Life, Documented: October 2010

27 October 2010

Middle School Woes

Maybe it's because they are surrounded by kids every day and this is their creativity outlet, but this menu from a middle school cafeteria lunch menu cracks me up:

Bat Bites and Witches Fingers

(Chicken Nuggets) and ( Baked Spicy Fries)

Skeleton Bones

(Veggies and Dip)

Frankenstein’s Dessert

(Baked Apple Crumble with whipping Cream)

Goblins Gloop

(Chilled Milk)

I'm thankful they put in what it really was, only for the hilarity.

My personal favorite is Goblin's Gloop.

The google image search for such:

Source

You are no doubt wondering why I'm keeping tabs on a middle school cafeteria lunch menu, great question.
It's from the school where I will be doing my internship and the menu is always posted on their announcement blog. So in keeping tabs on the school I also get to see what they are eating.

National Geographic: Case In Point

A reason to love their Twitter feed the most.

Halloween Zebra

Who does this! This is the most claustrophobic inducing costume!

Source

Who's letting this person hold their baby, crazy people:

Source

And the eating? I love this person!

Source

My kind of camera adventure except I don't think I would dig the figure hugging qualities of the suit or the fear of smothering.

Science, Practical

I suppose that's debatable.

I'm not sure what brought on this type of research, but there has been a study on the correlation between size of mammal and rate of oscillation when it shakes water off of itself.

The video alone wants me to be a bigger nerd and figure out what type of field I need to get into to have a research project that involves dogs...in a lets watch them and we can play with them type way:

Check out the article here.

PS. I found this through the "science" twitter feed. Next to National Geographic I think they are my favorite to follow

24 October 2010

The Hold Steady

More overflow from the Halifax Pop Explosion, success!

I attended my first show at the Market last night, it was a bit strange to be sipping on a beverage while watching a rock show in the same spot I purchased my veggies just earlier that day. But beggars can't be choosers when it comes to venues!

We arrived shortly after the openers started so I never caught their name. They reminded me of The Strokes, but with a female lead singer:

Enjoyable unknown name band

Honestly I'm not a die-hard Hold Steady fan. I like them, I know some of their songs but that's it. When I heard that they were coming to Fredericton in October waaaaaay back in July I jumped at the opportunity to pick up tickets because it was a show. I didn't know how few and far between those might have been in Fredericton, turns out there are more bands through here than I thought.

Regardless, the show was ~~very loud~~ great! The lead singer had more energy than any performer I've watched - his repertoire of ridiculous movements were hilarious:

Check out those hands, just a clappin'

Most intense lead singer, ever

Wisdom Book

One of my professors shared this video with our class.

Bits of wisdom from wise people:

For more information on the project visit wisdombook.org

Ben Folds + Nick Horby = Lonely Avenue

UPDATE: After listening to their first single, From Above, again (thanks CBC Radio 2!) I was struck with the HUGE similarity between its sound and that of Jens Lekman - particularly the intro and the music. Regardless it's a great song!

Thanks to CBC I've been introduced to another great band, thanks CBC!

Ben Folds and Nick Horby have teamed up to make an album under the name of Lonely Avenue. Horby has written all of the lyrics and Folds was responsible for the music portion.

Source

You can hear a few seconds of each song from their album if you click here. It's very Ben Folds-esque, therefore very good from the 20 seconds of each song you can hear.

There's even a song called Levi Johnston's Blues - yes, that Levi Johnston.

Another track is called Doc Pomus which I'm assuming that is where the band name came from...judging by Wikipedia.

On making the album:

"Things You Think" kind of the making of the song, great clips of Nick Horby talking, shenanigans of collaborating musicians (Pomplamoose) at the end:

23 October 2010

Urban Hiking

The teacher that I've been matched with for my internship is great. He runs a hiking club - hooray!

There was a hike today but rather than trekking through the woods we took the group through one of the many trails Fredericton has to offer and ended up at the market for some tasty treats!

It was a very, very windy day and we nearly blew away when close to the river and going across the bridge was slightly terrifying. But all was well.

Sadly, it was far too cold to take my camera out much so I only have one photo:

They have a hike each month so hopefully I will be able to take more photos without the fear of loosing a few fingers to the cold!

HPX Leftovers

As much as I wanted to be at the Halifax Pop Explosion I couldn't be so I was happy to lap up the leftovers here in Fredericton.

Last night I saw Daniel Romano and Jason Collett at the Capital. Thankfully it was an early show, as it turns out teachers have early days and by Friday evening I was running low on energy.

The Capital reminds me of Tribeca, but cleaner - it's a long hallway with a stage at the end. There were very few people at the show, which surprised me. Many people missed out.

Daniel Romano

Jason Collett

A fuzzy Jason Collett

Hooray for small venues where I can continue my trend of photos with male Canadian musicians! It's not Ali-flattering but that's not the point:

21 October 2010

Perfect Timing

Tim Burton has always been creepy, at least since 1982 when he made this short. I think it's perfect timing since Halloween is just around the corner.

I found it on Open Culture where I also learned that Vincent Price is actually narrating the short.

It's a lovely combination of spooky and children exaggeration:

18 October 2010

Technology, Also Great

I've been using Google Analytics shortly after I started up the o'l blog.

Analytics gives you statistical information about the traffic on your website, or in my case - blog. Things like how many people visit your site on the daily, where they are coming from (links from Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and other nifty things.

It's been interesting...it turns out when you don't post things people don't visit your blog - who knew!

But really, Google Analytics has given me all kinds of insight about bloggity blog blog.

I'm going to share a few of these things with you - huzzah!

For instance, the top five cities for people viewing in the past 30 days are as follows:

I have a feeling that Lower Sackville falls under Halifax and that's why it's number 1 - thanks mom and dad!

Analytics also gives a visual representation of where people are visiting your site from:

SUPER NEAT!!

Hopefully you'll keep on coming back to read ~~the little writing I post~~ and look at the variety of images and links that I share despite the fact that I'm keeping a few tabs on the blog's vitals! I'm just an interested nerd hoping to understand some of the technology that the internet continues to ooze.

Happy blog-viewing!

So, Poetry Is Great

This is news to me.

After years of being force fed poetry in school, how to analyze, interpret, write, etc etc all it took was a friend to introduce me to a different approach (thanks Yasmin!).

This is spoken word poetry by Andrea Gibson - it's great:

17 October 2010

Saint John

Since Greg will be moving to Saint John very shortly I will be learning more and more about the place.

Here are things I've learned so far:

1. It's not as smelly as I was told, although when you are on your way in from the Fredericton direction there is a definite smell of pulp mill in the air. Very reminiscent of Corner Brook.

2. It's not particularly flat or hilly, but rather a nice blend of the two.

It also has old timey trucks.

3. There is a downtown, but it's actually called uptown.

4. They have a nice small park with a large fountain, home to man pigeons. There are also potentially impromptu parades as we witnessed one yesterday. Since they were headed away from us I never found out what the parade was about. I like to think it was because Greg and I were in town.

5. Buildings have a lot of character, which makes sense as it's the oldest incorporated city in Canada.

There are other things I learned but I didn't take photos - I know! What was I thinking! So rather than just talk about them I think I will hold off from posting about them.

One final note, Greg found an apartment - hooray! It's in an old house broken into a few apartment units. The place is really nice and in a cozy, tree-lined part of town. It's also conveniently close to the school I'm hoping to get my second placement in - fingers crossed!