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April 17th, 2008
07:42 pm
Courtesy of my folks, actually:
What's Ben Stein been doing lately?
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February 15th, 2008
12:14 am - For those of you watching Craig Ferguson right now...
... Not only is the cartoon short Evangeline Lilly just talked about a real National Film Board short that was sometimes broadcast between other programs, I now have the song from going through my head.
If I remember the lyrics right, some of them go, "It's burning down and down/white water/That's where a log driver learns to step lightly/It's burning down and down white water/a log driver waltzes his girl completely".
You should see some of the other weird stuff I have rattling around my brain...
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January 2nd, 2008
07:58 pm - It's a new year, and I resolve...
... to post here at least once this year. And... done. Well, except for the content of the post, of course.
So, what are today's headlines, Bobby?
- One enterprising fellow who is handy at reverse engineering has discovered, among other things, that Amazon's Kindle book reader is also capable of playing minesweeper.
- Tyler's counterpart in the world of logic puzzles has added a feather of somewhat different sort to his cap.
- Judd Hirsch looks older in Independence Day than in Numb3rs. Either that's some nice subtle makeup work, or Judd has invested in David Copperfield's latest business venture. Updated to add: you're telling me the White House doesn't have cable? and: Is Jeff Goldblum's boss supposed to be a gay stereotype, a Jew stereotype, or both? and: "Fire at Will"?! No! He's one of the good guys!
- Irregular Webcomic usually makes me laugh. Today, however, it cracked me up at the third panel.
- Nigeria is infamous amongst techie for the e-mail scams it exports. Here's a bit of domestic chicanery in the tech arena.
- Updated: Haven't actually looked at this yet, but I can tell it's a good one just by the URL.
- Updated again: ... in the interests of Good taste and decency
- Updated one last time: ... in the interests of Pizza.
And I think that's all for now. (I mean it this time, I think.)
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October 19th, 2007
10:21 pm - Not-so-random link
The link in this post was a serendipitous discovery from earlier this week while I was doing other surfing. Be advised, however, that this link could be considered a potential spoiler for the NY Times second Sunday puzzle. You might even want to avoid mousing over it...
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October 11th, 2007
09:39 pm - It seems all I ever do here is dump links....
... but here's another bunch anyway.
For those of you knitters (not nitters, that's Orange's blog) who are bored with scarves and toques and baby booties, there are other things
This poem was linked to off of Ken Jenning's weblog recently and caught my attention - it's a good example of how art can be artistic and accessible at the same time.
Every once in a while the realms of banditry and absence of athletic ability do intersect.
Via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dougo, a nice concept video that surely falls under the rubric of "Fun with computer algorithms".
That's all for now.
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September 14th, 2007
01:32 am - Minor miscellany
I got to play on a Nintendo Wii for the first time last weekend - wheee!
So on Monday, when I went to work, I failed to suspend Lappy correctly. I figured this out when I did my every-so-often webmail check from work and found the messages that were there the first time, weren't there the second time. Oops. (I set the webmail box to keep-but-forward and thus was able to read my incoming messages for the rest of the day, but it was still momentarily disorienting to see it happen.)
I strongly encourage those of you with access to the WGN superstation (that is, the one available on cable) to check out the half-hour comedy series Corner Gas, imported from the Canadian province where I was born. It's well-written, well acted, and generally a lot of fun.
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August 17th, 2007
June 20th, 2007
June 8th, 2007
12:54 am - Microupdate
Silly turn of phrase that occured to me today:
Bernadette, freeze a budget.
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June 5th, 2007
07:14 pm - Alas, Poor Lappy
... I knew him, Horatio.
Actually, Lappy isn't clinically dead - yet. When I got home from work today I was able to boot into a functioning Linux environment from a bootable Linux live CD I had made a couple of years ago. But the live CD wasn't able to mount my hard drive as part of the boot. We'll see what can be recovered. In the meantime, I do have a back-up copy of my most important application - Hello, Crossword Compiler! - which is good, because I need to get a crossword sent off by mid-month and I will want to get some other puzzles reconstructed and re-typeset from the versions I sent to my test-solver.
In the meantime I have webmail, Meebo for IM-ing (which I tried out a few weeks before this, so I'm comfortable with it already), and the been-ages-since-I-used-it LiveJournal friends-list for most of my blog-reading. (I had Thunderbird set up to pull in all my blogs via RSS on Lappy.)
Still, I'm hoping that a) my files are recoverable and b) that I'm not without Lappy (or Lappy's successor) for very long.
(And a PS for the readers of my last post: Tuscon first, Hudson second, Idaho's son third.)
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June 2nd, 2007
10:45 am - I laughed! I cried! It moved me, Bob!
Various and sundry mini-items first:
- I've heard nothing but good things about Terry Pratchett's work, although I don't foresee myself having time to devour all, what, 40 Discworld novels any time soon. Regardless, I recently had occasion to visit the Wikipedia entry for the Pratchettian Nac Mac Feegle and much merriment ensued.
- Here in Winnipeg, we've had two separate incidents of truck drivers taking loads that were too tall under overpasses, in both cases damaging the overpasses enough to require repairs. (We also had someone here shear the top of their fifth wheel camper here shortly after the second overpass incident.) I wasn't sure that anything could top that. Sure enough, something could.
- Douglas Bass has used Google gadgets to create a custom search engine that focuses specifically on crossword blogs and blogs of crossword people. This LiveJournal turns out to be one of them, which probably means I should post more puzzle content here. (Come to think of it, I should post more content here period, but I digress.)
So here's a very quick silly puzzle: what is the correct ordering of these three things, listed here in alphabetical order: Hudson, Idaho's son, and Tucson?
- My webmail address that is supposed to receive comments from this LJ doesn't seem to be doing this anymore. How annoying!
On a less miscellaneous note, I'm now taking suggestions for my birthday party, which I should start planning soon. I can tell you already that Paintball, Karaoke and clubbing won't fly with me and/or my circle of friends. Anything that's out-and-out expensive may require me to subsidize friends who are still students may be a hard sell (said friends are somewhat averse to handouts). Movies have hit a dead spot in terms of group appeal now that Pirates 3 has been seen within my local circle for another recent birthday party activity. Any other ideas? (Also, anyone who reads this, who will be in the Winnipeg area in June, and who might want in on said activity should contact me at craigkas (a) myway dot com.
Current Mood: nerdy
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May 27th, 2007
11:00 pm
Fun YouTube link of the day:
Off The Wall Episode 1: "Lady Troubles"
(It was one of the videos YouTube recommended as related to a game show clip En pointed me to. But it's not game show related at all, or related in any other way to clip that I can figure out.)
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April 17th, 2007
11:48 pm - Miscellany
I'm a Toronto Raptors fan, and I've really enjoyed their resurgence this year. The only real question left before the playoffs start is whether they'll face the thoroughly depleted Washington Wizards who have slouched their way into the playoffs after losing what are generally considered to be their two best players (Antawn Jamison's 48 points in a losing cause tonight not withstanding); or if they'll face the entering-the-playoffs-on-a-tear New Jersey Nets, featuring Vince "I gave up on the Raptors Franchise" Carter, Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, and a ragtag rest of the lineup patched together with spi and baling wire. Tomorrow's season-ending games for both teams will tell the tale.
A Raptors-related "what's wrong with this picture" puzzle of sorts may be found at the link below; you will probably need to do some light research to answer (or to confirm your guess).
NBA.com Raptors revival photo gallery pic
And in other link-a-licious developments, you can get a librarian action figure, among others (Via a comment by bookishfellow, I think it was, on Eric Berlin's blog, you can now own the Little House Not on the Prairie, and bot counts have been rising sharply of late. (There's also other good things on the mcphee and shadowserver sites too, if you look around.)
Last but not least: it looks like my upcoming NY Sun puzzle will be a couple months later than I expected, although I've received no official confirmation of this yet.
Current Music: "Walk the Dinosaur", Was/Not Was
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March 17th, 2007
11:06 pm - My post frequency is increasing again - Woohoo!
In this case, it's partially occasioned by the fact that the one of the NY Times crosswords whose acceptance I mentioned in the last post is the puzzle for this Sunday. So those of you who both do the NYTimes puzzle and read this journal should be sure to check it out - it's pretty cool. (I also have a New York Sun puzzle coming up in April, as I recall, which is also pretty cool for completely different reasons, so you can expect another post next month, too. :-)
Let's see - what else can I throw into this entry? I'll start with the music: I bought more CDs this past week (10) then I did in the previous 6 months, and it was about time, too. I've put a few of them into lappy's CD drive today, but it's the Chris Rice CD that I haven't been able to persuade myself to replace with a different one. This is probably a reflection of the fact that I'm starting to move out of my blue period; there are several songs on there which hit the sweet spot for someone who is starting to recover his optimism. the Good Monsters "CD" from Jars of Clay that I got earlier in the week is going to be getting a lot of headphone airplay over the next while as well; there are a number of songs on there that resonate with some of the experiences of my blue period. On, uh, a different musical note, I must insist on mentioning "Ahab the Arab", which has bene going through my head intermittently lately for reasons I don't even want to begin to explain.
Work has finally slowed down just enough for me to catch my breath, but it probably won't stay un-hectic for long. I'm saving up holidays somewhat for the summer, when I will be sure to get out of town and do something different. Things have been hectic enough lately that I still don't have the passport I need to fly internationally at this point, which is one of a few different reasons why I won't be at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament next weekend - sorry to miss so many of you! On the other hand, all of this significantly increases the likelihood of me attending the NPL convention in Ann Arbor this summer...
I'll also be updating my LJ friend-ings here soon, and adding a few additional feeds to my mail-and-RSS-reader of choice, including a few that are long overdue.
Also, if witsarah still reads this blog occasionally, and could contact me at craigkas at mywaydotcom, I'd appreciate it.
For that matter, while I'm messaging individual readers, a few of you need to be online a little more often. (I'm looking at you jdyer and byronosaurusrex.)
Current Location: Blue couch in the 70's basement
Current Music: "Love Like Crazy", Chris Rice [CD: Amusing]
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February 12th, 2007
10:47 pm - And she makes more bubbles than I do.
No, no "she" at present, though I am much more ready for that than at any point since, well, the last time there was a "she". The title of this post is there simply because it makes me laugh every time I see it. (Ask Mr. Google why.)
Wow, mid-August of last year since I last posted. Eep!
Let's see, what other detritus is floating around my brain?
"Renovating Diverse City" by Toby Mac has been getting more than its fair share of CD play since I picked it up around Christmas time. Good stuff. As an aside, wordplay geeks who read this are invited to switch one of the vowels in "Toby Mac" with one of the consonants to form a name and a trademark.
Speaking of Wordplay: I got it on DVD for Christmas from my folks, and I was able to spot a couple of my appearances that I missed on my first viewing, one of which is of the "blink-or-you'll-miss-it" variety. Also a new co-worker as of January saw the Wordplay when it was still in theaters (before she joined us), which is kind of cool.
One other puzzle-related note: I have received notice of a NYT Sunday puzzle (all mine) acceptance, and an NYT daily-sized puzzle (with Lee Glickstein) acceptance. I still have another Sunday (again with Lee) in the NYT slush pile.
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August 24th, 2006
11:55 pm - Catchup post (mostly puzzler related)
This post will catch you up on...
The Grey Labyrinth Sekkrets hunt:
This was an awesome, awesome hunt. I spent most of my not-otherwise-spoken-for time for a week on it, having landed on the /dev/joe team (team Plugh) for it. Given that I'm left hoarding my vacation days at present, particpating in the hunt amounted to a vacation-I-didn't-have-to-take-time-off-for, and was marvelously refreshing, even if I was catching up on sleep the next week.
Amazingly, ~90% of the hunt was constructed by two people - not only that, but this was the first hunt they constructed, as far as I know. Despite that, there were no significant problems with broken puzzles or other such fun-diminishing issues (although the hunt itself took a lot longer that the organizers expected, I think. I don't know for sure how many other NPLers participated, although I do know that Tahnan and Saxifrage formed a team and finished in a better-than-merely-respectable time compared to the plugh team, especially given that they had less than 1/3 of the solvers that the Plugh team did.
Personal favorite puzzles for me included courk (a nice "AHA!" puzzle where the first thing I thought of trying worked), Tinhorn (nice idea well executed), CrystyB (ditto, even thought [censored] made this puzzle more difficult than you might expect; the puzzle itself put a grin on my face), quagmire (yet another nice idea well-executed, and also another grinner), and the metas, and the meta-meta (even though we were stuck on the meta-meta for quite a while, it was fair, we just failed to simplify along the correct axis.).
Other puzzles:
It's been a while (and life has been busy), but I finally have puzzles (a Sunday that's all mine, and a daily that's only partly mine) in the NYT slush pile again. Hopefully, that translates to being in the pipeline eventually, but at least I have them in the slush pile again. I'm also socking away time towards another Sunday with a dynamite take on a Lee Glickstein theme that is going to get offered to Will as soon as it's done.
I also have a puzzle based on a pretty neat idea that will hopefully make it into the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle eventually (although it's possible I might have to do major grid renovations, boo hoo!).
As for the NY Sun, I have a puzzle that requires the sort of research that requires the sort of forethought I haven't had the forethought to spare lately. Anyone out there with DVR + a wide selection of channels willing to help me compensate for my inability to research this? I can't say there'll be any reqard for it per se except the knowledge that you'll likely clear the way for another one of my takes on a Lee Glickstein theme that I expect to be going there also.
I've also come up with a new and different take on the whole "crossword T-shirt" idea. Any ideas on a) where/how to try to market it and b) how to protect my idea before trying to market it?
Oh, and the Columbo-esque one more thing... unlike certain of my fellow puzzlemakers, I have yet to complete a book entirely of my own puzzles. I would, however, like to point you to the closest I've come to such a thing thus far. I'm responsible for 60 of the 210 puzzles in the amusingly-titled "The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Extreme Sudoku", and despite the "idiot" in the title, it is pitched toward the high-level solver. 10 of the puzzles I contributed to this book are Circular Sudokus, 10 are Sum sudokus (AKA Killer Sudokus), and the other 40 are 10 each of 4 sudoku variations I invented (and have yet to see anywhere else). I received a comp copy recently, and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the ordinary-but-tough sudoku in the book; I'm finding them as entertaining as any I've seen from anywhere, so my kudos go to the designer of the puzzles (or the designer of the program and the tester of puzzles, if that happens to be the case.) And my thanks to rpipuzzleguy and byronosaurusrex who did the lion's share of the testing on my 60 of these puzzles.
Other things I've done this summer:
Yes, I've done other things this summer. However, aside from a vacation-in-a-day visit with my Aunt and two of my cousins (which was chock full of IMAX, Gelati, and Mini-golf goodness) and a one-and-only-day-trip-to-the-beach-of-the-summer, I can't think of anything that's really merited a mention. My summer has been largely focussed on my job, and it shows. I'm not to the place where I'm counting the days until Christmas - yet - but it may happen.
And to close things off, a mandatory YouTube link:
From before the cultural phenomena of Mentos + Diet Coke, and OK Go on treadmills... some phahnamahna of a different sort.
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August 20th, 2006
03:33 pm - I'm working on a longer post...
... but it's not ready yet. Blah blah, blah blah, blah blah ...
We interrupt this boring entry-in-lieu-of-an-entry to bring you this news flash: canadianpuzzler, as of the middle of this afternoon, now has a nephew in addition to the niece he already had.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-entry entry.
blah blah, blah blah, blah blah. Tune in soon for the comprehensive update I'm still working on.
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August 6th, 2006
12:53 pm - Hopefully, the first of several smaller posts happening today
Today looks to be a "perfect storm" day for getting some actual blogging done: I've got nothing urgent to accomplish today (though there's still a few things I need to see to either today or tomorrow), I'm well rested, I don't have any forced incursions into my scehdule, and I'm in an outgoing frame of mind.
So... where to begin? It's been a fairly busy summer so far; I've taken a grand total of two days off since April and may wind up not taking a third until well into the fall (unless I take a sick day to go to the optometrist and dentist in some order). Work has been both involving and challenging this summer- which is good, as it reduces the opportunity for it get tedious - but it has left me with less energy and interest for the various things I need to or want to do when I get home. I am definitely taking actual time off - at least a week's worth - next summer. I might even attend the Ann Arbor NPL convention next summer, as the fares seem to be better (or at the very least, no worse) than Winnipeg-to-New-York fares will be for the crossword tournament now that WestJet no longer flies those routes.
I don't expect to be able to afford both the tournament and the convention both next year, however, which will force me to decide between the two events. It's a tough choice: while I'm quite fond of many things about the tournament - the commuter train ride between NYC and Stamford; the ability to rub shoulders with the NYTimes forum cru, fellow constructors, and other interesting crossword people; the brief immersion into the crossword world (not to mention the tournament itself) - there are nonetheless some other very tempting things about the NPL Con also. In addition to the likelihood of meeting or actually getting to hang out with cool people who are either not at or not available during the crossword tournament, there will be actual opportunities to get out of the hotel and do things at the Con, and there are also more (and more affordable) possibilities to extend my travelling before Con actually begins. The two most notable possibilities so far seem to be visiting Chicago (and perhaps dropping in on rpipuzzleguy; and/or the blogger CrosswordFiend in the process if they'd allow it), or visiting Toronto and/or Ottawa. Of course, if I go to NPL Con, I'll have to try to convince witsarah and Greg to come too...
Hmm, I still don't know which one to consider to be Plan A. Feel free to atempt to sway me one way or the other in the comments.
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July 29th, 2006
04:19 pm
I will post a real update, and do it - hopefully - soon, but for now, I want to put this link where I can find it later (namely, here):
NYTimes - Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Evangelical Pastor
Worth a read. I might comment more fully on it later, but given my blogging history over the last month, don't coun't on it. One thing I will say now, however, is the following:
Republican foreign policy is (speaking in broad generalities) pragmatic, where Democratic foreign policy is (again, generally) idealistic. (The reverse has generally been true in economic policy, where the Democrats are pragmatic and the Republicans are idealistic.) It is the role of the government to act in the most favorable combination of idealism and pragmatism that it is able to (which explains in part why the alternation between the Democrats and Republicans has worked as effectively as it has - it serves to apply ideals pragmatically in a balanced fashion.) That is the role of government - goverance by the people, for the people, which will not be perfect but is ideally the best governance possible.
Evangelical Christianity, however - to be overly simplistic - is predicated on governance of the daily lives of its adherents by the will of God as expressed through the Bible and interpreted in that light in the life of the individual. It arose in no small part as a reaction to the theological pragmatism of mainline protestantism. If it then becomes enamored of political pragmatism, is it not only losing its center, but even its very soul?
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July 11th, 2006
09:51 pm - The world is converging
I just posted this from the Volity chat and gaming client. Very cool! (And check back real soon for non-spoiling comments on the Grey Labyrinth internet hunt, plus other various and sundry wonderful things...)
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