Month: December 2006

  • Cricket

    Um, not that I’m sitting at work hitting refresh on the BBC Sports site or anything… but ARE YOU GUYS SEEING THIS? The Poms are all out before tea on Day 5, and the Aussies need 168 off 36 overs. This is turning into a ripper of a match!

  • The UnSuggester

    Fun link from the Snook: The UnSuggester. You enter the title of a book that you have and it tells you which other books you’re least likely to own. He writes: “Interestingly, the first search I did was for The Book of Skulls. Among the unsuggestions are several books in our library – The Lovely Bones, Stitch ‘n Bitch, Little Women, Naked. Hmmm… Those are all yours…” I should upload our bookshelves. Obviously we’d blow the system’s algorithms.

  • Starbucks

    Huh. My boss Albert was on his way into the shop this morning when he noticed a woman at a stoplight with a coffee cup sitting on her car’s roof. He waved to get her attention and pointed at the cup. She called him over to thank him for the head’s-up… and gave him $15 in Starbucks gift cards. IT’S A PROMOTION. So if you see somebody driving around Sydney with a cup on their roof, let them know! Even if you don’t like their coffee, you can always give the cards to a homeless person.

  • Crossing the Nullarbor

    Photos of crossing the Nullarbor. It’s a lot less sparse than I expected. I’d still rather do it this way though…

  • Jingle Rock Bell

    Everyone gather around the piano for that Christmas favorite… Jingle Rock Bell! Warning: That song WILL be in your head for the next day.

  • The Putin Bride

    Whoa! Scientists in the UK have traced the polonium-210 that killed Alexander Litvinenko to a nuclear plant in Russia. DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNNNNN! And the Snook just sent me a link to this gem of a Slashdot comment:

    But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of Putin: is he the sort of man who would get the polonium-210 from his own nuclear reactor or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would get the polonium-210 from his own reactor, because he would know that only a great fool would put the evidence within reach. I am not a great fool, so clearly I can clearly not believe the evidence in Russia. But he must have known I was not a great fool, he would have counted on it, so I can clearly not believe the evidence in front of me.

    That is BRILLIANT.

  • Wii-Mania

    Wii-Mania has finally gotten the better of me. I haven’t been this excited about video games since Super Mario Bros. 3 came out for the NES. (Remember how there was a preview of it in that Fred Savage movie, where his autistic little brother won the Nintendo world championship? Ahhh, youth.) Anyhoo, we placed our pre-order yesterday, thus ensuring that we’ll get a machine when they come out on Thursday. Anybody up for a Wii-B-Q next weekend?

  • Shoe Hack

    Nice! My Nike+ iPod Shoe Hack got linked on Podophile, who described it as his “favorite DIY method.”

  • SURVEILLANCE!

    Oh, and this article on the possibility of people using your Nike+ sensor to STALK YOU? Is ridiculous. I doubt many runners wear their running shoes everywhere. And besides, if you know their habits well enough to place sensors wherever they’re going to be, you might as well just follow them around. It’s pointless. Besides, I watch Veronica Mars and everybody can be tracked by their cell phones anyway.

  • Overambition

    It appears that running a marathon in two weeks may have been a little, uh, overambitious. I just can’t help it; I’m signed up for two separate Nike+ iPod challenges (one to run the farthest in a month; the other to run 50 miles in the 25 days up to Christmas) and my competitive urge has kicked in. Tuesday night I actually set a new personal best for the mile (10:24) but as I was climbing the hill from Sydney Uni’s No. 2 Oval, I felt a sudden stab in my hamstring. Again. Crap. I ended up walking the rest of the distance home. I guess I’ve been ramping up the distance too quickly. I decided to give it a rest on Wednesday and Thursday. I also started rubbing Voltaren on the muscle a few times a day (since I can’t take ibuprofen anymore) and I’ve taken a couple Epsom salt baths. I also saw a massage therapist Thursday afternoon who gave my legs a thoroughly painful going-over. Friday I felt cautiously optimistic enough to try a short run. I went for a two mile run around Vic Park and tried to concentrate on taking shorter strides and not killing myself. I also ran 90% of it on the grass, which I figured would help. I still felt some pain, but it wasn’t really the muscular strain of before. (I think it was just soreness from the massage.) Afterwards I went to GNC to pick up some Endura. It’s nast but I’m forcing myself to choke it down a couple times a day. Does anybody else have any suggestions to get me back on the road as quickly as possible?