Randomization

In my thirty-eight years of life, I have seen an incredible rate of technological advances. I don't know if computers are actually easier to use these days, but they are definitely more impressive and powerful. From the old Tandy to the newest MacBook, a 10" floppy to a smart phone. The rate of advancement can be mind boggling. One thing I've always kept up with is music media. I'm a music lover and the first music I listened to was Queen on vinyl and Garth Brooks on tape. It then moved to CD's, then an mp3 player than held ten songs, then the iPod and now anything that can stream. I wouldn't be surprised if I had a song on a 3.5" floppy disc, if they fit. One thing that the move to digital services has is that the album art and such is now tied to the song itself. It's a pit of a lost medium to have to make an album booklet and you don't get to read the lyrics or see what art the band decided to put in, but the main album art is still attached to ...

Did you know I live in Canada? It's a country on the planet Earth. It is located north of the United States of America, east of the United States of America and west of France. It contains mountains, plains, hills and valleys. It celebrates it's birthday on July 1st, just to get ahead of the Americans. Canada is one of the less.....historically problematic countries in the world, mostly due to it's young age, but it still has it's dark past. And it's dark present too. As with any place in the world, there are pros and cons. You could argue that, as with any place in the world, many of the cons can be directly attributed to people in power, like politicians and police. I enjoy watching history videos on YouTube a lot. One of the things that sticks out to me is the idea of city states. Now, I'm not going to go around saying that's how we should do it, but man. Just having Saskatoon being the main government for all the towns around just sounds better than what...

This past weekend was fathers day (Happy belated!). I don't consider myself much of a father, by the time I met my daughter she was thirteen and I really haven't had to do TOO much. I still try to be there for her and help support her in whatever endeavors she participates. She was working this weekend so I didn't see her much but she decided to make a father's day supper on Thursday instead. I was excited that I wasn't going to have to cook. Then she told me what she was cooking. Pork chops. Now, dear reader, I know what you're thinking. "That sounds good! Pork chops rule!" You didn't grow up in my house though. Wait.....yes you did. Well then you know how my parents cooked meat. I like to think of them as good cooks, but the steaks and pork chops I ate when growing up had more in common with a cardboard box than the pig it came from. Mom always said they were just trying to make sure us kids didn't get sick from raw meat and tried to keep on ...

I've previously stated on this particular media platform that I am the main cook in our house. I'm not a guy that loves cooking, I'm not the best cook in the house, and there are many days I hate it and just want to make pizza pops, but it's my job anyway. I have about six recipes I rotate around so we end up having the same meals each week. On the weekends we often just cook for ourselves. While this is fine for me, I don't like to force it on my fellow humans too often so I try to keep my eyes open for something easy or new that I can either add to the rotation or just cook once a month or something. There's a J&J butcher that opened last year right near our house and I see it everyday and think, man, I should swing by there and see what they have. And with my new job I drive down central street in Saskatoon everyday and see some places including Summit Meats & Sausage Limited. I'm intrigued. I haven't been yet, but I must at some point. I must...

Cities. Towns. Villages. Bunches of people and buildings. Settlements are a common part of humanity. Whether it's a forest of buildings like New York, a small encampment in the Amazon or just a couple of mostly abandoned houses in the middle of Canada, everyone knows what they are. In ancient days they were the heads of government. Powerful city states that would also offer protection and leadership to those around. One could argue that we need to move closer to this. Maybe less taxes to the Federal and provincial governments and more to the cities, but everything comes with its own problems. Your current city is always something you have to be proud of. When I lived in Weyburn, you always made fun of Estevan and thumbed your nose at the surrounding towns. In Regina, I cheered for the Pats and hoped Saskatoon would always loose. Now that I live in the Saskatoon area, I cheer for the Blades now and hide all my Pats merch.  Another thing is to have the city flag. Warmans is just the ...

The wife and I spent three days up at Tobin Lake this past weekend. Mom and Dad bought us a two night stay at one of the Geodesic Domes for Christmas. The first picture in the link, with the bed, is the one we stayed in. It's about double the size of the other two. It's split into the half with the window wall that is the bedroom, then kind of a common area on the other half. Above that half is also a balcony with two beds. It's only good for kids as I had to crawl to get to the second bed just to check it all out. The only cooking comes from a BBQ outside. And a fire pit I guess, but there's a fire ban on right now. Besides that there is a small gazebo so you can seal yourself off from the mosquitos. Of which there were plenty. The whole thing is powered by solar that feeds a power pack. We left the fan running all day on our second day and it died about an hour after bed time. So, we suffered. The first day we got there it was an oven inside. It has hardwood floors a...

The Dyson Sphere. A large spherical structure built around a star to completely enclose and capture all energy from that star. It was proposed in 1960 by Freeman Dyson, a physicist. Since then, people have modified the idea into a swarm and other stuff. The main problem with a structure circling a object with gravity is that if even one molecule gets closer than the others, the gravity increases which causes it to have more gravity pulling it and before long you have part of you sphere in the sun. Another problem with a Dyson Sphere, is that it is still bound to the star. What happens if the star is at the end of it's life? No Hydrogen left to fuse, just death. Then everything dies and the sphere becomes a dead husk, if it survives the expansion and everything else of the stars end of life. But, what if instead of building a Dyson Sphere around a star, we built a star inside of a Dyson Sphere. Make it into a giant ship that travels from star to star, stealing hydrogen. It can expel...