Last week I ordered a Casio GW7900B-1 off eBay. I got it a few days later (here is my photo of it), I've been wearing it all week and I gotta say, it's a pretty comfortable watch. It has a lot of features, as you will read on the Casio site linked above. What I like best about it is the atomic timekeeping, because I'm a nut about my watches being accurate. I also like the rugged look and feel, as I've been known to bang my watches around a bit and this one seems like it will take a beating. Anyway, you can find a bunch of reviews about it Google so I'll just say I like it a lot.

P.S.: Some people say it's hard to read in low light, I don't find that to be true. They also say the alarm isn't loud enough... It's plenty loud!

This is awesome.

The Mazda hit the 400,000km mark not too long ago, and we were pretty excited for that milestone. Then this past week we had to take it to do an emissions inspection which it failed on two separate occasions. We thought it was the end of the road for the poor car for a brief moment. Then my dad replaced the catalytic converter last night, like he did two years ago and the car passed the inspection today with flying colours. Thank you dad! It just might make it to 500,000km now, which I didn't think was a realistic milestone a few years ago. And who knows, maybe in 2 years if the car is still running and the body hasn't rusted over completely yet, we can change the catalytic converter make it pass another e-test, and give it 2 more years of life! I won't hold my breath though.

Made up a new phrase today: Socially Awkceptable - Socially awkward, yet still accepted, because so is everyone/everything else. Thanks social media!

Here's a quick Coldfusion function to turn a date stamp into a relative time stamp (like Facebook has their dates showing as "2 seconds ago", for example). I use this at work, but I use its PHP equivalent on my log here.

http://pastebot.net/paste/PgyTNPDPx5x/

Usage:

<cfoutput>#RelativeTime('2012-01-04 16:09')#</cfoutput>

So for the past few weeks I haven't been able to get to either Casey's blog or Alex's blog from home. Turns out Alex can't get to his own site from work either.. What's in common? Our internet provider is Cogeco. There are other people experiencing the same issue.

What I figure is that someone put up a spam tumblr blog somewhere with a custom URL, and Cogeco banned tumblr's custom IP 72.32.231.8.. I emailed them about it almost a week ago and even though they didn't respond, based on that forum post it looks like they've been looking into the issue.

I suppose I will just wait patiently until they figure it out.

Update 14-Jan-12: It seems that they fixed it, at long last!

Any store that makes me wait in line on their online shop does not get my business.

I know you can go to each of these sites individually, but I like less clicks...
http://www.miklos.ca/track

This is a great reference to achieve it:
http://codeinthehole.com/archives/37-mysqldump-with-wildcard-table-matching.html

http://irinawerning.com/bttf2/back-to-the-future-2-2011/

It took over 3 years--which is unusual because I used to put an average of 55,000km per year on the car--but the Mazda made it to 400,000km tonight.

We got me one of these watches from Walmart last night. It's pretty nice looking! Nikki remarked "It's so small compared to your Luminox!" - which it is, but I don't mind this for everyday wear at the office. I set it against the atomic clock last night, and this morning it's still keeping exact time. That's more than I could say about the older Timex watches in my collection.

Update 15-Nov-11: The watch was returned after I found out about Timex Originals! Wow...

I own many watches, all with different water resistance levels. Here's a handy reference table I found on the interweb which should make it a bit more clear as to what all the markings mean.

NO DECLARATION
This model is NOT water resistant. Any water contact should be avoided.

WATER RESIST
This model is resistant to minor and accidental splashes. Greater water contact should be avoided.

WATER RESISTANT 30M (3 ATM / 100 Feet) *
Showering, accidental splashes, short swimming or car washing - it is resistant against perspiration, water vapor or rain drops. Tested for water resistance up to 3 ATM, and must be able to survive 30 minutes under water at a depth of 1 m (3 feet) followed by 90 seconds under a pressure corresponding to 30 meters.

WATER RESISTANT 50M (5 ATM / 160 Feet) *
Showering, accidental splashes, short swimming, car washing, parachuting, hang gliding and skiing - it is resistant against perspiration, water vapor, rain drops. Tested for water resistance up to 5 ATM corresponding to 50 meters

WATER RESISTANT 100M (10 ATM / 300 Feet) *
Swimming, snorkeling, mountain climbing, parachuting, hang gliding, skiing and all kinds of sports challenges. Tested for water resistance up to 10 ATM corresponding to 100 m

WATER RESISTANT 200M (20 ATM / 660 Feet) *
Free diving without scuba gear, and all kinds of water sports. Tested for water resistance up to 20 ATM corresponding to 200 m

WATER RESISTANT 300M (30 ATM / 1000 Feet) *
Scuba diving to a depth of 30 meters, for 2 hours. Tested for water resistance up to 30 ATM corresponding to 300 m

WATER RESISTANT 500M (50 ATM / 1650 Feet) *
Protected for scuba diving to a depth of 50 meters. Tested for water resistance up to 50 ATM corresponding to 500 m

* The metres value does not relate to a diving depth but to the air pressure used in the course of the water resistance test. (DIN 8310, ISO 2281, NIHS 91-10)

Why have I not made this connection before?

Today we bought one of these remotes. It's pretty cool I must say. One button turns on every device needed to "Watch TV" or "Watch a Movie" (TV, sound bar, blu-ray player) and it even switches the TV to the proper input.

^{Image credit: Jonathan Mak}

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American computer entrepreneur and innovator. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer.

via Wikipedia

We entered Casey to be the next Fido dog. Click "Vote" and they will donate $1 to Canada Dog Guides.
http://www.fidocastingcall.ca/dogs/70

The css property margin:auto works in IE as long as you specify a full and proper doctype, for example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

I did not know this until today.

Ron Artest, L.A. Lakers, officially changed his name to "World Peace". He is my hero today.

Changing my name was meant to inspire and bring youth together all around the world," World Peace said in a statement released after the hearing. "After this short delay, my tickets have been paid and I'm glad that it is now official.

via cp24.com

We've lived to see World Peace...

I found a washer on my desk (probably from my chair) and placed it on the end of the pencil I had nearby. Found it to be a perfect fit...



It reminded me of something but I couldn't figure out what... then finally I remembered... Pogo ball! Remember these things?

Game of the day (this is a good one!):
http://www.farmfive.com/doublemaze.html

When I ran the search engine (the matching algorithm) on these IrisCodes, I got a Hamming Distance of 0.24 for her left eye, and 0.31 for her right eye. As may be seen from the histogram that arises when DIFFERENT irises are compared by their IrisCodes, these measured Hamming Distances are so far out on the distribution tail that it is statistically almost impossible for different irises to show so little dissimilarity. The mathematical odds against such an event are 6 million to one for her right eye, and 10-to-the-15th-power to one for her left eye. National Geographic accepted and published this conclusion in a second cover issue featuring Sharbat Gula, 18 years after the first, and the Society launched their "Afghan Girl's Fund" to assist the education of Muslim girls in cultures that discourage or prohibit female education.

Read more: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/afghan.html

Today's game of the day: http://farmfive.com/whereonearth.html

http://jui.cc/Y1

Funny little page on the accuracy of watches:
http://www.chronocentric.com/watches/accuracy.shtml

http://static.miklos.ca/docs/Jack_Layton_Letter_110820.pdf

http://www.e-watchmaker.com/reviewtmxelectric.html

Have you every wondered which part of the other side of the earth is directly below you? Find out using this map tunneling tool.

http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm