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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Observations'
Hockey Vs Toilets
March 9th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Observations
Tags: Edmonton·flush·gold medal·Hockey·toilet·water
Lens Flare
March 8th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
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 [...]
Maximum Improbability
March 7th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
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, [...]
Tags: Neil Fraser·orbit
PoziDrive
March 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
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 [...]
Tags: nibs·pozi drive·screwdriver·screws
Chai!
February 25th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
I’m breaking up my morning routine in the office this week by switching from Orange Pekoe Tea to Earl Grey, Minty Green and Chai. A tasty change! The bergamont flavour in the Earl Grey really snapped me awake yesterday, and I’m finding the clove flavour of today’s Chai soothing.
Little breaks in my routine usually kick-start [...]
Tags: chai·earl grey·orange pekoe
Opening a Mac Pages file on a PC
February 22nd, 2010 · 2 Comments · Observations
I love a good puzzle! A friend’s aunt sent her a .pages file from a Mac and she needed a way to open it and print it on her PC.
It turns out that a .pages file is really a RAR archive (like a zip folder) and you can open it up using WinRAR (or a [...]
Tags: mac pages·pc·pdf·print·word
What do you get when you cross…
February 20th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
…a sinking ship with a pointless gizmo? There was a bunch of buzz this week about Wired Magazine working with Adobe to create an “entirely different way” to browse their magazine on the iPad. I followed a couple of the tweets around until I discovered what all the hoopla was about – a million-dollar PDF [...]
The End is Near!
February 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
The doomsday scholars have it all wrong – the real event foretold in the the Mayan calendar is the end of me wearing braces – scheduled for March 23rd 2010. As you can clearly tell from the markings on the stone – the supernatural rapture caused by having my braces off will inspire a feeding [...]
Fire!
February 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Observations, Ottawa
While watching the final scenes of “Pursuit of Happyness” the building fire alarm went off. In my experience, building alarms are generally false alarms, but I always evacuate nonetheless. Except this time I smelled smoke. So we scurried around to grab our coat, boots, and two big bins full of our important papers and took [...]
Prisencolinensinainciusol
February 9th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Observations
I ran into a crazy internet article this evening featuring videos of people from other countries imitating what English sounds like to them. It’s kindof mindblowing. This trippy video especially, because their singing comes off as a weirdly familiar noise but I can’t wrap my head around what they’re saying. Woah, dude.
Players of the Sims [...]