Viva Las Vegas, baby Yeah!
Goddam it's been a while since I've posted here. Blogs seem to be dieing with the advent of that hideous facebook and antiquated myspace. I guess I'll do my bit to keep them alive with this post!
I'm going to Vegas!
We're flying to LA, renting a mustang convertible, driving through Death Valley to Las Vegas for 3-4 days in early August!
Enter: The 2-Player Funnel
When we first moved in to our house here in Seattle, we had a housewarming party, and what better way to christen a house than to forge a funnel, and get everyone blind drunk right?
A great time was had by all, but there was one problem... people were lining up and not everyone could play at once. So I had an idea to make a "2 player funnel" so that it could be more of a team event... some kind of Y pipe that lets two people go at it simultaneously.
Last night... it happened. I had told my housemates of this, and obviously impressed with the idea, they ran out last night while I was at volleyball, and the result is this:
In case you are wondering... it holds 4 pints :-)
Canananananada
Last weekend Missy & I headed up to Vancouver, BC for the weekend. I took the Friday off work and we drove up there first thing in the morning. Van city is about 220kms north of Seattle, so not too far. The drive plus crossing the border into Canada took about 3 hours. I had a bit of an issue crossing the border, I had to go in and speak to the immigration people, apparantly I'm a suspicious customer there. Anyway, a short stint in the immigration line and we were free and clear into the country.
Driving into Canada isn't much on the west coast, for the most part it's pretty flat and mostly farmland. Once you get closer to Van city, there are mountains covered in snow on the horizon, and it gets just stunning... I've never seen anything like it.
The city itself is pretty big, bigger than Seattle by a country mile, but it seems to be all mostly apartnment buildings. There weren't any distinct collections office buildings that I could tell. Either that, or all the office buildings look like apartment buildings :)
Van city proper
We were staying in the heart of the downtown shopping district called Robson Street at a pretty decent hotel, here's the view we had:
It's very nice, I like
I've forgotten how much fun running around during the day and night as a tourist is. You can make the city your own, on your own schedule. We managed to catch up with one of my sister's mates and her bf who are now both living up there, and we walked all up and down the street we stayed on, and at night hit up a wicked little irish pub called Doolin's. It was meant to be, as the second we walked through the door there was AFL on tellie - Kangas vs Pies - and all Aussie collingwood fans around the bar... love it! Was great fun partying with Aussies again :)
Also, once you drive about 5 mins north of Vancouver, you're surround by giant parks and forest. We even saw a bald eagle, which is an absolutely mesmerising bird... giant things they are.
I definitely want to go back again and check out what else Vancouver has to offer, looks like an incredible city. Check out the photos!! :)
Another win for MP3
I read this morning about the whole copy-protection removal from certain songs on iTunes... and I must say, it's about time. I'm not one to advocate music piracy, but the restriction that iTunes-downloaded songs imposed was kind of ridiculous -- if I buy a music CD, I can play it anywhere, it's mine, I can use it as a coaster or listen to it, it's my choice. The songs I download from iTunes are only playable on my iPod... what if I had some other kind of music player? I now can't listen to these tracks.
None of this is new information. What is new, however, is that EMI announced yesterday that it would offer consumers at a higher price, DRM-free (copy-protection free) mp3 downloads from iTunes stores. The songs you download are also of a higher quality encoding... meaning clearer, more CD-like audio.
I think this is an excellent move, and going to go a long way towards increasing the popularity of the combination of personal mp3 players and online music stores. I guess we'll wait and see what it does for music piracy.
Swim across the Atlantic
That's what google maps suggest to reach Paris:
See driving direction # 18 on this page:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Seattle,+WA...
