The Blog of Harald

A humourous little tidbit from the Quote Of The Day mailing list:

[In regard to the varying effectiveness of different kinds of placebos], capsules containing colored beads are more effective than colored tablets, which are superior to white tablets with corners, which are better than round white tablets. Beyond this, intramuscular saline injections are superior to any tablet but inferior to intravenous injections. Tablets taken from a bottle labeled with a well-known brand name are superior to the same tablets taken from a bottle with a typed label. My favorite is a doctor who always handled placebo tablets with forceps, assuring the patient that they were too powerful to be touched by hand.”

— British physiologist Patrick Wall, one of the world’s leading experts on the use of the placebo. (From “The Science of Consciousness”, edited by Max Velmans, p. 168.)

I believe in magic and the power of conciousness, and yet it still sometimes amazes me that this works…

So Toronto City Council voted last night to allow a bridge between the Toronto Island Airport and the mainland. Existing access is via a ferry across the western gap; a (possibly small and vocal) group has been arguing for at least 20 years that building a bridge would improve utilisation of the airport and revitalise our city.

Personally, I’m skeptical on that particular rationalisation. This only works if you can fly to other downtown airports in nearby cities; so far that’s New York, Boston, and Chicago (Ottawa and Montreal don’t really have downtown airports, but I guess we could count them too.

The Toronto Board of Trade apparently surveyed their members on this topic, and concluded that they don’t really care about the Island Airport; what they want is fast access to Pearson International Airport (preferrably via train from downtown). I think this is the right answer; many other international cities have direct rail links from outlying airports to downtown; in my experience that’s a wonderful way to travel.

But that’s not really why I’m ranting this morning. The part of the debate that makes me gag is this:

The anti-airport faction is mostly downtown residents, who are annoyed by the noise and pollution caused by the airport. I’m sorry, but the airport was there long before most of the residents involved moved in. They knew the airport was there, and they bought houses and condominiums downtown (and especially on the waterfront) anyway. At the time that most of those condo towers were under construction, airport traffic was about five times what it is now (400,000 passengers per year vs. 80,000 today).

It’s generally a good thing for airports to reduce their noise and pollution, but
I don’t believe that people have a right to move into an area with an existing, functioning airport, and then start complaining about that airport. People have been buying houses near airports and then complaining about it for decades. There is a reason those houses are cheap! Don’t buy a residence near an operating airport, you morons!

Sunday was my birthday.

On Saturday, several friends came over, and we had a fajitas party. 9 people; a large bowl of chicken; a smaller one of beef; two large bowls of veggies; about a pound of cheese; a half litre each of sour cream and salsa; and almost a half-litre of guacamole. Some wine and lots of candles to complete the mix.

Wow, that was fun. We stayed up until almost 2 in the morning drinking (various combinations of scotch, brandy, grand marnier, martinis, and other liver-damaging substances), and watching the candles burn out one by one.

We really have to do this more often :-)

[ I’ve been busy the last couple of days setting up the rolemaster website for the campaign I’m in. Movable Type is good for more than just weblogs!!! ]

Here is a story about The human Swiss Army Knife. He’s got the ultimate presentation of the Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared”. He carries 12 kg of stuff around with him in various pockets and folds. He’s even got the Guinness record; 1300 different items!

I carry a MagLite, Leatherman, cell phone, and pedomter on my belt. This guy definitely out-geeks me. (Interestingly, he ditched his pedometer…)

[ Thanks to both David and Terry Labach for the link! ]

I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and experiencing what are probably stress related symptoms (e.g. sporadic chest pain and palpitations). I had the worst attack while in Dublin two weeks back (naturally I’d have scary health trouble while travelling!). I’ve had a cardiac stress test (which was normal), and my doctor says my resting EKG looks marvelous. My subconcious is not convinced, and likes to respond to symptoms with anxiety attacks. Whee!

So today (and tonight :-) I’m wearing a Holter Heart Monitor; basically EKG leads attached to a tape recorder that saves 24 hours worth of data. Tomorrow I’ll take it back to the hospital, and some poor overworked doctor will have to stare at the data and pronounce me “fit” or “unfit”.

The wires are all taped to my skin, and they’re uncomfortable. Other than that, the thing is suprisingly unobtrusive! I’m not allowed to sweat (or the electrodes will come off); we’ll see how sleeping goes.

The hospital sells the used batteries (and the used cassette tapes) for $0.25 each; so even if I get nothing else out of this experience, I’ll get some cheap (slightly used) batteries…

ImplosionWorld.com

Welcome to the explosive demolition industry’s worldwide source for news and information on building implosions, blowdowns and all other types of structural blasting projects.

This site is just plain cool. I’ve always loved watching building demolitions (who doesn’t?). Don’t try this at home, though…

There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives.
— Leo Graf, USS LaFarge, 2298

Roll Out The Gun Barrels

So, your RPG has run into a situation where there’s going to be some sort of large scale battle. Sure, the players can be involved in their corner of the way, but they’d really like to have some control over the whole fight. What do you do? Pull out that copy of Advanced Squad Leader and put the RPG on hold for a few years?

Well, here’s a very cheapass way to simulate large battles without having to deal with maps and counters and fifteen hours per turn.

Those wacky guys at Cheap Ass Games have done it again. I love this company; they have a great concept (make interesting games cheaply), and they’ve managed to come up with a whole bunch of interesting games (arguably the hardest part). Excellent!

In case my adoring public was wondering where I went, this has been My Week:

• Modifying the code to handle more than 1024 simultaneous clients. Seems that Apache’s process-per-connection model means, in turn, that each Apache webserver makes up to 1500 connections to the validator. This naturally involves rebuilding most of the support libraries, as well as the main application, and then finding a machine capable of *generating* that many simultaneous connections.
• Hunting down an obscure memory leak (which turned out to be something we had fixed a couple of years ago; *sigh).
• Hunting down crashes in the XML parser (still haven’t found that one).
• Managing various other customer problems along the way…
• Moving the blog
• A late curl
• Mild asthma, as a result of my cold from last week
• Finding time and energy to spend with the munchkins :-)

And my weekend:

• 8AM hockey on Saturday
• IMAX Space Station, then day at the science centre
• The TKF Chili Bash
• Santa Claus Parade
• Birthday celebrations at my dad’s house
• somewhere in there, laundry

So I plead “guilty with an explanation” for the lack of recent updates. I have a whole pile of stuff to filter through, and a couple of rants brewing (including one on the state of Ontario’s electricity supply). Stay tuned…

60’s goodness

Leonard Nimoy did a music video for a song called “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

I’m speechless.

(URLs are constantly changing; Search Google! for a copy.

The CDC says that Weight Gain in US Continues Upward Trend.

I’m not sure how you conclude that “children 2 to 5 years old” are overweight. But the study confirms what we already know, that generally speaking, the whole population is getting fatter, from a combination of too much to eat and too little exercise. This in turn is greatly increasing the prevalence of Type-II diabetes and heart disease, particularly among younger adults and adolescents where the problem didn’t exist before.

I’m slowing doing something about it. My recent trip to Ireland may have set me back a couple of weeks; A combination of airplane food, Irish breakfasts, and a few pints of Guiness… We’ll see on Tuesday, I guess.

David Suzuki Foundation: Nature Challenge

The challenge is simple: pick three of the top 10 ways to conserve nature, and do them over the next year. The website contains resources, including a mailing list, to help you meet these goals.

An interesting idea, and you’ll probably learn alot even if you don’t meet any of these goals…