Base Jumping World Record

These guys set a world record for jumping off the highest building. They jumped off the Burj Dubai in Dubai while it was still under construction in May of 2008. The most amazing thing is they got away with it.

Dubai has been the city built on nothing for the past while. It has virtually risen from the desert from a small trading post in the last 75 years. That means that it has no real culture, architecturally or otherwise. I originally thought it would be an impressive place to go but the more I read about it and hear stories from people who have been there I really don't feel the need to go there. There is so many cooler places to check out and experience (like Spain).
Dubai is just an attempt to create an economy in the country that is not based entirely on oil production. As such it has no real history and therefore no culture. It is just overt opulence for the purpose of impressing. Every large international company now has to have a some headquarters there just to remain impressive. It is kind of in the same vein of McMansions and Escalades.

Annnnnnnnnnnd We're Back!

We arrived home at around 11:30 Ottawa time from Madrid (minus only one bag). Irene promptly ate a bowl of cereal since it felt like breakfast time to us. I staved off the hunger in a desperate attempt to change my body into accepting this time zone. I think it worked.We had a fantastic time running around Madrid and doing trips to places like Segovia, Toledo, San Sebastien and Bilbao. Thanks to Tim and his sister Esther for showing us around and sharing lots of sangria and tapas. It was great fun and it is a little sad to be home so soon and back into the grind of real life.

Life of an Architect

And now for a humorous interlude while I take a stress leave from blogging. I was so stressed I had to head to Spain to get away from it all. It is tough work being a sporadic blogger.

Dilbert is probably one of the best print newspaper comics out right now.
Here is one of my classic favourites because it says a lot about my job.
I may not be the architect but some days that really is just the way it is.

And we are off....

As this blog is posted we are hopefully on a plane to Madrid via Montreal and Paris.
YAY!

I really did not think I would get another chance to go to Europe perhaps forever so I am pretty excited to get this chance. Now with this economic downturn and the future looking so shaky I am getting the feeling that this will be the last time we go. Once China becomes a super power and Obama turns the States into a third world country (taking Canada with it) we will probably not even have affordable air travel let alone the jobs to pay for it.

On another, totally unrelated note, this is my 200th post.

Gobama

And it is pretty much settled.
The US of A has it's first black president. This is a hollywood movie in the making.
I am a little scared and nervous as to what it all means for Canada. I guess only time will tell.
I'm not going to outright say McCain would have been a better choice but I am going to insinuate it.
From the start Obama has scared me with his perfect rhetoric and well polished speeches. But his win was pretty much sealed once Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate. I could not believe that when it happened. The other thing is, whenever the CEEB interviewed americans on who they were voting for they would only spout off things they had heard in the media. Ridiculous one liners like 'Obama is promising jobs for everybody' or 'Obama sounds like a terrorist'. Americans are so ridiculous.
Here is an example:These are the people who ruined it for McCain. It reminded me of the people talked about on stuffchristianslike (a play off of the similarly toungue in cheek stuffwhitepeoplelike). One of the things Christians like is bumper stickers. This is so not the way to 'convert' people to vote for your party.

The Greatest USB Port ever!

OK wait! Stop before you go running for the hills all annoyed at me for writing about some boring new technology that no one but me cares about. This isn't about technology, rather it's about alcohol......aaaah you've stopped. Yes this blog post is about the type of wine called Port to be exact.

Now I like Port about as much as the next guy who also likes Port. These guys have really thought of an interesting marketing strategy to get people to buy their drink. Ever since a new law went into effect that says only Port made in Portugal can legally be called 'Port' all the other Port makers are stuck trying to think of new names for their products.

California-based Peltier Station came up with this inovative solution. Remove the word 'Port' but add the acronym that everybody knows ('USB') and put the universal symbol on the bottle (in binary code text no less).
Read the full story here.

On Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is one of my favourite authors. His most famous book 'Farenheit 451' is about a fireman whose job it is to start fires. He is assigned to burn books. The book is set in the future with a totalitarian government that is controlling what everybody does or sees. Anybody who harbours books basically is killed. The main character ends up getting interested in books and ends up getting chased.....and I won't tell you the end.
I love books that deal with a post-apocalyptic world or a world where society has changed dramatically. Anyways, the common thought was always that the book (which was fist published in 1953) was a book about the crushing of free speech and censorship. So when I stumbled across this BoingBoing article by Cory Doctorow (whose writings I have been stumbling across quite a bit lately) I was mildly surprised that it was really supposed to be about the evils of TV. I can see why he wrote it that way though. There were a lot of TV screens and emphasis on the 'I want it now' society that it breeds. There was no care for anybody else. Really truly sad. I think he took TV to its ultimate conclusion. So I am not sure if this makes the book better or worse. Either way I still think Bradbury is fantastic.

Here is a quote from Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (stolen from wikipedia) where Bradbury describes his book.

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

I think that proves his point.

Another reason I like him is he really does not like Micheal Moore for using a play on his book title for his movie Farenheit 9/11. In the documentary 'Manufacturing Dissent' Bradbury goes on a small tirade about how Moore doesn't understand what his book was about. That really raised my respect for the author because we all know how much I love Micheal Moore.