cat /dev/brain

Sometimes I long for the earlier times, the simpler times, when spam was simply that fake meat in a can. But not too often, since fighting the modern kind of spam pays really well. Some of you may have noticed a new trend in spam, comment spam on blogs. Most of the spam appearing on…

As requested, here’s an in-depth analysis of the previously mentioned canoe trip. We left Thursday morning, arriving on the lake around 11ish. We had lunch at the end of the portage on Spider lake, and paddled the last kilometer over to campsite #5. As you can see from the pictures, this site is unbelievable. It’s…

It’s been a while since my last post, so here’s a quick update. Massassauga The main reason I didn’t write is because of a tiny canoe trip I took last week. Planning started on Tuesday… Noah, Ben and I left on Thursday morning, and returned Friday night. It was the best we could do with…

Sometimes people ask what I do. When I tell them, they quickly get that blank far-away stare in their eyes and wish they hadn’t asked. (Actually I have a bit of tact and make it quite simple). So, in case you really do want to know what I do, part of my job is managing…

Yesterday my brand-new nephew, Aiden William Hart was born. He’s a strapping big lad, weighing in at over 10 pounds. The son of a very proud (albeit tired) Eric and a real trooper (go Becky go!) Becky, he’s a real Dutchman. He’s already got huge feet, and will need a sponsorship from Nike to keep…

By far the most rewarding part of parenting is helping your children fall asleep. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my children just as much when they are awake as when they are asleep. But there’s something about tucking a child in (usually in the wee hours of the morning after they’ve fallen out…

I’ve added two links on the right of this blog. The first is a public bookmarks site, at del.icio.us. It’s a free service, allowing me to do the following: post my bookmarks up there, so I can access them from any computer I want. This sounds useless, but I typically use two or more computers…

I’ve finally managed to get a decent online photo album to work. There’s lots of free ones (like here) but I want control of my own destiny, specifically without any extra advertistement. My photo album is available here. For whatever reason I can’t delete the test albums I’ve created, but the Rock Lake album is…

Yesterday I took someone’s moped for spin. It’s a Tomos Bullet, pretty much brand new. He uses it to drive back and forth to work, which leaves the van for his wife, and allows them to get along with just one vehicle. According to Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act, a moped must be less than 50cc…

Tim Challies writes an interesting article here about the lack of physical education at Christian Schools. Having spent many years in the same schools as Tim (except the Scotland stint) I can attest to the same physical training, or lack thereof. I also had very little athletic inclinations in school, and unlike Tim, was rather…

Wired.com announced yesterday that the words “internet”, “web” and “net” will no longer be spelled with capital letters. Seems that the words really are common place and don’t need to be capitalized. Ask any spider or fisher-person, the words have been around for centuries.

Saturday evening we had the pleasure of crusing on the Grand River, courtesy of the Grand River Boat Farm. The cruise was ok, but the cause was excellent. It was a fundraiser for the World Wide Christian Schools organization (no website yet). They organize funding for building Christian schools in poor areas of the world,…

I saw two things this morning that I normally don’t. First I saw five deer in the field across the road from our house, only 20 metres or so from our house. They normally stay near the back, about 1km or so away. The second thing was a guy dumping his motorcycle right in front…

I was only away from work for 6 days, and had 334 emails arrive in my absence. Wow, I must be popular! Ya right, after my spam filter had a go at my inbox, 250 of those were classified as spam (from mortgage offers to free phones to viagra ads and much worse). Of the…

We had an awesome canoe trip last week, as described about a week ago in this post. The weather was great, company was excellent, the wildlife behaved, the food…. ahhh, lets leave the food out of it for now. For the impatient who don’t like to read more than a few words, pictures are available…

As an avid bookstore fan (I spend many lunch hours browsing the Coles’s close to my office) I’ve been wondering about the book called “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”. Turns out it’s a book on punctuation; and the correct or rather incorrect use of punctuation in current writing. In fact, it talks about the complete desecration…

Only seven more days until my canoe trip. I’m taking Noah (4 years old) for his first canoe trip, to Massasauga Provincial park, just south of Parry Sound. We’re going with Noah’s Uncle Ben, who’s a large strapping young lad, just itching to carry the canoe, packs, and Noah all at the same time. Noah’s…

This weekend Noah turned four years old. I can’t believe how fast time goes. Without sounding like an old guy, it seems just like yesterday that he would lie in my arms, just smiling at the world. In fact, it was yesterday… for about 5 seconds while I told him what he was like when…

I finally recieved one of the covetted gmail invites! So now I’ve got an email account that has 1000Mb of space, complete with Google’s searching capabilities and Google’s spam fighting technology. Hoopla! Email me at “hart DOT mike AT gmail DOT com” (replacing the words in caps with their equivalent symbols of course).