cherry top

the cherry tops challenge is a ride down in Nelson that Ryan and I chose to submit ourselves to. Well, he chose to and then mentioned it to me. I rather chose between doing it and enduring the ridicule until my dying day if I didn't.



Here's Ryan at the top of the loooong climb...after dragging his fully spent and cramping sorry ass up he decided to swig soy sauce straight out of the bottle. "It's good for salt replenishment. I read it on the internet."

Ya, I read a lot of things on the internet too...anyway.

Graham-"I gotta check in on the twins...anyone got Rogers up here?"

The dream tired team. Ready for the longest, steepest, hardest downhill ride I've ever seen...

I have a year to come up with an excuse for next time.

posting machine

now I'm a posting machine!



check out the new razor I got a few months ago...

newer, in this case, IS BETTER...



new razor in use:

old razor in use:

I feel like an Ikea commercial..."it's old, throw it out"

my new way to post...

"John, if you don't make a post I will take you off my list!"
~Nature Nerd

I pinned my lack of posting to laziness and the fact that it takes some effort to log into blogger, upload pics, write, preview, etc... So I made myself a little tool...preset fields to slam text into, picture uploads that will re-size and upload (correctly) and put it all together and send it to iloveoil with one button click. It ain't pretty, but it's easy.

Numbers Part 3: Cosmos and Me...Feeling Tiny

Carl Sagan has always been a bit of a hero of mine. As a child I have a few memories of watching Cosmos, a fantastic show that took the viewer across space and time. I've had my copy of the book Cosmos for almost as long as I can remember...its pages never ceasing to ignite my imagination.

One cool thing that fits into my Numbers saga is the 'Cosmic Calendar'...a calendar that has 12 months and that represents the total time that the universe has existed. Humans only make their debut in the evening of the last day of the year.



Here is Carl Sagan explaining the calendar...


And I cannot resist another...making me feel even smaller!


...it just makes you want to hug somebody, eh?

Numbers part 2: Powers of ten and one

xkcd is a webcomic I tend to check 3 times a week. Sometimes I laugh my head off. Sometimes other people find it funny too...but sometimes the geek humour is a little too obscure.

Here is an example of one of said comic episodes...

Do you find it funny?

Here is what the comic is subtly emulating...

...this film was made in 1977 and is called "powers of ten".

Now do you find it funny?

Numbers part 1 : Zimbabwe Currency

Here's a graph I found that shows the inflation of the Zim-dollar over a span of time. To put the number scale in perspective, I added some various commonly used markers.




To view the unadulterated version click here.



100 Billion!??




According to Arminda, my friend Peter's sister, who recently arrived from Harrare there is worthless money littering the streets of the capital.



Not being an expert on the subject I won't speculate on the cause of this disaster but I do wonder how something so crazy can happen to a country in the world's eye.