I’ve changed up the look of the site in favor of an ever more anti-design schteeze.  I think this is about as clean and as fast as I can make the site while still including all the stuff I want…

Yesterday I found myself emailing satellite images that I found on Google Maps to my family.  I was sending images of the places we used to live and hang out etc.  It was like a little virtual tour down memory lane for me.  Tonight I can’t sleep. I was lying awake so long thinking about this so long that I thought I’d post about it instead of just lying there.  By the time I’m done this I’ll be able to sleep…

I can remember being blown away that satellites had like 2 meter resolution when I was first learning about satellites.  I can remember looking into the sky and wondering if someone was looking back.  I used to look through the skylights (or windows on the ceiling) and thinking about it. Now courtesy of Google I’m the one looking down.  Its a very different perspective.  That back yard that used to seem impossibly huge when mowing the lawn now appears quite minuscule.

Now that it’s as easy as Google to find satellite images (of North America) it got me thinking about the idea of allowing people to annotate the images ala Flickr Notes style.  Wouldn’t it be cool if you could post a note saying hey that’s my house!  Or I went to school here from Grades 1-3!  Obviously this would get out of hand quickly but I think its quite interesting because it would be like a place to put our collective memories.

So as an exercise I went looking on Flickr and what do you know!?  There’s already a Flickr group called Memory Maps.

Does my family want to post some notes and get in on a little collective memory?  Click the image below and go see some things we used to do in my little town.

Matt Haughey seems to have the same idea.

Look at these pics he found:
Burning Man Camp
Honolulu
Cool Boat

Here are some other cool images:
Canada:
CN Tower Toronto
Parliament Buildings Ottawa
United States:
Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco
World Trade Center New York
Hmm… Can you guess this one? (notice some censored parts)
Why no censoring here?
US – Mexican border (San Diego / Tijuana)
Grand Canyon (I think)
The Getty Los Angeles

I often get emails from people that are basically comments.  People send me emails that are like "I enjoyed that dog video" or "thanks for posting this".  I understand when people need to speak with me in private, but if you have something to say about something on this blog please leave a comment!  I guess it’s better than all those folks that are reading and not saying anything.  How fun is a one sided conversation?

My girlfriend and I are taking care of this really awesome dog named Booker.  He likes to play catch, chew on things, and sing when the trains go by.  Here’s a video of him singing to the trains and playing ball.

Watch it here.

1m 34s

28MB (I’m too lazy to compress this stuff, this is how it came out of the camera)

I was at the Pan Pacific this morning for some breakfast with my pops and I saw Harrison Ford getting into a big black Escalade.  Normally I don’t get that excited when I see celebrities but this was freakin Indiana Jones in person!

This guy has had starring roles "in four of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Return of the Jedi (1983)." *

"The U.S. box office grosses of all of Ford’s films total about $3.18 billion, with worldwide grosses totaling approximately $5.65 billion. No other actor in history has box-office grosses as large as Ford’s." *

There were some knobs trying to get him to wave while they took pictures from like 50 feet away with their cameraphones.  It would really suck to be harassed everywhere you go.  Harrison is in town shooting The Wrong Element.  Here’s some more info on Harrison Ford’s visit in Vancouver.

If you’re a hack blogger like me that doesn’t even do good grammar good and stuff and punctuation; wrong it’s hard to convey mood.  I posted about my recently deceased Betta fish X-Ray to be mildly/morbidly humorous, like as if I cared so much about the fish that I was in mourning or something.  Some people thought it was mildly funny, as it was intended, while others sent me email that read like this: "we feel your pain" or "we’re with you on this terrible day of sorrow and mourning."  I thought it was pretty funny.  But what the hell does that have to do with anything?  Who cares you ask?  There is something more to this than the caffeinated attention deficit writing style.

It’s like when you’re text chatting (msn or irc->nerd) and the other person doesn’t really understand what the hell you’re trying to say, or they think you’re upset when you’re just really not very good at being funny.  It’s easy to get mixed signals when all you have is text.  So much communication happens subconsciously between people when they can see and hear one another.  The tone of your voice, your body language, your puppy dog eyes, the middle finger in the rear view mirror.  You know that kind of crap.  This is why part of the reason video and video blogs work well alongside regular old text blogs. 

If I had posted a video of the mock funeral for X-Ray, with the sobbing, the tears, the organ music, the tiny little fish coffin, and the over the top acting, it would have been much more obvious I DON’T REALLY GIVE A SHIT IF THAT STUPID FISH DIED! (evil laugh) (Getting mixed signals yet?)

Or I could be lazy, write about it and have your imagination create a more AWESOME video than I ever could.  Strongbad voice:  ALL HAIL THE VIDEO BLOGGERS OF THE MIND.  IT’S THE VIDEO BLOG THAT HAPPENS IN YOUR BRAIN. Repeat while listening to this: (dun dun duuun) and (pizza)

X made it through the night and into the morning.  He passed at around noon today.  Keep on truckin little X.

When I was in film school I made a little short film called X-Ray.  One of the stars of the film was a little Betta fish appropriately named X-Ray.  After we finished shooting I kept him as a pet.  When I got home today I noticed something strange on the floor.   I thought to myself "hmm thats odd, why is there a red leaf on the floor"?  Upon closer inspection I realized it was my little buddy X-Ray all dried up and motionless.  The first thing I thought of was that scene in Kill Bill when Bill goes:

"Is that not the perfect visual image of life and death? A fish flapping on the carpet, and a fish not flapping on the carpet. So powerful even a five-year old child with no concept of life and death knew what it meant."

Poor little X was in the "fish not flapping on the carpet" category so I grabbed a tissue and picked him up thinking I’d say a little word about how he’s been a good pet and then give him a toilet bowl burial ceremony.  Then he began to move… HE’S ALIVE!!!!  So I dropped him back into his extra large fish bowl and he immediately sank to the bottom.  I was sitting there with my nose pressed against the glass rootin for little X-Ray.  "Come on buddy you can make it!!!!"  My next thought was that he was going to drown because he breathes air!  Luckily after a couple finger taps on the glass he swam to the surface and took a breath of air.  HE MADE IT!

What a tough little bastard.  He launches himself out of his fishbowl (five feet off the ground) lands on the carpet and sits there drying up and about to die and yet he still manages to survive!  I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same but he’s alive.  If only I knew why he tried to commit suicide.  Maybe he needs some new food.