• Shooting fish in a barrel actually is easy.
• Milk is the best treatment for spicy-mouth.
• A bull in a china shop doesn’t do very much damage.
• Elephants really are afraid of mice.

Thanks, Mythbusters.

Also, the roads in Sydney are alive. Or at least, medians on the Harbour Bridge can crawl across the road to different lanes. The video of cars swerving around them as they moved was hilarious. Thanks, Daily Planet.

Overall, a fun evening with the Discovery Channel.

PS: If you google “harbour bridge”, the first hit is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the second is the Saint John Harbour Bridge. Hooray for my town.

If you ask what I did on just about any day in the month of April, if I answered honestly chances are pretty good that I watched some Battlestar Galactica. The miniseries in 2003 and the opening episode of the television series were amazing. Then it got boring for a season or so, and then more interesting again.

The basic idea is that a race of robots (Cylons) built by some faraway colonies of humans rebelled and killed everybody, and are now hunting down the last survivors in a rag tag fleet of spaceships, while both sides try to find Earth. The Cylons now have 12 humanoid models that are indistinguishable from the real McCoy. Of these, seven have been known for a while, and the remaining “Final Five” have been something of a mystery that the first seven don’t talk about. At the end of the third season, four of the final five were revealed, and now the big question on everybody’s mind is who that last one is.

And now begin the spoilers
(more…)

I’m coming up to a big move, and as such I’m faced with the problem of cramming everything I own into the back of a van. A big part of the solution, as it has been every time before, is to reduce the amount of stuff that I actually own.

The first to go were the many binders of notes I have collected over my undergraduate career. When the course is freshly over it’s sometimes hard to part with these, especially since most of the courses I’ve taken had a Part Two hot on their heels. Now that there are no more Part Two’s, the hardest part was hauling the bag of paper down to the curb on recycling day.

Textbooks were a similar case. I went to Haven Books Haven Books about a week ago to drop off about 15 textbooks ranging from anthropology and ethics to astrophysics and quantum mechanics. A select few—those which may be a legitimate resource in graduate school—are still on my bookcase. The fun thing about Haven was that with each textbook consigned, if the same book already exists at the store they tell you what it’s price is. One book I was going to sell for $10 was already there for $40. Ok, I thought, I might as well raise my price to $20—I still wanted it to sell, after all. Another, which I was putting on for $5, was there already for $20. Again, I could have raised the price, but considering that the book retails brand new for only $15, I didn’t think it was a smart move.

The really fun part has come today, after having put some things on craigslist. Who knew that minidiscs were in such high demand? And from middle aged immigrants no less! I’ve had no fewer than five phone calls in the four hours since the ad went live, all with different European accents, all wanting me to deliver, and a few strong opinions about proper craigslist etiquette.

Apparently, as I was told by one particularly cranky guy, it shouldn’t matter that I’ve already promised the MDs to another guy and am simply waiting for him to pick them up. It should be first come, first served. Personally I wonder how the rules of shotgun could be adapted to this situation. Are transactions which happen primarily by telephone subject to the line-of-sight rule, for example? In any case, as I’m the owner of the goods in question, I think it’s only fair that I set the rules of sale. I told him to call back tomorrow and if they’re still here they’re his. Maybe I should be more strict and demand that until the money is in my hands, no sale has been made.

As long as I avoid someone showing up at my door to collect something that is no longer here, I’ll be happy.

Some time ago I got the idea into my head that I would like anchovies. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I’m sure adjusting to a Japanese diet (where fish are in everything) and a love of Caesar salad (which has anchovies) played a role. The problem tended to be that nobody actually sells anchovy pizza anymore. At least, not at the time I was looking for it.

Turns out that Double Pizza in Montreal does. So at pizza night this past Tuesday, we finally went for it. One medium pizza, with anchovies, tomato, and onion.

The anchovies themselves weren’t bad. They were just what you’d except from having fish on your pizza. What was not expected was the horrific layer of salt they come with. I couldn’t even pick off the tomatoes without getting about a thousand milligrams of sodium in each bite.

So if salty pizza is your thing—and I don’t mean pretzels and potato chips salty, I mean brine from the Dead Sea salty—then get the anchovies. Next week I’m switching back to Hawaiian.

This easter I thought I’d be a bit ambitious and expand my confectionery skill set to something from my younger years — home made cream eggs. Not quite Cadbury style, but more like Laura Secord. Big honking things you eat by the slice.

The first step was lots and lots of sugar.

Which are combined with all manner of equally unhealthy things into a nice sweet dough. One third is turned into yolks…

… to be wrapped up in the remaining two thirds. This is one time where you really can put the fried egg back in the shell. Suck it, entropy!

Then the delicious dipping step.

Sure, you could use a fondue fork, but chopsticks work just as well. I also bought a candy thermometer for this step. Slightly needless, true, but a necessary step in getting a kitchen as well equipped as my mother’s. (I still need a spurtle.)

Finally we’re left with rows and rows of chocolate covered cream eggs, ready to cause all sorts of cavities and diabetes.

But, something was amiss. Still sitting on the counter, I saw this

A cup of butter still sitting in the bowl I set it in to soften. It turns out there was a misprint in the recipe (which had come from a newspaper), which though corrected by my mother, was corrected in such a way that was not clear on the photocopy I had. I had noticed it still unused as I kneaded my sugar-dough, but assumed it was for the dipping chocolate. Oh well. We’ll call these the diet, and slightly less creamy, version. Still good.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what I did with the extra chocolate, the answer is obvious.

It was a healthy, sundae, though. I mean, look at all those banana chunks.

So, a day after this adventure began, the final product is ready for the eating. Some things will need to be correct for next year (using the butter, for one, and fixing the white-to-yolk ratio), but I think they turned out pretty well considering. Yum.

I’ve heard a lot of people mentioning how ridiculously snowy it is in Montreal this year. I wasn’t too convinced that it was really that much snow—we get big snowstorms now and again—but then I remembered that those big snowstorms used to be two or three times a year. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve had at least forty two landmark blizzards in the last two weeks. I was finally convinced that there really has been an inordinate amount of snow when I tried to leave my building this morning:

Not that I mind climbing over snowbanks to get out of my front door. Or anywhere else in this city. To be fair, the tips of snowbanks shouldn’t really count toward how deep the snow is, but it is still fair to say that anywhere with less than 2 or 3 feet could legitimately be called “shallow” right now. And also “rare”.

The shoveled version of my front walk is only mildly better, even if it does call to mind various frightening scenarios.

Yes. Pirates and jellyfish. My paranoid delusions about deep snowy passageways don’t have to be internally consistent.

The weather has been pretty weird around Montreal the last day or so. At least I’m told that it’s weird. The grocery store stopped delivering because of the cold, my morning workout was canceled due to snow, and I keep hearing about weather warnings. The particular strange type of precipitation that’s going on outside right now reminded me about a conversation I had with someone the other day about all the different types of snow. I may not have as many words for it as the Inuit (assuming the rumours are true) but it’s more than one.

• Fluffy: This is the typical, nice, romantic type snow that comes down in snowflakes the size of your fist. It looks very good on television, and from indoors sitting in front of a fireplace.
• Sticky: The stuff snowballs are made from. Fluffy snow is useless for anything other than kicking it around like cotton balls. It’s sticky snow that’s the best to play in. You can grab a handful and find a snowball in your hand, and it makes elaborate Calvin and Hobbes style snowscapes possible.
• Granular: This is the weird stuff I walked through today to get groceries. It was basically hailing out rather than snow, but it had been going on for so long that the snow on the ground had quite a thick layer of it. It was like walking through really coarse sand.
• Invisible: Usually the first few snowfalls of the season are nothing but invisible snow. Or maybe phantom snow would be a better name. You can see it falling, but it doesn’t stick, disappearing the instant it hits the ground. It barely counts as snowing at all.
• Skeletal: Where invisible snow is the first stuff you see, skeletal snow is the last. Snow on the ground never melts uniformly. All sorts of factors come into play, I’m sure, like air pockets and dirt on the surface. The effect is that the snowbanks decay from the inside out in places, making strange tunnels and passage. The formerly smooth surface gives way to a crystalline structure with dusty spires and icy caves.

And, my personal favourite,

• Crusty: I think this is caused by the snow changing to freezing rain. You can a nice thick crust on top of the snow that, if you’re very careful, you can walk on without breaking. Or, if it does break, it makes a big satisfying cracking noise and you fall into the softer stuff beneath. If you pick up a slice of the crust, it’ll usually have fluffy snow stuck to the underside of it. It’s better than breaking the crust of a crème brûlée.

This is sticking to the natural stuff, i.e., not brown, yellow, or the firm compact stuff in the middle of sidewalks. I’m sure there are others as well, and there can definitely be combos. Today there’s about a half inch of black ice on the sidewalks (which really makes it grey ice, I guess), a layer of the soft and fluffy, topped off with the granular stuff from today’s hail. The black ice/fluffy combination is particularly dastardly, since one false step will send you flying and you’ll never see it coming.

I was tagged by this guy.

The rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

And here’s what I came up with:

1. I walk on my tiptoes through puddles and slush because my shoes have holes in the soles.
2. I’ve had the same hotmail account since about 1998, before it was owned by Microsoft, when it was called HoTMaiL, and when frames were a trendy design choice.
3. I’m addicted to bookdarts. Any book I read usually has about a dozen in them by the time I’m done with it, and non-fiction many times more. I buy them in bulk.
4. My maximum heart rate was last tested to be 197.
5. I often eat the same thing for dinner several days in a row, not because I make enough the first time for leftovers, but because it’s easier than thinking of something else to make with the same selection of food.
6. I can wiggle one ear.

I’m supposed to tag six people, but as it turns out I don’t know that many people who blog, so I’ll have to do a half-assed job of it: I’m tagging gablazes, awhinap, and spoonfulofpoon (because he clearly needs something to write about).

Every December for the last few years, there’s been a big snowstorm in Montreal. And each time it snows here there’s a jump in my site stats as everybody searches for “montreal snowstorm” and find this photo album I published after the one in 2005. Every time I feel a little guilty that they’re getting old photos of the wrong storm. They aren’t even very good photos.

This year’s storm was particularly good, though, so I’ve taken some new ones. My favourite part has been that the city is being really slow about removing all the snow. It may not be convenient for cars to have to dig parking spaces for themselves, or to have two lanes reduced to one because of some dominating snow banks, but it sure is nice to look at! And fun to climb through! Though I think the official count was somewhere between 30 and 40 centimetres in the main storm, it’s been snowing on and off for a couple weeks in addition to that, and a combination of plows and wind have made some of the snow banks taller than I am. I love it.

Despite my promises of new snow photos just two paragraphs ago, I’m technically supposed to be studying for an exam and writing an astrophysics paper, so that album will have to be added to the waiting list with the rest from 2007. In the meantime, here’s my favourite picture of the bunch, taken in front of McGill’s music building: Queen Victoria’s New Dress.

Theoretically I’m in the midst of writing my philosophy take home exam. In actuality I’m looking to procrastinate. At least I’m in the computer lab. And I’ve even printed off about a dozen astrophysics articles for that other paper I’m writing. I may not have read them yet, but it just looking them up in the first place counts as research. After a few nice diagrams, a respectable list of references, and fiddling with the margins a bit, I’ll have at least 15 pages in no time, right? At least that’s what the professor told us.

In the interests of making sure this post is actually about something somebody might want to read, I give you this tidbit: If you buy twelve cookies at Subway restaurants, it counts as groceries and you don’t have to pay taxes.

Also, I’ve developed a mild obsession with Mario games, so if anybody wants to buy me a Wii or a DS, that’d be awesome. But then again, maybe it’s just this strong desire to procrastinate that’s movitating me with that one.

Ok, ok, back to the grindstone…