Lancaster over 315 Front

 A tweet from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum has a picture taken from their Lancaster bomber on its first flight over Toronto.  The picture was taken on 11 November 1988 and features the still-under-construction Toronto Skydome stadium.  The picture also includes the RBC systems building where I had just started work two weeks earlier.

Alto 80

We make another appearance in the Alto 80 blog.  We first encountered Jim and Dale on our first outing with the trailer though we had been following Jim's blog since before we ordered our Alto.

Singaporeans worry as temperature drops to low twenties

I lived in Singapore in the late nineties and I still sometimes look at the Singaporean news.  The Straights Times has an article cautioning residents that the temperature has fallen into the low twenties Celsius.

According to NEA's website, the lowest temperature recorded in Singapore was 19.4 deg C on two days in 1934. Both days were in the month of January.

Your Personal Centre of Geography

Geo Mid Point will calculate the geographic mid-point of all of the places you have lived.  Mine seems to be in Labrador near Winokapaa Lake (Lat: 53.214381, Long: -63.207506).
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A Friend's App: Linger

The Atlantic has a write up on my friend Chuck Shnider's new app Linger. The app gives an organised view of the films in the Prelinger Archives.  I was at the NSNorth conference a few weekends ago and during some of the breaks Chuck played films from his app on the giant screen.  This app could be a real time eater.

Where the Bombs Hit

Bombsight is a website that maps the locations of all of the German bombs that were dropped on London during the Blitz (7 October 1940 to 6 June 1941).  Apparently two bombs fell on the small street we used to live on in Fulham and four landed in the square opposite my first London apartment (as well as two on the block where the apartment was).

via Yahoo News

NYC Criminals take day off

The Guardian reports that on Monday 26 November 2012 no one was murdered, stabbed or the victim of a violent crime in New York City.

New York police department chief spokesman Paul Browne said it was "first time in memory" that the city's police force had experienced such a peaceful 24 hours.
It comes at the end of year when the city is on target to have its lowest murder rate since 1960.

I lived in New York in 1991 and I remember my colleagues there mentioning that one big advantage of living in Toronto was that if you were murdered you were guaranteed to make the news.  In NYC at the time you would have to be murdered in a particularly gruesome way to get a mention.

Lego Math Building

An excellent micro-scale Lego model of the Math Building at the University of Waterloo.

via The Brothers Brick

Photo: Highland Cattle

National Geographic Photo of the Day has a great picture of some Highland Cattle.  For some reason these beasties always remind me of my wife's relatives.

I once encountered a small herd of them (cattle, not relatives) on a road in the Scottish Highlands.  They were standing on the road completely blocking it.  They completely ignored the car but as soon as I got out the all ran away.

Singapore Streetview

I've just discovered that Google now have streetview for Singapore.  Some highlights for my curious readers:

This is the pedestrian gate to the condo complex I used to live in.

I used to work in this building. In my day what is now the Singapura Financial was an actual Royal Bank of Canada branch. I worked in the trading room which was up on, I think, the 15th floor.

If you walk down the street from the old RBC building and turn on MacCallum street you get to the hawker centre where we used to get lunch most days.  Unfortunately you can't go inside and see if the fried rice man is still there.

How Many Tabs is Too Many?

You know how in Firefox when you accidentally hit the close window button a dialog pops up that basically says: "Dude you are about to close 5 tabs! Do you really want to do this?"

Well the other day I accidentally hit the close window button and a dialog popped up that said (and I'm not making this up) "You are about to close 198 tabs! Do you really want to do this?"

This may explain why I had to go out and by more RAM yesterday.

Who puts an OED in a blue box?

Several strange things happened to me the other day. I got up early because the electrician came to fiddle around with the electrical outlet for our new stove. (It had been installed where it blocked the stove from being pushed all the way back.)

The first weird thing is that I went for a run at about 8 AM. I was amazed at the number of people who were out that early. I kept having to slow down or dodge around groups of school kids. It was also garbage / blue box day so I kept having to dodge around them on the sidewalk.

The second weird thing happened a few minutes into the run. I encountered a gaggle of school kids and a row of garbage cans while I was beside a large truck parked in the road. Because I couldn't pass I slowed down. As I did so, I glanced over at the blue box. Sitting on top of it was an Oxford English Dictionary.

I'm not talking about one of those largish books that you keep on your desk for essay writing. I'm talking about one of these (that's the best picture I could find). This is a two volume set that collects all the content from the full 20 volume OED. In order to accomplish this, each page has the contents of 9 pages from the full set. Because the print is so small, the box that holds the two volumes has a little drawer that holds a magnifying glass.

The magnifying glass was missing but then I guess no one would throw a magnifying glass in a blue box.