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MacGyver Tip: Get Red Wine Out of Carpet

So I knocked a full bottle of red wine over in my kitchen today, and it smashed and flooded my carpet with red wine. Smooth, eh?

Fortunately, I was saved by the Internet: a solution of Dawn dishwashing soap and hydrogen peroxide took the stain out beautifully without wrecking the carpet's coloring. Chemistry is cool.

Link: http://www.stratsplace.com/patty_wine_stain.html

Advertising People Need to Think

So I'm stumbling home from the bar tonight.  It's about 4am, and the not-so-major street I'm wandering down is deserted.  And who do I run into?  David Suzuki.

He's staring at me from across the street, ten feet tall and lit with floodlights.  Yes, he's a billboard.  Not just the normal, tacky kind, but the extra-tacky rotating three-ads-in-one-spot kind.

What's he doing?

Holding up a compact fluorescent lightbulb and telling me that I have the power to save energy.  From his 10,000 Watt rotating big ass billboard in the middle of nowhere.

Where does he get off?

Using RFID Properly

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article on RFID passports in the US that is worth a read.  In particular, he's satisfied with a simple scheme to prevent unauthorized access to the chips.  Each chip is encrypted with a key that's printed (in an optical-reader-friendly format) inside the passport.  The chips are now as secure as paper --- you have to open the book to read it!

How Big Is Your Mushroom Cloud?

Boing Boing ran a great story on this Google Maps hack.  It links a high-yield explosion simulator (think nuclear) with Google Maps, so you can see the area of destruction in question.  You can key in your own latitude / longitude and get the satelitte view and everything.

Definitely the most creative Google Maps hack I've seen to date.

Whale Song to be Beamed Into Space

Whale song to be beamed into outer space.  Horrific probe disaster and evaporation of oceans averted.  Former Admiral and crew imprisoned on charges of insubordination.  News at 11.

No Excuses for the English Language

Simon found a great quote today:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."  -- James Nicoll

Two Assinine Points of View for the Price of One

I was recently reading an article entitle "Coffee with Steam" on the website of the St. Petersburg Times.  I was thrilled to discover that this article contains not one, but two ridiculous ideas!

The first is the core text of the article: people (read: Americans) are complaining because Starbucks coffee cups have quotations from "liberals" printed on them.  Leaving aside the dicey definition of "liberal" in the article, this strikes me as flat out idiotic.  A coffee house run by liberals???  The scandal!

Furthermore, to all of the conservatives out there who are going to end up Googling this and emailing me, all I can say is this: Starbucks is a private corporation.  Isn't one of your core values that a company in the US can do whatever it wants to make a profit?

Anyway, on to my second charming discovery.  Click on the "Reuse or republish this article" link above the text of the article.  At first, I thought this was a clever idea --- buy the rights to reuse the article in a book or commercial brochure.  Then I saw the option for "email this article."  I punched in 1 email and asked for a quote...  $1.00.  That's $1 per email, whereas I could have chopped it out of yesterday's newspaper for free.

To add hilarity to this situation, there's an "Email this article" link that lets you do it for free on the same page.  Glad to see that the left hand has a clue what the right is doing over at the St. Petersburg Times.

Mamma Mia Closing in Toronto

Sorry for not posting for a while...  I've been feeling a bit under the weather.  It's good, in a way...  I'm getting caught up on my reading.

I wanted to point out that Mamma Mia is closing in Toronto after five years.  It's a great show, so go see it before May 22 if you can.

Downtown Toronto as a Sphere

Squiggle has put up a very cool spherical picture of downtown Toronto, as seen from the SkyPod of the CN Tower.  You can see my workplace quite clearly...  my condo is just behind one of the skyscrapers.

Navigate the Streets Race

This is just too cool.  I read an article on Spacing magazine's website about the Navigate the Streets race here in Toronto (and also Ottawa, Montréal, and Winnipeg by the look of it).  Essentially it's a public scavenger hunt.  Teams of two, on foot or by transit only, compete to decipher the list of clues and find the destinations mentioned in the list.

An excerpt from the article:

Our course brings us face to face with cute chicken graffiti on the side of a poultry shop in Kensington Market, the statue of a bear outside the Olga Korper gallery near Roncesvalles, and The Communist’s Daughter, a discreet little watering hole for hipsters at Dundas and Ossington.

Strategy is also part of the game. We duck through parking garages and alleyways to escape the competition, and contemplate whether it would be faster to use the wildcard clue, which would take us to the giant dominoes at Bloor and Spadina, or clue # 9, which would lead us toward the wind turbine by the CNE.

This is a great public space hack and I want in.  As an avid automobile non-owner, I think I can take the locals when it comes to finding every nook and cranny downtown.  Anyone want to be my partner?