Forbidden Planet

Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia! Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia! Who did once upon the cross, Alleluia! Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia! Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia! Unto Christ, our heavenly king, Alleluia! Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia! Sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia! But the pains which he endured, Alleluia! Our salvation have procured; Alleluia! Now above the sky he’s king, Alleluia! Where the angels ever sing. Alleluia! Sing we to our God above, Alleluia! Praise eternal as his love; Alleluia! Praise him, all you heavenly host, Alleluia! Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia! - Tradition Christian Easter Hymn Although, personally, I would prefer something set to the tune of She's Not There by The Zombies Well some one told me about him - the way he died Well some one told me about him - how many people cried But it's too late to say you're sorry You should have known, you should have cared Please don't bother trying to ...

Today is the Easter Vigil, when we wait for Christ to rise from the dead. Many Christian traditions recite the Apostles' or Nicene Creed, which contain the lines He was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to dead. On the third day he rose again. Some translations use the word Hell instead of dead . One of the apocryphal pieces of literature, The Acts of Pilate (popularly renamed The Gospel of Nicodemus during the Middle Ages, tells of Christ's descent into the dead. t was written sometime between the mid 2 nd and mid 3 rd centuries and reflects a particular understanding of the events surrounding Jesus' death and resurrection among early Christians sometime around 100 to 200 years after the fact. The text paints an unflattering picture of Jewish involvement in Jesus' death. Below is my retelling of Christ's descent into Hell. Even though it is not canonical, I find it a very beautiful, moving and inspiring work of early Christianity. (As it is my retel...

In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. You hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord. I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have taken heed of my adversities, and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; you have set my feet in a broad place. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horr...

Today is Holy Thursday in many Christian traditions and it is (at least in my faith tradition) commemorated with a remembrance of the Last Supper as well as ritualistic washing of the feet (though, not all parishioners get their feet washed - usually, just a few are preselected). The Eucharistic celebration is an ancient Christian practice and some rules / guidelines are given for it in the Didache (or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles). It is most commonly dated to have been composed in the early 2 nd century. Although some date it as early as 70 C.E. CHAPTER 9 : eucharistic consecration 9:1 Now regarding the eucharist, give thanks in this way : 9:2 First concerning the cup : "We thank You, our Father, for the holy vine of David Your servant, which You made known to us through Jesus Your servant. To You belongs the glory for ever." 9:3 And concerning the broken bread : We thank You, our Father, for the life and knowledge which You made known to us through Jesus Your serva...

Discovered over the weekend that le pingouin is not a penguin, but a type of auk known as a Razorbill . The French translation for penguin is manchot . Apparently, this is a common error. Not surprising since many languages clearly have some sort of agreement on penguin: pingüinos (Spanish), pinguine (German), pikkewyn (Afrikaans), pinguino (Italian), pingwiny (Polish), pingvinfélék (Hungarian), pingüim (Portugese). Images nabbed from here and here .

As promised , side by side (well, top by bottom) comparison of the Fly scanned handwriting and my actual handwriting as it appeared on the page. The Fly and other digital pens require a special paper. The paper has a series of dots printed on it in a pattern. It is a sort of two dimensional barcode. According to Wikipedia , if the entire pattern was printed out, it would cover an area in excess of 4.6 million km 2 . Last weekend, 51cm of snow fell in Ottawa. As you can see, the backyard is filled almost to the top of the fence with snow. Which means the snow is close to 5 feet deep. More than 411 cm has fallen in Ottawa this Winter. There is more snow expected this coming week. We have a chance to break the 1970/71 snowfall record of 441 cm. I think less snow fell in Montreal. As you can see in this photo, the snow only goes about half way up the fence. Making it maybe 3 feet deep at best. A blood orange. The inside of a blood orange. The first animated film I have ever made (if you di...

Recently I purchased the Fly Fusion Pentop Computer , just because it looked so cool (and I had some spare money to spend). It is pretty cool. To get best handwriting recognition out of it, you do have to print in a fairly clear manner, which I can, though it is a bit of an effort and slows me down as I consciously try to form the various letters. On the other hand, the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology is pretty good if you print nicely. If you don't then it is a bit of a mess. Below are two samples of writing: one done in nice tidy print, the other in my usual scrawl. It does quite well with the first sample and horribly with the second. Obviously my normal upper case block printing is pretty hard on the OCR. And it certainly doesn't seem to like the way I prefer to form my letters. It may have helped to be sitting at a table rather than lying on my stomach on the bed scribbling away, but, then again, it is the portability I want. An interesting observation is th...

I think most people underestimate how much energy it really takes to power things. A quick trip to your local science and technology museum / centre should quickly dispel any misconceptions. These places usually have a stationary bicycle connected to a generator and you are encouraged to peddle to try and light a lamp or two. It doesn't take much peddling to realize that it takes a whole lot of work to light a lamp. This realization did not occur to the inventor of an environmentally friendly lamp dubbed the Gravia or to the judges judging it. The idea is that the energy from a slowly descending weight is converted to electricity and used to power high efficiency LEDs, providing approximately 600-800 lumens of light over a 4 hour period. At the end of 4 hours, you just flip the lamp over and the whole process begins anew. It sounds great ... except the energy output seems a little out of whack - especially if you have ever energetically peddled one of those stationary bikes in a s...

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. "I claim them all," said the Savage at last. - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

We got 28cm of snow on Wednesday, bringing the total snowfall total to 355cm in Ottawa this Winter. This makes it the second largest recorded snowfall. The previous record was 441cm back in the Winter of 1970/1971. We are supposed to get another 20cm or more this weekend. So there is still a chance we will beat the old record. I tell Sofia and the kids to enjoy it because they may not see another snowfall like this for another 40-50 years. Picture of a previous snowstorm, but the effect and result is pretty much the same. Following the snowstorm, the trees were nicely covered in snow crystals. Close up of snow crystals on a branch. Snow crystals on pine needles. Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet.

When does a difference in opinion, understanding or perception cross the threshold and become a mental disorder? When does confidence and certainty become delusion? I am reminded of the story of a woman many years ago on CBC radio, who told how her parents had her diagnosed as insane and committed as an adolescent because she was lesbian. While I may not agree with her and I believe her behaviour to be wrong (yeah, yeah, I am on the conservative end of the spectrum here), I certainly do not think she was insane. So what is the difference between being "wrong" and having a fundamentally disordered perception, understanding and experience of the world? To adapt a saying: I may not know what insanity is, but I know it when I see it . Principally inspired (bits copied verbatim from my comment) by a post on Barbara's blog .

SweetiePie has invited me to share 5 facts about my self. I am male. My first name is Richard I am 42 I am married I have two children Ok, maybe that is a little too factual and not sufficiently revealing. So the question becomes one of, "Do I recycle old tidbits of information from my blog? Or do I give you fresh pieces of information?" Since I want to encourage people to read this blog, I prefer not to give out previously revealed information. On the other hand, I also don't want to give identity thieves too much personal information. Oh! The dilemma, the dilemma. I am sinister (in Latin nominative). My hair is naturally curly (and increasingly grey). I cannot read Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince or The Selfish Giant without crying. Actually, I cannot even finish them. These are the only two stories that affect me so and I unable to share them with my kids. When I was much younger, I didn't quite understand the movie classification system. I thought G meant...

I took the kids skating this past Sunday and managed to take 389 pictures during that time. It becomes so easy with digital cameras nowadays - especially when they feature a nice, easy to use burst mode. I also managed to capture some shots of dripping icicles. If you click on and enlarge the pictures, you can see the drop of water forming and falling. It was a nice surprise to discover when I looked at the picture (they were shot in burst mode). Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet. Sorry, I was a little too aggressive with the JPEG compression settings. [05-March-2008 @ 11:00: added text about the drop forming and falling.]

Hye has invited me to put a message in a bottle. When I was younger, I used to dream of discovering something unique, import and of value. I did look for bottles with messages, buried treasure, fossils, or gold deposits. Sadly I never really found anything. I did find pyrite (Fools Gold), and some small fossils (various shells and parts of crinoids, but never trilobite. sigh. Though, Jason did find a fossilized shell 3 or 4 cm in length two years ago. Definitely, the largest fossil we have found). However, I have never thought of putting a message into a bottle. (The uber-geeky among you should recognize the phrase.)

Yesterday someone shared a useful tip with me: should you be the victim of a robbery in which you are forced to withdraw money from an ATM, by entering your PIN backwards you will send a silent alarm to the bank which will then notify the police. I restrained, but probably not entirely successfully, the urge to laugh. It sounds like a great security measure, unfortunately, it is impractical. Under normal circumstances I presume it is hard enough form most people to mentally reverse their PIN (it is for me). Under a stressful situation, I presume it would be pretty nigh impossible. Further there is the problem of people using palindromic PINs like 1111 or 2332 because they are easier to remember, this person replied, "Well, I guess you're screwed then." I also wondered why I had never been told or informed about this. The person answered back, "I guess they don't want it general knowledge so the criminals don't know about it." Uh-huh. If such a system wer...