I'm touched, but I'll have to decline

Thanks, Neil, for the tip that this was brewing:

more good music from iceland

Listening to my iPod on shuffle yesterday, I happened to hit on Emiliana Torrini's song "Sunny Road" (from her album, Fisherman's Woman) and was reminded, again, just how much Icelandic music I enjoy.

I've been a longtime fan of the The Sugar Cubes and all-things Bjork. Then I stumbled on the so-eerie-it's-cool sounds of Sigur Ros. And now, a little poppier with Emiliana Torrini's music.

I wonder what it is about that small island nation that cranks out so many good musicians?

Wonder what she sounds like? take a listen to Emiliana via this YouTube video for "Sunny Road":

last week's rubik's cube solving competition

Yes, I'm a geek about the Rubik's cube. My fastest solve ever was back in my prime (my teens) at 45 seconds.

In this year's competition, just held in Budapest, the fastest single solution was recorded at 10.18 seconds.

The overall winner was a 16-year-old japanese kid, Yu Nakajima, who averaged 12.46 seconds after solving it five times.

Not content with just the straight-forward solution (two hands, eyes open), competition categories included solving with one hand, blind-folded, with feet. See the Reuters Video for the visuals (while it's available).

I gotta work on my technique!

tracking another season of survivor

Finally got around to watching the season opener of Survivor: China last night (it'd been festering on our HR20 since Thursday), and a few passing thoughts on the situation as I see it:

• why oh why does anyone show up to meet Jeff wearing anything but sensible clothing for the 39 days ahead? This means no skirts, no spiky heels, no rompin' stompin' footwear either.
• If you know you've been chosen to be on Survivor, and you're going to be outdoors for 39 days, make it a point to actually go camping for a night or two before leaving the States.
• And there's absolutely no reason anyone going on Survivor shouldn't be able to make a shelter or (gasp!) make fire. We're fifteen shows into this thing, and folks have no excuse to be surprised at the challenge that awaits the first couple days in, no matter where the show's taking place: Australia to Africa, Cook Islands to Vanuatu.

And a few thoughts on the participants this year:

• I can't wait for Courtney (the bitchy waitress) and Leslie (the righteous talk show host) to get voted off... bonus if it's in a surprise two-fer trip to tribal council.
• From the looks of things, Ashley (the pro wrestler) is going to keep the blur-it-out censors busy since she can't seem to keep the twins in her top for more than a few moments at a time.
• Given both his accent and his attitude, I coulda told you Chicken (yes, the Chicken Farmer) was going to be first to go the moment he drawled in his only-in-Virginia-way that he wasn't going to share his opinions anymore cuz nobody was smart enough to listen to him. A shame, as I'd hope I'd pick up some chicken farming tips from him
  
• I hope James (the quiet grave digger) goes all the way.

Looking forward to the next 14 weeks of the show to see who does what to whom and when (and why).

setting my goal as the Feynman point

Courtesy a kottke.org post today, I have a new goal: to memorize pi to the Feynman point.

The Feynman point is the sequence of six 9s which begins 762 digits into pi. "[Feynman] once stated during a lecture he would like to memorize the digits of pi until that point, so he could recite them and quip 'nine nine nine nine nine nine and so on.'"

Maybe I can work on this as I climb Mt Whitney at the end of the month?

Why the rote memory exercise? Well, it helps me pass the time on those solo ventures (hiking, motorcycling, kayaking) when the mind otherwise goes to jelly. I've already memorized pi to the 76th digit (cluttering up my memory from a contest in math class back in high school over 20 years ago). Oh, and I can sing the alphabet backwards, too.

So many brain cells, so little time.

my simpsons avatar

My Simpsons Avatar
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

also called: fun with 2-D graphics.

While I aspire to have pants this orange (but not feet this tiny), I don't think I could ever wear them out in public.

We'll see if my avatar makes it to another part of the Simpsons movie site (let me know if you see it!).

You can make your own avatar here

cool design: US govt budget

I'm a fan of interesting and new graphic representations of otherwise mundane data, and this poster of how the US government's budget is allocated: Death and Taxes certainly fits the bill.

Not only is the design cool, but the interface to zoom in and out on the web page is clever as well. (a two-fer!)

i remember her when...

Over a bowl of Grape Nuts at breakfast, I was glancing over the list of attendees at the white-tie dinner for the Queen at the White House last night, and what caught my eye were the names of two different pro football players in attendance: Peyton Manning and Timothy Hasselbeck.

Perhaps Dubya thought it proper to have some footballers in attendance for the Queen? (shhh, don't tell him).

What stood out all the more was the fact that Elisabeth Hasselbeck was in attendance with her husband (or was he with her?). Yes, she's a co-host of "The View" now and all that.

But this is also the same Elisabeth (Filarski) that we watched sweat through a season of Survivor Australia to finish in fourth place.

Who could have thought she'd go from getting eaten alive by flies in the Outback to an audience with the Queen?

Just goes to show that life is funny sometimes... and there's no way to know what's coming next.

cheep, cheep, meet the peep(s)

meet the chick!
Originally uploaded by thomas pix.

After much hemming and hawing and fence-sitting, we've finally got our chicks. Two Barred Rock pullets joined our family yesterday afternoon.

To spare regular readers all the bloggy details of raising chickens, I've started a new blog about them chicks here in my new blog Urban Chickens.

Only rarely will the chicken stuff bleed into this blog, and that'll only be when there's a technology or food angle to the post.

Sharks hockey playoff tickets!

Sharks hockey playoff tickets!
Originally uploaded by thomas pix.

It's like Christmas all over again!

Our playoff tickets were delivered to the doorstep this morning. Interesting to see the breakout of prices the deeper we go in the playoffs:

• regular season: $38/seat
• 1st round: $48/seat
• 2nd round: $61/seat
• 3rd round: $86/seat
• 4th round: $116/seat

I can't wait to pay $116 to watch the Sharks win the Cup this year!

fresh eggs everyday? yum

This morning's Mercury News had a column about urban chicken farming, and when Mel first mentioned it (she got to that section of the paper first), I quickly dismissed the idea and then back to reading about why my beloved Sharks have been unable to score a goal for over two games in a row now.

When I finally got to the Business section myself, suddenly the idea of raising a couple chickens in our backyard was really appealing. Thanks to our participating in a CSA back in Virginia, we'd had the pleasure of tasting fresh eggs, and believe me, once you have fresh eggs, you can only tolerate the styrofoam-packaged things they sell at the supermarket by the dozen (or gross by the gross, if you're shopping at Costco).

Besides the tempting oddity of having a couple cute cluckers inhabiting the back 40, raising our own egg-makers would be yet another green thing we, as a family, can do. As a bonus, the local zoning laws allow us to keep as many as three chickens here at the house.

A couple hours research on the web has led me to the following decent resources (a lot of not-so-useful stuff is out there):

• Backyard Chickens
• The Country Chicken
• The City Chicken

But, I think I struck gold when I discovered Omlet's eglu chicken coop.

High tech meets high design meets urban living. It's all I can do not to order one today.

Instead, I've ordered Barbara Kilarski's Keep Chickens to study up a bit more before diving in with living, eating, scratching, pooping egg-makers in the backyard.

I've got preliminary buy in from Melanie (with certain agreements to do other outside chores as a condition). I'll keep you posted on my progress.

studying swedish for my trip

I'm excited to be going to Stockholm for a meeting at the beginning of March. I'm nervous that I won't know the language (other than what I've picked up at IKEA).

Finding resources on the web that provide "useful phrases" is very hit or miss. So glad to see franksyard uploaded lots of video so I can study the Swedish Chef in action!

they should call it american DENIAL

Now that I'm fast-forwarding through my DVR's collection of shows from the sixth season of American Idol, I've finally come to understand why I'm so fascinated by these lead-off cattle-call shows yet so very uninterested in the subsequent "you made it to Hollywood!" shows that eventually winnow the pool down to the winner. My fascination comes from realizing I sit watching, mouth agape, at how deep in denial the lionshare of these contestants manage to live.

This season's opening cattle-calls in Minneapolis and Seattle have illustrated like no others just how powerfully (painfully?) an individual's denial can separate them from reality. It seems like the worse the auditioning singer, the more adamant they are that everyone else just can't appreciate how superbly talented they are. Now, I'm no expert in spotting singing talent, but even I know when I hear folks that, to put it plainly, sing real bad. Equipped with this knowledge, I can also spot when a given "talent" (methinks) doth protest too much at being told they're awful.

And that's what makes the cattle call shows that open each season of American Idol so very much fun for me. It's an illustration over and over and over just how delusional these kids are that they possess some kind of singing talent. If only they'd expend a similar amount of energy opening their minds to feedback and redirection, they might become something. Alas and alack they don't: they're in heavy denial, and seemingly happily so.

And like every other season but the first, I'll quit watching AI once they convene the contestants in Hollywood (dawg!). It's at this stage that the talent consistently acts in diva-like ways to sabotage their own futures, and I think that's even worse than fate befallen those in denial who never made it out of the first round.

(thank goodness the HR20 seems to be recording the shows as intended... fingers crossed)

i am The Flash

Thanks to the folks over on the LifeDev blog, I took a superhero quiz this morning to find out I'm Flash of all heroes. I guess I'd better get used to wearing red spandex.

I am The Flash Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...