blog.ccharles.ca

Hi, Simon Pegg fans! If you have Mplayer installed, copying this into your console (gnome-terminal, konsole, xterm, etc.) should let you watch the Paul trailer in Linux!

mplayer -cache 200000 -user-agent 'QuickTime/7.6.2 (qtver=7.6.2;os=Windows NT 5.1Service Pack 3)' http://trailers.apple.com/movies/universal/paul/paul-tlr1_480p.mov

It will queue up to about 20% before playing. Give it a bit of time .

Once the video is playing, pressing the ‘F’ key will go fullscreen. Alternatively, you should be able to use your favourite Mplayer front-end like SMplayer or GMplayer instead of plain Mplayer to get a pretty interface.

We’re nearing the tail end of the Vancouver Olympics.

Canada’s women’s hockey team has won the gold medal and the IIHF has freaked out over their on-ice celebrations. The Internet has largely said that the IIHF is being silly and that female Canadian hockey players drinking beer and bubbly while smoking stogies is pretty cool. They’ve earned it, after all.

Our men’s team hasn’t won anything yet, but if they beat Slovakia (it’s currently 2-0 Canada in the middle of the second—make that 3-0) they’ll be guaranteed at least a second place finish. Good for them.

Here’s where my concern comes in. Why are the Olympic officials ignoring too many men infractions? When Canada played Russia earlier this week Russia definitely got away with one, and many people think there was actually a second. Tonight Slovakia even more obviously had too many men, and again the officials did nothing.

Is this typical of international hockey? Is it happening in Olympic games that don’t involve Canada? Am I making a big deal out of nothing? I don’t know.

Aside from this gripe I think the officiating has been very good, and I’d like to offer our Canadian Olympic athletes continued luck. You guys are making Canada proud.

Today we had to have Disco, our pet ferret, put down.

She was old and this is something that we’ve been expecting, but it still sucks.

Disco was a wonderful pet and we will miss her very much.

Bryan Murray has traded Dany Heatley and a 2010 fifth-round draft pick to the San Jose Sharks for Jonathan Cheechoo, Milan Michálek and a 2010 second-round pick.

It remains to be seen whether this is a good trade for Ottawa, but I’m really excited. Cheechoo brings some badly-needed toughness to a team that has been pushed around a little bit the last few years. He’s also a talented scorer who won the Rocket Richard trophy in 05-06.

I don’t know much about Michálek, but he looks like a talented young guy who has good on-ice chemistry with Cheechoo.

Considering that Ottawa also acquired Alexei Kovalev over the summer there could be some very interesting offensive hockey in the nation’s capital this year. The Sens also have a new goaltender in Pascal Leclaire and some talented young defensemen, so they should do alright on defense as well.

I’m going to come right out and say it: I expect that we’ll see Ottawa back in the playoffs this year. If they don’t make it you can blame me for jinxing it .

While visiting Laura’s aunt and uncle this past weekend we acquired a kitten. His mother abandoned him, so we took him home. Our best guess is that he was a week old when we got him—his eyes weren’t even open yet!

We’ve called him Oliver. Here he is napping with a full tummy:

Oliver, so full of milk

Here’s another picture taken today, after his eyes opened:

Oliver, after his eyes opened

Welcome to the family, Ollie!

This summer has been super rainy, and I don’t like it.

I don’t spend as much time outdoors as I used to, but I do like the sunshine. I’ve been trying to walk home from work as much as possible to get some exercise. It’s about 7 km, and it takes me about an hour and ten minutes.

Recently I haven’t been able to do this nearly as much as I’d like. It seems like it’s either raining or threatening to rain every single day.

People like to say that rain is good for the plants. I’d bet that even the plants are starting to get tired of this weather.

I had a blog, but I didn’t update it very regularly. My bad. I took the old blog down, but then I started to miss it. I decided to try again.

The old blog had a little bit of content, but it wasn’t very good. It’s gone now. I’m starting fresh. I’m going to try to publish regularly, but that’s going to be challenging.

I have things to say. I had things to say before, too, but I had trouble writing them down. I think I tried too hard.

When I’m writing a paper, or a cover letter, or whatever else, I tend to use a write-review-edit cycle. I do this many times, repeating it until I’m happy. I tried doing this with blog posts too, but it didn’t work very well. I’d start writing something, maybe start reviewing it, but I’d never finish.

I’m going to try to cut down on the editing. I need to gain some momentum. Wish me luck.