Nanotech

I read about new solar panel technology from a company called Nanotech that can mass produce flexible (ie. very useful) solar panels for under 1$ US. Why is that important you say? Because that is the breaking point which makes it cheaper to produce electricity from the sun than it does to produce electricity from coal, of course!

I'm hoping this greenovation leads to a greenolution (both copyright 2007, the best nothing) whereby we actually see practical conversion to solar power. Imagine power plants and even home self-production of solar electricity for all? That would be splendid indeed.

Anyway, this product from Nanotech is Popular Science's Innovation of the Year for 2007.

Katie Holmes

For those who thought Katie Holmes was 15 or less whilst she was a cast member of Dawson's Creek, I have bad news for you.

Katie Holmes starred in Dawson's Creek from 1998 to 2003. She was born in 1978.

Ergo, she was 20 when she started!

Thank you for participating in being dumber than me.

Electric Cars

Here's an opportunity to support Canadian business and the environment all in one token. The government refuses to allow Zenn electric cars to be sold in Canada for (what appears to be) bullshit reasons. There is a story here that appeared on the front page of Digg. A CBC video is included with more info.

I realize it takes power to drive an electric car and most often that power comes from coal plants and I realize there are issues with disposal of batteries. However, these are issues that cannot be overcome with further/better science/conservation and renewable energy sources.

So why not give Canadians the choice whether to separate themselves from oil, benefit the Canadian economy (there are no Canadian oil-burning vehicle manufacturers), and demonstrate a willingness to improve air-quality/environment, thereby driving up demand and lowering costs for these vehicles.

You can sign a petition to help put pressure on the Canadian government here:
http://www.zenncars.com/letsgo/

Given their speed, they may not be the best option for getting around. However, I can think of many uses for them such as (grocery) shopping and other short trips not suitable for walking or winter travel and trips around the neighborhood (to school for those who have kids). In my case, this vehicle would be a better option than my truck, assuming I'm not hauling tons of stuff, which I rarely do.

Given the history of electric cars (see: Who Killed the Electric Car?), you have to ask yourself if it is really true that governments are blocking the adoption of these vehicles to accommodate oil companies. It would seem unlikely given this vehicle is being sold in the US, so what is it?

Jim Carrey

McCabe

Some great Bryan McCabe videos. People sure seem to like him. Awesome tune in the first one.

Dear Candice and Shannon

First off, just let me say how nice you looked today, it was a pleasure to have spoken with you.

I realize this is an important day for everyone and there is a lot of buzz surrounding this afternoons lunchtime beard-off. However, since I have not had much time to socialize with you ladies lately, I just wanted to get this off my chest.

I would just like to share with you reasons why I should win this competition, in most, if not all categories. I will share on a point by point basis:

• Pity - I had to release my prior growth last week due to the passing of Heather's Grandfather. And while the competition is important to me, the sanctity of human life is the one thing that overrides it. But I have made a comeback since and I now sport a blossomed face like no other.

• Authenticity - As you already know, I was on the moving crew over the period of the competition. What lends credence to the beard I now wear proudly is the fact it was used in good ol' fashion manual labour. In other words, I looked the part and lived the lifestyle. I let the beard dictate me, and not the other way around. Who else would have realized and respected the power of their beard as much as I? That is the question you need to ask yourselves.

• Manliness - I have not cleaned up my current growth, nor would I have. I've let it run wild up to this point like I would have, had I not cut it off last week. The beard and I, we are free spirited souls, frolicking in the mystery of life, dancing in the parlour of creation, and basking in the sunshine of wonder.

• Style - Just reflect, if you will, for a moment on the way my striped shirt "goes" with my beard. I'm not one to brag, but holy hell is that ever awesome. Don't ask me why, because it should just be clear to everyone with no questions asked.

Now, some might see this as an attempt by me to try and persuade you. Some might even accuse me of making a bribe. But ask yourselves this: how does government work? How do celebrities prevent sex tapes from getting out? What is the point of a hostage taking? That's right, they are all based on bribes. Bribes make the world go round and I am just taking part in circle of life.

Failing that, why not create a new category for an award? Something like the spirit award, for most perseverance and dedication to a beard despite all odds.

I'm just saying is all.

Your dearly,
AlexR

Sports thoughts

I just watched a corny Rbk commercial trying to make hockey seem really deep and important where Crosby comes up at the end and says how he plays for the logo on the front and not the name on the back. And even though it was corny, in a lot of sense it it is true of a lot of hockey players and is a reminder of how hockey is very authentic and genuine. For instance, how players so rarely fake injury for purposes of getting penalty calls in their favour and how they will continue to play in the midst of immense pain and even how emotional it can be to play for team and fans and have to leave (although "have" can be debated in Smyth's case, he is my example of this, Gretzky same thing).

This provides a striking contrast to major European soccer players. I was reminded of this when David Bentley scored his winning goal in a recent game in the English PL. He, as many others do, used this opportunity to call attention to himself by using a double overhead thumbs up pointing to the name printed on his upper back. True, on occasion you see players grab the crest on their shirt and kiss it or direct attention to it, but this most often high profile/paid players or ones who are in bad standing with the fans and are attempting to win their support back.

In fact, since players can be simply bought off other teams during certain times of the year, there is frequent media attention on players who indicate their desires to play for the big clubs. Why would they do this? Because this would benefit them and their career the most. In this way, the smaller clubs are more of a temporary vessel for them to reach their true goals. This is why EPL games are so easy to predict, because there is always a steady stream of quality players from smaller teams to bigger ones, and the league table is often very similar from year to year; few teams fight for the top.

And of course you can go on to talk about the unwillingness to play through pain and the constant feigning of injury, and regardless of how much skill these players have, you can't respect them anywhere near as much hockey players.

Stupid Sports

I don't think I had seen this football gem ever before, but it is great! There are other moments like these in a top 9 (what the hell is with top-weird-number lists these days?) by clicking on this link. Including my favorite ever, which you would have seen here before, Patrik Stefan embarrassing himself out of hockey forever.



What was perhaps missed to make this a top TEN list was Brian McCabe winning a game in OT this year by blatantly scoring on himself (also featured here in the past), or some of the classic soccer own-goals which you can see on youtube compilations. See below for these.

Keep your head up, kids

How the alw-injured (that's my play on oft-injured, clever no?) Marian Gaborik gets up from this slide tackle by Hasek, I will never know.


Hockey Player Goes Flying - Watch more free videos

Homo Depot

In my continued series at lambasting the man (yes, I said lambasting), today I focus on Home Depot's punishment of their customers by making be cashier/checkout attendants.

In what can be considered partly the best and worst shopping experiences of my life, Heather and I decided to visit the new Home Depot at Stone Bridge. It was deader than hell. We made return purchases instantly with no lineup and comfortably browsed the store, which I should add was completely stocked and amazingly clean and tidy. However, it was when it came to actually making our purchases when I wanted to vomit black things.

You see, I've noticed HD's cheeky attempts to get me to do their work for them at the Circle Drive store with their "Self Checkouts" where you scan in your own items and swipe them, etc. However, I avoid them because not only do I not feel like scanning all my purchases and bagging them and paying for them manually, but I also don't want to have a computer bitch barking instructions at me, AND I certainly don't want the system to fuck up and make me call an attendant to help me. But at the new location tonight, there was NO OPTION! There was only these fuckyou checkouts open. So my fears came true, though Heather was responsible for swiping and bagging, which she annoyingly enjoyed.

You see my friends, it won't be this day where we were the only people in line and there was an actual employee sitting there to help us that will drive you half way to the half way house. It will be the day in the near future where the lineups at this store are miles deep (like they can be at Circle) and you are stuck behind morons in line, or worse, clueless seniors, waiting to be your own bag boy and there is no Home Depot employee in sight.

Way to go Home Depot, you have successfully made us all your bitches.

Definitely a penalty

Damn 69 and his business giving.


Best Penalty Of The Year - Watch more free videos

Amen

Pissoff

And so it continues...

-I booted the laptop after shutting it down this afternoon. It had to do an update when I shut it down, no big deal. Then I just boooted it up again and it says that there was a startup program blocked that I should investigate and I should click the bubble informing me of this. So I did and nothing happened, stupid, but no big deal yet. So I open the systray icon that says "blocked startup programs" and it opens the Software Explorer which is part of "Windows Defender" (oooooh!). Great, a handy way to view all the programs loaded on bootup. But not so great is that it doesn't show me what (if anything) is blocked. So WTMF? Everything is permitted or not yet classified. But nothing says it is blocked. Fuck me up the bunghole, how useless is that. Even better, somehow my antivirus (AVG) is aparently "not yet classified". Does that mean Vista is too stupid to trust it? On the systray icon menu popup, there is an option to run the blocked program, which it lists as "UpdateUtil Application".

Now get this. In the Software Explorer, it lists a program called UpdateUtil which is owned by MICROSOFT! And it says it is permitted!? So now Vista doesn't trust it's own applications and is lying to me about it being blocked?! Fucking stupid shit.

So I say fuck it and try and run the program, which it now gives a full description of which is:
netfxupdate.exe
Unidentified Publisher
C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/...

Google gives me conflicting information about this process, so it can stay blocked, but this is the type of shit that shouldn't have to be dealt with. One website says:
This is a component of .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is an integral Windows component for building and running next generation software applications and web services.

But others aren't so reassuring. If it is indeed a Microsoft component, then everything Windows bashers complain about is officially true and nobody should ever use Windows again.

-FUCK ME UPSIDE DOWN! So after I installed a program called Printkey 2000 which allows handy functions for making screencaps (which I couln't use to capture this ridiculous shit because Vista blocks use of the printscreen button while viewing "User Account Control" windows), I tried to delete the folder with the setup.exe created from a unzip. So Printkey setup exited, yet Vista wouldn't let me delete this folder because it was apparently still in use. Yeah, uh huh. Suuuure. Fuck you. However, it did let me delete the setup.exe that was inside the unzipped folder. What the fuck ever.

Annoy Me

Before settling on a HP dv9640 laptop, I went through the big Mac vs. Microsoft debate. I asked some Mac users to give me reasons to change over. One of the things that stood out in my head was that ease of use was a big feature, or to quote Porter: "everything just works."

Ultimately, price and Heather's benefit won out and I sit here with my Vista laptop. But I think I'm starting to understand the headaches I was being warned about with Microsoft. This hasn't been a consideration for quite a while, since all I've used is Vista on a desktop and everything is configured the way I like it (aka, working for the most part).

So here's my initial setup troubles:
-Microsoft Outlook from Office XP would not authenticate sending mail. Even Sasktel tech support couldn't help me out. But switch over to Vista's email client and presto, no issues. What a piss off.
-After initializing a home network from my XP desktop for the first time, it said that in order for the network to work correctly for file/printer sharing, I would have to install XP network drivers from the XP cd on my Vista laptop. Is there no suck thing as backwards compatibility?
-I don't know if Microsoft is completely at fault for this, but the windows media plugin for firefox had to be installed manually. Shouldn't this shit come bundled or Firefox be able to install on it's own? I just installed it for hell's sakes.

And just because it knew I was going to bitch about it, I think the laptop stalled on reboot and I sat at a black screen for about three minutes after I logged in. This seems kind of excessive for OS loading time. And can I have something other than blackness please? A flapping Windows flag? Anything?

These Windows boxes had better network easily, otherwise laptop frisbee will become a sport.