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Why "Future Fuzzy" Wears That Hat

One of the webcomics I enjoy is Sam Logan’s Sam and Fuzzy, which could be described as “the adventures of a lovable loser and a short, psychotic bear”. The author recommends that new readers start reading from the January 3rd, 2005 strip; I think that you can start as early as late 2003, which is when I felt the comic really started hitting its stride. You might also want to check out the readers’ guide.


The first appearance of Future Fuzzy. Click to see the comic at full size.

Some of my favourite Sam and Fuzzy strips are the ones featuring

“Future Fuzzy”, a future version of Fuzzy who arrives in a flash of

light from 24 hours in the future to warn Fuzzy of impending doom. The warnings are usually worthless, but amusing.


Click the comic to see it at full size.

In the comic, there’s a convention that people from the future wear sombreros with little pompons that dangle from the brim. Even the future version of “Roger”, a decapitated head whom Fuzzy considers a friend and advisor, wears such a hat:


Click the comic to see it at full size.

The “future hat” seemed familiar to me. I’d seen such a hat associated with a time travel story before, but couldn’t put my finger on where. It’s been bugging me for about year now.

Last night, I was flipping through some old X-Men comics, when I stumbled across this image from X-Men Annual #14, from 1990. Get a load of Rachel Summers’ hat!

Rachel Summers, for those of you not familiar with the X-Men comics of the mid-80s to early 1990s, is the daughter of Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Jean Grey from an alternate future timeline.

The future from whence Rachel comes is a dystopian one, where mutants are hunted down and either killed or put into concentration camps. Rachel has been sent back from the future to do what she can to prevent it from happening, and to warn the present-day X-Men.

So that’s where I’d seen the “future hat” before. It all makes sense now.

Geek mystery solved!

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Online Rights’ Canada’s Balanced Meal — Tomorrow at the Drake

In the same hotel as the one where Sam Bulte’s $250-a-plate fundraiser — er, celebration — is being held, Online Rights Canada will be holding a Balanced Meal where the talk will be about “why MPs shouldn’t take cash from the industries they regulate”, the way Sam Bulte is.

The fun runs from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Drake Hotel’s corner cafe (the Drake is at 1150 Queen Street West, two blocks east of Dufferin). Online Rights Canada says that the Cafe’s macaroni and cheese is tasty; I will also vouch for their “Notorious B.U.R.G.” hamburger. Check out their menu [PDF].

A couple of things to note about the Balanced Meal:

  1. This is a nonpartisan event, and we don’t have any position

    on how you should vote in the coming election. Partisan raconteurs need

    not apply.

  2. ORC can’t pay for dinner. Sorry, but we’re a not-for-profit organization!
  3. Please RSVP to info [at] OnlineRights.ca. Seating will be limited, but we love a crowd.

Be there — I will, and with accordion, even!

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Apollo 12 Cuff Checklists

One thing that impressed me in the movie Apollo 13 was their use of checklists: in a mission where little differences are actually big differences, there’s nothing like a checklist to take care of the things that our brains are bad at (accurately tracking long lists of procedures and data) and free our brains to do what they do best (evaluating, analyzing and reacting to changing situations). I should probably get in the habit of making more checklists.

The Apollo 12 Lunar Journal site has two PDFs showing two different mission checklists that were mounted on the cuffs of the astronaut’s suits: one for the command module [700K PDF — some poorly-photocopied nudity], and one for the lunar module [900K PDF — some poorly-photocopied nudity]. Not only do the checklists feature the standard tech stuff, they’ve also got some cartoons and photos of Playboy playmates. That sort of stuff wouldn’t fly today, but this was engineering culture in the ’60’s.

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If David Janes Were Running for Prime Minister

While David Janes and I do not always see eye-to-eye on every issue, our poltics often align in that foggy part of the political landscape where “fiscally conservative” and “socially liberal” meet (according to the Map of Politopia, I live in the northwest suburbs of “Centerville”). Accuse me of wanting to have my cake and eat it too if you must; I will counter (and win) by reminding you that that is exactly the purpose of cake.

The latest series of entries in his blog, Ranting and Roaring, lists the planks of the “Janes Platform”, if he were running for Prime Minister. I generally agree with them:

Strangely enough, what David has to say about paying off the debt — “A Janes government will not pay down the debt, believing that keeping

money in the hands of the Canadian people and growing the economy to

the point where the debt is an irrelevancy is a more effective strategy” — is pretty close to what Lorne Gershuny of the Marxist-Leninist party said about the debt at last week’s all-candidates meeting!

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The Rephrasing Spider-Man

Spider-Man not only fights crime, he also fights the misuse of words!

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Mesmerizing Animated Graphic of the Week

Until I stumbled across this animated GIF, I didn’t know that Jean-Claude van Damme (“The Muscles from Brussels”) was in the Breakin’ movie. Not only that, it was his first onscreen appearance!

Click the image to see Jean-Claude strut his stuff [1.6MB animated GIF].

Click here to see a rather disturbing picture of Jean-Claude van Damme and Lorenzo Lamas, two buddies at the beach…Brokeback Beach! (It’s still safe for work, unless pictures of men in Speedos are verboten.)

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January 31st: ESRI Canada/Bell Mobility Location-Based Services Seminar

ESRI Canada, in

cooperation with Bell

Mobility, is hosting a seminar on location-based services that will cover “how

developers can capitalize on this exciting Canadian opportunity in

LBS”.

The organizers say that

attendees of the seminar will:

  • Learn about

    what is working in the Canadian LBS market

  • Discover the sales and marketing opportunities

    available to

    application developers who build wireless applications using Bell

    Mobility’s Location Technology with ESRI’s ArcWeb

    Services

  • Learn how to build LBS applications for your

    customers using

    Bell real-time Assisted GPS with the advantages of ESRI’s ArcWeb

    Services maps and data

  • Meet key representatives from Bell and ESRI Canada

    who can help you get started developing web and wireless

    applications

  • Become aware of the exciting partnering

    opportunities with Bell and ESRI Canada

The seminar will take

place at Bell Mobility’s headquarters (5099

Creekbank Road, Mississauga, Ontario) on Tuesday, January 31st, from 7:30 a.m.

(ARRRRGH!) to noon. I’ll be there (and hopefully awake),

and if you’d like to catch up with me there or have lunch (and lots of

coffee afterwards, drop me a

line or leave a note in the comments.