The f-bomb that keeps on ticking

What do actor Tom Hanks and the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama have in common?

They both used the f-bomb in October 2012.

Tom Hanks purposefully on a talk show while speaking in character from one of his roles in the movie Cloud Atlas and the Dalai through a transcription error while speaking at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Buy American? President Obama bought French game Just Dance 3 for Christmas

According to a tweet from French multinational computer gaming company Ubisoft, United States President Obama obtained their game Just Dance 3 as a family Christmas present. So much for Buy American! What's that about Do what I say, but not what I do....

The Ubisoft tweet also caught the attention of the venerable Forbes with this headline
"President Barack Obama Endorses Ubisoft's Just Dance 3 Videogame For Christmas". Forbes missed the obvious Buy American contradiction.

Government of BC says "Canada Starts Here"

The Victoria Times Colonist newspaper reported on October 8, 2011 that the Government of BC "changed the province's international brand of 'Canada's Pacific Gateway' to 'Canada Starts Here'".... The slogan seems to have been unveiled in late September 2011 as part of a jobs plan announcement by Premier Christy Clark.

I wonder how the East Coast feels about that since they have more of a claim to that slogan than BC does.

A search of Google for "Canada Starts Here" reveals some interesting other uses by other parts of the country:

Canada Starts Here: The Great Waterway, a site promoting Ontario's 1000 Islands region

A Pro-Life Canada Starts Here, the tagline and motto of the Student Life Link site for high school students against abortion.

Your Fly-in Fishing Trip to Canada Starts Here! if you're into fly-in fishing trips in Ontario

And who's going to argue with Fodor's Travel Intelligence which clearly states in its Newfoundland and Labrador Travel Guide section "Canada starts here, from the east, on the island of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. Known as Mile One, the province's capital of St. John's is North America's most easterly point and its oldest city."

Uploaded "Shades of Asperion" excerpt to SoundCloud

You have some technological angst and consider yourself a barbarian among the automated? Have a listen to the excerpt from my "Shades of Asperion" on SoundCloud. I only discovered after I'd finished the piece that there's a hospice in the state of Georgia named Asperion, along with a hotel in England, both of which might be haunted by their own shades. Given the coincidental occurrence of the second Victoria Steam Expo, I might have been channeling some of my steampunk's muse into this piece.

Extreme Symphony Sports, only in Victoria, BC

In what's being called a first, brave members of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra will take part in the first Victoria Extreme Symphony Sports event following the mountain bike JumpShip event on a barge in the Inner Harbour on June 10, 11 and 12, 2011. This is all in anticipation of a new program as part of Victoria Symphony Splash, details as yet to be released by organizers.

Ok, I made all that up, but to give you an idea of the possibilities I've concocted this artwork from a couple of items from the Microsoft Office clip art gallery.

Have you tried the new Gmail Motion?

That was a great April Fool's gag from Google: Gmail Motion (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html). I was intrigued when I saw the "New! Gamil Motion Beta". That exclamation mark gets me every time. And if it's from Google, it must be true. Well, it was truly an April Fool's experience, especially the part about Google Docs Motion, the next breakthrough in collaborative document management.

Has The Bieb (Justin Bieber) lost his voice?

Did anyone else hear (pardon the pun) that The Bieb (Justin Bieber) lost his voice today (April 1, 2011)?

Uploaded excerpt from The Paint Machine Mix to the Internet Archive

While at a local Home Hardware store, I recorded with permission the sound of their paint mixing machine and incorporated it in a highly altered state into this 22 second excerpt from my Paint Machine Mix now available for your listening pleasure at the Internet Archive.

Final Vancouver Police Museum t-shirt contest entry (third of three submitted)

I completed and entered my final Vancouver Police Museum t-shirt contest entry. There's only a day or two left to vote.

Designed by David Mattison

Another Vancouver Police Museum t-shirt contest design entry (second of three to be submitted)

Here is my second Vancouver Police Museum t-shirt contest design entry, the second of three I'll be submitting.

Designed by David Mattison

Vote for my Vancouver Police Museum t-shirt contest design (one of three to be submitted)

Hey, don't you just love a good t-shirt contest? Having failed to enter the one for the Victoria Symphony Splash, I heard about one the Vancouver Police Museum is running until July 30. I submitted one entry so far, "Don't Get Caught Speeding [stop sign] To the Vancouver Police Museum." You can see all the entries on the contest Web site at http://contest.vancouverpolicemuseum.ca/. Don't forget to vote for my entries!

Designed by David Mattison

Outdoor Photography Canada photo caption winner

Looks like a caption I submitted for a humorous photo won the day at Outdoor Photography Canada.

Lost repeats itself, see the beach where it was filmed

I'll bet some of you are as annoyed as I am that the Lost episode airing tonight, April 27, 2010, is a repeat. Hey, weren't we promised all new episodes until the two-part series finale? I want my money back.

Just to get you in the mood for next week's hopefully new episode, here's a photo I took on the Mokueia beach looking towards Kaena Point. This is one of the Oahu North Shore beaches where Lost was filmed.



And this is the end of the public road at Kaena Point as seen through Google Maps Street View. This is from a parking lot looking towards the start of the northeastern foothills of the Waianae Range that separates central Oahu from the Wainae coast.

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=21.578951,-158.237355&spn=0,0.00408&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=21.578951,-158.237355&panoid=lCYqJ5ftH2NiD9nnb0ljsg&cbp=12,184.47,,0,-8.37&source=embed&output=svembed&w=425&h=350]

Worldwide disappearance of pixels, global emergency declared

The worldwide disappearance of pixels from computer screens everywhere, that is, on a global scale, has led to the implementation of worldwide emergency measures. If you are able to read this, then your pixels are all right for the time being. If you are unable to read this, then it's time to clean your computer monitor, because today is April 1 and it's time for a bit of spring cleaning before your pixels really do disappear.

Duel of the Kraken Gods

When I first saw the trailer for the upcoming movie Clash of the Titans, I was struck by how much Liam Neeson's Zeus' character command of "Release the Kraken!" echoed Bill Nighy's Davey Jones' character declaiming almost the same or the same words in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Perhaps this is what you call a homage from one film to another. "Release the Kraken!" indeed.

A modest proposal: ban any and everything worldwide, including words, that violates the International Olympic Committee brand value

As a result of yet another news story about the Canadian Olympic Committee's (COC) pressure tactics against a small business owner in Vancouver that I blogged about in What, no flames allowed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics?, I've come up with a modest proposal.

I propose that any and everything that violates the International Olympic Committee's brand value be henceforth and irrevocably banned worldwide. This would include not just existing registered trade marks such as Toasterz and Eaterz, the very trademarks that the COC objected to, but also more famous ones such as the Calgary Flames name and logo, Ronson’s Lighter Fuel logo and any pizza joint worldwide that uses the word Olympic in its names, as well as words such as torch for flashlight in Great Britain and the Olympic Mountains in Washington State.

Since an Olympic event is held every two years, with the next one after the Vancouver Winter Olympics being the London Summer Olympics in 2012, and the IOC has demonstrated over the years that it is like the UN of the sports world, why don't we just avoid all the legal hassle of doing battle with them, bite the Olympic, er, sporting bullet, and take the opportunity to stretch our creative muscles.

How about a new nickname for Vancouver?

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Take the medal-counting poll for Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

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Copy Wars: China P88 vs Apple iPad, Dark Void computer game vs Avatar movie

You may have heard about the Chinese company, Shenzhen Great Loong Brother, that's threatened to sue Apple over some kind of claim that Apple's iPad is a clone of their product, the P88, which apparently has been on sale in China for the past six months. This Wired magazine article points out some of the silliness around the Chinese claim.

James Cameron's movie Avatar has also had its share of accusations of third-party influences, one the most interesting coming from those familiar with ayahuasca, a drug from South America that supposedly gives its users the illusion of being connected with the natural world. In Avatar, the Na'vi people of the planet Pandora achieve this feat through a direct physical connection by plugging the end of their hair braid into not only their Tree of Souls, but also into some animals. This Globe and Mail op-ed piece by Canadian filmmaker Richard Meech compares Avatar's symbiotic connection to the drug-induced, imaginary one of the Amazon "vine of the soul."

Now comes the computer game from Capcom called Dark Void. In Episode 1, Chapter 4, after falling through a long hole in a mountain, the hero (you) end up at the bottom and in a landscape that looks suspiciously like the floating Hallelujah Mountains of Avatar. In the movie the Na'vi use flying beasts to fly around and in Dark Void the heroes use rocket packs.

Probiotic yogurt bacteria invasion, take the 10 billion and counting poll

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