To all my friends overseas, I miss you all so very much right now.

The Vancouver Aquarium is one of my favourite attractions here in Vancouver. Its one of the few things that is awesome no matter what the weather is like. All of our mates who've visited us have been dragged there. So this past weeks they've had good and bad news.

The Bad News:
There 15-year-old stellar sea lion named "Tag" just passed away from cancer. He was a real character and always enjoyed amusing the visitors by sticking out his tongue and splashing people with water. He leaves behind 11 I'm-very-sure-saddened female sea lions. Here's a photo I took of him in better days:


The Good News:
Qila, one of the beluga whales who was herself born in the aquarium, gave birth to a baby. While I am not a fan of whales in captivity, I am happy that this baby seems to have been born healthy, and that Qila is able to take care of her/him. This baby beluga is the first beluga to be born to an aquarium-born beluga.


Photo: Vancouver Aquarium

So now that Jaime has his old pc up and running again, I was able to try out the Spore demo character creator. It actually has me excited about this game again. Hopefully they don't delay it any further before it comes out. It has a lot of potential.

From the European Commission. (Link from New Scientist Blog)

So we're home. Jetlag is hitting me pretty bad so will have to leave a longer post for later. However, I would like say that this was the best holiday ever!!! So many awesome sights to see, so many great friends to catch up with (and we even made a few new ones). Hats off to all the awesome hosts who put us up.

I can't believe I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. Have no idea how I'll cope. Looking forward to sleeping in our own bed tonight though.

So we have travelled to the higher latitudes to the wonderful city of Edinburgh, and we are staying with our friends Tancred and Evelyn. Edinburgh has been the most laid-back and relaxing city we've been to so far. We've seen Edinburgh Castle, Mary King's Close, lots of Scottish Baronial architecture and had a walk round Holyrood Park (though we haven't managed to climb Arthur's Seat yet). And we have indulged in the local gourmet delight that is the deep-fried Mars bar: a unique culinary experience indeed!

So we've made it to the UK. It actually took us less time to get from Dusseldorf to London than it did to go from Heathrow to the Docklands, but we made it to our next temporary home staying with our friend, Aoife, who has been a fabulous host.

Today we took in the British Museum, and saw Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace and even saw some Canada Geese in St James Park. This evening we were shown to the Prospect of Whitby for dinner by our good friend Falsedan and his lovely girlfriend, Aija. We enjoyed a lovely pub meal and drinks, though the pub was so old and the floors so sloped, you had to hold on to your drink lest it slide off the table.

Tomorrow were going to try to get to the Tower of London.

Hey all, just letting you know that I posted a few photos of our trip to flickr.

So we made it to Düsseldorf! Five hours on the trains from Paris and then last night we were eating roast pork and drinking copious amounts of German beer. Its great catching up with Steve and Alex and their little bub, Emily. Today we checked out the Rhine river, the mustard museum and watched the Chelsea v Manchester Utd. game.

That's right folks: 700 photos. Paris has been awesome! I've managed to see almost everything I set out to see (I've left a somethings for the next time I come to Paris). My favourites have been:

• Notre Dame Cathedral. Imposing by today's standards, but can you imagine what it would have been like to most folks in the old days before high rises? I must confess that I actually started to weep when I first entered this amazing edifice. Today we climbed to the top of the tower, which had an awesome view, gargoyles and a whopping bell.
• Museum of the Middle Ages. A lot more relaxed that most other museums, and a great collection of medieval arts and artefacts, including the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry.
• Saint Chapelle. Gorgeous stained glass and medieval decoration.
• The Catacombes. The feeling one gets in those dark tunnels with all those dead is indescribable.

Anyway, my ordinoteur is telling me its almost time. Will post more from Dusseldorf. Might even get some of my photos on flickr at that time too.

We are here! Just had my first french coffee and croissant. Our hotel is lovely and from our small balcony we have a beautiful view. To the right: Notre Dame Cathedral, to the left: the dome of the Pantheon. Anyway, off to sightsee!

PS - French keyboqrds qre retqrded!

So just a couple more days til' our holiday. Were rushing around like frantic madmen trying to get all our various crap done before we leave. I've been burning the midnight oil trying to get the ASBC website done before I go, but I think I'm fighting a losing battle. This morning I woke up with a migraine for the first time in a long time, which was upsetting. Hope it's just a one-off. Poor Jaime had an epic journey on transit to get to Coquitlam yesterday, but came home the victor with a new jacket.

But for those who care, our itinerary is:

April 18: Fly from Vancouver to Paris
April 25: Train from Paris to Dusseldorf
April 28: Fly from Dusseldorf to London (into terrifying Terminal 5 :(
May 2: Train from London to Edinburgh
May 9: Train from Edinburgh to London
May 9: Train from London to Swindon
May 18: Train from Swindon to Heathrow
May 19: Fly from Heathrow to Vancouver

It's gonna be awesome!

Step 1: Find all your paperwork currently strewn through the house.
Step 2: Place on table.
Step 3: Sort paperwork.
Step 4: File paperwork away in file folder.

As usual, I'm halfway through step 3 and have completely run out of energy. I now fall back into this pattern:

Step 3a: file away the small amount of paperwork I've sorted.
Step 3b: push all the rest of the paper in a massive pile. Hide somewhere in the house.
Step 3c: Wait a month, attempt step 1 again.

So one of my favourite sites is Cute Overload, a totally sappy site devoted to cute animals. Having a bad day? I always recommend 10 minutes viewing Cute Overload; it always lifts one's spirits somewhat. However, the other day I came across Ugly Overload, a site dedicated to butt-ugly animals. While a lot less cute and fluffy, it is very interesting and I must say better laid out with better quality photography and a lot less lolcats. Ugly Overload showcases bittersweet animals like this terrifying ring-tailed lemur baby (the do grow up to be quite cute):

I'm so very excited! I busily getting things ready for my trip. Having picked up and read the Lonely Planet guide to Paris, I now realise that I will not be able to do/see it all. So I ask you, the viewing several, to leave your comments of what you loved most about Paris and what's not to miss.

So every April 1st usually catches me by surprise, leaving me no time to properly set up a good gag and making me fall back on stale jokes like "look out the window: it's snowed!"*. But this year I managed to have master plan just pop into my head. I have cleverly rigged up our large Halloween decoration spider above the inside of our door to our coffee room downstairs at work. Wayne, who is a great sweetheart of a man, but a bit of a trickster who likes to play jokes, is the one who always goes downstairs and opens the door to make coffee. I can't wait til a large purple spider drops on his head tomorrow morning!

Wayne and the spider last Halloween:

* Jokes on us: it was snowing two days ago.

So it’s March 28^th and it’s snowing in Vancouver. I’m not complaining, especially in light of the amount of snow they have back east (metres and metres of the stuff), it’s just so strange to be getting snow here when it’s almost April. Late in arriving this year, the pink cherry blossoms and yellow daffodils are now covered in snow and looking kind of sad. I shan’t expect the snow to stick around long. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera with me today, but in lieu of photos, I’ve written a bad haiku:

Early spring snow falls
Onto the cherry blossoms
Cold flowers shiver

I came across this short demonstration of the odd properties of the "prince rupert's drop" on boing boing. Glass is magical stuff.

It sucks. I'm already late for work.

Sad news this morning: Gary Gygax (the founder of Dungeons & Dragons) passed away. Though I am a newcomer to world of D&D, I must confess a love for the game. In this crazy hectic world of impending doom, super-business, unsatisfying work and general grrrr, it is nice once a week to meet up with your geeky-pals to shoot the shit, share some food and drink, and to feel the satisfaction of putting the smackdown on a bunch of nasty orkses.

Penny Arcade sums it up best: