The danger in carrying a Swiss army knife doesn’t come from the blade, it comes from suddenly discovering that everything around you can be taken apart.

In the same way that everything becomes a nail when you have a hammer… I’d been meaning to tighten the screw on my phone receiver, but while I was at [...]

[Read more →]

Tuesday March 23rd marks the day that I finally had my braces taken off. The orthodontist had originally promised 2 years, but overall it took 3 (almost exactly) thanks to a badly-timed move and the new orthodontist wanting to do things his own way.
The first thing I ate was popcorn. Mmmmm, salty, buttery [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve moved into a house! I lost a few layers of skin on my elbows and I have blisters on my feet, but thanks to the many helping hands that pitched in we got our walls painted, appliances connected and all of our stuff moved over the course of just a few days.
A few notes [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been intrigued by the work of Audrey Kawasaki (fair warning: some of her work is pretty racy) for a few years. I keep coming across other artists referencing her work, and it took me a while to realize all of these images were coming from the same person. She creates seductive portraits of ghostly [...]

[Read more →]

Saw this fantastic graph today and had to share it. This is Edmonton’s water usage (in Megalitres) during the gold medal men’s ice hockey game on February 28th, showing that Canadians can cause a Superbowl “Half-time Flush”. It’s what American infrastructure planners have nightmares about – huge fluctuations in water usage caused by the synchronized [...]

[Read more →]

Although I’m very excited to have a new home to move to, I was reminded as I walked in the door of one of the things I’m going to miss about the apartment – the way the light streams through the windows and bathes everything in orange and yellow in the afternoons. It’s too bad [...]

[Read more →]

I was pleased to discover today on the Improbable Research Blog (the people who hand out the Ig Nobel Prizes) that in fact, a lava lamp will work on Jupiter. That’s a relief!

What’s even more improbable though, is that the erector set centerfugist who made the video is none other than the mysterious Neil Fraser, [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve finally found some exciting reasons to use the super-obscure screwdriver heads from my toolkit! I have 3 or 4 of those “128 piece” sets that it seems I only ever use the medium-size Phillips, Robertson and Flat nibs out of.
It turns out that tightening our Lagostina frying pan handle required a Phillips Pozi Drive [...]

[Read more →]

I had to unpack my laptop for the first time in 3 weeks so I could work from home this morning, and I got to sit and watch for a half hour as all of my software updaters wrestled for control of my internet connection, hard drive, and processor. In just 21 days there have [...]

[Read more →]