The Squid Zone

The great squid migration...

2009-12-30T17:15:22-05:00

People who don't follow me on Facebook don't know this, but the Squidette has been causing me to migrate from my smallest-room-in-the-house office to what used to be her office. She has moved to the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom will move to what was my old office after we do some renovations. This has caused me to start rifling through ye olde pile of crap. I've found a few interesting things so far: an old Blackberry alpha-numeric, bi-directional pager with email capability, vintage 1996 or so a phone message from March 1991 when I was a captain in the...

All I want for Christmas is a new star!

2009-12-29T09:49:09-05:00

I found this today over at Night Sky Girl's blog and it is very cool. A new star has been discovered in the Big Dipper (aka, Ursa Major). The Big Dipper is an easy constellation for star gazers... it's probably the first one we learn since the two stars that form the front of the "bowl" of the Dipper (Dubhe and Merak) are often referred to as "the pointers" since they lead the eye to Polaris, the North Star in the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper. Ursa Major has been observed for milennia. More correctly, the Big...

Merry Squidmas!

2009-12-24T09:42:44-05:00

A little Squidmas carol for everyone!

And there shall be less of me, redux

2009-12-22T21:33:54-05:00

Back in April I wrote that I wanted to be down to 220 lb (from 270 at the time and 278 in the summer) by Christmas. Well, I was failing at that until November, but I'm much closer now: 245 lb today and dropping about 2 lb a week now. I guess I might well make the target weight by spring. Sooo, I've met with some success, although I can't recommend the method: pancreatitis + pneumonia. Nothing like intense pain and drugs to shed those pounds. The former necessitated a major diet change, so it looks like the weight is...

The octopus cometh... part whatever

2009-12-22T08:30:44-05:00

I love finding this stuff on the web. If you click on the picture you'll be shuffled off to Animal Planet. Watch the video. It's a vid of a diver breaking what I understand is the cardinal rule of diving: don't poke into holes with anything you can't afford to lose (like your hand, or your face). It's interesting that the octopus goes for the mask. Although attacks by large cephalopods are quite rare, a common theme is that they go for the mask and regulator. I think that denotes a level of cunning that is rather scary.

On the 5th day of Christmas, the universe gave to Earth...

2009-12-21T13:01:24-05:00

This is extremely cool: You can read more technical details about this here at Bad Astronomy, so I will spare you the details. It's a cool video, watch it in HD if you can.

Tiger Woods fucks around, and I don't care... and neither should you

2009-12-20T09:08:13-05:00

The Great Tiger Story continues with an article in today's Ottawa Citizen that talks about how we shouldn't put athletes on a pedestal and how they've let us down before. Frankly, I am sick to death of those sorts of articles. Although the columnist is correct about "we shouldn't put athletes on a pedestal", I am not sure he understands WHY we shouldn't do so. It's not that the athlete might not live up to our expectations in sport. Sure, that happens - abilities wax and wane - but waning abilities doesn't seem to be what brings these people down....