The current countdown number is zero.

And thus ends another chapter of my life.
posted by Pi at 3:30 PM |

 
This is the perfect article to read while eating my beef stir fry.
posted by Pi at 10:05 PM |

 
Quote of the day
Exchanged during the Toronto Blog Meetup between Jen and Brent.
Jen: People who write blogs are very...um...
Brent: Articulate?
Jen: Yes, articulate.
posted by Pi at 10:04 PM |

 
I have a few decisions to make regarding the Toronto International Film Festival. Maybe you can help me look through the list of movies and suggest films for me to see.
posted by Pi at 8:37 PM |

 
I was about to go to sleep, but some links from memepool got me all excited so I can't go to sleep until I post about them.

I like to look at patterns and oddities in the English language. Here are some words with the strangest properties I could have ever imagined. Some properties are even more preposterous than baseball statistics these days. If you're interested in further mysteries of the English language, perhaps I can interest you in Eunoia, the shortest word to contain all the vowels. Please note, that 'facetious' contains not only all the vowels, but with the added bonus of them in alphabetical order.

This search engine uses a relational database and displays the results graphically. It now makes it excessively easy to play "six-degrees of separation" with web sites. How many links does it take to get from me to you? (Aside: the guy on the radio just said, "We're going to play a game of six-degrees of separation next," on Edge102. Freaky!)

On a related note, have you ever tried to play the Google game? Type in two valid words into Google and have it return zero hits. While playing the game, I stumbled upon one such set accidentally. I mistyped "poster" and typed "poser" instead. My second word was "mitochondrial". This brought up a set of 15 hits and I knew I was onto something. I slowly morphed "poser" into another word using very loose synonyms. I found that if I paired "mitochondrial" with the word that Austin Powers put the "grr" into, I come up with no hits, except for the sponsored link. The reason I'm not typing in the second word is because when Google indexes this page next time, it will turn up a hit on this page and the search words will no longer produce a null set. I don't want that happening. What other pairs can you find?
posted by Pi at 2:18 AM |

 
On the controversy surrounding Microsoft sponsoring the University of Waterloo's new online course.

"The choice of languages among programmers is a very heated debate, with overtones of chauvinism and an almost religious-issue fervour. I dare say that the same critics would be silent (or even bored) if we were discussing E&CE's adoption of a vendor-specific integrated circuit design system or a vendor-specific microwave propagation modeling tool." - spoken by Tony Vannelli, Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Even though I never had him as a professor during my days there, I always knew that Dr. Vannelli was a cool guy.
posted by Pi at 6:24 PM |

 
Can you believe it? Here's an article that actually shows some responsible reporting. It mentions global warming, greenhouse gases, and erratic weather all in the same breath, but cautions that there is no concrete evidence that links all three. Finally, someone who presents an argument from both sides and doesn't perpetuate unsubstantiated theories as fact. Why can't all articles be this balanced? For example, the imbalance in this article angered me so much that I sent a letter to the editor (which was heavily edited).
posted by Pi at 2:29 PM |

 
Spider-Man is a f*cking awesome movie. Saw it again for the third time this weekend and stayed until the end of the credits for a little treat. Seeing the movie gives me a similar feeling to watching U2 perform live: they are both shows that I had dreamed to watch over 10 years ago, fulfilling two of my boyhood dreams. Now if only I can convince Cindy Crawford to sleep with me, my boyhood fantasies would be complete.
posted by Pi at 12:48 AM |

 
I didn't know the Danforth tasted like Strongbow.
posted by Pi at 3:25 PM |

 
Let X represent the current count. Let CD[X] represent the current CD in my CD player.

CD[X] = Madonna, The Immaculate Collection
CD[X-1] = Radiohead, The Bends

A strange transition, but at least I put in CD[X] a day after CD[X-1].
posted by Pi at 1:07 PM |

 
Oh man, I feel like shit right now. Thank you everyone.
posted by Pi at 10:00 PM |

 
This animation is me. The only problem is that I'm only at the prelaunch stage now.
posted by Pi at 12:41 AM |