http://scrimisms.com Presently suffering a dearth of witticisms Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:07:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The CBC Reports: Nobody feels worse than Mellisa Hollingsworth right now. The 29-year-old skeleton racer from Eckville, Alta., considered to be a lock for a podium finish at the Vancouver Olympic Games, had a medal slip through her fingers after a disastrous fourth run down the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre ... http://scrimisms.com/2010/02/20/to-canadian-athletes-who-do-not-own-the-podium/ The elevator door closed. Then it popped open half an inch and made a crunching sound. Then nothing. There were six of us and a dog in the elevator, and we weren’t going anywhere. I’d never been trapped in an elevator before, and found that my ... http://scrimisms.com/2010/02/15/trapped-in-an-elevator-with-my-valentine/ "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Physicist Richard Feynman, from the report on the Challenger disaster. This is obvious, and yet apparently easy to forget. It drives me nuts when I see corporations and governments spending marketing dollars to tell us ... http://scrimisms.com/2010/01/16/fooling/ =( http://scrimisms.com/2009/12/16/whats-wrong-with-this-picture/ The global corporation sells mass-production techniques, even in their branch plant version. To be profitable, however, mass production requires mass consumption—that is, the homogenization of the tastes, needs, values, and priorities of all the nations within which the firm and its subsidiaries operate. In the name of technical ... http://scrimisms.com/2009/12/13/lots-of-options/ I snapped this a couple of weeks ago at the locks on the Rideau Canal. I think it's one of the cooler pictures I've taken, though I can't claim it was totally on purpose. http://scrimisms.com/2009/11/29/a-duck-in-a-canal/ At work, I use a Mac and a Windows Vista machine every day. I also poke around on XP and Windows 7 from time to time. When I have to switch from using the Mac to using some flavor of Windows, I always wince a little bit. ... http://scrimisms.com/2009/11/22/don%e2%80%99t-want-no-holes-in-my-windows/ The prevailing story on the Balloon Boy episode is that it was a stunt designed to attract attention to the boy’s family and help them secure a reality television show about themselves. I don’t have an opinion on whether the it was a hoax or whether Falcon’s parents really ... http://scrimisms.com/2009/10/24/chekhov-on-the-balloon-boy/ We watched the movie Primer the other night. It’s about a couple of engineers who invent a limited kind of time travel in their garage. It was shot on a budget of $7000 and doesn’t have any special effects or flashy action sequences, and all of the performances ... http://scrimisms.com/2009/10/18/going-back/ It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and the grocery store was very busy today. As we went about our shopping, we kept hearing, on the P/A, variations of "Mr. Smiley, telephone, line 1 please." This call was repeated every few minutes the entire time we were in the store. My ... http://scrimisms.com/2009/10/10/smiley-needs-a-cellphone/