At $35, the Google ChromeCast might be the coolest nerd tool I’ve played with lately. Send any tab from your browser to the tv. It’s been especially handy for live streams of the Olympics. Curling on the TV without running a cable to the tv? Awesome!
And then, it integrates really well with Netflix particularly. It lets me browse on my laptop and then click play to device. Seconds later, I’m watching netflix on the tv without the frustration of fighting our (cheap and terrible) bluray player.
Again, for $35, this is a fantastic little thing. Plugs straight into an HDMI port. You can pick it up at walmart. Way cool.
Archives for February 2014
Snow!
I feel like I grew up with a lot of snow.
Side note, you know you’re a huge nerd when you start a blog post about getting 18 inches of snow yesterday, and spend 10 minutes reviewing historical snowfall data for your childhood. (Thanks Environment Canada!) Not that I’d do that. But if someone did, they’d be a huge nerd, no?
Climate data I just reviewed suggests that maybe I remember that differently than it actually went. The most snow Peterborough, Ontario, got in a single day from 1969-2006 was just 33 cm, or a little over a foot.
Yesterday, here in Beckley, WV, we got an official 18 inches of snow. That’s like 45 cm, if you need the metric numbers, eh? It’s a lot of snow, no matter how you dice it. Half a yard.
It’s amazing to see how things simply shut down when you get that much snow. I don’t remember it being such a big deal when I was little, but then I only cared about playing in huge piles of snow. Maybe my dad was as flummoxed by decision making in the snow as I was.
You just perceive the world differently based on your needs from it. There’s a lesson there, I’m sure.
When things are beyond your control
Sometimes you can’t control things. Weather is one of those things. Really tough to control. When the radar picture looks like that (thanks, Weather.com), you can only sit and wait and see exactly what the fall out is. Your plans are completely thwarted. It’s not malfeasance, it’s simply God ordering things differently than you did. To quote Will Smith, “I saw that going differently in my mind.”
Curling
Oh man, I love curling. Watching it, that is. I get a real kick out of it. I’m sure on some level, I should be worried that it’s not a real sport or that I’m wasting time by watching it, but when I watch it I’m caught up in the strategy of it. The strategy and the yelling. Lots of yelling.
Thank heavens for the winter olympics!
Music to work by
I’ve been having some fun experimenting with different things to listen to while I write. I find music with lyrics to be unhelpful, so I’ve been dipping into classical, jazz, and movie soundtracks.
I’m really enjoying movie soundtracks, because occasionally the music will take a sinister tone as I write a sinister line. Sometimes it’ll hit whimsy when I’m whimsical.
Of course, most of the time it doesn’t work (like right now, the Gun Fight theme from Fievel Goes West is playing, and while it’s great, this blog post fails to capture the epic feeling of the music), but somehow, it still works.
Anyway, if you’re into Spotify (And yes, I’m aware of the artist-support reasons to not be; please buy music from the artists you love), here’s a link to a playlist with a bunch of movie stuff. Enjoy!