Author: admin

This number one’s for you

I went to a party the other week and discovered that I actually like Labatt’s Blue.

“It’s definitely not Evian, but it is better than most city tap. Certainly more palatable than many light beers I’ve had, and not at all, uh, urinous.”

– Wired reporter Tom Nichol, giving a thumbs up to drinking his own urine after being filtered through Water Security’s new purification system

“We are not brewers, we are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”

– Father Abbott of the Belgian abbey Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren, whose _Trappist Westvleteren 12_ beer has recently been voted the world’s best, and became promptly sold out.

Look out for Number 1

Well, the gas prices broke the $1.00/L barrier today. All the gas stations are upgrading their price signs, Y2K-style, to accept three digits. Maybe it’s all a conspiracy by the digital signage companies to sell more signs… 😮

“If I’m trying to find someone to look after my purebred Samoyeds while I’m in St. Tropez, I’m not going to ask some naked Burning Man hula-hooper on Tribe.net.”

– Cheray Unman, member of the elitest social network aSmallWorld, describing why being snoot is such a hoot

Did you ever have to make up your mind

The news media can be so desperate for a good story, they’ll sensationalize and make their own. People like solid, definitive statements, no matter how wobbly and contrived they really are.

A good example is when TechWeb published a story entitled “Tablet PCs Headed for Broader Use” and then publishes a contrary article called “Tablet PC Faces Uncertain Future” seven hours later, and both articles cite the same market research company.

Two different bylines, two different axes to grind.

The Dundas Experiment

I don’t know why, but everytime I get on the subway these days I can’t seem to get the transfer machines to work. Especially at Dundas. I thought the buttons on those machines worked on the principle of electrical capacitance in your skin. Does this mean I just don’t exist? It’s a real bummer when machines ignore you…

Aside: Here’s a crazy transfer that a machine spit out at me one night.

ttc.jpg

I always get carded

I’m walking out of work late today, and as I wave my pass to exit the building, a lady behind me, also leaving work, asked me uncertainly, “Uh, do you work here?”

I’m wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans, since we had a team event at the Rogers Centre SkyDome* earlier today, so I paused my iPod and tersely said “Yep.”

“Are you a summer student?” she asked.
“No,” I gravely replied.
“What group do you work in?” she pressed.

So we chatted a bit. I told her my job involved intellectual property matters. She didn’t know what that was, so I explained further.

“Oh!” she said. “Your job must be fun!”

I looked her in the eye and said, “Yes, it is.” And I was telling the truth.

(*Blue Jays won, btw. After the game, I went back to the office.)

Birds, you don’t drink milk

OutMaBackyard.jpg

Travelled to suburbia to meet Dezza and M (aka, New Hire Orientation Class of June 2001) at dim sum. Afterwards, we went over to M’s posh new North York house (52″ LCD HDTV? Check. Stainless steel convection stove? Check. Structube dining table? Check.). They have a robin’s nest in their planter in the backyard, which I snapped a pic of.

Here’s a funny conversation:
“Why do they just sit there with their mouths open?”
“Because they’re BABIES!”

Who put the bap in the bim-bim-bap?

It’s MSG, every psychosomatic foodie’s nightmare. But is “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” just a myth fueled by irrational public hysteria? The article, “If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?” seems to confirm this:

We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow’s milk).

(The article also triggered a huge discussion over at MetaFilter.)

What I find curious is the people claiming allergies to MSG aren’t even eating authentic Asian cuisine, but rather mushu pork and other anachronistic foodcourt flavours. Personally, if I got sick eating somewhere, I’d look at the usual suspects first: excessive grease, allergies, or maybe the cook didn’t wash his hands.

You know what else has glutamate in it? Tomatoes, parmesan cheese, walnuts, and peas. MSG makes things taste great, but as always, everything in moderation.

True cause of Jedi downfall: crappy IT

Shane Schick of ITBusiness believes that _Star Wars_ holds a hidden parable on the powerful role of an intelligent technology strategy in your organization. Schick muses that Jedi and Sith should have ganged up against their common foe, that crappy Holonet:

I like to imagine that a consortium of vendors in the Star Wars republic created a standard to make holographic conversations a reality. Maybe they called it Wow-Fi, or something like that. Then, even though it didn