I drive to work and home again everyday, Monday to Friday. Calgary is becoming a big city, people. Traffic is a real issue. So, for the good of everyone, I would like to review a few basic rules of the road that I feel are being overlooked:

1. The red light means stop. It doesn’t mean look both ways and speed off. It doesn’t mean you have ANY sort of right of way, even if you are turning right. You have to wait for the traffic that has the green light. If I am going straight through my GREEN light, I do not have to yield to you who are trying to turn right on your RED (aka STOP) light! Apparently, this is not just a problem in Calgary.

2. Yield (yes, the triangle one) means wait for others to go first. Not speed as fast as you can to get ahead of me.

3. Speed Limits.  All along your travel, you will see big white signs with black numbers. These numbers represent a speed that is considered the maximum. It is recommended that you travel this speed and ONLY this speed. If the sign says “50″, please travel 50km/. No more, no less. Don’t go 30km/h. Don’t go 60km/h, those signs are coming up. Go 50km/h.

*special note to you hotshots out there*
Guess what? I know your car is faster than mine. BUt guess what else? Speeding costs me money. So I am traveling 50km/h in the “50 zone”  DO NOT pull up right behind me,  DO NOT  flash your lights at me, or suddenly, you will find yourself going even slower. I am chosing not to speed because it is safe and it saves me money. Respect my decission.

And lastly, not a rule so much as an act of courtsey. If you see someone signalling to get into your lane, slow down, let them in. I have been doing this for the last 12 months consistantly as a little experiment of my own. I find that I am in a better mood while driving and I am not getting places any later than I normally do. So take part in the karma, and slow down, make a gap for someone to share your lane.

If you haven’t already, you’ll probably enjoy this:

YouTube - George Bush sings Sunday Bloody Sunday

A free book on all the cool things you can do with Google? Here’s the description:

“You probably use Google everyday, but do you know… the Google Snake Game? Googledromes? Memecodes? Googlesport? The Google Calculator? Googlepark and Google Weddings? Google hacking, fighting and rhyming? In this book, you’ll find Google-related games, cartoons, oddities, tips, stories and everything else that’s fun. Reading it, you won’t be the same searcher as before!”

Grab it here.

Personally, I think they missed the point on how this garbage can thing works:

Yeah, don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll just fit that right into a bag.

Let me set the stage: It’s late - about midnight. It’s been raining for a few hours, on and off. Thunderstorms are being called for. I’m kicking back on my couch - a few feet from my open patio doors. The sound of rain and wind in the trees is coming faintly from behind me. I throw in The Chronicles of Narnia, and crank up the sound. You may recall the begining of that movie, where the four kids are playing hide and go seek in the house. It’s raining in the movie. Now, I hear thunder; deep, and rolling - definitely not overpowering the ambient noises of the wind or rain (or the city behind all that,) but deeper and definitely there. I could not for the life of me tell you if that was from the movie, or from outside. When I realised that, I started paying more attention to what I was hearing. Was it still raining outside, or am I just hearing the rain from the movie?!

And then I think - it doesn’t really matter at all, does it? The fact that I couldn’t tell without stopping the movie or turning down the sound is pretty amazing. It turns out it was the movie. And that, I think, deserves a bit of a nod. To me, sound is much more important than picture quality. You might have guessed that this would be my opinion from the state of my living room - full 5.1 surround setup, including the subwoofer, and a TV that can only handle RCA inputs (forget component or S-Video.) Obviously the better equipment is the audio stuff, so it would stand to reason that I’d enjoy it more. Would I still say this if I had a wicked ultra clear super mega 1.21 Gigawatt TV? Yeah, I think so, Marty.

I love sound. I’ve always loved sound. I own 3 record players (aka phonographs) and over 150 vinyl albums ’cause I think the sound is more natural than CDs. I own the same albums on CD and vinyl, and if I play them side by side on the same stereo, I’m sure you’d agree the vinyl sounds better. (My best example to compare CD to vinyl quality is Sting’s The Dream of Blue Turtles album, in particular, the song Russians.) I’ve built my own speakers, and I used to listen to music in quadraphonic stereo before Surround Sound. Hell, even my cat’s name is Echo.

I have a nice stereo setup: NAD receiver, Mirage main’s, PSB center, and Paradigm rears and sub. I’ve got the Monster Fibre Optic cable going from the DVD player to the receiver. In the above movie, DTS was on - and the sound was so real and so clear, that I couldn’t easily determine if it was coming from my speakers or outside.

It seems to me that the movies that have the best sound are in DTS. I am totally open to the possibility that this is psycosomatic. Consider the following movies: Almost Famous, Gladiator, Unbreakeable, O Brother, where art thou, and Narnia - all in DTS. Those movies all have excellent sound, as I’m sure you’ll recall. Some of you may be a bit skeptical if DTS is any better than Dolby Digital, but DTS actually has 2-3 times the bitrate of DD. That gives it the ability to include more ambient noise in the sound reproduction, which I really think matters (see above note on CDs vs vinyl.)

At the end of the day, this doesn’t really matter, so long as you’re enjoying the sound. But if you catch something with DTS, compare it to the Dolby Digital mode, and maybe you’ll agree that DTS isn’t just more bullshit advertising; it actually sounds better. And in my opinion, that’s worth spending money on.

DailySixer.com Video: Rock Paper Scissors Championship

I just finished the 3rd installment in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire - it was excellent. I even liked it better than A Clash of Kings, which you may recall that I really enjoyed.

It’s difficult to say all I want to say in these posts ’cause I can’t assume that you’ve read them. So, what’s going on in the plot’s and how they relate to the end of the previous novel are a bit of a taboo to write about. As such, I can’t really critique the book, as I might want to do. Perhaps I’ll do that in a comment.

This book continues in the same sort of Point of View style, which allows Martin to re-tell parts of the ending of the second book from the perspective of some characters that weren’t at the end of that book. I found that excellent because it acted as a refresher for all that happened at the end of the last book. Martin is nice enough to give the readers a note about his POV style of writing and timelines at the start of this book - but frankly, if you couldn’t figure that out, then you’ve probably got bigger problems with the story than the timeline.

We left the last book with some sort of Clashing of Kings. That book really took off from the first, building on the very cool world that Martin has created. This one takes that even further; and it seems like all the things I wanted to hear more about in the second were what was focused on in the third. There is a lot more action in this book, compared to the last two, so you see quite a high turnover in characters. A lot happens that changes the world in this book, and I found a few of my opinions of characters in the last book were pretty wrong. I think it’s pretty hard to misjudge a character in a book, but this POV writing style lends itself very readily to misinterpretations, biases and opinions. The first two books were much more about plotting for power and wars for the throne, while this book branches out into worldly conflict between good and evil.

This book is longer than the last one, although I found it easier to read. Perhaps I am just getting used to all the characters, or the writing style. But so many startling things happen in this book, that it’s hard not to get caught up in it. I found myself much more involved with the book - laughing out loud, cursing and re-reading parts, looking for loopholes when characters are killed off, etc.

When I first picked up this series, I wasn’t sure how good it would be. At this point, I would heartily recommend the series to anyone. I can already compare it to the great fantasy series like Dune or Lord of the Rings. I’ve heard that the next book isn’t as good as this one. From Martin’s site, A Feast For Crows is really about 2 of the characters who made it through the last book, and just barely touches on some others. Considering the amazing story lines that were developed towards the end of this book, I would be dissapointed had I not known that going in. However, I know those plots pick back up in the 5th book, which should be coming out soon. Apparently, he wrote the 4th and 5th books together and split the 4th off and had it published when it passed the 1000 page mark.

On to the next!

YouTube - Super Mario solo with two guitars

That’s all.

This is a great Flash animation - must have been really tough to make … but it’s funny as hell!

You may check it out by clicking on these very words