Wenlock and Mandeville…What happened to Olympic Mascots?

The 2012 London Olympic mascots have recently been unveiled….and yes they are metal cyclops blobs with no feet, oven mitt hands,  taxi light hats, and phallic figures (especially Wenlock). These things creep the hell out of me, and if I was a kid, I wouldn’t want one staring at me by my bed. Pretty sure no one will want to be a Wenlock kid (see The Quatchi kid).

The Central and West Island

We were based in Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park for the next two nights to explore some of the central island, and at Bella Pacifica in Tofino for the last two nights to explore the West coast.

Rathtrevor

The North Island

For the past week my girlfriend and I had been camping around Vancouver Island. I had never been outside Victoria and wanted to get a good sense of what the rest of the Island had to offer so we explored the North, Central, and Western regions of Vancouver Island. With the help of some miraculous weather (we never saw a drop of rain and in early May that is extremely lucky), the trip exceeded all my expectations. I found it extremely comforting that such great adventures can be had so close to home relatively cheaply. This post will focus on the adventures we had in the Northern region.

Cluxewe

Sherlock Holmes = Doctor House?

I finally got around to watching Sherlock Holmes today and I couldn’t get over how much Holmes reminded me of House. Both are keenly observant, rational-minded, brilliant at solving mysteries, and witty. They have only one friend and are very reliant of them, don’t abide to social norms, and have unorthodox methods. Sherlock Holmes does kick more ass though. Anyways, Guy Ritchie did a great job in reinvigorating the franchise and the stars, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachael MacAdams, and Mark Strong, did an amazing job portraying their characters. Can’t wait for the sequel.

Departures Season 2 Review

So it didn’t take me very long to finish the second season. I was done about a month ago but haven’t had the time to write about it until now. Departures has rapidly become one of my favourite shows. Check out the intro to Season 2 below, hopefully it will convince you to watch this jaw-dropping series.

Happy Earth Day

Green is the new cool these days, and this year Earth Day initiatives have ranged from completely biodegradable Sun Chip bags to connecting the release of Avatar on DVD/Blu-ray to planting 1 million trees. My favourite initiative came from an unexpected institution: the US Navy. The US Navy celebrated Earth Day by test flying their “Green Hornet”, an F/A-18 Super Hornet which flew past the speed of sound on a 50/50 mixture of biofuel and traditional jet fuel for the first time. It required no modifications to the jet or its engines and flew perfectly normal. The fuel is based on camelina seeds. This is an important first step in switching not only all existing F/A-18′s to greener fuel, but eventually all other aircraft and ships as well. Props to the US Navy for such a simple and effective initiative.

Unfortunately, exams have kept me from posting as much as I would like, but I hope that will change once April ends.

Sleepless in Seattle: Part Two

Here’s the rest of my post on Seattle. 

Sleepless in Seattle: Part One

So this Easter weekend, me and my girlfriend had a little road trip down to Seattle. The trip had been in the works for a while, but with a little luck in terms of work load and some inspiration provided by Departures, we finally committed less than a week before Good Friday. Apart from the 4 hour wait getting into the States, and the strangely windy and cold weather, it was a very enjoyable and much needed trip.  I’ll post some of my thoughts on the attractions we went to in this post, and touch on accommodation, food and my budget in subsequent posts.

April Fool’s 2010

Here are some April Fool’s jokes around the web this year:

Youtube -  launched its text-only TEXTp format which apparently saves them $1/sec in bandwidth costs.

Gotta Catch ‘em All!

Here’s a fun post in light of April’s Fools: My top 6 pokemon (of the original 150 of course).

After extensive recent debate, discussion and thought…here is the party of 6 pokemon I would carry around Kanto: