trips. I could spot the big M miles off.
56. Spaetzle. My mother-in-law is german.
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV Microbreweries abound in Montreal.
59. Poutine. In Montreal? Who hasn't had a coranary experience.
60. Carob chips.
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads. I prefer the gland nearer the heart.
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake. Made 'em.
68. Haggis.
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette.
71. Gazpacho. Yuck.
72. Caviar and blini.
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill. Yes. On a survival course (we were taught how to tell good meat from bad). I accidently killed a rabbit with a tracker. We had it
for dinner.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict. My favourite breakfast.
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare. Yes (see Roadkill). But I've had it lots of times.
87. Goulash
88. Flowers. Rose hips are particually nice.
89. Horse. Hello? Quebec.
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam. Guilty.
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish.
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox It's a popular breakfast in Montreal.
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta. My father-in law is Italian.
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee Coffee = Ick.
100. Snake.

Three more I haven't tried and don't ever want to eat:
Brains. Scared of BSE. Very scared in fact.
Eyes. Seen it done. Found it disgusting.
Face. OK, I admit I'd eat it; just don't make me prepare it.

Some I highly recommend
Labneh
Scallops

Some I want to try
Ostrich
Buffalo/Bison
Meat cake
Chocolate Tahini quickbread

Zombies!
Zombie Harmony (thanks to Jenifer over at Screen Space for the link). It's a cute stub of a site.

And now a word...
Denis Leary's idea of a drunk-driving PSA. The Asshole song is something that I still humm to myself when I'm truly frustrated. This advert cracked me up. It's a bit different from The Original Version; but it certainly gets the right idea across.

Chargers and cable organization
A /. post asked how to organize their charging devices. Amidst the drek that /.'ers usually post (including jokes, jabs, complaints, and very complex instructions for technical solutions) someone posted a link to CallPod. They have several cool looking products, but the Chargepod is a great idea. Priced at 79.95USD, it is a six-device charge base sattion. It comes with six attachments (the website gives details and other connectors are also available under the title of "accessories") as well as a US power adapter and a car charger. They have a riddiculiously long list of compatible objects. While most of us just have a power strip (or two) with all the chargers attached, there are other ways to organize things. And some of them seem pretty self contained. But they all use a power bar or surge suppressor.

I keep meaning to buy a few pieces of peg board and tie wrap not only the obsequious do-dads that little my desk (USB hub, various power bars, chargers, wireless hub, router, etc) to the board and then drop it down below the desk. I want to buy cable chaseways, but they're expensive; and I need to buy some more velcro tie wraps (reusable and easy to adjust unlike the plastic ones) to gather up the long cables in my office and hide them somewhere. I tried a lot of different things, but I'm starting to believe the best way to organize cables is to loop them up and put the loop on a hook screwed into the back of your desk. That way, if you need more cable, you can just unhook the loop, undo the velcro tie wrap, take out more cable, redo and rehook.

Figuring out how to get all the different sized plugs to fit neatly onto one power bar strip is beyond me.

Tagged as recipes
Simply Recipes put up a Sloppy Joes recipe today. I use to love Sloppy Joes and this one looks so nice and thick. I'd have to replace the ketchup with tomato paste though (reduces the sugar), and I'd serve it on toast instead of hamburger buns; but it would make a great fall meal along with some white vinegar coleslaw (1/4 cup vinegar of choice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar).

Too cool
CubeCraft (thanks BoingBoing). I know what I'll be doing with my free time this week. I so want to make some of these. I also signed up to his blog. My first attempt at building one failed miserably. Next time: thicker paper and a sharper craft knife. Now, ... where did I store my cutting board...?

Gizmodo found the ultimate nerd approved tool. gaydar. Now you can know for sure.

Chargers and cable organization

A /. post asked how to organize their charging devices. Amidst the drek that /.'ers usually post (including jokes, jabs, complaints, and very complex instructions for technical solutions) someone posted a link to CallPod. They have several cool looking products, but the Chargepod is a great idea. Priced at 79.95USD, it is a six-device charge base sattion. It comes with six attachments (the website gives details and other connectors are also available under the title of "accessories") as well as a US power adapter and a car charger. They have a riddiculiously long list of compatible objects. While most of us just have a power strip (or two) with all the chargers attached, there are other ways to organize things. And some of them seem pretty self contained. But they all use a power bar or surge suppressor. Some are gaydar, but they only hold a few items.

I keep meaning to buy a few pieces of peg board and tie wrap not only the obsequious do-dads that little my desk (USB hub, various power bars, chargers, wireless hub, router, etc) to the board and then drop it down below the desk. I want to buy cable chaseways, but they're expensive; and I need to buy some more velcro tie wraps (reusable and easy to adjust unlike the plastic ones) to gather up the long cables in my office and hide them somewhere. I tried a lot of different things, but I'm starting to believe the best way to organize cables is to loop them up and put the loop on a hook screwed into the back of your desk. That way, if you need more cable, you can just unhook the loop, undo the velcro tie wrap, take out more cable, redo and rehook.

Figuring out how to get all the different sized plugs to fit neatly onto one power bar strip is beyond me.

Tagged as recipes

Simply Recipes put up a Sloppy Joes recipe today. I use to love Sloppy Joes and this one looks so nice and thick. I'd have to replace the ketchup with tomato paste though (reduces the sugar), and I'd serve it on toast instead of hamburger buns; but it would make a great fall meal along with some white vinegar coleslaw (1/4 cup vinegar of choice, 2 tablespoons olive oil, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar).

Death race is gay?

i09 pointed me to . I think the author is putting too much on a school-yard joke. And the shirts -- hey, one's sexuality is not always determinable by one's taste (or lack there of) in clothing. Besides, I saw the shirts more as symbolic of the place Machine Gun Joe wanted to be, rather than his sexuality. Still, AfterElton has it right - the movie is called Death Race, not happy puppies frolicking. The movie tag line is: Get ready for a killer ride.

My short review:
An action-packed video game with movie lead-ins successfully turned into a
movie with slightly more dialog and less fowl-ups.

Too cool

CubeCraft (thanks BoingBoing). I know what I'll be doing with my free time this week. I so want to make some
of these. I also signed up to his blog. My first attempt at building one failed miserably. Next time: thicker paper and a sharper craft knife. Now, ... where did I store my cutting board...?

Gizmodo found the ultimate nerd approved tool. gaydar. Now you can know for sure.

All about fonts.
Screen Space, a great blog and podcast for all us type-huggers, posted a YouTube link to the video Typography Is What Language Looks Like. This short (1m45s) movie is done with speaking-type (see the words, hear the words) and provides a great answer to the question "what is typography". Even if you're not a type-hugger (or as the pejorative of the term is coined - a font weenie), see the film and you never know, you just might learn something. For those who love type, I strongly suggest you subscribe to screen space. The pod casts are good and the links are regularly things I don't find in all the other RSS subscriptions I have. I'm a bit behind with Screen Space (the link above was posted on 16-July-2008), but I'm slowly catching up.

del.icio.us tagged today
[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2. A quick way to test combined colors and see how well they look together. Provides a color wheel and visible examples. Tags: html tools color css

Tempts Fate is back
Temps Fate Vs. is back. Challenge 1: Escape the shoulder canon is supposed to be done by August 18. Taral's monetary goal for phase four is almost reached and phase 1 isn't even up yet. This is the best marketing campaign ever. It's also a great web comic that updates ... erm ... lets call it irregularly. :)

The best roleplaying table ever.
The Sultan Gaming Table. I want one.

Things that make you go Oh Wonderful...
This morning, The Content Wrangler featured article titled U.S. Federal Government Silences Typo Spotters; Forces Them To Stop Encouraging Others. It's a story of woe, pitting the do-gooder (TEAL - the Typo Eradication Advancement League) against the nation-state. Naturally, the nation-state won. In the resulting decision, TEAL had to take down their website and stop their insidious hunt of typos across America. The nation deemed what they were doing was vandalism through defacement of public property. What the rest of us would define it as would be "correcting" public property. The source documents to this article (provided in the above-linked Content wrangler's story) caused much head shaking this morning. Hopefully, this is the kind of thing that would get thrown out of court in Canada, but you can never be too sure.

Tea-Through-the-Nose-Award
Lucien Soulban has some Unconventional Wisdom this morning.

Daily Dose

I got a lot of paperwork done this week, and thanks to RW, a lot of processing done today. It feels like paperwork has become my life.

Here's the links I collected last week. I'll try to get back to updating about the day in shorter posts <famous last words>. The links aren't sorted (my time's been pretty limited of late).

The Life that's Mine
I'm snowed in by paperwork at home. Trust me, this is good (annoying, tiring, and aggregating, but good) because that means AnticipationSF has more members and more money. I've been loath to write about what's going on with the WorldCon because (a) my world view (haha) is so very small and (b) I deal with da money. So, really - how much should I write about data entry, cheque processing, credit card processing, and answering questions (everything from the very polite, very formal to the inane and back). I won't post the questions for fear of hurting someone's feelings or worse, invading someone's privacy.

I do need to know a lot more about badge security and creating regulations for registration. Fortunately, for me, most everything registration-related can be found online.

Otherwise, me and mine are well. I saw a few friends on Saturday night and went out to Kanda on Snowdon. I don't think they're quite as good as the one on Boulevard Sources in Pointe-Claire, but it might just have been an off night (or maybe I didn't order the right things). The restaurant was busy and it really showed on the black-attired staff. We left a decent tip then headed out. We tried to rent a movie but our tastes were so different that we couldn't agree on one. So we went back to RD's place to play a "quick" game of Talisman. 4th Ed is much prettier, but essentially the same game as 3rd. We played the speed version (you only have to trade in 5 pts to get a strength or craft); it doesn't seem like much--but it did speed things up.

We ended the game when RD got the Crown of Command. I was playing the Prophetess and I had the pixie, the princess and the unicorn as followers. Talk about being a girly-girl. RD played something more akin to Ash; which was pretty funny in all it's ass-holiness. BM played the monk with fervor, being the first in (and first out) of the second ring.

Monday everyone was back at work, and while it was busy it was also kind of fun hearing about vacations and seeing pictures. I went out to Lunch with lsoulban. He was fresh back from Gen*Con and (bless him) he brought me swag. He brought me back a signed Mouseguard book! *Glee* And dice. Oh goodness. The dice. I now have a crown royal box *filled* with dice (mostly miss-matched sets) and a small bag of my favourites. He also brought me the official gen con memorial set of dice (he called it the crayola explosion of dice). :) *happy dance*

I spoke with FT last night--mostly about Anticipation stuff. The question of how to process reg stuff more quickly came up. The answers (a) get more staff & give them homework (b) more people processing at once (c) don't validate before processing (d) scan it all and figure it out later.

The problem with all of them relates to data retention (I don't want to loose forms or have them damaged if I have to give them out to get them processed), and data security (if we don't validate, we're guaranteed to introduce errors which will take more time to get out later). My little home scanner really isn't up to the task, so maybe going to kinko's (or the Quebec equivalent) and getting it all scanned in is a good idea. So much to research...so little time.

Tonight PJ came over with her daughter in tow to do more Anticipation stuff. Lets just say it didn't go as planned. Dinner was fine (a fritatta, steamed broccoli and maple-glazed pork that was a bit overdry), but the paperwork took on a new dimension of FOOBAR. I've passed the problem up the ladder to see if it can be solved in good time. Fingers crossed. *Edited to add* and it's fixed. Now back to entering data.

In the PodCasts:
Listening to the Best of the Sunday Edition in the Summer (Aug 18, 2008) - Andrew Pyper comments that less and less people want to write about books and more people want to actually write books. It's an interesting statement. The podcast is interesting and Andrew Pyper is a good speaker.

On Cooking and Food:
I'm a big fan of Gordon Ramsy. Normally when someone drops the F bomb, I
find it rude and horrible, but somehow Gordon Ramsy makes it almost OK.
These short commercials are fantastic. I'm not really sure these adds show the attractiveness of the catering sector, but they are fun to watch. Thanks to Serious Eats for the link.

On Comics/Gaming:
David Peteren's blog brings great news and a cute Gencon poster. I've got the
mouseguard RPG on my wishlist. :)

General links
Talking to pirates. An interesting tale. The link to the game is here.

Wow. Marisa McClellan (over at Slashfood) found an amazing (and easy) desert on the net. Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill. It's one of those deserts I'm now really excited to try.