I haven’t actually talked about the fractals in my posts for a bit, but the one in the post bears mentioning, and it relates to the post as a whole.  You really need to click on this one and see it full sized.  It has a rainbow coloured fern/feather look to it that’s quite spectacular at full size.  Just click on it to embiggen.

Which brings us (eventually) to the main part of the post.  Remember a few years ago how digital photo frames were all the rage?  Every online electronic store, every photography store, department store, electronics retailer carried them.  You pretty much couldn’t walk through a mall without tripping over a few kiosks full of them?

Like some people, I ended up with a few, that I gave away or loaded up full of pictures, then mostly forgot about.  Never got around to loading new pics on them, and, well….  They’ve been collecting dust for a couple of years now.  It turns out, I like my family photos printed out, in a real frame.  As old-timey as that may sound.

Anyway, over Christmas I got given a free snow-globe from the Hallmark store when I bought a massive round of cards to send out.  It’s kinda a neat, in a trashy-hokey way, with a colour shifting LED, and a a little motor that stirs the glitter inside it.  I gave it to my toddler, who became instantly fascinated by it.  And the wife and I fell in love with its magical ability to zone out the wee one when we put her to bed.  Better than a shot with a tranquilizer dart.  Probably easier on the toddler too.

So how does this all tie together?  Fractals and digital picture frames and toddlers with high tech snow globes?

Well, the one problem with the snow globe is that it eats batteries.  So I got to thinking that what our wee one really needs is some kind of electric lava-lamp to help her get to sleep, and now I bet you can guess where this is going…

I loaded up one of the picture frames with a mess of different fractals, set it to random transition mode with the picture changing every 5 seconds, and BAMMO.  A plug-in-able mesmerizer for our precious that doesn’t eat batteries.

So, if you happen to have a toddler that has trouble getting to sleep, feel free to raid the collected fractals from here and give it a try.  Come on, when was the last time you actually turned on that digital photo frame anyway?

Fractals, Humour, Pointless Posts | No Comments »

A lot of people put out their “best of” lists at the end of the year/beginning of the new year.  This isn’t that.  This is my list of  “TV Shows, Videos, and Movies that I watched and enjoyed and you might not have heard of or enjoyed.”  If I did a “best of” list, it would contain a list of movies and videos that you cut cut and paste from a number of different people.  I’m just not that unique.

It contains films and TV series from this past year, as well as a few things that are a bit older, and a brief description of them.  I got thinking of it when a friend visited yesterday and we got talking about videos and I started mentioning some of the stuff I had watched last year he might be interested in.

The main common thread is that these are all things I watched (or re-watched) in 2011 and enjoyed, and think that other people might enjoy too.  If it contains things you’ve never heard of, then those are the first things you’ll want to try out. Read the rest of this entry »

Fractals, Video | 2 Comments »

I was updating the software the runs this blog (a slightly customized version of the sturdy and reliable WordPRess that I have installed on a shared host), when I happened to notice that I haven’t actually posted anything since the middle of October.  In fact, it’s been a day over two months since I last posted anything.

That isn’t to say I haven’t written anything here, just that I haven’t completed anything I was writing and actually posted it.

I could blame a busy work schedule (true) and a busy home life with my wife and daughter (also true), and I’ve also been getting out more and off visiting friends since I swore off social networking sites (again, also true).

But really, what it comes down to I haven’t had anything really inspire me enough to sit down and crank out a full post.

And that includes today.  Sort of.  I don’t have much to say really, other than…

With the Christmas season on us, I find myself in a warm house, with a loving wife and daughter.  Everything else, the daily grind of the office, and all of life’s other annoyances, are small in comparison.

I don’t think of this as a religious time of year.  For me, it’s a family time of year.  And with that in mind, I just want to wish everyone the same joy in being around the people they love, that I’ve come to be privileged with.

Happy Holidays to all.

Philosomifizing, Pointless Posts | No Comments »

So, a few weeks ago I mentioned that Facebook had crossed my annoyance vs. usefulness threshold, and that I would essentially be no longer using the service.  Or, at the very least, scaling way back on how much I was using the service.  Given how pervasive the service is, and how much a role it plays in the lives of many people I know, I thought it would be worth following up on how my plan is working out.

In a nutshell, very well, thank you very much.  And actually, the changes I’ve made go somewhat deeper than I had initially envisaged. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Culture, Philosomifizing | No Comments »

Went out camping this weekend with my wife and daughter.  It was a bit of a last minute thing, really didn’t decide we were going to do it until late in the week, when we saw how good the forecast was, and I had to hold off actually leaving until almost noon on Saturday because of work commitments – not commitments I had made, but others had made on my behalf.   If it had been up to me, we would have left Friday evening and had a couple of nights under the stars with a full day in between.

One of the great things about Canada is how freaking huge this country is.  People from other parts of the world have a lot of trouble grasping the reality of the enormity of this nation, coupled with a lack of population density.  If you’re from Europe, Asia, the US, or even from Africa, it’s difficult to conceptualize the vast emptiness of most of this country.  Huge chunks of countryside with almost no development or human impact. Read the rest of this entry »

Philosomifizing, Pointless Posts | No Comments »

So I popped into Facebook this morning to take a quick look at the news feed, and, well, it was fairly brutal.  I immediately posted a rash (and most likely untrue, at least in the short term) comment that I would be abandoning the platform in favour of G+.  The thing is, the latest re-design is only a small part of the reason why I’m seriously contemplating ending my “relationship” with Facebook.

In fact, I’m thinking of abandoning the whole artificial construct of the large commercial Social Networks entirely, and I have a number of reasons that have been brewing at the back of my mind for a while.
Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Online Culture, Rants | 6 Comments »

A few days ago I got my invite to Google+, the big G’s latest attempt at building out a social networking service.  The invite came (of course) from a longtime friend, who rates as even more of an Early Adopter than me.  I’d been reading about it since before it had even launched – it was something that had been rumoured, then Alpha-ed, and now it’s being Beta-ed.  I was intrigued by it, partly because of the rumoured features.  But also because Google had been letting rumours slip for so long, in a not so subtle whisper marketing campaign to build up anticipation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Fractals, Online Culture | No Comments »

UPDATE: Wuala has changed their program and no longer offers the ability to trade local storage for extra storage. This totally changes the equation, and essentially makes the service useless to me. Just thought I’d mention that. -Oct 12, 2011.

Synchronized online storage is one of those things that sounds way geekier than it really is.  As a result, it’s one of those things that less people use than should – a lot of people could get a lot of benefit from “Cloud Storage” – if only they really know what it is and what it does.

Think of it this way.  Imagine you have a file folder on your computer with a limited amount of storage space. It acts just like any other file folder.  You can drag and drop files into it.  If you’re a bit savvier, you can even set backups to update to it automatically.  Now imagine you can access that exact same folder, with all it’s files, from any computer you wish – so long as you have the password for it. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Online Culture | 5 Comments »

Due to one of those weird “Only in the corporate world” things, I got a bonus because, essentially, someone else didn’t screw up.  Wasn’t for anything great I had done.  So, I’m having that person over for a BBQ this afternoon (which will probably be done by the time I get around to finishing and posting this), and went and spent the money on a new toy. (NOTE: I actually didn’t get around to clicking “publish” for almost two weeks.)

What I got was an eeePad Transformer from ASUS, with the optional keyboard dock and a slip cover for the tablet portion. Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff, Online Culture, Philosomifizing | No Comments »

I got to thinking about this subject the other day as I was agonizing over the purchase of a replacement mouse on one of my systems.  My wife claims she “gets it,” but I suspect she secretly gets a chuckle about the sheer amount of time I can spend agonizing over the purchase of something as simple as a new mouse or keyboard.

 

The part of her that “gets it” is in tune with the fact that I spend an enormous amount of time at the computer – and hey, it pays the bills so it qualifies as a justifiable work expense.  At the same time, even I’ll admit that spending my spare time for weeks on end reading online reviews, dry testing display models in stores, even borrowing friends keyboards/mice for short periods of heavy practical use, might fall into the category of “a little extreme.” Read the rest of this entry »

Computer Stuff | 4 Comments »