Category Archives: Geek

Audiobook Review: Singularity


Since I started my new job, I now have a 35-40 minute commute to work so I started listening to audiobooks again. I found a free audiobook called Singularity by Bill DeSmedt at podiobooks.com. From the site:

What if the cataclysmic Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but by a microscopic black hole?

What if that fantastic object – smaller than an atom, older than the stars, heavier than a mountain – is still down there, orbiting deep inside the earth, slowly consuming the planet?

What if only a rookie government agent and an uncannily-insightful consultant stand between a renegade Russian billionaire and his plans to use the black hole to change history – or end it?

What if it’s all true?

I thoroughly enjoyed Singularity – in fact, there were times I didn’t want to leave the car because I was so involved in the story. The author does a great job narrating and really keeps you involved. It does gets a bit technical at times with things like quantum theory, the time-space continuum, etc. but it was action-packed and quite entertaining.

If you’re looking for an action-thriller with a scientific bent to it, you can’t go wrong with Singularity.

Hell’s Kitchen

I freakin love Hell’s Kitchen. I guess it’s my restaurant experience with Golden Corral and Outback Steakhouse that makes that show unbelievably entertaining. I worked on both side – out front as a waiter, bartender, and FOH manager and I did all positions in the back (meatcutter, line, dish, grill, saute, salad, fry, etc. etc.). Good times, but I don’t miss it a bit.

[tags]tv, television, hells kitchen, fox, restaurant, outback steakhouse[/tags]

PC LOAD LETTER

As if you needed further proof that I’m a geek…..
My new car’s stereo allows you to customize the welcome message it displays. I thought about “Sir Pipalot” and “BrianScion”, but those weren’t good enough. Here is what I decided on for now:

PC LOAD LETTER

[tags]geek, stereo, car, cars, Office Space, funny[/tags]

May 25 is National Towel Day

Towel Day

With a website named MyVogonPoetry, How could I NOT mention that tomorrow, May 25th is National Towel Day? Carry your towel with you everywhere! Why?

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

(from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy)

[tags]geek, hhgttg, douglas adams, towel, towel day, national towel day, scifi[/tags]