resistance to persistence

A wonderful find at Marshalls on a recent shopping trip to the States. If you want to show that you’re rocking hard all the time even when you’re relaxing at home, let these statues “throw the horns” for you.

Poladroid makes your images look like desaturated polaroids. If you’ve got some fond memories of the now defunct polaroid cameras, download poladroid for your mac and turn digital pics into something that feels old and familiar.

What a day. Sometimes fun things can happen without even planning them. What normally would have been a quiet Sunday turned into an adrenaline filled day.

The morning started with swim class for my daughter. At 8 months it’s fun to take her swimming and the fearful neck clasping hugs she gives are so sweet. Special times.

After that I rushed home to head out on the next adventure. My buddy Kevin was in my driveway waiting to go see a Chuck Liddell MMA training session. $150 to take part in instruction, $30 to watch. We chose the watching obviously. I got a ton of photos which I’ll be posting soon. It was interesting to watch him go through some of his favorite moves (the overhand right, etc) and even some ground game. After 2 hours of that there was an hour of Q&A. Lots of expected questions -Randy vs Lesner, EliteXC Kimbo fiasco and was highly critical of EliteXC for buying up the smaller leagues and benching them. This came after taking questions from Mauro, one of the announcers on EliteXC. But overall it was positive and informative. We didn’t stick around for the autograph signing session.

Chuck Liddell and Showdown Joe

I then got a call around 5:30. My friend John was in the neighbourhood and he was going to stop in for a minute to show me something. He showed up on my doorstep with a Porsche Carrera 4S. Drool. A coworker lent it to him for the week while he was out of town. He took me for some hot laps around the city busting it open on some back industrial roads but there’s never a road long enough to try out the full speed of a driving machine like that. A good taste of adrenaline to end the day.

i noticed this watching Reggie Miller at the NBA All-Star Weekend events. He looks a lot like Barack Obama. I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so as a quick google turned up some results.

A cool way to view your Flickr photos

I came across an interesting Flickr viewer today. Airtight Interactive has created a Flickr TiltViewer. You can spin the plane of photos around, click an image to zoom and view it, move them around. It’s brings a 3D dimension to a 2D world of photography.

Try it out… view my Flickr portfolio in the Tilt Viewer

Control with the Mouse:
* Click images to zoom-in, click again to zoom-out.
* Click the background to zoom-out.
* Click the ‘reload’ button (below the image grid) to load a new set of images.
* Click the ‘flip’ button (bottom-right of a zoomed-in image) to see image details.

Hack the URL to view your own images if you want to try it out.

Walking my usual route this morning, I cut through Berczy Park by the Flatiron building on Front Street. I saw a bunch of film crew gear setting up, which is never a surprise in Toronto, but always interesting to watch. Reflectors were being setup, a camera was being mounted on a large boom arm. But no lighting yet. Usually there’s a lot of lighting setup and that got me interested to as I was walking past, I kept looking around. And then I spotted something very interesting in yellow and red.

I watch Amazing Race a lot. I love seeing the challenges, travelling the world, and reality tv in general. So I have the sight of the yellow and red checkpoint markers burned in my retinas. And that’s exactly what I saw today when I passed the park.

Amazing Race is in Toronto

The box has a lock on it. I think it’s probably so that the word doesn’t get out on who’s left in the game before the episodes are aired or where the next destination is. I’m sure there’s betting pools out there and information like that could come in handy.

I might wander back to the park at lunch time and see if anything else is happening. Here’s the map location.

I’ve posted a larger version of the image on Flickr.

UPDATE: I went back later the same day and the post was there, but no cameras. Interesting…Is Phil hiding in the bushes with the camera crew? Nope. There was a sign on the box that revealed it wasn’t the tv show, but a local adventure company running a “team building” event based on the Amazing Race concept. Run around Toronto gathering clues and your company will work better together.

Was it just a funny coincidence? J and I were driving to the mall a couple of weeks ago and I put on a comedy album from one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, who has sadly passed away and will not be providing us with any more funny.

One of his routines is about an escalator. I’ll try to recount it as best as I remember. If you don’t know Mitch’s work, imagine it being performed by a stoned hippy kinda dude.

I like an escalator, man, ’cause an escalator can never break.
It can only become stairs.
There would never be an “Escalator Temporarily Out of Order” sign, only “Escalator Temporarily Stairs.
Sorry for the Convenience.”

I’m not making this up…shortly after we arrived in the mall, I saw this and burst out laughing. I ran to get J and we both said the joke out loud to each other and started laughing.

it wouldn’t have been as funny if i hadn’t just heard a joke about it

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Then today, I saw the bumper on this news truck, which is thankfully bragging about its slightly more environmentally friendly ability. And as I read it, I kept hearing Borat’s voice in my head. This green truck is black not. No…not quite. This green truck is black. [pause] [pause] [pause] [pause] Not.

This green truck is black not