Category: Randomness

  • California Fire Satellite Map

    I found this image on the awesome http://firefighterblog.blogspot.com/ that’s getting a lot of traffic today and is posting a constant stream of fire updates, so be sure to subscribe to his feed if you’re following the fires.

    Originally from the MODIS Terra polar orbit Satellite (click the image for the source). The fire appears to have crossed the Southern US border.

  • Wikipedia, Vulcans, Suss-Mahn and cerebral entropy

    In case you were looking for it, here’s a list of fictional martial arts courtesy of wikipedia…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_martial_arts

    How did I arrive there? I was researching Vulcans.

    There’s a martial art called Suss-Mahn used by T’Pol in one of the enterprise episodes (which I just watched for $1.99 courtesy of the awesome Unbox) and it’s named after producer Mike Sussman.

  • South Africa are the new Rugby world champs!!!!!!!!!!

    It was a tougher game that I expected – in fact it was a bit of a nail biter. But we won and Bryan Habana has been named player of the year by the Rugby Board. 🙂

    It was cool hanging out with other South Africans at St Andrews pub in Green Lake watching the game (The Kiwi and Kangaroo was full) but I was bummed when someone told me Lucky Dube has been killed in a car jacking. One day someone’s going to fix crime in South Africa. Lets just hope that day comes soon.

  • Is Google.com down for anyone else?

    …or is it just me? Seems to have gone down for a few minutes at a time around 11pm to midnight for the last few evenings. It’s not tied to browser or workstation, but may be tied to our public IP address. All other websites work including news.google.com and blogsearch.google.com – just www.google.com seems to be having probs.

  • The Nash Equilibrium & The Prisoners Dilemma

    Interesting video I ran across this evening looking for interviews with John Nash:

  • Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.

    I was scrambling through a deep canyon on Sunday on Snoqualmie’s South Fork and ended up at this beautiful quiet pool that looked very deep and had a very nice brookie that grabbed my thin mint streamer after a few casts.

    I was reminded of an Afrikaans expression:

    “Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.”

    It’s the Afrikaans equivalent of “Still waters run deep” but it doesn’t really translate that well. Literally it translates as: “Still waters, deep ground, beneath the devil goes round and round” – but it loses its punchiness in translation.

    Afrikaans is a language with a rough history and I think because of this it’s rich with idiomatic expressions, some of which would make a sailor blush. [so I won’t share those with you].

    Another one: “Hy kan nie ‘n bokkom braai nie.”

    Translates as: “He can’t barbecue a dried and salted mullet” – doesn’t translate either because you have to have lived on the west coast of South Africa and seen what a bokkom looks like and experienced the sheer genius of west coast braais (bbq’s) to understand what an insult this really is.

  • South Africa in the Rugby World Cup Final!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I paid my $30 bucks for pay per view and watched SA teach Argentina a lesson in Rugby respect yesterday beating them 37-13. Bryan Habana you are a God!! If anyone knows a good place to watch SA kick England’s arses next weekend let me know. [Preferably somewhere with more South African fans than English]

  • I LOVE MONDAYS!!

    Monday mornings are our busiest in terms of traffic. We also get a ton of new user signups over the weekend which means that our numbers get a huge bump every Monday. So I reeeeally look forward to Mondays.

  • Locomotive Breath

    My Texan cousin-in-law and I were partying in SoCal recently and we got chatting about favorite songs. He mentioned Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull was his favorite. I just heard it for the first time, and, um, wow! If you’re into hard charging gritty 70’s tube amp rock then you want to check this out. I love the constantly driving bass guitar in the background.

  • It's a beautiful day in socal!

    There’s something about Southern California that is totally awesome. I dunno what it is. No, I’m not moving here, I love Seattle. But California rocks too in it’s own special way!