I was wandering around teh interwebz the other day and stumbled across something funny.

The Oatmeal – a sort of bloggy, sort of comicy, and all round funny site. He has a lot of fun stuff, and some of it is even edjumicational. Like for instance,  you can learn about the reproduction habits of the Angler Fish, or the life cycles of a Parasitic Flatworm.

Check it out!

So last night while I was laying in bed, it suddenly occured to me that Ouch, normally the bedsheet does not cause me any pain in the knee. So why was my knee all sore and tender now?

Today I had a look and my knee is all black and blue and purple, like someone had at it with a stick or club or something.

Now I don’t recall any kind of beat-down, nor for that matter do I remember taking any unexpected trips to the ground. So this can only be the result of one thing:

Evil Invisible Garden Gnomes.

They’re sneaking into my house at night and beating me with sticks while I’m asleep.

I know they’re invisible because I can’t see any garden gnomes in the neighborhood when I look for them. And I surmise that they are evil because they’re invisible, and therefore they can be evil and get away with it.

Plus, if they were friendly or visible garden gnomes, I’d like to think they would sneak in and clean my house while I slept, rather than pummel me with blunt objects.

Here is photographic proof: You can clearly see that no friendly or visible garden gnomes exist. Therefore the only garden gnomes in this photo are the evil invisible variety. It is conclusive!

If you drink beer, you have a Scott Number. It’s a mathematical constant. Or maybe it’s a variable? Everyone has their own Scott Number.

Your Scott Number is defined as the number of beers you drink before you get around to putting the new case in the fridge.

In other words: You know when you bring home a new case of beer? And you really want one? So instead of putting it right into the fridge, you set it on the kitchen table, or the kitchen counter, or the coffee table, or the floor next to the sofa, or on the sofa, or… you get the picture. And then you open it up and help yourself? And then you have another? Eventually the beers in the case will get warm, or you’ll have had enough, or whatever. Sooner or later you’ll put them in the fridge. But between bringing the case home, and putting the case in the fridge, you’ll have some beers. How many beers you have, is your Scott Number.

The Scott Number is named after a guy named Scott, who once said to me something along the lines of “Oh yeah, that case never made it into the fridge.”

Clearly, his Scott Number was 24. That is a magic number.

What’s yours?

A couple days ago I was doing some big aquarium maintenance on the 38-gal snail tank. Basically I was bored of the black gravel and wanted to remove it, and do some redecorating.

I’ve done that sort of thing before and generally the corydoras and frogs know to cower in the opposite side of the tank to where I’m working. The snails however are too curious and tend to try and get in the way all the time.

So I temporarily hauled the lot of them out of the tank and plunked them all in the nursery with the babies.

It should be blatantly obvious but I’ll say it anyways: don’t overcrowd your aquariums! This was probably marginally acceptable because the situation only lasted for about 2 hours, and the nursery had been cleaned & had a water change before, and again after. But for the 2 hours, it was a 2 1/2 gallon enclosure of crazy snail claustrophobia…

Yay! It finally arrived!

The Fedex man came to the office yesterday with my shiney new iPhone 4, direct from the Apple factory in China.

Believe it or not, I’ve never even seen one before in person – I’d ordered it completely sight-unseen and in the 3 weeks since then, I haven’t seen anyone else with one yet.

Immediate first impressions – it feels solid. The iPhone 3 and 3Gs both feel ok, but the curvy sides and plastic back does make it feel… well curvy and plastic. The iPhone 4 however, feels positively solid. Steel alloy all around, and some kind of magic glass on the front and back, make it feel heavy without feeling, well, heavy.

Like in a pinch you could slip it into a sock and make it into a weapon… though I wouldn’t really recommend that.

Some people have said they don’t like the squarish sides, prefering the form factor of the previous models. I’m in the opposite camp – having held this in my hand, I find it much more aesthetically pleasing than the earlier iPhones.

The screen is pretty, the ‘Retina display’ that they were hyping… It is bright and sharp and vibrant.

And of course, the blinky light! The blinky light is impressively bright. I tried using it as a flashlight last night and I was like woah, is there a way to dim it a bit? It’d probably ruin the whole function as a camera flash, but I’d like to slip a wee bit of blue gel in there so it was a blue blinky light. I’ll resist, for now.

Anyhow, to summarize: It’s cool, I like the form factor better than the earlier models, it feels solid and well-built, but pictures cannot do it justice – you really have to see and feel it in person.

This is one of my two African Dwarf Frogs. Mister Stoopidhead is male, the other one (a female) is named Little Piggy.

They are a bit shy, and when they swim up to the surface for air they go up and down very fast, so it’s rare to catch a pic of one of them while swimming. From the tip of his nose to his toes on his outstretched leg, he is about 2 inches long.

All I wanted to do was get the raw data off of one (marginally obsolete) (mini-sized) hard drive and onto another (marginally obsolete) (mini-sized) (but slightly larger) hard drive.