I know I haven't blogged publically for a while, so here's a couple things worth reading if you have some time:

In an effort to end the lies, NoMoreLOL.com has been created. Standing on the front lines between honest communication and disingenuous emoting, NoMoreLOL is fighting back with a new acronym: LOI. I think I'm gonna buy a tshirt.

On a more serious note however, knitnut has been nominated for best blog post in the Canadian Blog Awards. Frankly, I'd not heard of the site before the awards, but the post is both relevent and factual, covering something most people reading blogs really don't understand: homelessness.

Happy Christmas/Solstice/Kwanza/Eat-food-sleep-and-get-presents everyone!

I'm up in Kelowna with the parents for a few days so don't call me unless you're willing to buy me dinner in exchange for the cost of the phone bill ;-)

This was a nice laid-back couple of days, with my parents spoiling me with lots of nifty presents that will likely be rediculously difficult to haul back to my apartment from the bus station. I got to see the family, and meet my cousin's new boyfriend who is actually pretty cool as well as see my Aunt and Uncle's new place in slightly - less - than - the - middle - of - nowhere - but - still - nowhere - I'd - ever - want - to - live. Fun and food was had by all.

Oh, and to get to the subject of this blog post, check it out: INVADER ZIM RINGTONES!. The site uses an AJAX-type system to download the mp3s which makes it really hard to just download the whole lot, but still, it's all there. You can even search the list by speaker or keyword :-)

THE PANTS COMMAND ME! DO NOT IGNORE MY VEINS!

xkcd seems to say in one comic strip that which I've been trying to explain for 48 days.

This is probably the coolest development I've seen in wind technology ever. According to their site, these new MAGLEV Wind Turbines operate in a near-frictionless environment leading to BIG gains in energy production. How big? roughly 1000 times that of traditional wind turbines. In other words, you can build one of these on a farm and save the 64,000 acres of space you would have had to use for a traditional wind farm.

If the claims are true, the potential here is really big, so they're putting one up in Arizona as a pilot project. If I hear anything new, I'll post about it here.

More information on this turbine and the technology supporting it can be found here:

• The official MAGLEV Wind Turbine site.
• TreeHugger article covering the initial MAGLEV Turbine press release
• WorldChanging's take on the technology
• Wikipedia's article on Halbach arrays

Big thanks to Margaret for finding this and sending it my way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the best 5 second video ever.

Ron posted this on his own blog and I really wanted to share.

TED is an annual conference consisting of speakers from around the world who are experts in their field. The purpose behind the gathering is simply to share ideas: what's happening in industry, science, government, culture etc. etc. Until recently, these meetings haven't been available to the public, but that's finally changing. You can now watch the talks online and they're really fascinating.

At roughly 20minutes each, it can seem like a lot to get through, so be selective, or do as Ron suggests and just listen to them while you're getting ready in the morning. Any way you do it, I suggest you make the time.

...And don't miss John Doerr's talk on greentech. It's exceptional, but (at least for me) disheartening.

Those of you who know Noreen probably know that she's been working tirelessly on a special project with UBC in an effort to expand the curriculum to include Asian Canadian History. To that end, she's working with both SFU and UBC on a project called Asian Canadians Reframed and she needs our help. Below you'll find information about a survey they're conducting about the public impressions/ideas about Asians and it takes a total of 3 minutes to fill out.

Please note that everyone is eligible to fill this out. White people, Toronto people, rich people, poor people, whatever, they need everything for a balanced look at the issue, so please do what you can.

"Asian Canadians Reframed" is an art project comprised of students from SFU and UBC. We are conducting a survey on common perceptions of Asian people in Canada and from the data that we collect, we intend to produce a photo exhibition showcasing the responses. The survey is an online one and should take no longer than 3 minutes if not less.

Please help our project grow by filing out our online survey! Tell your friends and family about us, spread the word, fill out the survey several times! We’d love to hear all that you have to say and we’ll do our best to showcase them all!

Thanks for your help.

Playing off the success of Where's George, Where's Willy is a $5 bill tracking system you can use to find where your money has travelled. In some cases, I saw bills that left Toronto and ended up in Sarnia, while some bills have ended up in Saskatoon. It's kinda neat.

To participate, take the nearest $5 bill, go to the site and put in it's serial number (three letters followed by a string of numbers along the bottom). If the site has a record of that bill, you can see where it's been and if it doesn't it'll create an entry for it so that others can do the same.

To help the process along, you can even write whereswilly.com on the bill.

omgwtfbbq. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: LOL Trek.

Thanks to Barclay for the link.

Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?

Rudd-O, Slashdot, Tuesday May 01, @03:44PM.

More details on what this key is and what it's for can be found here.

Update

Digg has decided to do the right thing. Kudos to them for taking this step, and to the community for forcing them down that path.