:: The Ruminant ::

The Ruminant's first visitor, amayamaya, left a nice comment requesting more posts. Just as retailers often display their first dollar, I am going to display this first comment for a while. Rest assured, amayamaya, when I get my thirty minutes of fame, you will have your fifteen. I hope I'm not too selfish to keep some of the fame for myself.

:: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 ::

I'm sure all the other nerds have already noticed this, and maybe I've noticed it before and forgot about it... At the end of the "Hotel Royale" episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation, Capt Picard says to Commander Riker, "perhaps, like Fermat's theorem, it is a puzzle we will never solve."

Of course, Fermat's last theorem was finally proved in 1995 by Andrew Wiles. Writing about the future is always a gamble in terms of credible suspension of disbelief. The writers no doubt expected this sentence retain its weight for more than just a couple of years.


:: Chris 1:00 PM [+] ::
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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone, but just so you know, Erin and I had Christmas yesterday, so you are all suckas having Christmas a day late. I got Erin a Creative Nomad MP3 player, which kicks ass. I got an HP PSC 1300 multi-function printer, which kicks ass. I can print, scan, make copies, and print digital photos directly from the memory card [pause for drooling]. For dinner we made a Christmas chicken, some unspellable potato dish, and a giant pot of banana pudding. All of our relatives sent us candy, and my sister gave us a pizza pizzazz, which we have already used to cook pizza. We are absolutely overflowing with chocolate and sugary things. I will no doubt have diabetes by the New Year.

There's a lot that I've been meaning to write about, but I've let this blog slip. I've been learning Japanese. It is a fascinating language. Learning it almost feels like playing a video game. I get really absorbed in it. I can now say and understand sentences such as:

"How many pencils do you own?"
"I own three pencils."
"How much does this pencil cost?"
"Will you please give me the pencil?"
and so on.

I've also been hacking the hell out of my computer. I got a memory upgrade a few weeks ago, so I now have 256MB (the max for my laptop). My system finally works properly under RedHat 9. Everything works great. It is orgasmic. I've spent many hours upgrading all my libraries and software packages, often to the CVS versions. I'm out of control. I was planning to document everything, to keep track of what I needed to do to make things work (I have modified the source of a few packages). I just did so much so fast that it may be hopeless now. Ah well. The system works: I can write my thesis, draw my diagrams, download/view pictures and movies from my digital camera, print and scan on my new printer, and maintain my CV and job application letters in OpenOffice. I am now also running Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird, which are so wonderful they nearly replace the need for sex.

Our good friend The Chairman (Michael) came up to visit us in Edmonton a few weeks ago, and we all took a trip to Banff, in the Canadian rockies. It was gorgeous. I took lots of great photos, and scanned them with my schnazzy new printer. I made a little photo album on this page:

Photos: Our Trip to Banff

We found a number of interesting things in Banff, but by far the most perplexing was this ad from a local tourist guide:


What mental pictures does this image evoke...? It gets even worse when you see full ad. Bon apetit.
:: Chris 1:31 PM [+] ::
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