Press Release

WORLD RENOWNED BLOGGERS ANNOUCE INAUGURAL MEET
April 29, 2007, 8:30 PM EST - Wrathcardipus Newswire Service

Cyberspace, April 29, 2007 The First Annual Canadian East Coast Blogmeet™, alternately known as the World's Smallest Blogmeet, scheduled for an undisclosed location on May 20, 2007, has been announced by Wrathcardipus Newswire Service, a subsidiary of the C. Elegans Conglorporation™, a joint Onterrible/Nofunland endeavour.

Designed to establish a mechanism whereby interested parties may enhance interactions between bloggers primarily located in Eastern Canada, visiting Eastern Canada, just passing through Eastern Canada, or even thinking about maybe, possibly some day, if they get that grocery packing job, getting sort of close to Eastern Canada on their way to anywhere else, the event is also open to bloggers worldwide.

Date May 20th, 2007
Time 1:00 AM-ish* Newfoundland Time (GMT -3 and a half hours. Yes really)
Location Eastern Canada
Duration Don't blink, you'll miss it!
Activities Aimless wandering in an as yet unnamed airport (hint: one step east and you get your feet wet), consumption of caffeinated beverages, gum flapping, perhaps a chorus or two of “Barrett’s Privateers,” some jiggery-pokery of a photographic nature, and possibly a 10-minute tour of some picturesque parts of Eastern Canada, in the middle of the night. It'll probably snow, too. (No it won’t, either. ~W.) Plz to note that no educational credits are awarded for attendance at this otherwise fine event.

Registered attendees currently include Wrath and Ricardipus. All other Bloggers are invited.** (plz to RSVP to Wrath or Ricardipus, and include the registration fee***).

Hope to see you there! (Optimists, us.)



*Do not think about removing the hyphen unless you can provide the appropriate headgear for all attendees.

**Plz to note that if anyone else shows up, status as World's Smallest Blogmeet may be compromised. Don't say we didn't warn you.

***registration fee to be negotiated, chocolate but we accept chocolate all kinds of gifts and chocolate.


Disclaimer No badgers or nematodes were harmed in the creation of this missive. All expenses to be assumed by the attendees. This offer may expire at any time. While every effort is made to ensure the timeliness and accuracy of the information, documents, legislation, data or material (the "Information") available in this release, the Provinces of Onterrible/Nofunland assume no liability or responsibility for the completeness, accuracy or usefulness of any of the Information. Especially usefulness. No guarantees there, bud. I mean, c'mon. Are you serious? Useful? Leggo my leg, you kidder, you! Information (including any revisions and updates) in this release is provided solely for general public information purposes and is provided strictly "as is." In case of discrepancy between blog content and relevant worldwide legislation and regulations, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of anything and self destruct in 6 seconds. While every effort is made to ensure that all Information provided in this release does not contain computer viruses, human bacteriophage, nematode algae or badger flagellates, you should take reasonable and appropriate precautions, i.e. develop a Lady MacBeth complex very, very soon. May God have mercy on our souls. Batteries not included.

A minor rant

Despite all my complaints about being too busy, it seems that I just keep taking on other projects. You know, projects that get done in my "spare time". Remember that? Thought not.

Anyway, the latest requires digging through a large amount of scientific literature looking for articles on a certain topic, then summarizing the findings in an easily-digestible format. No problem. It's a lot of reading (a couple of hundred articles, of an average of about eight pages each), but I take a 45-minute bus ride to and from work every day, so that makes over seven hours a week I can dedicate to reading this stuff. Easy.

However (and here comes the rant-y part)... although I can easily look up scientific articles on the mighty PubMed database, which life scientists of all stripes use all the time, and I can stay on top of new ones that might not have made their way into PubMed yet via RSS (and I thank Black Knight for hooking me up there), I still have to go to the journal sites (or in some cases, repositories of multiple journals) and download the individual articles. Which would be fine, if all journals had one of these: You see? If you know the volume and page number, you just type 'em in, and bingo! you have the article you want all tied up in a shiny PDF wrapper just a-waiting for you to read it.

The alternative, unfortunately, is that most journals just have an ugly front page with a huge list of back issues, which you have to browse through to find the article you want. This gets to be a problem when the issue you want is several years old and sitting on the fourth or fifth screen of available issues. I can't even begin to imagine how much time I've wasted used up simply navigating around these things.

So - a plea to all scientific journals, everywhere. Take a leaf out of Science's book, and put a little search box on the front page. Please. It will make my life easier.

And you thought that I only complain about trivial things.

You know you're a parent if:

14. You have ever gone for a walk at 6:00 AM, on the premise that you were awakened at 5:00 by someone small clambering into your bed, and there's just no point in trying to go back to sleep again.

This didn't happen recently, but a while ago... resulting in, among others, these photos:

I'd still rather have gone back to sleep, though.

Spot the difference

Seen on Flickr - a newly-shaven Kaptain Kobold:

Seen lurking around the internet - Scaryduck:

Spooky, isn't it?

Spring means it's Ferrari season

Yes, Ferrari season north of Toronto has officially begun, with the first sighting of the year yesterday. A bright red F430 Spider, on a day where the racing version also triumphed at the American Le Mans race at Long Beach (in the GT2 class; 12™ overall). Although I at first thought it was a 360 Modena (a much more common 'rari), on closer observation the characteristic double mirror stalks and teardrop-shaped front air vents were clear as day.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera with me (not that anybody who reads this blog probably cares about car pictures anyway). Later on, I went out to the local renovation store (ok, Home Depot, a store I have a love-hate relationship with) , bearing Junior Ricardipus #1's mighty, 0.1 megapixel Disney Pix Micro, and grabbed some other car shots en route. The Pix Micro has the advantage of being tiny, about six and a half by four and a half centimetres, and weighs almost nothing, so it's easy to hold and shoot with it while still keeping both hands on the wheel. Definitely would not be the case for Mrs. Ricardipus' digital monster.

The resulting shots, as you might imagine, are a bit random in nature. This Porsche was the best picture of the bunch. The rest are over on Flickr, in the set located here.

In the back yard, the male goldfinches are becoming handsomer and handsomer, another sure sign of impending summer. Here are a couple of shots, with the usual disclaimers about shooting through dirty windows, zooming waaaay in, and so forth.

It never rains but it pours

Or in this case, snows. Like it did Thursday night. In April. Friday morning looked like a Winter Wonderland, although to be fair it was only a couple of centimetres deep and it all melted pretty quickly. Didn't stop traffic from slowing down to a crawl though. You'd think we'd be used to the stuff by now.

And now it's Saturday morning, and I am tired. I got an emergency call yesterday afternoon from a consulting client who needed information for a meeting this morning. Fortunately, she's two time zones west of here, so I could work past midnight, email the information, and still be confident she'd have time to look at it before she had to get some sleep. Of course, this means I went to bed about three hours later than I really wanted to.

Also in the pipeline is another consulting gig, for a company that used to employ me but saw fit to lay me off and now needs my considerable expertise again. Hear that noise? That's the sound of the hourly rate ratcheting up.

Just kidding. Also just kidding about the "considerable expertise" thing - they could get all kinds of people to provide the information they need, but I guess I'm cheapest, or easiest, or the biggest mercenary they know, or something.

But it all adds up to extra work on top of the full-time gig. What with completing that Government of Canada report (which, by the way, they have yet to pay me for), fighting with email, the day job, the family, reading other peoples' blogs (including this tasty science one I just found), and messing about with Flickr, it's remarkable that I even have time to toss off blog posts of my own. So you should all feel very, very sorry for me and send me chocolate and stuff. Because I deserve it.*


*Some aspects of this statement may not be entirely true.

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others."

...as Confucius said.

Mrs. Ricardipus was accepted to teacher's college at the local university yesterday. A big fat envelope arrived bearing the good news, along with a request for an equally big fat tuition deposit.

Oh.

Tuition.

Textbooks.

Daycare.

Studying.

Exams.





Career!

She's been waiting a long time for this, while someone else got his career in line, so now it's time. And she'll be excellent at it.

Easter weekend, with birds and sunset

In the backyard chez the parents, a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Sphyrapicus varius. If I may quote from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:

"Although most non-birders believe that the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a fictitious bird created just for the humorous name, in fact it is a widespread species of small woodpecker. "


Unfortunately I wasn't able to snap any pictures as it was a long way off and isn't very big to begin with. However, I did get a couple of shots of another visitor, a Northern (Yellow-Shafted) Flicker, Colaptes auratus. Through the trickery of modern digital photography, I've blown it up for you... still a bit fuzzy though. It was also a fair way away. Hm, that seems to be a common refrain whenever I post bird pics. Anyway, here it is, feasting on grubs and things in the grass. It's also a woodpecker. Really.




Neither species is uncommon, but nonetheless we seldom see them, even in the slightly more spacious, 60's era suburbia in which I grew up. Not to mention the rape-and-pillage, raze-the-trees-to-the-ground, late 90's development where I now live.

Speaking of which, the goldfinches at our place are still yellowing up in readiness for summer. I'll see if I can snap a few pictures, next time they're in a cooperative mood. In the meantime, I'll leave you with another sunset shot from the in-laws' place, which is conveniently located in the same town as the out-laws:

Barcoded

This is what happens when you a) have a slow connection, and b) insist on scrolling before the page has finished loading:



If I scanned this at my local grocery store, what do you think it would come up as?

Not entirely obsessed with cars and birds, really

Miserable, rainy weather this weekend... bleak. Like this:

However, the Goldfinches are here with a vengeance, and some of the little fellows are beginning to yellow up nicely. If you like, compare the photo below with the one from last weekend. By the time breeding season rolls around (and these little birds breed later than other species), the males will all be striking in splendid bright yellow and black trim.

I tried to take a picture of some grackles, but the results were miserably out of focus. Next time, perhaps.

--

In other news, the spring crop of sports cars is not quite under way, although a banana-yellow Mustang GT made an appearance yesterday, as did a Porsche 944 and a couple of Boxsters. People drive Mustangs and Porsches year-round here though, so nothing really unusual there.