Wired Cola

INT. TLO and Me are CLEANING UP. The TV is off.

TLO: "The remote is asking me a question I don't understand."

Me: "What's the question?"

TLO: "It says, 'did that fix the problem?'"

Me: "Just say yes."

TLO: "I see you're of the Mill-ian school."

Late to the game as always, but Slate posted a story about stock photography which led me to the strange phenomenon of Everywhere Girl, who isn't the only everywhere girl out there, just the most famous.

The one devoted to pictures of shipping containers.

Yeah, I love it.

Road bike bottom bracket designs are starting to get esoteric, with world+dog using some form of external-bearing fun, and at least three incompatible new standards introduced in the last few years for putting those bearings back inside the bottom bracket: the already-abandoned Pinarello MoST, BB30, and Trek's magical Precision Fit Sockets (?!).

First, I found this video, courtesy Jack Shedd, of an ambidextrous pitcher facing off against an ambidextrous batter in "A" minor-league baseball. It's actually quite funny, as the two each attempt to switch stances for advantage (if you don't know, switch hitters in baseball are rare; switch-pitchers barely exist at all).

Don't bother reading this update. It has few links, so you'll have to Google everything.

Weight loss is slower than expected, but progress is being made. On Thursday night, with Rebecca away with her mother, I did the grisly "Wayne Gretzky 99" ride: 35 km to Richmond, race the Coastal Thursday Nighter, 35 km home. A metric century with a race in the middle. At least I was smart enough to bring lights for the ride home.

Note to self: if you have rat traps under your house, check them often, or else they will become the answer to the question "what's that horrible smell?"

Well, perhaps I won't sell out everything, but considering what I usually get paid for writing here, Matchstick's new buzz-for-Zunes program seems pretty nifty.

Yes, you may have heard at other blogs that Matchstick drives them insane. I have nothing bad to say about the same guys who gave me a Nokia phone a few years back (which is, incidentally, still working great for my parents).

Gord (who is once again, faster than me) tweeted the existence of Krabbésday, which is the day of the actual race that inspired Tim Krabbé to write The Rider.

Gizmodo has a video and photo tour of Lego's internal collection of almost every set they ever made.

It's just glorious. Like the narrator, there were some sets there where the simple sight of them brought me back to my childhood in a remarkably immediate way.

And since as all my friends know, I am a great fan of the environment, I present some recycled content. To wit, what I like to call the Ten Thousand Hour series.

I'm quite extraordinarily proud of that work. I'd particularly commend the review of Krabbé's "The Rider" to you, because I persist in the belief that it is an underappreciated piece of literature.