johnbowman.net

Clearly, any non-HD TV would be too small to play this game. So would most dens.

YouTube - Dramatic Chipmunk

According to the Most Read tab on TheStar.com, the fifth [correction] most read article is entitled All is not what it seems, Gemini.

That’s right. The horoscope.

Another Google Docs/Google Maps test, using data from the Large Fire Database

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A proof-of-concept, displaying geographical information stored in a Google Docs spreadsheet on a Google Map, as described here:

Official Google Maps API Blog: Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets

The current version, with a lot more information but without a database or spreadsheet back-end, is on the CBC site.

(Grrr… I gotta change my layout. Curse these narrow fixed-width columns.)

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Now Magazine printed my letter to the editor this week, but their edits robbed the original text of its unique sentence structure, grammatical freedom and “clever” use of scare quotes.

Here’s what appeared in the paper:

Chancing the TTC

The TTC portion of your bike issue’s commuter challenge is absolute nonsense.

I simply don’t believe that your writer had to wait 33 minutes just to get on a train at Dundas station in rush hour. It doesn’t ring true.

The route he chose to get to St. Clair and Lansdowne isn’t even the fastest available. Why take the St. Clair streetcar all the way from Yonge to Lansdowne? Take the subway from Yonge and Bloor to Lansdowne station and then take the 47 bus north. That certainly wouldn’t take 75 minutes.

The TTC didn’t stand a chance in your challenge.

John Bowman
Toronto

Here’s what I sent them:

The TTC portion of your “NOW commuter challenge” is absolute nonsense.

I simply don’t believe that your writer had to wait 33 minutes just to get on a train, even at Dundas station, even in rush hour. It doesn’t ring true.

And the route you chose to get to St. Clair and Lansdowne isn’t even the fastest route available. Why take the St. Clair streetcar all the way from Yonge to Lansdowne? Take the subway from Yonge/Bloor to Lansdowne station and then take the 47 bus north. That certainly wouldn’t take 75 minutes.

The TTC didn’t stand a chance in your “challenge.”

John Bowman
Toronto

The New York Times has a great piece today about retirees’ love of video games.

In the first photo, a nun is playing Bookworm. I bought that game for my mom a couple Christmases ago, and few months after us kids gave my parents their first computer. I don’t think she’s stopped playing since.

The second photo shows 63-year-old man competing in a “Nintendo Wii bowling league.” My parents bowl. I could imagine them getting into this.

But here’s the problem with Wii Bowling: With a few hundred Lego bricks and what appears to be nine lines of code, you can make a robot that can bowl a perfect game. Every time.

If all it takes to be the best in Wii bowling is to imitate a robot swinging the controller every 15 seconds, it’s not much of a game, is it?

The following appears on page two-twoty-two of jPod:

“Years ago I read in a psychology book about this experiment in which people were asked to spit into a saucer and then drink back the spit—still warm from their mouths. Most people couldn’t do it, because the moment spit leaves your body, it’s not you any more. That’s what it’s like seeing yourself on TV—it’s like drinking your own spit. It’s not nice.”

Well, I don’t think it’s that bad.

I still haven’t watched the video of myself on The Agenda, though.

A surprising number of my friends have contacted me saying they’d seen me on the show. They were just watching TVO when I came on.

Salon has renamed their roundup of political opinion on the blogs, from the Daou Report to The Blog Report.

Biters. This is The Blog Report.

Ah, well. It wasn’t the most original idea in the first place. Kinda like Mr. Furley asking “What are we going to call Jack’s bistro?”

“That’s it!”

“What’s it?” (Rip-off of “Who’s on First” follows.)

Yesterday, John Hodgman made a joke about a newspaper so conservative that the only comics it ran were Mallard Fillmore, Little Orphan Ayn Rand and Garfield.

Today… this.

(Found in the comments on Hodgman’s blog.)