Cuppa Auld Lang Syne

Well, aren’t you surprised you lived this long?

Raise a glass of whatever you’re drinking this upcoming New Year’s Eve and think of your friends and family, the choices taken and not taken. I’ll do the same.

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He’s Just A Chip Off The Old Block… Of Ice

Earthquake monitors in the Canadian north heard a large BANG! and later satellite photos confirmed a large ice shelf broke off and started floating away as noted with alarm by CNN news.

Ancient ice shelf snaps, breaks free from Canadian Arctic
POSTED: 7:03 a.m. EST, December 29, 2006

The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometers (41 square miles) in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada’s Arctic.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as data from seismic monitors, Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of August 13, 2005.

You know it’s a slow news week when the news of this ice shelf breaking off makes headlines on CNN nearly eighteen months after it actually happened.

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I’m not an expert in this social networking websites like Digg.com, but any company that buys a “resource” that’s powered mostly by volunteers providing content is treading on financial ice so thin you can see the hungry fish swimming below. [link] Social networking sites like Digg are controlled by a few top diggers that decide what’s going to hit the front page, and well, if most of the users figured out exactly what went on behind the curtain, the site wouldn’t be quite so popular.

The bubble part of Web 2.0 is selling communities.

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When Google puts out its yearly Zeitgest, it’s kind of lying.

What Google claims are the top searches, aren’t. People still look for porn. Go fig.

It would just be boring as hell to see the same phrases pop up every year, so Google deftly filters out the repeat phrases and leaves in the upcoming trendy searches. Here’s Google’s explanation

Basically, Google folks behind THEIR curtain were just making shit up.

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Google is indeed good for some things, however. Google maps has a great API, or techie widget, that folks have used for locating stuff on maps. Several little websites have offered setups so you and your friends can create your own bookmarks and put them on maps, like CRAP, I GOTTA GO! (public bathroom locations they’ve visited). One of the more famous of these is the Gawker Stalker, where folks place real time sightings of celebrities when and where they see them on a map of New York City.

Next year I anticipate a map that locates where celebrities have used public bathrooms…

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Sandy Oakes has a commentary at Romancing The Blog on the death of a series romance line at Harlequin. Bombshell books were hybrids, with the emphasis on the kick-ass heroine who could take care of herself. Adventure and feisty females sounds great as a premise; the TV show ALIAS brought it to our homes once a week during its five year run. However, romance readers expect a certain kind of fantasy, and the series romance format is just too short to develop a character that can love AND kill. Sandy mentions a couple of different multi-book series within Bombshell, and how those held her interest — I think Bombshell discovered this concept too late — keeping one character over multiple books.

There’s more to say on this, but I figured I’d just bring up the subject for now.

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You make’a the motion with this here, and dat thingee makes a motion down there

A motion sensing remote from Nintendo’s Wii connected to a… well, it’s not a rocket science conclusion here

[link]

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I was all set to chat up an auction by a guy who reportedly got jilted by a girl after booking his Jamaican holiday, but Ebay pulled the auction.

The guy got a lot of press for it, though.

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Fatboy Slim gave someone a nice day after their car broke down on Boxing Day

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No, I have no idea what Boxing Day is, except it has more to do with Christmas Bonuses than with Mohammed Ali.

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Speaking of Christmas bonuses, this is the season for bribes, both small and big

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Donald Trump and the Muskrat-That-Lives-On-His-Head have had some troubles with Muskrat Trump’s giant American Flag on some property controlled by Trump. He’s already in a lawsuit over the size of his flag, but TMZ reports that now that everyone’s lowered their flags to half-staff in honor of President Gerald Ford’s death, Muskrat Trump’s flag can only go down to 3/4 height.

If the flag flew any lower, it would knock over 40-foot palm trees nearby.

[TMZ, at the bottom]

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And finally folks, don’t let the New Year’s celebrations go to your head. [Live Science, telling you don't take Tylenol if you've been drinking and other tidbits you'll forget after the second shot of tequilla]

If you have to get drunk, stay safe.

And if you have to drive, don’t do it near me.

Happy New Year!