Be Lambic or Green

A few years ago I was lucky enough to spend two weeks working with four dolphins in Hawaii, studying their ability to learn language, specifically sign language. Occasionally the dolphins would exhibit behaviour which was not expected and they would start to repeat that behaviour every time you gave a particular sign. For example you might give the sign to nod their head, and the dolphins nods, but then also spits a bit of water. The spit was not required, but because the dolphin gets rewarded for the nod, they start to incorporate the spit. The staff at the lab called this “superstitious behaviour”. Doing something causes a reward to happen, so keep doing it.

All that to say that I’ve noticed some Montreal metro passengers have started exhibiting superstitious behaviour. We have new rechargable ticket cards which are used by placing them on a card reader at the turnstile. There is a small delay while the card is processed – about a second – then the green light comes on and you can proceed. But people are impatient; they place their card and nothing happens immediately, so they start waving it about and flipping it over. Eventually the green light comes on, they get their reward. Their primitive dolphin-like brains think the waving and flipping caused the green light to come on so they keep doing it.

That’s my metro observation for today.

I keep forgetting to promote the Skeptic Circle when it comes around. Today I’m remembering. We’re up to #96, which is very impressive. When it started I figured it would start to fade away around #50, but no, it’s still going strong.

So presented by EndCycle, here is Skeptic Circle #96.

I was thrilled by the race at Spa last weekend. The last few laps were amazing and I wanted to blog about it straight away. We were going out though, so I had to wait.

Then I returned home to discover that one of the best races of the season had been ruined by more ridiculous decision making by the stewards. The idea of writing anything about the race evaporated at that moment and took a few days to return.

Neither driver did anything in those few corners that could constitute a rule infringement severe enough to warrant changing the race result. Even if (and it’s a very big if) Hamilton broke the rules, choosing to strip him of the win as punishment was insanely harsh. Hamilton was overttaken by Kimi again after that incident, and re-took the lead before Kimi crashed out so the incident had absolutely no bearing on the final result.

Handing down a punishment like that after the token fine Massa got for unsafely exiting his pit garage just exposes the FIA stewards as incompetant at best, corrupt at worse.

Patty, Aidan and Sid

Yesterday we headed out to a downtown theatre with Aidan, his Bama and his bunny to see Patty and Sid on tour. Patty and Sid are the presenters of Kids CBC, a commercial free selection of shows for pre-schoolers shown every morning between 7 and 11.

Patty and Sid were joined on stage by Curious George and Bo from Bo on the Go and on video (presumably live via satellite) by Drumheller, the skeletal dinosaur from Alberta, Mama Yama, the animated yam/penis from Ontario, Saumon the french-speaking salmon from Quebec and Captain Claw, the old sea-dog lobster from Nova Scotia. Hilarity ensued as they collected the necessary pieces for Curious George’s surprise birthday party.

Aidan was a little overwhelmed by the whole thing, but still had a good time, and started getting really into it about 5 minutes before it finished. After that we lined up (luckily close to the start of the very long line) to meet Sid, Patty, George and Bo. When it was Aidan’s turn, he started by telling Sid and Patty about “Kerry and John’s Birthday Party” before eventually sitting down for a photo. Meeting Curious George had a slightly different effect though, involving Aidan cowering on the floor in terror. I managed to get him onto my lap for a photo with George and Bo, but his face was buried in my shoulder. The traumas we put our kids through.

Aidan has been talking about Sid and Patty ever since, including to the waiter at dinner last night. I guess they made an impression.

Now that I’m feeding my dents into my Asides category, if you’re a feed reader you might not want to see that junk, especially if you already saw it at identica, so if you want you can subscribe to this feed instead, which excludes the Asides category.

For the moving sale we had recently, Jen carefully prepared a whole bunch of “surprise” gift bags containing various useless paper products and other goodies. We were selling them for $1 each.

They did not sell well.

We needed to get rid of them, so I decided to take them to work and hand them out to my colleagues. I got as far as the train and decided the bag was too heavy to carry all the way to work. My solution was to hand the gift bags out to all the people sitting in my chosen train car.

I guess in this cynical world we live in people don’t expect to get something for nothing, so I received many bemused looks. It seemed as though most people thought I was a complete weirdo or I was selling something. Some people even refused my offer.

Out of about 40 people I gave bags to I got about 5 thank yous. The people who said thank you were invariably under 16. Do we get less polite as we get older?

Two girls sitting next to me on the train today were busy cramming for a math test. Listening to them made me realise how much I’ve forgotten. Apparently I can’t do trigonometry any more, and my algebra skills are seriously rusty.

I was a good little student at school and my brain was like a sponge, soaking up knowledge. That knowledge has been slowly dripping out over the years; I’m sure I’ve forgotten half the stuff I learned at school. Of course the forgotten knowledge has been replaced by new and different knowledge, but still it’s sad to think of all that lost information.

I just hope I retain enough to be able to help Aidan with his homework.

• Richard “the Hamster” Hammond is back home after being discharged and walking out of the hospital. Doctors say he will take six months to recover fully though. His fans’ fundraising efforts have netted over 200,000 pounds so far, with the target set at 500,000 for a new air ambulance helicopter which will be dubbed “Hammy’s Heli’. Filming of Top Gear has resumed.
• My favourite web comic, SinFest has a particularly poignant strip today.
• I’m reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at the moment. It’s taking forever but I think it will be worth it.
• Nick Heidfeld ranted at Yamamoto after the Chinese Grand Prix, using all sorts of bad words, before realising that Yamamota was not Sato, the driver who had blocked him. Oops.
• McGill have a new science outreach program running right now. Every Friday between today and December 7th there will be a scientific lecture followed by a tangentially related science fiction movie. Tonight’s lecture is “Sea Monsters Unmasked” followed by the movie 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. “Overpopulation of the Earth” followed by Soylent Green (Nov 10) is the most inspired though.

Overheard on the train this morning:

“Can you imagine if there was no Myspace? I’d be so bored, there’d be, like, nothing to do.”

I did this before, but I feel like doing it again. Besides, I have nothing else to blog about today.

On my desk is:

• Darth Potato (he guards the entrance to my cubicle)
• Five regular pens
• Two dry marker pens
• Three half used post-it note pads
• Two memos
• Some headphones
• Four lined notepads
• A “Styles Inc” picture of a messy desk
• Several napkins
• An empty box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans (but they spelled Flavour wrong on the box)
• A floppy disk (I don’t know where it came from)
• A CD of presentations from the conference I went to
• Some business cards
• My computer monitor, keyboard and mouse
• A plastic lei
• The phone
• A pair of Harry Potter style glasses
• A McGill Book Fair bookmark (the fair is on 25th October)
• A metal slinky (which I play with all the time, probably annoying my neighbours intensely)
• A mug with a photo of Aidan on it (Father’s Day gift)
• The latest McGill Alumni magazine
• My ManPurse
• A copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• A Lee Valley calendar (still on August)

So what’s on your desk?

As I mentioned recently, this week is back to school week. I’ve been seeing lots of greetings between old friends on the train as kids get together after a summer apart. This has highlighted a significant difference between the sexes.

The girls employ the “squeal-hug” technique: they see each other, they squeal at each other, and they run into a warm embrace which lasts several seconds. They then talk at high speed about everything that happened to them over the summer.

The boys on the other hand use the “grunt-slap-bump” technique: they grunt at each other in a manly way, they perform some variety of hand slap, optionally involving extra twiddly bits if they’re trying to look really cool, then they bump opposing shoulders, as if they are trying to hug but miss.

These are the things I notice while travelling to work.

Stolen from Blork…

Have you ever . . . (bold means Yes I Have)

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink (ok so there were only 5 people in the bar)
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said ‘I love you’ and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped (chickened out in NZ)
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights (still trying)
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper(!)
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer (only two?)
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
42. Had amazing friends (All friends are amazing, aren’t they?)
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe (in but not across)
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your cds (my wife has)
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Had a one-night stand
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror.
96. Raised children. (well up to 8 months old anyway)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Created and named your own constellation of stars
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (ok, not just to start over)
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived.
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions (assuming there were any)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language (kinda sorta)
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146: Dyed your hair
147: Been a DJ
148: Shaved your head
149: Caused a car accident
150: Saved someone’s life

Happy new year everyone, time to take a look back at 2005.

Top 10 events of 2005

• Jen getting pregnant
• Jen having a baby
• Surprise parties (giving and receiving)
• Finishing the cupboard
• Making new friends
• Learning to play euchre
• Achieving my ATM
• Teaching a Unix course
• My first Ebay purchase(s)
• Managing to keep this blog going for the whole year

Top 10 Music of 2005

• The Killers
• Modest Mouse
• Arcade Fire
• Rise Against
• Green Day
• Jack Johnson
• The Shins
• The Gorillaz
• Motion City Soundtrack
• Ben Kweller

Top 10 Movies and TV that I saw in 2005

• Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
• Bad Santa
• Garden State
• Doctor Who
• Motorcycle Diaries
• Serenity
• Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Series of Events
• Lost
• Little Britain
• Battlestar Galactica

Discoveries of 2005

• Hospital food is even worse than I imagined
• Online poker is addictive
• Changing nappies isn’t as scary as it sounds
• PVRs rock
• I know more about Canada than many Canadians
• Firefox (or did I discover that in 2004? hmm)
• The Battle of Wesnoth
• I can be funny sometimes

Worst things of 2005

• C-sections
• Dubya
• Rising transit prices
• Overly credulous people
• Everyone having parties when we can’t make them
• Missing every single YULblog meet
• MySpace
• Accidentally using salt instead of sugar in a cake mix
• Bureaucracy getting in the way of progress and creativity
• Loved ones getting sick

Happy [insert winter solstice festival of choice] to you all, I hope it is filled with joy, good food, good drink and much festiveness. May [insert gift bringer of choice] bring everything you wanted and a few surprises too.

Happy Thanksgiving all you American folk. It’s too close to Xmas for us, we had our thanksgiving last month.

On this day of giving thanks, Americans should be most thankful for one thing:

The 22nd Amendment to the American Constitution.

Schoolgirl:
“That girl from the Black Eyed Peas is hot. If I was taller with bigger boobs and a flatter stomach and if I had my eyebrow pierced I would look like her.”

Schoolboy:
“So if you were a completely different person then.”

This morning on the train to work I had sitting around me: a brain, an athlete, a princess, a basket case, a criminal (but they didn’t bring breakfast), a pirate (praise be to the FSM!), an 80s disco diva, two skiers, a hockey player, a demon, a ballerina, a cross-dresser, two cowgirls and Hermione Granger.

Even though the North American Halloween has been tamed to the point of no longer being spooky in any way, it’s still a lot of fun. Happy Halloween kids!

You really really don’t want to go to ratemypoo.com. Trust me on this. Don’t click it. Leave it alone. Back away.

The annual Centraide campaign started today with the March of 1000 Umbrellas. It looked very impressive, I really should carry my camera everywhere.

In other news, it’s the first Tuesday of the month, and that means it’s quiz night at Hurley’s Irish Pub (upstairs), on Crescent Street between St Catherine and Rene Levesque. Be there at 8pm to tax your brains and drink beer.

It’s banned book week. Go out and read a banned book today.

The American Library Association has published a list of 100 most frequently challenged books. Here are the ones I’ve read:

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L�Engle
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Which ones have you read?

I got a stripy shirt! Horizontal stripes, blue and brown. Sadly it has crappy writing on the back, but I don’t have to look at that. I also got a pseudo-stripy pair of shoes. I’m happy.

There is gang warfare on the streets of Montreal today. The two rival gangs are patrolling the streets, even handing out propaganda to passers by. They have gang uniforms of course. One gang is wearing white t-shirts with blue writing, the other gang members are wearing white t-shirts with green writing.

The blue writing says “Jews for Jesus”.
The green writing says “Jews for Judaism”.

I hope none of them are dyslexic and colour blind.

As soon as I find out where the big rumble is happening I’ll let you know.

And I still haven’t found my stripy shirt. The one in the punk/goth/emo store had Billabong all over it. Ugh.

McGill has just announced the opening of a ‘One-stop shop for sex talk‘, complete with cheap condoms and dental dams, to ‘make safe sex cool again’. Wasn’t it cool already? I think this kind of thing would be more useful in high schools than in universities, but it’s a step in the right direction.

The name ‘Shagalicious Shop’ sounds like something a forty year old thought up thinking teens would find it cool though. Apparently it is ‘designed to look like a 21st-century shag pad’. I have to go find out what a 21st century shag pad looks like now.

The McGill community calendar is advertising the following lecture today:

Desperate housewives: Some notes towards a historical genealogy
3:30 PM | Rhodri Hayward, Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine

I’m intrigued.

I’ve had an obsession with stripes lately. Specifically I want a stripy shirt and some stripy shoes.

I want stripes.

Yesterday we went clothes shopping and I almost found my stripy shirt, but they didn’t have my size. I got pants instead. They’re not stripy.

I need stripes.

A shop I see on my way to work has a stripy shirt in the window. I’m going in there this week to buy it. It’s a trendy teen skater goth punk kind of shop, but I don’t care, it has a stripy shirt.

The stripy shirt will be mine. Not so sure about the shoes.

Last night at midnight we were at the McGill Bookstore surrounded by wizards, witches and muggles all desperate to get their hands on the latest installment of the Harry Potter Saga. There were pancake patties and cockroach clusters. There was butterbeer. There were owls and golden snitches and there were big piles of the new book, in adult and child forms. We got one of each.

Now don’t disturb me, I’m reading.

Mischief Managed.

A meme over at her place inspired me to do this. I’m not following the meme exactly because it was only the first part that got me thinking.

20 years ago

I was living at home with my mum, stepdad, and half brother, just finished senior school (that’s high school for you North Americans) and about to start sixth form college. I had recently discovered beer and was enjoying it immensely. When I could get served. Which wasn’t often. My dad was running a pub, so I spent as much time with him as I could. I still had my ZX Spectrum, and didn’t know what a PC was.

15 years ago

I was living in Surbiton, south-west London in a dingy bedsit. One small room with a bed, a tv, a cupboard, a table, a sink and a fridge. I was working for a publishing company as a technical analyst (vague job title for a vague job), spending most of my time at work or at the pub across the road from work to avoid going back to the nasty bedsit. I was in debt, but still drinking too much. I was learning Unix voraciously.

10 years ago

I was sharing a flat in Surbiton with my friend Philip and his friend Shaun and very happy to be away from the bedsit. I was working as a programmer for an EDI company in Hampshire, and driving two hours a day to get there and back. I was drinking less but smoking more. I had also recently discovered the internet and multi-player gaming…

5 years ago

Jen and I had just bought a fancy schmancy loft-style condo beside the Lachine Canal on the edge of Point St Charles. I snuck in there on moving day before Jen with a blanket, candles, and champagne so we could have a picnic in the middle of our big new empty space. I’d been in Canada since the start of the year and only just got around to getting some consultancy work. We had three PCs next to each other in the condo, but still talked to each other over ICQ.

1 year ago

We had been in our new house in Beaconsfield for 1 year. I was discovering the joys of gardening and BBQing. In three days time I would start my blog. I like to think I started blogging early enough to not be accused of jumping on the bandwagon.

Yesterday

We went to Le Caverne Grecque on Prince Arthur for a meal on the terrace with the Toastmasters crowd. The food wasn’t fantastic but the company was good, and Little Penguin wine was on the table.

After over a year, yesterday was finally the day to get a haircut. I went to Mutt and Jeff, a hair salon on Crescent Street where a very friendly staff treated me well and my hairdresser did an impressive job with my difficult hair. During my cut, the three hair dressers and two other customers were having a detailed conversation about sex toys, which enriched the experience even more.

Here are the before and after pictures:

UPDATE: My head has been freezing all day.

It’s been a busy week so far; Monday was quiz (we won!), Tuesday I gave a speech at Toastmasters (it went well!), last night was woodworking (my cupboard is looking good!). The week is getting busier though:

Tonight we’re going to a hair salon / art gallery (I know, weird combination) to see my mother-in-law’s photo exhibition. She took a series of photos of natural snow formations which, looked at from the right angle and with a little imagination, look like body parts. If you want to see them for yourself, the exhibition is on until Saturday at Espace Alternatif, 122 Rue Bernard Ouest.

Tomorrow night I’m going over to Shawn’s for an evening of Magic and pizza.

On Saturday it’s my granny-in-law’s birthday (she’s 93 you know!), so we’re going up to the country for a birthday dinner, and staying the night.

On Sunday evening we’re going to the Anand Bazaar, a Gujarat Indian food fair at Polyvalente Lucien-Page, 8200 Blvd St-Laurent (corner Jarry). I’m looking forward to all the delicious Indian food, even if it is only vegetarian. Entrance is free if you want to come along, it starts at 4:30.

Added to all that, it’s a race weekend. The Formula 1 circus is heading to Italy for the Imola Grand Prix. I’ll be up early on Saturday morning to watch the qualifying, but sadly we have to record the race on Sunday morning and try not to listen to the radio on the drive home.

We did not win the CBC Daybreak De-Clutter contest. Some lucky family are having their garage reorganised. Garage? Everyone has a messy garage, come on.

In case you didn’t listen in to CBC this morning, here’s the scoop:

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the dentist’s chair, trying to listen to CBC Daybreak over the top of the buzzing of the teeth polishing gizmo. I heard mention of a de-clutter competition, the winner of which would win the services of a personal organiser for a day to clean up the messiest room in their house. I immediately thought of Jen’s office, so when I got to work I sent an email to enter the competition.

Last week Jen got a call from Sonali Karnick to say we had made it into the final four contestants, and that she was coming over in 45 minutes to see the dreaded office. She arrived, explored the office, recorded us, paper noises, bubble wrap and the singing hamsters then went on her way.

This week they are featuring the four finalists, and today was our day. Jen has a great radio voice, I think she should get a job in radio. The singing hamsters made it on air too.

Bit: Jen, her mum, him and her won the Hurley’s quiz quite convincingly. Cara, Tyler and I came a distant second.

Bob: I glued all my bits of wood together last night. They now look a bit like a cupboard. Getting everything assembled and square before the glue sets is tricky.

Bit: We could be minor celebrities soon. Stay tuned!

Bob: I’m going to Malvern, Pennsylvania in May. I’m so excited.

Bit: That last Bob contained some sarcasm, did you spot it?

Bob: Everyone is talking about cabane a sucre. Just hearing those words makes me hungry.