The Simpson Blog

Today, the famous Armdale Rotary in Halifax has been changed to a roundabout. (Chronicle-Herald article.) The Yield-and-Proceed rules have been dropped in favour of ... just ... yield to the people in the inner circle. Much like life. The people in the inner circle have the right of way. So just wait your turn to get into the spin cycle. Not being a Halifax driver, I have only experienced the Rotary's mayhem from the passenger seat. Frankly, I'm not likely to notice a difference. However, I'm told that there have not been any smash-ups there today. On Saturday, the Nova Scotia government will implement gas price regulation. Sure, it'll prevent prices from bouncing around like they did today -- $1.088/L in the morning, $1.145 at noon, $1.088 again right now. But the prices will go up or down every two weeks without warning of the direction. And depending on big swings in the New York harbour spot price, it could change more often than that. The Premier says the regula

The Onion AV Club goes over some classic movies that it's alright to hate, including, of all things, Star Wars: Remove Harrison Ford's swaggering charisma from Star Wars , and what's left? The Phantom fucking Menace . And has there ever a soggier slice of white bread than Mark Hamill? The prequels didn't violate the timeless genius of Star Wars ; their awkward dialogue and stiff performances simply carried on the wooden tradition of Lucas' 1977 Original. The article also gives dissenting opinions on the alleged genius of Network , A Clockwork Orange , The Shawshank Redemption , and others. Recent viewings, classic and otherwise, in our Halifax home: Life Is Beautiful, Schindler's List, City Slickers, Made, Citizen Kane, Sneakers, and Fight Club. Still in the pile: The Shining.

This morning, The Daily News put a picture of Sobey's with a big red-circle-with-slash "no" sign superimposed on the front page, to highlight the Sunday shopping crackdown. If that didn't make you sick, the Chronicle-Herald's front page might've: Caption: Pathologist Heidi Sapp examines a colon, removed from a patient during a recent operation, in a lab at the Victoria General site of the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. Eeeewww. That's no way to start Monday morning. She looks too bloody happy to be pokin' at those guts.

Little Sister and her husband Chris were in town this week for a lovely visit. Amanda was at the wheel for plenty of driving, plus we did a lot walking, visiting Point Pleasant Park , the Casino , the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic , Halifax Public Gardens , Peggy's Cove , Lunenburg , Herring Cove, Sir Sandford Fleming Tower at The Dingle (no relation to HTPC Little Eddie), some big-and-beautiful house viewing, and the general downtown environs including Chris' first donair . Photo highlights are in the Big Ass Super Gallery at flickr . A few entries ago, I mentioned a show called X-Weighted. Good show, very entertaining, and inspirational, educational, moving, bla bla bla. Turns out they're doing a casting call this weekend in Halifax. I think I'm gonna be there. Maritime word of the day: Elsipogtog (el-see-BOOK'-TOOK').

It's been blogged all over the place already, but the online advertising for the Philips/Norelco Bodygroom shaver has caused quite a buzz and some big laughs on the net. Visit www.shaveeverywhere.com to see for yourself. It's for sale at Amazon.com , but they don't ship this product outside the US. It's not listed on the Philips Canada web site. So, I called the Philips customer service line to ask when the Bodygroom will be sold in Canada. The line is one of those frustrating voice-recognition dealies ... ("English ... no ... no ... no ... main menu ... no ... no ... operator ... operator! ... no ... other.") ... after getting lost on hold and otherwise yanked around, my third call got me a different 800 number. The instantly helpful operator at the Canadian line said the company doesn't quite know when the gadget will be sold here. Apparently it's still pending CSA approval. Seems kinda strange, 'cuz it's been sold in the UK for a while

Saw a story on the ABC wire today about new "stealth" ringtones the kids are using to hear their phones ring, while preventing adults from doing so. ( San Fran Chronicle article on same subject.) You probably know that high-frequency hearing is the first to go, and usually starts falling off around age 20. These ringtones are high-frequency tones that kids can hear, but adults can't. ABC News filed a report by Jim Hickey which purported to tour the ringtone around their newsroom. The interns and desk assistants could hear the tone clearly, but the older reporters and editors could not. I thought the story was bullshit, because I inspected the waveform of the report, and there was nothing visible where the stealth tones were supposed to be -- just silence. Rather than concluding that we'd all been had, I did some searching and found a web page with the stealth ringtone available for download . I played it, and the youngest person in the room immediately grabbed he

A good, long night of action at the Halifax Forum as newscott.com brought the Maritime Cup III to hundreds of fans. It was a blast to hoot and scream at a wrestling show where I knew nothing about the performers. Thanks to Tim (off to Saint John to anchor the afternoon news, congratulations!) and Dominic for joining me on a boys' night at the matches. Here are some highlights thrown together for my YouTube page .

Double the power, double the fun! Staples had the Hauppauge PVR-150MCE on sale last week for $100, so I picked one up and slapped it into the HTPC. Now we can tape Ultimate Fighter and ER at the same time. Or Cops and HNIC. Or the trickiest one, My Name Is Earl and CSI. Tape two shows at once while watching another, or tape one and watch another. Good deal. Staples has the plain PVR-150 (minus the remote and IR blaster, which I won't be using anyway) on "hot buy" this week for $100, so pick one up if you wanna get into the TV-on-yer-computer era. Got an email from register.com recently, telling me that bigasssuperstar.com was about to expire. I re-regged for another two years, and wondered when my old, stinky domain cygnals.com was going to expire. Turns out it was the day before. Problem was, Network Solutions still had my ancient email address on file. The @home network died ages ago, so I couldn't get in and tweak stuff. Their 1-800 support staff helped me sign