Kenyamsterdam

July 25, 2006 at 11:59 am · Filed under kenyamsterdam

Dateline: Middle of August

Here’s where we are. Jessica and I have just returned from an amazing honeymoon/ vacation in Kenya and the Netherlands, inspired by the wedding of Jessica’s brother Martin to his fiancée Jennie. While Martin
and Jennie met in Las Vegas where they live, Jennie is Kenyan, and Kenyans like to have weddings in Kenya. Can you blame them?

So, a relatively small American contingent of twenty or so of Martin’s intrepid relatives have schlepped to Africa — certainly to see Martin married off to the excellent and lovely Jennie, but also: how many excuses do you need to go to a whole freaking new continent?

Jessica and I have been married four months, and had not yet had a honeymoon, so we decided to use this trip to Kenya in such manner, with an added jaunt of a few days in Amsterdam on the way back. Why Amsterdam? You can’t fly to Kenya directly; might as well go somewhere nice on the half-way. I had spent an afternoon in Amsterdam a few years ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an utterly pretty city, and totally kitschy at the same time. Lots of water, lots of idiotic t-shirts: it’s the Niagara Falls of Europe. So hey, honeymoon!

Anyway, we’re back, and I’d like to tell you all about our buon viaggio. I’m going to lay it out day by day (with fudgy timestamps as if I’m blogging from the limpid past), so although I’m writing after the fact and all, it will be like you’re RIGHT THERE IN THE ACTION. To really give you the full monkey, I probably should write it in the second person. You like the second person. You wish more people wrote that way. You are thrilling to the possibilities: not merely able to experience Africa vicariously, but dare you say it, I-cariously.

Actually, you’re glad that I’m abandoning that approach to travel writing, starting just over here –>. Whew! How about I’m just going to tell you about each day as it happened, and illustrate it with a few pictures from all the good times?

If you feel like cheating somewhat before I get this all writtenated, and have a high tolerance for pictures devoid of sociological context, you can always see the pictures swimming through our Flickr streams:

Ryan Flickr
Jessica Flickr

bk_keywords: Kenya honeymoon Amsterdam.

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The South Park Mormon clip

July 21, 2006 at 12:51 am · Filed under Teevee

I finally saw the South Park take on the foundations of Mormonism from a few seasons back. It’s maybe 90% accurate. Not too bad. I think Mormons would take issue with the dozens of holes Joseph Smith digs to find the plates (the angel told him where to dig), and with the assertion that no one else ever saw the golden plates. (Eleven men, most related to Smith, signed one of two documents saying they had seen the plates.) The “dum dum dum dum dum” editorializing does not have a scriptural referent as far as I know.

In a side note, Martin Harris, who is featured in the second half of the clip and who financed the publication of the Book of Mormon, is buried in a cemetery in Clarkston, Utah surrounded by literally dozens and figuratively millions of dead Godfreys, all of whom I am related to.

bk_keywords: Joseph Smith.

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Find the next web page

July 13, 2006 at 1:42 pm · Filed under Fun

There are a couple of sites like this, but this one (apparently called N) is pretty good. The idea is you have to figure out the URL of the next web page in the numerical series, which starts at 1 and goes to 30. The way to get from one page to the next changes each time.

Some of these are pretty tough. Wikipedia is helpful in a couple of instances, and you will also need to look at the source code for a few of them.

Keep in mind that each one gives you a clue as to how its URL would be derived, but you’re really looking for the next one in the series.

Another thing: on the internets, Nineteen.html is a different page than nineteen.html or NINETEEN.html.

How far can you get? I can post hints for ones you get really stuck on.

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Of the typist, by the typist and for the typist

July 4, 2006 at 12:48 am · Filed under Fun

It’s probably been a while since your last typing speed test. How fast are you these days? Find it in with an elegant little typing test.

Me? Consistently in the high 80s-low 90s wpm, with three or four errors each time. My best showing, after about ten tries: 100.85 wpm, with two errors. Pretty good! Certainly better than whatever I pulled in typing class on the Selectric back in the day.

You? Better than high school?

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