I’m an idiot

I had planned to blog while travelling here in Ecuador. When we arrived, I realised that I had left my laptop power adapter at home. Great. Now I have about 2 hours of laptop power for the rest of the trip. Oh, woe is me!

3 days in Guangzhou

Hong Kong 2011-11-14-16, a set on Flickr.

Sorry – fell behind while we were in China. We spent Monday-Wed in Guangzhou/Huadu. I had a chance to show Mrs Dragonspeed the office that I helped get setup when I visited 5 years ago. We also got to visit with our niece and nephew. A fun, but somewhat dusty and smoggy visit. Enjoy the photos 🙂

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2010. That’s about 31 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 48 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 826 posts. There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb.

The busiest day of the year was February 27th with 193 views. The most popular post that day was Some incredible Tsunami Photos.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were [some spam referral site], fishingwithrod.com, photography-on-the.net, photographybb.com, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for tsunami, bog rosemary, judo, aldabra tortoise, and cube farm.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Some incredible Tsunami Photos December 2004
4 comments

2

Vancouver in the Fog January 2009
9 comments

3

World Police and Fire Games Judo was great! August 2009
3 comments

4

Changu Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania July 2009

5

Paris at Night June 2008
4 comments

Freddy Mercury is Probably rolling over in his grave

The Muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody

Thanks Dave – for digging that up!

For the Chemistry geeks out there – Oxygen

Sucks to be an oxidizer some days.

Some Pictures from Lanzhou

I’m in Lanzhou China for work for a couple of weeks.  It’s a very interesting city.

 

Here are some pics from my first couple of days in town:

The view from my hotel room

Chilies drying on the line near where I work

I’m always fascinated by the creative ways people find to transport things here

Some delicious sichuan style pork ribs that we had for lunch at a local restaurant

My colleague, me and the restaurant owner
   

The last picture has an interesting story…  We came into the restaurant to eat lunch and since the owner saw me with my camera, he wanted a picture with us… what the heck…sure.  We took the picture and then continued with lunch.  After lunch I went to pay the bill and he indicates that there is no charge…  So, I guess my photography skills are paying off finally 🙂

Cheers from Lanzhou!

Technorati Tags: Lanzhou, mountains, China, travel, hospitality, photography

67.9 Million sure would make a nice bonus

CEO at Goldman Sachs Christmas Bonus:  67.9M USD broken down into 26.8M in CASH
and 41.1M in stock.

67.9 MILLION!

OK – break’s over… back to work…..

Sigh.

Technorati Tags: obscene, bonus, financial

Hot dog eating contest – quotable quote!

Today in New York they had the annual hot dog eating contest, and an American won it for the first time in 8 years (should be proud or ashamed if you’re American?)

What got me from the New York Daily News article was this quote from the “rookie of the year” known as “Rios Grande”…

“I stopped eating with about three minutes left on the clock. “I got real bad hiccups, and it started to come up a little bit, so I stopped eating. I wanted to maintain my dignity.”

I hope I’m not the only one that sees the irony in ANYONE in a hotdog eating contest hoping that they could maintain their dignity. 

I laughed so hard I almost choked on the hotdog I was eating 😉

Technorati Tags: contest, hotdog, dignity, july4th

Surrey Named as Canada’s Cultural Capital

Say WHAT?

Perhaps culture is defined as drug using homicidal car theft?

m’kay.

Happy Birthday George!

Friday June 22nd will be the 250th birthday of the man after whom our city is named.

 Happy Birthday George Vancouver!  It’s been a good quarter millenium.   You don’t look a day over 150 🙂

Bring Back Pluto!!! – Vote rigged!

Bring back Pluto!  We want Pluto!  Bring back Pluto!

OK, it’s not as dramatic as the title would indicate, but only 10% of eligible members voted in the vote to cast out poor Pluto.  Many couldn’t vote, because they weren’t in Prague on the last afternoon of a conference.  I’ve been to conferences.  The last afternoon is usually busy with people packing up, NOT voting to cast out a planet 😦

Bring back Pluto!  We want Pluto!  Bring back Pluto!

Farewell Pluto – We hardly knew ye.

Pluto and Charon dancing during happier times:

Pluto is out.  Not good enough to be a planet they say <sniff>

All that memorizing in school – for naught.

Pluto’s speech after hearing the news.

Oh well – we’ve always got this guy:

By the definition applied by the IAU even EARTH won’t be a planet for long 😦

What if the movies were real?

What if the things in movies actually happened on the dates the movie paces them at…..

Ladies and Gentlemen:  The Movie Timeline

Interestingly, the same year I was born, Austin Powers was frozen in time.  Coincidence?

How to find Lost objects

just came across this useful little online book called “How to Find Lost Objects” You can even buy it from Amazon, if you want something to be there with you to help calm you while you look.

 

I’m hoping this will help me find things that I “misplace” as I seem to do it fairly frequently 😦

Thanks to Cool Tools for the link!

Help this guy win a bet

This dude needs to get out see the sun more often. Apparently he has bet his friend that he can get 1 billion page views.  While I doubt it, check out his page and help him along.

Western Union halts Telegram Service

WE KNEW IT HAD TO HAPPEN ONE DAY STOP
WITH THE ADVENT OF CELLPHONES AND THE INTERNET TELEGRAM USE HAS DECLINED STOP
THE END OF AN ERA STOP

Western Union, sending telegrams since 1851 has ceased all telegram operations.

FADE TO BLACK STOP

5 Men in a Limo

I was just reminded of this great video:  5 Men in a Limo

Quite funny.

Calvin and Hobbes – So long ago.

Monday, Slate did a good article on Calvin and Hobbes.  I still miss that kid and his tiger 😦

Now he has a complete anthology!  1440 pages!  Bound hardcopy.  23 pounds.

Colorado Judge tosses out Moore suit against Bertuzzi

Ha!

It looks like if he wants to proceed, it’ll have to be up here, and we don’t give out judgements in the multi-millioon dollar range.  You can’t pick your location for your lawsuit just because it’ll get you more money.

E2=M2C4

Einstein’s famous equation (often misquoted as E = mc²) E² = m²c⁴ is 100 years old today.  Thanks Einstein for not allowing the education system to strangle your creativity…. Brilliant minds are hard to come by.