Mike Browne’s Blog

No, this is not one of the sets at Bag End from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. A human sized Welsh family of four lives in it. It took the owner and his father in law, with the help of friends and passersby, 4 months (1000-1500 man hours) to build. The cost? A comfortable £3000 ($7000 CAD).

The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.

What an attractive and cosy looking home. Not only original and inexpensive but environmentally responsible too. I want a hobbit house!

For more pictures and information on this house check out A Low Impact Woodland Home.

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) — Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.

The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali on Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters.

One of the clowns was killed instantly, and the second died the next day in hospital.

“The killings had nothing to do with the show the victims were performing at the time of the incident,” Henao said in a telephone interview. “We are investigating the motive.”

With an entrance fee of under 50 cents, Circo del Sol de Cali attracts mostly poor Colombians. It pitched its tents in Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela, earlier this month.

“The clowns came out to give their show, and then this guy came out shooting them,” one audience member told local television. “It was terrible.”

[source CNN and Digg]

Perhaps some psycho was suffering from coulrophobia (fear of clowns) and took things way too far.

Not only is it awful for the clowns and their families, but imagine what the children who were at the circus are going through. Yikes!

And I am absolutely NOT talking about the snack food. In this context I am using the word poppycock this way:

pop·py·cock (pŏp’ē-kŏk’) Pronunciation Key
n. Senseless talk; nonsense.

[Dutch dialectal pappekak : pap, pap (from Middle Dutch pappe, perhaps from Latin pappa, food) + kak, dung (from kakken, to defecate, from Middle Dutch kacken, from Latin cacāre; see kakka- in Indo-European roots).]

Online Etymology Dictionary
poppycock
1865, probably from Du. dialect pappekak, from M.Du. pappe “soft dung” (see pap) + kak “dung,” from L. cacare “to excrete.”

[source dictionary.com]

Apparently I used the word improperly in a couple of posts here on my blog in referring to a snack made for me by my wife. How do I know I misused the word? I got a letter:

download <%media(20070220-pcletter.pdf|PDF of letter" /> (208 kb) to follow along.

*** Let me qualify before continuing. I am feeling particularly grumpy today so a poorly written letter from a corporate lawyer wasn’t a welcome thing this morning.***

Here we go:

You spelled my name wrong. My last name is Browne not Brown, which is a colour or the last name of a favourite cartoon character of mine.

Second our postal code is incorrect. I’m not sure what country you’re trying to send mail to but it’s not Canada.

Third, you spelled your own product name wrong in the second paragraph of the letter. Perhaps you should add your product’s name to your word processor’s dictionary so the mistake doesn’t happen again. Just a helpful hint.

Finally, I immediately changed the wording in the offending posts on our “company’s websites” (personal blogs… wtf?). The snack my wife makes for me at Christmas time will be from this point on referred to as censored snack. See posts here: post one and post two from my blog and this one (I think the main offender as it shows up on page one of google using the offending word and ‘recipe’ in a simple search) from Carol’s blog.

When Google crawls us again this referral will go away.

Our sincerest apologies to the company in question. We will never ever refer to you or your products again. Also we shall not ever purchase or consume your products again, but will choose a competitor. Also we hope many people who read our blogs will respond in kind.

Fiddle faddle… one of Dad’s favourite words. He used it to replace another word that starts with F and is sometimes coupled with ‘off’. Which is something I’d like to tell a certain letter writer.

Here’s an edited video from one of the offending posts:

The Bugatti Veyron tested to see if it really can do 407 km/h.

I’m one of those kids who grew up in Canada right in the midst of the switch to metric so miles per hour still means something to me. So, 407 kmh = 252.90 mph. Holy guacamole! That’s fast.

Thanks to Scotty for the link.

I loved the music of Kraftwerk in the 80’s. Now it’s making a comeback:

Thanks to mark from HNR for the link.

I am a robot!

XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have jointly announced that they have entered into an agreement to combine the two companies – in an all-stock merger – with a combined enterprise value of $13 billion.

Sirius’ superstar CEO Mel Karmazin will head the new company as its CEO, and Gary Parsons will also retain his title as Chairman as the new company. The new company’s board of directors will consist of 12 directors, four independent members designated by each company, as well as one representative from each of General Motors and American Honda.

Hugh Panero will continue in his current role until the close of the merger. Further management appointments will be announced prior to closing.

The combination creates a nationwide audio entertainment provider with combined 2006 revenues of approximately $1.5 billion based on analysts’ consensus estimates.

Follow the jump to read what’s in store for customers and investors under this new merged entity…

[more at source: orbitcast]

So far I’m unimpressed.

I wonder what’s going to happen with Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern (hoo hoo)? They absolutely despise each other and now they’ll have to work together. O and A believe had a hand in Howard having them fired before. I wonder if we’re about to see it happen again? Ugh. I hope there’s room for the two with the new merged company. If not we’ll be ditching our subscription. Howard Stern is boring.

Carol and I went to the Chinese New Year Celebrations. We took lots of photos. The dragon in the above photo came form a picture I took today.

Here’s the best one that I took:

There are a few more of the better ones in my Flickr set right here.

I also took some video:

The above band that was playing at Tinseltown Mall. Clearly the lead singer spent more time working on not saying Herro than being on key. The next song they did was “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”. I kid you not.

Finally, when we got home, Carol and Moosh posed for a photo to celebrate as well:

Remember this video I put on YouTube last week?:

It was mentioned in The Globe and Mail about three quarters of the way down the page in this article is says:

You’re a star

Congratulations to Sean McCormick. You’re posted on YouTube under the headline “Sportsnet F-Bomb,” with video and audio showing you using the f-word during a Rogers Sportsnet telecast. When the picture disappeared for a few seconds, McCormick, a Sportsnet anchor, obviously thought the audio also was off.

A spokesman said the network received two complaints.

The video has had over 1000 views just today.

Humans! is a 60 second global awareness PSA sensationalizing the excessive, all-consuming nature of the human being. This cute and naive Earth stands no chance against such an insatiable parasite. Witness its utter demise in a fun and sickening kind of way.

Nicely done by the folks at Three Legged Legs! Check out their site there’s plenty more amazing video to ogle.