Maxsons Import_User – Page 54

20/09/2012

Water on Leaves

I took this picture a few days ago. I was leaving work in the afternoon when I noticed the water droplets on this plant.

20/09/2012

Today….

….I have now lost all the weight I gained while Cyndi and I were in the US last summer. I know, it took a year, but 1/2 of it came in the last 3 weeks (since I returned from Switzerland).

My goal over the next year is to loose a grand total of 50 lbs. I’m already down 5 kg from when I started that goal.

Image from pukibeach via flickr

19/09/2012

Cops and Guns

Yesterday in the UK 2 police officers were shot dead while trying to arrest some dirtbag. This has caused a furor over whether police should or shouldn’t be armed. I don’t get it.

Society asks police officers to go into dangerous situations and deal with the scum of society, at times. Sure, most of the time people are nice and cooperate; however, they still are criminals. Criminals break the law. If I were a cop, I would want to be able to protect myself from these dirtbags. As a member of society, I think we should allow police to protect themselves.

Image from elvert james via flickr

14/09/2012

What Language To Learn?

I’ll put it simply: I think that learning a foreign language if you are going to stay in the US is worthless. What’s the point? You can travel thousands of miles in any direction and run into only native English speakers. What benefit does learning a language provide? Except for people who have a reason (translators, etc…) I would say there is none.

Now, things change if you move or travel to another country. When we moved to Serbia, all business with the government had to be conducted in Serbian (perhaps our government could take note). Most people around us spoke no English so to just live, we had to learn Serbian.

But say you want to learn a language. As a native English speaker, which language do you pick? I’ve been thinking about learning another language living in Europe to help ease my pains as I travel. Which to pick though–I thought I had written about this before, but I can’t find anything on my site…guess not…arg, I can’t even find the article I remember reading.

Anyway, which to pick? This morning, the Telegraph had the top 10 (for the UK). Here is the article (a slideshow really) and here is the list:

10. Portugese
9. Japanese
8. Russian
7. Cantonese
6. Arabic
5. Polish
4. Mandarin
3. Spanish
2. French
1. German

For me, Spanish in high school took the desire for it away. I’d only learn French if I were to live there. I had seriously considered Russian (somewhat good in Eastern Europe…although Serbian has allowed me to get by as much as I think Russian would) and German. Glad to see German was at the top.

Image from tochis via flickr

13/09/2012

Software Patents

I don’t like the idea of software patents. Do companies need some sort of protection? Sure. But current law has been taken way too far.

This is an interesting way to limit the plethora of current software patents.

By the way, I didn’t know that the Wright Brothers had patented their wing-warping technique.

Image from Michael Neubert via flickr

12/09/2012

Tree

Have you ever needed to print a directory tree? No, I’m not talking about a simple directory listing, I’m talking about a tree. Like this:

├───2009
│ ├───A
│ │ ├───1
│ │ ├───2
│ │ ├───3
│ ├───b
│ │ ├───1
│ │ └───5

I knew I had done it before but couldn’t remember how. I only needed it for a 2 minute thing so I just printed the dir output and called it good. But, I couldn’t leave it. That is when I found:

TREE

The tree command did exactly what I wanted. Hope this helps you if you ever need/want to print a directory tree in Windows.

Image from eduarti amorim via flickr

11/09/2012

Enterprise Rent-a-Car (UK)

I saw this commercial / advert on TV a few days ago and laughed and laughed. I liked the fact that a US company would poke fun of themselves this way. Here you go:

This video is archived here just in case it ever comes off youtube

[Update 2013-02-08 07:07:17] Sky is also playing this game craftily. Here are two of their internet adverts.

09/09/2012

Rounders and Baseball

Today was a church picnic. After everyone had eaten, there was a pickup game of rounders. I hadn’t heard of it so I was going to sit out. But everyone convinced me to play. They said “it’s like baseball.” So, this post is a bit about rounders and baseball. But first, here’s two pictures:


from sk8geek via flickr	from wrongindustries via flickr

In these pictures, you can see about all of the similarities between rounders and baseball. There’s a ball (but it is smaller) and bat. The goal is to hit the ball and run around the bases (or sticks in the case of rounders). You get out if the ball is caught or the stick is tagged. But you don’t run home as in baseball…you run to 4th base. There’s no such things as fouls or strikes. You run on the 3rd pitch even if you don’t hit the ball. If you don’t hit a homerun–called a rounder–you don’t get credit for making it home; however, if you don’t make it all the way around, you can move to the next base as soon as the bowler bowls the ball (pitches it). To switch sides, you have to get people “out” by catching the ball. Tagging them out doesn’t count. BUT, once you are out, you are out (like in dodgeball) and you don’t get to bat again.

So, even though it isn’t really like baseball, I had fun playing.

08/09/2012

Battle, Hastings, and the Normans

Today, we went to Battle which is where the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. Interestingly, I always thought that 1066 was the year the English kicked out the French (the Normans). However, it turns out it was exactly the opposite. That was the battle where the French got their foothold on Great Britain Island. Here’s some pictures (and here are even more on flickr)