The Night of St. Nick. Is Santa Claus real?
December 25 is Christmas Day. The day Saint Nicholas allegedly delivers presents to the “nice” children of the world. This begs the question, “Is Santa Claus real?” Perhaps not, but a few years ago I read an interesting article some physics students put together that answers this very question.
Read on for the satirized, scientific study.
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Style And Performance
I have always gotten a kick out of people who soup up their vehicles. Especially vehicles that really shouldn’t be. Case in point: This week while doing some regular excursions we chanced to find a mini-van whose owner certainly knows what he (or she) wants in a motor vehicle.
Nothing says “family” like a mini-van retrofitted with a transport truck exhaust. No doubt this beauty has style and performance wrapped in a single sea foam-green package.
Twitter and Tweets
I have decided to give Twitter a try.
I am not a huge fan of social networking sites–I am certain it is more of the “social” element and not the “networking” element; after all, who does not like networking?–but Twitter is one more point of contact, which cannot hurt.
For the record, I do not think “church sucks.” The church is the corporate body of Christ. I am, however, opposed to some of the institutional constructs that have evolved (mostly in Western culture) over the last few hundred years. Order and ceremonial observation are great, but not when the purpose and function has long since been lost. I say we have communion with potato chips and Coke.
Help me find Clippy for iPhone [Updatedx2]
Clippy is a great little add-on for those with jailbroken iPhones. I started using it shortly after its release and for a product that had not even reach version 1.0, it was pretty solid, easy to use, and convenient.
For those who may not know, Clippy brings cut and paste functionality to the iPhone. The software has some limitations, mainly that it can only copy from editable fields (i.e. not something like a standard web page). It’s a minor limitation considering that any copy/paste functionality is better than none. The latest version of Clippy even had multiple clipboards.
Unfortunately I had to restore my iPhone the other day. Much to my dismay, I haven’t been able to find Clippy in either the Cydia or Installer repo sources.
All the Googling in the world hasn’t helped me find this fantastic tool. I’ve even gone so far as to try to manually grab the .deb file but to my surprise, the iSpazio repository doesn’t seem to load. The domain name is registered but attempts to load the site result in a BlueHost “no domain found” error.
So if anyone out there finds Clippy, please let me know!
Update: I was able to find the new repository. Add http://ispaziorepo.com/cydia/apt/ to your Cydia sources and Clippy should once again be installable.
Update 2: It looks like iSpazio may still be having difficulty with their repo (even the new one above seems to be down now–although I was able to use it when I original posted this information). The good news for those who haven’t been able to pick up a copy of Clippy is that it’s available from the BigBoss repo now. This repo is added to Cydia by default so you shouldn’t have to change anything to get it.
The Club: “Guarantee”
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a real “fan” of The Club. So while perambulating Canadian Tire this past weekend it caught my attention.
While such a discovery wouldn’t normally be so enthralling, I couldn’t help but notice the packaging this fine automotive anti-theft device came in. Not only is The Club a great good mediocre falsely-reassuring, glorified bike lock; it also comes with a money guarantee. Really what can be more reassuring than knowing that if the device doesn’t do its job guarding your $10K+ investment, you’ll be richly rewarded with a whopping $250 – $500?
Click the link for pictures.
A great poster possibly made even better
Right outside the nursery at my church there’s this poster of a baby playing in sand with the caption, “One voice can make a song. One life can change the world.” I’ve always liked the expression on the kid’s face.
One day I had an idea: Being a fan of the Apple iPhone I couldn’t help but wonder just how great this poster would be with a little product plug. Bring in Pixelmator and a few minutes with the airbrush tool and now we know.
Click the link for to see the full-size before and after shots.
My very own laptop table
Saturday we made a trip to Sweden’s favourite furnishing store, Ikea. We took the usual tour and even picked up a few things here and there.
One really interesting piece of office decor we stumbled upon caught my attention. I was tempted to buy it–although I’m not sure where I would have put it had I done so. The glorious embellishment was none other than a laptop stand named Dave.
Pictures are available after the link.
New site design
Although I had only been running my blog for about six months, I felt a change was needed. Today I’ve started using a new theme for the site.
I still like the previous theme, but this new one is a bit brighter and I prefer the horizontal menu along the top.
Apple Music Video
Being a fan of Apple computers, I couldn’t help but appreciate the unique art-form of this music video produced by Dennis Liu.
Dennis has a few other funny videos worth watching on YouTube.
Workplace Safety
Part of Sophia’s training during our travels in April has included an element of hydraulic press safety. Below is a clip from a safety video. This illustrates what I can only assume is a typical factory in China (note the lack of hardhats). These individuals are positioning and removing metal parts as the hydraulic press forms each piece. After seeing this, I think we can all have an appreciation for robots.
My personal favourite element is the individual in the centre (in the white shirt): I love how he has to really duck each time the press comes down.