cat /dev/brain

The past weekend stands out for a few reasons. The first is we attended a benefit concert put on by Watoto, a group of 7-15 year-old children from Uganda. They stand out because all of them have lost one or both parents to AIDS and warfare. The ministry’s goal is to rescue 10,000 of the…

Check out this page, I love it.

When I was about eight or nine my parents took us to Holland to visit our extended family. Visitting my grandfather was always a treat, he’d make the most awesome paper airplanes, and we could fly them off the balcony of this 7th floor apartment. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make them…

We’ve been watching the movie “Finding Nemo” this weekend, and the shark’s mantra “fish are friends, not food” has now been adopted by our family, albeit slightly altered “brothers are friends, not food”. Noah and Mikaela were playing shark, things got a bit too real for the participants and Noah now has a rather large…

Have a look here.

The Ontario Government has created a greenbelt legislation, which is surrounded by a lot of rumor and not much fact. The link (here) at least shows the maps, but is still low on information. The concept is that urban sprawl is costing the municipalities far too much, and the developers have far too much clout…

The Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer is taking off very soon in an attempt to fly around the world (23,000 miles) without stopping or refueling, in 80 hours. And the route is pretty much right over Hamilton! It’s taking off from Kansas, then heading up over Canada, over London and Toronto. Hamilton is sorta right on…

Have a look at this site, kinda like 1984.

Check out this place. Nevermind all the fancy homes in Toronto or cottages in the Muskoka’s buy your own country in the Arabian sea, and build your own kingdom there. Talk about opulence going way too far.

I’ve upgrade my site to WordPress 1.5, which comes with this lovely default theme. Since I’m by no means a graphic designer, I’ll probably leave it like this. The following changes are now in effect: If you’ve posted a comment before, you’ll be allowed to post again. If you’ve never posted a comment and try,…

I’ve always been a big fan of Google, using Google as my primary search engine (including Google Toolbars on all my browsers), Google Groups, and now….. Google Maps! This is the FIRST mapping service that can successfully find my house! And it’s got an excellent user interface, a much larger map than Mapquest/Yahoo! Maps… I’ve…

We have a Saturday morning tradition of visitting our local Tim Horton’s coffee shop. Sometimes this involves driving through the drive-thru on our way elsewhere. The post with the speaker/microphone is surrounded by two garbage cans, in an effort to keep the old coffee cups off the streets. Mikaela (2.5 years old) is convinced that…

There are few good media personalities that I can really identify with. Allan Fotheringham, formerly on the back page of Macleans (and many other places) was one of them. Roy Green of Hamilton’s CHML-900 fame, and now syndicated in the Chorus radio network, is another. (He used to join the morning show of the Y108…

Last weekend we went to Horseshoe Valley, just north of Barrie. It was one of those $99 for two nights, all you have to do is listen to a spiel to buy a timeshare kind of deal. It made for a great weekend, apart from the relatively low-pressure spiel. We took Noah and Mikaela along,…

Hamilton has got to be the only place in the world where you can get a parking ticket for parking in your own driveway. The builder of our subdivision, in his infinite wisdom, placed the sidewalks a long ways away from the road, leaving us without enough room to park two vehicles. The alternatives we…

My hammered dulcimer is finally complete! Well… almost. There’s a few more things that need to be done, including replacing the bass bridge, finishing the very rough hammers, and learning how to play it. I’ve posted some pictures at my Dulcimer gallery. Specifically, a full pictures of the finished product, a view from the players…