Life's a Box (Bowl?) of Chocolates
Forrest Gump was on TV last night. I still don't get the whole point of that movie. Is it just simply stating that you don't have to be smart to get through life?

M&M's come in a chrome-gold bowl that makes for a great external equivalent of a fish-eye lens. You can see my entire bedroom in that thing. Somehow, the "box of chocolates" brought that up.

I spent the entire day working on my models. It seems that there is a sort of pattern where I work for a day, then nothing happens for about a week, then something drives me to work another entire day or evening on them. It's peculiar, because it never works out when I plan it.

It has been pointed out to me that my last post, about "gigakliks" is off by several factors. In fact, it does not take into account that a kilometre is already a thousand metres. So, the car has travelled a quarter-gigametre, or a quarter-megaklik. Clearly, my distance away from university is starting to set in...

Skiing and a Quarter-Gigaklik
So, Markus got me out skiing tonight. It was really, really cold, at 25 below zero without windchill. Naturally, while skiing, one produces ones own windchill as well. We went out to Camp Fortune, and I think this was the first time I have ever night-skied. It was good fun, I got to try those little short skis called snow blades and they were refreshingly different. At one point, one of my feet got so cold I could not feel my big toe, and the feeling only came back after about 5 minutes of thawing it; scared me, but everything turned out okay. To fix this freezing flesh problem, on the way home, I stopped by Carleton to warm up in the sauna. Long story short, I think every ski resort should be mandated by law to have a sauna. It was a good evening.

On the way to the ski hill, my car surpassed the 250,000km mark. That can be called 250 mega-kliks or a quarter giga-klik. Still considering what sounds better. I am aiming for it to pull through to 300,000.

Homebrew Canon Shutter Remote
This evening I put together a shutter remote for my Canon Digital Rebel XT. I got the idea to do it earlier this week. For some reason, it never before occurred to me to build one myself; I always assumed I would end up buying one at some point.

Long story short, for less than ten bucks, I have a very functional unit. It has a focus button (black), shutter button (red), and a little toggle button that keeps the shutter open for longer periods without having to constantly hold the red button down. The cable came from a broken mouse I had laying around. The case had been meant for a high school project that never materialized. The only things I bought were the two large buttons and the connector.

All in all, the unit worked out great. It has been a long time since I last did some cheap gadget hackery; awesome feeling. I spent the whole evening taking photos of science fiction models and compositing them.