Over the falls

I have a really sore neck this morning, from the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore. My wonderful wife bought me two tickets for my birthday, so we found a kind hearted soul who wanted to play with my four kids for the day, and drove up the Beltway into Maryland. After parking the car about three kilometers away, we walked in the direction of the pulsing drums up to the pimlico race track , where the event was held. I felt a little old, hanging out with these kids, but we managed to sort of fit in.. (maybe?) Twenty Dollars for two beers was a bit steep...Old guy whinging at the bar. When I was a kid, me and my brothers would be driven around town in our big red family van, and Dad would blast The Who on the crappy cassette player. We grew up singing along to tunes like ' Boris the Spider' , ' Magic Bus ', and ' Can't Explain '. When I heard that The Who were re-forming and coming to town, I just had to go. To be honest, I thought they would probably suck. ...

Here's a truly special idea - via those crazy Thrashers , I ran into this intriguing article from The Economist, which points to the world of Negative Databases, and how they might be able to help the world of encryption and data security. In a world where sensitive data gets frequently lost, Data security folk are always trying to come up with the most secure way to store data. And it doesn't take a six year old to tell you that the best way to keep your data safe, is to not have it there in the first place. "Pshaw!", I hear you say, "You can't store it and not store it at the same time!", and in a way, you'd be right. But then, in another, more accurate way, you'd be a bit wrong. Consider the following statement: "All Ravens are Black" From here, you could make all kinds of crazy assertions about all black things being ravens, but these are incorrect, despite being amusing. What's not incorrect, is that: "All Non Black-Thin...

Simon has the rules of this blog meme over at Exceptionally Uncaught. I had to seriously look around for the closest book - the first two I found were "Good Night Goz", which I discounted because it only had eleven pages, and the websters dictionary, which I discounted because it didn't technically have any sentences - (well, no full stops, anyway, which I believe maketh the sentence) So I ended up with: Fax:202-333-8308. www.georgeowninn.com. Hotel George $$$$ Capitol Hill Modernistic Posters of the first president adorn the hotel, which attracts lobbyists, celebrities and others who dig hip surroundings and proximity to power. See Map P.102. From Washington DC for Dummies, 3rd Edition. ( I really have no idea how I came to own this book. No, honestly...) So , yeah - you're all 'it' and that...

I was shocked and stunned when I woke up this morning to hear of Steve Irwin's accident . I never met Steve personally - to be honest, for a while I thought of him as a bit of a joke - some hyperactive ocker maniac, giving us Aussies a bad name overseas. (I mean, over here, as soon as you say you're from Australia, it's a matter of time before an American asks you if you know the 'Crocodile Hunter'...) But that all changed the day I took my kids to visit the Australia Zoo , up on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland. There, built around his parent's original reptile park, is a fantastic and huge zoo that is focused on protecting animals and educating people as to the way the natural world works. My Family and I spent the whole day attending shows and walks, and feeding Elephants and Kangaroos, and by the time I walked out, I felt privileged to have been a part of Steve and Terri's passion and enthusiasm for the natural world, and the way that they managed to m...