Category Archives: Randomness

Sappy Sunday – Acceptance & Anti-Bullying Message From An Insurance Commercial?!?

A Thai insurance commercial, mashed-up with an atmospheric piece of music, creates a touching message against bullying and about acceptance:

Friday Fun Link – Go The Fuck to the Library

It’s funny cause it’s true. (h/t to TR & CF)

The Best Non-Fiction Book I Read This Year…

…was quite possibly a fiction book! I think I’ve mentioned before that I read mostly non-fiction – probably 80-90% NF to 10-20% Fiction.  But a recent Reddit thread on “eye-opening books that have improved the quality of your life” led me to a great fiction find. In the thread, somebody recommended Bill Bryson’s “A Short […]

The Tribesman Who Facebook Friended Me

A really interesting story about how Facebook has reached into places where you would least expect it. (I sometimes feel like I need to add this to any story I post that I find on MetaFilter but seriously, the MetaFilter comments make the original story 1000x better!)

Cross-Linguistic Onomatopoeia

A discussion of how the song “Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes” is sung with a different melody in Canada then in other parts of the world leads to this awesome Wikipedia article about how a variety of animal sounds and other common noises are conveyed in different languages. (via MetaFilter)

Saturday Snap – Funny Graffiti

Kids, grafitti is wrong and you should never do it.  But if you happen to have a Sharpie in your pocket when walking past an unadorned stop sign, it’s a truism of life that the obvious jokes can also be the funniest.  😉  

Map Porn

I recently discovered an awesome sub-Reddit called r/mapporn which features all kinds of really frickin’ cool maps such as “America 1681“, “Flipping European and North American Cities“, “World Map of Railways“, “Map of Facebook Connections” and I have to stop there or else I’ll just link to all their maps – each one is so […]

Friday Fun Link – One Day on Earth

A recent documentary features a variety of scenes from all around the world captured on a single day.  Here’s the trailer: One Day on Earth – Motion Picture Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.

Some Thoughts on The 10th Anniversary of 9/11

There’s a lot of commentary today online, in other media and at memorials around the world.   So instead of adding to the noise, I thought I’d do a quick round-up of some of the most interesting things I’ve seen… (Oh, okay – I’ll quickly do my own “Where were you when?” story since I […]

Happy RPL-a-versary to Me!

Today is my three year anniversary of starting work at RPL.  A few stream-of-unconscious thoughts and observations… 1. I started working for the Writers Guild of Alberta at almost the exact same time of year – I know because I was in their office doing my initial training a couple days before September 11.  (I’ve […]