Sunday

So Dani is gone for the week to China! Extremely jealous here. The long flight over would be a pain, but just to go is amazing. She called at 7 this morning to let me know she made it (24 hours of travel straight!!). Its kinda fun to think that she was calling me from the future, since it was sunday night there. Molly definitely misses her. She complains about it to me a lot, tho I can't really speak dog...

Oh and ants have infested my kitchen. Like big suckers. The kind that I think could carry me away. I'm unleashing hell on them today. Killed 50 in the last 24 hours. Have 9 ant traps out of them too. Bring it on.

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Here are some great photos of "When its OK to say 'OH SH*T'". We're trying to figure out what ones are photoshopped and what are real. So far the last one is definetly photoshopped.

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The problem with petrol.

As gas prices keep going up, painfully, I keep hearing a lot of complaints on the radio/news along the lines of 'well gas prices are up again, good thing we don't live in (some other city), because they are up 2 more cents than we are'. They then report on the price of barrels of oil being the cause (duh). What I don't understand is why no one is really doing anything about it. Sure there are hybrid cars that give you 60 extra miles per charge, on the highway, with no wind and only one passenger, but my question is why do we even need gas any more? In the age of computers, AI, world wide knowledge, you'd think someone has made an engine that runs off of air. Have these people done something like that and been silenced by the larger petrol companies? How have ideas not become front page news? Why do we just accept the price of gas as it is and continue to drive more and fill up more? Why can't we shake off the metaphoric chains and rebel against the gas companies and our cars? THere has to be a solution out there! I've had a feeling of annoyance for a while now due to gas prices that I need to let out. Something has to be done. We can't keep paying for gas the way it is. I'm open to ideas. Lets hear them!

Link Wednesday

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For those of you who arn't happy with the normal mac or dreaded pc icons, heres a page with like 100 sets that you can use.

Icons

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A modern cell phone:



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Project Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes.

Google always has a good April 1 idea.

Sarnia at Night

I got the chance to head out in the bitter cold of the night to the river in Sarnia with my brother-in-law Nathan to play with some night photography. Here are some of my shots that looked decent.

LInk Monday

Ok here is a different website idea. This guy has a list of things that he will do plus a price to do it. Things include everything from going to other parts of the world to sending you an empty envelope to taking a photo of the sky at that moment. He's listed the people who have paid him to do some of these things too! Its a really weird, interesting idea!

http://davidhorvitz.com/if

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Back a couple months ago, a group called "Improv Everywhere" staged what they called 'Frozen Grand Central' where over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents suddenly froze in place for 5 minutes during a busy day at the train station. The reactions of people are funny. Watch the video here:

improveverywhere.com.

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Do you like those fridge magnets that let you make sentences and dumb sayings?? Well here's an interactive one online!

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A short history of nearly everything.

I'm currently reading a book called 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', which is literally a quickly condensed book that outlines what is in a handful of science textbooks. Basically think of everything you had to ready throughout highschool science put into one book that is made easy to read, add a bit of humorous writing and some indepth 'behind the theories' study and you get this book. I would totally recommend this to anyone who has an interest in science, history, space, living, etc.
I personally liked science in school but I'm learning more from this one book than all the classes combined. Right now I'm into a chapter about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Its seriously mind-numbing, but in a good way.
Here's a part that I though was just amazing to think about:

"You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you're an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10¹⁸ joules of potential energy - enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point. Everything has this kind of energy trapped within it. We're just not very good at getting it out. Even a uranium bomb - the most energetic thing we have produced yet - releases less than 1 percent of the energy it could release if only we were more cunning."

To me that is just astounding to imagine.

R.A.K.

RAK is short for Random Acts of Kindness. This is an idea that was started with a single flower. A few years ago I was driving with my friend Mike and a few others downtown London when we were stopped at a light. I looked at the car beside us which the sole occupant was a girl in her 20s. She looked kind of bored, and not really happy. In our car I had a flower I had just picked randomly (I really can't recall why I would have had it). So while the stoplight was red, I jumped out of our car, knocked on her car's window and proceeded to give her the flower while only saying (while smiling), "This is for you". Then I walked away. Thank goodness she actually opened her window and didn't think I was some freak trying to steal her car. When I was walking away I caught her smiling and looking slightly bewildered. That was the first act that sparked our idea of Random Acts of Kindness.
Mike and I have been talking about this idea since then. The basic concept is to randomly help someone or make someone's day happier by doing something and doing it totally anonymously. Essentially doing good unto others with no thought of reward. It seems in our present day this is an odd concept for most people.
This past Christmas eve a group of us went to a retirement home that is near my parents house around 10pm with a box of small gifts (they were just fun gifts of chocolate, candles, etc all wrapped up fun) for all the nurses who had to work there overnight. We handed them out without telling the nurses who we were, but just thanked them for working that night away from their families. We got a lot of surprised looks and smiles (and heard that one of the nurses started crying because she was so shocked by our idea), but hopefully made their night a bit better. We spent maybe $40 total for 15 gifts.

I'm not posting this to gratify myself in any way. This is just to get ideas going in whoever reads this. We think the world would be better off if more people just randomly did an act of kindness for no personal gain. I hope to post some of our activities on here when I can think of doing so, just to keep people informed of what could be going on.

What spurred this post was my morning. We had a great snowstorm last night, got over a foot of snow in some places. After shoveling my driveway and getting dani off to work and walking molly, I jumped into my nice new 4 wheel drive and drove around our area (mostly just to play with the 4x4), but I happened to see 2 cars stuck and helped push them out, then saw an older lady shoveling her drive and just walked up with my shovel and started shoveling. She was really surprised and said that she was waiting for her son-in-law to come with a plow later in the day, but I told her I could help for now. I shoveled the end of the drive (where the snow plow left a good 3 feet of heavy snow), then just left without even telling her my name. She asked to pay me, but I just told her to have a nice day and left. I can only hope that this put a happy thought into her head and made her day just a little bit better.

Imagine if even a small percentage of the world just randomly thought of other people and not themselves, and did something nice. Just smile at someone. Hold a door open. Give a gift to a stranger who doesn't look happy. Shovel a drive way. Its easy to do.

I'll try to keep this updated about our actions.