Imax iCal is at an end

My little side project that I used to scrap a site and build a usable ical file is at an end. I mentioned it just in May but now it totally broken because they have totally revamped their website.

They still have not provided an ical format that I can use in my phone, but the info on the site is usable enough that it's not worth my effort at this time to scrape and reformat. It was fun and I learned a bunch, but it's now time to disable it. I'll make the source view-able for interest's sake.

BBQ Roast

Tonight I tried something that I've wanted to try for quite a while: making a roast on the BBQ. It went quite well - roast on the top rack, potatoes under to collect any drippings. Mmmm... I have a fantasy sometimes of having an outdoor kitchen (including sinks) where a BBQ would be my oven for most things. Cleanup would be minimal since it would be outside. No smoke detectors to set off. My only experience with outdoor kitchens is that you have watch for scarlet macaws that steal spice containers.

Perhaps one day. Perhaps.

Dot, blip, baby

When Laura told me that she thought that she was pregnant it was weird - a floating realization that didn't seem to have sunk in. The first ultrasound was along those lines as well. "Hey, see that dot there? That will be a baby". Strange and abstract. The next ultrasound was like that too "Hey, see that pulsing blip there? That will be a baby". I felt like I was sort of missing something. I knew in my head that dot would become a baby and that our lives would change, but that knowledge felt like water and my brain was the ducks back. It just wouldn't stick.

The ultasound after that was very different. That was where it now looked like a baby. There was a beating heart, head, arms, legs, movement. I felt like someone had made a brick of emotions, dropped it into a sock and hit me upside the head with it. Excitement, fear, happiness, gratitude. Now it felt like it started to sink in and feel real. I find it simply amazing how quickly things can go from a dot to a blip to a baby. Our baby.

A good evening

It's been a good evening. Saw a robot action movie (transformers 3), with lots of tie-ins / references to other sci fi (Firefly and Star Trek), followed by a drive home in a freshly washed car, under the stars and a full moon, saw someone on an over-sized unicycle, while listening to Gnarls Barkley and then the Indiana Jones soundtrack. That, in one long run on sentence, are a few things that made me smile tonight. The others of course being Laura and my Earl Grey, hot.

Lub dub

Yesterday I watched a man's heart beat in his chest. I could see the valves open and close, watch the blood flow, see the heart rate changed as the man's breathing changed. It was fascinating. The coolest part was that it was my own heart.

Not that echocardiograms are new. It's just fascinating when these things are so "close to home". I've seen a bunch of fetal ultrasounds and my feeling was always "that's neat". Contrast that to seeing an ultrasound of your own unborn child - well, I'm not such a wordsmith where I can accurately convey the emotional upwelling and wow factor of it.

It's funny, because I expect that if it's part of your job to do echo's then I'm sure that there is no magic to it. It would just be another day at the office. It's funny how easily the fantastical can become mundane.

Public or limited?

I've never had a twitter account. The only social networks I've joined so far have been facebook and google+ and I'm starting to debate my policy of only posting things limited to my "friends" / "circles". Is the world currently missing out on something truly profound? Absolutely. Should I open my most random and deep thoughts to the community at large? Meh.

The only benefit that I could think of making my google+ posting public would be that I could easily write (if it doesn't currently exist) something that would cross post it to FB. Or I could just abandon FB altogether and decide at that point if I should make things public / private.

I have most of my random stuff on the 'net as public (this blog, most photos). So why am I restricting my blatus's?