Lone Locust Productions

Month: January 2009

  • They won’t be doing my taxes

    Flyers on the door. How I hate flyers on the door. They never advertise anything I want. (usually a church or a landscaping service) and they waste natural resources and create liter.

    Once in a while, though, the idiocy of one takes my breath away.

    Here’s a scan of one that showed up on the door today. I’ve blocked out the name of the company (I don’t want them to get any business) and punched up the color on the “sentence” I wish to highlight.

    Would this inspire confidence in anyone that these jokers are qualified to do income tax returns?

  • Big Cats

    The question I ask is… do I trust a story in The Sun?

    The official confirmation came yesterday — proving thousands of members of the public have been right for years.

    Forestry workers conducting deer surveys have TWICE got within 50 yards of the fearsome creatures in the wild, it was revealed.

    These so-called “fearsome creatures” are big cats. “Big Cats” being an unspecific term for mysterious felines, larger than a house cat, that have been reported in rural England for many years. Even if they really were spotted, they remain a mystery. Are they ordinary tabbies that got hold of Colonel Sander’s growth hormones, exotic wild cats such as panthers that escaped (or were released) into the wild or some heretofore undiscovered species of native feline.

    Only time, research and more trustworthy reporting than The Sun will tell.

  • Nothing for free

    Well, just in case you thought you were saving the world by not using phone books printed on dead trees which promote deforestation, or by doing your research online instead of going out in the field instead.

    From the BBC:

    US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross has conducted research into the environmental impact of “googling”.

    Environmental physicists are worried about the environmental impact of information technology.

    A recent study estimated the global IT sector generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines put together.

    Mr Wissner-Gross’s study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.

    If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount, which is the roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle for a cup of tea.

  • Encouraging train snap

    It’s been two weekends now and we’re long past the free rides on the Phoenix Metro (oh, how I abhor that name!) but today we were driving by the large park and ride as the train was disgorging and I was really impressed at how many people were getting off the train.

    I really believe the trains will work well for the city, but I thought it would be months or even years before I saw this many people using it on a Sunday afternoon.

  • It’s a big world out there…

    Darn it, I never get to do Internet memes! So I’m just going to do one on my own:

    This is where I’ve been in the world, and when you put on a map, there’s a whole lot of world left to see:


    visited 7 states (3.11%)
    Create your own visited map of The World or try another Douwe Osinga project

    And this is the US


    visited 19 states (38%)
    Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

  • Doctor Who – The Next Doctor – Review

    I think I’ve finally figured out why I never seem to get around to reviewing the Doctor Who Christmas episodes – it’s because, Christmas is over and by this point it all seems hokey to dredge up stuff about Christmas. It’s like watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in July.

    Therefore, I will make this short:

    (more…)