"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."
- Victor Hugo
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
- Matt Groening
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February 10, 2005
Either the W3 online tutorials are not exactly up to snuff, ,or I'm a lousy online student. It took me a good six hours to get the page to appear almost as it does here, but I did it. Why, you may be asking, is this new-and-improved page not posted? Simple: it only works in Explorer. I get something completely different in Mozilla, and I don't even want to try Opera or Navigator. Have no fear, I'll keep at it - it'd be done already, but my brother's in town.
Oh, I almost forgot. Has anyone out there ever tried to validate [X]HTML or CSS before? Punishing! I thought I'd play the keener and make my brand-new Notepad opus official, so I swung on over to the W3 validation page and got backhanded by over a hundred errors. Me and keen... never did mix too well. Ergo, on with the FML (Frankenstein Markup Language) for a few more days. You've known nothing else thus far; you'll be fine.
In other news: Soma FM. Hot. Damn.
For those keeping track of the vagaries of this chaos that is my life: I have not only received word from a potential employer (twice! From the same company! For two different positions!), but have secured myself an interview on the morrow. All I've got to say is, it's about time. I'd reached the point where I was beginning to question my value as a human being, let alone valid candidate for employment.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Gloom and doom - whatever. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that these last couple of months haven't excatly been idyllic - I finally admitted defeat in the medical benefits fiasco and made the trek to my dentist's office to pay some long-overdue bills. Oddly enough, despite the fact I'm an additional grand in the hole, I actually feel that a burden has been lifted from my shoulders. As of yesterday, I no longer have to think about Rainbow - at all.
*** Insert sound of knuckles on wood here ***
In fact, I'm more than happy to put that whole chapter of my life behind me; I'm certain it was far more punishing than positive. At times I feel that I am still affected on some level - I'm far more prone to distraction, and I know for a fact that my alcohol consumption levels are way up. Hell, I've got an interview tomorrow, and I'm sitting here half-corked at one in the morning... that's not Responsible Adult at all. 'Responsible Adult' is about the only thing out there that mixes with me worse than 'keen' does.
I suppose it is about time I did at least a modicum of growing up... in fact, I already have: I bought some new shoes today and my sister actually likes them. That's never happened before, I can assure you. The best I've ever scored was an: "Yeah, they're OK." I'm not painting any pictures here: let it be known that I've never heard a disparaging remark upon my choice in pedal apparel... although I've never heard a complimentary one, either.
Anyone heading to France in the near future? If you are, please³ play for me. I'd go myself, but I keep forgetting to become rich in this life.
February 9, 2005Here we go, sportsfans. I've completed my online courses in HTML and CSS, and am now going to attempt to rework my whole webpage into something resembling 'correct' coding. No more of this piecemeal 'whatever works' coding for me!
Well, that's the plan, anyway. I might just end up having to start over from scratch. We'll see.
February 5, 2005
Hmm. Awoke this morning to find that last entry. Not sure where it came from, or where I was going with it. I didn't even make that number up as part of some weird malt liquor/dope thought process: check it out.
I know, I know - your next question is "Malt liquor?" Yes, you read that correctly. The idea popped into my head yesterday afternoon, and although I fought it long and hard, I finally caved and picked up a couple of fourties. Don't worry, I didn't drink them by myself; a friend lent some assistance. Honestly not all that bad - there's not really any flavour at all, so it's easy to drink... as far as craziness goes: about average.
Definitely not to be a regular thing; I think once in a blue moon is plenty. I mean, if it's good enough for Lando Calrissian, it's good enough for me.
And with that, I've got stuff to do.
February 4, 2005
Diameter of the base of the CN Tower 66.6 m.
February 2, 2005
Lawsy me, am I jonesing for a smoke right now. Anyone who has quit smoking likely understands where I am coming from at this particular moment, but for those of you who have never smoked, let me put it this way: it is taking all the willpower I have to not walk out the door to the corner store and buy a pack. I'm actually salivating as I write this. Unbelievable. I've been pacing around the apartment for the last half hour, have picked up my shoes twice (and put them back down, thank you very much), and am physically twitching at this very moment. Hoo boy.
If you're reading this and are sympathizing with me, do me a favour: the next time somebody tells you how easy it is to quit smoking, kick them in the shins. Both of them. In the meanwhile, I'm gonna go do some pushups or something.
February 1, 2005
So I'm lying in bed this morning, listening to the 6AM news report (I couldn't sleep, but that's the boring part). I was feeling a little miffed about being awake at such an ungodly hour, but figured I might as well edify myself if I wasn't going to sleep. The first report that caught my attention was basically just a blurb: British Columbia has just passed some new laws protecting the Kermode bear - also known as the Spirit or Ghost bear, for reasons illustrated below:
No, it's not a polar bear; it's a relative of the much smaller black bear that typically hangs out in and around the city dumps here. Well, no. That's not entirely accurate. The Spirit bear is actually a black bear, but it has a recessive gene that makes its fur white - kind of like an albino. The report stated that the provincial government was seeking to protect the Spirit bear gene pool from depletion and potential extinction - which is cool, right?
The second half of the report woke me right up: apparently, conservation and environmentalist groups are up in arms about the these new laws. Yeah, you read that right, it's not the hunters who are upset... it's the nature lovers. They're angry because they believe the government is practising what they call 'wildlife racism'. They claim that the Spirit bear is being protected because it is white, and that the black bear is not because it is - as the name suggests - black.
This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time - and that's saying something. These laws have been enacted in order to promote diversity, not to aid the extermination of one species in favour of another. They're not even different species, for chrissakes! Ugh... I'm getting worked up again - the upside of hearing this report was that I was able to pay much more attention to the next one.
Y'all are familiar with Antonio Stradivari, I assume. Mm-hmm, the maker of Stradivarius violins (although that 'us' ending is just the Latinate form of his name, he never used it). Born 1644, died 1737. Over the course of his lifetime, he made about a thousand violins, of which only about six hundred survive today. All of these display tone quality that far supercedes that of any other violin ever made - even today.
Sure, he was obviously a genius at his craft and likely knew a few things about woodworking that were lost with his passing, but one would think we would've been able to at least match (i.e.: copy) his work. Think about all the technology we have at our disposal; think of all the violin afficionados who strive to learn this skill; think of all the studies that have been done on these violins. They have been measured, weighed, X-rayed, poked, prodded, played, loved, abused, and sometimes even lost, yet still we cannot imitate his work.
Well, first and foremost, violins are interesting in that they don't deteriorate with age, they improve. Kind of like wine, except they never turn into vinegar; they just keep sounding better and better. So Tony's got time on his side. However, some folks down at Columbia University have discovered something new: it seems that Stradivari's lifespan coincided with a mini-ice age that settled on Europe in the mid-to-late seventeenth century.
This is where it gets interesting: trees (well, all plants) grow faster when it is warmer, and slower when it is cooler, right? Right - this phenomenon is what causes tree rings to form. Therefore, during this period, trees ended up with a higher overall density; a characteristic which enhances the resonance of the wood, which thereby would enhance the tonal quality of any instrument made from such wood. Pretty cool, huh? They also suspect there is a layer of volcanic ash within the wood, which would also serve to increase the density.
This got me thinking: if this is all true, then isn't much of Stradivari's fame basically due to dumb luck? I don't mean to discredit the man, he obviously was a highly skilled craftsman, but this twist of fate gave his creations that certain je ne sais quoi that people have been trying to emulate for centuries. I can't help but think that it was this little bit of chaos (or serendipity, if you prefer the literary to the mathematical) that made his name immortal.
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