
Flying Home

Since my summer vacation began back in May, I’ve spent very little time in my home city of Toronto. Instead, I’ve been in these places:
- Toronto for a week or so
- Tampa for a couple of weeks
- Toronto for a couple of days
- The Philippines — Manila and Bohol — for a couple of weeks
- Toronto for a day
- Tampa for a weekend
- San Francisco and the Bay Area for almost a week
- Tampa for nearly three weeks
…and now it’s time to make my way back home and take care of a few things: business (including an employment lead or three to chase down), my apartment, catching up with friends and family, and so on. I’ll miss Anitra, but she’s scheduled to come up near the end of August for Fan Expo and a trip to Montreal, and I’ll have my hands full in the meantime.
I’m at gate E73 at Tampa International Airport as I write this, and I’ll be boarding the flight that will get me back to Accordion City in the mid-afternoon. See you soon!
“Pandyland” Explains Instagram
Click the comic to see it at full size on its original site.
The webcomic Pandyland is always a fun read, and the latest comic does a great job telling the truth about Instagram and why we really use it.
Coffee’s Uncanny Valley

Coffee’s great when it’s hot or when it’s iced, but when it’s in that middle ground — the uncanny valley — between the two, it’s downright terrible.
The uncanny valley is a computer graphics term for that zone where replicas of humans, such as computer-animated characters or robots lie look and act almost, but not quite like real human beings. The valley is that zone between a cartoon-like approximation of human appearance and behaviour on one end and perfect human appearance and behaviour on the other. In the uncanny valley, the imitation is just “off” enough to look wrong or creepy. Examples of the uncanny valley include the robotic women in The Stepford Wives, whose behaviour was a little too much like a social conservative’s fantasies, and the way the human characters were rendered in the computer-animated film The Polar Express.


Given the reputation of British cuisine, it’s hard to tell whether shoppers were relieved or disappointed.
Here’s the Whiskas Cat Milk page, in case you were wondering what the stuff actually is.

Going to Necro Game Day today, hence the tribute above, from the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide — the infamous Random Harlot Encounter Table.
