chrisdye blog @ Vorg

Pommes aux Pommes

chrisdye — 2011-07-26T11:33:42-04:00

Correct:
- accurate
- exact
- appropriate

Considering the decreased traffic on Sillytech, I'll give you two weeks.

Best video on Youtube

chrisdye — 2011-06-29T19:59:20-04:00

Election Prediction

chrisdye — 2011-04-30T20:04:50-04:00

As is Sillytech tradition, it's time to place your best guess on the outcome of Canada's election on Monday, May 2. There are 308 seats. The person who has the smallest seat differential for each party "wins":

Conservative:
NDP:
Liberal:
Bloc:
Green/Independent:

I'm U.K, you're U.K.

chrisdye — 2011-04-24T18:06:57-04:00

Neverendum

chrisdye — 2010-12-29T14:58:57-05:00

I just thought I'd brag that my entry, "Neverendum", was selected as Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day on October 24. This is the most public attention for one of my submitted works since Chickadee Magazine published the picture of a park bench that I submitted in 1983.

The person who actually coined the term was Dave Rosen, who published the Quebec Neverendum Colouring and Activity Book in 1996.

World leaders in silly shirts

chrisdye — 2010-11-08T13:18:51-05:00

APEC leaders in silly shirts

One Day

chrisdye — 2010-10-20T13:41:56-04:00

Happy World Statistics Day, everyone!!!

"Let us all acknowledge the crucial role of statistics in fulfilling our global mission of development and peace." -Ban Ki Moon

Frog levitator wins Nobel Prize

chrisdye — 2010-10-06T11:29:16-04:00

Andre Geim becomes first Ig-Nobel winner to Win Nobel Prize

If he can win, anybody can win.

Tropical paradise. Yep.

chrisdye — 2010-09-17T12:39:20-04:00

Massive hurricane bears down on Bermuda

Igor is a moster among hurricanes

No wonder Indonesia wanted it so much

chrisdye — 2010-08-16T20:16:07-04:00

This has 1,000,000 hits on Youtube:

Redacted, Redacted, ooh I wanna take you to Bermuda, Redacted, Come on pretty momma...

chrisdye — 2010-07-14T15:53:37-04:00

Handcuffed Defendant Flees From Court

Go Spos!

chrisdye — 2010-06-24T09:48:15-04:00

Twenty years ago today, I went to my first baseball game. The Expos had the NL East lead, a half-game up on the Pirates, and it was half-price ticket day for under 16s, so I convinced my parents to drive all the way to the Big O with the family.

The Meech Lake Accord had failed the day before and it was St-Jean-Baptiste Day, so for the first (but not last) time in Expos history, many in the large (for the Expos) crowd of 25,000 booed Canada's national anthem. Anytime the Expos played at home on St-Jean-Baptise Day after that, they played the anthems during the warmup so that no one would be there to boo.

We sat in the first row of the upper deck, right behind home plate. Dennis Martinez had a solid start, but the relief was weak and the Pirates won the game, retaking the NL East lead (which they kept for the rest of the year). Disappointing, but I'll never forget how awesome it was to eat peanuts and ice cream and watch the Expos in the Big O on a hot summer day, during that brief time when the retractable roof actually worked.

Nil-Nil Draw + Sound of Angry Bees = World's Greatest Spectacle

chrisdye — 2010-06-22T20:40:59-04:00

Surf the web as if you're at the World Cup! http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk

It's like rai-y-ain on your wedding day

chrisdye — 2010-06-15T15:21:19-04:00

Lightning strikes six-storey Jesus statue in Ohio, burns it to ground

Comrade of the Rings

chrisdye — 2010-05-31T22:35:59-04:00

Via Dustin: check out the Soviet-era illustrations for the russkiy Lord of the Rings, and especially the Commie Hobbit movie at the end!

Warming trend

chrisdye — 2010-05-21T20:49:50-04:00

World Sauna Championships in Finland

UK election prediction

chrisdye — 2010-05-05T12:32:35-04:00

We've predicted Canada and the US; why not someplace where only some of us have any idea what goes on?
The British House of Commons has 650 seats (529 in England, 40 in Wales, 59 in Scotland and 18 in Northern Ireland). There are many minor parties that can win a few seats with less than 2% of the vote. The categories for this contest will simply be "Conservatives", "Labour", "Liberal Democrats", and "Other". (If you want to specify the "Other", you are welcome to, but it won't count in who has the best prediction).

Enough is enough!

chrisdye — 2010-05-05T00:42:03-04:00

Straatview

chrisdye — 2010-05-04T00:23:46-04:00

I previously wrote about Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau, a tiny town in Holland with a few dozen parcels of land belonging to Belgium. International borders run haphazardly through the town, dividing streets and buildings, like so:

View Larger Map

Well, it seems that Google maps has Streetviewed all of Holland and none of Belgium, resulting in Streetview stopping and starting at near-random intervals through Baarle-Nassau. My favourite part is that some of the Belgian parts have little parts inside them that belong to Holland. These tiny strips of Dutch land, some no bigger than a front yard, are streetviewed, while the Belgian parts are all cut off.

What is the internet made of?

chrisdye — 2010-04-13T00:01:31-04:00

This is the median of internet entertainment: exactly half of the stuff on the internet is better than this, and exactly half is worse:

Olympic... um... Games

chrisdye — 2010-02-11T21:42:32-05:00

Of all of the Olympic Mascot flashgames,
recycling bin curling is the best.
(Although I like the music for Soaring Sumi).

Chickens break up a rabbit fight

chrisdye — 2010-01-31T12:50:06-05:00

Worst hotel in Montreal

chrisdye — 2010-01-28T18:38:34-05:00

I've travelled a lot, and so have read quite a lot of hotel reviews. But Montreal's very own Hotel Eureka has the worst hotel reviews I have ever seen.

There's unbelievably terrible, and then there's...

chrisdye — 2010-01-11T22:01:37-05:00

A skyscraper with no Seoul

chrisdye — 2010-01-07T01:05:43-05:00

While the the opening of the Burj Dubai hogs the world's headlines, the Ryugyong Hotel, a 105-storey empty building in the heart of Pyongyang, North Korea, is in its 23rd year of construction and would cost 10% of North Korea's GDP to make inhabitable. Whether you are for or against the North Korean nuclear missile programme, you have to admit it it has been more successful than this. Honestly, I still wonder how Kim Jong Il's party was able to win all of the seats in the last North Korean elections after this building fiasco.

Which is expanding faster: the universe or the National Hockey League?

chrisdye — 2009-12-14T18:19:06-05:00

I found this explanation of how fast the universe is expanding:
"Astronomers measure the expansion of the universe in kilometers per second per megaparsec. This is called the Hubble Constant, and its value is... around 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec... You can also put this into terms of a rate of growth. Roughly speaking, the universe is growing in size by about 7 percent every billion years."

If the universe is 13.7 billion years old, then 1 billion years is 7.3% of its age. The NHL was founded in November 26, 1917, making it 92 years 18 days old. 7.3% of 92 years 18 days is 6 years 262.65 days. 6 years, 262 days ago from today was March 27, 2003. The NHL has not created any expansion teams since that time. For the last 7.3% of their respective existences, the universe has expanded faster than the NHL.

Let's try two billion years. Having no knowledge of astrophysics, I figure if the universe is constantly expanding at 7% per billion years, then all we have to do is add 7% to 107% and arrive at 14.49% expansion for the last two billion years.

2 billion years is 14.6% of the universe's age. 14.6% of the NHL's age is 13 years 160.6 days. From today's date, we arrive at July 7, 1996.
Since 1996, the NHL has gone from a 26-team league to a 30-team league (Nashville, Atlanta, Minnesota and Columbus). This is a 15.38% increase.

To conclude, in the past 14.6% of their respective existences, the NHL has expanded at a slightly faster rate than the universe.

Meanwhile, across the pond...

chrisdye — 2009-11-20T15:26:19-05:00

"LONDON [AP]...European leaders on Thursday chose Ashton and van Rompuy [as president of the European Union], an unassuming man nicknamed "Rompuy-pumpy" by British tabloids. He is best known for penning Flemish-language haikus, which he publishes on a blog..."

If you love the Berlin Wall so much, why don't you marry it?

chrisdye — 2009-11-09T17:12:25-05:00

The story of Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, wife of the Berlin Wall

Her website: http://www.berlinermauer.se/

David Hasselhoff Reunites Germany

chrisdye — 2009-11-09T17:06:48-05:00

It is well known that the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. Less well-known is that East Berliners swarmed the wall in order to see David Hasselhoff:

Find more videos like this on HoffSpace