Windows Vista Speech Recognition

I just couldn't help myself.... Windows is supposedly coming out with their new 'amazing' new operating system to replace windows... In fact it's gonna do such a good job they just.... had to keep the name windows and add 'Vista' behind it?? Well, windows vista is getting a lot of criticism, even and especially from avid Microsoft users. Ah, when will the world learn to all buy macs.

Very funny video!

Toyota Hilux!! Can't kill it... I mean really!

Ok, here's the video, absolutely worth watching! The audio seems to lack some finesse, and it falls off at the end, but most of the video (the important part) you can hear the narration.

WOW!

Top Gear.... the best show on earth! UPDATED!

Ok, go do yourself a really big favour right now... and click on THIS LINK! Give the video 23 seconds to get into the swing of things!

Being in video mode tonight, I must admit, I'm happy to announce that I speant nearly an entire evening, well at least 3 hours of it, watching Videos from "Top Gear" on youtube.
Now sure I'm a huge car fan, so naturally this makes watching these video's... well irresistable. But even to a none car fan, even some of my sister's (through marriage) I sincerely beleive they would get nearly as many laughs, pleasure and jaw drops as I do watching these videos.
These English speaking blokes' with the greatest accent on earth, bring humour to cars, and to one of the greatest filmed and scripted tv shows I've seen.
Take the Ford GT video attached. Ok, this is likely the most humour free video from 'Top Gear', but I simply couldn't pass this video down. I mean, asside the fact that I'm a huge Ford fan, this GT is one of the most incredible cars on the roads today. Even Jay Leno, known for his exotic garage, finds this car to be one of his ultimate top favourite cars, for handling, power, looks, comfort and all allround uniqueness. I for some reason feel compelled to agree whole-heartedly. And when one of my customers came out of a V6 mustangs (not V8) she exclaimed: "Jay, that is better than chocolate... simply better!" :) :) ... and that was only a Mustang, and just the V6! Add, 300 more horsepower, more style and more vigour!

Ok, back to 'Top Gear'. Do yourself a favour, and drop onto www.youtube.com , and type in: "Top Gear" and playtime commences!

I do Promise, the audio is much better on the other vidoes, just can't be helped that my favourite two videos (toyota truck and Ford GT) have the worst sound... likely because they have been watched the most by millions around the world, guess you can wear out the sound on a digital video... :)

From racing an Aston Martin DB9 against a bullet train from england to france to playing soccer with a team of Toyota Aygo's VS a team of VW Fox's. From Taking a classic Mini and jumping it off the ski jump in lila hammer, to racing the fastest rally car on a snow track, against a winning bobsled team!
And then there is the ultimate, my all time favourite Top Gear episode. In fact it is so good, it almost makes me wish I sold 1980's's Toyota trucks. They take a Toyota Hilux truck, and do everything possible to destroy it... I mean everything. From driving it like crap, to dropping a wrecking ball on it, drowning it in the ocean... and... well, you'll just have to watch it.

Ok, I'll post it next time for your easy convenience!

Amazing Wave Surfing!!

Ok, I've got absolutely no relation to surfing let alone big wave surfing.... but you really gotta see this video. Methinks either this surfers potty training went down the drain on this day (no pun intended) or he's born without feelings... feelings of fear!

did i say WOW yet??

When there's nothing to discuss....

So in speaking with some customers today, I was reminded by something funny that us humans do when there is lack of conversation.

For whatever reason, when we run out of things to speak about with someone, or when we are looking for the perfect ice-breaker to start talking with someone, we often look up to the skies... to the current weather conditions of course.

"Nice day today eh?" "Looks like you brought in the sunshine" "wow, what a storm today" and all the usual, often dorky 'weather comments.'

So I figured in my often lack of writing in this blog frequently, (or as frequently as some of you may wish), I leave you my new 'weather report' box on the sidebar to the right of this most recent post. Now I know that this 'post' being my third post this week makes for a record on 'blogit', don't count on this becoming the norm.

I don't think you'd be too interested in hearing about the latest Ford I sold, and how we can't keep plants alive in our apartment, and what we ate, and what we watched for tv. 'cause for Jay and Veronica... that's usually our life! :) Ok... it's a whole lot more exciting than that, but exciting to you and exciting to us may be two entirely different things... ya?? :)

So I leave you all with the weather to discuss, in advance, for my future lack of blog posts. So when you check my blog for any updates on the life and times of Jay and Veronica and find... nothing... you have the weather to discuss.

Inside of this weather 'box' I even included the five major cities nearby my most popular blog- readers. Just click on the 'cities tab'.

Wow, two posts in less than a day....

Just a few comments. I wanted to point out some exciting things, ok, what I find to be exciting.

I realized that a few of the links on the right side of my blog where somewhat out of date. I've slightly upgraded my buddies list, though the list remains short. Either Veronica and I don't have many 'buddies' or our 'buddies' don't blog!

The cool addition is that my 'top 3' list has been altered and updated to my 'top 5' list.

This top 5 list has some of my favourite things on the internet to date. Being a Rather large Apple fan and a Ford fan, I felt more than a need to put these to on my top 5 list. Apple is a very innovative company, they make a bullet-proof product and I swear by their lineup! Ford I've come to respect and appreciate in counteless ways as a business. I stand behind all of their vehicles and in the way I am sold by their 'built-ford-tough' mentality, and being the best-selling trucks for over 25 years, I have become a full believer in the same quality and comfort in their latest and greatest car and crossover (CUV) line-up.

Two very interesting websites to do with Ford is www.fordboldmoves.com - on the rebuilding of a major company, and www.thetruthabouttrucks.com - self explainatory. Very much worth spending 5 - 10 minutes checking out when you get a free moment.

Now onto less sales-pitchy things, "We Feel Fine" is one of the COOLEST online projects I have ever seen, let alone one of the coolest projects ever!! You can see the feelings of thousands of others around the world, type in moods, feelings, sort by gender, age, weather, all in seperate categories or all together and see the different results. Very easy to play with, and very fun. DEFINATELY WORTH A VISIT, and easy to spend lots of time on... especially for my buddy Marcel the phsycologist! Really cool!

Gizmodo, as I've commented on before keeps me in touch with the latest in gadgets, (often several dozen new inserts daily)

Restaurantica is one great tool for those who love dinning out the odd time. Though we try to conserve money as much as possible to pay off debts quickly, we seem to constantly get money from relitaves to "go out eating". No complaints in this department! Veronica and I truly enjoy a good dish the odd time... speaking of, we still have two more "dinner outs" waiting to be used at a restaurant of our choice thanks to relatives... !! :) Restaurantica, here we come.

Resort to right hand panel of this blog to see links for the above mentioned websites.

I hope you enjoy these sites as much as I do!!

Go Big or Go Home!!

My latest hobby has found me being a pin-pusher. That's right, a PIN-pusher, not PEN-pusher.
The thought crept up on a me a few months ago when I kept looking at a rather vast, empty wall in our apartment that deserved more than just a few small, wimpy looking pictures hanging on it. Thanks to our lofty ceiling, the wall looked so open and felt like it needed a rather large painting or some sort of art-peice, but it had to be large. Being a firm beleiver of the expression, "Go big or Go home", I set right to work.

Having a bit of a background in the arts, but having no skill whatsoever in painting etc, I thought about setting out to make a rather large painting. Reallizing I really have no talent at all.... I thought of doing some sort of modern art, splash of paint kinda thing, perhaps somewhat representing a sunset or so, might look kinda funky. Do-able, but not sure if that's what I wanted.

Then one night I dreamt up the idea to do an artpiece out of carpenters nails, driven right into the wall, and make a Massive pointillism type drawing, but with nails. Hmmm... but we rent our apartment... that would be a problem. When it comes time to moving from this apartment, Veronica would be doing the moving, and I would be removing the nails for a week! Not so cool. So I thought about hanging a board of sorts and doing the nails in that. So I decided to us Foam sheets (inexpensive) and black push-pins (also inexpensive). Lightweight, cheap, and readily available.

I wanted to maintain a look, that the image was done right on the wall. As a pointillism drawing is pencil or ink dots on white paper, I wanted to keep the monotone look and have the black pin-heads on the yellow wall. So I painted two 4X8 sheets of foam the same yellow paint as the walls, mounted the sheets together, and then touched up the seams and mounting screws with paint.

So I wanted the image to be something scenic, I was thinking something outdoors and nature related as we don't get much of a view of the outdoors from in here. The Common Loon has always been one of my favourite creatures on earth. Since Veronica doesn't seem to have any sort of fears of loons, I didn't think she'd mind a rather large representation of a loon in our place! So I projected a sketched image of a loon onto the wall using an LCD projector hooked up to my laptop, poured my bulk order of black push-pins into our large salad bowl, and well, less than 20 hours later I wound up with this.

Any guesses as to how many pins?? Really, I'd like to see what your guesses will be!

The winner gets this artwork when Veronica gets sick of it... :) :)

Click on the images for a closer look!

Long long weekend fun! -Update #2

Update- July 19. The pics are now up. Click here or below on the link for photos!

--------------------

Update- July 13. Pics to come soon. Trying something new, and not much time to spend on it. Too get pics up soon though!
_______________________

This canada day weekend was some good times and some good fun for us. It started with a canoe trip, and ended with joyous sunburns... and the mark of my one year anniversary at Reliable Ford. Yup, I'm pretty happy with that.

Veronica and I took a few days to ourselves and joined our College and Careers Bible study group on a Canoe trip. We drove to the top end of Georgian Bay were we canoed out to crown land just south of Killarney Provincial park. We camped on the mainland Wednesday as we arrived around midnight there. Thursday morning we went the the Sportsman's Inn which is located right on the docks in Killarney. Great breakfast served there and they even let us take our coffees out on the docks while we waited for breakfast to be served!! Now Killarney is quite the town! It's a 68 Km drive in from the main highway, and until you get only a km or two from town, there honestly can't be more than a dozen driveways coming from the one road into Killarney. The sign welcomes you to a population of 500, something I couldn't get over. So I asked our friendly waitress at breakfast, and she said "...actually no, Killarney's population is only about 250, the other half is the surrounding areas." WOW, that's smaller than most church congregations that I know!!

Anywho, after breakfast we canoed out the the islands, and due to some storm clouds rolling in, we chose to setup camp in a more sheltered island rather than the more scenic islands that offered a superior view. Beautiful scenery there, the islands, colour (not clarity) but color of the water and surrounding scenes reminded us of Cuba. We still had a good dosage of sun and fun, swimming, canoeing and lazing around. Canada is such a beautiful country!! See pics of the weekend here.

The above link to pictures also includes the rest of the weekend. So Saturday we ended our canoe trip around noon. As our 10 friends from C&C study group went back home, we drove on, through Northbay, and on to Ottawa to see Brian and Alanna and their children, to see Lucas again (who's getting cuter and more like a little boy every time we see him,) and of course to see their new little one, Zacharey Hart. For a newborn he was adorable. The drive along the Ottawa river (border of Ontario and Quebec) above Algonquin park was simply beautiful. Stunning landscape there! The visit in ottawa itself was short but very sweet and great the see the Ottawa contigiency of the Hart family!

The Monday consisted of more sunburning at Sable beach, which is always a great way to spend a holiday monday in the summer! One of our favourite past-times and some great Frisbee, Football, Soccer, and all the usual beach stuff!

The last few pictures you'll also see another little one, that's Anna Hart, new addition the the Eric and Becky family. We got to see her just after the long weekend ended, and of course, another cute hart baby. This was another short and sweet visit, and again, good to see the Brantford sector of the Harts.

Among all this excitement was some not as fun-ness however. We had to say farewell to two very good friends. Jeremy Vandergaag left us on Monday morning to leave for Alberta to see his girlfriend and live closer to her. We also just recently had a farewell party for other good friend, Sara Plantinga who also leaves us for the west, for her it's Winnepeg to teach. We will miss them both and their departure has definately left holes in our hearts. We wish them the best and our good Lord's blessings in their travels and future plans. We miss them already! :(

In all, it was a refreshing weekend, and though we drove about 2,000 km's in about 5 days, it was a great holiday and nice to get 'away from it all' for those few days!

Plus... laying in our double hammock in open air northern Ontario is what really made it all worth it!!